April is Poetry Month, 2007 Edition

[Yui-chan]

National Poetry Month is a celebration of poetry first introduced in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets as a way to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. It is celebrated every April.

 

Inspired by the success of Black History Month, held each February, and Women's History Month, held in March, the Academy of American Poets convened a group of publishers, booksellers, librarians, literary organizations, poets, and teachers in 1995 to discuss the need and usefulness of a similar month long holiday to celebrate poetry. You can read more details of the history and celebration of the holiday here...

 

In the mean time, as my own homage to a beautiful and inspiring art form, I would like to once again pass along to the Pen one poem every day for the month of April. These are provided by "Martha" of the April_is Yahoo Group.

 

Index:

 

1 April - Elegy of Fortinbras, Zbigniew Herbert

2 April - Words for Love, Ted Berrigan

3 April - Anywhere Else, Maggie Dietz

4 April - the mockingbird, Charles Bukowski

5 April - White Apples, Donald Hall

6 April - Song, Adrienne Rich

7 April - Hour, Christian Hawkey

8 April - Death Comes To Me Again, A Girl, Dorianne Laux

9 April - Publication Date, Franz Wright

10 April - The Day Flies Off Without Me, John Stammers

11 April - Johnny Cash in the Afterlife, Bronwen Densmore

12 April - This Heavy Craft, P.K. Page

13 April - All There is to Know About Adolph Eichmann, Leonard Cohen

14 April - Supple Cord, Naomi Shihab Nye

15 April - Waste Land Limericks, Wendy Cope

16 April - you can't be a star in the sky without holy fire, Frank X. Gaspar

17 April - I Imagine The Gods, Jack Gilbert

18 April - Serenade,Terrance Hayes

19 April - from Briggflatts, Basil Bunting

 

Your servant,

~Yui

[Yui-chan]

Sunday, April 1, 2007

 

Elegy of Fortinbras

Zbigniew Herbert

 

for C.M.

 

Now that we're alone we can talk prince man to man

though you lie on the stairs and see no more than a dead ant

nothing but black sun with broken rays

I could never think of your hands without smiling

and now that they lie on the stone like fallen nests

they are as defenceless as before The end is exactly this

The hands lie apart The sword lies apart The head apart

and the knight's feet in soft slippers

 

You will have a soldier's funeral without having been a soldier

the only ritual I am acquainted with a little

there will be no candles no singing only cannon-fuses and bursts

crepe dragged on the pavement helmets boots artillery horses drums

drums I know nothing exquisite those will be my manoeuvres before I

start to rule

one has to take the city by the neck and shake it a bit

 

Anyhow you had to perish Hamlet you were not for life

you believed in crystal notions not in human clay

always twitching as if asleep you hunted chimeras

wolfishly you crunched the air only to vomit

you knew no human thing you did not know even how to breathe

 

Now you have peace Hamlet you accomplished what you had to

and you have peace The rest is not silence but belongs to me

you chose the easier part an elegant thrust

but what is heroic death compared with eternal watching

with a cold apple in one's hand on a narrow chair

with a view of the ant-hill and the clock's dial

 

Adieu prince I have tasks a sewer project

and a decree on prostitutes and beggars

I must also elaborate a better system of prisons

since as you justly said Denmark is a prison

I go to my affairs This night is born

a star named Hamlet We shall never meet

what I shall leave will not be worth a tragedy

 

It is not for us to greet each other or bid farewell we live on archipelagos

and that water these words what can they do what can they do prince

 

 

(translated from Polish by Czeslaw Milosz & Peter Dale Scott)

 

[i love poems that give a fresh perspective to a fictional character,

and here Fortinbras, the soldier who shows up at the end of Hamlet,

gets to have his say. I love how the lack of punctuation gives this

poem a kind of immediacy, and seeing a really pragmatic perspective on

what happens after the end of the play, the end of the tragedy, when

life goes on, when you're the kind of person who isn't a Hamlet.]

[Yui-chan]

Monday, April 2, 2007

 

Words for Love

Ted Berrigan

 

for Sandy

 

Winter crisp and the brittleness of snow

as like make me tired as not. I go my

myriad ways blundering, bombastic, dragged

by a self that can never be still, pushed

by my surging blood, my reasoning mind.

 

I am in love with poetry. Every way I turn

this, my weakness, smites me. A glass

of chocolate milk, head of lettuce, dark-

ness of clouds at one o'clock obsess me.

I weep for all of these or laugh.

 

By day I sleep, an obscurantist, lost

in dreams of lists, compiled by my self

for reassurance. Jackson Pollock René

Rilke Benedict Arnold I watch

my psyche, smile, dream wet dreams, and sigh.

 

At night, awake, high on poems, or pills

or simple awe that loveliness exists, my lists

flow differently. Of words bright red

and black, and blue. Bosky. Oubliette. Dis-

severed. And O, alas

 

Time disturbs me. Always minute detail

fills me up. It is 12:10 in New York. In Houston

it is 2 pm. It is time to steal books. It's

time to go mad. It is the day of the apocalpyse

the year of parrot fever! What am I saying?

 

Only this. My poems do contain

wilde beestes. I write for my Lady

of the Lake. My god is immense, and lonely

but uncowed. I trust my sanity, and I am proud. If

I sometimes grow weary, and seem still, nevertheless

 

my heart still loves, will break.

 

 

MORE LIKE THIS:

A Certain Slant of Sunlight, Ted Berrigan

Red Shift, Ted Berrigan

[Yui-chan]

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

 

Anywhere Else

Maggie Dietz

 

How anyone is happy in this country

I don't know. Any way you turn

there is an edge, and everyone

cocks a wind-burned hand over

the brow to look out under it.

The water flings petticoats of foam

against wolf-headed rocks, and

multicolored boats moored

among others to the weathered

pier bob dumb as soldiers.

We live on what's beneath us.

Dark snake-like birds curl into

the water, rise like rose blooms

floated in bowls. And every day

the riven, mended nets go trolling.

A far cry from my unforgotten fields.

How is it, then, the boat lamps

and the buoy bells dislocate me?--

aching not for home, for something

I can't name. As if I could be half-

another, as if I've lived someplace

I never will. Winter brought greenish

bergs to the harbor, floes composed

of further waters. And the strange

white crows here rode them.

A mustached woman poured

scalding coffee on the feet of one

to free it from the scalloped ice

night layered on the sand.

It screamed as my lost brother

does in dreams, with a creature's

anguished hatred. Next morning,

it lay in the wheat-colored grass,

half-eaten by dogs. Here, shells

resembling army helmets wash

ashore, and cataracted eyes of horses.

The town creaks, the seaward shingles

of the dry-faced widows' houses

loosen like teeth. A squall will snap

a mast in half clean as a bone.

Are we not shipwrecked?

The gravid sea holds nothing

for us--but how we squint out

over it, waiting for another sun,

for someone else's blessed hour.

 

 

[seventh line from the end -- "A squall will snap". The sound of that is so fantastic! Try it out loud, slow. And those first two lines, and how this weaves together tangible things, the seashore imagery, with bigger questions about suffering and emotion.]

[Yui-chan]

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

 

the mockingbird

Charles Bukowski

 

the mockingbird had been following the cat

all summer

mocking mocking mocking

teasing and cocksure;

the cat crawled under rockers on porches

tail flashing

and said something angry to the mockingbird

which I didn't understand.

 

yesterday the cat walked calmly up the driveway

with the mockingbird alive in its mouth,

wings fanned, beautiful wings fanned and flopping,

feathers parted like a woman's legs,

and the bird was no longer mocking,

it was asking, it was praying

but the cat

striding down through centuries

would not listen.

 

I saw it crawl under a yellow car

with the bird

to bargain it to another place.

 

summer was over.

 

 

[in this class I'm taking, a girl was talking about Bukowski and said apologetically, "I know he's kind of cliche," and my professor said, "we should all be so lucky." True! I think he can be hit-or-miss, but this is so on: "it was asking, it was praying," and bargain as a verb at the end there. Really effective with so few words.]

[Yui-chan]

Thursday, April 5, 2007

 

White Apples

Donald Hall

 

when my father had been dead a week

I woke

with his voice in my ear

I sat up in bed

 

and held my breath

and stared at the pale closed door

 

white apples and the taste of stone

 

if he called again

I would put on my coat and galoshes

 

 

[i saw Donald Hall at a reading last year, a few weeks before he was named poet laureate and he was funny and charming. He said he thinks this poem works because of the "st" sound at the end of taste and beginning of stone: "That's what lifts a poem, makes it get off the ground a little."

 

I like how it's kind of a stuttering sound, which seems to match the theme -- the interruptions of death, and being suddenly woken. And "white apples and the taste of stone" -- how it calls to mind graveyards without quite explaining itself.]

 

More like this:

To a Waterfowl, Donald Hall

My Mother Said, Donald Hall

Names of Horses, Donald Hall

[Yui-chan]

Friday, April 6, 2007

 

Song

Adrienne Rich

 

You're wondering if I'm lonely:

OK then, yes, I'm lonely

as a plane rides lonely and level

on its radio beam, aiming

across the Rockies

for the blue-strung aisles

of an airfield on the ocean.

 

You want to ask, am I lonely?

Well, of course, lonely

as a woman driving across country

day after day, leaving behind

mile after mile

little towns she might have stopped

and lived and died in, lonely

 

If I'm lonely

it must be the loneliness

of waking first, of breathing

dawn's first cold breath on the city

of being the one awake

in a house wrapped in sleep

 

If I'm lonely

it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore

in the last red light of the year

that knows what it is, that knows it's neither

ice nor mud nor winter light

but wood, with a gift for burning.

 

 

[i love this, because it's a topic that seems like it should make for bad teenage poetry, and instead it's so fantastic -- the conversational tone, the images, the rowboat that saves the poem from wallowing with its strong sense of identity. (How many self-assured rowboats did you think you'd read about today?) And the last line!]

 

More like this:

Diving into the Wreck, Adrienne Rich

Dear Adrienne, Adrienne Rich

Miracle Ice Cream, Adrienne Rich

[Yui-chan]

Saturday, April 7, 2007

 

Hour

Christian Hawkey

 

My sixth sensurround

is down, my second skin

the skin I'm stepping

into: I lick

a new finger & hold it up

to the wind: O my beloved

what. O

my beloved what. O my

beloved shovel-nosed mole

can I clean the soil

from your black, sightless eyes

can I massage with fine oils

your tiny, webbed feet

are you tired of running

into drainpipes

does your mouth foam

approaching power lines

are your tunnels collapsing

do you have work to do

does the dirt breathe

do you breathe the air

between the dirt

are your lungs

the size of earlobes

do you hear me

in the tunnel next to you

have you cut your nose

on a shard of glass

have you excavated

the severed, blue leg

of Spider-Man

did you pause to admire

his red booties

are you tunnels collapsing

do you have work to do

am I keeping you

am I keeping you

 

 

[i think one of the worst holdovers from English classes is the idea that you should *understand* everything going on in a poem right away, when poetry is awesome because it's the one thing that's allowed to function on other levels: how it sounds, how it looks, how it can catch you up in its images or language even if it doesn't seem to make sense. I have no idea what on earth is going on at the beginning of this poem and I love it anyway. Maybe because of it.]

 

More like this:

Four poems by Christian Hawkey

A Dead Mole, Andrew Young

[Yui-chan]

Sunday, April 8, 2007

 

Death Comes To Me Again, A Girl

Dorianne Laux

 

Death comes to me again, a girl

in a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling.

It's not so terrible she tells me,

not like you think, all darkness

and silence. There are windchimes

and the smell of lemons, some days

it rains, but more often the air is dry

and sweet. I sit beneath the staircase

built from hair and bone and listen

to the voices of the living. I like it,

she says, shaking the dust from her hair,

especially when they fight, and when they sing.

 

 

[Has Dorianne Laux been reading Neil Gaiman? I like this because it tells a story and uses details so well.]

 

More like this:

Antilamentation, Dorianne Laux

[Yui-chan]

Monday, April 9, 2007

 

Publication Date

by Franz Wright

 

One of the few pleasures of writing

is the thought of one's book in the hands of a kindhearted

intelligent person somewhere. I can't remember what the others

are right now.

I just noticed that it is my own private

 

National I Hate Myself and Want to Die Day

(which means the next day I will love my life

and want to live forever). The forecast calls

for a cold night in Boston all morning

 

and all afternoon. They say

tomorrow will be just like today,

only different. I'm in the cemetery now

at the edge of town, how did I get here?

 

A sparrow limps past on its little bone crutch saying

I am Federico García Lorca

risen from the dead --

literature will lose, sunlight will win, don't worry.

 

 

More like this:

My Place, Franz Wright

The Street, Franz Wright

A Supermarket in California, Allen Ginsberg

[Yui-chan]

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

 

The Day Flies Off Without Me

John Stammers

 

The planes bound for all points everywhere

etch lines on my office window. From the top floor

London recedes in all directions, and beyond:

the world with its teeming hearts.

 

I am still, you move, I am a point of reference on a map;

I am at zero meridian as you consume the longitudes.

The pact we made to read our farewells exactly

at two in the afternoon with you in the air

holds me like a heavy winter coat.

 

Your unopened letter is in my pocket, beating.

 

 

[i love the sense of motion and sprawl and expansion in the whole poem, and how it packs in so many fantastic lines: "the world with its teeming hearts" and that last line, especially.]

 

More like this:

I Don't 'Go Organic' Often, but When I Do, John Stammers

The Taxi, Amy Lowell

[Yui-chan]

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

 

Johnny Cash in the Afterlife

Bronwen Densmore

 

At first you wonder where June has got to

and then you manage to forget

the circumstance of your own arrival.

Prior to here you were where? Suffice to say

that you were finished with some task

or another. Around the corner something flutters

and you'd chase it if you were feeling your old self,

though right now you're not sure what you'd do

with something living if you caught it.

You hunker down and keep an eye out,

remember how when you were a boy

you trapped rabbits in a baited net

and waited for your father, who killed them

with just his thumb and two fingers.

You are forgetting the names of these things

already. You would like to describe wings beating

as warm, and possessed of smell,

but when you open your mouth it's just air

getting out, you think screen door,

and when sound finally comes

it seems animal to you. If your wife were here

you might put your ear to her and know better

but for now it's just you and the whoosh,

whoosh of that shadow. If you wrote it down

it might come back but you don't mind,

not sure you really want it now.

For all you know it could have been owls

you were tracking back then, as a boy,

baskets that you wove to keep them in.

 

 

[i am such a sucker for what-if poems, story poems, and second person. And I love how centering this on Johnny Cash and those kinds of boyhood memories means there's no chance of it becoming overly precious. I really like the drift of this, how things get vaguer and vaguer as the poem goes along, how language itself seems to be fading.]

 

More like this:

Mummingbird, Bronwen Densmore

The Heaven of Animals, James Dickey

[Yui-chan]

Thursday, April 12, 2007

 

This Heavy Craft

P.K. Page

 

The wax has melted

but the dream of flight

persists.

I, Icarus, though grounded

in my flesh

have one bright section in me

where a bird

night after starry night

while I'm asleep

unfolds its phantom wings

 

and practices.

 

 

[The Icarus myth is a subject poets looove -- I bet you could easily publish a whole collection of Icarus poems. This one's a little less well-known, I think, and I like it for its brevity and how it makes Icarus the speaker, not just a subject for someone else to talk about.]

 

More like this:

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, William Carlos Williams

Failing and Flying, Jack Gilbert

Icarus, Christine Hemp

Musee des Beaux Arts, W.H. Auden

[Yui-chan]

Friday, April 13, 2007

 

All There is to Know About Adolph Eichmann

Leonard Cohen

 

EYES: Medium

HAIR: Medium

WEIGHT: Medium

HEIGHT: Medium

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: None

NUMBER OF FINGERS: Ten

NUMBER OF TOES: Ten

INTELLIGENCE: Medium

 

What did you expect?

Talons?

Oversize incisors?

Green saliva?

 

Madness?

 

 

[Adolph Eichmann, of course, is Hitler.]*

 

More like this:

Hitler's First Photograph, Wislawa Szymborska

Ovid in the Third Reich, Geoffrey Hill

* Actually, Adolph Eichmann is not Hitler, though he was a high-ranking SS officer. Details are available on Wikipedia.

[Yui-chan]

Saturday, April 14, 2007

 

Supple Cord

Naomi Shihab Nye

 

My brother, in his small white bed,

held one end.

I tugged the other

to signal I was still awake.

We could have spoken,

could have sung

to one another,

we were in the same room

for five years,

but the soft cord

with its little frayed ends

connected us

in the dark,

gave comfort

even if we had been bickering

all day.

When he fell asleep first

and his end of the cord

dropped to the floor,

I missed him terribly,

though I could hear his even breath

and we had such long and separate lives

ahead.

 

[Correction from yesterday: Adolph Eichmann was an SS officer. Oops.]

[Yui-chan]

Sunday, April 15, 2007

 

Waste Land Limericks

Wendy Cope

 

I

 

In April one seldom feels cheerful;

Dry stones, sun and dust make me fearful;

Clairvoyantes distress me,

Commuters depress me--

Met Stetson and gave him an earful.

 

II

 

She sat on a mighty fine chair,

Sparks flew as she tidied her hair;

She asks many questions,

I make few suggestions- -

Bad as Albert and Lil--what a pair!

 

III

 

The Thames runs, bones rattle, rats creep;

Tiresias fancies a peep--

A typist is laid,

A record is played--

Wei la la. After this it gets deep.

 

IV

 

A Phoenician named Phlebas forgot

About birds and his business--the lot,

Which is no surprise,

Since he'd met his demise

And been left in the ocean to rot.

 

V

 

No water. Dry rocks and dry throats,

Then thunder, a shower of quotes

From the Sanskrit and Dante.

Da. Damyata. Shantih.

I hope you'll make sense of the notes.

 

 

[T.S. Eliot's long, dense poem The Waste Land retold in limericks! Ha!]

 

 

More like this:

A Nursery Rhyme [as it might have been written byT.S. Eliot], Wendy Cope

[Yui-chan]

Monday, April 16, 2007

 

you can't be a star in the sky without holy fire

Frank X. Gaspar

 

Why should I keep telling you what I love, and whom?

I am so dull and awkward, what difference would it make?

Yet I can't shut up. I'm like that mockingbird up on the

bee-riddled pole at the corner of our easement. He is de-

mented, singing I must have sex, singing stay away from me.

Every once in a while he does a little hip-hop, he flaps his

wings, he does a break-down. When does he breathe? When

does he sleep? And beneath him are the morning-glories,

who could teach me a thing or two about the absolute rage to live,

and also the trumpet-vine, which is serene and alluring, but which

is all muscle and will underneath. And the wisteria! You

would stand naked in the snow-white shower of its blossoms, but it

would send a root down through you and plant a stake in your heart.

No, I can't shut up, it's not in my nature, just as beauty is not,

just as all those virtues I read about have gone missing. And I

don't want everyone to gather round either. In another world

I am ready to lie down in solidarity with all the doomed blossoms

along the white fences. In another world I would stop grinding

my own bones. In another world I would convert all my failures

and consume them in a holy fire. But then there is that mindless

bird – he can't shut up – and it's one world only, and he knows it.

 

 

More like this:

Bright Wings, Frank X. Gaspar

[Yui-chan]

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

 

Today's post is a guest entry by Mairead, who has excellent taste in poetry and other important things.

 

I Imagine The Gods

by Jack Gilbert

 

I imagine the gods saying, We will

make it up to you. We will give you

three wishes, they say. Let me see

the squirrels again, I tell them.

Let me eat some of the great hog

stuffed and roasted on its giant spit

and put out, steaming, into the winter

of my neighborhood when I was usually

too broke to afford even the hundred grams

I ate so happily walking up the cobbles,

past the Street of the Moon

and the Street of the Birdcage-Makers,

the Street of Silence and the Street

of the Little Pissing. We can give you

wisdom, they say in their rich voices.

Let me go at last to Hugette, I say,

the Algerian student with her huge eyes

who timidly invited me to her room

when I was too young and bewildered

that first year in Paris.

Let me at least fail at my life.

Think, they say patiently, we could

make you famous again. Let me fall

in love one last time, I beg them.

Teach me mortality, frighten me

into the present. Help me to find

the heft of these days. That the nights

will be full enough and my heart feral.

 

[i love Gilbert for his wisdom and the simple beauty of his voice; lines like "Let me at least fail at my life" and "Help me to find / the heft of these days" also have an elegance to their sound that gets stuck in my head. This is from his third (of only four) books, written when he was in his late sixties, and there's longing in this poem, I think, an urgency to maintain the immediacy of youth. Anyone lucky enough to get their hands on his most recent book, Refusing Heaven, should also read "Bring in the Gods," in which he confronts the same questions with another decade's wisdom: "I want to fail. I am hungry / for what I am becoming."]

 

More like this:

The Abnormal Is Not Courage, Jack Gilbert

In Umbria, Jack Gilbert

A Brief for the Defense, Jack Gilbert (& more like that)

[Yui-chan]

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

 

Serenade

Terrance Hayes

 

I want to always sleep beneath a bright red blanket

of leaves. I want to never wear a coat of ice.

I want to learn to walk without blinking.

I want to learn the language of a Chilean poet.

I want to say God & fuck you & touch me

without blinking. I want to outlive the turtle

& the turtle's father, the stone. I want a mouth

full of permissions & a pink glistening bud.

If the wildflower & ant hill can return

after sleeping three seasons, I want to walk

out of this house wearing nothing but wind.

I want to greet you, I want to wait for the bus with you

weighing less than a chill. I want to fight off the bolts

of gray lighting the alcoves & winding paths

of your hair. I want to fight off the damp nudgings

of snow. I want to fight off the wind.

I want to be the wind & I want to fight off the wind

with its sagging banner of isolation, its swinging

screen doors, its gilded boxes, & neatly folded pamphlets

of noise. I want to fight off the dull straight lines

of two by fours & endings, your disapprovals,

your doubts & regulations, your carbon copies.

If the locust can abandon its suit,

I want a brand new name. I want the pepper's fury

& the salt's tenderness. I want the eight-sided passion

of sugar, but not its need. I want the virtue

of the evening rain, but not its gossip.

I want the moon's intuition, but not its questions.

I want the malice of nothing on earth. I want to enter

every room in a strange electrified city

& find you there. I want your lips around the bell of flesh

at the bottom of my ear. I want to be the mirror,

but not the nightstand. I do not want to be the light switch.

I do not want to be the yellow photograph

or book of poems. When I leave this body, Woman,

I want to be pure flame and song. I want to be your breath.

 

 

More like this:

The Same City, Terrance Hayes

Shafro, Terrance Hayes

Clarinet, Terrance Hayes

[Yui-chan]

Thursday, 19 April, 2007

 

from Briggflatts

Basil Bunting

 

Furthest, fairest things, stars, free of our humbug,

each his own, the longer known the more alone,

wrapt in emphatic fire roaring out to a black flue.

Each spark trills on a tone beyond chronological compass,

yet in a sextant's bubble present and firm

places a surveyor's stone or steadies a tiller.

Then is Now. The star you steer by is gone,

its tremulous thread spun in the hurricane

spider floss on my check; light from the zenith

spun when the slowworm lay in her lap

fifty years ago.

 

The sheets are gathered and bound,

the volume indexed and shelved,

dust on its marbled leaves.

Lofty, an empty combe,

silent but for bees.

Finger tips touched and were still

fifty years ago.

Sirius is too young to remember.

 

Sirius glows in the wind. Sparks on ripples

mark his line, lures for spent fish.

 

Fifty years a letter unanswered;

a visit postponed for fifty years.

 

She has been with me fifty years.

 

Starlight quivers. I had day enough.

For love uninterrupted night.

 

 

[This is the very end of Briggflatts, Basil Bunting's long, autobiographical poem about a girl he loved and left. Bunting was really into poetry as an audible, spoken art form, so all the sounds he uses are very deliberate, and grounded in the accent of Northern England (he had some hilariously strong views on the loss of the letter 'r' in Southern accents). You can hear him reading a different poem, "At Briggflatts meetinghouse," here to get a sense of it.

 

He said: "Poetry, like music, is to be heard. It deals in sound... Reading in silence is the source of half the misconceptions that have caused the public to distrust poetry." Also he was a SPY!]

 

More like this:

What the Chairman Told Tom, Basil Bunting

To Tanya on my Sixtieth Birthday, Wendell Berry