February 2012
9 posts
6 tags
Interview with Mary Oliver →
I’m going to post the link to the interview in O Magazine with Mary Oliver because I really think you should read it. (And you should read her poetry.) I think the interview is pretty interesting, but I also just wanted to say how glad I am that Rebecca posted “The Journey” because it’s one of my very favorite poems. Oliver’s Dream Work came into my life at a...
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The Journey
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice— though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though...
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Getting It Right
Your ankles make me want to party, want to sit and beg and roll over under a pair of riding boots with your ankles hidden inside, sweating beneath the black tooled leather; they make me wish it was my birthday so I could blow out their candles, have them hung over my shoulders like two bags full of money. Your ankles are two monster-truck engines but smaller and lighter and sexier than a...
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Lady Lazarus
I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it—
A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot
A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?—
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave at will be At...
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Self-Help for Fellow Refugees
If your name suggests a country where bells might have been used for entertainment
or to announce the entrances and exits of the seasons or the birthdays of gods and demons,
it’s probably best to dress in plain clothes when you arrive in the United States, and try not to talk too loud.
If you happen to have watched armed men beat and drag your father out the front door of your house...
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Holly
It rained when it should have snowed. When we went to gather holly
the ditches were swimming, we were wet to the knees, our hands were all jags
and water ran up our sleeves. There should have been berries
but the sprigs we brought into the house gleamed like smashed bottle-glass.
Now here I am, in a room that is decked with the red-berried, waxy-leafed stuff,
and I almost forget what...
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“This is actually a really old discourse. From Plato’s banishment of poets...”
– Ben Lerner, “on why people hate poetry” (Minnesota Public Radio)
A friend posted this on facebook, and I think it rings true. How many people do you know who hate poetry? I know quite a few. I try to love poetry just a little more, in order to make up for them.
-R
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Desert Places
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast, In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost covered smooth in snow, But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it—it is theirs. All animals are smothered in their lairs. I am too absent-minded to count; The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness Will be more lonely...
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Phenomenal Woman
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size. But when I start to tell them, They think I’m telling lies. I say, It’s in the reach of my arms, The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me.
I walk into a room Just as cool as you...
January 2012
8 posts
7 tags
The Windhover
To Christ our Lord
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king- dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and...
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Desire
The June breeze will tell you: the middle of things is where the juices are; where the years bulge best with desire though nothing worth desire can be defined— I have known this so long and wanted to tell you.
You are the servant of something about to happen. You were never meant to be young—a dreadful mistake on the verge of correction. I am only your carpet, your coat, a soft...
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Story of a Hotel Room
Thinking we were safe — insanity! We went in to make love. All the same Idiots to trust the little hotel bedroom. Then in the gloom… …And who does not know that pair of shutters With the awkward hook on them All screeching whispers? Very well then, in the gloom We set about acquiring one another Urgently! But on a temporary basis Only as guests — just guests of one...
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“Time—a few centuries here or there—means very little in the world of...”
– Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook
I agree with Mary Oliver, but I still find myself so much more drawn to Modern poets and their poems than any other time period. (Maybe with contemporary poets/poems as a somewhat close draw. Kim Addonizio, I’m yours.)
-R
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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
I Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird.
II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds.
III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one.
V I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the...
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2 A.M.
When I came with you that first time on the floor of your office, the dirty carpet under my back, the heel of one foot propped on your shoulder, I went ahead and screamed, full-throated, as loud and as long as my body demanded, because somewhere, in the back of my mind, packed in the smallest neurons still capable of thought, I remembered we were in a warehouse district and that no sentient being...
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The Way to Keep Going in Antarctica
Be strong Bernadette Nobody will ever know I came here for a reason Perhaps there is a life here Of not being afraid of your own heart beating Do not be afraid of your own heart beating Look at very small things with your eyes & stay warm Nothing outside can cure you but everything’s outside There is great shame for the world in knowing You may have gone this far Perhaps this...
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A Voice on an Answering Machine
I can’t erase her voice. If I opened the door to the cage & tossed the magpie into the air, a part of me would fly away, leaving only the memory of a plucked string trembling into the night. The voice unwinds breath, soldered wires, chance, loss, & digitalized impulse. She’s telling me how light pushed darkness till her father stood at the bedroom door dressed in a white tunic....
December 2011
3 posts
4 tags
A poem for inner peace
I.
I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes and lives a while in my sight. What it fears in me leaves me, and the fear of me leaves it. It sings, and I hear its song.
Then what I am afraid of comes. I live for a while in its sight. What I fear...
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What Do Women Want?
I want a red dress. I want it flimsy and cheap, I want it too tight, I want to wear it until someone tears it off me. I want it sleeveless and backless, this dress, so no one has to guess what’s underneath. I want to walk down the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store with all those keys glittering in the window, past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old donuts in their café, past...
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To My Twenties
How lucky that I ran into you When everything was possible For my legs and arms, and with hope in my heart And so happy to see any woman— O woman! O my twentieth year! Basking in you, you Oasis from both growing and decay Fantastic unheard of nine- or ten-year oasis A palm tree, hey! And then another And another—and water! I’m still very impressed by you. Whither, ...
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Nice
I can be nice. I can put my body flat, down straight, and pull sleep from somewhere deep
in the brain, that no-weather thing, that blank page- after-page thing. I can be
nice enough and say nothing, drift to the cool room under a blanket, under all the things
I have to do. Count them. Count forward or backward: glue broken things, fill the feeder,
work for a living, make supper, go anxious...
November 2011
8 posts
7 tags
Love Double-Wide (Your Love is Like a Bad Tattoo)
Your love is like a bad tattoo. I’ve done too much time in this trailer park and I will burn your double-wide down
except I’m lazy. Your love is like a bad tattoo although you put it on the back of my eye. It starts “Ramona” and I
can’t read the rest anymore. I’m tired but I remember what it says. Something I won’t repeat is what. I said...
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Thanks
Listen with the night falling we are saying thank you we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings we are running out of the glass rooms with our mouths full of food to look at the sky and say thank you we are standing by the water thanking it smiling by the windows looking out
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging after funerals we are saying thank you after the news of...
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One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring...
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Girl and Friends View Naked Goddess
after Pier Celestino Gilardi’s painting A Visit to the Gallery
She’d rather be nude, she’d rather be dressed, rather cover up her bum and breasts. If she dropped her clothes would she look like this? A sculpted goddess, bare as an almond? Her girlfriends buzz about those goddess tits, though the shy one stares straight ahead—stunned to see what she might become. What might...
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Miss Peach Gets Lucky
So I had a date with this werewolf. I said I’d give him a Tuesday dinner slot if he got all his tangles out. After all that
conditioner, he did feel greasy, but no worse than your average guy by late Sunday afternoon. And we’re supposed to feel sorry
for the frothing one. He’s a bleeding wild flower, a sock that would scratch you raw and doesn’t even have a match. ...
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Young
A thousand doors ago when I was a lonely kid in a big house with four garages and it was summer as long as I could remember, I lay on the lawn at night, clover wrinkling under me, the wise stars bedding over me, my mother’s window a funnel of yellow heat running out, my father’s window, half shut, an eye where sleepers pass, and the boards of the house were smooth and white as wax and...
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Stay Home
I will wait here in the fields to see how well the rain brings on the grass. In the labor of the fields longer than a man’s life I am at home. Don’t come with me. You stay home too.
I will be standing in the woods where the old trees move only with the wind and then with gravity. In the stillness of the trees I am at home. Don’t come with me. You stay home too.
...
October 2011
7 posts
5 tags
Still
I have been studying the trees in my yard, the way they stand, unflinching,
in their brown armor. I remember him telling me to have a thick skin, be tough,
to let insults and hurt bounce off. It is true, the tree uses bark to weather cold and storms,
hardly blinks when two lovers carve their names in its flesh. But this morning, one bleeds
a sticky sap and I wonder if it is grieving ...
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Letter to N.Y.
For Louise Crane
In your next letter I wish you’d say where you are going and what you are doing; how are the plays, and after the plays what other pleasures you’re pursuing:
taking cabs in the middle of the night, driving as if to save your soul where the road goes round and round the park and the meter glares like a moral owl,
and the trees look so queer and green standing...
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Public Transportation
She is perfectly ordinary,...
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Queen Anne's Lace →
Her body is not so white as anemony petals nor so smooth—nor so remote a thing. It is a field of the wild carrot taking the field by force; the grass does not raise above it. Here is no question of whiteness, white as can be, with a purple mole at the center of each flower. Each flower is a hand’s span of her whiteness. Wherever his hand has lain there is a tiny purple...
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Autumn Day
Lord: it is time. The summer was immense. Stretch out your shadow on the sundial’s face, and on the meadows let the winds go loose.
Command the last fruits to be full in time; grant them even two more southerly days, press them toward fulfillment soon and chase the last sweetness into the heavy wine.
Whoever has no house now, will build none. Who is alone now, will stay long alone, ...
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The Body
has its little hobbies. The lung likes its air best after supper, goes deeper there to trade up for oxygen, give everything else away. (And before supper, yes, during too, but there’s something about evening, that slow breath of the day noticed: oh good, still coming, still going … ) As for bones—femur, spine, the tribe of them in there—they harden with use. The body would like a small...
September 2011
3 posts
3 tags
Antilamentation
Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read to the end just to find out who killed the cook. Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark, in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication. Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot, the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones that crimped your toes, don’t...
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Three poems by Denise Levertov
Living
The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer.
The wind blowing, the leaves shivering in the sun, each day the last day.
A red salamander so cold and so easy to catch, dreamily moves his delicate feet and long tail. I hold my hand open for him to go.
Each minute the last minute.
Witness
Sometimes the mountain is hidden from me in veils of cloud, sometimes I...
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When Autumn Came
This is the way that autumn came to the trees: it stripped them down to the skin, left their ebony bodies naked. It shook out their hearts, the yellow leaves, scattered them over the ground. Anyone could trample them out of shape undisturbed by a single moan of protest.
The birds that herald dreams were exiled from their song, each voice torn out of its throat. They dropped into the dust even...
August 2011
15 posts
4 tags
Poet's Work
Grandfather advised me: Learn a trade
I learned to sit at desk and condense
No layoffs from this condensery
—Lorine Niedecker
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The Invisible Man
I laugh, I smile at the old poets, and love all the poetry they wrote, all the dew, moon, diamond, drops of submerged silver with which my elder brother adorned the rose; but I smile; they always say “I,” at every turn something happens, it’s always “I,” only they or the dear heart they love walk through the streets, only they, no fishermen pass by, or booksellers, no masons...
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Ode to American English
I was missing English one day, American, really, with its pill-popping Hungarian goulash of everything from Anglo-Saxon to Zulu, because British English is not the same, if the paperback dictionary I bought at Bretano’s on the Avenue de l’Opéra is any indication, too cultured by half. Oh, the English know their dahlias, but what about doowop, donuts, Dick...
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Eating Poetry
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees. Her eyes are sad and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone. The light is dim. The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their eyeballs roll, their blond legs burn like brush. The poor librarian begins to stamp her...
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America
Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison
Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes Where you can’t tell the show from the commericals,
And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think he is, He says that even when he’s driving to the mall in his Isuzu
Trooper with a gang of...
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A Glass of Water →
Here is a glass of water from my well. It tastes of rock and root and earth and rain; It is the best I have, my only spell, And it is cold, and better than champagne. Perhaps someone will pass this house one day To drink, and be restored, and go his way, Someone in dark confusion as I was When I drank down cold water in a glass, Drank a transparent health to keep me sane, After the bitter mood had...
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“I keep wondering if we can find a broader cultural explanation for the...”
– Tony Hoagland, “Fear of Narrative and the Skittery Poem of Our Moment” from Poetry magazine, March 2006
Poetry is always related to—and a reflection of—the changing world. I think of T.S. Eliot abandoning regular meter and rhyme to reflect the complete upheaval of Modernism...
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Oath to my former life
It used to be enough to be bigger in soul by any means, whether climbing the water tower drunk or coked or driving to the frozen lake on mushrooms to throw up as the ice breathed my skin in and out. I can offer no more literal description of pilgrimage than seven black pills and holding my hand over fire when pain as the extent of the world was perfect clarity. If not my overturned dog...
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Dogfish
Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing kept flickering in with the tide and looking around. Black as a fisherman’s boot, with a white belly. If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin, which was rough as a thousand sharpened nails. And you know what a smile means, don’t you? ~ I wanted the past to go away, I wanted to...
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The Two
When he gets off work at Packard, they meet outside a diner on Grand Boulevard. He’s tired, a bit depressed, and smelling the exhaustion on his own breath, he kisses her carefully on her left cheek. Early April, and the weather has not decided if this is spring, winter, or what. The two gaze upwards at the sky which gives nothing away: the low clouds break here and there and let in...