# Reading > Poems, Poets, and Poetry >  fragments of contemporary poetry

## quasimodo1

David Eggleton 
The Weather Bomb
February began with firewatch skies, 
a glare that flared off of hot metal cans, 
gangs of lawn-mowers chanting mantras, 
and an anticyclone calm which lasted for days. 


Then came a sky that swelled like sludge. 
Slowly, as if lockjawed, on the bludge, 
rain fronted up just to lair about, 
before turning whirling dervish on Valentines Day. 


All night the storm bustled, strong as a haka. 
Dawn sobbed out stories of baby raindrops, 
backpacked in from the Tasman Sea blast zone, 
only to thump down hard on Wellington. 


{first stanzas of long poem by New Zealand poet David Eggleton}

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## quasimodo1

~GEORGE EKLUND~





HOMAGE TO JIM 



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



At the broken gate
Of the supreme composition
He could not come to the phone.
The radiation had burned his throat.
I reasoned he didn't have to say a thing.
For the affected there is no plot.
The radiation had burned the cranial nerves. {excerpt/beginning lines, from the Valparaiso Poetry Review}

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## quasimodo1

-How Despair may be Transformed into a Diamond- 
As payment for your colour storm 
An acid sky blackens every flower. 
You feel your breath touching down 
And hold on to the voice you know 
On each lip corner, two now frozen 
Hedges to your country. 

{first stanza of this poem}

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## quasimodo1

-Emily Noether's Theorem- 

Poets are divided according to the rivers 
That are closest to their home. He glances 
At the lance in the lance-rack, 
At his ago, the site of a single-hearth house, 
Which must come down in the bloomed fields, 
Thorns, earth broom and overgrown grass. 

{first stanza of this poem...from the publication Masthead}

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## quasimodo1

The Wissahickon spills endlessly, like the night love poured through me, nearly, I thought,
uncontainable as it rushed from my fingers and out the window into people passing on the street,
over fire hydrants, pigeons, and boom boxes, through police cars, stop signs, and cockroaches,
between two dogs circling in heat. I did not need an answer then.
I would have understood the indifferent delight of the ducks. But I asked,
and my question scattered like mercury, into a million trembling globules
magnetic with yearning. 

-- Deidra Greenleaf Allan 
{ending of a poem called "Vigils: The Night Watch"}

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## quasimodo1

JMW TURNER



In 1842, unable to still his panic 

at the stormcloud that was about to

consume the 19th Century, 

John Ruskin invented JMW Turner,

who, in turn, invented light. 

Not the light of the Sistine or Toledo

but the clouded light of an eye for gravity, 

a love of particles and suspense, 

the light we see and are seen through.



Ruskin learned his art on a rug, 

on his hands and knees, alone.

There is pattern in discipline 

and in the reverse. 

There should be in this letter 

I have tried to write for a year; always interrupted 

by rumors of wars and your latest. 

Alone now, I start again, arranging proportions,

diminishing loss. I will finish. 

Turner did his best with age,

when he could hardly see at all. 

With a flourish, I keep this:

{first part of this poem published in the Adirondack Review}

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## quasimodo1

{from the Paris Review} 
Issue 178, Fall 2006 



Tension

Never use the word suddenly just to
create tension.
Writing Fiction

Suddenly, you were planting some yellow petunias
outside in the garden,
and suddenly I was in the study
looking up the word oligarchy for the thirty-seventh time.

When suddenly, without warning,
you planted the last petunia in the flat,
and I suddenly closed the dictionary
now that I was reminded of that vile form of governance.

{beginning stanzas of this poem/ two new poems by Billy Collins can be found in this issue}

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## quasimodo1

Visitations 
{from the Paris Review} 
Issue 172, Winter 2004 


There in the shrine at Lourdes 
Embellished with old crutches, splints, and canes 
(Freely abandoned by the cured, 
The scoured of sins, the shorn and healed of pains) 

It is said the Madonna once 
Cloaked in compassionate blue and full of grace, 
Showed up from nowhere there in France, 
Conferring a special virtue on that place; 

And that at scattered sites 
Throughout the world (though only, be it said, 
Where the faithful worshiped and their rites 
All were observed) appearances were made. 

{Three stanzas from the start of this longish poem by the late Anthony Hecht} {http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Oct21.html ...obituary}

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## quasimodo1

{Kenyan Review, Winter 2006, volume XXVIII, NUMBER ONE..first part of this long poem by Meena Alexamder}


Torn Grass 


Childhood is a hot country, Amma lives there.
The sky has turned the color of torn grass.

Remember the calf dragged away to Chenganacheri Fair?
Tiny tottering thing, snout wet with gooseberry juice.

You crouched in the dirt, staring and staring ,
Refused to come back in.

We had spiced pomfret, mangoes so ripe their sweat
Stained the damask tablecloth my dying mother left me.

Your grandfathers shadow hit the veranda.
He sat in his armchair, chewing on a cheroot.

Clouds swelled the mirror, broke its rosewood frame.
I saw my dead mother.

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## quasimodo1

EPISTLE TO NERUDA
Superb,
Like a seasoned lion,
Neruda buys bread in the shop.
He asks for it to be wrapped in paper
And solemly puts it under his arm:
"Let someone at least think
that at some time
I bought a book"
Waving his hand in farewell,
like a Roman
rather dreamily royal, 
in the air scented with mollusks, 
oysters,
rice, 
he walks with the bread through Valparaiso. 
He says:
" Eugenio, look!
You see--
over there, among the puddles and garbage,
standing up under the red lamps
stands Bilbao-with the soul
of a poet -- in bronze.
Bilbao was a tramp and a rebel.
Originally
they set up the monument, fenced off
by a chain, with due pomp, right in the center,
although the poet had lived in the slums.
{First one fifth of this long poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko}

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## quasimodo1

A Sudden Rain in the Green Mountains



for Jessica Bennett 

Plush hills, the raw materials, fall away. 

The soaking clay 

In which the serried oaks, the picturesque 

And swaybacked pines, elected to evolve, 

The famous marble in its bare reserve, 


Vanish like guesses in these verticals 

Whose heft at dusk 

Blurs rooks to ridges, veils the bicycles 

And splashes where they lean hard into curves. 

Looming like crowds, such weather makes its world; 

{First two stanzas of this poem by Stephan Burt, cr from the Boston Review, 1993-2005, subtitle to this publication...A Political and Literary Forum}

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## quasimodo1

Inspiration

The common paths by which we walk and wind 
Unheedful, but perhaps to wish them done, 
Though edged with brier and clotbur, bear behind 
Such leaves as Milton wears or Shakespeare won. 
Still, could we look with clear poetic faith, 
No day so desert but a footway hath, 
Which still explored, though dimly traced it turn, 
May yet arrive where gates of glory burn: 
Nay, scarce an hour of all the shining twelve 
But to the inmost sight may ope a valve 
On those hid gardens where the great of old 
Walked from the world and their sick hearts consoled 
{first lines of this poem}

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## quasimodo1

MÖBIUS, The Poetry Magazine 2007



THE LAST ALGONQUIN IN OUR VILLAGE 
The sun rises with its concomitant clarities.
It is Columbus Day, and the last Algonquin brave
In our village fondly paddles his kayak along
A bay-like inlet up the Hudson River
Where a swan, iceberg white, fastidious as
A ghost, rides the waves like a ballerina.
She is no pet, but she deigns to accept a plum
Our Indian disembarks and sits outside
His house and works on a pair of moccasins
For me, his only customer. ...

{excerpt from this poem}

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## quasimodo1

The Monster of Mr Cogito


1 

Lucky Saint George 
from his knight's saddle 
could exactly evaluate 
the strength and movements of the dragon 

the first principle of strategy 
is to assess the enemy accurately 

Mr Cogito 
is in a worse position 
he sits in the low 
saddle of a valley 
covered with thick fog 

through fog it is impossible to perceive 
fiery eyes 
greedy claws 
jaws 

through fog 
one sees only 
the shimmering of nothingness



{excerpt from the beginning of this long poem}

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## quasimodo1

THE CITY LIMITS
When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue...
{first stanzas of this poem}

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## Virgil

A.R. Ammons is an undervalued poet. He's got some really fine poetry.

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## quasimodo1

Hey Virgil, been taking a good look at this guy for awhile now. He has the pedigree from heaven...all the best schools, big time professor and prolific poet who is amazingly down on the earth. Think I have a book you might enjoy... send it in a bit. quasi

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## quasimodo1

A new review of a collection of poems. Review title..."Formalities" by James Longenbach... Poems by Mary Jo Salter in her new book "A Phone Call to the Future" (new and selected poemms). Fragments of her work within this review. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/bo...tml?ref=books# [cr: nytimes]

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## quasimodo1

CALLED INTO PLAY 



Fall fell: so that's it for the leaf poetry:
some flurries have whitened the edges of roads

and lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: &
turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going to

find something to write about I haven't already
written away: I will have to stop short, look

down, look up, look close, think, think, think:
but in what range should I think: should I

figure colors and outlines, given forms, say
mailboxes, or should I try to plumb what is

{first few couplets of this poem}

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## quasimodo1

CONSOLATION 


Darwin. 
They say he read novels to relax, 
But only certain kinds: 
nothing that ended unhappily. 
If anything like that turned up, 
enraged, he flung the book into the fire. 


True or not, 
Im ready to believe it. 


Scanning in his mind so many times and places, 
hed had enough of dying species, 
the triumphs of the strong over the weak, 
the endless struggles to survive, 
all doomed sooner or later. 
Hed earned the right to happy endings, 
at least in fiction 
with its diminutions. 
{first few lines by this Polish poet, mentioned by another poster}

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## quasimodo1

MAKE IFA 

Make Ifa make Ifa make Ifa Ifa Ifa 
In sanctified chalk 
of my silver painted soot
In criss-crossing whelps 
of my black belching smoke
In brass masking bones
of my bass droning moans
in hub cap bellow
of my hammer tap blow 
In steel stance screech
of my zumbified flames 
In electrified mouth
of my citified fumes
In bellified groan
of my countrified pound 
In compulsivefied conga
of my soca moka jumbi
MAKE IFA MAKE IFA MAKE IFA IFA 

IFA 

{this first part of Jayne Cortez' poem is something possibly beyond analysis but it's tribal sound is way out there}

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## quasimodo1

That is the title of this review by Dan Chiasson. The work discussed is "The Best American Erotic Poems" an anthology edited by David Lehman. subtitle: "from 1800 to the present", 300pp Scribner Poetry $30 I think I'll let the buyers of this collection find the fragments for themselves. In the review, which describes the book as something of a competition, W.H.Auden wins hands down. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/bo...u&oref=slogin#

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## quasimodo1

Speaking To You (From Rock Bottom)


Speaking to you
this hour
these days when
I have lost the feather of poetry
and the rains
of separation 
surround us tock
tock like Go tablets

Everyone has learned 
to move carefully...
{introductory lines to a great poem}

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## quasimodo1

THROWN FOR A LOOP


There's so much more belief than truth, and
that is lucky in a way, belief inclining us

more toward what we need than what we'll get:
but we really do believe what we believe and

we hope it will work out: but put a plug of 
gold on the scale opposite a sack full of 

painted feathers, truth will that great woven 
cluster outweigh: the fulcrum could be called

"getting along"--and that's where balanced
persons no doubt stand:
{first couplets of this poem, from the collection, "Glare"}

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## quasimodo1

...I won't be longer on the porch
than it takes to look out once
and see what I've taught myself
in two months here to discern:
night restoring its opacities,
though for an instant as intense
and evanescent as waking from a dream
of eating blackberries and almost
being able to remember it, I think
I see the parts -- haze, dusk, light
broken into grains, fatigue,
the mineral dark of the White Mountains,
the wavering shadows steadying themselves --
separate, then joined, then seamless:
the way, in fact, Frost's great poems,
like all great poems, conceal
what they merely know, to be
predicaments... {from ON THE PORCH AT THE FROST PLACE, FRANCONIA, NH excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

A Walk

February on the narrow beach, 3:oo 
A.M. I set out south. Cape Cod Light 
on its crumbling cliff above me turns 
its wand of light so steadily 
it might be tolling a half-life, 
it might be the second-hand 
of a schoolroom clock, 
a kind of blind radar. 

These bluffs deposited by glaaciers 
are giving themselves away 
to the beaches down the line, three 
feet of coastline a year. I follow 
them south at my own slow pace. 
Ahead my grandfather died 
in a boat and my father 
found him and here I come. 
{first two stanzas of this poem}

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## quasimodo1

MAKING YOUR OWN ECLIPSE
The word comes from a Greek word 
for abandonment: we catch an untraceable 
fire already kindled in another. 

When night falls suddenly 
for such a short period 
in the clearest skies of the day 

as a second darkening, 
they could not have known 
that what they were seeing was the Moon 

acting as a screen. 
For blue does not mean 
its sensation in us, but the power 

in it, the behaviour of the aligning 
light in the pleasure-journey 
of the obedient morning. 

Across Ireland the blueness will drop 
to temperatures of dusk, 
a gentle east wind 

will blow birds silent, 
and stars along the Path 
of Totality will decorate 
{excerpt from this poem}

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## JBI

Persimmons by Li-Young Lee

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker
slapped the back of my head
and made me stand in the corner
for not knowing the difference
between persimmon and precision.
How to choose

persimmons. This is precision.
Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.
Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one
will be fragrant. How to eat:
put the knife away, lay down the newspaper.
Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.
Chew on the skin, suck it,
and swallow. Now, eat
the meat of the fruit,
so sweet
all of it, to the heart.

Donna undresses, her stomach is white.
In the yard, dewy and shivering
with crickets, we lie naked,
face-up, face-down,
I teach her Chinese. Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I've forgotten.
Naked: I've forgotten.
Ni, wo: you me.
I part her legs,
remember to tell her
she is beautiful as the moon.

Continued here: http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minst...oems/1245.html

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## quasimodo1

ELEGY 

Poems. 

By Mary Jo Bang. 

92 pp. Graywolf Press. $20 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/bo...html?ref=books.

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## quasimodo1

TURN THANKS TO MISS MIRRY
ill-tempered domestic helper who hated me.
She said that she had passed through hell bareheaded.
and that a whitening ash from hells furnace

had sifted down upon her and that is why she gray early.
Called me Nana. Nannys name I have come to love.
She twisted her surname Henry into Endry
in her railing against the graceless state of her days.

She was the repository of 400 years of resentment
for being uprooted and transplanted, condemned 
to being a stranger on this side of a world
where most words would not obey her tongue. {first three stanzas}

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## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/bo...tml?ref=review ---FROM HARVEY RIVER 

A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island. 

By Lorna Goodison. 

Illustrated. 288 pp. Amistad/HarperCollins Publishers. $24.95. 

Related
First Chapter: From Harvey River (March 30, 2008) ----------------------------------Lorna Goodison (born 1947) is a Jamaican poet -----Im a poet, but I didnt choose poetryit chose me [] its a dominating, intrusive tyrant. Its something I have to doa wicked force. --I Am Becoming My Mother

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## quasimodo1

William Matthews (1942-1997) quote describing the four thematic categories of 

published poetry: "1. I went out into the woods today and it made me feel, you 

know, sort of religious. 2. We're not getting any younger 3. It sure is cold and 

lonely (a) without you, honey, or (b) with you, honey. 4. Sadness seems to be the 

other side of the coin of happiness, and vice versa, and in any case the coin is too 

soon spent on we know not what."

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## quasimodo1

NO RETURN
I like divorce. I love to compose
letters of resignation; now and then
I send one in and leave in a lemon-
hued Huff or a Snit with four on the floor.
Do you like the scent of a hollyhock?
To each his own. I love a burning bridge.
{first stanza}

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## quasimodo1

BETWEEN HURRICANES
As we slide into the 3rd world we have created,
running from hurricanes,
with our SS# indelibly inked on our arms
storms swell and swallow our control.

I am flooded with life review,
the beliefs of my youth.
I reach for my first Bible
which has survived every move.
I am mystified by Revelations
hallucinations again.
{excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

"Hamlet Off-Stage: Neutrinos Explain Suck-Uppers"
Neutrinos do zip but swap back and forth
into each other, much like Rosypoop
and Guildendoo do. For years it was thought
neutrinos hung out weightless as R&G.
No longer. Scientists have discovered
neutrinos possess mass. Though invisible,
neutrinos weigh as much as all the stars.
How could I have thought the R & G twins
weightless? ... {excerpt}

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## stlukesguild

I haven't been reading much contemporary poetry as of late... to be honest, I haven't been reading much of anything as of late, focusing my time upon my current artistic efforts (although I have done some reading of various Hebrew Biblical texts as part of this body of work). Nevertheless... Geoffrey Hill is one of the few living poets who continues to speak to me. For all the reputation of John Ashberry I find myself somewhat unconvinced... But there is something... heavier... weightier... something suggesting a real _gravitas_ in Hill's work. Even his language and syntax suggest something of a more muscular Anglo-Saxon strain of English... English without the fluid ease of the French influences. English that recalls the heft of Milton, Hopkins, _Beowulf_...:

IV.
Between bay window and hedge the impenetrable holly
strikes up again taut wintry vibrations.
The hellebore is there still,
half-buried; the crocuses are surviving.
From the front room I might be able to see
the coal fire's image planted in a circle
of cut-back rose bushes. Nothing is changed
by the strength of this reflection.

XI.
Above Dunkirk, the sheared anvil-
head of the oil-smoke column, the wind
beginning to turn, turning on itself, spiralling,
shaped on it's potter's wheel. But no fire-storm:
such phenomena were as yet unvisited
upon Judeo-Christian-Senecan Europe.
It is to _Daniel_, as to our own
tragic satire, that one returns
for mastery of the business; well-timed,
intermitted terror. How else recall
Mierendorff's ancient, instant, final cry__
_madness____ in Leipzig, out of the sevenfold
fiery furnace?

XIII.
Whose lives are hidden in God? Whose?
Who can now tell what was taken, or where,
or how, or whether it was received:
how ditched, divested, clamped, sifted, over-
laid, raked over, grassed over, spread around,
rotted down with leafmould, accepted
as civic concrete, reinforceable
base cinderblocks:
tipped into Danude, Rhine, Vistula, dredged up
with the Baltic and the Pontic sludge:
committed _in absentia_ to solemn elevation,
_Trauermusik, musique funèbre_, funeral
music, for male and female
voices ringingly _a capella_,
made for double string choirs, congregated brass,
choice performers on baroque trumpets hefting
like glassblowers, inventions
of supreme order?

-from _The Triumph of Love_
Geoffrey Hill

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## JBI

from TORNADOS by Thylias Moss

Truth is, I envy them
not because they dance; I out jitterbug them
as I'm shuttled through and through legs
strong as looms, weaving time. They
do black more justice than I, frenzy
of conductor of philharmonic and electricity, hair
on end, result of the charge when horns and strings release
the pent up Beethoven and Mozart. Ions played

instead of notes. The movement
is not wrath, not hormone swarm because
I saw my first forming above the church a surrogate
steeple. The morning of my first baptism and
salvation already tangible, funnel for the spirit
coming into me without losing a drop, my black
guardian angel come to rescue me before all the words

continued here: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poe...oss/online.htm

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## JBI

from Codicil by Derek Walcott

Schizophrenic, wrenched by two styles,
one a hack's hired prose, I earn
me exile. I trudge this sickle, moonlit beach for miles,

tan, burn
to slough off
this live of ocean that's self-love.

To change your language you must change your life.

I cannot right old wrongs.
Waves tire of horizon and return.
Gulls screech with rusty tongues

continued here: http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets...tt/poems/11267

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## JBI

from Those who thoroughly Bed the Estuary by Jay Wright


Those who thoroughly bed
the estuary
...............know
the value of relation,
the inflection and formal
variation
............water knows
...................from air.
Clearly,
everything consists
in the determinate word,
the order of one, two, three;
no tricky exclusion concerns us
not here, not ever.

continued here: http://www.versedaily.org/bedtheestuary.shtml

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## JBI

from Adolescence II by Rita Dove

Although it is night, I sit in the bathroom, waiting.
Sweat prickles behind my knees, the baby-breasts are alert.
Venetian blinds slice up the moon; the tiles quiver in pale strips.

Then they come, the three seal men with eyes as round
As dinner plates and eyelashes like sharpened tines.
They bring the scent of licorice. One sits in the washbowl,

One on the bathtub edge; one leans against the door.
"Can you feel it yet?" they whisper.
I don't know what to say, again. They chuckle,

continued here: http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets...ove/poems/2201

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## quasimodo1

On Reading Crowds and Power 



1 


Cloven, we are incorporate, our wounds 
simple but mysterious. We have 
some wherewithal to bide our time on earth. 
Endurance is fantastic; ambulances 
battling at intersections, the city 
intolerably en fête. My reflexes 
are words themselves rather than standard 
flexures of civil power. In all of this 
Cassiopeia's a blessing 
as is steady Orion beloved of poets. 
Quotidian natures ours for the time being 
I do not know 
how we should be absolved or what is fate. {first stanza}

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## quasimodo1

The Schooner Flight 


1 Adios, Carenage 


In idle August, while the sea soft, 
and leaves of brown islands stick to the rim 
of this Caribbean, I blow out the light 
by the dreamless face of Maria Concepcion 
to ship as a seaman on the schooner Flight. 
Out in the yard turning gray in the dawn, 
I stood like a stone and nothing else move 
but the cold sea rippling like galvanize 
and the nail holes of stars in the sky roof, 
till a wind start to interfere with the trees. 
I pass me dry neighbor sweeping she yard 
as I went downhill, and I nearly said: 
Sweep soft, you witch, cause she dont sleep hard, 
but the ***** look through me like I was dead. 
A route taxi pull up, park-lights still on. 
The driver size up my bags with a grin: 
This time, Shabine, like you really gone! 
I aint answer the ***, I simply pile in 
the back seat and watch the sky burn 
above Laventille pink as the gown 
in which the woman I left was sleeping, 
and I look in the rearview and see a man 
exactly like me, and the man was weeping 
for the houses, the streets, that whole ****ing island. ------------------{1st stanza of this long poem}

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## quasimodo1

Mr. Matthews was asked whether his work was the poetry of experience. He answered: ''Well, it's certainly not the poetry of innocence. Life happens to us whether we have the good sense to be interested in the way it happens to us or not. That's what it means to be alive."

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## quasimodo1

In Memory of the Utah Stars

Each of them must have terrified 
his parents by being so big, obsessive 
and exact so young, already gone 
and leaving, like a big tipper, 
that huge changeling's body in his place. 
The prince of bone spurs and bad knees. 

The year I first saw them play 
Malone was a high school freshman, 
already too big for any bed, 
14, a natural resource. 
You have to learn not to 
apologize, a form of vanity. 
You flare up in the lane, exotic 
anywhere else. You roll the ball 
off fingers twice as long as your 
girlfriend's. Great touch for a big man, 
says some jerk. Now they're defunct 
and Moses Malone, boy wonder at 19, 
rises at 20 from the St. Louis bench, 
his pet of a body grown sullen 
as fast as it grew up. 
------------------------------------{excerpt}

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## JBI

from Digging by Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pin rest; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

continued here: http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets...ey/poems/12699

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## quasimodo1

From the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University, a slideshow of first editions..... http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/200...how_index.html including Eliot's Prufrock, Levertoff and Plath.

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## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/29/bo...er=rssuserland -- Super-bibliophile Danowski gives his collection to Emory University.

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## quasimodo1

"Mantilla" 

My resurrective verses shed people
and reinforced each summer.
I saw their time as my own time,
I said, this day will penetrate
those other days, using a thorn
to remove a thorn in the harness
of my mind where anyone's touch
stemmed my dreams. 

{excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

To the Author of Glare 


...but I wander from the main point: the main point is one
among many dots so fine you need a microscope to see them


but then they multiply like germs: the work of the deepest cells
is ergonomically incorrect, but effective nevertheless, like
my footprints in the snow leading to you, who would be my father


if this were a dream and I on the verge of waking up somewhere
other than home: but the hours remain ours, though they
were gone almost as soon as they arrived, hat and coat in hand.


--David Lehman {"Glare" is a poetry collection by A.R.Ammons} {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Isla Mujeres

The shoal we saw from the boat was fish; 
it parted as I dove through, and formed 
again overhead, each fish 
like a dancing molecule in a rock. 
On the flight to Merida we came down 
through clouds that looked like brains 
or scrambled eggs, but they were only 
wisps and down we came. I'd swim 
back up a chimney of fish and break, 

already squinting, back into bright air. 
If love is curiosity, I loved those fish. ...
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

THE UNQUIET CITY
we are succulents
our cool jade arms open
over clean tables our fine bone
china minds pull the strings
of our tongues together we plait
our thoughts with the television
back through the aerials and
transmission towers prodding
through the literal fog
the mechanics of which distance
does not startle us or the ears
pretend to hear the telephone
the page also wearies
us we have taken the meaning
out of things by laying them face to
face in our dictionary of emotions
we are so entirely alone that we
are unaware of it
and we enjoy the religion of solitude
because religions are at base
meaningless and we can turn
from them to a new hobby
to clean ashtrays or emptier
whiskey glasses we the women
of our building Margaret Gladys
Cecily Ida Eileen and I have
the cleanest washing on our block
we are proud and air our sheets
although it's a long time since
any serious stain or passionate figment
seeped through that censorious cloth...
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

A Sudden Rain in the Green Mountains



for Jessica Bennett 

Plush hills, the raw materials, fall away. 

The soaking clay 

In which the serried oaks, the picturesque 

And swaybacked pines, elected to evolve, 

The famous marble in its bare reserve, 


Vanish like guesses in these verticals 

Whose heft at dusk 

Blurs rooks to ridges, veils the bicycles 

And splashes where they lean hard into curves. 

Looming like crowds, such weather makes its world; 


Its crash and draft and spate and uniform 

Consonant force confirm 

Or mean-not that without you there are no 

Attainments I can care for or call good- 

But that among them, missing you, I know 

How much delight, green need ... {excerpt...poem by Stephen Burt} -------

http://bostonreview.net/BR24.1/burt.html

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/bo...enbach-t.html# ---Review entitled "The Wasted Land" by James Longenbach....of Jorie Graham's new book called "Sea Change" (Poems) subtitle...review dated 4/6/08

----------


## quasimodo1

The title of this review is "Poet's Choice" by Mary Karr (4/13/08)...there will be no comment by this writer...it seems Nicanor is into "anti-poetry". http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...041003233.html

----------


## quasimodo1

Heather McHugh (b. 1948) from the poem "What He Thought" This poem is more powerful in its entirety by an exponent. Here is an excerpt. "...We last Americans__were due to leave tomorrow. For our parting evening then our host chose something in a family restaurant, and there__we sat and chated, sat and chewed, __till, sensible it was our last__big chance to be poetic, make__our mark, one of us asked__'What's poetry?___Is it the fruits and vegetables and__marketplace of Campo dei Fiori, or__the statue there?' Because I was__the glib one. I identified the answer__instantly, I didn't have to think--'The truth is both, it's both,' I blurted out. But that__was easy. That was easiest to say. What followed taught me something about difficulty,__for our underestimated host spoke out,__all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said: The statue represents Giordano Bruno, brought to be burned in the public square__because of his offense against__authority, which is to say__the Church. His crime was his belief__the universe does not revolve around__the human being: God is no__fixed point or central government, but rather is__poured in waves through all things. All things__move. 'If God is not the soul itself, he is__the soul of the soul of the world.' Such was__his heresy. The day they brought him__forth to die, they feared he might__incite the crowd (the man was famous__for his eloquence). And so his captors__placed upon his face__an iron mask, in which__he could not speak. That's__how they burned him. That is how he died: without a word, in front__of everyone. And poetry...(we'd all put down our forks by now, to listen to__the man in gray; he went on__softly)-- poetry is what....he thought, but did not say." 1994 q1

----------


## quasimodo1

Reviewing Three Portraits 
by Madeline DeFrees 


Two clocks out of synch watch faces of night
drift by. One face, a lacquered saint, dredged up
from a trunk, wrapped in virgin wool, black
robes of justice trapped in the vault of a bank.
An 18-karat guarantee of stainless steel and 

peerless
dentistry, though you'd have to pry the mouth 

open
to discover that. A high-priced portrait 

photographer
in Chicago crossed her nervous hands on a Rule 

Book
and said, "Don't smile!" 

Steel girders support the lifted face, the smoky hair
and smoky voice exhaling clouded lines. A 

four-wheel
drive studio, props in every back street
and a live camera that really moved. Peeling paint,
thin pulse in the temple, faint warnings of early
snow: shadows, assurance, perspective. Nothing
has been left out of this head shot because it was 

not
pretty. He said, "Let your hair blow anywhere it 

wants
and go right on shouting your poems." 

------------ 
http://www.pshares.org/issues/articl...marticleID=186
{excerpt} --

----------


## quasimodo1

Tie Your Heart at Night to Mine

Tie your heart at night to mine, love,
and both will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.

Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly. {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

In the Land of the Inheritance 

"In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes."

Judges 19-21 
A foreigner and his *** and concubine
were huddling in the square as night came on;

around them, veil on veil of dust that hoof
and staff and sandal could only disturb enough

to show how calmly it was sifting down
into a darkening sabbath of its own.

Surely here, he thought, among the Benjamites
someone would ask him in to spend the night,

and he, a holy man, the lord's anointed,
chosen among the chosen. But while he waited,

merchants and tradesmen, young and old alike,
all hurried by without a word or look

to their own dwellings as if he wasn't there,
and only the ache from having come so far,

his sharpening hunger and the night's chill
told him he was not invisible.

His concubine kept silent, her veiled head bowed,
since it was her fault they were stranded now:

Hadn't she tried to run away from him
back to her father's house in Bethlehem,

and when he came to get her, her father said,
My son, my son, and gave him wine and bread,

and blessed him, and then told the girl, Go home.
So now he glowered at her. See what you've done,

impious woman, see what your unclean ways
have brought us to, he was about to say

when an old man who pitied their distress
said, "Peace be to you, friend, come to my house,

I'll give you food for hunger, wine for thirst,
come to my house, I'll care for all your wants."

Now as they ate and drank, as their hearts grew merry,
the townsmen gathered together in a fury

outside the old man's house and beat his door,
and yelled, "Old man, give us the sojourner

that we may know him, give him to us now."
The old man pleaded, "Leave the man alone, ...


{excerpt} -- http://bostonreview.net/BR19.6/inheritance.html

----------


## abdullah kurraz

> David Eggleton 
> The Weather Bomb
> February began with firewatch skies, 
> a glare that flared off of hot metal cans, 
> gangs of lawn-mowers chanting mantras, 
> and an anticyclone calm which lasted for days. 
> 
> 
> Then came a sky that swelled like sludge. 
> ...


it seems that you have a great command of expressing the true self of current human being wherever he/she is. It is a mixture of individual and collective feelings and visions that dominate the world as nature leaves it impacts on us - human beings - with our true and factual experiences and actions on daily basis. the language is rhetoric and influential without ambiguity or any sort of distortion. Here, we see a figurative poetic language that truly depicts poetic moments. It could also be a crucible of romantic features and realistic ones where the poet finds every thing beautiful and meaningful.

Best
Dr Abdullah Kurraz

----------


## abdullah kurraz

> A Sudden Rain in the Green Mountains
> 
> 
> 
> for Jessica Bennett 
> 
> Plush hills, the raw materials, fall away. 
> 
> The soaking clay 
> ...


 a very influential portrait where every thing is poetic mingled with the geo-poetics which is rife in the lines and their meaningful shadows and significant indications or denotations. also, the poem here is composed in a dialogic / conversational manner, with its poetic construction and content. Language is clear and themes are attainable. 
Thanks 
Best
Dr Abdullah kurraz

----------


## quasimodo1

To abdullah kurraz: It seems you have a firm grasp on contemporary poetry yourself, Doc. Surely you have a favorite poet you could add to this thread. Thanks for tuning in. q1

----------


## quasimodo1

Aphorisms Regarding Impatience
by Ellen Hinsey

1.
Mythologies of the End

Each century believing itself poised as if on the 

edge of time.




2.
The Meaning of Impatience

Restlessness in time. To imagine that which is not 

swiftly accomplished will never be fulfilled. 


3.
Displaced Envy

Unable to initiate creation, or manage civilization: 

the drive to engineer decreation with perfection.


4.
Perplexing Instincts

The division of the spirit between advancement and 

abandon.


5.
The Attraction of the Apocalypse

To control with absolute certainty one thing. And 

for it to be the last.


6.
Fragile Vector

The intersection where civilization and 

perseverance meet.


{excerpt from the online poetry magazine, Agni}

----------


## quasimodo1

-The Whole False History of Human Beings-
There are gorgeous castles in France awkward and ponderous
To live in now, tho the owners who did live
In them were all famous and as modern as possible
Then, which meant fireplaces and a square hole in many walls
To lift food up to them or slide poop down, two different holes
On different sides of the cold damp rooms.
Ditto in England. In Ireland there were bigger castles, beautiful monsters,
And what we now think of as Germans wanted them.
These so-called Germans, actually Merovingians, lived in quonset
Huts of straw, branches, and, oh, a little adobe.
They were more warlike than the Nazis and nearly as
Foolish. Boiled dead on the Irish walls their first trip.
(They had many little boats to get there.)
(Numerous survivors of boiling were allowed to return to Merovingia to tell the tale
As a warning.) The tale got the German collective psychic blood boiling
And naturally they went back and this time the Irish,
Who were better cleverer viciouser fighters if you can imagine,
Chopped up all but a few, cleverly chopped up
The trunks of bodies besides the obvious appendages and nuts
And dicks, and only a few survivors were allowed
To return to Merovingia to tell the tale. The
Irish made them cast off from Ireland in their little boats
With bags of arms, heads, and the aforementioned creative carvings Of pieces of trunks together with bags of German or Merovingian genitals
But the Germans or Merovingians threw these in the deep sea
While returning to Germany where more collective blood boiled
And they were hysterically stirred up and vowed to do
Things I hesitate to mention here. So, right, they went back
And the Irish ate them all. ... {excerpt, from the Boston Review}

----------


## quasimodo1

Outsider Art 
by Kay Ryan 


Most of its too dreary 
or too cherry red. 
If its a chair, its 
covered with things 
the savior said 
or should have said 
dense admonishments 
in nail polish 
too small to be read. 
If its a picture, 
the frame is either 
burnt matches glued together 
or a regular frame painted over 
to extend the picture. There never 
seems to be a surface equal 
to the needs of these people. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

NOTES FROM THE AIR 

Selected Later Poems. 

By John Ashbery. 

364 pp. Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers. $34.95. -- Review entitled "But I Digress" written by Langdon Hammer, nytimes Sunday book review, 4/20/08 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/bo...2&oref=slogin#

----------


## JBI

Heart's Needle
by W. D. Snodgrass

For Cynthia

When Suibhe would not return to fine garments and good food, to his houses and his people, Loingseachan told him, "Your father is dead." "I'm sorry to hear it," he said. "Your mother is dead," said the lad. "All pity for me has gone out of the world." "Your sister, too, is dead." "The mild sun rests on every ditch," he said; "a sister loves even though not loved." "Suibhne, your daughter is dead." "And an only daughter is the needle of the heart." "And Suibhne, your little boy, who used to call you 'Daddy' he is dead." "Aye," said Suibhne, "that's the drop that brings a man to the ground."
He fell out of the yew tree; Loingseachan closed his arms around him and placed him in manacles.

after The Middle-Irish Romance
The Madness of Suibhne

1

Child of my winter, born
When the new fallen soldiers froze
In Asia's steep ravines and fouled the snows,
When I was torn

By love I could not still,
By fear that silenced my cramped mind
To that cold war where, lost, I could not find
My peace in my will,

All those days we could keep
Your mind a landscape of new snow
Where the chilled tenant-farmer finds, below,
His fields asleep

In their smooth covering, white
As quilts to warm the resting bed
Of birth or pain, spotless as paper spread
For me to write,

continued here: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15302

----------


## quasimodo1

Good to see you on this thread, JBI. Havn't thought about W.D.Snodgrass in years. Thanks for the link.q1

----------


## quasimodo1

Just Walking Around by John Ashbery


.....Smiling to yourself and others.
It gets to be kind of lonely
But at the same time off-putting.
Counterproductive, as you realize once again

That the longest way is the most efficient way, 
The one that looped among islands, and
You always seemed to be traveling in a circle.
And now that the end is near

The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.
There is light in there and mystery and food.
Come see it.
Come not for me but it.
But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other. {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Repulsive Theory 



Little has been made 
of the soft, skirting action 
of magnets reversed, 
while much has been 
made of attraction. 
But is it not this pillowy 
principle of repulsion 
that produces the 
doily edges of oceans 
or the arabesques of thought? 
And do these cutout coasts 
and incurved rhetorical beaches 
not baffle the onslaught 
of the sea or objectionable people 
and give private life 
what small protection it's got? 
Praise then the oiled motions 
of avoidance, the pearly 
convolutions of all that 
slides off or takes a 
wide berth; praise every 
eddying vacancy of Earth, ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

John Colburn
BURNING UP

for Frank Stanford and for Nicaragua

Dawn came and there was something like a great 

ear 

behind the sun. 

Ashes drifted down though nothing had burned. 

I wanted to shine like a fish. 

Supposedly there are people who 

will not burn in a fire. 

Biblical people. 

I carried my bucket. 

Dead men pumped water from 

the center of the earth. 

We all drank it. 

More ashes arrived. 

We caught them on our tongues, 

angels of next time receiving the body. 

The earth tumbled then, 

the pump handle creaked. 

When soldiers came, we ran. 

Like always. 

I did a snake dance into the culvert. 

Soldiers were afraid of ghosts. 

A tongue is like a fish worn dull, 

shine gone. 

Day after day pieces of wood 

floated down the river. 

What were they building down there, at the end? 

They were building a cross. 

They were building a bird to fly us out. 

They were building a new city 

for the dead to lead from 

and the soldiers were blind to it. 

By noon the ghosts were gone. 

The pump handle creaked, but no water. 

When the soldiers came back I changed. 

I became an angel of next time. 

I said the words and 

scales fell from my fish tongue 

but the giant ear was stone. 

Soldiers drifted like ashes. 

I told them: 

Downriver, they are building 

wings that will not burn in a fire 

and you are right to hide. 

Put down your guns. 
-------------------------------------------------------{excerpt}

http://www.jubilat.org/n8/colburn.html

----------


## quasimodo1

Turtle 
by Kay Ryan 


..... Even being practical, 
she's often stuck up to the axle on her way 
to something edible. With everything optimal, 
she skirts the ditch which would convert 
her shell into a serving dish. She lives 
below luck-level, never imagining some lottery 
will change her load of pottery to wings. 
Her only levity is patience, 
the sport of truly chastened things. {excerpt}

----------


## JBI

from LONELINESS by Lee Ann Roripaugh

My father made me keep
the bright orange Sanka cans,
with holes in the lids
for ventilation, on
the back porch overnight.
But by morning, sunlight
had steeped my frogs
like tea bags, their bodies
hot to touch as I laid
them out under
the Nanking Cherry trees
and tried to revive them
with cold water
from the garden hose.
When my father took
them away to bury,
my mother asked me not
to cry. That night
was the Fourth of July,
and my mother and father
and I went up to the attic
to watch the fireworks,
each with a plate-sized
circle of watermelon.
continued here: http://www.usd.edu/engl/faculty/roripaugh.cfm

She seems stylistically traditional, but her foundation in the traditions and experiences of Japanese immigrants in America makes her a very interesting, and insightful poet.

----------


## quasimodo1

COMPLETE MINIMAL POEMS 

By Aram Saroyan. 

277 pp. Ugly Duckling Presse. Paper, $20. 
Review entitled "Lighght Verse" by Richard Hell-----This book collects nearly all the poems Aram Saroyan wrote in the 1960s, when he was in his early 20s and, as he put it, “the only person available at a typewriter who didn’t have some predetermined use in mind for it.” The resulting pages, tapped in Aram Saroyan by his typewriter, were succinct. Saroyan was the master of the one-word poem. But his works were as musical and meaningful as more conventional poetry, too, and a lot more amusing. The minimal poems were eye openers, ear openers and mind openers, and no one else was doing anything much like them at the time, and no one has since. {Thanks to JBI for introducing Lee Ann Roripaugh, at least to this reader}





277 pp. Ugly Duckling Presse. Paper, $20. 
"Granted — as Saroyan has — he was smoking a lot of grass at the time. But every second person in the United States was, and is, on something or other often enough. The grass factor is interesting because: 1) it’s typical of the era, always an interesting dimension of art; 2) one realizes it couldn’t be an unfair advantage, since no one else wrote like he did; and 3) the reader’s knowledge of it confers a nice extra little psychedelic ting to the pages." {April 27, 2008 nytimes book review section} http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/bo...2&oref=slogin#

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.loc.gov/poetry/events.html

----------


## quasimodo1

In a Bottle


... (That lyre should be

Administered a serum! Every last lackluster mist, 
Each lactose-lacking mother, can be fixed! No fear!) From human
City rooms a mush of doctorable suburb issues forth–degrees

In marrow-clog, amounts in mottlement. Kreme de la
Kreme! (Officially OK for all of us to be superlative, I’m pretty
Sure, as long as the kids take all their tele-tablets 

And the wellness store takes spelling
From the FCC. It’s thanks to lawyers
We have settlements at all, of course, 

And thanks to governors your class in governmentalese–it is
Required–and wired!–let’s give our nation’s CEO a great
Big hand! A chip for every memory loss and shoulder! No need

Ever to recollect, or be alone, or die. The message is
The middleman!) But now, beneath exclamatory notice
(although not the one duck’s jaundiced eye) three bugs in a bottle–

Their brains unwashed, their feelers fine–begin (with
Morseless expertise) to conjugate, 
And multiply.----------------------------------------- http://www.drunkenboat.com/db3/mchugh/bottle.html

----------


## quasimodo1

Birthday 

for John



.....It is the porous border of summer,
mirage of trees, clouds
floating like years over the mountains.
He has traveled far in his heart
to come to this full quiet
to witness weather stepping
across the lake toward him 
like an ordinary saint bringing the news:
another whole day, loved. {second stanza}


http://www.cortlandreview.com/issue/29/zimmerman.html

----------


## quasimodo1

Editor's Note 




Dear Friends of The Cortland Review,

We were already several weeks behind our publication schedule when many of you wrote to express your concern. You gave us at The Cortland Review a sense of community that motivated our volunteers to push forward, and just as we were putting the finishing touches on the issue, two planes flew into the nearby World Trade Center and stopped the world. Suddenly our issue, weeks overdue, was utterly insignificant. 

Like all of you, we were caught up in confusion and uncertainty. Then many of you wrote to us again, this time inquiring about and praying for our safety. Our feeling of community grew stronger, and you helped us bring structure back to our lives. The Cortland Review is a labor of love, and we thank you for your overwhelming support, for showing us that we are a meaningful part of your lives.

Now it is time for us to show that you are a meaningful part of ours. Our hearts and prayers are with the families and friends of those who are still missing or have been lost in this terrible tragedy, and the rest of you who, like us, are still stunned by it. In a nation strengthened by unity and getting back to business, we hope you find comfort and healing in the poetry among our pages. 

Thank you.

God Bless America.

Guy Shahar
Editor-in-Chief

----------


## quasimodo1

Tenderness and Rot 
by Kay Ryan 


Tenderness and rot 
share a border. 
And rot is an 
aggressive neighbor 
whose iridescence 
keeps creeping over. 


No lessons 
can be drawn 
from this however. ... {excerpt} -- http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch....html?id=30582

----------


## quasimodo1

Living in Curved Space
Susan Terris



She inhales stars until she is light-filled
and can bat-wing above the dark earth. ...

...Another out-of-body sequence and
her flanks fur, throat chuffs, tail grows

Below the high dam, the real Abu-Simbil lies.
Below the sea, the lighthouse of Pharos.

There are worlds, too--under lava, under ice--
where no tree falls and no sound is heard.

What is hidden will not again be visible. She 
seeks refuge in these places: angles of repose

where salmon turn to seagulls and a hand
may, to infinity, hold a pen and draw itself.


{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Caps 

.....The storybook boy attempts the simple gesture 
of baring his head for his emperor,
but another hat has appeared.
This happens over and over.
Who does not share his despair of simplicity,
of acting clearly and with dignity?
And what pleasure can we find in the caps,
brightly feathered and infinitely various, 
that pile up so high they bury us?



-- Kay Ryan {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Rae Armantrout
Results

1



Click here to vote

on who's ripe

for a makeover



or takeover

in this series pilot



Votes are registered

at the server

and sent back



as results.






2



Click here to transform



oxidation

into digestion.



From this point on,

it's a lattice

of ends



disguised as means:



the strangler fig,



the anteater.



3



I've developed the ability

to revise

what I'm waiting for



so that letter

becomes dinner

gradually



while the contrapuntal

nodding

of the Chinese elm leaves



redistributes

ennui

{parts 1 to 3 of this poem: from Jubilat}

----------


## quasimodo1

I threw my arms about those shoulders... 
Darling, you think it's love, it's just a midnight journey.
Best are the dales and rivers removed by force,
as from the next compartment throttles "Oh, stop it, Bernie,"
yet the rhythm of those paroxysms is exactly yours.
Hook to the meat! Brush to the red-brick dentures,
alias cigars, smokeless like a driven nail!
Here the works are fewer than monkey wrenches,
and the phones are whining, dwarfed by to-no-avail.
Bark, then, with joy at Clancy, Fitzgibbon, Miller.
Dogs and block letters care how misfortune spells. ...{excerpt} title=first line

----------


## quasimodo1

Galatea Encore 
As though the mercury's under its tongue, it won't
talk. As though with the mercury in its sphincter,
immobile, by a leaf-coated pond
a statue stands white like a blight of winter.
After such snow, there is nothing indeed: the ins
and outs of centuries, pestered heather.
That's what coming full circle means - 
when your countenance starts to resemble weather,
when Pygmalion's vanished. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

TINY WARRIOR

.....You never saw me
Your eyes were closed so tight
They say you put up quite a fight
Somehow your life was over before it had begun and 
Gently did I touch and kiss your tiny-fingered hand
Born too soon 
You never saw the silver moon
Or the light of a summer's day
Last night I dreamt a gathering of eagles
Had come 
To spirit you away
Born too soon
Your tender heart 
Could not beat
To the pulsing rhythm 
Of life's taut drum

Nikolai 1982-1983 {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

A SUMMER OF HUMMINGBIRDS 

Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of 

Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 

and Martin Johnson Heade. 

By Christopher Benfey. (author of review)

Illustrated. 287 pp. The Penguin Press. $25.95. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/books/review/

Miller-t.html?_r=1&8bu&emc=bua2&oref=slogin---

-------------------------------------------------------

On Gossamer Wings 



By LAURA MILLER
Published: May 4, 2008

----------


## quasimodo1

WILD NIGHTS! 

Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, 

Twain, James, and Hemingway. 

By Joyce Carol Oates. 

238 pp. Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers. $24.95. ------

first chapter... 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/bo...tml?ref=review 

s/first-chapter-wild-nights.html?ref=review 

---------The Dying of the Light (review title)
The John F. Kennedy Library
Ernest Hemingway and his wife, Mary, on safari in 

1953. 
By BRENDA WINEAPPLE
Published: April 20, 2008

----------


## quasimodo1

ONE YEAR
When I got to his marker, I sat on it,
like sitting on the edge of someone's bed 
and I rubbed the smooth, speckled granite.
I took some tears from my jaw and neck
and started to wash a corner of his stone.
Then a black and amber ant
ran out onto the granite, and off it,
and another ant hauled a dead
ant onto the stone, leaving it, and not coming back.
Ants ran down into the grooves of his name
and dates, down into the oval track of the 
first name's O, middle name's O,
the short O of his last name,
and down into the hyphen between
his birth and death--little trough of his life. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/ar...s&oref=slogin# -- Jason Shinder, 52, Poet and the founder of the Y.M.C.A.'s National Writer's Voice program.

----------


## quasimodo1

Inevitably the science community and global warming have created some poetry (what else is there to do while you wait for the fireball). In a science blog of the nytimes, you can look at a digital photo of the interior of a rock and come up with your own poem. This one by Andrew C. Revkin is posted on "dotearth" -- "Perhaps we tamed fire. Perhaps fire tamed us. Certainly we are still seduced by that glowing dance of a thousand roseate veils, whether in the shimmering heat of the hearth or the growl of the V-8. 
While water soothes and nourishes, fire empowers. The astonishing magic of controlled combustion, facilitated by Earth’s just-right atmosphere and ample stores of fuels, has allowed humans to transform from scattered gatherers into a gathering global force. 
Fire transports us, and in return we transport fire. Together, for better and worse, we have made the world our own." http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/20...ery-and-earth/

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/bo...l?8bu&emc=bua2 New review/essay on Charles Simic from the NYTimes...dated today.

----------


## JBI

Welcome Back Quasimodo1, good trip?

----------


## quasimodo1

hey JBI, outstanding trip. Just sort of getting back into the groove. Let me check out what's up with the Poetry Book Club thread.

----------


## quasimodo1

For A Coming Extinction


Gray whale
Now that we are sinding you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing

I write as though you could understand
And I could say it
One must always pretend something
Among the dying
When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks
Empty of you
Tell him that we were made
On another day

The bewilderment will diminish like an echo
Winding along your inner mountains
Unheard by us
And find its way out
Leaving behind it the future
Dead
And ours


{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

A Physics

When you get down to it, Earth
has our own great ranges
of feeling-Rocky, Smoky, Blue-
and a heart that can melt stones.

The still pools fill with sky,
as if aloof, and we have eyes
for all of this-and more, for Earth's
reminding moon. We too are ruled

by such attractions-spun and swaddled,
rocked and lent a light. We run
our clocks on wheels, our trains
on time. {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

WHAT HE THOUGHT


We were supposed to do a job in Italy
and, full of our feeling for
ourselves (our sense of being
Poets from America) we went
from Rome to Fano, met
the Mayor, mulled a couple
matters over. "What does mean this 'flat drink?' someone asked.
What is "cheap date?" (Nothing we said lessened
this one's mystery). Among Italian writers we


could recognize our counterparts: the academic,
the apologist, the arrogant, the amorous,
the brazen and the glib. And there was one
administrator (The Conservative), in suit
of regulation gray, who like a good tour guide
with measured pace and uninflected tone
narrated sights and histories
the hired van hauled us past. ... {excerpt} [ for more information on Heather McHugh-- http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/P...Hugh/index.cfm ]

----------


## quasimodo1

Im an unreliable witness
I zone out


Hail, storm and tempest
youre marooned
in our marriage


again 


Have wizards knotted
snarls in our nerves,
nooses in our dreams?


Daughter born 
in the land of granite
and cods head,
we cant help where we live


A Noreaster


again

{from the collection Squandermania and the poem 

"Marooned"} link: 

http://bostonreview.net/BR33.3/belieu.php

----------


## quasimodo1

Ghazal of the Better-Unbegun 



A book is a suicide postponed.


--Cioran



Too volatile, am I? too voluble? too much a word-person?
I blame the soup: I'm a primordially
stirred person.

Two pronouns and a vehicle was Icarus with wings.
The apparatus of his selves made an ab-
surd person.

The sound I make is sympathy's: sad dogs are tied afar.
But howling I become an ever more un-
heard person.

I need a hundred more of you to make a likelihood.
The mirror's not convincing-- that at-best in-
ferred person.

As time's revealing gets revolting, I start looking out.
Look in and what you see is one unholy
blurred person. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

STROKE
The literate are ill-prepared for this
snap in the line of life:
the day turns a trick 
of twisted tongues and is
untiable, the month by no mere root
moon-ridden, and the yearly eloquences yielding more
than summer's part of speech times four. We better learn

the buried meaning in the grave: here
all we see of its alphabet is tracks
of predators, all we know of its tense
the slow seconds and quick centuries
of sex. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

The Miracle of the Actual



While the poet was falling in love with people she hadn't met 

certain Vietnamese were in their third generation of the torment of Agent Orange

which crafts real people like Picassos, joints in all directions, limbs ending.

Lingers at least fifty years like heartbreak, and breaks the mighty imagination

over angles like the Atlantic shatters clams on the jetties up and down New Jersey.



We kept expecting as a society for time to stop and let us into the air conditioning

to ponder and take our ease upon the new-aged recliners of the seventies.

Beholding the fine view, we would devise the humane, unbend some crooks.

It seemed like things were improving when reporters took a break writing about them,

we cannot believe in the population of China and think the scientists extremists.



The lovers Shirin and Khosro fell in love just hearing about each other

so long ago you could claim it never happened, or was a myth

and crossed Anatolia missing each other six or seven times, once,

Khosro saw her bathing and the sight of her back was enough to ruin him

for two or three more crossings until she finally arrived and lost her beauty

for him but not to him at the hand of some angry nephew. .....................{excerpt, from the Adirondack Review}

----------


## quasimodo1

BY THE DEAD


PRIDE that sat on the beautiful brow, 
Scorn that lay in the arching lips, 
Will of the oak-grain, where are ye now? 
I may dare to touch her finger-tips! 
Deep, flaming eyes, ye are shallow enough; 
The steadiest fire burns out at last. 
Throw back the shutters, -- the sky is rough, 
And the winds are high, -- but the night is past. 

Mother, I speak with the voice of a man; 
Death is between us, -- I stoop no more; 
And yet so dim is each new-born plan, 
I am feebler than ever I was before, -- 
{Anonymous . Selected Poems from The Atlantic 

Monthly} ------------------------------------------- http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/mo...c/AnoAtla.html



.....A small database of anonymous poems

----------


## quasimodo1

SONG FOR A MOUNTAIN-CLIMBER
Pure indifference
moves otherwise. Its unconditional:
a little fling cannot diminish it:
impartially it flies from everything,

from mans investments, and
his dearth. The thought that God
might care for us is
terrifying: ought

to keep us hooked on earth. ... {EXCERPT}

----------


## quasimodo1

- new poetry by August Kleinzahler - title of the review above




By STEPHEN BURT
Published: May 25, 2008

----------


## quasimodo1

- new poetry by August Kleinzahler - title of the review above




By STEPHEN BURT
Published: May 25, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/bo...=1&oref=slogin

----------


## quasimodo1

For The Twentieth Century


Bound, hungry to pluck again from the thousand
technologies of ecstasy

boundlessness, the world that at a drop of water
rises without boundaries,

I push the PLAY button:

...Callas, Laurel & Hardy, Szigeti

you are alive again,

the slow movement of K.218
once again no longer

bland, merely pretty, nearly
banal, as it is

in all but Szigeti's hands

*
Therefore you and I and Mozart
must thank the Twentieth Century, for

it made you pattern ... {excerpt} 

F. Bidart, winner of the 2007 Bolingen Prize for poetry

----------


## quasimodo1

Poetry May 2007 Atlantic Monthly 


by Wyatt Prunty 

1950

"Then let him ride in the bed of the truck
and wave the world home." That was the old man's answer.
So I made my small-fist climb up back
Of the cab, to see things in reverse and hear
The wind generalizing hedgerows and oaks, 
And watch the avenues of fields that broke
Whenever a hedge gave out and sudden farm
Emerged, dogs barking alarm—
As we kept up that way, 
Under the shade that tunneled and played 
And deepened the road. But where were we going? 
I never remember; only, 
I owned cattle and barn, the loosely planked bridges 
That rattled like drums, limbs flicking the sky, 
And gravel busy under the musical tires; 
Till filled with what ticked by, I wanted the entire 
List of it, ... {excerpt} -- http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200705/prunty-poem

----------


## quasimodo1

We Lived in a Hug, Shivering with Cold 
Tomaz Salamun 
Issue 184, Spring 2008 



..... On handcarts 
(wheelbarrows) there are 

blue baby 
bags. An unguaranteed 
growth ring is left 

on the asphalt. 
The gadget with which 
you fatten 

your ears, 
rubbed out from sky 
lights. The other 

will understand all of this 
when he takes the time. 
The Danube will open its graves. 

Translated from Slovenian
by Brian Henry and the author 



{excerpt from the Paris Review}

----------


## quasimodo1

Jazz Fan Looks Back 
by Jayne Cortez 


I crisscrossed with Monk
Wailed with Bud
Counted every star with Stitt
Sang "Don't Blame Me" with Sarah
Wore a flower like Billie
Screamed in the range of Dinah
& scatted "How High the Moon" with Ella Fitzgerald
as she blew roof off the Shrine Auditorium
Jazz at the Philharmonic

I cut my hair into a permanent tam
Made my feet rebellious metronomes 
Embedded record needles in paint on paper
Talked bopology talk
Laughed in high-pitched saxophone phrases
Became keeper of every Bird riff
every Lester lick
as Hawk melodicized my ear of infatuated tongues
& Blakey drummed militant messages in
soul of my applauding teeth 
& Ray hit bass notes to the last love seat in my bones ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

MIND

The slow overture of rain, 
each drop breaking 
without breaking into 
the next, describes 
the unrelenting, syncopated 
mind. Not unlike 
the hummingbirds 
imagining their wings 
to be their heart, and swallows 
believing the horizon 
to be a line they lift 
and drop. What is it 
they cast for? The poplars, 
advancing or retreating, 
lose their stature 
equally, and yet stand firm, 
making arrangements 
in order to become 
imaginary. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

FLOATING BRIDGES
Oh what a crush of People
Invisible, reborn 
Make their way to into this garden 
For their eternal rest

Every step we take on earth 
Brings us to a new world 
Every foot supported 
On a floating bridge 

I know there is no straight road 
No straight road in this world 
Only a giant labyrinth 
Of intersecting crossroads 

And steadily our feet 
Keep walking and creating 
Like enormous fans 
These roads in embryo {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

SUITE FOR RED RIVER GORGE



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



I. Whistling Arch
(Arch in Formation)

In high winds air rushing through the low opening whines, giving the arch its name. This whine is something that happens very rarely. 
Kentuckys Land of the Arches: The Red River Gorge

Here geologic time tumbles 
from the sandstone face in great slabs
of rock, progress marked
on some same clock keeping pace 
with glaciers, the passing of comets,
volcano formation. 

The stones lonely O frames
mountaintop, dark gorge,
catches a patch of white sky
in its aperture. It shows 
where time was, and now passed

sings its only hymn to a congregation
of centipede and snake, blackbird
perched on an ancient laurel,
trillium unfurled,
its pale ear pressed to the stars. {Part I of three from Lynnell Edwards poem}

----------


## quasimodo1

SLEEPING IN BLUE
I lean into you,
we bury down
in the dunes

the breeze holds
like a whisper
you stroke my brown knees

your fingers
are my unspoken thoughts

the silence is sensuous,
suffuses like
scent of sandalwood ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Where's the Moon, There's the Moon (A Story for Children) 

Issue 184, Spring 2008 



1. 
If I look to the opposite shore and greet myself there, 
if I call out to myself come here 
and watch myself laboriously construct from shore-things 
a boat, and watch myself over the waters come rowing, 
but, crossing the midpoint between shores, 
out in the middle of the colorless lake, 
no longer approaching, no longer coming closer, 
disappear, where am I now, has my boat capsized? 

2. 
Infinite capacity for love in the smallest detail; 
infinite suffering in the innermost reality; 
large mind in even the dumbest, mutest object; 
destiny in an object that stands still; 
heart in the middle of the gray, motionless water; 
the largest sadness in the world in a groaning buoy; 
in a buoy and the bird overhead, huge sadness, 
and yet I hop from place to place as though Im weightless. 

3. 
When I picture my father I see the surface of the moon, 
plains of moon-stuff chalk-dust papers shredded 
by a paper shredder, snowbanks of shredded paper, 
nobody to organize it all, no way to moralize the day 
out of its aimlessness, nobody with a Shop-Vac handy 
slowly to turn the whiteness into pattern and form, 
revealing, as a chisel reveals in the marble, 
a figure, a womans figure, an expression of bliss 

4. 
now that that big nonentity the moon is in my mind 
the clichés for representing Earth are hereby banished 
a hundred open-ended poems, abrupt transitions, high tones 
grating against the low, unsorted experience; 
sex beside the holy man defiled by sex, 
the pig pile of ways you can get high, right there 
beside the dawn and how you badly want to kill yourself, 
the fleer, the road that unravels like a banner before him 

5. 
and the childs attention fixed upon the animal book, 
and all the animals in the book intent upon dinner 
or eyeing some harbinger cloud forever, permanently 
dejected because some little stone turned their child 
to stone, weeping big mule or owl tears as though 
the child never turned the page, the sun never shone 
again bringing larkspurs, gentian, and the mule-boy 
reunited with mule mommy and daddy just in time to end, 

6. 
but the mule on page four will always be sad, the owl 
overhead will always mourn for the mule in his sadness, 
nobody will ever bring news of page eighteen when mule-boy 
returns from the dead, and the child reading the book 
will always preside like a sinister god over these animals, 
always dipping in and out of their moods like a snacker, 
a little sadness to tide you over until suppertime, 
a little elegiac owl, some time at the grief picnic . . . ...


{excerpt...from the Paris Review}

----------


## quasimodo1

Poems of Depth

--for Gerardo Deniz, based on his "20,000 Places Under Our Mothers," based on Jules Vernes 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

1.

O Ned your name is Land and its not anywhere near you;
youre free in your captivity, holy paradox!
You tire of walking around the submarine, 
of looking out at the luminous waters,
brimming with the phosphorescent zoophytes, tiny noctilucae, starfish and aurelias
you know not how to classify.
Youre bored with the sea breeze and the occasional horizon.
O harpooner, how did you land where the only bread is a replacement,
breadfruit?
What creatures are you shooting in your mind?
How you manage to stop the hand, and instead reach for the diving suit.

2.

The crew members hush when the captains right hand comes in.
Nemo knows hes no one;
he enforces, forces.

Is he a double, or an appendage?
The closest of them all. 
And if the captain were left-handed?
He says "Less paradigmatic,"
more so, more so.

Underwaters reign is verticality.
Conseil hears the masters cry and immediately asks
"Has it bitten you, Monsieur?"

"Id pay with a limb to own the treasure I just found."
The cannibals throw stones; destroy it.
Destroy the left-handed shell, growing awkward against the clock.

Aronnax takes this lightheartedly; water being less dense,
certainly. Hell plunge. Nemo hears no news about the incident.

{excerpt)

----------


## quasimodo1

My Carmelite Family


It had taken me more than an hour
To come to life, under the rose-encrusted
Influence of the star-driven morning.

A blue a bit too pastel, with all its accessories,
A colour he could not have given us
In a hundred years, familiar but shallow,

Intense but guarded, multipled the sensations
Of his different flesh, though not
My ability to return the increased gaze.

Breathtakingly tactile, his beautiful
Carnal mask distanced the white reserve
Of the paper, yet brought it closer

To his cornerstones, the perfect control 
Of his hands' immense fresco about to move. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

"Ships in the night"
Half-past midnight, hours to go till five.
Shannon, Rockall, Malin, Fair Isle, Bailey
echo confirmation I'm alive. 


Half-ignored at two and seven daily
shipping forecasts beat the bounds of light, 
track the channels where the moon shines palely: 


Humber, Biscay, Fisher, German Bight -
haunts of kittiwake and golden plover -
sound the deepest reaches of my night. 


While I'm tossing, turning, thrashing over, 
strung out taut with sleepless eyes shut fast, 
Plymouth, Portland, Dogger, Wight and Dover


sing me senseless, lashed to nightmare's mast. ...

{excerpt} -- http://www.interpretershouse.org.uk/

----------


## quasimodo1

THE GAZING EYE FALLS THROUGH THE WORLD

—for Ono No Komachi, 834-880 A. D.

Philadelphia, almost dawn. The Delaware stares 
Back like lilies. In their ten thousand sets of eyes 

A hawk's claw moon again, hung barely, 

And there goes a train clearing snow 
For someone beautiful. And while she isn't sure 

Why, she's dreaming of moving again
While a Japanese poem whisks by in shapes the snow makes:

As certain as color
Passes from the petal,
Irrevocable as flesh,
The gazing eye falls through the world.

The heart does break. 

Ono No Komachi did not beg for her beauty back 
On the streets of Kyoto, and the boys running 
Past her did not throw carp at her feet, 

Nor did they force her to see her age anymore 
Than she already had, for she was fire, only 

Smarter. Yet, I exist, is the line she hides. 

Her eyes, hazel if the sun glanced her face
As she turned away from the street and toward the sea, 

Would tell it another way, distilling, as they had for years, 
The Sea of Japan until it was a shawl draped across her back, 

Its wind carrying the scent of a snuffed candle, until 
She was a little snow drifting onto white paper 

Containing no lines . . .

~

A stack of white paper, in fact, packed 
In a box and taken cross-country. 

Even if this story weren't true, I'd still tell it. 

{excerpt} ---- blackbird.vcu.edu/v3n2/poetry.htm

----------


## quasimodo1

Selection from "City Terrace Field Manual" ..... "What's a little riot between friends? So I stabbed you with a screwdriver between pauses in the ammunition going off, popping of metal canisters burning and exploding? How could I be expected to know if the gunshots in your house were mine? This is life in the big city, free market of desire: you'll thank me in the end. Sure, you may need a little radiation therapy for a fiber-optic plug in your brain. Sure, your kids whine for technicolor mercy in some crystal cathedral a lifetime after toking up as they choked. There's nothing wrong with that--nothing wrong with every Chino-Facility-for-Men Day. Besides, footprints on your face give you a wise look, creases beside your mouth distinguished as headlines. I acknowledge your deepest feelings for me, or the most shallow, what sludge! I don't hold it against you that I had to throw you to the ground, kick you repeatedly. So you broke a few bones? My clothes are clean, no bother. Hey, no diminished affection for your loss of skin. I will not light your children on fire with a molotov cocktail today. I appreciate your concern. My best to you and yours. No one is home to take your call." ..... {excerpt from one prose poem}

----------


## quasimodo1

"Counting the Dead" 


a review
By JOEL BROUWER
Published: June 22, 2008
RISING, FALLING, HOVERING 

By C. D. Wright. 

97 pp. Copper Canyon Press. $22. 
{latest collection by an unpredictable poet} http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/bo...l?8bu&emc=bua2

----------


## quasimodo1

iNCARNATION

When the Holy One stepped from endless order
into the chaos of our days, it was winter.
Weather blew everywhere. Time itself was dying.
The squirrel, with a tail soft as breath,
curled inside the maple trunk.

The cold stayed. Five-fingered leaves pressed the ground,
their stems perpendicular, thin wrists above each flame-tipped palm.
Cataclysm scanned the days; like any future, like our own. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Purgatorio, Canto XXIX 

Singing the way a lady sings in love,
she continued, after saying the last word,
"Blessèd are they whose sins are covered,"

and like the nymphs who once wandered alone
through the shadows of the forest, one
longing to see, one avoiding the sun

then she went, against the flow of the river,
walking along the bank, and I went with her,
following her small steps with my own small steps.

We had not taken a hundred steps between us
when the banks turned to the right as one,
so that I was facing the east again.

And we had not gone far in that direction
when the lady turned around toward me
saying, "My brother, look and listen."

And all at once there was a shining
that raced through the great forest on all sides
making me wonder whether it was lightning,

but whereas lightning is gone as swiftly
as it comes, this stayed, shining brighter and brighter,
and in my mind I was saying, "What can this be?"

And running through the luminous air was
a sweet melody, so that a good zeal
led me to blame Eve for her recklessness,

that there, where the earth and heaven obeyed,
a woman, alone, and who had just been made,
could not bear to be veiled by anything.

If she had only stayed devoutly under
her own, I could have tasted these pleasures
beyond words earlier, and for longer.

While I walked on among so many
first-fruits of eternal happiness,
enraptured, and longing for still greater joys,

before us, the air under the green boughs
came to be like a fire blazing
and we could hear that the sweet sound was singing.

Oh, most holy virgins, if I have endured
fasting, cold, and vigils for you ever,
need drives me now to ask for the reward.

Now is the time for Helicon to brim over
and Urania to help me with her choir
to put into verse things hard to hold in thought.

A little farther, seven golden trees
appeared as an illusion the long space
gave rise to, that was still between us,

but when I had come so near to them that
the common object which deceives the sense
lost none of its features because of distance,

the faculty that nourishes the discourse
of reason saw that they were candlesticks
and heard "Hosanna" in the singing voices.

Above us flamed the beautiful panoply,
far brighter than the moon in the clear sky
at midnight in the middle of the month.

Full of wonder, I turned around toward
the good Virgil, and he answered
with a look as amazed as my own.

Then I turned my face to the high things again
moving so slowly in our direction
that newly wed brides would have overtaken them.

The lady scolded me: "Why are you so
intent on the living lights that you pay no
attention to what there is behind them?"

Then I saw people coming after them
as after their leaders; they were dressed in white
and here there was never whiteness like that.

The water held my image on my left
and like a mirror showed me my own left
in a reflection, when I looked at it.

When I was at a point along the bank
where my distance from them was only
the rivers width, I stood still, the better to see,

and I saw the flames moving ahead, leaving
the air painted behind them, and they
looked the way pennons do, streaming

so that overhead was striped with seven
bands, in all the colors which the sun
makes his bow from, and Delia her girdle.

Those standards went back farther than I
could see, and to my mind there seemed to be
ten paces between the outer ones.

Under a sky as beautiful as I
have said came four and twenty elders, and they
walked two by two, wearing crowns of lilies.

All of them were singing, "Blessèd are you
among the daughters of Adam, and to
all eternity may your beauty be blessed."

After the flowers and other tender growth
opposite to me on the other shore
were without those elect people once more,

in the way star succeeds star in heaven
four animals came following them, each one
wearing green leaves made into a crown.

Each one of them was winged with six wings,
the feathers full of eyes, and Argos eyes,
if they were living, would be like those.

I will not waste more rhymes describing their
forms, reader, for I am pressed by another
demand that does not leave me scope for this,

but read Ezekiel who portrays them as
he saw them, out of the cold places
coming with wind and cloud and fire,

and as in his pages you will find them
so were they here, all except for the wings,
where John is with me and departs from him. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

HOMER'S SEEING-EYE DOG
Most of the time he worked, a sort of sleep
with a purpose, so far as I could tell.
How he got from the dark of sleep
to the dark of waking up I'll never know;
the lax sprawl sleep allowed him
began to set from the edges in,
like a custard, and then he was awake,
me too, of course, wriggling my ears
while he unlocked his bladder and stream
of dopey wake-up jokes. The one
about the wine-dark pee I hated instantly.
I stood at the ready, like a god
in an epic, but there was never much
to do. Oh now and then I'd make a sure
intervention, save a life, whatever.
But my exploits don't interest you
and of his life all I can say is that
when he'd poured out his work
the best of it was gone and then he died.
He was a great man and I loved him.
Not a whimper about his sex life --
how I detest your prurience --
but here's a farewell literary tip:
I myself am the model for Penelope.
Don't snicker, you hairless moron,
I know so well what faithful means
there's not even a word for it in Dog,
I just embody it. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

"The Kefti come no more.
They bear us no more the oils
and the cedars for coffins.
Their sails are lost." This was their epitaph
along with the recorded black sky
and the ashfall.
Then Egypt forgot the gracious isle 
of the olives
and the palaces of the seven kings
where athletes somersaulted
over the spread horns of bulls.
They died in one night, the pillars of the palace 

buckling,
great stones cast down, the galleys
beached on the shore, ruin and ashes
assailing men from the sky.
Thera, the burst throat of the world, coughing fire 

and brimstone
there to the north, its voice like the
bellowing of a loosed god
long propitiated to no purpose.
We have known it in our own lives--
the fear of the moving atoms, but
these people
endured the actual megaton explosion, and their
remnants
faded from history, while the timeless, practical
Egyptians
regretted a small loss of trade.
Civilizations die as men die, by
accident then. ... {excerpt from Knossos} *Kefti = Cretans

----------


## quasimodo1

Logan-t.html?_r=1&8bu&emc=bua1&oref=slogin 

--Urban Poet {a review by}



By WILLIAM LOGAN
Published: June 29, 2008 -- SELECTED POEMS 

By Frank O’Hara. 

Edited by Mark Ford. 

265 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $30. -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/bo...a1&oref=slogin

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## quasimodo1

From the Elephants' Graveyard


Seeking its own level,
the circus elephant's memory
seeps from the mound
that was its body, cooling
in a borrowed barn in Georgia.

Days of rain, days of no water.
Rumbling pleasure, misery, slow healing.
Smells. Routines. The beloved others.
One man's face, tipped into her weak eyes
over and over for years.

An unseen rivulet,
thick as tar distilled
from a forest's record of rings,
it slips through the straw
and the tired farmyard clay,

through compacted layers of marl and schist,
crystal ribs of lizards
and limestone caverns nursing echoes,
and it joins the oily stream
from the elephants' graveyard-- ... {excerpt, from cavewall press}

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## quasimodo1

.....Although I knew the way music can fill a room,
even with loneliness, which is of course a kind
of company. I could swelter through an August

afternoon -- torpor rising from the river -- and listen
to Stan Getz and J. J. Johnson braid variations
on "My Funny Valentine" and feel there in the room

with me the force and weight of what I couldn't
say. What's an emotion anyhow?
Lassitude and sweat lay all about me

like a stubble field, it was so hot and listless,
but I was quick and furtive as a fox
who has his thirty-miles-a-day metabolism

to burn off as ordinary business.
I had about me, after all, the bare eloquence
of the becalmed, the plain speech of the leafless

tree. I had the cunning of my body and a few
bars -- they were enough -- of music. Looking back,
it almost seems as though I could remember --

but this can't be; how could I bear it? --
the future toward which I'd clatter
with that boy tied like a bell around my throat,

a brave man and a coward both,
to break and break my metronomic heart
and just enough to learn to love the blues. {excerpt from "the blues"}

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## quasimodo1

A DISTANCE OF A SHOUT 

We lived on the medieval coast
south of warrior kingdoms
during the ancient age of the winds
as they drove all things before them.

Monks from the north came
down our streams floating that was
the year no one ate river fish.

There was no book of the fores,
no book of the sea, but these
are the places people died. ... {excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

Prayer 



Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
infolding,
entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a
visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by
minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the
dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where
they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into
itself (it has those layers) a real current though mostly
invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing
motion that forces change--
this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. ... {excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

Anodyne

I love how it swells 
into a temple where it is 
held prisoner, where the god 
of blame resides. I love 
slopes & peaks, the secret 
paths that make me selfish. 
I love my crooked feet 
shaped by vanity & work 
shoes made to outlast 
belief. The hardness 
coupling milk it can't 
fashion. I love the lips, 
salt & honeycomb on the tongue. 
The hair holding off rain 
& snow. The white moons 
on my fingernails. I love 
how everything begs 
blood into song & prayer 
inside an egg. A ghost 
hums through my bones 
like Pan's midnight flute 
shaping internal laws 
beside a troubled river. ... {excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

from COMPAÑERA
(Ana Mendieta)
Compañera
We should have bolted you down like
a piece of iron sculpture and
pointed you in another direction
but you were busy looking for love
in the wrong dictionary
looking for a sweet papa
in the wrong encyclopedia

& now I say to myself
Ana is dead
not alive
not returning
what would she think of that

She arrived in the Apple
to jog around the park
have lunch with friends
create sculpture
install exhibitions
& get intellectual stimulation..... ...{excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

{excerpts from long "list" poem} 
Entry Forbidden



[Selections from the International Mail Manual, 

"Country Conditions for Mailing," May 2005, U.S. 

Postal Service] 

Albania 
Extravagant clothes and other articles contrary to 

Albanians' taste. 
Items sent by political emigres.

Algeria 
Funeral urns. 
Saccharine. 

Azerbaijan 
Cutting and stabbing arms, knuckledusters, stiletto 

blades, balls of paralyzing fluid. 
Antlers, and the horns of the species Cervidae . 

Bahamas 
Radioactive materials. 
Skimmed milk in tins. 

Bangladesh 
Quinine, colored pink. 

Belarus 
Metallized yarn made with or made of gold thread. 
Opium. 

Botswana 
Honey and preparations of honey including royal 

jelly, preserves sweetened with honey, and flypaper. 
Prison-made goods. 

-------------------------------------------------------

Lesotho 
Eau de cologne. 
Military uniforms. 
Printed matter relating to football pools. 

Liechtenstein 
Mini-spies (miniature wireless transmitters). 

Luxembourg 
Postcards embellished with fabrics, embroidery, 

spangles, except in sealed envelopes. 

Malawi 
Aphrodisiacs. 
Correspondence concerning fortune telling. 

Malaysia 
Harpoons. 

Maldives 
Gunpowder. 
Weapons of war. 
Intoxicants. 
Poisons. 
Nitrates. 
Pork. 
Statues used for worship. 
Pornographic material. 

Pakistan 
Arms, ammunition except when sent on behalf of 

the government. 

Panama 
Pastries. 

Paraguay 
Tomato juices. 
Socks except those made of jersey. 

Peru 
Underwear. 
Communist propaganda. 
Contraceptive products. 
Dolls. 
Waxes and creams for shoes. 

San Marino 
Albums of any kind (of photographs, postcards, 

postage stamps, etc.). 
-------------------------------------------------------

Vatican City 
Human remains. 
Live animals. 

Vietnam 
Invisible ink, codes, ciphers, symbols or other types 

of secret correspondence, and shorthand notes. 
Used mosquito nets. 
{from the publication, Jubilat}

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## quasimodo1

THE POEM CAT
Sometimes the poem
doesn't want to come;
it hides from the poet
like a playful cat
who has run
under the house
& lurks among slugs,
roots, spiders' eyes,
ledge so long out of the sun
that it is dank
with the breath of the Troll King. 

Sometimes the poem
darts away
like a coy lover
who is afraid of being possessed,
of feeling too much,
of losing his essential
loneliness-which he calls
freedom. 

Sometimes the poem
can't requite
the poet's passion. 

The poem is a dance
between poet & poem,
but sometimes the poem
just won't dance
and lurks on the sidelines
tapping its feet-
iambs, trochees-
out of step with the music
of your mariachi band. 

If the poem won't come,
I say: sneak up on it. ... {excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

A Few Words on the Soul

(translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)

We have a soul at times.
No ones got it non-stop,
for keeps.

Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.

Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhoods fears and raptures.
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

IN TEMPORE SENECTUTIS
When I am old
I will not have you look apart
From me, into the cold,
Friend of my heart,
Nor be sad in your remembrance
Of the careless, mad-heart semblance
That the wind hath blown away
When I am old.

When I am old
And the white hot wonder-fire
Unto the world seem cold,
My soul's desire
Know you then that all life's shower,
The rain of the years, that hour
Shall make blow for us one flower,
Including all, when we are old. {first two stanzas of this poem}

----------


## quasimodo1

.....I have loved my God as a child at heart 
That seeketh deep bosoms for rest, 
I have loved my God as a maid to man 
But lo, this thing is best: 

To love your God as a gallant foe that plays behind the veil; 
To meet your God as the night winds meet beyond Arcturus' pale. 

I have played with God for a woman, 
I have staked with my God for truth, 
I have lost to my God as a man, clear-eyed 
His dice be not of ruth. 

For I am made as a naked blade, 
But hear ye this thing in sooth: 

Who loseth to God as man to man 
Shall win at the turn of the game. 
I have drawn my blade where the lightnings meet 
But the ending is the same: 
Who loseth to God as the sword blades lose 
Shall win at the end of the game. 

For God, our God is a gallant foe that playeth behind the veil. 
Whom God deigns not to overthrow hath need of triple mail. -- {excerpt from "Ballad for Gloom"}

----------


## quasimodo1

Poetry April 2008 Atlantic Monthly 




The Day I Saw the Emperors Clay Soldiers

The day I saw the emperors clay soldiers 
I thought I understood the end of things
blank faces staring back from 2,000 years. 
A farmer found them; I found the farmer 
in my father, grandfather, lost since 
the Depression days of hominy pots. 

My lost fathers are clay now too, 
contained, kept from me by a wine-velvet 
rope sagging between brass stanchions. 
If I reach across, will the alarm sound, 
lights flash, uniformed guards push me back? 
I thought I understood the end of things. 

The day I saw the emperors clay soldiers 
I wanted to be the electrician who 
installs lights above the exhibits. 
I know my fathers best side, or knew, 
though it makes me dizzy to remember. 
Ive never understood the end of things. 

Were hollow men too, my fathers and I. 
We never talked, even when we had 
the chancemaybe afraid of the echo. 
But 2,000 years is a long time 
to wait, even for still, curt clay soldiers 
who surely understand the end of things. ... {excerpt, from the Atlantic}

----------


## quasimodo1

A POETRY READING AT WEST POINT
I read to the entire plebe class,
in two batches. Twice the hall filled
with bodies dressed alike, each toting
a copy of my book. What would my
shrink say, if I had one, about
such a dream, if it were a dream?

Question and answer time.
"Sir," a cadet yelled from the balcony,
and gave his name and rank, and then,
closing his parentheses, yelled
"Sir" again. "Why do your poems give
me a headache when I try

to understand them?" he asked. "Do
you want that?" I have a gift for
gentle jokes to defuse tension,
but this was not the time to use it.
"I try to write as well as I can
what it feels like to be human," ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

EXCERPT FROM "RABBIT MAN"
3.


you saw death like the black legs of your mother

like the bent teeth of your retarded sister

like the wet smell of light in a fish's eye.

you saw death riding without a car or credit cards.

you saw death creeping waddling like the fat women

you hated.

you saw Jesus could not save you.


god's hand is creased with the smell of burnt hair and

hot grease,

she hears you tell your sons don't get no

black nappy-head woman.

her titties sag down sad snakes that crawl up your legs

till your penis talks and with blind sight you see

the two daughters you left in the desert without water.

oh death knows you and invites you for dinner,

rolls out the driveway like a coupe de ville,

is a snake-tongued daughter who turns on you,

is a thirsty rabbit choking on a lonely road.

death is an ax in an elevator rising to the sun.

death is god's egg.

death is a daughter who eats.

you are the table now the wet black earth lays upon--

you are dinner for dirt,

a cadillac spinning back to a one-room shack.

you are the rabbit released from fear,

the circle broken by sun

the handle of a buried ax,

head rolling thru the desert

like tumbleweed--

back to Neptune

----------


## quasimodo1

Cyprus, I'm coming to you 


You reach out your strong arms
Drawing me to you.
I long to bury myself in the fresh green
Folds of your skirt;
Smell your earthy musk about me,
Filling the air, filling me totally with you,
Soothing the hurt and healing me;
Your red-brown body soaking up my tears,
The whisper of your voice telling me that
I belong and am loved;
That I will leave you stronger.
Cyprus – I’m coming to you,
I’m coming to cry large salt tears into your oceans,
To allow you to envelop me with your darkness
And reassure me that she has not
Completely destroyed me.
I’m coming to sit with you and tell you everything.
I know you will understand.
You’ll soothe my aching soul
As I bare it to you; ... {excerpt}



[28 February 1990] -- http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/ma...d.asp?id-12340

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## quasimodo1

Weathers

Its freezing in the desert but theres nothing there to freeze.
The ground slides & swells. Where have you been buried?

Under which dune did you say? In the morning winter leaves.
Hush I can hear the aphids aphony & almost a word in the wind.

Time. Shovels. Im late. Im latent. I lost my list.
It was only "difference." Hailstone a lodestone on a leather lace.

Is there a certain lack of polarity? Is it family? Here I am.
In the cold moons blast zone on clean sand & up is the deep murk.

Up licks my foreign shores. Tide of light. Hailstone beckoning
me to the brown ground. Something there, deep in the drift.

Its a piece of snow. Where have you been buried oasis,
O trace H2O? Hush already I can see evening leaving.

Atop this cactus the bees are hibernating. Hush they are dreaming
their communal dream, nothing. Sweet dreams. A storm took you here.

Your hive of snakeskins & spiny things. Sweet dreams bees.
Every morning winter ferments. Agent my eyes. May the bulb

of winter be planted deep enough not to burn may the blossom
return may the pollen swell & slide may the nectar mollify

*

There once was a hole in a stone.
Try as we might we could not see
to the other side. I put my
hand in the equator. It was
wet & quite warm. I placed my toe,
my leg, in the glazed equator.
My clothes listed from a brassy
hook in the wooden tie upright
in a stone. The air much cooler
now than the equator. My hips
slipped into the flat line of the
equator. You basking under
your tiara of succulents
on a stone, toying with a stone.
My red beard spread on the skin of
the equator. I drank of the
equator. The salt in that line.
I lowered my brain into the
planar equator. You began
to slide & swell above my sure
face, calcified, the equator.
I love you I hummed I cant swim

{excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

My friend
they dont care
if youre an individualist
a leftist a rightist
a ****head or a snake

They will try to exploit you
absorb you confine you
disconnect you isolate you
or kill you

And you will disappear into your own rage
into your own insanity
into your own poverty
into a word a phrase a slogan a cartoon
and then ashes

The ruling class will tell you that
there is no ruling class
as they organize their liberal supporters into
white supremist lynch mobs
organize their children into
ku klux klan gangs
organize their police into killer cops
organize their propaganda into
a devise to ossify us with angel dust
pre-occupy us with western symbols in 
african hair styles
innoculate us with hate
institutionalize us with ignorance
hypnotize us with a monotonous sound designed
to make us evade reality and stomp our lives away
And we are programmed to self destruct
to fragment
to get buried under covert intelligence operations of
unintelligent committees impulsed toward death
And there it is

The enemies polishing their penises between
oil wells at the pentagon
the bulldozers leaping into demolition dances
the old folks dying of starvation
the informers wearing out shoes looking for crumbs
the lifeblood of the earth almost dead in
the greedy mouth of imperialism
And my friend
they dont care
if youre an individualist
a leftist a rightist
a ****head or a snake ...

{excerpt from poem, "There It Is", also recorded in a jazz album of the same name...1982)

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## quasimodo1

http://www.theparisreview.com/viewin...hp/prmMID/3944 -- 

Return to Interview Archive Index


ARCHIBALD MACLEISH The Art of Poetry No. 18 

Issue 58, Summer 1974 
View a manuscript page 
Download a PDF of the full interview

----------


## quasimodo1

WALT MCDONALD~





ADVICE I WISH I'D BEEN TOLD 



-------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------


Over the years, I've heard good advice from others; 

I wish they had told me sooner. Probably they did, 

but I didn't listen. What I'm about to say is what I 

constantly urge myself to do. I offer these 

comments to save us time, to help us strip off some 

ankle weights of language. The difference between 

second place and first place in the high jump, 

between the silver and the gold, is only about an 

inch. Ah, but "How glorious that inch / And that 

split-second longer in the air before the fall" 

(Robert Francis, "Excellence"). 


1. Resist Abstractions, and They Will Flee from You 

General and abstract statements are easy to say, 

and usually flat. They don't show; they tell. 

Imagine friends stepping out into the hall and 

seeing something vivid and specific, then coming 

back into your room and summarizing all the 

specific, sensuous details they saw in abstract, 

general statements — like any of these: "He was a 

distinguished-looking man." "She looked angry." 

"She treated others with justice." "He had a strange 

way of fixing his hair." "He gave her costly gifts." 

"She reacted in a negative way." 
I understand these claims — but I don't see or 

feel them as richly as I wish I could. The power of 

language is in vivid specifics that make us see — or 

hear, and feel, through sensuous images. A plot 

summary is not as vivid or powerful as seeing the 

movie. In order to make any of those statements 

quoted above, the writers might have seen specific 

details, but — instead of sharing them with readers 

— they have "ab-stracted" (drawn conclusions from, 

or taken from) their impressions and given us only 

the abstract notions of the experience — 

"distinguished-looking," "justice," "a negative way." 
These are the kind of easy abstractions I'm likely 

to make in first drafts — when I'm simply trying to 

find a few lines for a poem. But go beyond first 

thoughts. I urge you to reach, to work hard; don't 

sit down like a couch potato, comfortable with the 

easy abstractions of your mind's first draft. A poem 

works best, for me, when the writer doesn't tell, but 

when he or she invents combinations of specific 

words to show us old facts in new ways. Poems 

with too many abstractions and not enough images 

tell about something, but don't move me as much 

as they could. 
Abstractions and generalizations are like chunks 

of lead tossed on a pond of water — " the art of 

sinking in poetry." Abstractions are hired assassins; 

they're paid to hold you hostage, to keep you 

bound to your couch, in house arrest. They don't 

want you to travel, to see the vivid images of other 

regions; they hope you won't discover what you're 

missing. Now let's stop and admit some obvious 

facts about the craft of writing: 
1) There are no rules. All I can do is describe 

what works for me in the best poems I read. All I 

can do is share the best advice I can to help you 

write better poems; all I can promise is to focus on 

what I admire. 

-- 

http://wwwstage.valpo.edu/english/vpr/mcdonaldes

say.html

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## quasimodo1

Jayne Cortez -- States of Motion ----------------- 

Sun Ra left the planet traveling in a pyramid made 

of metal keys Willie Mae Thornton sailed away in 

an extra large moisture-proof harmonica Pauline 

Johnson flew off to the meeting in her brass 

trimmed telephone Thelonious Monk withdrew 

seated in a space ship shaped like a piano Art 

Blakey departed in a great wood & stainless steel 

bass drum Esther Phillips bowed out in a nasal 

sounding chrome microphone Charles Tyler, 

George Adams & Clifford Jordan reached another 

realm riding in receptacles constructed like 

saxaphones Okot p'Bitek shoved off in an attache 

case full of songs, books & whiskey Leon Damas 

hit the road in a big black banjo Andre Lorde 

departed while wrapped in her book jackets Dizzy 

Gillespie zoomed off in a sweet chariot shaped like 

a trumpet Miles Davis left in a magnificent 

copper mute Marietta Damas vacated the terrain 

in one beautiful house filled with folkloric & 

electronic gadgets Romare Bearden crossed over 

the rainbow in a blimp made of his collages & 

etchings Norman Lewis pushed away from the 

shore in a vault shaped like a bicycle ....{excerpt 

from this poem by Jayne Cortez, poet and jazz 

songwriter}

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## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/200...POD_index.html

----------


## quasimodo1

Review/Music; Setting Agitprop Poetry To the Beat of Current Jazz 

By JON PARELES 
Published: March 25, 1991  "On Wednesday and Thursday nights, S.O.B.'s presented agitprop poets with a beat, politically committed performers whose music saves them from didacticism. Jayne Cortez's poetry, which praises 'revolutionary commitment' and warns of environmental and social catastrophe, has attracted some of the best musicians in contemporary jazz; Macka B., a British reggae toaster (rapper) and singer, performed with Robotiks, a lean four-piece band, as the Mad Professor mixed the sound and added the electronic effects of dub reggae." - ------"Ms. Cortez is a poet, not a rapper, chanting and reciting in a determined voice that sometimes rises in a girlish lilt. She has hooked her poetry to Ornette Coleman's kind of funk -- a bristling, prismatic, harmonically unconstrained surge of riffs and propulsion." http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...+Cortez&st=nyt

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## quasimodo1

".....Winter 
wears her well-earned warriors clothes, 
a season wearing thinner, wetter, 
colder, but still and ever green, here 
shed not leave her leaves, not shed 
whats hers though the southerly 
tried and tries to whistle them away. 
And since this is my comedy 
of ears, in one and in the others 
fates to trip again, Ill claim: 
the body is both bread and breed, 
as words well said are planted seed 
and grow so where we tread is treed, 
where each line read remains the reed 
on which the note is played when pressed 
to lips, mouth, self-ordained as priest, 
weds wed to wed and weed and so 
with word grown one forever as even 
the dead remain in deed, wound round 
and round in these wet sheets of wind." {excerpt from Dreaming in New Zealand}

----------


## quasimodo1

STANDARDIZATION
When, darkly brooding on this Modern Age, 
The journalist with his marketable woes 
Fills up once more the inevitable page 
Of fatuous, flatulent, Sunday-paper prose; 

Whenever the green aesthete starts to whoop 
With horror at the house not made with hands 
And when from vacuum cleaners and tinned soup 
Another pure theosophist demands 

Rebirth in other, less industrial stars 
Where huge towns thrust up in synthetic stone 
And films and sleek miraculous motor cars 
And celluloid and rubber are unknown; 

When from his vegetable Sunday School 
Emerges with the neatly maudlin phrase 
Still one more Nature poet, to rant or drool 
About the "Standardization of the Race"; 

I see, stooping among her orchard trees, 
The old, sound Earth, gathering her windfalls in, 
Broad in the hams and stiffening at the knees, 
Pause and I see her grave malicious grin. 

For there is no manufacturer competes 
With her in the mass production of shapes and things. 
Over and over she gathers and repeats 
The cast of a face, a million butterfly wings. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Morningside Heights, July 



Haze. Three student violists boarding 
a bus. A clatter of jackhammers. 
Granular light. A film of sweat for primer 
and the heat for a coat of paint. 
A man and a woman on a bench: 
she tells him he must be psychic, 
for how else could he sense, even before she knew, 
that shed need to call it off? A bicyclist 
fumes by with a coachs whistle clamped 
hard between his teeth, shrilling like a teakettle 
on the boil. I never meant, she says. 
But I thought, he replies. Two cabs almost 
collide; someone yells **** in Farsi. 
Im sorry, she says. The comforts 
of loneliness fall in like a bad platoon. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://poetrymagazine.org/magazine/0...em_181087.html








Louise Glück’s most recent collection of poems, 

Averno (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), was a 2006 

National Book Award finalist. She lives in 

Cambridge, Massachusetts and teaches at Yale. 


Midsummer 
by Louise Glück 


On nights like this we used to swim in the quarry, 
the boys making up games requiring them to tear 

off  the girls’ clothes 
and the girls cooperating, because they had new 

bodies since last summer 
and they wanted to exhibit them, the brave ones 
leaping off  the high rocks — bodies crowding 

the water. 


The nights were humid, still. The stone was cool 

and wet, 
marble for  graveyards, for buildings that we never 

saw, 
buildings in cities far away. 


On cloudy nights, you were blind. Those nights the 

rocks were dangerous, 
but in another way it was all dangerous, that was 

what we were after. 
The summer started. Then the boys and girls began 

to pair off 
but always there were a few left at the 

end — sometimes they’d keep watch, 
sometimes they’d pretend to go off  with each 

other like the rest, 
but what could they do there, in the woods? No 

one wanted to be them. 
But they’d show up anyway, as though some night 

their luck would change, 
fate would be a different fate. 


At the beginning and at the end, though, we were 

all together. 
After the evening chores, after the smaller children 

were in bed, 
then we were free. Nobody said anything, but we 

knew the nights we’d meet 
and the nights we wouldn’t. Once or twice, at the 

end of summer, 
we could see a baby was going to come out of all 

that kissing. 


And for those two, it was terrible, as terrible as 

being alone. 
The game was over. We’d sit on the rocks smoking 

cigarettes, 
worrying about the ones who weren’t there. 


And then finally walk home through the fields, 
because there was always work the next day. 
And the next day, we were kids again, sitting on the 

front steps in the morning, 
eating a peach.  Just that, but it seemed an honor 

to have a mouth. 
And then going to work, which meant helping out 

in the fields. 
One boy worked for an old lady, building shelves. 
The house was very old, maybe built when the 

mountain was built. 


And then the day faded. We were dreaming, 

waiting for night. 
Standing at the front door at twilight, watching the 

shadows lengthen. 
And a voice in the kitchen was always complaining 

about the heat, 
wanting the heat to break. 


Then the heat broke, the night was clear. 
And you thought of  the boy or girl you’d be 

meeting later. 
And you thought of  walking into the woods and 

lying down, 
practicing all those things you were learning in the 

water. 
And though sometimes you couldn’t see the 

person you were with, 
there was no substitute for that person. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Self-Analysis

The poet is a forger who forges so completely that he forges even the

feeling he truly feels as pain. And




those who read his poems feel absolutely, not his two separate pains,

but only the pain that they do not feel.




And thus, diverting the understanding, the wind-up train we call the

heart runs along its track.

Fernando Pessoa



http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/bo...d-letters.html

----------


## firefangled

There are two line indents that Lit-Net can't produce, L4 and L12

*Prayer*


Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
infolding,
entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a
visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by
minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the
dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where
they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into
itself (it has those layers) a real current though mostly
invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing
motion that forces change--
this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/...t-Laureate.php Finally a great modern poet gets some recognition.

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/bo...pagewanted=all -- Some samples of her work, nyt web extra.

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/bo...tml?ref=review

----------


## quasimodo1

Outsider Art 
by Kay Ryan 


Most of its too dreary 
or too cherry red. 
If its a chair, its 
covered with things 
the savior said 
or should have said 
dense admonishments 
in nail polish 
too small to be read. 
If its a picture, 
the frame is either 
burnt matches glued together 
or a regular frame painted over 
to extend the picture. There never 
seems to be a surface equal 
to the needs of these people. ... {exceprt}

----------


## firefangled

What a great thread, Quasi. There are so many wonderful contemporary poets out there, it is difficult to come in contact with them all independently.


*The Lord and the General Din of the World*


The kids are shrieking at the edge of the pool,
their angelic faces twisting. They like
to shriekthey like to make the Great Dane bellow.
When he cannot stand it any longer, he jumps
the wall and chases them, still screaming, in.

And under all this now a steady grating
A plastic bottle of blue cheese dressing
Scraping up against the concrete gutter,
Bobbing off the aqua, sun-flicked waves
The kids have made by jumping.

And theres a man here from Afghanistan
who hasnt cut his greasy hair since he was driven mad.
His name is Simon. He looks just like The Christ.
Walks up and down beside the pool, oblivious
To screams and barking. He gestures as he talks,
Whispers and pontificates. No one is listening.

_Lord, is the general din of the world your own?
Something that is good in me is crumbling_ {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

To the Memory



of J.S. Bach because on bad nights
I take my three brown dogs to bed
with a box of crackers, which we share
while I sing them their favorite song:

Sheep may safely graze on pasture
when their shepherd guards them well.
Sheep may safely graze on pasture

I have lived by how this is funny.
I address myself to the dead now.

My body thinks she is the moonthe moon
as remembered against the metal bars
of a bridge whose arc we trust
the more the less we can.

From a distance the cars move to music.
From a distance the world sings back.

My body thinks she is the moon
but she is a clown and I
am all music and unbearably
weighted down. ... {excerpt}


© Jane Mead

----------


## quasimodo1

IMMANENCE



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Antibellum Plantation, Stone Mountain Park, Georgia



We leave the one-room schoolhouse
with the double meaning of its woodenness 
spelled out in ranks of hair-shirt oaken 
benches and plank-top desks without a blemish
of utility. No inkwells, no pencil minders to give
them purpose. It is a place of the truly elementary
of bone-tired inertia and of rote, and educative homilies 
about the patriot saints. On the slatted wall
above the teacher's desk, the Father of His Country
still presides from the unfinished portrait 
by Gilbert Stuart. Disembodied head, dead white 
on a black ground of rusty satin. It speaks to dark eternity,
bright virtue: the mythic cherry tree; the bitter winter 
of faithfulness, Philadelphia locked up like an English gaol;
the patience to stick till the screw turned tight 
at Yorktown. Did the hardness or the homilies prepare 
those boys of 1850 for Sunday strolls to come, 
ranked like Continentals, into the rifle's obliterating jaws? 

My wife has four-leaf clover on her mind.  
I've never seen one, and she abhors the vacuum 
of my skepticism. She prays that God will let us find 
this unicorn of flora, and as we walk the well-groomed lawn, 
she plucks one up, a tiny Intercession. Yet there's another: 
I stoop, incredulous, and here it is, the four plump lobes 
like the fingers of a cartoon hand. I laugh the sinner's
incongruous guffaw, while she thanks God, He 
who helps our unbelief. I think how I want to be with her 
when lightning X-rays open spaces, or the car knifes 
across four lanes of highway, the shattering median, 
the onrushing flail of steel. Then I recall those war-
dead Southern boys, bent to their hard-assed catechism, 
their Calvinist Lives of the Saints
three hundred thousand war-dead boys. ... {excerpt}

[from the Valparaiso Poetry Review]

----------


## quasimodo1

IN THE VILLAGE OF MY ANCESTORS


.....Unknown old men and women
Appropriate the names
Of young men and women from my memory

I ask one of them
Tell me for God's sake
Is George the Wolf still living

That's me he answers
With a voice from the next world

I touch his cheek with my hand
And beg him with my eyes
To tell me if I'm living too {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

CIVILIZATION
Send your army home to their wives and children.
It is late. Your soldiers are burdened, thirsty.
Lock the doors, the windows, and here in darkness
lie down beside me.

Speak of anything we possess in common:
ground or law or sense. Only speak it softly.
Spiders crawl the crevices. Violent voices
ruin their balance,

and theyll fall  intuit  upon our faces,
where I fear them most. But youve heard this terror,
and my midnight phobias always move you 
cause to remain here. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

In High Waters 



Quartered, cleaned, this beautiful black wire looped 

and
knotted
through the skin, the squash hung on the porch.
All September they puckered, cracked. Then they 

were dry.
They clicked a little when the wind 

made its way past them: hollow sounds, almost 

pleasing—
cupped hands
clapping a bit for themselves when we weren't 

looking.
November I drew them.
They had stopped changing. 

I drew them landlocked. Canyons.
They scorned the rivers that had abandoned them.
Four phases of some moon, I drew them. Four 

rowboats run
aground.
Four, leashed to their piling, nudging each other 

from time to time. Four sails
learning to quarter wind, gather way—what 

cunning, what
incredible
patience! We brought them indoors to a large nail
in the kitchen. I drew them again, four ships in a 

rice-paper
storm, 

four rocks narrowly avoided by the sailor, who,
thanks to them finds his way home.
Four sailors' memories of the same girl. Now
you would cook them. Soaked in water, salt, they 

would
plump up. 

How nice to have things out of season. Summer 

squash
caught in our winter, there is snow outside
like you would not believe.
Whole trees are buried beneath waves, becalmed. 

The world 

is everywhere able to flow into itself without 

damage
or confusion. ... {excerpt}


Copyright © Jorie Graham [from Ploughshares]

----------


## quasimodo1

A Happy Childhood 


Babies do not want to hear about babies; the like to be told of giants and castles. 
Dr. Johnson 

No one keeps a secret so well as a child 
Victor Hugo


My mother stands at the screen door, laughing. 
Out out damn Spot, she commands our silly dog. 
I wonder what this means. I rise into adult air 


like a hollyhock, Im so proud to be loved 
like this. The air is tight to my nervous body. 
I use new clothes and shoes the way the corn-studded 


soil around here uses nitrogen, giddily. 
Ohio, Ohio, Ohio. Often I sing 
to myself all day like a fieldful of August 


insects, just things I whisper, really, 
a trance in sneakers. Im learning 
to read from my mother and soon Ill go to school, 


I hate it when anyone dies or leaves and the air 
goes slack around my body and I have to hug myself, 
a cloud, an imaginary friend, the stream in the road- 


side park. I love to be called for dinner. 
Spot goes out and I go in and the lights 
in the kitchen go on and the dark, 


which also has a body like a clouds, 
leans lightly against the house. Tomorrow 
Ill find the sweatstains it left, little grey smudges. {first part of long poem}

----------


## quasimodo1

SHE IS IN THE PAST, SHE HAS THIS GRACE 

My mother looks at her watch,
As if to look back over the curve
Of her life, her slackening rhythms:
Nobody can know her, how she lost herself
Evening after evening in that after,
Her hourly feelings, the repetition,
Delay and failure of her labour
Of mourning. The steps space themselves
Out, the steps pass, in the mists
And hesitations of the summer,
And within a space which is doubled,
One of us has passed through the other,
Though one must count oneself three,
To figure out which of us
Has let herself be traversed. 

Nothing advances, we dont move,
We dont address one another,
I havent opened my mouth
Except for one remark,
And what remark was that?
A word which appeases the menace
Of time in us, reading as if
I were stripping the words
Of their ever-mortal high meaning.

She is in dark light, or an openness
That leads to a darkness,
Embedded in the wall
Her mono-landscape
Stays facing the sea
And the harbour activity,
Her sea-conscience being ground up
With the smooth time of the deep,
Her mourning silhouetted against
The splendour of the sea
Which is now to your left,
As violent as it is distant
From all aggressive powers
Or any embassies. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Blue Juniata 



Farmhouses curl like horns of plenty, hide 
scrawny bare shanks against a barn, or crouch 
empty in the shadow of a mountain. Here 
there is no house at all 


only the bones of a house, 
lilacs growing beside them, 
roses in clumps between them, 
honeysuckle over; 
a gap for a door, a chimney 
mud-chinked, an immense fireplace, 
the skeleton of a pine, 


and gandy dancers working on the rails 
that run not thirty yards from the once door. ...





...for sometimes a familiar music hammers 
like blood against the eardrums, paints a mist 
across the eyes, as if the smells of lilacs, 
moss roses, and the past became a music 
made visible, a monument of air. {excerpts}


Malcolm Cowley, Blue Juniata from Blue Juniata: A Life. Copyright © 1985

----------


## quasimodo1

Meta-A and the A of Absolutes 



I write my God in blue. 
I run my gods upstream on flimsy rafts. 
I bathe my goddesses in foam, in moonlight. 
I take my reasons from my mother's snuff breath, 
or from an old woman, sitting with a lemonade, 
at twilight, on the desert's steps. 
Brown by day and black by night, 
my God has wings that open to no reason. 
He scutters from the touch of old men's eyes, 
scutters from the smell of wisdom, an orb 
of light leaping from a fire. 
Press him he bleeds. 
When you take your hand to sacred water, 
there is no sign of any wound. 
And so I call him supreme, great artist, 
judge of time, scholar of all living event, 
the possible prophet of the possible event. 
Blind men, on bourbon, with guitars, 
blind men with their scars dulled by kola, 
blind men seeking the shelter of a raindrop, 
blind men in corn, blind men in steel, 
reason by their lights that our tongues 
are free, our tongues will redeem us. 
Speech is the fact, and the fact is true. 
What is moves, and what is moving is. 
We cling to these contradictions. 
We know we will become our contradictions, 
our complex body's own desire. 
Yet speech is not the limit of our vision. 
The ear entices itself with any sound. 
The skin will caress whatever tone 
or temperament that rises or descends. 
The bones will set themselves to a dance. 
The blood will argue with a bird in flight. 
The heart will scale the dew from an old chalice, 
brush and thrill to an old bone. 
And yet there is no sign to arrest us 
from the possible. 
We remain at rest there, in transit 
from our knowing to our knowledge. 
So I would set a limit where I meet my logic. 
I would clamber from my own cave 
into the curve of sign, an alphabet 
of transformation, the clan's cloak of reason. ... {excerpt}




[Jay Wright, Meta-A and the A of Absolutes from 

Transfigurations: Collected Poems (Baton Rouge: 

Louisiana State University Press, 2000). Copyright © 

2000 by Jay Wright]

----------


## quasimodo1

Song 



I make the drive, walk the corporate walk, 
To do what I must and give what I got. 
I turn the chrome knob and I fill my slot. 
I talk and I joke, a regular guy 
I input and output and rarely ask why. 


It's pasta and wine at home in my flat. 
It's voice mail and e-mail, then feed the stray cat.  
Sometimes I go out and chat up the girls. 
Some want to tango, some manage a smile. 
Some come home and have safe sex for a while. 


My sweet IRA, my 401-k, 
Let me buy tickets to games, to a play 
I go with the gang and don't get involved. 
I fly to St. Croix and stare at the sea. 
I travel first class. No day-tripper me. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Be Music, Night 



Be music, night, 
That her sleep may go 
Where angels have their pale tall choirs 


Be a hand, sea, 
That her dreams may watch 
Thy guidesman touching the green flesh of the world 


Be a voice, sky, 
That her beauties may be counted 
And the stars will tilt their quiet faces 
Into the mirror of her loveliness 


Be a road, earth, 
That her walking may take thee 
Where the towns of heaven lift their breathing spires ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

".....Restoration 
knows no half measure. It will 
not stop when the treasured and lost 
bronze horse remounts the steps. 
Even this horse will founder backward 
to coin, cannon, and domestic pots, 
which themselves shall bubble and 
drain back to green veins in stone. 
And every word written shall lift off 
letter by letter, the backward text 
read ever briefer, ever more antic 
in its effort to insist that nothing 
shall be lost." 
{last part of "All Shall be Restored"}

----------


## quasimodo1

JERSEY RAIN 
Now near the end of the middle stretch of road
What have I learned? Some earthly wiles. An art.
That often I cannot tell good fortune from bad,
That once had seemed so easy to tell apart.

The source of art and woe aslant in wind
Dissolves or nourishes everything it touches.
What roadbank gullies and ruts it doesn't mend
It carves the deeper, boiling tawny in ditches.

It spends itself regardless into the ocean.
It stains and scours and makes things dark or bright:
Sweat of the moon, a shroud of benediction,
The chilly liquefaction of day to night,

The Jersey rain, my rain, soaks all as one:
It smites Metuchen, Rahway, Saddle River,
Fair Haven, Newark, Little Silver, Bayonne.
I feel it churning even in fair weather ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

A Raft of Grief

The raft that means a great number is not related 
at all to the raft that carries people or their possessions 
in the water. The two words are homonyms. 
Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins 

If only there were a boat, 
low and long and loaded 
with all wed brought or built: 
the fatal inattentions, 
anxieties and tics 
that time had sanctified, 
our good and bad intentions, 
rages, lapses, and aches. 
If only it were that easy, 
to stand only ankle- 
deep in the sullied water, ... {excerpt}

----------


## firefangled

*Seven Poems*

1

At the edge
of the bodys night
ten moons are rising.

2.

The scar remembers the wound.
The wound remembers the pain.
Once more you are crying.

3.

When we walk in the sun
our shadows are like barges of silence.

4.

My body lies down
And I hear my own
voice lying next to me.

5.

The rock is pleasure 
and it opens
and we enter it
as we enter ourselves
each night.

7.

I have a key
so I open the door and walk in.
It is dark and I walk in.
It is darker and I walk in.

{excerpt}

Mark Strand from _Darker_

----------


## TheFifthElement

> *Seven Poems*
> 
> 1
> 
> At the edge
> of the bodys night
> ten moons are rising.
> 
> 2.
> ...


Mark Strand is not a poet I know, though after reading this he is a poet I think I _should_ know. These are wonderful, thanks Firefangled.

----------


## Sweets America

Oh Fire, I agree with Fifth, these poems are just great! I studied one poem by Mark Strand last year, I loved it, it was strange:

*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 steps and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

----------


## PrinceMyshkin

*
I wish I were close
To you as the wet skirt of
A salt girl to her body.
I think of you always.*

 Akahito (trans. K. Rexroth)

----------


## TheFifthElement

> Oh Fire, I agree with Fifth, these poems are just great! I studied one poem by Mark Strand last year, I loved it, it was strange:
> 
> *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.
> ...


Ah yes! I have read this poem. It is excellent, thanks for posting Sweets  :Smile:

----------


## TheFifthElement

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets 
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would 
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to your hair
or the crease 
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You would be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peelers wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
- your keen-nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers

When we swam once
I touched you in the water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said
this is how you touch other womenthe grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume
and knewwhat good it isto be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar...

(extract: The Cinnamon Peeler's Wife, Michael Ondaatje)

----------


## quasimodo1

Squarings

When you sat, far-eyed and cold, in the basalt throne
Of the wishing chair at Giants Causeway,
The small of your back made sense of the firmament.

Like a papoose at sap-time strapped to a maple-tree,
You gathered force out of the world-trees hardness.
If you stretched your hand forth, things might turn to stone.

But you were only goose-fleshed skin and bone,
The rocks and wonder of the world were only
Lava crystallized, salts of the earth

The wishing chair gave savour to, its kelp
And ozone sharpening your outlook
Beyond the range of possibility.

*

I was four but I turned four hundred maybe
Encountering the ancient dampish feel
Of a clay floor. Maybe four thousand even.

Anyhow, there it was. Milk poured for cats
In a rank puddle-place, splash-darkened mould
Around the terra cotta water-crock

Ground of being. Bodys deep obedience
To all its shifting tenses. A half-door
Opening directly into starlight.

Out of that earth house I inherited
A stack of singular, cold memory-weights
To load me, hand and foot, in the scale of things.

*

Sand-bed, they said. And gravel-bed. Before
I knew river shallows or river pleasures
I knew the ore of longing in those words.

The places I go back to have not failed
But will not last. Waist-deep in cow-parsley
I re-enter the swim, riding or quelling

The very currents memory is composed of,
Everything accumulated ever
As I took squarings from the tops of bridges

Or the banks of self at evening.
Lick of fear. Sweet transience. Flirt and splash.
Crumpled flow the sky-dipped willows trailed in.

*

Heather and kesh and turf stacks reappear
Summer by summer still, grasshoppers and all,
The same yet rarer: fields of the nearly blessed

Where gaunt ones in their shirt-sleeves stooped and dug
Or stood alone at dusk surveying bog-banks 
Apparitions now, yet active still

And territorial, still sure of their ground,
Still interested, not knowing how far
The country of the shades has been pushed back.

How long the lark has stopped outside these fields
And only seems unstoppable to them
Caught like a far hill in a freak of sunshine.

{first four stanzas}

----------


## quasimodo1

Top ten poetry collections as represented by Small Press Distributers-- ( www.spdbooks.org )-- 1) “Complete Minimal Poems,” by Aram Saroyan (Ugly Duckling).
2) “Poeta en San Francisco,” by Barbara Jane Reyes (Tinfish).
3) “All That’s Left,” by Jack Hirschman (City Lights).
4) “You Are a Little Bit Happier Than I Am,” by Tao Lin (Action).
5) “The True Keeps Calm Biding Its Story,” by Rusty Morrison (Ahsahta).
6) “Lobster With Ol’ Dirty Bastard,” by Michael Cirelli (Hanging Loose).
7) “The Evolution of a Sigh,” by R. Zamora Linmark (Hanging Loose).
8) “Lyric Postmodernisms,” edited by Reginald Shepherd (Counterpath).
9) “Incubation: A Space for Monsters,” by Bhanu Kapil (Leon Works).
10) “Underwater Lengths in a Single Breath,” by Benjamin S. Grossman (Ashland Poetry).

----------


## quasimodo1

The Parade 


How exhilarating it was to march 
along the great boulevards 
in the sunflash of trumpets 
and under all the waving flags
the flag of ambition, the flag of love. 

So many of us streaming along
all of humanity, really
moving in perfect step, 
yet each lost in the room of a private dream. 

How stimulating the scenery of the world, 
the rows of roadside trees, 
the huge curtain of the sky. 

How endless it seemed until we veered 
off the broad turnpike 
into a pasture of high grass, 
headed toward the dizzying cliffs of mortality. 
{excerpt}

----------


## firefangled

Ah! Michael Ondaatje. Wonderful poet and the Cinnamon Peeler is an amazing book. Thanks Fifth for postingt this poem.

----------


## firefangled

Charles Simic is unusual to say the least. If I have said this before or posted this poem of his forgive me. He is strange and the residing Poet Laureate of the United States. He is Charles Bukowski with attention to details.


*Pastoral Harpsichord*

Poor reception, thats the one 
Advantage we have here,
I said to the mutt lying at my feet
And sighing in sympathy.
On another channel the preacher
Came chaperoned by his ghost
When he shut his eyes full of tears
To pray for dollars.

Bring me another beer, I said to her ladyship,
And when she wouldnt oblige,
I went out to make chamber music
Against the sunflowers in the yard. {excerpt}


 Charles Simic, from _Walking the Black Cat_

----------


## quasimodo1

THE BORDERS
To say that she came into me,
from another world, is not true.
Nothing comes into the universe
and nothing leaves it.
My motherI mean my daughter did not
enter me. She began to exist
inside meshe appeared within me.
And my mother did not enter me.
When she lay down, to pray, on me,
she was always ferociously courteous,
fastidious with Puritan fastidiousness,
but the barrier of my skin failed, the barrier of my
body fell, the barrier of my spirit.
She aroused and magnetized my skin, I wanted
ardently to please her, I would say to her
what she wanted to hear, as if I were hers.
I served her willingly, and then
became very much like her, fiercely
out for myself. -- {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Wherein Obscurely


On the road with billowing poplars,
In a country flat and desolate
To the far-off gray horizon, wherein obscurely,
A man and a woman went on foot,

Each carrying a small suitcase.
They were tired and had taken off
Their shoes and were walking on
Their toes, staring straight ahead.

Every time a car passed fast,
As they're wont to on such a stretch of
Road, empty as the crow flies,
How quickly they were gone--

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Making Your Own Eclipse
The word comes from a Greek word 
for abandonment: we catch an untraceable 
fire already kindled in another. 

When night falls suddenly 
for such a short period 
in the clearest skies of the day 

as a second darkening, 
they could not have known 
that what they were seeing was the Moon 

acting as a screen. 
For blue does not mean 
its sensation in us, but the power 

in it, the behaviour of the aligning 
light in the pleasure-journey 
of the obedient morning. 

Across Ireland the blueness will drop 
to temperatures of dusk, 
a gentle east wind 

will blow birds silent, 
and stars along the Path 
of Totality will decorate 

the late forenoon. 
Bleating flocks and fearful herds 
will unexpectedly return to their stables 

and patterns of light and dark 
will tremble over the ground. 
We will keep looking 

at the fleecy space, 
you curled up with your head 
on my knee, saying, We 

have been cheated, the twenty- 
four seconds are passing and it 
is much worse than we expected. 

Then there will be the subtle 
tension as the Moon begins 
to creep into your face, .....{half of this poem}

----------


## quasimodo1

Piute Creek 



One granite ridge 
A tree, would be enough 
Or even a rock, a small creek, 
A bark shred in a pool. 
Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted 
Tough trees crammed 
In thin stone fractures 
A huge moon on it all, is too much. 
The mind wanders. A million 
Summers, night air still and the rocks 
Warm. Sky over endless mountains. 
All the junk that goes with being human 
Drops away, hard rock wavers 
Even the heavy present seems to fail 
This bubble of a heart. 
Words and books 
Like a small creek off a high ledge 
Gone in the dry air. ... {excerpt}

----------


## Sweets America

> Piute Creek 
> 
> 
> 
> One granite ridge 
> A tree, would be enough 
> Or even a rock, a small creek, 
> A bark shred in a pool. 
> Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted 
> ...


 :Thumbs Up:  Yeaaaaah!! I love how nature is described in this, the greatness and meditative aspect of the rocks still standing there after million summers... 

Here's one by Galway Kinnell:

*Cemetary Angels*

On these cold days
they stand over
our dead, who will
erupt into flower as soon
as memory and human shape
rot out of them, each bent
forward and with wings
partly opened as though
warming itself at a fire.

----------


## firefangled

> Charles Simic is unusual to say the least. If I have said this before or posted this poem of his forgive me. He is strange and the residing Poet Laureate of the United States. He is Charles Bukowski with attention to details.
> 
>  Charles Simic, from _Walking the Black Cat_


Quasi, your PM is correct. The current Poet Laueate is now Kay Ryan.

----------


## firefangled

I modeled my thesis in oral literature of the Ojibwa after a similar work by Gary Snyder on an analysis of a Northwest American Native story. It was when Turtle Island (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 1975) was first published and I discovered this poem, which at the time, had the effect of answering many questions that had swam in the pool of my mind for years. 

Snyder was known to have often rescued road kill from having an ignoble final days or transition to the life that awaited them. As was customary of more civilized societies than our own, the death of animals was by choice or survival was respected by transforming every possible part of the animal into something that continued to live through its use. This poem involved a gray female fox from which Snyder and his son were removing the pelt...Thus, this excerpt...

*One Should Not Talk To a Skilled Hunter About What Is Forbidden By the Buddha*
_- Hsiang-yen_

...
Peeling skin back (Kai
reminded us to chant the Shingyo first)
cold pelt. crinkle; and musky smell
mixed with dead-body odor starting.

Stomach content: a whole ground squirrel well chewed
plus one lizard foot
and somewhere from inside the ground squirrel
a bit of aluminum foil.

The secret.
and the secret hidden deep in that.

----------


## quasimodo1

Above Pate Valley 


.....sun 
Straight high and blazing 
But the air was cool. 
Ate a cold fried trout in the 
Trembling shadows. I spied 
A glitter, and found a flake 
Black volcanic glassobsidian 
By a flower. Hands and knees 
Pushing the Bear grass, thousands 
Of arrowhead leavings over a 
Hundred yards. Not one good 
Head, just razor flakes 
On a hill snowed all but summer, 
A land of fat summer deer, 
They came to camp. On their 
Own trails. I followed my own 
Trail here. Picked up the cold-drill, 
Pick, singlejack, and sack 
Of dynamite. 
Ten thousand years. -- {excerpt|

----------


## quasimodo1

The Bather

Where the path to the lake twists out of sight,
A puff of dust, the kind bare feet make running,
Is what I saw in the dying light,
Night swooping down everywhere else.

A low branch heavy with leaves
Swaying momentarily where the shade
Lay thickest, some late bather
Disrobing right there for a quick dip 

(Or my solitude playing a trick on me?)
Pinned hair coming undone, soon to float
As she turns on her back, letting
The dozy current take her as it wishes

Beyond the last drooping branch
To where the sky opens
Black as the water under her white arms,
In the deepening night, deepening hush,

The treetops like charred paper edges,
Even the insects oddly reclusive..... {excerpt}

----------


## TheFifthElement

*Prism*

I.
Who can say what the world is? The world
is in flux, therefore
unreadable, the winds shifting,
the great plates invisibly shifting and changing 

2. 
Dirt. Fragments
of blistered rock. On which
the exposed heart constructs
a house, memory: the gardens
manageable, small in scale, the beds
damp at the seas edge  

7.
From the pierced clouds, steady lines of silver.

Unlikely
yellow of the witch hazel, veins
of mercury that were paths of the rivers 
Then the rain again, erasing
footprints in the damp earth.

An implied path, like 
a map without a crossroads.

9. 
A night in summer. Outside,
sounds of a summer storm. Then the sky clearing.
In the window, constellations of summer.

I am in bed. This man and I,
we are suspended in the strange calm
sex often induces. Most sex induces.
Longing, what is that? Desire, what is that?
In the window, constellations of summer.
Once I could name them. 

10.
Abstracted
shapes, patterns.
The light of the mind. The cold, exacting
fires of disinterestedness, curiously

blocked by earth, coherent, glittering
in air and water,

the elaborate
signs that said _now plant, now harvest_ 

I could name them, I had names for them:
two different things.

19.
The room was quiet.
That is, the room was quiet, but the lovers were breathing. 

In the same way, the night was dark.
It was dark, but the stars shone.

The man in bed was one of several men
to whom I gave my heart. The gift of the self,
that is without limit.
Without limit, though it recurs.

The room was quiet. It was an absolute,
like the black night.

Extract from Prism (Averno)

----------


## quasimodo1

"Abstracted
shapes, patterns.
The light of the mind. The cold, exacting
fires of disinterestedness, curiously

blocked by earth, coherent, glittering
in air and water," Great posting, TheFifthElement, I'm just now getting to appreciate some of her work.

----------


## quasimodo1

Work Song 



This fastening, unfastening, and heaving 
this is our life. Whose life is it improving? 
It topples some. Some others it will toughen. 
Work is the safest way to fail, and often 
the simplest way to love a son or daughter. 
We come. We carp. We're fired. We worry later. 


That man is strange. His calipers are shiny. 
His hands are black. For lunch he brings baloney, 
and, offered coffee, answers, "Thank you, no." 
That man, with nothing evil left to do 
and two small skills to stir some interest up, 
fits in the curtained corner of a shop. 


The best part of our life is disappearing 
into the john to sneak a smoke, or staring 
at screaming non-stop mills, our eyes unfocused, 
or standing judging whose sick joke is sickest. 
Yet nothing you could do could break our silence. 
We are a check. Do not expect a balance. 


{3 of 4 stanzas, from Poetry Magazine}

----------


## quasimodo1

From the Last Canto of Paradiso 
by Dante Alighieri 

xxxiii, 46-48, 52-66


As I drew nearer to the end of all desire, 
I brought my longing's ardor to a final height, 
Just as I ought. My vision, becoming pure, 


Entered more and more the beam of that high light 
That shines on its own truth. From then, my seeing 
Became too large for speech, which fails at a sight 


Beyond all boundaries, at memory's undoing 
As when the dreamer sees and after the dream 
The passion endures, imprinted on his being 


Though he can't recall the rest. I am the same: 
Inside my heart, ... {excerpt}


Translated from the Italian by Robert Pinsky

----------


## quasimodo1

To. W. P. 



I 


Calm was the sea to which your course you kept, 
Oh, how much calmer than all southern seas! 
Many your nameless mates, whom the keen breeze 
Wafted from mothers that of old have wept. 
All souls of children taken as they slept 
Are your companions, partners of your ease, 
And the green souls of all these autumn trees 
Are with you through the silent spaces swept. 
Your virgin body gave its gentle breath 
Untainted to the gods. Why should we grieve, 
But that we merit not your holy death? 
We shall not loiter long, your friends and I; 
Living you made it goodlier to live, 
Dead you will make it easier to die. 


II 


With you a part of me hath passed away; 
For in the peopled forest of my mind 
A tree made leafless by this wintry wind 
Shall never don again its green array. 
Chapel and fireside, country road and bay, 
Have something of their friendliness resigned; 
Another, if I would, I could not find, 
And I am grown much older in a day. 
But yet I treasure in my memory 
Your gift of charity, your mellow ease, 
And the dear honour of your amity; 
For these once mine, my life is rich with these. 
And I scarce know which part may greater be, 
What I keep of you, or you rob of me. ... {2 of 4 stanzas}

----------


## quasimodo1

.....My former former wife has become a unique poet; 
most of my work, 
such as it is is done. 
Full moon was October second this year, 
I ate a mooncake, slept out on the deck 
white light beaming through the black boughs of the pine 
owl hoots and rattling antlers, 
Castor and Pollux rising strong 
its good to know that the Pole Star drifts! 
that even our present night sky slips away, 
not that Ill see it. 
Or maybe I will, much later, 
some far time walking the spirit path in the sky, 
that long walk of spiritswhere you fall right back into the 
narrow painful passageway of the Bardo 
squeeze your little skull 
and there you are again 


waiting for your ride 

{last half of this poem, Waiting for your Ride, by Gary Snyder}

----------


## quasimodo1

I couldnt shake the sea noise out of my head, 
the shell of my ears sang Maria Concepcion, 
so I start salvage diving with a crazy Mick, 
name OShaugnessy, and a limey named Head; 
but this Caribbean so choke with the dead 
that when I would melt in emerald water, 
whose ceiling rippled like a silk tent, 
I saw them corals: brain, fire, sea fans, 
dead-mens-fingers, and then, the dead men. 
I saw that the powdery sand was their bones 
ground white from Senegal to San Salvador, 
so, I panic third dive, and surface for a month 
in the Seamens Hostel. Fish broth and sermons. 
When I thought of the woe I had brought my wife, 
when I saw my worries with that other woman, 
I wept under water, salt seeking salt, 
for her beauty had fallen on me like a sword 
cleaving me from my children, flesh of my flesh! --- {fromThe Schooner 'Flight' 
by Derek Walcott }

----------


## quasimodo1

Goodbye to Tolerance 
by Denise Levertov 


.....And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread, 
blood donors. Your crumbs 
choke me, I would not want 
a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped 
by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never 
falter: irresponsive 
to nightmare reality. 


It is my brothers, my sisters, 
whose blood spurts out and stops 
forever 
because you choose to believe it is not your business. 


Goodbye, goodbye, 
your poems 
shut their little mouths, 
your loaves grow moldy, 
a gulf has split 
the ground between us, 
and you wont wave, youre looking 
another way. 
We shant meet again 
unless you leap it, leaving 
behind you the cherished 
worms of your dispassion, 
your pallid ironies, 
your jovial, murderous, 
wry-humored balanced judgment, 
leap over, un- 
balanced? ... then 
how our fanatic tears 
would flow and mingle 
for joy ... {excerpt}


Denise Levertov, Goodbye to Tolerance from Poems 1972-1982. Copyright © 1975 by Denise Levertov.

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98jun/poets.htm 

"Discovering" Young Poets
How some of the best-known poets of this century 

got that way

by Peter Davison

----------


## firefangled

William Stafford is a master. He belongs to that category of artists the Japanese have named national treasure. He offers works of art as well as sharp ideas about the craft. One of the most amazing gifts to poetry is his theme of the golden thread. He believes that whenever you set a detail down in language, it becomes the end of a thread...and every detail—the sound of the lawn mower, the memory of your father's hands, a crack you once heard in the lake ice, the jogger hurtling herself past your window—will lead you to amazing riches.

William Blake said:

_I give you the end of a golden string
Only wind it into a ball
It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate
Built in Jerusalem’s wall._

I asked Stafford one day. “Do you believe that every golden thread will lead us through Jerusalem’s wall, or do you love particular threads?” He replied, “No, every thread…only the golden string knows where it is going, and the role for a writer or reader is one of following, not imposing.”

—From the Introduction to William Stafford’s _The Darkness Around Us Is Deep_ by Robert Bly.


*If I could Be Wallace Stevens*

The octopus would be my model—
It wants to understand; it prowls
The rocks a hundred ways and holds
Its head aloof but not ignoring .
All its fingers value what
They find. “I’d rather know,” they say. 
“I’d rather slime along than be heroic.”

My pride would be to find out; I’d 
bow to see, play the fool,
ask beg, retreat like a wave—
but somewhere deep I’d hold the pearl,
never tell… {excerpt}

—William Stafford, from _The Darkness Around Us Is Deep_

----------


## quasimodo1

A Morris Dance 


Across the Common, on a lovely May 
day in New England, I see and hear
the Middle Ages drawing near,
bells tinkling, pennants bright and gay
a parade of Morris dancers.

One plucks a lute. One twirls a cape.
Up close, a lifted pinafore
exposes cellulite, and more.
O why aren't they in better shape, 
the middle-aged Morris dancers?

Already it's not hard to guess
their treasurerher; their presidenthim;
the Wednesday-night meetings at the gym.
They ought to practice more, or less, 
the middle-aged Morris dancers.

Short-winded troubadours and pages,
milkmaids with osteoporosis
what really makes me so morose is
how they can't admit their ages,
the middle-aged Morris dancers. ...

{excerpt} 

-------------------------------------------------------

Interviews July 16, 2008 
Mary Jo Salter talks about her new collection, 

Phone Call to the Future; editing The Norton 

Anthology of Poetry; and her early days as an 

assistant poetry editor at The Atlantic.

by Sarah Cohen 

------------------------------------------------------- 

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807u/mary-jo-salter



The Poet's Poet {interview with Mary Jo Salter}

----------


## Sweets America

> I
> *One Should Not Talk To a Skilled Hunter About What Is Forbidden By the Buddha*
> _- Hsiang-yen_
> 
> ...
> Peeling skin back (Kai
> reminded us to chant the Shingyo first)
> cold pelt. crinkle; and musky smell
> mixed with dead-body odor starting.
> ...


Thanks for this, I love it.

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0825/p25s01-bogn.html



------------------------ 

Poet Kay Ryan: A profile
By Elizabeth Lund 

"Kay Ryan may be the only American poet who 

describes her writing process as "a self-imposed 

emergency," the artistic equivalent of finding a 

loved one pinned under a 3,000-pound car. These 

"emergencies," she says, allow her to tap into 

abilities she wouldn't normally have, much like a 

father who single-handedly lifts a vehicle off his 

child. In Ms. Ryan's case, however, what has 

survived because of her efforts over the past three 

decades is a singular voice and vision. Her poems - 

with their compact size and technical precision, 

their wit and sharp intelligence - have been praised 

by critics for their ability to do and say things that 

none of her contemporaries can match." ----------{excellent article about Kay Ryan and her methods, August 25, 2004}

----------


## quasimodo1

Gulls 
by Jorie Graham 


Those neck-pointing out full bodylength and calling 
outwards over the breaking waves. 
Those standing in waves and letting them come and 
go over them. 
Those gathering head-down and over some one 
thing. 
Those still out there where motion is 
primarily a pulsing from underneath 
and the forward-motion so slight they lay 
their stillness on its swelling and falling 
and let themselves swell, fall ... 
Sometimes the whole flock rising and running just 
as the last film of darkness rises 
leaving behind, also rising and falling in 
tiny upliftings, 
almost a mile of white underfeathers, up-turned, white spines 
gliding over the wet 
sand, in gusts, being blown down towards 
the unified inrolling awayness 
of white. All things turning white through 
breaking. The long red pointing of lowering sun 
going down on (but also streaking in towards) whoever 
might be standing at the point-of-view place 
from which this watching. This watching being risen 
from: as glance: along the red 
blurring and swaying water-path: 
to the singular redness: the glance a 
being-everywhere-risen-from: everywhere 
cawing, mewing, cries where a 
single bird lifts heavily 
just at shoreline, rip where 
its wing-tips (both) lap 
backwash, feet still in 
the wave-drag of it, to coast 
on top of its own shadow and then down to not 
landing. ... {first stanza}

----------


## quasimodo1

Jazz Fan Looks Back 



I crisscrossed with Monk
Wailed with Bud
Counted every star with Stitt
Sang "Don't Blame Me" with Sarah
Wore a flower like Billie
Screamed in the range of Dinah
& scatted "How High the Moon" with Ella Fitzgerald
as she blew roof off the Shrine Auditorium
Jazz at the Philharmonic

I cut my hair into a permanent tam
Made my feet rebellious metronomes 
Embedded record needles in paint on paper
Talked bopology talk
Laughed in high-pitched saxophone phrases
Became keeper of every Bird riff
every Lester lick
as Hawk melodicized my ear of infatuated tongues
& Blakey drummed militant messages in
soul of my applauding teeth 
& Ray hit bass notes to the last love seat in my bones.... {excerpt}

----------


## firefangled

If you read it fast it's almost scat. Certainly jazz. This is cool, Quasi

----------


## quasimodo1

PUSH BACK THE CATASTROPHES

I don't want a drought to feed on itself 
through the tattooed holes in my belly 
I don't want a spectacular desert of 
charred stems & rabbit hairs 
in my throat of accumulated matter 
I don t want to burn and cut through the forest 
like a greedy mercenary drilling into 
sugar cane of the bones 

Push back the advancing sands 
the polluted sewage 
the dust demonsthe dying timber 
the upper atmosphere of nitrogen 
push back the catastrophes 


Enough of the missiles 
the submarines 
the aircraft carriers 
the biological weapons 
No more sickness sadness poverty 
exploitation destabilization 
illiteracy and bombing 
Let's move toward peace ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

SOJOURNS IN THE PARALLEL WORLD
We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension--though affected,
certainly, by our actions. A world
parallel to our own though overlapping.
We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.
Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life: ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Archangel Cathedral 


The coffins of great Russian princesses stand
in the basement of the Moscow Kremlin. They
were brought there in the 30s from the
destroyed Voznesensky Monastery.

There where the angels weave the sky,
where there is the triumph of the last dream,
where the cellar secrets conceal,
I asked myself: For whom

have I lived and suffered this life?
I didnt fall prostrate in prayer,
I always sang my own words
in the dark storehouse of useless tsaritsas.

Here, under the gigantic splinter-bar of walls
there is disparagement of forgetfulness.
I stand over poisoned Glinskaya,
her pillaged tomb.

And over us now red flags,
now the alcoholic madness of the country.
Only timid bones can be seen
through the robbers hole in the sarcophagus.

In these cracks of the royal masonry,
in this mould of terrifying corners,
there are the denouements of chronic illness,
the revelation of prophetic words. ... {excerpt}

[translated by Richard McKane]

----------


## stlukesguild

*I Am Goya*

I am Goya
of the bare field, by the enemy's beak gouged
til the craters of my eyes gape
I am grief.

I am tongue
of war, the embers of cities
on the snows of the year 1941
I am hunger.

I am the gullet
of a woman hanged whose body like a bell
tolled over a blank square
I am Goya...

from _I Am Goya_

tr. Stanley Kunitz


*Elegy for My Mother*

I canceled your funeral, mother;
you can't be resurrected in this day and age.

Mama, forgive these repeated gatherings.
I know you face has long since turned to snow;
I have taken you from the crematorium
and will place you now beside Father.

This spring we let earth fall
into your graves at the Novodevichi Monastery:
Voznesensky and Voznesenkaya rest there now
and the earth is given new life.

Whatever you touched has become holy:
the benches in the square, and Ordynka Street
behind them, are holy;
over Catherine's birch tree
shines your maternal light.

What did earth offer you, Antonina?
Mad for lilies of the valley,
you were an intellectual in a worker's kerchief
with the backbone of a tragedienne...

Unsung Russia you were,
guarding hearth and home;
a young wife, you combed our troubles, drew them,
with your hair, back into a bun tight as a fist...

Now you'll be a stranger when you waken me at night;
the little Akhmatova volume will fly open on its own:
What is it that torments you, Antonina?
Tonya?...

I have not spoken these words with condescension;
Whoever reads them, please do not wait.
Rush with lilies of the valley to your mother,
for mine I cannot- its too late.

from _Elegy for My Mother_
tr. William Jay Smith and F.D. Reve

----------


## JoanS

sorry for question which is not reffered straightly to the thread... some weeks ago i remeber the thread about jim morrison and his poetry, now i can´t find it.. anybody can help me?

----------


## quasimodo1

THE ANTIWORLDS 



1961 



.....The Anti-great-academician 
has got a blotting paper vision. 

Long live creative Antiworlds, 
great fantasy amidst daft words! 
There are wise men and stupid peasants, 
there are no trees without deserts. 

Therere Antimen and Antilorries, 
Antimachines in woods and forests. 
Theres salt of earth, and theres a fake. 
A falcon dies without a snake. 

I like my dear critics best. 
The greatest of them beats the rest 
for on his shoulders theres no head, 
hes got an Antihead instead. 

At night I sleep with windows open 
and hear the rings of falling stars, 
From up above skyscrapers drop and, 
like stalactites, look down on us. 

High up above me upside down, 
stuck like a fork into the ground, 
my nice light-hearted butterfly, 
my Antiworld, is getting by. 

I wonder if its wrong or right 
that Antiworlds should date at night. 
Why should they sit there side by side 
watching TV all through the night? 
They do not understand a word. 
Its their last date in this world. 
They sit and chat for hours, and 
they will regret it in the end! 
The two have burning ears and eyes, 
resembling purple butterflies... 

...A lecturer once said to me: 
«An Antiworld? Its loonacy!» 

Im half asleep, and I would sooner 
believe than doubt the mans word... 
My green-eyed kitty, like a tuner, 
receives the signals of the world. {excerpt}




Translated by Alec Vagapov

----------


## quasimodo1

Life at War 



The disasters numb within us 
caught in the chest, rolling 
in the brain like pebbles. The feeling 
resembles lumps of raw dough 


weighing down a childs stomach on baking day. 
Or Rilke said it, My heart. . . 
Could I say of it, it overflows 
with bitterness . . . but no, as though 


its contents were simply balled into 
formless lumps, thus 
do I carry it about. 
The same war 


continues. 
We have breathed the grits of it in, all our lives, 
our lungs are pocked with it, 
the mucous membrane of our dreams 
coated with it, the imagination 
filmed over with the gray filth of it: 


the knowledge that humankind, 


delicate Man, whose flesh 
responds to a caress, whose eyes 
are flowers that perceive the stars, 


whose music excels the music of birds, 
whose laughter matches the laughter of dogs, 
whose understanding manifests designs 
fairer than the spiders most intricate web, 


still turns without surprise, with mere regret 
to the scheduled breaking open of breasts whose milk 
runs out over the entrails of still-alive babies, 
transformation of witnessing eyes to pulp-fragments, 
implosion of skinned penises into carcass-gulleys. 


We are the humans, men who can make; 
whose language imagines mercy, 
lovingkindness we have believed one another 
mirrored forms of a God we felt as good 


who do these acts, who convince ourselves 
it is necessary; these acts are done 
to our own flesh; burned human flesh 
is smelling in Vietnam as I write. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

A Performance Of Henry V At Stratford-Upon-Avon 
Nature teaches us our tongue again
And the swift sentences came pat. I came
Into cool night rescued from rainy dawn.
And I seethed with language - Henry at
Harfleur and Agincourt came apt for war
In Ireland and the Middle East. Here was
The riddling and right tongue, the feeling words
Solid and dutiful. Aspiring hope
Met purpose in "advantages" and "He
That fights with me today shall be my brother."
Say this is patriotic, out of date.
But you are wrong. It never is too late

For nights of stars and feet that move to an
Iambic measure; all who clapped were linked,
The theatre is our treasury and too,
Our study, school-room, house where mercy is

Dispensed with justice. ... {excerpt}

----------


## firefangled

from _Loose Sugar_

*visitor fragment*

Lately the visitor
looks the same as the enemy; why
should I agree to see her?

She withdraws to the various
outposts I invented earlier

My visitor is on the other side,
I cant see her from
the ring of fire Ive been assigned

{excerpt}

*blue square*

When I gave up hope of being complete
the sorrow deepened.
As that went too, a mystery replaced it.

Now its a faint blue square against which being
and nonbeing will always
wrestle, even in the afterlife

{excerpt}

*below below*

In the corner of the heart
reserved for action, a pig is eating
the poppies of hell;

it doesnt look up when I come in;
it doesnt need 
a confirming ideal. If there are flowers

there must be dirt below hell
where power has no meaning
but growth comes out of it.

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/bo...a2&oref=slogin 



--Juan Felipe Herrera Review entitled "Punk Half 

Panther' by Stephen Burt 8/10/08 -- NYT book 

review ----- "For Juan Felipe Herrera, poetry is all about breaking down barriers."

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/bo...html?ref=books 

Books of The Times
Truth and Beauty? Only in Afterlife, a review by 

Charles McGrath 




Published: August 7, 2008 --- 

POSTHUMOUS KEATS 

A Personal Biography 

By Stanley Plumly 

392 pages. W. W. Norton & Company. $27.95.

----------


## quasimodo1

My word against theirs, my sickle humor
against their last glass of chianti. Simple,
Direct and compassionatein a way, let us say,
it is in my nature to be generous: to remind
the passengers about the last stop in Anguish-
town, to spell integration with an X, to scrub
the word Prison with sneaky vastness inside.

It is my own penchant for skull symphonies
my embossed headdress, especially, that brings
me to your carpeted doom-time; this flowery intro
serves a purpose; every spirit strand is an exit,
a cash & carry star of exits and entrances. --- 



La Muerte

(Death)

by Juan Felipe Herrera

----------


## TheFifthElement

*Cows*

Over the shrug of the motorway bridge
they go, their vintage design
stirring vague pangs of grief
in salesmen and long-distance lorry drivers.

As a child I would scramble under the hedge
to consult with cows. I found them enigmatic
with their slow conversation, lathery breath,
eyes like planets. It seemed they had few plans,
gave scant thought to the question of destiny.
But sometimes there might be a calf,
with soft hooves, and a stunned expression - 
a dumb prophet, visited by this future:

no dry-straw jostle of the cowshed.....

(excerpt, _Cows_ from the collection _Tilt_)

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.pw.org/content/poetry_bro..._new_york_city --- Article: THE POETRY BROTHEL: POSTCARD FROM NEW YORK CITY

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.pw.org/content/poetry_bro..._new_york_city THE POETRY BROTHEL: POSTCARD FROM NEW YORK CITY (proper spelling of author...Jean Hartig

----------


## quasimodo1

Below is a poem by 2008 Jackson Poetry Prize recipient, Tony Hoagland. 

IN THE PAINTING THE ALLEGORY OF THE TEMP AGENCY, 

the employers are depicted as wolves
with bloodred mouths and yellow greedy eyes,
pursuing the small-business employees through the dark 

forest of capitalism. It is night, and
by the light of the minimum-wage moon we can see
the long pink tongues of the bosses hanging out 

and the dilated white eyeballs of the employees as they flee
through woods, lacking any sense of
solidarity or collective organizing power. 

Upon closer inspection the leaves beneath their feet
are shredded dollar bills which bear
the distressed expressions of ex-presidents 

and the wind in the trees is making a long
howl of no health insurance or job security
and No, it is not really a very good painting, 

heavy-handed in concept, and unintentionally
comic in a way that
invites us to laugh at the desire for justice  

Rather, the painting shows that the artist was untalented,
and is an allegory of how difficult it is
to be both skillful and sincere ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Writing in the Afterlife 



I imagined the atmosphere would be clear, 
shot with pristine light, 
not this sulphurous haze, 
the air ionized as before a thunderstorm. 


Many have pictured a river here, 
but no one mentioned all the boats, 
their benches crowded with naked passengers, 
each bent over a writing tablet. 


I knew I would not always be a child 
with a model train and a model tunnel, 
and I knew I would not live forever, 
jumping all day through the hoop of myself. 


I had heard about the journey to the other side 
and the clink of the final coin 
in the leather purse of the man holding the oar, 
but how could anyone have guessed 


that as soon as we arrived 
we would be asked to describe this place 
and to include as much detail as possible 
not just the water, he insists, 


rather the oily, fathomless, rat-happy water, 
not simply the shackles, but the rusty, 
iron, ankle-shredding shackles 
and that our next assignment would be 


to jot down, off the tops of our heads, 
our thoughts and feelings about being dead, 
not really an assignment, 
the man rotating the oar keeps telling us 

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

cruel, cruel summer 



either the postagestamp-bright inflorescence of wild mustard 
or the drab tassel of prairie smoke, waving its dirty garments 


either the low breeze through the cracked window 
or houseflies and drawn blinds to spare us the calid sun 


one day commands the next to lie down, to scatter: we're done 
with allegiance, devotion, the malicious idea of what's eternal 


picture the terrain sunk, return of the inland sea, your spectacle 
your metaphor, the scope of this twiggy dominion pulled under 


crest and crest, wave and cloud, the thunder blast and burst of swells 
this is the sum of us: brief sneezeweed, brief yellow blaze put out 


so little, your departure, one plunk upon the earth's surface, 
one drop to bind the dust, a little mud, a field of mud 


the swale gradually submerged, gradually forgotten 
and that is all that is to be borne of your empirical trope: ... {excerpt}

----------


## stlukesguild

oops... double post!

----------


## stlukesguild

I will do anything to avoid boredom. It is the task of a lifetime. You can never know enough, never work enough, never use infinitives and participles oddly enough, never impede the movement harshly enough, never leave the mind quickly enough.

_On Ovid_

I see him there on a night like this but cool, the moon blowing through the black streets. He sups and walks back to his room. The radio is on the floor. Its luminous green dial blares softly. He sits down at the table; people in exile write so many letters. Now Ovid is weeping. Each night about this time he puts on sadness like a garment and goes on writing. In his spare time he is teaching himself the local language (Getic) in order to compose in it an epic poem no one will ever read.

_On Parmenides_

We pride ourselves on being civilized people. Yet what if the names for things were utterly different? Italy, for example. I have a friend named Andreas, an Italian. He has lived in Argentina as well as England, and also Costa Rica for some time. Everywhere he lives he invites people over for supper. It is a lot of work. Artichoke pasta, Peaches. His deep smile never fades. What if the proper name for Italy turns out to be Brzoy- will Andreas continue to travel the world like the wandering moon with her borrowed light? I fear we failed to understand what he was saying or his reasons. What if every time he said _cities_, he meant _delusion_, for example?

_Sleep Stones_

Camille Claudel lived the last thirty years of her life in an assylum, wondering why, writing letters to her brother the poet, who had signed the papers. Come visit me, she says. Remember, I am living here with madwomen, days are long. She did not smoke or stroll. She refused to sculpt. Although they gave her sleep stones- marble and granite and porphyry- she broke them, then collected the pieces and buried these outside the walls at night...

_Canicula Di Anna_

1.

What we have here
is the story of a painter.
It occurs in Perugia
(ancient Perusia)
where lived the painter Pietro Vannucci
(c. 1445-1523)
who was called Perugino,
a contemporary of Michelangelo
and teacher of Raphael...

some philosophers of the present day
meet in conclave
upon the ancient rock of Perugia.
They seem to have commissioned
for purposes of public relations,
a painter to record them
in pigments of the fifteenth century...

The painter, at any rate,
is not a happy man.
A woman, as usual, is the problem...

9.

It is perhaps not widely known
that a certain so-called Perugino
spent the years 1483-1486
covering with frescoes
that part of the Sistine Chapel
now immortalized by Michelangelo's _Last Judgment_,
which efforts were ruthlessly effaced
to make space for
his successor's more colossal genius...

13.

Group portrait: a special commission.
I paint the philosophers at table and
on the way to Being.
The bottle is difficult. I attempt
a color invented by Cimabue.
The phenomenologists engage in dialectic
about wine as vinegar.
To render the throat holes
(blackish red) I have acquired
sap of the tree _draco dracaena_ (an expense
but the phenomenolgists requested it)
or dragon's blood, which, medieval legend
recounts, originally
soaked into the earth 
during epic wars
of elephants and dragons...

14.

The phenomenologist from Paris hates mosquitoes
and carries a small electric devise
that lures the female mosquito to her death
by simulating the amorous cry of the male. Then
to block the whining sound, he has pink earplugs.
As he sits in conversation
with the phenomenologist from Sussex
a mosquito is observed to enter.
The Englishman leaps to his feet,
calling, "Let us use the mosquito machine!"
and smashes the insect to the wall
with the devise. It is the first sign
of wide ontological differences
that will open in the Anglo-French dialectic
here.

from Anne Carson- _Plainwater_

I have only read this single volume of Carson, but already I find myself entranced. Carson is Canadian (*have you read any of her JBI?*)... 58 years old... a professor of classics and comparative literature with a distinguished background in classical languages, comparative literature, anthropology, history, and commercial art. She writes poetry, prose, essay, criticism, and translation (her recent translations of Sappho are well regarded). Beyond this the writer is quite reluctant to reveal information of her personal life. 

Carson's books of "poetry" are a fascinating merger of all of her experiences as a scholar and professional writer. Her works remind me in many ways of the writings of Borges, Italo Calvino, Augusto Monterroso, the shorter writings of Kafka, Donald Barthleme, and the "prose poems" of W.S. Merwin. Like these writers she blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction... often presenting marvelous fictive accounts of historic personages complete with scholarly details and notations. At times one is not certain if the work one is reading is prose, poetry, essay, history, critical analysis, meditation... or something completely different. There is also a marvelous crisp, crystalline prose not far removed from that of Borges, Calvino, or Merwin.

----------


## JBI

I have read shorter poems, and am currently awaiting a volume of Autobiography of Red from the library. She seems to be one of the supreme poets of our age, though she isn't very Canadian in terms of her poetics. She seems more English (mixed with American as most poets are) than Canadian. If you want real Canadian verse, look into John Newlove, the Prairie Poet.

Still though she has her talent, and I am looking forward to The Autobiography of Red, which is supposedly a rich verse novel, though highly neo-classical, as she seems to be.

----------


## Jozanny

Entrancing post luke. Hate to say this but she's post modern par excellence if she can sustain that tone through an entire collection; put her in my reading notes.

----------


## stlukesguild

And too think... I was first led to her by a mention of her poetry in a critical essay by Harold Bloom. It seems old Harold is aware that there is literature of merit beyond that of the dead white European males. :Biggrin:

----------


## Jozanny

> And too think... I was first led to her by a mention of her poetry in a critical essay by Harold Bloom. It seems old Harold is aware that there is literature of merit beyond that of the dead white European males.


If I can be pardoned for the aside, a lack of good critical reading has been of great frustration to me. Before I came online, I belonged to The Readers' Subscription, through which I purchased my few critical titles--although I will concede I don't like Wayne Booth and did not really understand Lodge's apologia in his collection of essays on Bakhtin--mainly because I am not familiar with Bakhtin himself.

I do have RS bookmarked, since I found it, at least I hope I did, now under Doubleday's control, but haven't renewed my membership, yet.

I find it difficult, despite wish lists and ease of ordering, to know where to go to find critics and scholars of interest.

----------


## JBI

> And too think... I was first led to her by a mention of her poetry in a critical essay by Harold Bloom. It seems old Harold is aware that there is literature of merit beyond that of the dead white European males.


Where did this essay appear? If possible could you provide a JStor link, or something?

----------


## JBI

> If I can be pardoned for the aside, a lack of good critical reading has been of great frustration to me. Before I came online, I belonged to The Readers' Subscription, through which I purchased my few critical titles--although I will concede I don't like Wayne Booth and did not really understand Lodge's apologia in his collection of essays on Bakhtin--mainly because I am not familiar with Bakhtin himself.
> 
> I do have RS bookmarked, since I found it, at least I hope I did, now under Doubleday's control, but haven't renewed my membership, yet.
> 
> I find it difficult, despite wish lists and ease of ordering, to know where to go to find critics and scholars of interest.


You need to look into major academic publications, and such. If you have no access to a university library, perhaps your local library has JStor access, which gives you an archive of the major periodicals in scholarly research. Really though, nothing beats a major university library, as it is virtually impossible to do any research (of any credibility) without one.

----------


## stlukesguild

I have little use for most contemporary criticism which far too often seems more concerned with the critic's pet theory (political, social, or otherwise) than with the author's work. On the other hand, I have read a good many examples of literary criticism in the broader sense... not the academic analysis and deconstruction of a single text... some of which ranks as truly great literature in and of itself. Among these examples I would include Samuel Johnson, Walter Pater, William Hazlitt, Samuel Coleridge, Matthew Arnold, etc... I am also attracted to the critical writings of a good many who are poets/authors of some importance in their own right. Here I would include J.L. Borges, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, Eugenio Montale, Octavio Paz, W.S. Merwin, Edward Hirsch, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Dana Gioia, etc... Of modern/contemporary critics who are not also known for their efforts as poets/novelists/etc... I have already noted I have little use for theory or ideology. Critics I have found of the most use to me have included Northrop Frye, Harold Bloom, Roger Shattuck, and even the often outrageous Camille Paglia. You might ask JBI or even Petrarch'sLove (if she is back from her trip) who would in all likelihood be far more able to lead you in the right direction concerning contemporary scholarly criticism than I.

----------


## JBI

You'd be surprised what can be found in contemporary scholarship - Bloom too admits this, as often (though he tries to add as many "classical voices" as possible) his anthologies are loaded with contemporary critics. Either way though, the so called "school of resentment" is an American phenomenon for the most part - modern European, and even Canadian scholarship is far less political.

The reasons are, that America, which really is a pastiche of different cultures, has formed itself into a definite culture, like other nations. Canada has not done so, and has opted for the so called "cultural mosaic" approach, a mixing of traditions and customs from the wide immigrant communities. In truth, the 250,000 immigrants arriving each year (the government is trying to up it to 500,000, but are currently unable to process that many immigrants) add in addition to the old-immigrant community cultures, an additional contemporary culture, which creates even more culture backgrounds amongst Canadians.

For this reason, though we have areas of teaching in English departments (such as African Canadian literature, and Italian Canadian literature) we do not have the sort of racial or feminist focusing as programs in the U.S. have. Canadians, though we weren't perfect, as no one will claim, seemed to have treated, historically, immigrants and minorities far better than our American counterparts, and, as a result, do not have to make as big a deal, as most academics, students, and writers are minorities themselves, and the immigrant-native divide is rather invisible.

That being said, European countries for the most part seem to have defined traditional cultures and literatures, and as a result, do not have the same focuses as the American system. The problem though, is that their scholarship is focused on their linguistic backgrounds, and as a result, is untranslated, and restricted to their literature. Unless you are interested in, and able to read texts in the original, such scholarship will be of no interest.

In truth, though much of American scholarship is placed under the so called "school of resentment", the bulk of it actually seems to follow the sort of "aesthetic" preferred by Bloom. It isn't difficult to find scholarship of interest, if one has the resources available to look (assuming you aren't concerned with ideological or overly theoretical criticism, which, I would say, is not completely devoid of merit, and is often quite beautifully written).

----------


## stlukesguild

Dammit! JBI! You're making me work here... and I just started back to teaching today! I had to skim through _How to Read and Why, Where Shall Wisdom be Found_, and a couple other volumes (at least I knew it wasn't in _The Western Canon_) until I found where I had highlighted it in _Genius_ p. 11:

I have avoided all living geniuses in this book, partly so as to evade the distractions of mere provocation. I can identify for myself certain writers of palpable genius now among us: the Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago, the Canadian poet Anne Carson, the English poet Geoffrey Hill...

This... and another mention or praise for _Autobiography of Red_... which I cannot find off hand... as well as Edward Hirsch's mention of her in _How to Read a Poem_ was enough to intrigue me. A brief perusal of _Plainwater_ in the bookstore was enough to convince me to give her a try. I was very pleased with what I have read.

----------


## quasimodo1

Dickinson relied on Higginson as a reporter from the world beyond her garden gate. 

WHITE HEAT

The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson

By Brenda Wineapple

Illustrated. 416 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95 (review of this book called "Emily's Tryst" by Miranda Seymour, 8/22/08) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/bo...ew&oref=slogin

----------


## quasimodo1

AN IMPROVISATION FOR ANGULAR MOMENTUM

Walking is like
imagination, a
single step
dissolves the circle
into motion; the eye here
and there rests
on a leaf,
gap, or ledge,
everything flowing
except where
sight touches seen:
stop, though, and
reality snaps back
in, locked hard,
forms sharply
themselves, bushbank,
dentree, phoneline,
definite, fixed,
the self, too, then
caught real, clouds
and wind melting
into their directions,
breaking around and
over, down and out,
motions profound,
alive, musical! .....

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/200...ORIA_index.htm "A Poets Realm of Myth and Reality" article and slideshow about Machado's Spain.

----------


## quasimodo1

From Somewhere In Advance Of Nowhere

BUMBLEBEE, YOU SAW BIG MAMA

You saw Big Mama Thorton
In her cocktail dresses
& cut off boots
& in her cowboy hat
& man's suit
As she drummed &
Hollered out
The happy hour of her negritude
Bumblebee

You saw Big Mama
Trance dancing her chant
Into cut body of
A running rooster
Scream shouting her talk
Into flaming path of
A solar eclipse
Cry laughing her eyes into
Circumcision red sunsets
at midnight
Bumblebee

You saw Big Mama
Bouncing straight up like a Masai
Then falling back spinning her
Salty bone drying kisser of music
Into a Texas hop for you to
Lap up her sweat
Bumblebee

You saw Big Mama
Moaning between ritual saxes
& carrying the black water of Alabama blood
Through burnt weeds & rainy ditches
To reach the waxy surface of your spectrum
Bumblebee

You didn't have to wonder
Why Big Mama sounded
So expressively free
So aggressively great
Once you climbed
Into valley roar
Of her vocal spleen
& tasted sweet grapes
In cool desert
Of her twilight
Bumblebee

You saw Big Mama
Glowing like
A full charcoal moon
Riding down
Chocolate Bayou road
& making her entrance
Into rock-city-bar lounge
& swallowing that
Show-me-no-love supermarket exit sign
In her club ebony gut
You saw her
Get tamped on by the hell hounds
& you knew when she was happy ...


{excerpt, Jayne Cortez}

----------


## quasimodo1

Theory and Practice 

By LANGDON HAMMER
Published: August 29, 2008 
"Poets and critics have been around for a long time, and some writers have been both poets and critics, but the 'poet-critic' was invented in the 20th century. This hybrid role was created by T. S. Eliot and then adapted by a generation of poets who won positions in American colleges as literary critics, before the M.F.A. in creative writing gave poets jobs teaching writing workshops. The poet-critics of that era shared a point of view. They were against experimental literature. They valued rhyme and meter not only as expressive forms, but as safeguards against sentimentality, narcissism and even madness. They saw poetry as a way to preserve the individuals spiritual and intellectual integrity in a society dominated by science and mass culture. They praised reason and proportion, but their mood was apocalyptic." {first paragraph of this review}

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/bo...ks&oref=slogin

----------


## JBI

The River Pilgrim: A Letter

At eighteen, I thought the Sixhibaoux wept.
Five years younger, you were lush, beautiful
Mystery; your limbs — scrolls of deep water.
Before your home, lost in roses, I swooned,
Drunken in the village of Whylah Falls,
And brought you apple blossoms you refused,
Wanting Hand Snow woodsmoke blues and dried smelts,
Wanting some milljerk's dumb, unlettered love.
That May, freight chimed zylophone tracks that rang
To Montréal. I scribbled postcard odes,
Painted le fleuve Saint-Laurent come la Seine —
Sad watercolours for Negro exiles
In France, and drempt Paris white with lepers,
Soft cripples who finger pawns under elms,
Drink blurry into young debaucery,
Their glasses clear with Cointreau, rain and tears.

Continued here: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpo...arke/poem1.htm

This is from his verse novel Whylah Falls, which I am currently reading. So far it is absolutely incredible (75 of175). The influence of Pound's translation from Li Po is clear in this piece, though the central theme of Clarke's work in my opinion is African-Canadian Identity, and cultural identity in general. He seems quite the poet, and is somewhat of a renown academic in Canada, currently teaching in the English department at the University of Toronto.



On another note: just finished Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson; I found it interesting, but will wait to see if others have read it before discussing it more in depth, and posting my opinions/interpretations.

----------


## stlukesguild

JBI... I'm currently reading through _Autobiography of Red_ by Anne Carson. I've read _Plainwater_ some time ago. I'll probably finish in a day or so as I have the bad habit of reading several books at once... on top of the fact that school has just started back and I'm into lots of work on lesson plans, pacing charts, standards, and other nonsense. Any other takers? Surely Jozy would be up for a little foray into Carson.

----------


## JBI

Hummingbird by Milton Acorn.

One day in a lifetime
I saw one with wings
a pipesmoke blur
shaped like half a kiss
and its raspberry-stone
heart winked fast
in a thumbnail of a breast.

In that blink it
was around a briar
and out of sight, but
I caught a flash
of its brain
where flowers swing
udders of sweet cider;

Continued here: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpo...corn/poem4.htm

Acorn is one of my favorite Canadian poets. His verse has the incredible value of not sounding like Wallace Stevens, like most other contemporary verse tends to do, and also has a fresh set of metaphor, and diction, giving it a distinctive flavor, and an imagistic feel that can only be described as Canadian.

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/01/bo...ks&oref=slogin Obituary... Ahmed Faraz: Outspoken Urdu Poet, dies at 77 by Haresh Pandya, 9/1/08

----------


## quasimodo1

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121883343091845417.html

----------


## quasimodo1

THE LAMMAS HIRELING

After the fair, I'd still a light heart
and a heavy purse, he struck so cheap.
And cattle doted on him: in his time
mine only dropped heifers, fat as cream.
Yields doubled. I grew fond of company
that knew when to shut up. Then one night,
disturbed from dreams of my dear late wife,
I hunted down her torn voice to his pale form.
Stock-still in the light from the dark lantern,
stark-naked but for one bloody boot of fox-trap,
I knew him a warlock, a cow with leather horns.
To go into the hare gets you muckle sorrow,
the wisdom runs, muckle care. I levelled
and blew the small hour through his heart.
The moon came out. By its yellow witness
I saw him fur over like a stone mossing.
His lovely head thinned. His top lip gathered.
His eyes rose like bread. I carried him
in a sack that grew lighter at every step
and dropped him from a bridge. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

THE INVISIBLE MENDER (My First Mother)

I'm sewing on new buttons
to this washed silk shirt.
Mother of pearl,
I chose them carefully.
In the haberdashers on Chepstow Place
I turned a boxful over 
one by one,
searching for the backs with flaws:
those blemished green or pink or aubergine,
small birth marks on the creamy shell.
These afternoons are short,
the sunlight buried after three or four,
sap in the cold earth.
The trees are bare.
I'm six days late.
My right breast aches so
when I bend to catch a fallen button
that strays across the floor.
Either way,
there'll be blood on my hands.
Thirty-seven years ago you sat in poor light
and sewed your time away,
then left.
But I'm no good at this:
a peony of blood gathers on my thumb, falls
then widens on the shirt like a tiny, opening mouth.
I think of you like this 
as darkness comes,
as the window that I can't see through
is veiled with mist ... (excerpt)

----------


## quasimodo1

WATCHING FOR DOLPHINS


In the summer months on every crossing to Piraeus
One noticed that certain passengers soon rose
From seats in the packed saloon and with serious
Looks and no acknowledgement of a common purpose
Passed forward through the small door into the bows
To watch for dolphins. One saw them loose

Every other wish. Even the lovers
Turned their desires on the sea, and a fat man
Hung with equipment to photograph the occasion
Stared like a saint, through sad bi-focals; others,
Hopeless themselves, looked to the children for they
Would see dolphins if anyone would. Day after day

Or on their last opportunity all gazed
Undecided whether a flat calm were favourable
Or a sea the sun and the wind between them raised
to a likeness of dolphins. Were gulls a sign, that fell
Screeching from the sky or over an unremarkable place
Sat in a silent school? Every face

After its character implored the sea.
All, unaccustomed, wanted epiphany,
Praying the sky would clang and the abused Aegean
Reverberate with cymbal, gong and drum.
We could not imagine more prayer, and had they then
On the waved, on the climax of our longing come

Smiling, snub nosed, domed like satyrs, oh
We should have laughed and lifted the children up
Stranger to stranger, pointing how with a leap
They left their element, three or four times, centred
On grace, and heavily and warm re-entered,
Looping the keel. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

THE COMING OF THE COLD

I

The late peach yields a subtle musk,
The arbor is alive with fume
More heady than a field at dusk
When clover scents diminished wind.
The walker's foot has scarcely room
Upon the orchard path, for skinned
And battered fruit has choked the grass.
The yield's half down and half in air,
The plum drops pitch upon the ground,
And nostrils widen as they pass
The place where butternuts are found.
The wind shakes out the scent of pear.
Upon the field the scent is dry:
The dill bears up it acrid crown;
The dock, so garish to the eye,
Distills a pungence of its own;
And pumpkins sweat a bitter oil.
But soon cold rain and frost come in
To press pure fragrance to the soil;
The loose vine droops with hoar at dawn,
The riches of the air blow thin. ..... {excerpt, 1 0f 3 parts from The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke}

----------


## quasimodo1

From The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
PP 61-63

THE SHAPE OF THE FIRE

I

What's this? A dish for at lips
Who says? A nameless stranger.
Is he a bird or a tree? Not everyone can tell.

Water recedes to the crying of spiders.
An old scow bumps over black rocks.
A cracked pod calls.

Mother me out of here. What more will the bones allow?
Will the sea give the wind suck? A toad folds into a stone.
These flowers are all fangs. Comfort me, fury.
Wake me, witch, we'll do the dance of rotten sticks.

Shale loosens. Marl reaches into the field. Small birds pass over water.
Spirit, come near. This is only the edge of whiteness.
I can't laugh at a procession of dogs.

In the hour of ripeness the tree is barren.
The she-bear mopes under the hill.
Mother, mother, stir from your cave of sorrow.

A low mouth laps water. Weeds, weeds, how I love you.
The arbor is cooler. Farewell, farewell, fond worm.
The warm comes without sound.

II

Where's the eye?
The eye's in the sty.
The ear's not here
Beneath the hair.
When I took off my clothes
To find a nose,
There was only one shoe
For the waltz of To,
The pinch of Where.

Time for the flat-headed man. I recognize that listener,
Him with the platitudes and rubber doughnuts,
Melting a the knees a varicose horror.
Hello, hello. My nerves knew you, dear boy.
Have you come to unhinge my shadow?
Last night I slept in the pits of a tongue.
The silver fish ran in and out of my special bindings;
I grew tired of the ritual of names and the assistant keeper of the
Mollusks:
Up over a viaduct I came, to the snakes and sticks of another winter,
A two-legged dog hunting a new horizon of howls.
The wind sharpened itself on a rock;
A voice sang:

Pleasure on ground
Has no sound,
Easily maddens
The uneasy man.

Who, careless, slips
In coiling ooze
Is trapped to the lips,
Leaves mare than shoes;



Must pull off clothes
To jerk like a frog
On belly and nose
From the sucking bog.

My meat eats me. Who waits at the gate?
Mother of quartz, your words writhe into my ear.
Renew the light, lewd whisper.
{2 of 5 parts}

----------


## quasimodo1

TEN QUESTIONS FOR MONA

From the Boston Review




Im sitting at the same table again, in the hopes. 
This time Im sitting where you were. 
Like a fragrance you had stayed to rise, 
* 
having felt just long enough under your hat, 
wanting exactly what you want. 
Like a fragrance you had strayed. 
* 
There are masculine and feminine willows 
moving about this room. 
Just now tiny machines manufacture noises 
* 
devoting themselves to the removal 
and the placing. Tiny machines 
manufacture noises producing 
* 
in me a feeling of productivity. 
Just now a shadow 
approached from the west door spilling 
* 
a glance upon me, sorry, I thought 
it was you sitting down in the place 
where your hands shook as you poured 
* 
evenings sweet wine out in photographs. 
I watched you grow older in the approach. 
Summers are loose and feathery 
* 
in consequence as a high school, or a time, 
or a camp in which Right Now is a time. 
You say you think of it in a good way, 
* 
in the long approach, i.e. laughter 
and lightness and etcetera time 
of staying too long and leaving too soon, 
* 
sitting across from you, that absolute 
conditional you sitting down in the place 
where I had been a glance upon me. 
* 
Right Now is a time. A child needs 
to be moved less fearfully 
than thinking of something else. 
* 
What flower do you bring a flower? 
Id curl up in the wrist, but theres a cat 
already named there for luck and howling. ... {excerpt}
*

----------


## Kafka's Crow

*Do not ask, my love.....*

by Faiz Ahmad Faiz

Do not ask, my love, for the love we had before:
You existed, I told myself, so all existence shone,
Grief for me was you; the worlds grief was far.
Spring was ever renewed in your face:
Beyond your eyes, what could the world hold?
Had I won you, Fates head would hang, defeated.
Yet all this was not so, I merely wished it so.
The world knows sorrows other than those of love,
Pleasures beyond those of romance:
The dread dark spell of countless centuries
Woven with silk and satin and gold brocade,
Bodies sold everywhere, in streets and markets,
Besmeared with dirt, bathed in blood,
Crawling from infested ovens,
My gaze returns to these: what can I do?
Your beauty still haunts me: what can I do?
The world is burdened by sorrows beyond love,
By pleasures beyond romance,
Do not demand that love which can be no more.

English Translation By Mir Habib

----------


## quasimodo1

From the Boston Review

RILKE'S ARGUMENT WITH DON GIOVANNI



I never thought
I'd be anything like you . . .
I was drawn up, as in a whirlwind, by their gaze
and wished to live there forever -- a soul around my soul --
astonished, perhaps, to be wanted there at all --

who was Mitzi in the army; the boy fainting by the wall at school.

But then, when the wincing not right
began in my head; when I wanted
so much to be loved in the moment I found my separateness
still there, still real -- I needed
the one who could be told anything, even the thing
that drove her away.

People will say I disliked the body; it's the easiest
explanation, for someone who talked with angels.
But my dear ones will know something different,
how astonished and careful
I could be, like a boy
given something unbelievable,
the pale gold flare at the bottom of the stream.

The men of our time burst into them
like the brusk hussar
at the dressing-room door in Strauss's Ariadne.

I loved their talents
as if they were my own talent,
a surer hand to reach the brush, the page --
transfixed with knowing
how a child shapes itself, willless, in the dark.

And they must have felt something heavy in me, too rich,
too complete in itself. They dreamed
stronger dreams in my presence.
But the weight was what sank, what even I couldn't hold.

I always hoped the right one
would arrive like wind,
that freshly, instantly touching everywhere.
I never remembered
the nature of wind is to pass by. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

FROM LIGHTENINGS: VIII

The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.
The anchor dragged along behind so deep
It hooked itself into the altar rails
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,
A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
And struggled to release it. But in vain. ... {excerpt}

*
From Seeing Things (Faber & Faber, 1991).
*

----------


## quasimodo1

http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2...-ever-written/ Review of "The Book of Counted Sorrows" entitled The Most Dangerous Book of Poetry Ever Written by Gregory Cowles current price, used... 800.00

----------


## quasimodo1

Waiting 

Was distinctly unglamorous. 
A wince-making barrenness. 
An eighteen-rib mule 

Hungry unfed at the empty. 
It wasn't an imaginary landscape. 
But the morgue man bent 

Over the young man asleep on a Lethean slab. 
It was the season of quiet: 
The quiet of death. The uneasy quiet

After the gasp in the middle
Of the terrible, terrible movie 
That someone had made and kept showing... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

"If Ryan's language is spare, her concerns are broad and philosophical. A typical Ryan poem begins with a proposition'Everything contains some/ silence' or 'It's what we can't/ know that interests/ us." She explores old bromides, wondering what the fabric of life is like ("stretchy") or what it might be like to live on an island where silence is revered. Each poem twists around and back upon its argument like a river retracing its path; they are didactic in spirit, but a bedrock wit supports them. Here's "Green Hills," from The Niagara River, her sixth (and most recent) book:"

Their green flanks 
and swells are not
flesh in any sense
matching ours,
we tell ourselves.
Nor their green
breast nor their
green shoulder nor
the langour of their
rolling over.

from http://www.slate.com/id/2196198/pagenum/all/#page_start

----------


## quasimodo1

SOUTH OF MARS
It's over now. Part of the story 
Has disappeared, into the void 
Of something that has ended forever: 
I know the exact place, behind the house, 
A place where waves can be counted, 
Seven hard cold waves, 
Like the ones in the sea. 
Undreamt of blues and marvellous 
Greys set up a background, 
A flat light and a mask of ocean salt, 
For a sea full of inlets, harbours 
And ravines, shipwrecks and sudden 
Green splendours: green, I want you, 
Green, I am half-full of seawater 
Though far, far from the sea, 
And the smoothest stone 
Is a freshwater myth. 
A cool oval breeze reaches me 
From the sea, birds can fly in it, 
And every half-minute comes the smell 
Of the sea, newly cleaned, like a loaf of silver. 
The sound of the sea fits inside 
An orange in a wicker basket, 
Or your face when it is still wet. 
Its fine sand, of which there is very little, 
Licks the shell of the sunset without 
Waiting to go in, as if I had 
A gold coin in my hand and didn't 
Know how to let it go. 
I'll do the whole thing in one breath, 
And soon this house will be happier* 
And more logical, without the dark 
Corridor, without its quiet humble* plume 
Of smoke that was warm blood 
Mistaken inside a windowpane. 
When you're all in the door of your house 
With that sense of Saturday and garden gate, 
You'll know there's no place I'd rather live, 
To finish out the summer, the last days of August, 
And the blessed September, 
Above all, waking up, 
And finding THAT. 
Send me news how the sea is doing, 
Wave-like wheat and wheat-like wave. 
Remember me when you 
Are at the beach, in that yacht 
With the name of an island - 
I would like the water to grow calm 
For you and send blue telegrams. 
My back to the frozen field 
And just one star, I have the joy 
Of thinking very differently than I did 
Last summer, the year that the pillow 
Was embroidered. Who would have said 
That eight years later, I would look 
For the timid city on the map 
To see the mountain stripped of mist 
And NOT look at the sea? 
The church tower rock back and forth 
Over the pitiable houses? A verbal 
And musical ruin. I never understood 
The number in your address this past 
Season, your passport of smiles 
Like a train without wheels* 
Or wheels without a track. 
Surrounded by corpulent trees 
As if the tree had just been invented, 
The woman who went to gather kindling 
On the beach of day sits down 
With all the excitement pruduced by jewels. 
But anything is better than to remain 
Seated in the window looking* 
At the same landscape and its surprises. ... {excerpt}

*

----------


## quasimodo1

From The Colossus and other Poems

FULL FATHOM FIVE

Old man, you surface seldom.
Then you come in with the tide's
coming
When seas wash cold, foam-

Capped: white hair, white beard,
Far-flung,
A dragnet, rising, falling, as waves
Crest and trough. Miles long

Extend the radial sheaves
Of your spread hair, in which wrin-
Kling skeins
Knotted, caught, survives

The old myth of origins
Unimaginable. You float near
As keeled ice-mountains

Of the north, to be steered clear
Of, not fathomed. All obscurity
Starts with a danger:

Your dangers are many. I
Cannot look much but your form
suffers
Some strange injury

And seems to die: so vapors
Ravel to clearness on the dawn sea.
The muddy rumors

Of your burial move me
To half-believe: your reappearance
Proves rumors shallow,

For the archaic trenched lines
Of your grained face shed time in
Runnels:
Ages beat like rains

On the unbeaten channels
Of the ocean. Such sage humor
and
Durance are whirlpools

To make away with the ground-
Work of the earth and the sky's
Ridgepole. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

From The Colossus and Other Poems

THE COLOSSUS

I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It's worse than a barnyard.

Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or
Other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.

Scaling little ladders with gluepots and pails
Of lysol
I crawl like an ant in mourning
Over the weedy acres of your brow
To mend the immense skull plates and clear
The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.

A blue sky out of the Oresteia
Arches above us. O father, all by yourself
You are pithy and historical as the Roman
Forum.
I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.
Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are
littered

In their old anarchy to the horizon-line.
It would take more than a lightning-stroke
To create such a ruin
Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
Of your left ear, out of the wind,

Counting the red stars and those of plum-
Color. ..... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

From The Colossus and Other Poems

THE DISQUIETING MUSES

Mother, mother, what illbred aunt
Or what disfigured and unsightly
Cousin did you so unwisely keep
Unasked to my christening, that she
Sent these ladies in her stead
With heads like darning-eggs to nod
And nod and nod at foot and head
And at the left side of my crib?

Mother, who made to order stories
Of Mixie Blackshort the heroic bear,
Mother, whose witches always, always
Got baked into gingerbread, I wonder
Whether you saw them, whether you said
Words to rid me of those three ladies
Nodding by night around my bed,
Mouthless, eyeless, with stitched bald
head

In the hurricane, when father's twelve
Study windows bellied in
Like bubbles about to break, you fed
My brother and me cookies and Ovaltine
And helped the two of us to choir:
"Thor is angry: boom boom boom!
Thor is angry: we don't care!"
But those ladies broke the panes.

When on tiptoe the schoolgirls danced,
Blinking flashlights like fireflies
And singing the glowworm song, I could
Not lift a foot in the twinkle-dress
But, heavy-footed, stood aside
In the shadow cast by my dismal-headed
Godmothers, and you cried and cried:
And the shadow stretched, the lights 
Went out.

Mother, you sent me to piano lessons
And praised my arabesques and trills
Although each teacher found my touch
Oddly wooden in spite of scales
And the hours of practicing, my ear
Tone-deaf and yes, unteachable.
I learned, I learned, I learned elsewhere,
From muses unhired by you, dear
Mother,

I woke one day to see you, mother,
Floating above me in bluest air
On a green balloon bright with a million
Flowers and bluebirds that never were
Never, Never, found anywhere.
But the little planet bobbed away
Like a soap-bubble as you called: Come
Here!
And I faced my traveling companions. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

From The Colossus and other Poems

MUSSEL HUNTER AT ROCK HARBOR

I came before the water-
Colorists came to get the 
Good of the Cape light that scours
Sand grit to sided crystal
And buffs and sleeks the blunt hulls
Of the three fishing smacks beached
On the bank of the river's

Backtracking tail. I'd come for
Free fish-bait: the blue mussels
Clumped like bulbs at the grass-
root
Margin of the tidal pools.
Dawn tide stood dead low. I smelt
Mud stench, shell guts, gulls'
Leavings;
Heard a queer crusty scrabble

Cease, and I neared the silenced
Edge of a cratered pool-bed.
The mussels hung dull blue and
Conspicuous, yet it seemed
A sly world's hinges had swung
Shut against me. All held still.
Though I counted scant seconds,

Enough ages lapsed to win
Confidence and safe-conduct
In the wary otherworld
Eyeing me. Grass put forth claws;
Small mud knobs, nudged from
Under,
Displaced their domes as tiny
Knights might doff their casques.
The crabs

Inched from their pygmy burrows
And from the trench-dug mud, all
Camouflaged in mottled mail
Of browns and greens. Each wore
one
claw swollen to a shield large
As itself--no fiddler-s arm
Grown Gargantuan by trade,

But grown grimly, and grimly
Borne, for a use beyond my
Guessing of it. Sibilant
Mass-motived hordes, they sidled
Out in a converging stream
Toward the pool-mouth, perhaps to
Meet the thin and sluggish thread

Of sea retracing its tide-
Way up the river-basin.
Or to avoid me. They moved
Obliquely with a dry-wet
Sound. With a glittery wisp
And trickle. Could they feel mud
Pleasurable under claws

As I could between bare toes?
That question ended it--I
Stood shut out, for once, for all,
Puzzling the passage of their
Absolutely alien
Order as I might puzzle
At the clear tail of Halley's

Comet coolly giving my
Orbit the go-by, made known
By a family name it
Knew nothing of. So the crabs
Went about their business, which
Wasn't fiddling, and I filled
A big handkerchief with blue

Mussels. From what the crabs saw,
If they could see, I was one
Two-legged mussel-picker.
High on the airy thatching
Of the dense grasses I found
The husk of a fiddler-crab,
Intact, strangely strayed above

His world of mud--green color
And innards bleached and blown off
Somewhere be much sun and wind;
There was no telling if he'd
Died recluse or suicide
Or headstrong Columbus crab
The crab-face, etched and set there,

Grimaced as skulls grimace: it
Had an Oriental look,
A samurai death mask done
On a tiger tooth, less for 
Art's sake than God's. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

from British contemporary poetry



from Exeunt

I

Drop Serene

He poured the warm, clear guck into the mould
in which he'd already composed, with tweezers,
dead wasps on an everlasting flower
or ants filling over a leaf. When it was cold
he slaved at the surface, softening the camber
till it sat with the row of blebs on his mantelpiece,
each with its sequestered populace
like a hiccup in history, scooped out of amber.

As if it might stall the invisible cursor
drawing a blind down each page of his almanac
or the blank wall of water that always kept pace,
glittering half an inch, half an inch from his back.
He was out in the garden, digging the borders
when it caught him, in a naturalistic pose.



II

Curtains

You stop at the tourist office in Aubeterre,
a columbarium of files and dockets.
She explains, while you flip through the little leaflets
about the chapel and the puppet-theatre,
that everything is boarded up till spring,
including — before you can ask — the only hotel.
A moped purrs through the unbroken drizzle.
You catch yourself checking her hands for rings.

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

FISSION



The real electric lights light upon the full-sized
screen
On which the greater-than-life-size girl appears,
Almost nude on the lawn-- sprinklers on --
Voice-over her mother calling her name out -- loud --
Camera angle giving her lowered lids their full
Expanse -- a desert -- as they rise

Out of the shabby annihilation,
Out of the possibility of never-having-been-seen,
And rise,
Till the glance is let loose into the auditorium,
And the man who has just stopped in his tracks
Looks down
For the first

Time. Tick tock. It's the birth of the mercantile

Dream (he looks down). It's the birth of
The dream called NEW WORLD (looks down). She lies there. A corridor of light
Filled with dust
Flows down from the booth to the screen.
Everyone in here wants to be taken off

Somebody's list, wants to be placed on
Somebody else's list.
Tick. It is 1963. The idea of history is being
Outmaneuvered.
So that as the houselights come on -- midscene --
Not quite killing the picture which keeps flowing beneath,

A man comes running down the aisle
Asking for our attention --

Ladies and Gentlemen
I watch the houselights lap against the other light -- the tunnel
Of image-making dots licking the white sheet awake --
A man, a girl, her desperate mother -- daisies growing in the 
Corner --

I watch the light from our real place
Suck the arm of screen-building light into itself
Until the gesture of the magic forearm frays,
And the story up there grays, pales -- them almost lepers now,
Saints, such
White on their flesh in
Patches -- her thighs like receipts slapped down on a 
Slim silver tray,

Her eyes as she lowers the heart-shaped shades,
As the glance glides over what used to be the open,
The free,
As the glance moves, pianissimo, over the glint of day,
Over the sprinkler, the mother's voice shrieking like a grappling
Hook,
The grass blades aflame with being-seen, here on the out-
Skirts…..You can almost hear the click at the heart of
The silence

Where the turnstile shuts and he's in -- our hero --
The moment spoked,
Our gaze on her fifteen-foot eyes,
The man hoarse now as he waves his arms,
As he screams to the booth to cut it, cut the sound,
And the sound is cut,
And her sun-barred shoulders are left to turn

Soundless as they accompany
Her neck, her face, the 
Looking-up.
Now the theater's skylight is opened and noon slides in.
I watch as it overpowers the electric lights,
Whiting the story out one layer further

Till it's just a smoldering of whites
Where she sits up, and her stretch of flesh
Is just a roiling up of graynesses,
Vague stutterings of
Light with motion in them, bits of moving zeros

In the infinite virtuality of light,
Some LIKENESS in it but not particulate,
A grave of possible shapes called likeness -- see it? -- something
Scrawling up there that could be skin or daylight or even

The expressway now that he's gotten her to leave with him --
(it happened rather fast) (do you recall) --

The man up front screaming the President's been shot, waving
His hat, slamming one hand flat
Over the open
To somehow get
Our attention,

In Dallas, behind him the scorcher -- whites, grays,
Laying themselves across his face --
Him like a beggar in front of us, holding his hat --
I don't recall what I did,
I don't recall what the right thing to do would be,
I wanted someone to love…..

There is a way she lay down on that lawn
To begin with,
In the heart of the sprinklers,
Before the mother's call,
Before the man's shadow laid itself down,

There is a way to not yet be wanted,

There is a way to lie there at twenty-four frames
Per second -- no faster --
Not at the speed of plot,
Not at the speed of desire --

THE ROAD OUT -- EXPRESSWAY -- HOTELS -- MOTELS -- 
To telling what on earth we'll have to marry marry marry ….

Where the three lights merged:
Where the image licked my small body from the front, the story playing

All over my face my
Forwardness,
Where the electric lights took up the back and sides,
The unwavering houselights,
Seasonless,

Where the long thin arm of day came in from the top
To touch my head
Reaching down along my staring face --
Where they flared up around my body unable to

Merge into each other
over my likeness,
Slamming down one side of me, unquenchable -- here static

There flaming --
Sifting grays into other grays --
Mixing the split second into the long haul --
Flanking me -- undressing something there where my body is
Though not my body --
Where they play on the field of my willingness,

Where they kiss and brood, filtering each other to no avail,
All over my solo
Appearance,
Bits smoldering under the shadows I make --
And aimlessly -- what we call free -- there

The immobilism sets in,
The being-in-place more a love than the being,
My father sobbing beside me, the man on the stage
Screaming, the woman behind us starting to 
Pray,
The immobilism, the being-in-place more alive than

The being, .... {excerpt}


(1991)

----------


## quasimodo1

AFTERIMAGES

*** I 
However the image enters 
its force remains within 
my eyes 
rockstrewn caves where dragonfish evolve 
wild for life, relentless and acquisitive 
learning to survive 
where there is no food 
my eyes are always hungry 
and remembering 
however the image enters 
its force remains. 
A white woman stands bereft and empty 
a black boy hacked into a murderous lesson 
recalled in me forever 
like a lurch of earth on the edge of sleep 
etched into my visions 
food for dragonfish that learn 
to live upon whatever they must eat 
fused images beneath my pain. 
*** II 
The Pearl River floods through the streets of Jackson 
A Mississippi summer televised. 
Trapped houses kneel like sinners in the rain 
a white woman climbs from her roof to a passing boat 
her fingers tarry for a moment on the chimney 
now awash 
tearless and no longer young, she holds 
a tattered baby's blanket in her arms. 
In a flickering afterimage of the nightmare rain 
a microphone 
thrust up against her flat bewildered words 
********* we jest come from the bank yestiddy 
****************** borrowing money to pay the income tax 
****************** now everything's gone. I never knew 
****************** it could be so hard. 
Despair weighs down her voice like Pearl River mud 
caked around the edges 
her pale eyes scanning the camera for help or explanation 
unanswered 
she shifts her search across the watered street, dry-eyed 
****************** hard, but not this hard. 
Two tow-headed children hurl themselves against her 
hanging upon her coat like mirrors 
until a man with ham-like hands pulls her aside 
snarling She ain't got nothing more to say! 
and that lie hangs in his mouth 
like a shred of rotting meat. 
*** III 
I inherited Jackson, Mississippi. 
For my majority it gave me Emmett Till 
his 15 years puffed out like bruises 
on plump boy-cheeks 
his only Mississippi summer 
whistling a 21 gun salute to Dixie 
as a white girl passed him in the street 
and he was baptized my son forever 
in the midnight waters of the Pearl. 
His broken body is the afterimage of my 21st year 
when I walked through a northern summer 
my eyes averted 
from each corner's photographies 
newspapers protest posters magazines 
Police Story, Confidential, True 
the avid insistence of detail 
pretending insight or information 
the length of gash across the dead boy's loins 
his grieving mother's lamentation 
the severed lips, how many burns 
his gouged out eyes 
sewed shut upon the screaming covers 
louder than life 
all over 
the veiled warning, the secret relish 
of a black child's mutilated body 
fingered by street-corner eyes 
bruise upon livid bruise  
and wherever I looked that summer 
I learned to be at home with children's blood 
with savored violence 
with pictures of black broken flesh 
used, crumpled, and discarded 
lying amid the sidewalk refuse 
like a raped woman's face. 
A black boy from Chicago 
whistled on the streets of Jackson, Mississippi 
testing what he'd been taught was a manly thing to do 
his teachers 
ripped his eyes out his sex his tongue 
and flung him to the Pearl weighted with stone 
in the name of white womanhood 
they took their aroused honor 
back to Jackson 
and celebrated in a whorehouse 
the double ritual of white manhood 
confirmed. 
{3 of 4 parts}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html...-Roethke65.pdf -- Review from August 23, 1964 of the collection: "The Far Field" written a year after Theodore Roethke's untimely death.

----------


## quasimodo1

THE THIRD HOUR OF THE NIGHT

When the eye 

When the edgeless screen receiving 
light from the edgeless universe 

When the eye first 

When the edgeless screen facing 
outward as if hypnotized by the edgeless universe 

When the eye first saw that it 

Hungry for more light 
resistlessly began to fold back upon itself TWIST 

As if a dog sniffing 

Ignorant of origins 
familiar with hunger 

As if a dog sniffing a dead dog 

Before nervous like itself but now 
weird inert cold nerveless 

Twisting in panic had abruptly sniffed itself 

When the eye 
first saw that it must die When the eye first 

Brooding on our origins you 
ask When and I say 

Then 


wound-dresser let us call the creature 
driven again and again to dress with fresh 
bandages and a pail of disinfectant 
suppurations that cannot 
heal for the wound that confers existence is mortal 
wound-dresser 
what wound is dressed the wound of being 


Understand that it can drink till it is 
sick, but cannot drink till it is satisfied. 
It alone knows you. It does not wish you well. {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

VITA NOVA

You saved me, you should remember me. 
The spring of the year; young men buying tickets for the ferryboats. 
Laughter, because the air is full of apple blossoms. 
When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling. 
I remember sounds like that from my childhood, 
laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful, 
something like that. 
Lugano. Tables under the apple trees. 
Deckhands raising and lowering the colored flags. 
And by the lakes edge, a young man throws his hat into the water; 
perhaps his sweetheart has accepted him. 
Crucial 
sounds or gestures like 
a track laid down before the larger themes 
and then unused, buried. 
Islands in the distance. My mother 
holding out a plate of little cakes 
as far as I remember, changed 
in no detail, the moment 
vivid, intact, having never been 
exposed to light, so that I woke elated, at my age 
hungry for life, utterly confident ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

A WALRUS TUSK FROM ALASKA

Arp might have done a version in white marble, 
the model held aloft, in approximate awe: 
this tough cross-section oval of tusk, 
dense and cool as fossil cranium 
preliminary bloodshed condonable 
if Inupiat hunters on King Island may 
follow as their fathers did the bark of a husky, 
echoes ricocheted from roughed-up eskers 
on the glacier, a resonance salt-cured 
and stained deep green by Arctic seas, whose tilting floor 
mirrors the mainlands snowcapped amphitheater. 
Which of his elders set Mike Saclamana the task 
and taught him to decide, in scrimshaw, what was so? 
Netted incisions black as an etching 
saw a way to scratch in living infinitives 
known since the Miocene to have animated 
the Bering Strait: one humpback whale, plump, 
and bardic; an orca caught on the ascending arc, 
salt droplets flung from a flange of soot-black fin ... ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

From The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke

THE GENTLE

Delicate the syllables that release the repression;
Hysteria masks in the studied inane.
Horace the hiker on a dubious mission
Pretends his dead bunion gives exquisite pain.

The son of misfortune long, long has been waiting
The visit of vision, luck years overdue,
His laughter reduced the sing-song of prating,
A hutch by the EXIT his room with a view.
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

TRANSCENDENCE
Beauty and colors so pleasing to the eye,
Stars and planets in the dark sky, 
The ratio in the circle denoted by pi,
The surging of the seas and the marvel of the fly

The splendor of the flowers that blossom and die: 
All these were there as eons rolled by.
But neither plants nor trees, nor beasts nor birds
Described all these in rhymes or in words.

Nature and her laws were occult in the dark, 
Till consciousness came, and lit them with its spark.
How did this happen, for what purpose and whence?
Could the answer for this be in Transcendence?

----------


## quasimodo1

BLUE MONDAY


Blue of the heaps of beads poured into her breasts 
and clacking together in her elbows; 
blue of the silk 
that covers lily-town at night; 
blue of her teeth 
that bite cold toast 
and shatter on the streets; 
blue of the dyed flower petals with gold stamens 
hanging like tongues 
over the fence of her dress 
at the opera/opals clasped under her lips 
and the moon breaking over her head a 
gush of blood-red lizards. 
Blue Monday. Monday at 3:00 and 
Monday at 5. Monday at 7:30 and 
Monday at 10:00. Monday passed under the rippling 
California fountain. Monday alone 
a shark in the cold blue waters. 
*********************You are dead: wound round like a paisley shawl. 
*********************I cannot shake you out of the sheets. Your name 
*********************is still wedged in every corner of the sofa. 
*********************Monday is the first of the week, 
*********************and I think of you all week. 
*********************I beg Monday not to come 
*********************so that I will not think of you 
*********************all week. 
You paint my body blue. On the balcony 
in the softy muddy night, you paint me 
with bat wings and the crystal 
the crystal 
the crystal 
the crystal in your arm cuts away 
the night, folds back ebony whale skin 
and my face, the blue of new rifles, 
and my neck, the blue of Egypt, 
and my breasts, the blue of sand, 
and my arms, bass-blue, 
and my stomach, arsenic; 
there is electricity dripping from me like cream; 
there is love dripping from me I cannot uselike acacia or 
jacarandafallen blue and gold flowers, crushed into the street. {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Hermann Hesse



(translated by James Wright)

PAINTER'S JOY

Acres bear corn and cost money.
Meadows are surrounded by barbed wire,
Terrible need and avarice laid side by side
Everything looks wasted and closed in.

But here in my eye another order of things
Goes on living: violet ebbs away
And the purple flows on its throne, and I sing
My innocent song.

Yellow by yellow, and yellow next to red.
Cool blue turns to the color of rose.
Light and color leap from world to world,
Arch and echo away in a surging of love.

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Talking Poetry

Thursday, September 25, 2008
7:14 PM

(title of book from the U. of New Mexico Press, copyright 1987)
(subtitle=Conversations in the Workshop with Contemporary Poets)
(author= Lee Bartlett)

While sifting through some old volumes, this book, TALKING POETRY, got my attention because 
The poets who were interviewed were mostly unknown to anyone familiar with the who's who of contemporary poetry of this present period. The authors included in this volume were:

Clark Coolidge
Theodore Enslin
Clayton Eshleman
William Everson
Thom Gunn
Kenneth Irby
Michael Palmer
Tom Raworth
Ishmael Reed
Stephen Rodefer
Nathaniel Tarn
Diane Wakoski 
Anne Waldman

In searching these poets online and in library database, the only poets "making the cut" at this time are:

Eshleman, Everson, Gunn, Palmer, Reed, Wakoski, and Waldman.

Of these, in my opinion only three composed poetry passing this very limited test of time.
See posts following for examples.

----------


## quasimodo1

de Kooning's Woman I 

from From Scratch, Black Sparrow Press, 1998.


is the first in a series, probably not
in de Kooning's sense of it primal woman or
first-earliest-woman, but these facets may have been
on his mind, for we have here a series or "ones,"
a sacrificed and dismembered "goddess,"
a kind of North American Coyolxauhqui
whose circular Stone was discovered at the foot of the Great
Temple stairway,
as well as Madonna and Child,
the Child at once just born and maybe four,
he is bald and white, in the Madonna's left shoulder and arm,
staring at Her, perched on what appears to be
Her ruddy left thigh, which
on closer inspection might also be
the rump of a flat-snouted or headless animal
lunging to the right, whose back and legs are Her lap and legs,
lunging into the shredding legs of the figure who uses
the Madonna's right shoulder and arm as his breast and stomach
(which is also a red-gartered, chubby, severed thigh)-
he has long, loosely-tied hair, or is "he" a widwife
with face hair-a pirate? sniffing
or whispering to the Madonna's right temple?
His breast-stomach is also his right arm
swinging under the Madonna's haltered and huge right breast,
and out of his splitting hand
another hand emerges from which
shears protrude cutting the Child's umbilicus?
Or is a castration under way?

All this action is simultaneously
splintered and frozen,
once we see the Child, the animal, and pirate-midwife,
there's not much left of Woman I, or
let's say she's in sacrificial drag,
all but her head and breasts are others
masquerading as her body parts,
she is a crowned tripod of wedge-head and dome-shielded breasts,
dismembered and whole? or have her body parts been stuffed into
new roles?
Over-sized Mesopotamian eyes, hypnotic,
teeth like a porticullisbeaver-set into her face,
the gaze of one who has been blasted,
the left eye straight ahead,
as wide open animal jaws howl at her earless head,
the right eye more inward, averted,
reflecting on what pirate-midwife is hissing-

{excerpt, 2 of 3 stanzas}

----------


## quasimodo1

FALSE PORTRAIT OF D.B. AS NICCOLO PAGANINI



Those who have lived here since before 
time are gone while the ones who must 
replace them have not yet arrived. 


The streets are wet with a recent 
rain yet you continue to count 
first minutes and hours then trees 


rocks, windows, mailboxes, streetlights 
and pictographs refusing to 
rest even for the brief span it 


would take to dry off, change clothes and 
reemerge grotesque yet oddly 
attractive like Paganini 


whose mother was visited by 
a seraph in Genoa not 
long before his birth and who is 


thought now to have acquired much of 
his technical wizardry as 
a result of Marfans syndrome 


a quite common anomaly 
of the connective tissues which 
may well account for the tall and 


angular body, muscular 
underdevelopment as well 
as the hypermobile joints that 


eventuated on the stage 
in a peculiar stance, a 
spectacular bowing technique 


and an awesome mastery of 
the fingerboard. He would bring his 
left hip forward to support his 


bodys weight. His left shoulder, thrust 
forward also, would enable 
him to rest his left elbow on 


his chest, a buttress against the 
stress of forceful bowing along 
with debilitating muscle 


fatigue. The looseness of the right 
wrist and shoulder gave pliancy 
leading to broad acrobatic 


bowing. The spider fingers of 
his left hand permitted a range 
on the fingerboard which many 


attributed to black magic 
for Paganini was said to 
have signed a pact with Lucifer 


to acquire virtuosity 
as a small child. After his death 
perhaps due in part to this tale 


in part also to rumours of 
gambling and wild debauchery 
the Church refused to allow him 


burial on hallowed ground. In 
consequence his body was moved 
furtively from place to place 


until after many years and 
for reasons still mysterious 
the Church finally relented. 


A few paradoxes should be 
noted as an afterward. Though 
accused of charlatanism he 


was rewarded for his skill like 
no one before him. He loved his 
violin above all yet once 


he gambled it away at cards. 
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Review entitled "The Roustabout" by David Orr 9/26/08 of Clive James' new book: OPAL SUNSET, SELECTED POEMS, 1958-2008 (Norton, 25.95) ... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/bo...a2&oref=slogin

----------


## quasimodo1

Sarah Lindsay


From Poetry, October, 2008

ELEGY FOR THE QUAGGA

Krakatau split with a blinding noise
And raised from gutted, steaming rock
A pulverized black sky, over water walls
That swiftly fell on Java and Sumatra.
Fifteen days before, in its cage in Amsterdam,
The last known member of Equus quagga,
The southernmost subspecies of zebra, died. 
Most of the wild ones, not wild enough,
Grazing near the Cape of Good Hope,
Had been shot and skinned and roasted by white hunters.

When a spider walked on cooling Krakatau's skin,
No quagga walked anywhere. While seeds
Pitched by long winds onto newborn fields
Burst open and rooted, perhaps some thistle
Flourished on the quagga's discarded innards.
The fractured island greened and hummed again;
Handsome zebras tossed their heads
In zoos, on hired safari plains.
Who needs to hear a quagga's voice?
Or see the warm hide twitch away a fly, ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

From Poetry magazine, October 2008

IN THE DRINK

"He would have gone to Hell ageine, and earnest sute did make:
But charon would not suffer him to passe the Stygian lake."
--Ovid, Metamorphoses
(Tr. By Arthur Golding)

Never mind phantom forms, the Keaton--crash
That dumped us in that sea-fed swamp,
The Dutch kill, Latin nihil, thing without
Opposite-- attend instead the transcendent,

The flying, for god's sake, what we saw
The moment before we thwocked overboard:
A heron stutter-flapped and lifted off,
Clumsy as a wind-mauled tarp at first,

But couth beyond sublime once clear
Of cattail punks and saltgrass tips,
The overturned rowboat's rusted hull.
Or the cormorant that plunked and dipped,

Rose flipping fish from beak to tongue
And down its neck, water beading on its head.
But the crown that really pleased the crowd
My maiden voyage was iridescent green,

Brilliantined, a merganser's spiky coxcomb.
He swam right by, chasing red herrings
And crackling so happily I had to pull
A feather from his cap. And so I surfaced

Solo. I tell myself, I only launch the bark,
I never book the seats. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

PILGRIMAGE

We drive home, the valley floor
flooded with darkness, the baby inside you floating
head down, swaying when the car
turns, a sleeper within
a sleeper. A glove

of moonlight on my hand, I remember
the lake in Maine, my friend angry,
challenging me to swim with him across. We vanished

and reappeared in the swells, flailing,
filling and emptying our hands. I found him floating
on his back, his face warm in the sun, the lake
holding him, hiding him. I won't

wake you, a shadowy rush
of farms and meadows the way they streamed past
the train to Barcelona, you and I sleeping uneasily,
the racket of hammering rails in the tunnels, and out,
the ocean beside us, calm in moonlight.
We stopped, jarred awake
in our little berths.

We climbed into the bus where your purse
was picked-it must have been there-crowded into
the aisle, the small boy behind you,
his terrific concentration.

We got off too soon, and walked
block after block of urban housing: blank,
evacuated. What appeared to be a mountain of rubbish

heaving itself in spires and geysers into the sky
was La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's unfinished nightmare
Temple of the Holy Family, an empty shell

as if bombed out, tilted
treelike columns spiraling upward, parabolic
arches and helicoidal surfaces, an eerie warping,
flutter and undulation of angel and snail, its domes
and cupolas encrusted with broken tiles,
cups, plates, and pieces of glass,
called by the local people
The Cathedral of the Poor. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/bo...b3&oref=slogin Review entitled "Tripping To and Fro, Happily Skewering Poetry" by Janet Maslin, 10/1/08 of Billy Collins' new book BALLISTICS

----------


## quasimodo1

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 disaster. 
I lost my mothers watch. And look! my last, or 
next-to-last, of three loved houses went. 
The art of losing isnt hard to master. 
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

From The Colossus and other poems

BLUE MOLES

1. They're out of the dark's ragbag, these two
Moles dead in the pebbled rut,
Shapeless as flung gloves, a few feet apart--
Blue suede a dog or fox has chewed.
One, by himself, seemed pitiable enough,
Little victim unearthed by some large
creature
From his orbit under the elm root.
The second carcass makes a duel of the 
Affair:
Blind twins bitten by bad nature.

The sky's far dome is sane and clear.
Leaves, undoing their yellow caves
Between the road and the lake water,
Bare no sinister spaces. Already
The moles look neutral as the stones.
Their corkscrew noses, their white hands
Uplifted, stiffen in a family pose.
Difficult to imagine how fury struck--
Dissolved now, smoke of an old war.

2. Nightly the battle-shouts start up
In the ear of the veteran, and again
I enter the soft pelt of the mole.
Light's death to them: they shrivel in it.
They move through their mute rooms while
I sleep,
Palming the earth aside, grubbers
After the fat children of root and rock.
By day, only the topsoil heaves.
Down there one is alone.
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jul/26/poetry Interview "Olds' Worlds" by Marianne Macdonald (photograph of Sharon Olds)

----------


## quasimodo1

From The Face of the Earth

MAKING YOUR OWN ECLIPSE

Making Your Own Eclipse
The word comes from a Greek word 
for abandonment: we catch an untraceable 
fire already kindled in another. 

When night falls suddenly 
for such a short period 
in the clearest skies of the day 

as a second darkening, 
they could not have known 
that what they were seeing was the Moon 

acting as a screen. 
For blue does not mean 
its sensation in us, but the power 

in it, the behaviour of the aligning 
light in the pleasure-journey 
of the obedient morning. 

Across Ireland the blueness will drop 
to temperatures of dusk, 
a gentle east wind 

will blow birds silent, 
and stars along the Path 
of Totality will decorate 

the late forenoon. 
Bleating flocks and fearful herds 
will unexpectedly return to their stables 

and patterns of light and dark 
will tremble over the ground. 
We will keep looking 

at the fleecy space, 
you curled up with your head 
on my knee, saying, We 

have been cheated, the twenty- 
four seconds are passing and it 
is much worse than we expected. 

Then there will be the subtle 
tension as the Moon begins 
to creep into your face, 

the cool band of air 
in her shadow racing 
about as close as it can, 

to plunge into the gold spot 
where the magnified Sun 
will sail under the same perfect pearl. 

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

From The Oxford Book of American Poetry
(chosen and edited by David Lehman)

MAN LISTENING TO DISC

This is not bad--
Ambling along 44th Street
With Sonny Rollins for company,
His music flowing through the soft calipers
Of these earphones,

As if he were right beside me
On this clear day in March,
The pavement sparkling with sunlight,
Pigeons fluttering off the curb,
Nodding over a profusion of bread crumbs.

In fact, I would say
My delight at being suffused
With phrases from his saxophone--
Some like honey, some like vinegar--
Is surpassed only be my gratitude

To Tommy Potter for taking the time
To join us on this breezy afternoon
With his most unwieldy bass
And to the esteemed Arthur Taylor
Who is somehow managing to navigate

This crowd with his cumbersome drums.
And I bow deeply to Theloniious Monk
For figuring out a way
To motorize-- or whatever -- his huge piano
As he could be with us today.

The music is loud yet so confidential
I cannot help feeling even more
Like the center of the universe
Than usual as I walk along to a rapid
Little version of "The Way You Look Tonight,"

And all I can say to my fellow pedestrians,
To the woman in the white sweater,
The man in the tan raincoat and the heavy glasses,
Who mistake themselves for the center of the universe --
All I can say is watch your step

Because the five of us, instruments and all,
Are about to angle over
To the south side of the street
And then, in our own tightly knit way,
Turn the corner at Sixth Avenue.
{excerpt}

----------


## Psycheinaboat

*Untitled*

The landscape crossed out with a pen
reappears here

what I am pointing to is not rhetoric
October over the rhetoric
flight seen everywhere
the scout in the black uniform
gets up, takes hold of the world
and microfilms it into a scream

wealth turns into floodwaters
a flash of light expands
into frozen experience
and just as I seem to be a false witness
sitting in the middle of a field
the snow troops remove their disguises
and turn into language

----------


## quasimodo1

From The Oxford Book of American Poetry
(chosen and edited by David Lehman)

TO WORLD WAR TWO

Early on you introduced me to young women in bars
You were large, and with a large hand
You presented them in different cities,
Made me in San Luis Obispo, drunk
On French seventy-fives, in Los Angeles, on pousse-cafes.
It was a time of general confusion
Of being a body hurled at a wall.
I didn't do much fighting. I sat, rather I stood, in a foxhole.
I stood while the typhoon splashed us into morning.
It felt unusual
Even if for a good cause
To be part of a destructive force
With my rifle in my hands
And in my head
My serial number
The entire object of my existence
To eliminate Japanese soldiers
By killing them
With a rifle or with a grenade
And then, many years after that,
I could write poetry
Fall in love
And have a daughter
And think
About these things
From a great distance
If I survived
I was "paying by debt
To societry" a paid
Killer. It wasn't
Like anything I'd done
Before, on the paved
Streets of Cincinatti
Or on the ballroom floor
At Mr. Vathe's dancing class
What would Anne Marie Goldsmith
Have thought of mee
If instead of asking her to dance
I had put my BAR* to my shoulder
And shot her in the face
I thought about her in my foxhole--
One, in a foxhole near me, has his throat cut during the night
We take more precautions but it is night and it is you.
The typhoon continues and so do you.
"I can't be killed -- because of my poetry. I have to live on in order to write it."
I thought -- even crazier thought, or just as crazy --
"If I'm killed while thinking of oines, it will be too corny
When it's reported" ( I imagined it would be reported.!)
So I kept thinking lines of poetry. One that came to me on the beach in Leyte
Was :The surf comes in like masochistic lions."
I loved this terrible line. It was keeping by alive. My Uncle Leo wrote to me,
"You won't believe this, but someday you may wish
You were footlosse and twenty on Leyte again." I have never wanted
To be on Leyte again,
With you, whispering into my ear,
"Go on and win me! Tomorrow you may not be alive,
So do it today!" How could anyone ever win you?
How many persons would I have to kill Was older than you were and in camouflage. But for you
Who threw everything together, and had all the systems
Working for you all the time, this was trivial. If you could use me
You'd use me, and then forget. How else
Did I think you'd behave?
I'm glad you ended. I glad I didn't die. Or lose my mind.
As machines make ice
*footnote...Browning Automatic Rifle, high posered assualt rifle used primarily in secnd World War. (excerpt)

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.slate.com/id/2197576/pagenum/all/

----------


## quasimodo1

TO SEE HIM AGAIN
Never, never again?
Not on nights filled with quivering stars,
or during dawn's maiden brightness
or afternoons of sacrifice?

Or at the edge of a pale path
that encircles the farmlands,
or upon the rim of a trembling fountain,
whitened by a shimmering moon?

Or beneath the forest's
luxuriant, raveled tresses
where, calling his name,
I was overtaken by the night?
Not in the grotto that returns
the echo of my cry?

Oh no. To see him again --
it would not matter where --
in heaven's deadwater
or inside the boiling vortex,
under serene moons or in bloodless fright!

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.tnr.com/booksarts/story.h...2-00e1541fbff3 

The New Republic

Sing for Me, Muse, the Mania
by Christopher Benfey
Post Date Wednesday, October 08, 2008 





Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell

----------


## quasimodo1

RETRODUCTION TO AMERICAN HISTORY 


Cats walk the floor at midnight; that enemy of fog, 
The moon, wraps the bedpost in receding stillness; sleep 
Collects all weary nothings and lugs away the towers, 
The pinnacles of dust that feed the subway. 


What stiff unhappy silence waits on sleep 
Struts like an officer; tongues next-door bewitch 
Themselves with divination; I like a melancholy oaf 
Beg the nightly pillow with impossible loves. 
And abnegation folds hands, crossed like the knees 
Of the complacent tailor, stitches cloaks of mercy 
To the backs of obsessions. 


Winter like spring no less 
Tolerates the air; the wild pheasant meets innocently 
The gun; night flouts illumination with meagre impudence. 
In such serenity of equal fates, why has Narcissus 
Urged the brook with questions? Merged with the element 
Speculation suffuses the meadow with drops to tickle 
The cow’s gullet; grasshoppers drink the rain. 
Antiquity breached mortality with myths. 
Narcissus is vocabulary. Hermes decorates 
A cornice on the Third National Bank. Vocabulary 
Becomes confusion, decoration a blight; the Parthenon 
In Tennessee stucco, art for the sake of death. Now 
(The bedpost receding in stillness) you brush your teeth 
“Hitting on all thirty-two;” scholarship pares 
The nails of Catullus, sniffs his sheets, restores 
His “passionate underwear;” morality disciplines the other 
Person; every son-of-a-***** is Christ, at least Rousseau; 
Prospero serves humanity in steam-heated universities, three 
Thousand dollars a year. Simplicity, Flamineo, is obscene; 
Sunlight topples indignant from the hill. 
In every railroad station everywhere every lover 
Waits for his train. He cannot hear. The smoke 
Thickens. Ticket in hand, he pumps his body 
Toward lower six, for one more terse ineffable trip, 
His very eyeballs fixed in disarticulation. The berth 
Is clean; no elephants, vultures, mice or spiders 
Distract him from nonentity: his metaphors are dead. ... {half of this poem}

----------


## JBI

> http://www.tnr.com/booksarts/story.h...2-00e1541fbff3 
> 
> The New Republic
> 
> Sing for Me, Muse, the Mania
> by Christopher Benfey
> Post Date Wednesday, October 08, 2008 
> 
> 
> ...


For those interested, One Art by Bishop

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets...shop/poems/860

----------


## Jozanny

> RETRODUCTION TO AMERICAN HISTORY 
> 
> 
> Cats walk the floor at midnight; that enemy of fog, 
> The moon, wraps the bedpost in receding stillness; sleep 
> Collects all weary nothings and lugs away the towers, 
> The pinnacles of dust that feed the subway. 
> 
> 
> ...


quasi, I really like this. I hope Tate wins because it seems I can sink my teeth into these motifs with enthusiasm, and I am motivated to read his work purely for myself, so I may just make an Amazon purchase, but I will wait until I know which collection you are going to select.

----------


## quasimodo1

What a passage. Let me see if I can influence unfairly the vote. "Vocabulary 
Becomes confusion, decoration a blight; the Parthenon 
In Tennessee stucco, art for the sake of death."

----------


## quasimodo1

SONNETS OF THE BLOOD



I


What is the flesh and blood compounded of 
But a few moments in the life of time? 
This prowling of the cells, litigious love, 
Wears the long claw of flesh-arguing crime. 
Consider the first settlers of our bone, 
Observe how busily they sued the dust, 
Estopped forever by the last dusted stone. 
It is a pity that two brothers must 
Perceive a canker of perennial flower 
To make them brothers in mortality: 
Perfect this treason to the murderous hour 
If you would win the hard identity 
Of brothersa long race for men to run 
Nor quite achieved when the perfections won. 
{excerpt}

----------


## Jozanny

> What a passage. Let me see if I can influence unfairly the vote. "Vocabulary 
> Becomes confusion, decoration a blight; the Parthenon 
> In Tennessee stucco, art for the sake of death."


Is this one of your humorous moments which always lose me? :Tongue:  I ordered new The Collected Poems 1919-1976 FGS classics, because as usual, TNR is always right and I'd die happy if I could intern with them just a few short months, but I am only a semi-intelligentsia snark, for a crip. :Biggrin: 

I bought it because this is a keeper, at least for me, whether he wins the vote or not.

Delivery date est is 10/16, but I usually get Amazon purchases in about 3 days.

----------


## quasimodo1

Yes, another attempt at levity which is my case tends to be Murphyesque, sucking stones, crutches and mews of the southeastern aspect. I am trying to get FGS...have you ever used Library of America...they are moving and having a big sell off. Mostly classic stuff. Please tell me your remark about the TNR is ascerbic.

----------


## quasimodo1

TIERRA DEL FUEGO



You who see our homes at night 
and the frail walls of our conscience, 
you who hear our conversations 
droning on like sewing machines 
—save me, tear me from sleep, 
from amnesia. 
Why is childhood—oh, tinfoil treasures, 
oh, the rustling of lead, lovely and foreboding— 
our only origin, our only longing? 
Why is manhood, which takes the place of ripeness, 
an endless highway, 
Sahara yellow? 
After all, you know there are days 
when even thirst runs dry 
and prayer’s lips harden. 
Sometimes the sun’s coin dims 
and life shrinks so small 
that you could tuck it 
in the blue gloves of the Gypsy 
who predicts the future 
for seven generations back 
and then in some other little town 
in the south a charlatan 
decides to destroy you, 
me, and himself. 
You who see the whites of our eyes, 
you who hide like a bullfinch 
in the rowans, 
like a falcon 
in the clouds’ warm stockings 
—open the boxes full of song, 
open the blood that pulses in aortas 
of animals and stones, 
light lanterns in black gardens. ... {excerpt}


Translated by Clare Cavanah

----------


## Jozanny

> Yes, another attempt at levity which is my case tends to be Murphyesque, sucking stones, crutches and mews of the southeastern aspect. I am trying to get FGS...have you ever used Library of America...they are moving and having a big sell off. Mostly classic stuff. Please tell me your remark about the TNR is ascerbic.


quasi, your encyclopedic skills tend to astound, which is why as a poet myself I might drown in them if I am not careful to back off now and then :Tongue: .

Yes, I enjoy Library of America texts as very finely edited, and have much of James and Faulkner and Paine and Sherman's memoirs, among others, and no, when it comes to The New Republic, to me they represent the dying breed of a true American and (American-Jewish) intelligentsia--with the possible exception of Michelle Cottle. Oddly, I don't like their female opinion writers as much--too much of a b----y streak in tonality,  :Biggrin: 

That said though, their editors made me nearly skid mark my underwear by treating me with respect when I applied to work for them. I keep torturing my columns in near tears hoping one day I am satisfied enough to keep trying to crack their ceiling with my byline. The quality of their work and literary depth is the closest thing I have to a religion.

Now I have to go look up this Adam Z who you posted. You can pm me anytime. All is forgiven :FRlol:  (I'm joking).

----------


## quasimodo1

THE ART OF POETRY


To gaze at a river made of time and water
and remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.

To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.

To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadness--such is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.

Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.

{excerpt}

--translated by Anthony Kerrigan

----------


## quasimodo1

FROM THE DRESSING-ROOM


Left to itself, they say, every foetus 
would turn female, staving in, nature 
siding then with the enemy that 
delicately mixes up genders. This 
is an absence I have passionately sought, 
brightening nevertheless my poets attic 
with my steady hands, calling him my blue 
lizard till his moans might be heard 
at the far end of the garden. For I like 
his ways, hes light on his feet and does 
not break anything, puts his entire soul 
into bringing me a glass of water, 
I can take anything now, even his being 
away, for it always seems to me his 
writing is for me, as I walk springless 
from the dressing-room in a sisterly 
length of flesh-coloured silk. .... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.danagioia.net/essays/eryan.htm Article by Dana Gioia

----------


## quasimodo1

212
by Anna Akhmatova
translated from the Russian by Judith Hemschemeyer

And now you are depressed and despondent,
Renouncing fame and your dreams,
But for me you are irremediably dear,
And the darker you become, the more touching.
You drink wine, your nights are impure,
You dont know reality from dream,
But your green eyes are tormented 
Its clear that wine hasnt brought you peace.
And your heart asks only for a quicker death,
Cursing the sluggishness of fate,
More and more often the west wind carries
Your reproaches and your pleas.
But could I really go back to you?
Under the pale sky of my native land,
I only know how to remember and sing,
But you dont dare remember me.
So the days go by, and sorrows multiply,
How can I pray to the Lord for you?
Youve guessed: my love is such
That even you cant make it die.
July 22, 1917 
Slepnyova
*
Anna Akhmatova was born Anna Gorenko into an upper-class family in Odessa, Ukraine, in 1889. Although frequently confronted with official goverment opposition to her work during her lifetime, she was deeply loved and lauded by the Russian people, in part because she did not abandon her country during difficult political times. She died in Leningrad, where she had spent most of her life, in 1966. 
Judith Hemschemeyers translations of Anna Akhmatova will be brought out by Zephyr Press this spring. (1990)

----------


## quasimodo1

AENEAS AT WASHINGTON 
* 
I myself saw furious with blood 
Neoptolemus, at his side the black Atridae, 
Hecuba and the hundred daughters, Priam 
Cut down, his filth drenching the holy fires. 
In that extremity I bore me well, 
A true gentleman, valorous in arms, 
Distinterested and honourable. Then fled 
That was a time when civilization 
Run by the few fell to the many, and 
Crashed to the shout of men, the clang of arms: 
Cold victualing I seized, I hoisted up 
The old man my father upon my back, 
In the smoke made by sea for a new world 
Saving little--a mind imperishable 
If time is, a love of past things tenuous 
As the hesitation of receding love. 
(To the reduction of uncitied littorals 
We brought chiefly the vigor of prophecy, 
Our hunger breeding calculation 
And fixed triumphs.) 
I saw the thirsty dove 
In the glowing fields of Troy, hemp ripening 
And tawny corn, the thickening Blue Grass 
All lying rich forever in the green sun. 
I see all things apart, the towers that men 
Contrive I too contrived long, long ago. 
Now I demand little. The singular passion 
Abides its object and consumes desire 
In the circling shadow of its appetite. 
{excerpt} 
*** 1933

----------


## JBI

Barbara Klar


Wind is Pine for listen. 
Snap means wait. 
And the shadow word 
dangles from the witch's hair 
and fights the old war of deadfall and pours 
from the one-toothed gargoyles in the eaves of the forest,

in the gardens of the giants, their woody flowers creaking, 
the word leaning west, west, growing vertical 
against the wind's disorder, the raven trees planted 
by one wingtip and flying. 

From Not Speaking for One Week

Quasi, if you could find me more on this poet I would greatly appreciate it, as I can only dig up this little cutting. I know she isn't prolific, but I was very moved by this little snippet (though it is not yet published widely).

Edit, did some digging of my own through her publisher, and came up with these interesting poems:

http://www.openbooktoronto.com/magaz...ticles/cypress

Dusk in the narrow country
of the North Plateau. The lodgepoles have been
waiting, villages of the undead with their arms
out, the night clerks of stone hotels
with broken beds and caving basements.

I enter, cambium locking,
and the father of doors knows
I will wake without a body. Choose your tree.

In a country disappearing over cliffs, invisible
bones in the bone trees, mine is the lodgepole
of the hot pasture’s edge, candelabra
in the Church of Pine, a year’s hymns
bundled in the flames that light my death.

*

A low branch opens: back room, needle dust,
hip hollow last lain in before the discovery
of magnetic north. The hound who has been following
circles its sleep and lays down a long bone line.
It has followed for years toward this bearing,
muzzle pointing through the tree
to the north northwest of the afterlight.

I lie down also, kiss the velvet bone, hound skull
spearing its heartbeat, my arm around the great chest
thumping slowly and more slowly,
for a seasons-long minute
not at all. I am alone among
the dead again, a spoon
around the dark spoon of the hound
who will hover in the branches,
someone staring north
from Lodgepole, Montana,
the Hound Star rising.

I will live alone if I must, leave
for the coyotes the gift of flesh and lung,
I will walk downhill abandoned
in the flickering morning.

From Night Tree

----------


## quasimodo1

MOTHER AND CHILD



Were all dreamers; we dont know who we are. 
Some machine made us; machine of the world, the constricting family. 
Then back to the world, polished by soft whips. 
We dream; we dont remember. 
Machine of the family: dark fur, forests of the mothers body. 
Machine of the mother: white city inside her. 
And before that: earth and water. 
Moss between rocks, pieces of leaves and grass. 
And before, cells in a great darkness. 
And before that, the veiled world. 
This is why you were born: to silence me. 
Cells of my mother and father, it is your turn 
to be pivotal, to be the masterpiece. 
I improvised; I never remembered. 
Now its your turn to be driven; 
youre the one who demands to know: 
Why do I suffer? ... {excerpt}

"Mother and Child" by Louise Glück, from The Seven Ages. Copyright © 2001

----------


## quasimodo1

From The Collected Poetry of Theodore Roethke

JUDGE NOT

Faces greying faster than loam-crumbs on a harrow;
Children, their bellies swollen like blown-up paper bags,
Their eyes, rich as plums, staring from newsprint,--
These images haunted me noon and midnight.
I imagined the unborn, starving in wombs, curling:
I asked: May the blessings of life, O Lord, descend on the living.

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

MIDSUMMER



On nights like this we used to swim in the quarry, 
the boys making up games requiring them to tear off  the girls’ clothes 
and the girls cooperating, because they had new bodies since last summer 
and they wanted to exhibit them, the brave ones 
leaping off  the high rocks — bodies crowding the water. 


The nights were humid, still. The stone was cool and wet, 
marble for  graveyards, for buildings that we never saw, 
buildings in cities far away. 


On cloudy nights, you were blind. Those nights the rocks were dangerous, 
but in another way it was all dangerous, that was what we were after. 
The summer started. Then the boys and girls began to pair off 
but always there were a few left at the end — sometimes they’d keep watch, 
sometimes they’d pretend to go off  with each other like the rest, 
but what could they do there, in the woods? No one wanted to be them. 
But they’d show up anyway, as though some night their luck would change, 
fate would be a different fate. 


At the beginning and at the end, though, we were all together. 
After the evening chores, after the smaller children were in bed, 
then we were free. Nobody said anything, but we knew the nights we’d meet 
and the nights we wouldn’t. Once or twice, at the end of summer, 
we could see a baby was going to come out of all that kissing. 


And for those two, it was terrible, as terrible as being alone. 
The game was over. We’d sit on the rocks smoking cigarettes, 
worrying about the ones who weren’t there. 


And then finally walk home through the fields, 
because there was always work the next day. 
And the next day, we were kids again, sitting on the front steps in the morning, 
eating a peach.  Just that, but it seemed an honor to have a mouth. 
And then going to work, which meant helping out in the fields. 
One boy worked for an old lady, building shelves. 
The house was very old, maybe built when the mountain was built. 


And then the day faded. We were dreaming, waiting for night. 
Standing at the front door at twilight, watching the shadows lengthen. 
And a voice in the kitchen was always complaining about the heat, 
wanting the heat to break. 


Then the heat broke, the night was clear. 
And you thought of  the boy or girl you’d be meeting later. 
And you thought of  walking into the woods and lying down, 
practicing all those things you were learning in the water. 
And though sometimes you couldn’t see the person you were with, 
there was no substitute for that person. 


{excerpt} {from Poetry magazine}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.slate.com/id/2196198/pagenum/all -- article in Slate about Kay Ryan

----------


## quasimodo1

From The Norton Anthology of American Literature
(Baym, Gottesman, Holland, Kalstone, Murphy, Parker, Pritchard)

MAXIE ALLEN

Maxie Allen always taught her
Stipendiiary little daughter
To thank her Lord and lucky star
For eye that let her see so far.
For throat enabling her to eat
Her Quaker Oats and Cream-of-Wheat,
For tongue to tantrum for the penny,
For car to hear the haven't any,
For arm to toss, for leg to chance,
For heart to hanker for romance.

Sweet Annie tried to teach her mother
There was somewhat of something other.
And whether it was veils and God
And whistling ghosts to go unshod
Across the broad and bitter sod,
Or fleet love stopping at her foot
And giving her its never-root
To put into her pocket-book,
Or just a deep and human look,
She did not know; but tried to tell.

Her mother thought at her full well,
In inner voice not like a bell
(Which though not social has a ring
Akin to wrought bedevilling)
But like an oceanic thing:
What do you guess I am?
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/bo...html?ref=books 

"Cracking Wise" review of poet Brenda Shaughnessy 




By DAVID KIRBY
Published: October 24, 2008 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WHY IS THE COLOR OF SNOW? 
by Brenda Shaughnessy 


Let's ask a poet with no way of knowing.
Someone who can give us an answer,
another duplicity to help double the world.

What kind of poetry is all question, anyway?
Each question leads to an iceburn,
a snownova, a single bed spinning in space.

Poet, Decide! I am lonely with questions.
What is snow? What isn't?
Do you see how it is for me.

Melt yourself to make yourself more clear
for the next observer.
I could barely see you anyway.

A blizzard I understand better,
the secrets of many revealed as one,
becoming another on my only head.

It's true that snow takes on gold from sunset
and red from rearlights. But that's occasional.
What is constant is white,

or is that only sight, a reflection of eyewhites
and light? Because snow reflects only itself,
self upon self upon self,

is a blanket used for smothering, for sleeping.
For not seeing the naked, flawed body.
Concealing it from the lover curious, ever curious!

Who won't stop looking.
White for privacy.
Millions of privacies to bless us with snow.

Don't we melt it?
Aren't we human dark with sugar hot to melt it?
Anyway, the question

if a dream is a construction then what
is not a construction? If a bank of snow
is an obstruction, then what is not a bank of snow?

A winter vault of valuable crystals
convertible for use only by a zen
sun laughing at us.

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

I have always been uncomfortable describing what already exists. Existing things are just too hot, too self-radiant. My words get soft and gluey if I try to mold them into a facsimile of something. If I were a sculptor, it would be as if I were forced to work with clay that clung to my fingers instead of sticking to my projected dog sculpture.Kay Ryan

----------


## quasimodo1

The Chairs That No One Sits In
By Billy Collins 

You see them on porches and on lawns 
down by the lakeside, 
usually arranged in pairs implying a couple 
who might sit there and look out 
at the water or the big shade trees. 
The trouble is you never see anyone 
sitting in these forlorn chairs 
though at one time it must have seemed 
a good place to stop and do nothing for a while. 
Sometimes there is a little table 
between the chairs where no one 
is resting a glass or placing a book facedown.  
It might be none of my business, 
but it might be a good idea one day 
for everyone who placed those vacant chairs 
on a veranda or a dock to sit down in them 
for the sake of remembering 
whatever it was they thought deserved 
to be viewed from two chairs 
side by side with a table in between. ... {excerpt, from Nov. Poetry}

----------


## quasimodo1

From November 2008 Poetry magazine

PLAINT IN A MAJOR KEY

Plaint in a Major Key 
by Jorge Sánchez 
Without even leaving one's door, 
One can know the whole world.
—Laozi

The rumble of the night sounds 
even in the bright daylight 
of morning. Life blooms amid 
the Ten Thousand Things, but 
does not bloom amid the Ten 
Thousand Things. Shrivel-eyed 
I wake up and tend to the One 
here and now, clamoring to be 
let out. Down with the gate, 
out with the boy, to the rooms 
of life's necessities, first 
to void and next to fill. 
The Order is only order which 
is disorder, the only Disorder 
is the disorder that is order. 
We usher ourselves, each in our 
own way, back down the way 
for various brushings, combings, 
other groomings. Each in our 
own way we urge the other 
toward some kind of growth: 
one to assume, the other 
to renounce; one to grow larger, 
the other to grow smaller, 
thereby growing larger. Words 
do not work, and when they do not, 
other words might. This makes 
more sense than it seems, works 
more often than it doesn't, 
except when it really doesn't, 
and then that disorder creeps 
back in. In five minutes, 
a different challenge. In five 
hours, a different One. Six 
more hours, the One is rubbing 
eyes, untangled like a dragon, 
shucked and undone like an oyster. 
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/bo...ks&oref=slogin -- Robert Lowell and 

Elizabeth Bishop review of "Words in Air"

----------


## quasimodo1

The Lemons
by Eugenio Montale
translated from the Italian by Millicent Bell

But listenthose famous poets
everyone studied in schoolthey got stirred up
among plants we dont know here: box privet or acanthus.
As for me, I love the roads that shrivel
into parched, weed-cluttered
ditches where boys
catch a skinny eel or two in a puddle;
the paths that follow the banks and sidle
down between clumps of cane
and put you down in the lemon groves, among the trees.
{exceprt}

----------


## quasimodo1

By PETER STEVENSON
Published: November 7, 2008 
“In childhood nothing happened.” So Donald Hall writes in his enchanting memoir, and what’s admirable about that 

sentence is not just the pleasure in coming across such a cheeky volley in the opening pages of an account of a life 

in our post-Freudian age, but the choice Hall made not to insert a comma between “childhood” and “nothing.” A comma — 

“In childhood, nothing happened” — would have insisted on a dramatic pause that the reader would be expected to 

applaud politely, nodding at the poet’s foreshadowing that clearly something did happen and it must have been simply 

stupendous, and here we go. But Hall means what he says, repeating the phrase “Nothing happened” twice, like a chorus 

or incantation, on the following page. ...cont.
UNPACKING THE BOXES

A Memoir of a Life in Poetry

By Donald Hall

195 pp. Houghton Mifflin Company. $24 -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/bo...html?ref=books

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/bo...html?ref=books -- Changing Light 



By AUGUST KLEINZAHLER
Published: November 7, 2008 
The poetry of James Merrill is a good deal closer to a Haydn piano trio or Boccherini quintet than it is to Walt 

Whitmans barbaric yawp. Like the 18th-century Galante style in music, Merrills work has a high, almost lacquered 

finish and prizes the qualities of refinement, intricacy of design and formal containment. It is music for the court, 

for the knowledgeable and cultivated listener. At his best  in a handful of poems where hes most restrained and the 

emotional core of the work, however camouflaged or subdued, is most intense  Merrill has few peers, and none among 

contemporary *poets working in meter and rhyme. -- SELECTED POEMS

By James Merrill. Edited by J. D. McClatchy and Stephen Yenser

298 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. Paper, $16

Related
Compare Several Drafts of 'The Kimono' (randomhouse.com)
An Excerpt From James Merrill's 'Selected Poems' (randomhouse.com)

----------


## quasimodo1

From Collected Poems 1920-1954
(revised bilingual edition translated
and annotated by Jonathan Galassi)

from Noons and Shadows

HOUSE BY THE SEA

The journey ends here:
in the petty worries that split
the heart that can't cry out anymore.
The minutes now are regular and fixed
like the revolutions of the pump.
One turn: water surfaces, resounds.
Another turn: more water, and some creaking.


{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.signandsight.com/features/1749.html -- signandsight -- Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan

----------


## quasimodo1

from Collected Poems 1920-1954

from The Occasions 1928-1939
[to I.B.]

from Part I

GERTI'S CARNIVAL

If your wheel gets snared in tangled
shooting stars and the stallion
rears in the crowd, if a long
shiver of pale confetti falls like snow
on your hair and hands, or children raise
their plaintive ocarinas* to salute
your passing, and faint echoes
float down from the bridge onto the river;
if the street empties, leading you
to a world blown inside a trembling bubble
of air and light where the sun salutes your grace--
it may be you've found the way,
the route a piece of melted lead
suggested for a moment on that midnight
when a calm year ended without gunfire.


{excerpt}

{from the Rivised and Bilingual Edition,
translated and annotated by Jonathan Galassi} [*ocarinas...n. A small terra-cotta or plastic wind instrument with finger holes, a mouthpiece, and an elongated ovoid shape. 

[Italian, from dialectal ucarenna, diminutive of Italian oca, goose (from the fact that its mouthpiece is shaped like a goose's beak), from Vulgar Latin *auca, from *avica, from Latin avis, bird; see awi- in Indo-European roots.]

----------


## quasimodo1

Book of Isaiah 
by Anne Carson 


I. 


Isaiah awoke angry. 


Lapping at Isaiah’s ears black birdsong no it was anger. 


God had filled Isaiah’s ears with stingers. 


Once God and Isaiah were friends. 


God and Isaiah used to converse nightly, Isaiah would rush into the garden. 


....

{from one of four parts}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/bo...html?ref=books -- Donald Finkel, 79, Poet of Free-Ranging Styles, 

Is Dead 



By MARGALIT FOX
Published: November 20, 2008 
Donald Finkel, a noted American poet whose work teemed with curious juxtapositions, which in their unorthodoxy helped 

illuminate the function of poetry itself, died on Nov. 15 at his home in St. Louis. He was 79....{cont.}

----------


## quasimodo1

from Poetry magazine, December 2008

PRAIRIE OCTOPUS, AWAKE

..................

Owls swallow vowels in stilled trees. It's not
sleeplessness, it's fear of what the dark will
do if don't keep a close eye on it.
Blue minutes leak from the pricked stars' prisms,
seep into the earth unchecked. Just as well--
I've hardly enough arms to gather them.
{second of two stanzas}

----------


## quasimodo1

Close your eyes
Unwinding the bitter onion–
Its layers of uncertainty are limited,
Under brown paper its sealed heart sings
To the tune of a hundred lemons. ... {one of two stanzas of CHOPPING}

----------


## JBI

From Five Songs For Relinquishing the Earth by Jan Zwicky

The rock weeps into its own whiteness.
Sunny meadow slopes, the gentians,
far above.
The sun, too, tumbles down. A symphony
of spruce boughs sinks into the fiery moss.

Jewel-music, the amber roar of the falls.
No one thinks of home.
Waiting in the cool shadows,
we are dappled with hope.







The fascination of water
is the laughter of geometry.
Wind plunges down the hillside:
a longing to embrace.

The mountain drifts in twilight.
When we draw the blinds at dusk
is the moment we most want to open
them again.

----------


## chasestalling

JBI:

Would you be so good to provide the current pronunciation of Jan Zwicky?

Chasestalling

----------


## JBI

I don't know - I just call her Zwicky, rhyming with picky. and the Z pronounced as in Zebra.

----------


## JBI

From Brahms' Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115 by Jan Zwicky

That we shall not forget to honour
brown, its reedy clarities.
...

That the mind's light could be filtered
as: a porch, late afternoon,
a trellised rose,
which is to say
a truth in nostalgia:
if we steel ourselves against regret
we will not grow more graceful,
but less
...

----------


## quasimodo1

History
**********after Haydn, Op. 64, No. 2, Adagio
It is quiet now.
The nameless officers for State Security
shrug on their overcoats
and head home through pre-dawn streets.
Oiled locks
turn, then turn again.
The general snores.
You will think it cold,
the way it fingers
open eyes, the darkened cheekbones,
the blood between the legs. ...
{excerpt}

Jan Zwicky

Pasted from <http://www.cstone.net/~poems/histozwi.htm>

----------


## quasimodo1

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. 
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, 
Have always known, know that we cant escape, 
Yet cant accept. One side will have to go. 
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring 
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring 
Intricate rented world begins to rouse. 
The sky is white as clay, with no sun. 
Work has to be done. 
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

{excerpt from AUBADE, last stanza of this poem}

----------


## quasimodo1

...Yet her poetry from beginning to end is concerned with prisons, 
vaults, cages, bars, curbs, bits, bolts, fetters, 
locked windows, narrow frames, aching walls. 


Why all the fuss? asks one critic. 
She wanted liberty. Well didnt she have it? 
A reasonably satisfactory homelife, 


a most satisfactory dreamlifewhy all this beating of wings? 
What was this cage, invisible to us, 
which she felt herself to be confined in? 


Well there are many ways of being held prisoner, 
I am thinking as I stride over the moor. 
As a rule after lunch mother has a nap 


and I go out to walk. 
The bare blue trees and bleached wooden sky of April 
carve into me with knives of light. 


Something inside it reminds me of childhood 
it is the light of the stalled time after lunch 
when clocks tick 


and hearts shut 
and fathers leave to go back to work 
and mothers stand at the kitchen sink pondering 


something they never tell. 
You remember too much, ... {excerpt from long poem, THE GLASS ESSAY}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.poetrymagazine.org/magazi...108_print.html

----------


## quasimodo1

TALKING TO THE MOON
A defeated politician is in circulation 
again, as we say of coins, 
and his mouth is full of words. 
His words have all been handled smooth. 
They'd shrink, like lozenges, except 
some sweat from everyone who's had them 
is on them. He could be you, 
why don't you support him? 

But some people hoard words. 
"The year the lake froze all the way 
across . . . ," a sentence might begin 
and then nod, sleepy in a hot kitchen. 
The words are a spell to make the lake 
freeze again. The sentence never ends. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

THE DEFINITION OF GARDENING 


....."Horticulture is a groping in the dark 
into the obscure and unfamiliar, 
kneeling before a disinterested secret, 
slapping it, punching it like a Chinese puzzle, 
birdbrained, babbling gibberish, dig and 
destroy, pull out and apply salt, 
hoe and spray, before it spreads, burn roots, 
where not desired, with gloved hands, poisonous, 
the self-sacrifice of it, the self-love, 
into the interior, thunderclap, excruciating, 
through the nose, the earsplitting necrology 
of it, the withering, shriveling, 
the handy hose holder and Persian insect powder 
and smut fungi, the enemies of the iris, 
wireworms are worse than their parents, 
there is no way out, flowers as big as heads, 
pock-marked, disfigured, blinking insolently 
at me, the me who so loves to garden 
because it prevents the heaving of the ground 
and the untimely death of porch furniture, 
and dark, murky days in a large city 
and the dream home under a permanent storm 
is also a factor to keep in mind."

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Outer Space

If you could turn the moon 
on a lathe, you would 
because you are curious. 

And that would explain 
why the moon slivers, 
but explain it stupidly 

by not taking care 
to ask how the moon rounds. 
And so we go, stupid ideas 

for feet. The better to wander 
with, retort the feet, 
and what can you say, 

you who shaved those taut 
spirals from the moon, 
kinks of tightening light 

that fell away from your attention 
to your work growing smaller 
the better you did it? 

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

****FROG!...
***** *****

Abstract in nature, yet so very important to it. He is the warning sign, 
the innervision to peace or self-destruction. Calmly and confidently in 
eyes wide open he watches and protects the inner being of innocence 
and the beauty of nature inspires him to love and give. He is not ugly! 
And the prince is not a prince. But he can be crazy like a poet 
clinging to the words of Gods and Demons and the drama of your 
sneers and snickers of him. This is love for all of you stuck in 
boredom and the intense madness of our darkside. In the danger of 
the Forest he does not seperate his emotions. ...
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/bo...r=1&ref=review --- Poetrys Shadow


By KARL KIRCHWEY
Published: December 19, 2008 --- Here is a first book written from a very high floor of the Tower of Babel, and 

the view is exhilarating. --- a review of AN AQUARIUM

Poems

By Jeffrey Yang

63 pp. Graywolf Press. Paper, $15

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/bo...1&8bu&emc=bub2

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/ma..._r=1&ref=books --- The Lure of Death 





By MELANIE THERNSTROM
Published: December 24, 2008 --- Death is the ultimate subject for a poet. Its the ultimate subject for all of 

us, of course  the self impossibly contemplating its impossible absence  but for a poet whose work is to express 

the inexpressible, it is a particular opportunity. I had often wished for some dread disease . . . /Overwhelmed by 

some unspecific disappointment or frustration, or joy, I longed for the clarity an illness might bring./Its 

beautiful to have enemies you can see! Jason Shinder wrote in a journal he called Cancer Book....

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/bo..._r=1&ref=books --- --- The Bard of Despond 



By DAVID BARBER
Published: December 25, 2008 
"In spite of being considered armed and dangerous in so many precincts of American poetry that his mug shot ought to 

be stapled up in the post office, theres still as of this writing no price on William Logans head. But you wouldnt 

have much trouble rounding up plaintiffs for a class-action suit: arguably the most industrious and notorious poet-

critic to brandish that hyphen like a knife between his teeth since his acknowledged master Randall Jarrell was on 

the prowl, Logan has perfected the gentle art of raising hackles by practicing poetry criticism as a blood sport 

rather than a parlor game. Any old reviewer can ruffle feathers. Logan collects scalps." --- Review of STRANGE FLESH

By William Logan

93 pp. Penguin Poets. Paper, $18

----------


## quasimodo1

From Poetry, January 2009

IDIOT PSALMS

I. a psalm of Isaak, accompanied by Jew's harp.

O God Beloved if obliquely so,
dimly apprehended in the midst
of this, the fraught obscuring fog
of my insufficiently capacious ken,
Ostensible Lover of our kind-- while
apparently aloof-- allow
that I might glimpse once more
Your shadow in the land, avail
for me, a second time, the sense
of dire Presence in the pulsing
hollow near the heart.
Once more, O lord, from Your enormity incline
your Face to shine upon Your servant, shy
of immolation, if You will.

{first of four parts}

----------


## quasimodo1

II
The days at end and theres nowhere to go, 
Draw to the fire, even this fire is dying; 
Get up and once again politely lying 
Invite the ladies toward the mistletoe 
With greedy eyes that stare like an old crow. 
How pleasantly the holly wreaths did hang 
And how stuffed Santa did his reindeer clang 
Above the golden oaken mantel, years ago! 

Then hang this picture for a calendar, 
As sheep for goat, and pray most fixedly 
For the cold martial progress of your star, 
With thoughts of commerce and society, 
Well-milked Chinese, Negroes who cannot sing, 
The Huns gelded and feeding in a ring. 

III
Give me this day a faith not personal 
As follows: The American people fully armed 
With assurance policies, righteous and harmed, 
Battle the world of which theyre not at all. 
That lying boy of ten who stood in the hall, 
His hat in hand (thus by his father charmed: 
You may be President), was not alarmed 
Nor even left uneasy by his fall. 
{excerpt from four part poem: MORE SONNETS FOR CHRISTMAS}

----------


## quasimodo1

Little Low Heavens 
A talented verse mechanic cracks open the hood to illuminate the structure and ignition points that make a poem rev up and roar forever.


by Clive James 

Any poem that does not just slide past us like all those thousands of others usually has an ignition point for our attention. To take the most startling possible example, think of Spring, by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Everyone knows the first line because everyone knows the poem. Nothing is so beautiful as Spring is a line that hundreds of poets could have written, and was probably designed to sound that way: designed, that is, to be merely unexceptionable, or even flat. Only two lines further on, however, we get Thrushs eggs look little low heavens and we are electrified. I can confidently say we because nobody capable of reading poetry at all could read those few words and not feel the wattage. Eventually we see that the complete poem is fitting, in its every part, for its task of living up to the standards of thought and perception set by that single flash of illumination. 

But we wouldnt even be checking up if we had not been put on the alert by a lightning strike of an idea that goes beyond thought and perception and into the area of metaphorical transformation that a poem demands. A poem can do without satisfying that demand, but it had better have plenty of other qualities to make up for the omission, even if the omission is deliberate, and really I wonder if there can be any successful poem, even the one disguised as an unadorned prose argument, which is not dependent on this ability to project you into a reality so drastically rearranged that it makes your hair fizz even when it looks exactly like itself. {from an article published in Poetry Magazine -- http://www.poetryfoundation.org/jour...html?id=182120 }

----------


## Silas Thorne

....Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands
Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken,
Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken,
Luminously-peopled air ascends;
And past the poppies bluish neutral distance
Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach
Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence:
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.

from Phillip Larkin's 'Here'

----------


## quasimodo1

"Adrian Mitchell is to feature in the February 2009 UK domain issue. As a tribute following his recent death, we have published his poet page in advance, along with archive audio recordings of him performing at the Poetry International Festival. Further poems will be published on 1 February 2009."

Read his biography and listen to the audio recordings at http://international.poetryinternati...p?obj_id=13553.

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/bo...n.html?_r=1&em --- Inger Christensen, Scandinavian Poet, Is 

Dead at 73 

By MARGALIT FOX
Published: January 12, 2009 
Inger Christensen, a distinguished Danish poet whose work  lyrical, philosophical, self-referential and exquisitely 

mathematical  was a cornerstone of modern Scandinavian poetry, died on Jan. 2 in Copenhagen. She was 73 and lived in 

Copenhagen.





She died after a short illness, said Susanna Nied, the American translator of her poetry.

----------


## quasimodo1

WAIT



Chop, hack, slash; chop, hack, slash; cleaver, boning knife, ax 
not even the clumsiest clod of a butcher could do this so crudely, 
time, as do you, dismember me, render me, leave me slop in a pail, 
one part of my body a hundred years old, one not even there anymore, 
another still riven with idiot vigor, voracious as the youth I was 
for whom everything always was going too slowly, too slowly. 


It was me then who chopped, slashed, through you, across you, 
relished you, gorged on you, slugged your invisible liquor down raw. 
Now you're polluted; pulse, clock, calendar taint you, befoul you, 
you suck at me, pull at me, barbed wire knots of memory tear me, 
my heart hangs, inert, a tag-end of tissue, firing, misfiring, 
trying to heave itself back to its other way with you. {two of four stanzas}

----------


## quasimodo1

from Poetry Magazine, February 2009

VIRGIL

Aeneid, II, 692-end

As he spoke we could hear, ever more loudly, the noise
Of the burning fires; the flood of flames was coming
Nearer and nearer. "My father, let me take you
Upon my shoulders and carry you with me.
The burden will be easy. Whatever happens,
You and I will experience it together,
Peril or safety, whichever it will be.
Little Iulus will come along beside me.
My wife will follow behind us. And you, my servants,
Listen to what say: just as you leave
The limits of the city there is a mound,
And the vestiges of a deserted temple of Ceres,
And a cypress tree that has been preserved alive
For many years by the piety of our fathers.
We will all meet there, though perhaps by different ways
And, Father, you must carry in your arms
The holy images of our household gods;
I, coming so late from the fighting and the carnage
Cannot presume to touch them until I have washed
Myself in running water." Thus I spoke.

{excerpt, translated from the Latin}

----------


## JBI

> from Poetry Magazine, February 2009
> 
> VIRGIL
> 
> Aeneid, II, 692-end
> 
> As he spoke we could hear, ever more loudly, the noise
> Of the burning fires; the flood of flames was coming
> Nearer and nearer. "My father, let me take you
> ...



I don't think that translation works particularly well - it may be accurate, but I don't think it is quite beautiful, it terms of language.

----------


## quasimodo1

I thought it unremarkable as well but posted it anyway. The fact that the bar is set low is an unfortunate statement. What I notice in this particular publication is that while submissions are greater than ever ...good or great poetry is no guaranteed result. Ferry has done better.

----------


## quasimodo1

Poetry Foundation 
Year in Review
January 2009

The Poetry Foundation, like many, will remember 2008 as the year of the great financial crisis. From poets and their publishers, to schools and literary organizations, this year's economic collapse has afflicted everyone in the poetry community in ways that are both far-reaching and painfully individual. The Foundation's own challenge was to protect the value of its endowment and continue its work to support poetry and poets. 

The U.S. stock market finished 2008 down 34% for the year. Losses on other types of investments, including real estate, private equity, and international, were similar. Thanks to the cadre of prudent fund managers who are responsible for investing the Foundation's endowment, our resources were not directly affected by defaults in the mortgage market, the failures of Wall Street firms and custodial banks, or the more recent losses of charitable foundations that were invested with Bernard Madoff. Although the value of the Foundation's portfolio has declined in line with the markets in which it is invested, there were no write-offs or permanent losses, and the endowment is positioned to participate fully in the eventual market recovery. 

As a matter of prudent management the Foundation has adopted a budget for 2009 that will not exceed 5% of the value of the endowment, a common policy in the foundation world and one that the Poetry Foundation has heeded in its five years of operations. At the same time, we are doing everything possible to maintain our work on behalf of the field and to preserve our direct payments to poets and writers, publishers, and prizewinners. 

The lean economic times notwithstanding, the Foundation continues to develop a broader and more engaged audience for poetry. All of the Foundation's programs, including its new initiatives, enter 2009 intact. The site for building the Foundation's permanent home in Chicago has been purchased and prepared, and a beautiful design by John Ronan Architects awaits the groundbreaking. When market conditions turn more favorable, we look forward to the sale of a bond issue and the start of construction. And the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, a think tank dedicated exclusively to issues of intellectual and practical importance to poetry, will see 2009 as its first formal year. Katharine Coles, poet laureate of Utah, former head of the creative writing program at the University of Utah, and founding director of the Utah Symposium in Science and Literature, is already at work as the Institute's inaugural director. She has selected as a first field of study for the Institute "Poetry and the New Media." 

While tending to its responsibilities on the business side of the house  the necessary left-brain activity of an arts organization  the Foundation continued its mission to discover the best poetry and to celebrate it through publication, prizes, and criticism. This year the Foundation increased its number of Lilly Fellowships, our annual awards for emerging poets, from two to five. Providing $15,000 to each of five fellows, the fellowships provide no-strings-attached assistance to young poets at a formative time in their careers. 

Poetry, for its part, published many first-time contributors (over two hundred of them in the past five years). To quote just one of the spirited and articulate poems from these newcomers, Sarah Lindsay's "Zucchini Shofar" begins: 
No animals were harmed in the making of this joyful noise: 
A thick, twisted stem from the garden 
is the wedding couple's ceremonial ram's horn. 
Its substance will not survive one thousand years, 
nor will the garden, which is today their temple, 
nor will their names, nor their union now announced 
with ritual blasts upon the zucchini shofar. 
Shall we measure blessings by their duration?
And it ends: 
This moment's chord of earthly commotion 
will never be struck exactly so again  
though love does love to repeat its favorite lines. 
So let the shofar splutter its slow notes and quick notes, 
let the nieces and nephews practice their flutes and trombones, 
let the living room pianos invite unwashed hands, 
let glasses of different fullness be tapped for their different notes, 
let everyone learn how to whistle, 
let the girl dawdling home from her trumpet lesson 
pause at the half-built house on the corner, 
where the newly installed maze of plumbing comes down 
to one little pipe whose open end she can reach, 
so she takes a deep breath 
and makes the whole house sound. 
Discovery and celebration: they are apparent in each new issue of Poetry, and they are a legacy going back to the magazine's very beginnings. Harriet Monroe and Ezra Pound, her "foreign correspondent," chose the poets they published with a combination of personal enthusiasm, neighborhood familiarity, and a perfect willingness to go against the grain. Publishing the new talents of their day  Eliot, Stevens, Moore, and Williams, among many  they tapped into a reservoir of underground energy that came to be known as Modernism. The rest, as they say, is history. 

Speaking of underground energy, the Foundation tapped into a load of that this year through our blog, Harriet, and through the Printers' Ball. Inspired by Harriet Monroe's "Open Door" policy*, the blog has become an agora where, with suitable noise and excitement, aesthetically diverse poets come to debate the art form. The Printers' Ball, in a parallel way, showcases Chicago's independent publishing scene. One might think of the Printers' Ball and Harriet together as a kind of Salon des Refusés, that historic exhibition where the Impressionists found their identity in opposition to the French Academy. Whether any poet-descendants of Rimbaud, Dylan Thomas, or Ginsberg were present at the recent Printers' Ball, I don't know, but the fact that the police showed up at the prior year's ball is a positive sign. It seems more than merely appropriate that the Foundation remain open in every way possible to the emergent talents and the underground energies of the moment. 

Across our programs we continue to cultivate new poetry readers among the youngest members of our culture. This year Poetry Out Loud, the national recitation contest, reached more than 250,000 high school students across the country. The Foundation appointed the second Children's Poet Laureate, the renowned and delightful Mary Ann Hoberman. Our growing collection of successful audio programs, available on poetryfoundation.org, includes the popular monthly podcast featuring the editors of Poetry. In 2008 listeners downloaded our audio content more than five million times. The multifaceted Poetry Everywhere project received a Parents' Choice Award for its online educational curriculum. Classical Baby (I'm Grown Up Now): The Poetry Show  our collaboration with HBO and a kind of poetry primer for young children and their parents  premiered on television in April and received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Program. 

Looking around at the widespread effects of the financial crisis, it seems that the old models, both business and social, are broken. At such moments in history, when there is no going back, poetry can intuit the future. As Yeats wrote after the failed Easter Rising of 1916:
All changed, changed utterly: 
A terrible beauty is born. 
A few years later the Republic of Ireland was formally established. 


Sincerely, 

John Barr 


* The Open Door will be the policy of this magazine. . . . To this end the editors hope to keep free of entangling alliances with any single class or school. They desire to print the best English verse which is being written today, regardless of where, by whom, or under what theory of art it is written.

----------


## quasimodo1

MEN AT MY FATHER'S FUNERAL



The ones his age who shook my hand 
on their way out sent fear along 
my arm like heroin. These werent 
men mute about their feelings, 
or whats a body language for? 


And I, the glib one, whod stood 
with my back to my fathers body 
and praised the heart that attacked him? 
Id made my stab at elegy, 
the flesh made word: the very spit 


in my mouth was sour with ruth 
and eloquence. What could be worse? 

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

LIVES OF THE SAINTS



I began as a darkness and remained so. My life was lit by occasional flares toward which I groped unevenly. I had no mother and no father to speak of. Then you came and it was a big midnight into which the empty stars had been sucked. All that was left were the curved streaks of their paths sliding through space as we turned on our axis and turned around our sun, and turned around our galaxy and turned once more. There was no turning point. All was in flux. All was darkness.
*
I was a schemer. I lit lamps in unlikely places to attract night's insects. I knew nothing of the day. Words sunk in me like ships crushed in an ice floe. I nursed hiddenness. Took on meaning. Imbibed the sound of thunder. I waited for things to come by and trapped them. My father told me that wild things will not suffer containment. I learned by entrapment. I learned by the sound of my knees sliding through fall leaves. I entered and left by the smallest of holes, like a bat. I peeked when I was supposed to cover my eyes. I saw things I was not intended to see. I told. I didn't tell. I said. I didn't say. I hid in the least spaces.
*
I was most ordinary and began as a thing. You didn't know me. We missed each other by minutesmy coming, your going. I made up words to explain it. They never did. At 12, I found something that was like you but was not you. I began to follow it. It led me everywhere. I fed it from a saucer on the chipped linoleum floor. I kept it lit.
*
I was a great liar and told many tales that were true. I kept things in pockets that no one knew about. I had suitcases ready at all times. And nobody could discover what it meant. I followed anacondas and slipstreams. I wanted a vegetable but all we had were flowers. Sometimes I took them down. I tried to remake the noise. I sat for examination. I was full of puncture holes. Marks appeared on my body overnight, as if from dreaming. I climbed the ladder from Hell and crossed. My robe trailed behind me and caught in the slats because I was already not tall enough for it. You believe me, don't you?
* {prose poem of ten parts}

----------


## Silas Thorne

When I returned from what I might characterise
as a last nervous piss, she said, turning the
ignition on, 'Do you mind?'

'You're in the box seat,' I said.
'The boot is on the other foot, now,' she said,
leaning determinedly on the accelerator.

'Then let it be on your head,' I said, as we 
slithered heatedly across the street slap-bang
into the expensive plate-glass purple

sign-painted EXCELSIOR PET EMPORIUM ....


(excerpt)

----------


## quasimodo1

"STILL, however blurry greatness may be, its clear that segments of the poetry world have been fretting over its 

potential loss since at least 1983. Thats the year in which an essay by Donald Hall, the United States poet laureate 

from 2006 to 2007, appeared in The Kenyon Review bearing the title Poetry and Ambition. Hall got right to the 

point: It seems to me that contemporary American po*etry is afflicted by modesty of ambition  a modesty, alas, 

genuine . . . if sometimes accompanied by vast pretense. What poets should be trying to do, according to Hall, was 

to make words that live forever and to be as good as Dante. They probably would fail, of course, but even so, 

the only way we are likely to be any good is to try to be as great as the best. Pretty strong stuff  and one 

wonders how many plays Shakespeare would have managed to write had he subjected every line to the merciless scrutiny 

Hall recommends." {excerpt from "The Great(ness) Game" article by David Orr, 2/19/09 --

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/bo.../Orr-t.html?em

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/bo...r=1&ref=review --- TIME AND THE TILTING EARTH

Poems

By Miller Williams

51 pp. Louisiana State University Press. Cloth, $45. Paper, $16.95 --- --- 

"But Williams isnt finished making *poems, and thats a fact for which we should be thankful. His latest collection, 

Time and the Tilting Earth, offers many pleasures. Chief among these are Williamss way of entwining the pure 

earthiness of language as its spoken with rigorous metrical precision, and, analogously, his affection for the 

quotidian, with an insistence on confronting unanswerable but unavoidable existential problems." {excerpt from 

review}

----------


## JBI

16.95 seems a little much for a 51 pager.

----------


## ~Sophia~

Fragments 5 and 6 

*8 Fragments For Kurt Cobain* 
by Jim Carroll


5/
Then I translated your muttered lyrics
And the phrases were curious:
Like "incognito libido"
And "Chalk Skin Bending"

The words kept getting smaller and smaller
Until
Separated from their music
Each letter spilled out into a cartridge
Which fit only in the barrel of a gun

6/
And you shoved the barrel in as far as possible
Because that's where the pain came from
That's where the demons were digging

The world outside was blank
Its every cause was just a continuation
Of another unsolved effect

----------


## quasimodo1

THE TRUANT



'What have you there?' the great Panjandrum said
To the Master of the Revels who had led
A bucking truant with a stiff backbone
Close to the foot of the Almighty's throne.

'Right Reverend, most adored,
And forcibly acknowledged Lord
By the keen logic of your two-edged sword!
This creature has presumed to classify
Himself - a biped, rational, six feet high
And two feet wide; weighs fourteen stone;
Is guilty of a multitude of sins.
He has abjured his choric origins,
And like an undomesticated slattern,
Walks with tangential step unknown
Within the weave of the atomic pattern.
He has developed concepts, grins
Obscenely at your Royal bulletins,
Possesses what he calls a will
Which challenges your power to kill.'

'What is his pedigree?'

'The base is guaranteed, your Majesty -
Calcium, carbon, phosphorus, vapour
And other fundamentals spun
From the umbilicus of the sun,
And yet he says he will not caper
Around your throne, nor toe the rules
For the ballet of the fiery molecules.'

'His concepts and denials - scrap them, burn them -
To the chemists with them promptly.' ...

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

EL DORADO



We have a friend in common, the retired sophomore. 
His concern: that I shall get it like that, 
in the right and righter of a green bush 
chomping on future considerations. In the ghostly 
dreams of others it appears I am all right, 
and even going on tomorrow there is much 
to be said on all these matters, issues, like 
No rest for the weary. (And yetwhy not?) 
Feeling under orders is a way of showing up, 
but stepping on Earthshes not going to. 
Ten shades of pleasing himself brings us to tomorrow 
evening and will be back for more. I disagree 
with you completely but couldnt be prouder 
and fonder of you. So drink up. Feel good for two. 
{one of two stanzas, from Poetry Magazine, March 2009}

----------


## JBI

> THE TRUANT
> 
> 
> 
> 'What have you there?' the great Panjandrum said
> To the Master of the Revels who had led
> A bucking truant with a stiff backbone
> Close to the foot of the Almighty's throne.
> 
> ...


You reading Pratt now?

----------


## quasimodo1

Yea, somebody piqued my interest and he's really an outstanding poet. Such ficle tastes.

----------


## JBI

There is a hypertext available of his complete works. The site is kind of hard to navigate, but once you figure it out, it leads to good things:

http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/pratt/

If you're into Canadian poetry, I recommend you pick up Geddes' 15 Canadian poets X 3 (which is in the 4th edition now I believe). It has some great contemporary poets covered, and nice biographical sketches of almost all the major players in English Canadian verse.

----------


## quasimodo1

MARCH 1936

There is no silence upon the earth or under the earth like the silence
under the sea;
No cries announcing birth,
No sounds declaring death.
There is silence when the milt is laid on the spawn in the weeds and
fungus of the rock-clefts;
And silence in the growth and struggle for life.
The bonitoes pounce upon the mackerel, 
And are themselves caught by the barracudas,
The sharks kill the barracudas
And the great molluscs rend the sharks, 
And all noiselessly -
Though swift be the action and final the conflict,
The drama is silent.

There is no fury upon the earth like the fury under the sea.
For growl and cough and snarl are the tokens of spendthrifts who
know not the ultimate economy of rage.
Moreover, the pace of the blood is too fast.
But under the waves the blood is sluggard and has the same
temperature as that of the sea.

There is something pre-reptilian about a silent kill.

{excerpt}

----------


## JBI

Come Away, Death by E. J. Pratt


Willy-nilly, he comes or goes, with the clown's logic,
Comic in epitaph, tragic in epithalamium,
And unseduced by any mused rhyme. 
However blow the winds over the pollen,
Whatever the course of the garden variables,
He remains the constant,
Ever flowering from the poppy seeds.

There was a time he came in formal dress,
Announced by Silence tapping at the panels
In deep apology.
A touch of chivalry in his approach,
He offered sacramental wine,
And with acanthus leaf
And petals of the hyacinth
He took the fever from the temples
And closed the eyelids,
Then led the way to his cool longitudes
In the dignity of the candles.

continued: http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/pratt/p...annotated.html

----------


## JBI

From The Witches Brew by E. J. Pratt

Perched on a dead volcanic pile,
Now charted as a submerged peak,
Near to a moon-washed coral isle,
A hundred leagues from Mozambique,
Three water-witches of the East,
Under the stimulus of rum,
Decided that the hour had come
To hold a Saturnalian feast,
In course of which they hoped to find
For their black art, once and for all,
The true effect of alcohol
Upon the cold, aquatic mind.
From two Phoenicians who were drowned,
The witches three (whose surnames ran
Lulu, Ardath, Maryan)
Had by an incantation found
A cavern near the coast of Crete,
And saw, when they had entered in,
A blacksmith with a dorsal fin,
Whose double pectorals and webbed feet
Proved -- while his dusky shoulders swung --
His breed to be of land and water,
Last of great Neptune's stock that sprung
From Vulcan's union with his daughter.
The sisters' terms accepted, he,
Together with his family,
Left his native Cretan shore
To dig the witches' copper ore
Out of their sub-aquaceous mines
In the distant Carolines,
And forge a cauldron that might stand,
Stationary and watertight,
A thousand cubits in its height,
Its width a thousand breadths as spanned
By the smith's gigantic hand,
So that each fish, however dry,
Might have, before the Feast was through,
His own demonstrable supply
Of this Pan-Oceanic brew.
A thousand leagues or so away
Down the Pacific to Cape Horn,
And Southwards from Magellan lay
A table-land to which was borne
This cauldron from the Carolines,
For here, as well the sisters knew,
The Spanish conquerors of Peru
Had stored their rich and ancient wines,
About the time the English burst
Upon their galleons under Drake,
Who sank or captured them to slake
A vast Elizabethan thirst.
With pick and bar the Cretan tore
His way to the interior
Of every sunken ship whose hold
Had wines almost four centuries old.
Upon the broad Magellan floors,
Great passage-way from West to East,
Were also found more recent stores,
The products of a stronger yeast.
For twenty years or thereabout,
The Bacchanals of Western nations,
Scenting universal drought,
Had searched the ocean to find out
The most secluded ports and stations,
Where unmolested they might go
'To serve their god while here below,'
With all the strength of their libations.
So to the distant isles there sailed,
In honour of the ivy god,
Scores of log-loaded ships that hailed
From Christiania to Cape Cod
With manifests entitled ham,
Corn beef, molasses, chamois milk,
Cotton, Irish linen, silk,
Pickles, dynamite and jam,
And myriad substances whose form
Dissolved into quite other freights,
Beneath the magic of a storm
That scattered them around the Straits;
For this is what the blacksmith read,
While raking up the ocean bed: --
Budweiser, Guinness, Schlitz (in kegs),
Square Face Gin and Gordon's Dry,
O'Brien's, Burke's and Johnny Begg's,
Munich, Bock, and Seagram's Rye,
Dewar's, Hennessey's 3 Star,
Glenlivet, White Horse and Old Parr,
With Haig and Haig, Canadian Club,
Jamaica Rum, and other brands
Known to imbibers in all lands
That stock from Brewery or Pub.
All these the Cretan, with the aid
Of his industrious progeny,
Drew to the cauldron, and there laid,
By order of the witches three,
The real foundation for the spree.

OTHER INGREDIENTS

To make a perfect fish menu,
The witches found they had to place
Upon this alcoholic base
Great stacks of food and spices too.
Of all the things most edible
On which the souls of fish have dined,
That fish would sell their souls to find,
Most gracious to their sense of smell,
Is flesh exotic to their kind: --
Cold-blooded things yet not marine,
And not of earth, but half-between,
That live enclosed within the sand
Without the power of locomotion,
And mammal breeds whose blood is hot,
That court the sea but love it not,
That need the air but not the land, --
The Laodiceans of the ocean.
So in this spacious cauldron went
Cargoes of food and condiment.
Oysters fished from Behring Strait
Were brought and thrown in by the crate;
Spitzbergen scallops on half-shell,
Mussels, starfish, clams as well,
Limpets from the Hebrides,
Shrimps and periwinkles, these,
So celebrated as a stew,
Were meant to flavour up the brew.
Then for the more substantial fare,
The curried quarter of a tail
Hewn from a stranded Greenland whale,
A liver from a Polar bear,
A walrus' heart and pancreas,
A blind Auk from the coast of Java,
A bull moose that had died from gas
While eating toadstools near Ungava,
One bitter-cold November day;
Five sea-lion cubs were then thrown in,
Shot by the Cretan's javelin
In a wild fight off Uruguay,
With flippers fresh from the Azores,
Fijian kidneys by the scores,
Together with some pollywogs,
And kippered hocks of centipedes,
And the hind legs of huge bull frogs
Raked by the millions from the reeds
Of slimy Patagonian bogs.

Then before the copper lid
Was jammed upon the pyramid,
The sisters scattered on the top
Many a juicy lollipop;
Tongues from the Ganges crocodile,
Spawn from the delta of the Nile,
Hoofs of sheep and loins of goats,
Raised from foundered cattle-boats --
Titbits they knew might blend with hops,
Might strengthen rum or season rye,
From Zulu hams and Papuan chops
To filets mignons from Shanghai.
Now while volcanic fires burned,
Making the cauldron fiercely hot,
Lulu with her ladle churned
The pungent contents of the pot,
From which distinctive vapours soon
Rose palpably before the view.
Then Ardath summoned a typhoon
Which as it swooped upon the stew,
And swept around the compass, bore
To every sea and every shore
The tidings of the witches' Feast.
And from the West and from the East,
And from the South and from the North,
From every bay and strait and run,
From the Tropics to the Arctic sun,
The Parliament of fish came forth,
Lured by a smell surpassing far
The potencies of boiling tar,
For essences were in this brew
Unknown to blubber or to glue,
And unfamiliar to the nose
Of sailors hardened as they are
To every unctuous wind that blows
From Nantucket to Baccalieu.
The crudest oil one ever lit
Was frankincense compared to it.
It entered Hades, and the airs
Resuscitated the Immortals;
It climbed the empyrean stairs
And drove St. Peter from the portals.

Continued here: http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/pratt/p...annotated.html

----------


## quasimodo1

Buddhists Like School and I Dont. 
An experimental poet meditates on the intersections of language, writing, and God.


by Fanny Howe 

God is unevolved and therefore cannot be apprehended by the senses, and as such exists as the witness of what is and 

also as light and energy, neither of which can be touched except by touching itself. 

You put your hand to your cheek and touch your own light and your own energy. 

You can call light and energy by the name of God if you want. 

If you dont want to say God, you must expect this choice to help make you lose your bearings until you understand 

how it moves around, shifting its position from being in you and of you, to being far from you. 

DivinityTrinityWhats the difference? 

No difference? No difference, no words. No word for difference, no identity. The genealogical and psychological 

search for an identity hitherto unnoticed, unknown, leads nowhere. The world is the unconscious but nature is not 

symbolic. 

The quest for a condition that exists in two separate states is what confuses people. The person looking for me (a 

fixed identity) is also the same person looking for (a vapory word) God. This split search can only be folded into 

one in the process of working on somethingwhether it is writing, digging, planting, painting, teachingwith a 

wholeheartedness that qualifies as complete attention. In such a state, you find yourself depending on chance or 

grace to supply you with the focus to complete what you are doing. Your work is practical, but your relationship to 

it is illogical in the range of its possible errors and failures. You align yourself with something behind and ahead 

and above you that is geometric in nature; you lean on its assistance, realizing the inadequacy of your words. 

Simone Weil said in Human Personality: 
At the very best, a mind enclosed in language is in prison. It is limited to the number of relations which words can 

make simultaneously present to it; and remains in ignorance of thoughts which involve the combination of a greater 

number. . . . The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large 

cell.
Yes, the problem of vocabulary in these matters is obvious, because a solution to the problem is made of the words. 

Who doesnt know that? If a bird has a problem with its whistle, it has to whistle to fix it. 

All voices tend toward song, and the vibrations of music in the vocal cords deeply influence the way spoken words are 

heard. 

Franz Rosenzweig noted:
In actual conversation, something happens. I do not know in advance what the other will say to me because I myself do 

not even know what I am going to say; perhaps not even whether I am going to say anything at all. . . . To need time 

means being able to anticipate nothing, having to wait for everything, being dependent on the other for ones own.
I understand that what is heard is what is already in the past and the proof for that is measurable. Sound has to 

travel a little way; it has to overcome space in order to reach a pair of ears. In this space of time, a few 

distortions can occur. Anxiety, misunderstanding can intervene, even heartbreak. Indeed, words themselves can, if 

allowed, seem to lose their original intention on their way out of the mouth. 

Socrates believed that the soul is eternal and contains knowledge of all things. In the trauma of birth, the soul 

loses its memory and has to start all over again. But in the experience of living and learning, it finds its way back 

to the truths that it lost. 


* * *


Revision is the path taken by an autodidact like me. In revising you teach yourself. You find your own information 

buried in your body. It is still alive until you are not. 

Right until he committed suicide in the end, Socrates had the high spirits of someone who knew (as in recognized) 

himself (his own condition). 

One way to understand your own condition is to write something and spend a long time revising it. The errors, the 

hits and misses, the excesserase them all. 

Now read what you have rewritten out loud in front of some other people. They will hear something that you didnt say 

aloud. They will hear what was there before you began revising and even before the words were written down. You wont 

hear anything but the humming of your own vocal cords. 

Its the same as what Remy de Gourmont in his Dust for Sparrows wrote from the point of view of the listener:
Never have literary works seemed so beautiful to me as when at a theatre or in reading, because of lack of habit or 

lacking a complete knowledge of the language, I lost the meaning of many phrases. This threw about them a light veil 

of somewhat silvery shadow, making the poetry more purely musical, more ethereal. 
Even while I have gone back over the words, I have never been sure of the need for it, the use of writing at all, the 

value of any completed poem, or the idea that writing might lead somewhere. I havent really known what I was doing, 

only that I would keep on doing it. It is a form of promiscuity and wanderlust. I could just as well have been a 

barmaid or a mailman. I could just as well throw all these papers in a river before sniffing some helium and letting 

go, because it was in the end only a part of the natural world. 


* * *


A Benedictine friend said there are three levels to transreligious experience: My religion is best. The second 

level: All religions are the same. And the third level that changes the first two: Through a deep reading of my 

own tradition, I find that all religious traditions converge. Likewise, through a deeper reading of my own language, 

I should be able to uncover a few words that correspond to certain transcendent words in other cultures. 

I shouldnt need to co-opt words like Brahman and Atman, no matter how much I am drawn to them and the novelty of 

their sound. 

I must find in English the words that bear the same force as those two do and share their meaning. This is my job. 

The worst sinners are the clerics who give God human attributes. Humans after all evolved from being slime into being 

beasts, and like all creatures, it was fear that drove us to change our form over time. Fear of being devoured, 

swallowed, and turned back into slime. Watch the scaled animal turn into a bird out of sheer terror, and you will see 

what humans went through, too. Humans are still formed from those evolutionary stages and revert to bestial behavior 

when threatened. 

Even if all of evolution happened, from the eye of eternity, in one wink, as a swift unveiling to the present day, 

this movement would be nothing like the stillness of God. This stillness is not something you come to, after years of 

struggle, or learn about, then encounter, or find refuge in, after a fight. It doesnt await you in a specific 

location. 

God is always in the same everyplace, without an adjective, an adverb, or a verb tense. The creator is creation 

itself. A baboon has knowledge of God just as a bee does, and a human child or a leaf. 

Fear is what holds humans back from evolving to full solidarity. Providing safety for peopleit has to be an action 

for all people. This is the difficulty. Everyone has to be safe for everyone to be safe. This is the messianic 

message. 

There are people like me who read a love letter over and over again. Every time they see a different message and a 

different level of love, and, until they have, read it backward and forward several times, and de-emphasize certain 

words. In fact, they cannot rest. 

For these people sound is eternal, it has no beginning or end. 

For others, the search for the right word produces a conclusion to a beginning. 

In both cases, happiness is the goal. 

Will I be happier if I call God Brahman? 

Will I be happier if I call God Divine? 

Will I be happier if I study the Trinity? 

Will I be happier if I discard the concept of both One and Three and head toward the Zero that is emptiness for 

Buddhists and fullness for Hindus? 

I will only be happier if I write a poem. 


The trees billow under a vague gray sky. 
Nearby and not far away, suffering. 
And the end of me. 
But if I know I have everything 
Then I can begin. 
Lucky to enter completion conscious. 
Lucky to be well. To have my cell. 
Wine, words, wafer, in all their forms. 
{excerpt, approx. one-quarter of the text, from March 2009 issue of Poetry Magazine}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/us...s.html?_r=1&hp --- http://www.clatsopcc.edu/fisherpoets/index.html ---Fisher Poets
12th Annual 
Gathering
Feb. 27 & 28, March 1 2009

----------


## quasimodo1

IN THE HIMALAYAS


Men who do not wear watches know
The sad infusion a concave glass 
Withholds. A life readies
For forgetfulness its forward distances, 
But these wheels return their moment
In the thrash of sex. When afterwards 
You ask what time it is, I cannot forswear
How near we are to that far country 
Where the sun arches
Into the east, the Ganges withdraws 
To its source, and mirrors rehearse
Our crabbed lives back to us. 
On the mountain a Sherpa discovers
The frozen body dressed a generation before. 
{excerpt} 
Copyright © William Logan
http://www.pshares.org/issues/articl...ArticleID=1126

----------


## quasimodo1

from The Oxford Book of American Poetry
{chosen and edited by David Lehman}

INSPIRATION
Today

I loathe poetry. I hate the clotted,
dicty poems of the great modernists,
disdainful of their truant audience,
and I hate also proletarian
poetry, with its dutiful rancors

and sing-along certainties. I hate
poetry readings and the dreaded verb
"to share." Let me share this knife with your throat,
suggested Mack. Today I'm a gnarl, a knot,
a burl. I'm furled in on myself and won't

be opened. I'm the bad mood if you try
to cheer me out of I'll smack you. Impasse
is where I come to escape from. It takes
a deep belief in one's own ignorance;
it takes, I tell you, desperate measures.

1998
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://raintaxi.com/online/2008winter/lee.shtml --- Behind My Eyes
Li-Young Lee 
W.W. Norton ($24.950
by Kristina Marie Darling
In Li-Young Lees Behind My Eyes, hieroglyphs collide head-on with parables, burning books, and breath to fan the 

fires nest, setting the stage for an elegant collection of poems. A highly anticipated follow-up to the authors 

previous four books, Lees newest work examines the many contradictions inherent in the immigrant experience, 

depicting them in spare, lyrical narratives throughout. Often juxtaposing thoughtful observations on identity and 

family with Western attempts to commercialize and quantify, Lees poems convey the difficulty of negotiating ones 

heritage with American cultural values, proving at once philosophical and grounded in everyday life.

Pairing consumer culture with the intensely personal, Lee often parodies the commercial when conveying the 

experiences of immigrants and refugees, suggesting that popular solutions like self-help and checklists prove 

frivolous in truly critical situations. His poem Self-Help for Fellow Refugees exemplifies this trend: 

Dont ask her what she thought she was doing
turning a childs eyes
away from history
and toward that place all human aching starts.

And if you meet someone
in your adopted country,
and think you see in the others face
an open sky, some promise of a new beginning,
it probably means youre standing too far.

Mimicking the tone of a self-help book through his use of imperative sentences and extended lists, the content of the 

poem creates a sharp contrast with the form the author appropriates. By such incongruities, Lee suggests that 

history and human aching remain fundamentally incompatible with commercialized solutionsa theme conveyed with 

elegance and refinement throughout the collection. {excerpt from RAINTAXI article}

----------


## JBI

I think I posted a Lee poem somewhere near the front of the thread, "Persimmons". If anyone is interested.

----------


## quasimodo1

THE ALBERT CHAIN


Like an accomplished terrorist, the fruit hangs 
from the end of a dead stem, under a tree 
riddled with holes like a sieve. Breath smelling 
of cinnamon retires into its dream to die there. 
Fresh air blows in, morning breaks, then the mists 
close in; a rivulet of burning air 
pumps up the cinders from their roots, 
but will not straighten in two radiant months 
the twisted forest. Warm as a stable, 
close to the surface of my mind, 
the wild cat lies in the suppleness of life, 
half-stripped of its skin, and in the square 
beyond, a squirrel stoned to death 
has come to rest on a lime tree. 

I am going back into war, like a house 
I knew when I was young: I am inside, 
a thin sunshine, a night within a night, 
getting used to the chalk and clay and bats 
swarming in the roof. Like a dead man 
attached to the soil which covers him, 
I have fallen where no judgment can touch me, 
its discoloured rubble has swallowed me up. 
For ever and ever, I go back into myself: 
I was born in little pieces, like specks of dust, 
only an eye that looks in all directions can see me. 
I am learning my country all over again, 
how every inch of soil has been paid for 
by the life of a man, the funerals of the poor. 


http://uk.poetryinternationalweb.org...bj_id=8501&x=1 -- {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

CINEMA CALENDAR OF THE ABSTRACT HEART


the fibres give in to your starry warmth
a lamp is called green and sees
carefully stepping into a season of fever
the wind has swept the rivers' magic
and i've perforated the nerve
by the clear frozen lake ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

VICTORY


There is no Rescue Mission where it isnt freezing 
from the need that created it. The lost children 
distill to pure chemical. Where Good is called No-Tone 
its the one who cries out who doesnt get a coat. 
The children fuse colors because they dont want to 
separate. Daughters shot off of hydrants who cut 
each other in the neck and gut, dont care 
which one of them will end up later in surgery. 
And drugged sons pretending to be costumes, 
well, theyre not welcome to comprehension either. 
Why does a wild child confuse a moon 
with a hole in his skin? 
One was born soaked in gin. 
His first sip was from a bottle of denial. 
What can leave me alone mean after that? 
The system is settled, dimensions fixed. 
Another ones hand feels like a starfish. 
Makes me hysterical like the word perestroika. 
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

from THE NERVE METER 

An actor is seen as if through crystals. 
Inspiration in stages. 
One musnt let in too much literature. 


I have aspired no further than the clockwork of the soul, I have transcribed only the pain of an abortive adjustment. 
I am a total abyss. Those who believed me capable of a whole pain, a beautiful pain, a dense and fleshy anguish, an anguish which is a mixture of objects, an effervescent grinding of forces rather than a suspended point 
and yet with restless, uprooting impulses which come from the confrontation of my forces with these abysses of offered finality 
(from the confrontation of forces of powerful size), 
and there is nothing left but the voluminous abysses, the immobility, the cold 
in short, those who attributed to me more life, who thought me at an earlier stage in the fall of the self, who believed me immersed in a tormented noise, in a violent darkness with which I struggled 
are lost in the shadows of man. 


In sleep, nerves tensed the whole length of my legs. 
Sleep came from a shifting of belief, the pressure eased, absurdity stepped on my toes. 


It must be understood that all of intelligence is only a vast contingency, and that one can lose it, not like a lunatic who is dead, but like a living person who is in life and who feels working on himself its attraction and its inspiration (of intelligence, not of life). 
The titillations of intelligence and this sudden reversal of contending parties. 
Words halfway to intelligence. 
This possibility of thinking in reverse and of suddenly reviling ones thought. 
This dialogue in thought. 
The ingestion, the breaking off of everything. 
And all at once this trickle of water on a volcano, the thin, slow falling of the mind. 


To find oneself again in a state of extreme shock, clarified by unreality, with, in a corner of oneself, some fragments of the real world. 


To think without the slightest breaking off, without pitfalls in my thought, without one of those sudden disappearances to which my marrow is accustomed as a transmitter of currents. 
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

OBLIQUE RAIN

translated from the Portuguese by Isabel Pinto Franco

III

The Great Sphinx of Egypt dreams into this paper . . .
I writeand she appears through my transparent hand
And at the corner of the paper the pyramids arise . . .

I writeam troubled to see the tip of my quill
Become King Cheops profile . . .
All of a sudden I stop . . .
Everything darkens . . . I fall into an abyss made of time . . .
Im buried under the pyramids writing verses under the clear light of 
this lamp
And all Egypt crushes me from above through the lines I draw with 
the quill . . .

I hear the Sphinx laugh inside
The sound of my quill running on paper . . .
A huge hand goes through me not being able to see it,
Sweeps everything to the corner of the ceiling that stands behind me,
And on the paper where I write, between it and the quill that writes
Lies King Cheops cadaver, staring at me with wide open eyes,
And in between our looks crossing each other the river Nile runs
And a happiness of sailing boats wanders
In a diffuse diagonal
Between me and what I think . . .

Funerals of King Cheops in old gold and Me! . . .

----------


## quasimodo1

from Aturuxos calados 



Regard a tree.
Who would have better seized lights longing?



Longing a labor is first, is first.
First the cold path of it. (Bring water.) Egregious



is a few steps over wet stones
hai ailala
or you might miss it













Shirred up, wet against the grain
silica might call out
its finger to the chest



pressed me still :





That day we passed between the two Toledos
anos annals années a-néantes espidas pido pidas





: rains hoof-marks
Horses shirred sleeping in wet fields









para María do Cebreiro

na hortiña do espello (¿espello?)
espiñas
as espiñas dos borrachos do neón
os borrachos do comprensible, do entendemento
estendido
ningures



o son aire rumor
en consecuencia



moi poucas palabriñas
cortesías
menos as eguas do pensamento,



empuxadas da lonxe.













That limitless strophe
: month



Sage or wary
Physically songs capacity



obriga cargada

onérous
these days.













Did I have seized ruckus
Jobs weir
catching (outcome) those fishes
and old leaves
me in the mill house at La Chaux
it all broken down, stone pushed into 
auga agua eaux
Writings succumb with great
happiness.
{excerpt from -- http://www.pshares.org/issues/articl...articleID=7555 }

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/bo...html?ref=books

----------


## quasimodo1

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.c...ves/?ref=books

----------


## quasimodo1

LANGUAGES



THERE are no handles upon a language 
Whereby men take hold of it 
And mark it with signs for its remembrance. 
It is a river, this language, 
Once in a thousand years 
Breaking a new course 
Changing its way to the ocean. 
It is mountain effluvia 
Moving to valleys 
And from nation to nation 
Crossing borders and mixing. 
Languages die like rivers. 
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/arts/21ziprin.html also... a "youtube" poem by Lionel Ziprin --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFveObkbc60

----------


## quasimodo1

from Poetry Magazine, April 2009
{translation issue}

THE NORTH WIND WHIPS

The north wind whips through,
in the streets papers and leaves
are chased with resentment.
Houses moan,
dogs curl into balls.
There is something in
the afternoon's fingers,
a catfish spine,
a rusty nail.

Someone unthinkingly
smoked cigarettes in heaven,
left it overcast, listless.
Here, at ground level, no one could
take their shadow for a walk,
sheltered in their houses, people
are surprised to discover their misery.

Someone didn't show,
their host was insulted.
Today the world,
agreed to open her thighs,
suddeny the village comprehends
that it is sometimes necessary to close their doors.

Who can tell me 
why I meditate on this afternoon? ... {excerpt}


{translated from the Isthmus Zapotec by David Shook}

----------


## quasimodo1

DIES IRAE

A tinny angelus rings in your ear.
Is this the message from the Great Unknown?
A secret raven? A red sky? Signs of the times?
The dark place where most people dont want to go?
Or are they merely selling the weather?
Wreathed in sea-smoke, Leukothea, the white goddess,
Speaks to you (in archaic Greek) of calculus,
The lack in lilac, lyrical blue milk of the mother.
A hand passes over flowing water, she says,
You are moved by your motion.
Yet only the golden string knows where it is going.
& looking up from his book, the counting master replies,
The sleep-maker listens for a foot on the stairs.
Jews of One Lemon, Nothing can save you. 

{excerpt, first stanza-- http://bostonreview.net/BR34.1/asekoff.php ....."Dies Irae", Latin for day of mourning, the name of the hymn sung at the mass of the dead}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://bostonreview.net/about/contest/

----------


## quasimodo1

THE MEDITERRANEAN 
Quem das finem, rex magne, dolorum? 

Where we went in the boat was a long bay 
A slingshot wide, walled in by towering stone-- 
Peaked margin of antiquity's delay, 
And we went there out of time's monotone: 
Where we went in the black hull no light moved 
But a gull white-winged along the feckless wave, 
The breeze, unseen but fierce as a body loved, 
That boat drove onward like a willing slave: 
Where we went in the small ship the seaweed 
Parted and gave to us the murmuring shore, 
And we made feast and in our secret need 
Devoured the very plates Aeneas bore: 
Where derelict you see through the low twilight 
The green coast that you, thunder-tossed, would win, 
Drop sail, and hastening to drink all night 
Eat dish and bowl to take that sweet land in! 
Where we feasted and caroused on the sandless 
Pebbles, affecting our day of piracy, 
What prophecy of eaten plates could landless 
Wanderers fulfil by the ancient sea? 
We for that time might taste the famous age 
Eternal here yet hidden from our eyes 
When lust of power undid its stuffless rage; 
They, in a wineskin, bore earth's paradise. 
Let us lie down once more by the breathing side 
Of Ocean, where our live forefathers sleep 
As if the Known Sea still were a month wide-- ...

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/bo...r=1&ref=review

----------


## quasimodo1

SOMETHING LIKE THAT


(translated by Liz Werner)




PARRA LAUGHS like he’s condemned to hell
but when haven’t poets laughed?
at least he declares that he’s laughing

they pass the years pass
the years
at least they seem to be passing
hypothesis non fingo 
everything goes on as if they were passing

now he starts to cry
forgetting that he’s an antipoet

0

STOP RACKING YOUR BRAINS
nobody reads poetry nowadays
it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad

0

FOUR DEFECTS that my Ophelia won’t forgive me for:
old
lowlife
communist
and National Literature Prize

<<My family may be able to forgive you 
for the first three
but never for the last>>

0
MY CORPSE and I
understand each other marvelously
my corpse asks me: do you believe in God?
and I respond with a hearty NO
my corpse asks: do you believe in the government?
and I respond with the hammer and sickle
my corpse asks: do you believe in the police?
and I respond with a punch in the face
then he gets up out of his coffin
and we go arm in arm to the altar

0

THE TRUE PROBLEM of philosophy
is who does the dishes

nothing otherworldly

God
*** the truth
******* the passage of time
absolutely
but first, who does the dishes

whoever wants to do them, go ahead
see ya later, alligator
******* and we're right back to being enemies ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

HAND RELIQUARY, AVE MARIA LANE



God knows that there is no proof
that part returns to wholeness
simply because miracles happen
at a single church-going.

Her verdant branches labelled
with the names of the five senses,
the garden not ours, she prayed
for her illness to last beyond the grave,

and be the unsealer of that tree.
She might have been dead for a week,
though she went on with her deep
dying, her womb a transparent crystal

turning into a brown relic
even before her death. The blinding
beauty of her hood opening
acted upon me as my own ghost ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/p...aindx.htm#ryan From the Atlantic Monthly, a magazine based anthology of poets known and not-so-well-known. Reader friendly format enticing one to subscribe. Poets like...Bly, Collins, Hirshfield, Kunitz, Matthews and Kay Ryan.

----------


## quasimodo1

LOST PARROT


She can cry his name from today to tomorrow.
She can Charlie him this, cracker him that, there
in the topmost he hangs like
a Christmas ornament,
his tail
a cascade of emeralds and limes.

The child is heartsick. She has taped messages
to the mailboxes, the names
he responds to, his favorite seeds.
At twilight she calls and calls.

Oh, Charlie, you went everywhere with her,
to the post office and the mall, to the women's
room at the Marriott where you perched
on the stall, good-natured, patient.

And didn't you love to take her thumb
in your golden beak
and, squeezing tenderly, shriek and shriek
as if your own gentleness
were killing you? ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/bo...r=1&ref=review --- My Daughters Murder 

By DAVID KIRBY
Published: April 10, 2009 
"At what point does life become art? 'Life being all inclusion and confusion,' Henry James wrote, 'and art being all discrimination and selection, the latter, in search of the hard latent value with which alone it is concerned, sniffs round the mass as instinctively and unerringly as a dog suspicious of some buried bone.' Kathleen Sheeder Bonannos searing lines about the murder of her daughter are all sniffing, no finding. There may indeed be 'hard latent value' in the calculated slaughter of a child; if so, you wont find it here" ... --- SLAMMING OPEN THE DOOR

By Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno

61 pp. Alice James Books. Paper, $15.95

----------


## quasimodo1

XII. Heres Our Clean Business Now Lets Go Down the Hall to the Black Room Where I Make My Real Money

You want to see how things were going from the husbands point of view---
lets go round the back,
there stands the wife
gripping herself at the elbows and facing the husband.
Not tears he is saying, not tears again. But still they fall.
She is watching him.
Im sorry he says. Do you believe me.
Watching.
I never wanted to harm you.
Watching.
This is banal. Its like Beckett. Say something!
I believe

your taxi is here she said.
He looked down at the street. She was right. It stung him,
the pathos of her keen hearing.
There she stood a person with particular traits,
a certain heart, life beating on its way in her.
He signals to the driver, five minutes.
Now her tears have stopped.
What will she do after I go? he wonders. Her evening. It closed his breath.
Her strange evening.
Well he said.
Do you know she began.
What.


If I could kill you I would then have to make another exactly like you.
Why.
To tell it to.
Perfection rested on them for a moment like calm on a lake.
Pain rested.
Beauty does not rest.
The husband touched his wifes temple
and turned
and ran
down
the
stairs. 

--Anne Carson, The Beauty of the Husband: a fictional essay in 29 tangos 
{excerpt} -- http://www.fort.org/carson_xii.html

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v3n2/no...d/matthews.htm --- DAVID WOJAHN
Review | Search Party: Collected Poems, by William Matthews, 
edited by Sebastian Matthews and Stanley Plumly
(Houghton Mifflin, 2004) 

Search Party brings together the best work of a uniquely eloquent poet, one of the most original voices of his 

generation, and surely the most readable. And the book comes along at the right time, for among those poets born 

roughly between 1935 and 1945a group which includes Glück, Hass, Wright, Palmer, Williams, Bidart, Plumly, Pinsky, 

and Olds, among othersMatthews is the one whose reputation has seemed most at risk. Although Matthews was something 

of a ubiquitous figure on the literary landscape of the 1980s and early '90s, recent anthologies have ignored him, 

and his work has attracted little critical attention. Perhaps this has to do with Matthews' early death from a heart 

attack in 1997, but I suspect that it has more to do with the writing itself: Matthews' mature style remains 

blissfully indifferent to most of the prevailing literary fashions. Although his early work derives from the 

surrealist-tinged poetics of Deep Image poets such as Merwin and James Wright, and he never wholly abandoned the Deep 

Image predilection for startling pyrotechnical metaphors, the values of his mature work are Horatianand Matthews 

translated Horacearising from good sense, wit, an insatiable curiosity, an affable authorial presence, and a 

slightly shambling quest for wisdom. Matthews was not interested in the earnest disassemblings and assaults on 

linearity which have come to be such an important aspect of our period style, nor did he display the self-indulgence 

and mere schtick which contemporary poets have often confused with wit. Search Party makes a very persuasive case for 

Matthews' continuing importance, thanks not only to the poems but also to a superbly insightful introductory essay by 

his friend and fellow poet Stanley Plumly. The book is not a definitive Matthewsa good number of worthy poems from 

his individual collections and even his 1992 Selected Poems have been omitted, and Plumly and his co-editor Sebastian 

Matthews have culled only a tantalizingly small portion of the many poems which Matthews published in journals but 

did not include in his books. Ideally, a Complete Matthews will be available someday; in the meantime, this book does 

ample justice to his writing. {excerpt from review... Blackbird Archive}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/ar..._r=1&ref=books --- Deborah Digges, Poet Who Channeled Struggles, Dies at 59 (obituary, Margalit Fox, 4/16/09) Quoted in this obituary is the poem "Searsucker Suit" -- To the curator of the museum, to the exhibition of fathers, 

to the next room from this closet of trousers 

and trousers, full sail the walnut hangers of shirts, 

O the great ghost ships of his shoes. 

Through the racks and the riggings, 

belt buckles ringing and coins in coat pockets 

and moths that fly up from the black woolen remnants, 

his smell like a kiss blown through hallways of cedar, 

the shape of him locked in his burial clothes, 

his voice tucked deep in his name, 

his keys and the bells to his heart, 

I am passing his light blue seersucker suit 

with one grass-stained knee, 

and a white shirt, clean boxers, clean socks, a handkerchief.

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/ma...html?ref=books --- "Since Seidel published the first of his 

10 collections nearly 50 years ago  a complete gathering of them, Poems 1959-2009, will be published this week  

his poetry has remained largely unknown to the general public while attracting heated critical commentary. Seidel has 

numerous distinguished admirers inside the literary world  poets as famous as Billy Collins and Paul Muldoon, 

critics as respected as Richard Poirier and Adam Phillips, novelists as laureled as Norman Rush and Jonathan Franzen 

 and has been called by the critic Adam Kirsch perhaps the best American poet writing today. Meanwhile, from other 

corners of that world, Seidel has earned different and more complicated epithets: sinister, disturbing, savage, 

the most frightening American poet ever and even the Darth Vader of contemporary poetry. ...{excerpt from 

article, NYTimes magazine} re: Frederick Seidel

----------


## quasimodo1

from THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE..CXVIII 

By default, as it so happens, here we have 
good and bad angels caught burning 
themselves characteristic antiphons; 
and here the true and the false 
shepherds discovered 
already deep into their hollow debate. 
Is that all? No, add spinners of fine 
calumny, confectioners of sugared 
malice; add those who find sincerity 
in heartless weeping. Add the pained, 
painful clowns, brinksmen of perdition. 
Sidney: best realizer and arguer 
of music, that divine 
striker upon the senses, steady my 
music to your Augustinian grace-notes, 
with your high craft of fret. I am glad 
to have learned how it goes 
with you and with Italianate- 
Hebraic Milton: your voices pitched exactly 
somewherebetween Laus Deo and defiance. 
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Stone's Secret



Otter-smooth boulder
lies under rolling
black river-water
stilled among frozen
hills and the still unbreathed 
blizzards aloft; 
silently, icily, is probed 
stone's secret.

Out there --past trace
of eyes, past these
and those memorial skies 
dotting back signals from 
men's made mathematics (we
delineators of curves and time who are
subject to these) --
out there, inaccessible
to grammar's language the 
stones curve vastnesses,
cold or candescent
in the perceived 
processional of space. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/bo...l?8bu&emc=bua2 --- Constantine Cavafy ---

COLLECTED POEMS

By C. P. Cavafy

Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn

547 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $35


THE UNFINISHED POEMS

By C. P. Cavafy

Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn

121 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $30

A review... "A Poet's Progress" by James Langenbach, April 17, 2009

----------


## quasimodo1

BIRDWATCHERS OF AMERICA -- I suffer now continually from vertigo, and today, 23rd of January, 1862, I received a singular warning: I felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me. 

BAUDELAIRE, Journals


It’s all very well to dream of a dove that saves, 

Picasso’s or the Pope’s, 
The one that annually coos in Our Lady’s ear 

Half the world’s hopes, 
And the other one that shall cunningly engineer 
The retirement of all businessmen to their graves, 

And when this is brought about 
Make us the loving brothers of every lout— 

But in our part of the country a false dusk 

Lingers for hours; it steams 
From the soaked hay, wades in the cloudy woods, 

Engendering other dreams. 
Formless and soft beyond the fence it broods 
Or rises as a faint and rotten musk 

Out of a broken stalk. 
There are some things of which we seldom talk; ... {excerpt}

----------


## JBI

Look at that rhyme scheme on the above one, it's almost effortless, but the skeleton is so dominant - how does he do it!

----------


## quasimodo1

NABOKOV'S BLUES


The wallful of quoted passages from his work, 
with the requisite specimens pinned next 
to their literary cameo appearances, was too good 

a temptation to resist, and if the curator couldnt, 
why should we? The prose dipped and shimmered 
and the flies, as I heard a buff call them, stood 

at lurid attention on their pins. If you love to read 
and look, you could be happy a month in that small 
room. One of the Nabokov photos Id never seen: 

hes writing (left-handed! why did I never trouble 
to find out?) at his stand-up desk in the hotel 
apartment in Montreux. The pictures mostly 

of his back and the small wedge of face that shows 
brims with indifference to anything not on the page. 
The windows shut. A tiny lamp trails a veil of light 

over the page, too far away for us to read. 
We also liked the chest of specimen drawers 
labeled, as if for apprentice Freudians, 

Genitalia, wherein languished in phials 
the thousands he examined for his monograph 
on the Lycaenidae, the silver-studded Blues. 

And there in the center of the room a carillon 
of Blues rang mutely out. There must have been 
three hundred of them. Amandas Blue was there, 

and the Chalk Hill Blue, the Karner Blue 
(Lycaeides melissa samuelis Nabokov), 
a Violet-Tinged Copper, the Mourning Cloak, 

an Echo Azure, the White-Lined Green Hairstreak, 
the Cretan Argus (known only from Mt. Ida: 
in the series Nabokov did on this beauty 

he noted for each specimen the altitude at which 
it had been taken), and as the ads and lovers say, 
and much, much more. The stilled belle of the tower 

was a Lycaeides melissa melissa. No doubt 
its an accident Melissa rhymes, sort of, with Lolita,
The scant hour we could lavish on the Blues 

flew by, and we improvised a path through cars 
and slush and boot-high berms of mud-blurred snow 
to wherever we went next. ..... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Review of her new book, "Darwin: A Life in Poems" --- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/books/18pade.html?em --- Darwins Descendant, on Origin of Poetry 

By CHARLES McGRATH
Published: April 17, 2009 
"The British poet Ruth Padel, a favorite to be named the Oxford Professor of Poetry this spring, is Charles Darwins great-great-granddaughter, though for much of her life she has preferred not to dwell on the connection.

A feature of Darwins is that theyre quite reticent, she said last week during a visit to New York that included a stop at the American Museum of Natural History."

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/ny..._r=1&ref=books --- A Celebrated Princeton 

Poet Organizes a Festival of His Peers 



By MARY JO PATTERSON
Published: April 17, 2009 
"POETRY is not everyones daily bread, but even those who would be hard pressed to name three great living poets 

understand its power, says Paul Muldoon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and professor of creative writing at 

Princeton University. ..."

----------


## quasimodo1

from The Colossus and Other Poems

WATERCOLOR OF GRANTCHESTER MEADOWS

There, spring lambs jam the sheepfold. In air
Stilled, silvered as water in a glass
Nothing is big or fat.
The small shrew chitters from its wilderness
Of grassheads and is heard.
Flits nimble-winged in thickets, and of good color.

Cloudrack and owl-hollowed willows slanting over
The bland Granta double their white and green 
World under the sheer water
And ride that flux at anchor, upside down.
The punter sinks his pole.
In Byron's pool
Cattails part where the tame cygnets steer.

It is a country on a nursery plate. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

{from Nigeria, 1932-1967}

ELEGY FOR ALTO
{with Drum Accompaniment}

AND THE HORN may now paw the air howling goodbye. . . .

For the Eagles are now in sight:
Shadows in the horizon--

THE ROBBERS are here in black sudden steps of showers, of 
caterpillars--

THE EAGLES have come again,
The eagles rain down on us--

POLITICIANS are back in giant hidden steps of howitzers, of
detonators--

THE EAGLES descend on us,
Bayonets and cannons--

THE ROBBERS descend on us to strip us of our laughter, of our
thunder--

THE EAGLES have chosen their game, 
Taken our concubines--

POLITICIANS are here in this iron dance of mortars, of generators--

THE EAGLES are suddenly there,
New stars of iron dawn;

So let the horn paw the air howling goodbye. . . .

O mother mother Earth, unbind me; let this be my last testament;
let this be
The ram's hidden wish to the sword the sword's secret prayer to
the scabbard--

THE ROBBERS are back in black hidden steps of detonators--

FOR BEYOND the blare of sirened afternoons, beyond the
motorcades;
Beyond the voices and days, the echoing highways; beyond the
latescence
Of our dissonant airs; through our curtained eyeballs, through our
shuttered sleep,
Onto our forgotten selves, onto our broken images; beyond the 
barricades
Commandments and edicts, beyond the iron tables, beyond the
elephant's
Legendary patience, beyond his inviolable bronze bust; beyond
our crumbling towers--

BEYOND the iron path careering along the same beaten track--

THE GLIMPSE of a dream lies smouldering in a cave, together with
the mortally wounded birds.
Earth, unbind me; ... {excerpt}

{in 1967, Christopher Okigbo was killed as a combatant in a Nigerian civil war}

----------


## quasimodo1

{Austria, 1926-1973}

INVOCATION OF THE GREAT BEAR

Great Bear, come down, shaggy night,
Cloud-coated beast with the old eyes,
star eyes.
Through the thickets your paws break
star claws.
We guard our herds with a watchful eye,
though caught in your spell, and mistrust
your tired flanks and sharp,
half--bared fangs,
old bear

. . . . . . . . . . . .


Be afraid or don't be afraid!
Just drop your coins in the collection basket and give
the blind man a good word,
let him hold the bear on its leash.
And spice the lambs well.
Perhaps this bear
will break loose, stop threatening
and chase all the cones that have fallen
from the pines, from the great, winged ones
hurled down from Paradise.

{translated from the German by Mark Anderson, excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

{Brazil, 1902-1987}

SEVEN-SIDED POEM 

When I was born, one of the crooked
angels who live in shadow, said:
Carlos, go on! Be gauche in life.

The houses watch the men,
men who run after women.
If the afternoon had been blue,
there might have been less desire.

The trolley goes by full of legs:
white legs, black legs, yellow legs.
My God, why all the legs?
My heart asks. But my eyes
Ask nothing at all.

The man behind the mustache
is serious, simple, and strong
He hardly ever speaks.

. . . . . . . .




Universe, vast universe,
if I had been named Eugene
that would not be what I mean
but it would go into verse
faster.

Universe, vast universe,
my heart is vaster.

I oughtn't to tell you,
but this moon
and this brandy
play the devil with one's emotions.

{translated from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Bishop, excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

{Italy, b. 1921}

HOW LONG

How long between the grain and the wind
of those garrets
higher, more spun out than the sky,
how long I have left you
my writings, my withered risks.
With angel and chimera
with ancient instrument,
with the diary and the drama
the nights play by turns with the sun.
I left you up there to save
from the cauterizing light
my uncertain roof
the disoriented gables,
terraces where the crazed hail walks:

you, only shadow in winter,
shadow among the ice-demons.
Moths and noxious butterflies
rats and moles descending to hibernate
taught and refined you,
Sagittarius and Capricorn
slanted cold lances at you
and Aquarius tempered in its silences
in its transparencies
a year dripping with blood, an inexplicable
loss of mine.

{excerpt, not from link posted below}

{translated from the Italian by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann} ...................
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presss...bookkey=190728 --- Andrea Zanzotto is widely 

considered Italys most influential living poet. The first comprehensive collection in thirty years to translate this 

master European poet for an English-speaking audience, The Selected Poetry and Prose of Andrea Zanzotto includes the 

very best poems from fourteen of his major books of verse and a selection of thirteen essays that helps illuminate 

themes in his poetry as well as elucidate key theoretical underpinnings of his thought. Assembled with the 

collaboration of Zanzotto himself and featuring a critical introduction, thorough annotations, and a generous 

selection of photographs and art, this volume brings an Italian master to vivid life for American readers. ...

----------


## quasimodo1

WHAT GOES ON 
Selected and New Poems, 1995-2009. 
By Stephen Dunn. 
Norton, $24.95. --- --- 

MERCURY DRESSING 
Poems. 
By J. D. McClatchy. 
Knopf, $25. --- --- 

ONE SECRET THING 
By Sharon Olds. 
Knopf, $26.95. --- --- 

SESTETS 
By Charles Wright. 
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $23. --- --- {reviews of these new collections... 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/bo...1&8bu&emc=bua2 }

----------


## quasimodo1

{Portugal, 1919-2004}

MUSE

Muse teach me the song
Revered and primordial...
.....................

Or changed into the wall
Of the first house
Or become he murmur
Of sea all around

(I remember the floor
Of well-scrubbed planks
Its soapy smell
Keeps coming back)

Muse teach me the song
Of the sea's breath
Heaving with brilliants
Muse teach me the song
Of the white room
And the square window

.................

Because time pierces
Time divides
And time thwarts
Tears me alive
From the walls and floor
Of the first house

Muse teach me the song
Revered and primordial
To fix the brilliance 
Of the polished morning

That rested its fingers
Gently on the dunes
And whitewashed the walls
Of those simple rooms

Muse teach me the song
That chokes my throat

{translated from the Portuguese by Ruth Fainlight, excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

{Serbia, 1922-1991}

THE SHADOW MAKER

You walk forever and ever
Over your own individual infinity
From head to heel and back

You're your own source of light
The zenith is in your head
In your heel its setting

Before it dies you let your shadows out
To lengthen to estrange themselves
To work miracles and shame
And bow down only to themselves

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

from Poetry, May 2009

WINTER

..........

Winter is out for a lot this year
the hand already is stiff
the crying of children is heard in the house
one will we be one life
I hear my house slip with the world
and scream all that has been screamed
the heart rams its boat into ice
shells rustling in the hull
winter is out for as much.

If I freeze fast in the ice
if you freeze fast my child
my great fear as I come
if you freeze fast my life:
then I am a vulture of wings and ice
tearing my liver, my living life
awake in eternity.

This winter is in for a lot.
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

BESIDE A CHRYSANTHEMUM

To bring one chrysanthemum
to flower, the cuckoo has cried
since spring.

To bring one chrysanthemum to bloom,
thunder has rolled
through the black clouds

Flower, like my sister returning
from distant, youthful byways
of throat-tight longing
to stand by the mirror:

{excerpt}

----------


## jinjang

So Chong-ju

The SNAKE

A lovely snake
lies on the footpath
thick with mint and musk.
What sorrow has shaped your form,
so repulsive?
Beautiful as a colored ankle-band
of my boy's.
Your forked tongue that darts, speechbound,
in and out of a red cave
was once glib enough
for your ancester to tempt Eve.
Bite spitefully into the blue sky.
Be gone with your repulsive head.

Breathless as if kerosene would burn my vitals
I chase it, hurling stones as it
as it slithers along the path
thick with musk and flowers,
but not to avenge Eve, Adam's spouse.

I wish to wear around my body
your skin-color lovelier than colored ankle-band.
With your beautiful lips redder than Cleopatra's,
sink into my soul, Snake.
You have lovely lips like a cat's,
like the lips of my daughter Sunhi
turning twenty.

-1936

----------


## jinjang

Yi Hyong-gi

FALLEN PETALS

It's beautiful to see one
sensible enough to go
when it is time to go

Passing through the inferno
of springtime passion
my love is fading now

Petals thickly falling
we must go now
loaded with parting bliss

Toward the deep green shade
toward autumn about to bear fruit
my youth fades like a flower

Let us part
our pale hands waving
when petals start to drift to the ground

My love, farewell,
you're my soul's sad eyes that mature
like water filling up a well

-1963

----------


## quasimodo1

So Chong-Ju


A SNEEZE
......
I stepped out
into the blue autumn day's
winds that touched the ricepaper door.
I sniffed at the weather,
and sneezed.

Somewhere
is someone
saying my words?

Somewhere
as someone says my words,
Has a flower overheard and passed them along?

The clouds split as I look up--
a shining brassy spot of sun
on the mountain's back.

Traces that stir
the waves of an old love.

Is someone 
somewhere
saying my words?

..... {excerpt}

{translated from the Korean by David R. McCann}

----------


## JBI

> So Chong-Ju
> 
> 
> A SNEEZE
> ......
> I stepped out
> into the blue autumn day's
> winds that touched the ricepaper door.
> I sniffed at the weather,
> ...


Do you have the collection, or just one poem? I'm curious as to how the translation is, as I hear he was one of the most revered of modern Korean poets.

----------


## jinjang

"Traces that stir
the waves of an old love." of Korean poems for me!

I do not have it in Korean unfortunately and I am not sure how it is translated.

It seems to me that the poet is missing someone or something without being depressed but with a tingy of humor.

Thank you for kindling my interests in poetry!

----------


## quasimodo1

{Italy, b. 1947}

from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry
( edited by J.D. McClatchy )

TO SIMULATE THE BURNING OF THE HEART

To simulate the burning of the heart, the humiliation
of the viscera, to flee cursed
and cursing, to horde chastity
and to cry for it, to keep my mouth
from the dangerous taste of other mouths
and push it unfulfilled to fulfill itself with the poisons of food,
in the apotheosis of dinners when the already
swollen belly continues to swell;
to touch unreachable solitude and there
at the foot of a bed, a chair
or the stairs to recite a goodbye,
so that I can expel you from my fantasy
and cover you with ordinary clouds
so that your light will not fade my path,
....... {excerpt}

{translated from the Italian by Judith Baumel}

----------


## jinjang

I appreciate your choice of poems. I read this one 10 times, concentrating more on some lines than others.

I wondered for a while why the poet would call the burning of the heart  the humiliation of the viscera, but guessed the answer by reading to touch unreachable solitude so that your light will not fade my path. Some passionate people would rather plunge into the emotional abyss. This poem seems to indicate the persons effort to seek detachment from the burning of heart and to seek peace rather than heart-breaking. Is it simply self-preservation? 

When we read a poem, we all get different perception and appreciation. I hope I am not spoiling it by giving my interpretation.

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/bo..._r=1&ref=books --- MY HAPPINESS BEARS NO RELATION TO 

HAPPINESS 

A Poets Life in the Palestinian Century 

By Adina Hoffman 

Illustrated. 454 pages. Yale University Press. $27.50. --- Biography of Taha Muhummad

----------


## quasimodo1

THIS TIME I WON'T PERMIT THE BLUE

This time I won't permit the blue, glimpsed
and seen from behind the window, from the edge of one roof
to another, in the sole grand explanation
of repetition, carrying the glance beyond
every limit, beyond the vision of the distances,
Temptation and blackmail of lightness and movement, this time
I won't permit it to bribe me in the promise of light.

I won't permit the flight of odors, the air
beaten by sounds and by wings, the fast flashes
Of a pigeon mirrored in the shadow
Of the eaves, that, walking, embroiders the edge,
that throws itself in the vacuum only to later
rise up, I won't permit them to drag me through the streets
to beat my body, defaced of all geography,
oblivious to all tendency, in order to beat 
in me the sleeping wound of stupor.

{translated from the Italian by Judith Baumel}

----------


## Sapphire

I really like this one! It makes me want to learn Italian, just to know how it would sound in that language  :Smile:  Thank you very much for posting.

----------


## jinjang

> I won't permit it to bribe me in the promise of light.
> ...
> I won't permit them to drag me through the streets
> to beat my body, defaced of all geography,
> oblivious to all tendency, in order to beat
> in me the sleeping wound of stupor.


What was her past experience such that she resists that much "the light" and that she wants to stay as "the sleeping wound of stupor?" It certainly rouses one's curiosity and imagination. 

But, I would rather "throw" myself "in the vacuum" and suffer if I must. It feels so restrained and feel almost claustrophobic, otherwise.

Great poem!

----------


## quasimodo1

By BRAD STONE
Published: May 17, 2009 
SAN FRANCISCO  "Turning itself into a kind of electronic vanity publisher, Scribd, an Internet start-up here, will 

introduce on Monday a way for anyone to upload a document to the Web and charge for it. 

The Scribd Web site is the most popular of several document-sharing sites that take a YouTube-like approach to text, 

letting people upload sample chapters of books, research reports, homework, recipes and the like. Users can read 

documents on the site, embed them in other sites and share links over social networks and e-mail. 

In the new Scribd store, authors or publishers will be able to set their own price for their work and keep 80 percent 

of the revenue. They can also decide whether to encode their documents with security software that will prevent their 

texts from being downloaded or freely copied.

Authors can choose to publish their documents in unprotected PDFs, which would make them readable on the Amazon 

Kindle and most other mobile devices. Scribd also says it is readying an application for the iPhone from Apple and 

will introduce it next month. ..... " --- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/technology/start-

ups/18download.html?_r=1&ref=books

----------


## quasimodo1

"Ruth Padel, right, has been elected the new Oxford professor of poetry and will be the first woman to hold the post 

since it was established in 1708, the Guardian reported." ---- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/bo...html?ref=books

----------


## quasimodo1

{Japan b. 1931}

A POETRY CALENDAR

I who wait for myself
I who don't appear
again today I turn a page of the sea
throw away a tight-lipped dead clam

the day not white dawn the beach white
a mother's barren womb a broken oar
.........................................

the day not white dawn a useless parasol
a suspicious laugh cold fried food

I who wait for myself
I who don't appear
again today I turn a page of the sky
sweep together and throw away all the sooty stardust

the day not quite dawn the grass full of hanging tears
I leaf and leaf through a calendar
Yes I don't appear
I who wait for myself
world of imaginary numbers love without arms

{translated from the Japanese by Naoshi Koriyama and Edward Lueders}
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

{Israel, b. 1936}

SURELY YOU REMEMBER

After they all leave,
I remain alone with the poems,
some poems of mine, some of others.
I prefer poems that others have written.
I remain quiet, and slowly
the not in my throat dissolves.
I remain.

Sometimes I wish everyone would go away.
Maybe it's nice, after all, to write poems.
You sit in your room and the walls grow taller.
Colors deepen.
A blue kerchief becomes a deep well.

You wish everyone would go away.
You don't now what's the matter with you.
Perhaps you'll think of something.
Then it all passes, and you are pure crystal.

After that, love.
Narcissus was so much in love with himself.
Only a fool doesn't understand
he loved the river, too.

You sit alone.
Your heart aches, but
it won't break.
The faded images wash away one by one.
Then the defects.
A sun sets at midnight. You remember
the dark flowers too.

..............................

Only a fool lets the sun set when it likes.
It always drifts off too early
westward to the islands.

Sun and moon, winter and summer
will come to you,
infinite treasures.

{translated from the Hebrew by Chana Block and Ariel Blockk}
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/bo...Brouwer-t.html --- Poetry Chronicle 




Reviews by JOEL BROUWER
Published: April 24, 2009 
WHAT GOES ON 
Selected and New Poems, 1995-2009. 
By Stephen Dunn. 
Norton, $24.95.

----------


## quasimodo1

TUOLOMNE


(Tu•ol'•omn•e. 1. a river in
California, north of the
Yosemite. 2. a meadowland on
the river, above Hetch-Hetchy.
3. a tribe, now vanished.)

for Meg Nye

Lord, look at the grass. 
Globs, glebes, gallopings, a whole ocean
and blade after blade after blade
of promiscuous 
grass. 
It could make a man feel called.
Called on the carpet. 
Yes, Lord, yes,
I let my seed fall on the rocky ground.
I never laid my talents out to found 
The many-mansioned condominium.
I stop off to camp out on the way home 
From a trip west to see my married daughter,
And look at me.
Big woodsman.
I’m so dumb
I build my space-age puptent on the sand.

You read me well enough.
Mornings, chilled to the marrow, when I stand
And squint out over the pebble-brightening water,
Something there is that shakes me by the scruff.

I forage off. I climb a little bluff
And kick my morning cat-hole in the dirt.
My knees are cold. They hurt.
I get down close to what my heel turned over.
All made of leaves! Oh look:
So many profligacies brought to book.
Look at the way the crumbs and fragments glisten.

Tell me again thy teachings, Lord, I’ll listen.

Happy the man who hunkers down and mulls
A second reading of the parables.
I brought your book along to do just that.
Let’s see now; have I got the message pat?

Where there is soil, plant seed. Where there is boulder,
Cover the same with buildings. Neither build
Nor scatter seed along the highway shoulder,
But if you are an ethnic, scavenge there
For someone newly robbed, or damn near killed,
Or both, whom it behooves you to befriend.
If you are merely indigent, perpend:
The hedges and the ditches are the place
To stand forth and be feculent in case
Some parvenu who planned a banquet gets
A mailboxfull of monogrammed regrets
And throws himself a little social tantrum.
If someone slips you money, don’t succumb
To modesty or misplaced moral scruple.
Throw it around! Invest! It might quadruple.
Weeds, you weed out. Collect the weed seed, though.
Your enemy may sink his pot of gold
In millet-fields and leave them unpatrolled.
Salt, you are meant to savor, not to sow,
Unless there be a grievance to avenge.
On sand, thou shalt not build nor plant nor scavenge,
But meditate. The sand shall be a standard
Of competition and comparison
In counting up the offspring of the dutiful.
The lily too shall function. It is beautiful.
Lastly, at unpredicted interval,
A sparrow shall conveniently fall
To test the quickness of the Cosmic Eyeball. 
I have committed whimsy. There. So be it. 
I have not followed wisdom as I see it.
You avalanche me sermons and I make 
Rhymes for the sake of rhymes. 
Break 
This sinner, Lord, of his lamented crimes. 

It’s not as if you hadn’t, lots of times, 
Shown me the moon.
The kingdom brought to birth.
Convulsion in the ferns. The very earth 
Rising above itself in ecstasies.
Haven’t I gone glass-eyed onto my knees
To pry into the busyness of these
Green legions, every microscopic blob
A roller-palace with a milling mob 
Of chloroplasts careening around in it
A dozen or two dozen times a minute?
How furious they are as they compete
At drawing water up a hundred feet
To let a picturebook blue spruce complete 
Its simulacrum of a waterfall.
A man’d have to think exceeding small
To get no hustle from that plasmic jazz.
Quadrillions! Every cell as frenzied as
A Circus Maximus beside a Tiber. 
Whole generations toughen into fiber 
And turn into the body of the mother
While I scratch out one verbal razzmatazz
And heavy up my notebook with another.
They have their conquests to consolidate.
And I? I guess I’m here to celebrate
Myself, your works, man’s passions, or the State,
Depending on which school I emulate.
And do I mock? I mock. And grieve? I grieve.
There’s nothing I would gladlier achieve
Than Poetry. I mean the serious thing.
Not this Pop-Popean ringa-dingdinging.

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

{Czech Republic, b. 1923}

MAN CURSING THE SEA

Someone
just climbed to the top of the cliffs
and began to curse the sea.

Dumb water, stupid pregnant water,
slow, slimy copy of the sky,
you peddler between sun and moon,
pettifogging pawnbroker of shells,
soluble, loud-mouthed bull,
fertilizing the rocks with your blood,
suicidal sword
dashed to bits on the headland,
hydra, hydrolizing the night,
breathing salty clouds of silence,
spreading jelly wings
in vain, in vain,
gorgon, devouring its own body,

water, you absurd flat skull of water---

...............................

And then he came down
and patted
the tiny immense stormy mirror of the sea.

There you go, water, he said,
and went his way.

{translated from the Czech by Stuart Friebert and Dana Habova}
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/ny...html?ref=books --- Infinite Poetry, From a Finite Number 


By KEVIN COYNE
Published: May 15, 2009 
Union City



Kevin Coyne
POETS CORNER A street sign in Union City honors a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. 

New Jersey
Complete Coverage »
In the Region
Connecticut »
Westchester »
Long Island »ITS not much of a yard by the standards of most of America  just a postage stamp of grass behind the house at the corner of Fourth Street and New York Avenue, fenced by chain link and shaded by an unruly maple, here in this densest of cities in this densest of states. But like many things in New Jersey, it turns out to be larger than it looks at first glance.

The eminent poet W. S. Merwin lived at this corner until he was 9, a block away from the Presbyterian church his father pastored. Several years ago, long after he had won his first Pulitzer, his boyhood city honored him with a street sign here: W. S. Merwin Way, it reads. Last month, Mr. Merwin won a second Pulitzer prize for poetry  the fourth New Jersey poet to win in the last 10 years, a streak that is unmatched of late by any other state, and one that raises the question of whether it is more than just a happy coincidence.

----------


## quasimodo1

{Belgium, b. 1942}

THE CITY

The city is covered with places you
took from me. Full of joint
footsteps, full of joint laughs.
They were sheltered by dreams and if need be
love grabbed the gun to protect them.

Tell my legs how to evade
what belonged to them.
Tell them. They refuse to believe
that the theaters have burnt, restaurants
were hit by plagues, terraces vanished
into thin air, hotels closed,
the courtyard was demolished.

I bow my head and think
the rain will not hit me. ............. {excerpt}

{translated from the Flemish by John van Tiel}

----------


## quasimodo1

THOUSANDS OF BROADWAYS 
Dreams and Nightmares of the American Small Town. 
By Robert Pinsky. 
University of Chicago, $16. 


Pinsky, a former poet laureate, first delivered the thoughts contained in this slim volume in a series of lectures at Rice University. Much of the book reads like the transcript of a class one might guiltlessly sleep through. “The American small town, by now a setting at least half-mythical,” he argues, “provides a mimetic arena where contradictions between slavery and freedom, or between abundance and emptiness, hark back to even more fundamental contradictions.” 
{quote from review...NYTimes}

----------


## Sapphire

*@the City*

At first I did not read carefully and I thought the poem was written in 1942. I thought it was about WWII. Now I see I was wrong and the writer was born in that year. 

I did not know this poet. I will check him out - thank you for introducing him. I have to say I like the Dutch version a bit better though. It says rather "the plague" than "plagues", "the terraces" than terraces etc. I wonder why the translator changed it. And the last verse is a bit different in translation too - putting a "." where a "," is. I kind of like that though... I guess translation is just as much about making choices as writing the poetry itself is  :Smile:  

I like the idea - how a city looses all its charm when you loose the one you explored that city with. The one you lived with in that city.

----------


## quasimodo1

To Sapphire: It's great that you know Flemish and can re-translate with effect. Let me post another by the same author and you can give me your opinion of the translator/translation. q1

----------


## quasimodo1

{Belgium, b. 1942)

PARTY 

After years the reunion. Brushed the dogs,
the feuds forgotten, the sons the image
of the father. Comparing weight:
belly, money, and ethics.

The late-comers are not expected earlier.
She who once was the queen, casts around
pictures of her daughters, and nobody
is surprised when the poet asks for the name
of the lady who was his big childhood love.

The laughers are talking condoms again, smoking almost
completely forbidden and anyone who does not embrace
United Europe now is lost. The cinders in the barbecue
Are glowing red. No lack of cancer causes here.

The munchies are going round, the whisky works its miracles
and from the wounds of the bacon the fat is dripping.
The names of the dead are exchanged like addresses
on the last holiday. {excerpt}

{translated from the Flemish by John Van Tiel}

----------


## quasimodo1

IN THE RING OF TWENTY SIGNS

—after Joseph Campbell

The third ring is the future scraping
the present: what is next enters, closes 
itself to the past. The fifth ring is
observation. The sixth, satisfaction 
of what is known. The fourth ring 
is worry, but that is naive, short-lived, 
a waste of time, which is the tenth ring, 
the middle. The eleventh ring is pleasure; 
feeding, but not gluttony, sex but not 
depletion. The twelfth ring: love. 
The thirteenth, love undone, unleashed
attachment. Rings six through nine are 
marriage. The fourteenth ring is silence.
The fifteenth, desire. The sixteenth 
ring, mercy. The sixteenth ring is true.
At seventeen you stand alone on the stairway.
The seventeenth ring is achievement.
The eighteenth gives it all away. Not
generously. Not regretfully. Just given.
The nineteenth ring is loneliness suffered
despite oneself. ..... {excerpt}



Barbara Helfgott Hyett teaches at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and directs a bussiness, The Workshop for Publishing Poets, in Brookline, Mass. She is the author of four books and has had poems and essays published in over one hundred magazines and in twenty-two anthologies. (2001)

----------


## quasimodo1

LETTER TO THE AMERICAN POET, GREGORY CORSO

{translated from the Hungarian by Len Roberts and Lászlo Vértes}

I’d like to roam the world with you, 
Corso,
derailer of time,
twentieth-century rowdy.
Your striped t-shirt reminds me of prison clothes,
runaway prisoner of poetry,
apostle of adultery.
Come on, tie up your sneakers, 
let’s go to the Moon,
the Sahara,
and the capital of our good mood: Spoleto!

It’s night in Dome Square.
Marble cubes swim about in the glass of darkness,
like splinters of ice
in bitter whiskey.

Let’s drink the city down at one gulp!

..................................

•

It may be good to steal cars
if we can’t steal immortality

and to peal with the tin-box
if we can’t with Christ’s leg.

•

Let’s play—you like to play:
let’s poke each other’s eyes,
perhaps we’ll be kinder this way
than those who smile.
Let’s break up your bombs for eggs on a plate
and Europe may then admire a new art of cooking.

•

And moron! moron!—let’s holler
at the Polar Bear-Senator,
the prime minsters, who spend
the weekend in the barrel of a cannon.
Oh, weekends!
oh, Sundays!
oh, Whitehouses! Parliaments!
tanks crawl forth
from your snail shells everywhere
and the poets fall on their backs on their slimy tracks.
Morons! morons!—let’s holler at the poets
who fall on their backs,
they don’t deserve bread,
women,
they don’t deserve death.

..................................

Everything can happen to us
if we stay,
everything that has already happened to us.
Come on,
we should be that procession
which rambles every which-way,
changes homeland to get to like the other’s homeland,
signs the sea, as if some picture postcard,
and has a rest in the towns,
to let the towns have a rest, too,
and doesn’t petition for mercy 
when it’s sued for its marching,
which it came to love on the seventh day.

{excerpt}

Sándor Csoóri is one of Hungary’s foremost poets and essayists. (1992)

Len Roberts’ translation of Sándor Csoóri’s Selected Poems has recently been published. (1992)

----------


## quasimodo1

{Poland, b. 1945}

ELECTRIC ELEGY
{for Robert Hass}

Farewell, German radio with your green eye
and your bulky box,
together almost composing
a body and soul. (Your lamps glowed
with a pink, salmony light, like Bergson's
deep self.)
Through the thick fabric
of the speaker (my ear glued to you as
to the lattice of a confessional), Mussolini once whispered,
Hitler shouted, Stalin calmly explained,
Bierut hissed, Gomulka held endlessly forth.
But no one, radio, will accuse you of treason;
no, your only sin was obedience absolute,
tender faithfulness to the megahertz;
whoever came was welcomed, whoever was sent
was received.
Of course I know only
the songs of Schubert brought you the jade
of true joy. To Chopin's waltzes
your electric heart throbbed delicately
and firmly and the cloth over the speaker
pulsated like the breasts of amorous girls
in old novels.
Not with the news, though,
Especially not Radio Free Europe or the BBC.
..........................
At night, forlorn signals found shelter
in your rooms, sailors cried out for help,
the young comet cried, losing her head.
Your old age was announced by a cracked voice,
then rattles, coughing, and finally blindness
(your eye faded), and total silence.
Sleep peacefully, German radio,
dream Schumann and don't waken
when the next dictator-rooster crows.

{translated from the Polish by Renata Gorczynski and C.K. Williams}
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

AMERICA POLITICA HISTORIA, IN SPONTANEITY

O this political air so heavy with the bells 
and motors of a slow night, and no place to rest 
but rain to walk—How it rings the Washington streets! 
The umbrella’d congressmen; the rapping tires 
of big black cars, the shoulders of lobbyists 
caught under canopies and in doorways, 
and it rains, it will not let up, 
and meanwhile lame futurists weep into Spengler’s 
prophecy, will the world be over before the races blend color? 
All color must be one or let the world be done— 
There’ll be a chance, we’ll all be orange! 
I don’t want to be orange! 
Nothing about God’s color to complain; 
and there is a beauty in yellow, the old Lama 
in his robe the color of Cathay; 
in black a strong & vital beauty, 
Thelonious Monk in his robe of Norman charcoal— 
And if Western Civilization comes to an end 
(though I doubt it, for the prophet has not 
executed his prophecy) surely the Eastern child 
will sit by a window, and wonder 
the old statues, the ornamented doors; 
the decorated banquet of the West— 
Inflamed by futurists I too weep in rain at night 
at the midnight of Western Civilization; 
Dante’s step into Hell will never be forgotten by Hell; 
the Gods’ adoption of Homer will never be forgotten by the Gods; 
the books of France are on God’s bookshelf; 
no civil war will take place on the fields of God; 
and I don’t doubt the egg of the East its glory— 
Yet it rains and the motors go 
and continued when I slept by that wall in Washington 
which separated the motors in the death-parlor 
where Joe McCarthy lay, lean and stilled, 
ten blocks from the Capitol— 
I could never understand Uncle Sam 
his red & white striped pants his funny whiskers his starry hat: 
how surreal Yankee Doodle Dandy, goof! 
American history has a way of making you feel 
George Washington is still around, that is 
when I think of Washington I do not think of Death— 
{excerpt...roughly one third of this poem}.....poet referred to in post 442.

----------


## Virgil

Have you heard of Geoffry Hill Quasi? I just came across him today and it piqued my interest.

----------


## quasimodo1

yes, Virgil, I've heard of him. I think I may have posted something of his in the "fragments" thread some time back but I'm not sure. You can "find" him here... http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...t.html?id=3152 . What have you read that got your interest?

----------


## Virgil

> yes, Virgil, I've heard of him. I think I may have posted something of his in the "fragments" thread some time back but I'm not sure. You can "find" him here... http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...t.html?id=3152 . What have you read that got your interest?


Well, it was in a magazine I was perrusing and I'm already forgetting. The writer of the article thought him the most important poet from England in the last decade or so and that he was very erudite. The bits of fragments that the article provided did show a highly crafted work.

----------


## quasimodo1

According to the Poetry Foundation database...he's definitely a scholarly poet, some say difficult and challenging. Like so many erudite-in-extremus poets... he's not everyman's poet... which intrigues me even more. --- http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&...d0Cgz4A6mDQ3f8

----------


## Virgil

I'm going to have to explore him.  :Smile:

----------


## quasimodo1

"A scholar and critic as well as a poet, Hill has published several collections of criticism and essays. Between 1959 and 1996 he published four collections of poetry, but over the last two decades he has become more prolific, with The Orchards of Syon (2002), Speech! Speech! (2000), and The Triumph of Love (1998). Reviewing the poems in A Treatise of Civil Power (2007), critic Tim Martin notes, “Hill’s persistent (and persistently underrated) wit lends both lightness and a paradoxical gravity to even the most abstruse passages of his dense, argumentative verse.” tidbit from that site...

----------


## quasimodo1

Requiem for the Plantagenet Kings 

....................

Relieved of soul, the dropping-back of dust, 
Their usage, pride, admitted within doors; 
At home, under caved chantries, set in trust, 
With well-dressed alabaster and proved spurs 
They lie; they lie; secure in the decay 
Of blood, blood-marks, crowns hacked and coveted, 
Before the scouring fires of trial-day 
Alight on men; before sleeked groin, gored head, 
Budge through the clay and gravel, and the sea 
Across daubed rock evacuates its dead. 
{excerpt}

----------


## jinjang

SURELY YOU REMEMBER

This one applies to you, quasimodo1? I can imagine even when everyone leaves, if that is possible, you will be here reading poems. 

MAN CURSING THE SEA

This one is brilliant! I will curse the sea when I get mad and surely my anger will be drowned in the vast sea. Then I will pat my shoulders with job well-done.

THE CITY
I agree with Sapphire. Memory lingers on in many different forms and ties us down…

IN THE RING OF TWENTY SIGNS
I wonder, if the poem parallels our lives with the rings, which ring I am in. Maybe the fourteenth.

Here is a very famous Korean poem most Korean people grew up with. It is a heart-breaking poem but the translation does not do the justice and I modified some lines at the end.

Poet: Han Yong-un (1879~1944)

“A devoted Buddhist monk since his youth, he became one of the 33 patriots who in 1919 signed the historical document declaring Korea independent of Japan…Love in his poems subsumes his love of the country and of humanity in general as well as his personal love.”

Translator: Jaihiun Joyce Kim

LOVE’S SILENCE 

Love is gone, gone indeed is my love.
Tearing himself away from me, he has gone
One a narrow path that breaks through the brightness
of the green hill toward an autumn-tinted maple grove.
Our oath, shining and enduring
like a gold mosaicked flower, has turned to cold dust,
blown away in the breath of wind.
The memory of the first poignant kiss, though faded,
Has worked a complete change in the course of my fate
and withdrawn into forgetfulness.
Your fair looks have turned me blind.
Since it’s human to love, I feared with caution
a parting to come when we first met.
But the parting’s come, so unexpected, 
it breaks my heart with renewed sorrow.
Yet I know parting can only undo love 
if it causes idle tears to fall.
…
A love-song, unable to control its tunes, 
lingers over the silence of love.

-1926

My own modification to deliver the meaning better:
Line 1: Love is gone, ah ah my loving love is gone. (The rhyming is missing.)
Line 2: Tearing, with lingering regret, himself away from me (Not going voluntarily and he is forced to go away from his love)
Line 7: blown away in a breath of breeze. (light wind not strong wind)
Line 10: disappeared with backward steps into forgetfulness. (It is not just withdrawing. It is walking backward still looking and fading)
Line 11: Your fragrant voice has turned me deaf and your flowery face has turned me blind. 
Line 15: My heart bursts open with renewed sorrow.
Last line: twirls and surrounds the silence of love.

----------


## quasimodo1

THE RIVER

{translated from the Vietnamese by the author and Martha Collins}

We wake from our dream with no time to button our shirts,
To tie back our hair, to leave word with our families.
We run together from two distant places
Through fields of trembling grass.

Dewdrops are thrown in the air like stars;
The grass-spider, startled, runs to the end of its line.
Grasshoppers, toads are thrown in the air,
Seeds of yellow grass are thrown in the air and ring like bells.

We run from two directions and kneel on two banks;
The river’s a moving horizon between us.
The clouds are sails discolored by wind,
Unhappy sails that tear and mend themselves.

The gobies are golden keys to the door
Of the water world where our house is waiting.
No time to button our shirts, to tie back our hair—
The rattle of keys echoes, rushing along the banks.

Why don’t we keep running? Why have we stopped?
Why don’t we crawl in the river like brown turtles?
We’re perch that climbed the falls, deceived by tiny inlets;
We’re two cornflowers thrown on the floor of dusk.

We run through many fields, we run and look back.
Why not run into the river? Why do we kneel on the banks?
We turn our faces up to the sky like frogs,
Summoning not the rain, but each other’s hair.

We run through many fields, through seasons of plowing and

sowing

We run, dreaming we’re running from sky rebels.
Why do we come back to the banks of the river and cry?
And why do the ferryboats sink themselves before dawn?

We run through many fields, through seasons of wild grass;
Fresh grass-seeds roll in a pocket of your shirt. ......

{excerpt}




Nguyen Quang Thieu has published four books of poems in Vietnam, as well as fiction and translations. His most recent collections are The Insomnia of Fire (1992), which won the Writers’ Association National Award for poetry in 1993, and The Women Carry River Water (1995). A bilingual collection of his poems, translated with Martha Collins, will be published by the University of Massachusetts in early 1997. (1996)

Martha Collins’s second book of poems, The Arrangement of Space, will be published this fall. Her manuscript-in-progress, A History of Small Life on a Windy Planet, won the PSA’s di Castagnola Award. (1991)

----------


## quasimodo1

{Russia, b. 1948}

ELEGIES ON THE CARDINAL POINTS
{for M. Sh.}

I North

Down the winding lanes of Moscow, down its hopeless
convolutions
Someone's shadow flew past in sweet desperation.
On a pool she kissed an emerald duck,
Pressed some crusted leaves against her eyeballs,
Shrieking with laughter dodged a tramcar-bull
And warmed herself up on a tramwire spark.

At night-- come to the picture show, they pleaded,
"Bergman films!" Moments from your life repeated
Hundreds of times. Who knew that nightly cinemas are hired by
hell?
That strapped into their seats the dead sit in the hall
Gazing with tilted heads into the past?
Escorted there like soldiers to the baths?
"Waiting. Love. Your Marat." -- for Charlotte, a telegram.

I've cast off seven skins, eight souls, all my clothes,
And in my breast I've tracked a ninth soul down,
A gentle mole, it trembled in my hand,
Pale-blue iceborn snow-wife with a broomstick,
I poked two little eyes in and she died.

Look-- the vault of heaven's bestrewn and snowing wings and 
feathers,
No sweeping them up in a week, stay buried in them forever.
Look-- under the moon fly Lion and Eagle and Bull,
And you sleep, you lie back in your body's serpentine coils.
Where's the angel? -- you ask, and I will most surely respond:
Where there's gloom-- there's a radiance, all the world is maimed,
The angel twined in gloom like a tenacious plant.
Steer for black point, for desolation and gloom,
Steer for darkness, for dark, for the rocks, the muddle, the pit.
The angel plays hide-and-seek? -- but he's there! -- in earth
underfoot.
He's no worm. Don't try to dig for him in a field.
See-- towards winter shining birds fly to the pole?

She gave a glance, began to groan
And stumbling on crenellations flew all night,
Her bloodspots dripping on hospitals, boulevards, mills. . . .
Don't worry! Your death is the birth of an angel of light.

----------


## quasimodo1

{Martinique, b. 1913}

ON THE ISLANDS OF ALL WINDS

lands which leap very high
not high enough however to keep their feet from remaining caught
by the peculium of the sea
booming its assault of irremediable faces

hunger of man heard by the mosquitoes and his thirst
for they are loaves laid out for a bird feast
sand saved against all hope or arms bent
to gather to one's breast all that lingers of 
the out of season heat

O justice noon of reason too slow it does not matter
that nameless to the resinous torch of tongues
they do not know that their dirt offering
is in this too distant song recklessly achieved

the morning in the unbeknown of my voice will unveil
the bird which it nevertheless carries and Noon
why my voice remained encrusted with the blood of my panting
throat

from the islands from all of them you will say
that according to the heart a supernumerary of vertiginous birds

for a long long time seeking between sheets of sand
the wound at the coveted crossroad of the undermining sea
you found through the hiccup
the pit of the insult included in the bitter blood
that finally exulting in the wounded kine of the stars .....
{excerpt}

{translated from the French by Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith}

----------


## quasimodo1

WALT WHITMAN'S BRAIN DROPPED ON LABORATORY FLOOR

At his request, after death, his brain removed
for science, phrenology, to study, and,
as the mortuary assistant carried it
(I suppose in a jar but I hope cupped
in his hands) across the lab’s stone floor he dropped it.

...........................................
of the skull’s outer ridges, valleys, would afford
particular insight. So Walt believed.
He had already scored high (between 6 and 7) for Ego.
And as if we couldn’t guess from his verses, he scored
high again (a 6 and a 7—7 the highest possible!) in Amativeness

(sexual love) and Adhesiveness (friendship,
brotherly love) when before his death
his head was read. He earned only 5 for Poetic Faculties
but that 5, pulled and pushed by his other numbers,
allowed our father of poesie to lay down some words

in the proper order on the page. That our nation
does not care does not matter, much.
That his modest federal job was taken from him,
and thus his pension, does not matter at all.
And that his brain was dropped and shattered, a cosmos,
on the floor, matters even less.



{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/bo...1&8bu&emc=bua2 --- On Poetry, The Edge of Night a review by David Orr --- May 22, 2009 "Many poets have been acquainted with the night; some have been intimate with it; and a handful have been so haunted and intoxicated by the darker side of existence that it can be hard to pick them out from the murk that surrounds them. As POEMS 1959-2009 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $40) demonstrates, Frederick Seidel has spent the last half-century being that darkest and strangest sort of poet. He is, its widely agreed, one of poetrys few truly scary characters. This is a reputation of which hes plainly aware and by which hes obviously amused, at least to judge from the nervy title of his 2006 book, Ooga-Booga. This perception also colors the praise his collections typically receive  to pick one example from many, Calvin Bedient admiringly describes him as the most frightening American poet ever, which is a bit like calling someone historys most bloodthirsty clockmaker. What is it about Seidel that bothers and excites everyone so much?" ...

----------


## quasimodo1

THE SCRIPT


So the wars went on for another century.
Under heaven roads sprang up, unconnected,
from three to eight feet wide,
impossible for vehicles to travel;
money also ran wild in form—
precious stones, shells, silk, bones;
scholars were busy inventing bizarre words
while people followed their own tongues
writing scripts of Worm,
of Vine, of Fish, of Cloud, of Bird.

As soon as the First Emperor conquered
the other kingdoms, he set standards
for coinage, roads, weights and measures.
His ministers advised him to fix
written words, which they argued
formed a foundation for the Empire
because a disordered official script
would cloud meanings, causing chaos.

The High Minister designed a script called
the Clerk Style, whose characters looked
august and simple, so his dictionary
of thirty-three thousand words
were carved on stone tablets while
all the other scripts were banned. ......... {excerpt}






Ha Jin has published several books of poetry and fiction. His most recent novel, Waiting (Pantheon, 1999) won the National Book Award. This coming fall he will publish a book of poems, Wreckage (Hanging Loose Press), and a book of short stories, The Bridegroom (Pantheon). (2000)

----------


## jinjang

Sin Sok-Cho (1909-1976)
THE GONG DANCE
*A Buddhist ritual dance performed by a monk or nun while striking a brass
gong set up on the floor.

Against my life-long wish to live
Like an immaculate petal
what shall I do
with the doleful spring
that gushes out
from the deep woods of my heart?

Perchance it’s like the sound of a bell
bonging from a remote temple in the green hill.
The bright moon is beaming in vain
on the empty temple;
a sleepless Philomel weeps so sadly,
on a spray in the back yard.
Woe is me. What shall I do?
How I’ve been dreaming
of the Nirvana
of matchless joy
that I can keep to myself!
Nevertheless,
dizzying dust has gathered unawares
on the clean mirror of my mind.

Flesh is sad.
A faulty-ridden body of this temporal world.
The maddening passion of the world 
Grips my body like a beast.
O this form, in such beauty.
In my treasure woods there’s a path
Running forever split between mind
And its enthralling body
Where a hidden serpent wriggles.
Like a drifting cloud
Quietly flows a stream
On which ripple down fallen petals.
How the rolling waters break into jewels!
What can ever stay the mighty flowing
Before the stream empties into the blue sea?
How I envy that stream which flows freely at will!
Plum-blossoms blossoming white
Under the moon,
I lay me down alone
in nun’s quarters
but I can hardly get to sleep
as if laden with cares.

O dizzying concerns of this world.
What resignation for show!
Are the eight commandments and hymns for nothing?
O fruits of illusion born of human fate!
…..
lies the sad abyss of soul
I dream of.	
…..
Is it this very suffering flesh
That is only real?
This very self that exists for a brief period,
this frame that flows flooded with use of life,
a mere flower-bud that burns with pure desire,
an illusory butterfly worn with cares.

….
In the dead of the night
in the quite of my upper room
I hear nothing but the dinning sound of water.
No other soul in sight but a lone candle-light
by which my neck band and my long-sleeved robe
are shed to ripple into a long-drawn sigh.
Like a dancing moth drawn to a flame
I chase a dream, sweet and endless.

Alas! Does solitude sire
a sinful serpent of thought?
….

On the myriad-folded ranges of mountains 
arrow-roots, twined and tangled,
run wild and free to wrap tightly
around an alder, slim and straight.
Are men also born to live tangled
and free like that?
For me
I have no wish nor attachment left in me
for I am a mere flower that blossoms by nature.
This frame of mine that has grown big 
charmed by the full-blown blossoms,
a sheer mass of roses.
Behold the hill where peach and plum blossoms
swirl in midair.

O seeds of evil chained to the eight phases of being.
How hard to cut off stubborn affinity
clinging to the three worlds*!
I wish to wander madly in the dream woods
assigned to me for a living
but I do not know whither to go
like a sailor beaten unconscious by the storm.

….
*The world of desire-driven beings, the world of beings with form, and the world of beings without form.

----------


## quasimodo1

to jinjang: Most elegant selection, appreciated it immensely. q1

----------


## jinjang

I am very happy to find one you appreciate. It is 9 pages long and much like a Buddhist monk chant. Pleasant day!

----------


## quasimodo1

DON'T BARE YOUR SOUL!


for Coleen Grissom


Dont bare your soul to anyone, however gentle,
solicitous, seductive, or wise!
Dont do it! Dont
make that mistake!
Dont bare your soul, and leave it to be scarified
like a Formica-topped table!
Greasy and wrinkled like an old dollar bill!
Blown like dirty confetti along the pavement!

.........................................

And the long dreamy talk you once had, hand folded
into hand, feet clasping feet for warmth, pulse-
beats in equilibrium as, at dusk, as dusk deepens,
the interior darkness expands to meet the exterior,
and there is a breathless moment when both are equal
that came to nothing in the endas you should
have known!

So dont bare your soul in intimacy, still less
in company!
Dont do it! Dont
make that mistake!
Dont bless while being cursed!
Remember that Hell is memory with no power of alteration;
remorse that is one-sided merely; shame a mirror
showing only your face.
Dont bare your soul to anyone, no matter who invites it!
No matter who whispers, I will love you forevertell me
all your secrets! 
Dont do it!
And if you do it, dont talk about it!
Not even to yourself!
And dont write about it!
Especially not that!



{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

PAY PER VIEW



Dont knock my dish.
I hold it dear, unincidental

at the households entryway: there is
intelligence in its half-

cocked concavity. No fixity of
whereabouts: and no direction but the shifting one
 
from whose beyond the next
known jolt could come.

Not homeless, just never at home,
just always out to lunch, just always in the head.

Soon enough Ill have to see
real soil, real sand, real loam, real loess, real leeearths ditch at large

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

VERMONT WATER






Vermont water tastes like sherry wine.
*** Trad.
{For Seamus Heaney}
Weve had our soft days
hems of rain sashaying
across the roof . . . muffled paradiddle . . .
the big pines brush lifted
flung down scattered dots
and the mist seen,
the air alive, but unheard.
Rain beads on the cattle bar,
not here, but in Wicklow
where you pointed out the droplets
poised and falling, beautiful.
Water is your sign. What pours 
forth from jug and drain, voluble
life-giver, free to do as it pleases
until it pleases. Here water goes
underground to be dowsed by those
whose forked sticks spring downwards.
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

{India, b. 1928}

SANSKRIT

Awaken them; they are knobs of sound
that seem to melt and crumple up
like some jellyfish of tropical seas,
torn from sleep with a hand lined by prophecies.
Listen hard; their male, gaunt world sprawls the page
like rows of tree trunks reeking in the smoke
of ages, the branches glazed and dead;
as though longing to make up with the sky,
but having lost touch with themselves
were unable to fin d themselves, hold meaning.

And yet, down the steps into the water at Varanasi,
where the lifeless bodies seem to grow human,
the shaggy heads of word-buds move back and forth
between the harsh castanets of the rain
and the noiseless feathers of summer--
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

from LETTER IN APRIL: IV

Already on the street
with our money clutched
in our hands,
and the world is a white laundry,
where we are boiled and wrung
and dried and ironed,
and smoothed down
and forsaken
we sweep
back
in children’s dreams
of chains and jail
and the heartfelt sigh
of liberation
{excerpt}
{translated by Susanna Nied}

----------


## quasimodo1

Inger Christensen: The Last Words Are Hers by Siri Hustvedt 


"Inger Christensen is dead. A great writer has died. I know that great is a word we often use to decorate a venerable cultural figure and then put him or her on a high shelf with the other moldering greats, but this is not my intention. Great books are the ones that are urgent, life-changing, the ones that crack open the readers skull and heart. I was in my early twenties when I first read Det, and I felt I had been sent a revelation. This work was like no other I had ever readits rhythms and repetitions were of my own body, my heartbeat, my breath, the motion of my legs and the swing of my arms as I walked. As I read it, I moved with its music. But inseparable from that corporeal music, embedded in the cadences themselves, was a mind as rigorous, as tough, as steely as any philosophers. Christensen did not compromise. Paradox upon paradox accumulated in a game of embodied thought. Logic, systems, numbers came alive and danced for me, but they did so hand in hand with ordinary things, which her voice enchanted and made strange. She made me see differently. She made me feel anew the power of incantation." --- http://www.poetryfoundation.org/jour...html?id=236636

----------


## quasimodo1

(Poland, b. 1924]

TO MARCUS AURELIUS
(for Professor Henryk Elzenberg)

Good night Marcus put out the light
and shut the book For overhead
is raised a gold alarm of stars
heaven is talking some foreign tongue
this the barbarian cry of fear
your Latin cannot understand
Terror continuous dark terror
against the fragile human land

..........................

Well Marcus better hang up your peace
give me your hand across the dark
Let it tremble when the blind world beats
on senses five like a failing lyre
Traitors-- universe and astronomy
reckoning of stars wisdom of grass
and your greatness too immense
and Marcus my defenseless tears

{translated from the Polish by Czelaw Mlosz and Peter Scott, excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

{Hungary, 1922-1991}

BETWEEN

The great sleeves of air,
air on which the bird
and the science of birds bear
themselves, wings on the fraying argument;
incalculable result
of a moment's leafy silhouette
bark and branch of a haze living upwards
like desire into the upper leaves
to inhale every three seconds
those big, frosty angels.

........................................

Between the sky and the earth.

Creaking of rocks. As
the sun's clear ores
into themselves almost, stone into metal, as
a creature steps on in his claws smoke,
and up above the escarpment
ribbons of burning hoof,
then night in the desert, night as
quenching and reaching
its stony core, night below zero, and as
the tendons, joints, plaques
split and tear, as
they are strained in endless
splitting ecstasy
by routine dumb lightning
in black and white--

Between the day and the night.

Aches and stabbings,
visions, voiceless aqueducts,
inarticulate risings,
unbearable tension
of verticals between up and down.

Climates. Conditions.
Between. Stone. Tanktraces.
A strip of black reed rimming the plain
written in two lines, in the lake, the sky,
two black plaques of signsystem,
diacritic on the stars--

Between the sky and the sky.

{translated from the Hungarian by Hugh Maxton, excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/we..._r=1&ref=books

----------


## quasimodo1

TO GIOVANNI DA PISTOIA WHEN THE AUTHOR WAS PAINTING THE VAULT OF THE SISTINE CHAPEL

1509

Ive already grown a goiter from this torture,
swollen up here like a cat from Lombardy
(or anywhere where the stagnant waters poison). 
My stomachs squashed under my chin, my beard's
pointing at heaven, my brains crushed in a casket, 
my breast twists like a harpys. My brush, 
above me all the time, dribbles the paint 
so my face makes a fine floor for droppings! 

.................................................. ........... 

And because Im like this, my thoughts 
are crazy perfidious tripe: 
anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe. 

My painting is dead. 
Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor. 
I am not in the right placeI am not a painter. 



Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, and poet, painted the Sistine Chapel from 1508-1512. (1998)

Gail Mazur is Writer in Residence in the Graduate Writing Program at Emerson College. She is founding director of the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge. Her third book, The Common, was published by the University of Chicago press in 1995, and she has recently completed her fourth, They Can't Take That Away from Me. (1998)


{ http://www.bu.edu/agni/poetry/print/...uonarroti.html - excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

OUTER SPACE

If you could turn the moon 
on a lathe, you would 
because you are curious. 

And that would explain 
why the moon slivers, 
but explain it stupidly 

by not taking care 
to ask how the moon rounds. 
And so we go, stupid ideas 

for feet. The better to wander 
with, retort the feet, 
and what can you say, 

you who shaved those taut 
spirals from the moon, 
kinks of tightening light 

that fell away from your attention 
to your work growing smaller 
the better you did it? 

Threads on a screw, the worm 
of a corkscrew, the circular 
staircase to sleep.... 

Soon the moon is gone 
as far as it can go and still come back. 
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

{Greece, 1911-1996}

AEGEAN MELANCHOLY

What linking of soul to the halcyons of the afternoon!
What calm in the voices of the distant shore!
The cuckoo in the trees' mantilla,
And the mystic hour of the fishermen's supper,
And the sea playing on its concertina
The long lament of the woman,
The lovely woman who bared her breasts
When memory found the cradles
And lilac sprinkled the sunset with fire!

With caique and the Virgin's sails
Sped by the winds they are gone,
Lovers of the lilies' exile;
But how night here attends on sleep
With murmuring hair on shining throats
Or on the great white shores;
And how with Orion's gold sword
Is scattered and spilled aloft
Dust from the dreams of girls
Scented with mint and basil!

At the crossroad where the ancient sorceress stood
Burning the winds with dry rhyme, there,
Lightly, holding a pitcher full with the waters of silence,
Easily, as though they were entering Paradise,
Supple shadows stepped. . . . .
And from the crickets' prayer that fermented the fields
Lovely girls with the moon's skin have risen
To dance on the midnight threshing floor. . . .

..........................................

O green gem-- what storm-prophet saw you
Halting the light at the birth of day,
The light at the birth of the tow eyes of the world!

{translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley and Phillip Sherrard, excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

{Greece, 1911-1996}

from THE AXION ESTI

Praised be the wooden table
the blond wine with the sun's stain
the water doodling across the ceiling
the philodendron on duty in the corner

........................................

The sixteen deckhands hauling the net
the restless seagull slowly cruising
stray voices out of the wilderness
a shadow's crossing through the wall

The islands with all their minimum and lampblack
the islands with the vertebrae of some Zeus
the islands with their boat yards so deserted
the islands with their drinkable blue volcanoes

Facing the meltemi with jib close-hauled
Riding the southwester on a reach
the full length of them covered with foam
with dark blue pebbles and heliotropes

Sifnos, Amorgos, Alonnisos
Thasos, Ithaka, Santorini
Kos, Ios, Sikinos

Praised be Myrto standing
on the stone parapet facing the sea
like a beautiful eight or a clay pitcher
holding a straw hat in her hand

The white and porous middle of day
the down off sleep lightly ascending
the faded gold inside the arcades
and the red horse breaking free

Hera of the tree's ancient trunk
the vast laurel grove, the light-devouring
a house like an anchor down in the depths
and Kyra-Penelope twisting her spindle

The straits for birds from the opposite shore
a citron from which the sky spilled out
the blue hearing half under the sea
the long-shadowed whispering of nymphs and maples

Praised be, on the remembrance day
of the holy martyrs Cyricus and Julitta,
a miracle burning threshing floors in the heavens
priests and birds chanting the AVE:

Hail you who walk and the footprints vanish
Hail you who wake and the miracles are born

Hail O Wild One of the depths' paradise
Hail O Holy One of the islands' wilderness

Hail Mother of Dreams, Girl of the Open Seas
Hail O Anchor-bearer, Girl of the Five Stars

Hail you of the flowing hair, gilding the wind
Hail you of the lovely voice, tamer of demons

Hail you who ordain the Monthly Ritual of the Gardens
Hail you who fasten the Serpent's belt of stars.

Hail O Girl of the just and modest sword
Hail O Girl prophetic and daedalic

{translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley and George Savidis, excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

DO NOT!

Do not despair of man, and do not scold him, 
Who are you that you should so lightly hold him? 
Are you not also a man, and in your heart 
Are there not warlike thoughts and fear and smart? 
Are you not also afraid and in fear cruel, 
Do you not think of yourself as usual, 
Faint for ambition, desire to be loved, 
Prick at a virtuous thought by beauty moved? 
You love your wife, you hold your children dear, 
Then say not that Man is vile, but say they are. 
But they are not. So is your judgement shown ...


{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

{Russia, 1940-1996}

ROMAN ELEGIES

I. The captive mahogany of a private Roman
flat. In the ceiling, a dust-covered crystal island.
At sunset, the windowpanes pan a common
ground for the nebulous and the ironed.
Setting a naked foot on the rosy marble,
the body steps toward its future to its attire.
If somebody shouted "Freeze!" I'd perform that marvel
as this city happily did in its childhood hour.
The world's made of nakedness and of foldings.
Still, the latter's richer with love than a face, that's certain.
Thus an opera tenor's so sweet to follow
since he yields invariably to a curtain.
By nightfall, a blue eye employs a tear,
cleansing, to a needless shine, the iris;
and the moon overhead apes an emptied square
with no fountain in it. But of rock as porous.

II. The month of stalled pendulums. Only a fly in August
in a dry carafe's throat is droning its busy hymn.
The numerals on the clock face crisscross like earnest
anti-aircraft searchlights probing for seraphim.
The month of drawn blinds, of furniture wrapped in cotton
shrouds, of the sweating double in the mirror above the cupboard,
of bees that forget the topography of their hives and coated
with suntan honey, keep staggering seaward.
Get busy then, faucet, over the now-white, sagging
muscle, tousle the tufts of thin gray singes!
To a homeless torso and its idle, grabby
mitts, there's nothing as dear as the sight of ruins.
And they, in their turn, see themselves in the broken Jewish
r no less gladly: for the pieces fallen
so apart, saliva's the only solution they wish
for, as time's barbarous corneas scan the Forum.

{2 of 12 parts translated by the author}

----------


## quasimodo1

To Elsie 

The pure products of America 
go crazy 
mountain folk from Kentucky 


or the ribbed north end of 
Jersey 
with its isolate lakes and 


valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves 
old names 
and promiscuity between 


devil-may-care men who have taken 
to railroading 
out of sheer lust of adventure 


and young slatterns, bathed 
in filth 
from Monday to Saturday 


to be tricked out that night 
with gauds 
from imaginations which have no 


peasant traditions to give them 
character 
but flutter and flaunt 


sheer ragssuccumbing without 
emotion 
save numbed terror 


under some hedge of choke-cherry 
or viburnum 
which they cannot express 


Unless it be that marriage 
perhaps 
with a dash of Indian blood ...

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

THE SINGERS CHANGE, THE MUSIC GOES ON

No one really dies in the myths.
No world is lost in the stories.
Everything is lost in the retelling,
in being wondered at. We grow up
and grow old in our land of grass
and blood moons, birth and goneness.
A place of absolutes. Of returning.
We live our myth in the recurrence,
pretending we will return another day.
Like the morning coming every morning.
The truth is we come back as a choir. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://features.csmonitor.com/books/...ets/#more-1631

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/bo...tml?ref=review --- NYT... "On Poetry" piece by David Orr... July 10, 2009

----------


## firefangled

William Stafford is one of my favorite American poets. He was able to capture the most ordinary things and make them new with his seeing. In this age of living in bad faith, when so much is taken from us and no decision seems easy, we would do well to read William Stafford. The following is one of my favorite poems by him:

*A Ritual To Be Read To Each Other*

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

{omission}

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we giveyes or no, or maybe
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. 

William Stafford

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/bo..._r=1&ref=books --- from poets.org... In a review in The New Republic, the critic Helen Vendler wrote: "Louise Glück is a poet of strong and haunting presence. Her poems, published in a series of memorable books over the last twenty years, have achieved the unusual distinction of being neither "confessional" nor "intellectual" in the usual senses of those words."

----------


## quasimodo1

Kay Ryan's poem on W.G. Sebald... "He Lit a Fire With Icicles" --- http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetrya...do?poemId=9144

----------


## quasimodo1

THE DISCIPLE
an obstinate disciple, so youthful
but the one whom jesus loved
who laid beside him at the last

kissing him was like kissing a door
slim flat stern with hinges on one side
but moveable on the other
how it swung open how we fell
there were boats and we took them
our nicotine-sour mouths in each other
like an element to shape something from
the bitterness gathered in the hollows
when it wore off we smoked

in the end a rain fell
a rain we could barely believe
it turned cold, things got wet and everywhere ...
{excerpt}

© 2004, zu Klampen! Verlag
From: Monika Rinck: Verzückte Distanzen. Gedichte
Publisher: Zu Klampen! Verlag. Edition Postskriptum: Springe, Germany 2004., 
ISBN: 3-933156-81-5 

© Translation: Nicholas Grindell
From: shearsman (58 / 2003)

----------


## quasimodo1

The Myth of Innocence 



One summer she goes into the field as usual
stopping for a bit at the pool where she often
looks at herself, to see
if she detects any changes. She sees
the same person, the horrible mantle
of daughterliness still clinging to her.

The sun seems, in the water, very close.
That's my uncle spying again, she thinks—
everything in nature is in some way her relative.
I am never alone, she thinks,
turning the thought into a prayer.
Then death appears, like the answer to a prayer.

No one understands anymore
how beautiful he was. But Persephone remembers.
Also that he embraced her, right there,
with her uncle watching. She remembers
sunlight flashing on his bare arms.

This is the last moment she remembers clearly.
Then the dark god bore her away.

She also remembers, less clearly,
the chilling insight that from this moment
she couldn't live without him again.

The girl who disappears from the pool
will never return. A woman will return,
looking for the girl she was. ...

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Lagerfeld 


Rome: an open city A lager
Down the catwalk troop the fashions
Of the millennium, bulletproof vests
For copulation Two gladiators
Are fighting for the job, long practised
In the tricks of throttling, they win applause
That´s what they went to school for HIM OR ME
The stink of fear In his empire
Lagerfeld is making a dream come true A PACK
OF WOMEN THE PICK OF BEAUTY
The winter collection for the wars in Dacia
Has made him rich IT IS ENOUGH TO TURN YOUR STOMACH
They are bearing my ideas, these are summer clothes
To the spoilt world A festival of beauty
Helena Christensen in evening wear Meanwhile 
The two craftsmen have not let go 
One is Commodus, the wild son
Of a cool father, the mother´s indiscretion
When he croaks the throne stands empty
And Septimius Severus the African
Will march with the XIVth from the wilderness of Vienna
Against the capital POOR ROME A barbarian
Emperor On his heels the rest of the world
Lgerfeld doesn´t watch He has a problem
He can make them more beautiful but not better
More and more beautiful Outfit of the brute beasts
RICH AND POOR A divided clientele
ATROCIOUS Paying and thieving
I enjoy undivided attention But 
He knows what´s going on, he isn´t blind
The fifteen-year-old killer from Springfield
A MOUNTAIN OF CORPSES IN THE HIGHSCHOOL CAFETERIA
He has learned to lend a hand
he is in custody now in paper clothes Another fashion From America Gangs of children
Are combing North Rhine-Westphalia trainees
Looking for food at Hertie´s and Woolworth´s ...
{excerpt...© Translation David Constantine}

----------


## quasimodo1

Review: Rhyme and Unreason by David Orr (nyt) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/bo...html?ref=books

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...-26063,00.html

----------


## Kafka's Crow

Here is a poem I literally grew up on. My ealiest memories of hearing this poem recited in my baby ears go back to a time from which almost all else disappears in the dark tunnel of memory, the strongest, the most memorable words in Urdu language. Later I fell out of touch with Rashid's poetry who has always been out of favour in the conservative society he wrote for. His poetry is non-conformist, both in form and content, his life-style rose more eyebrows than anybody else's, his death arose controversy. A modernist through and through, he wrote in a highly Persianised Urdu and was destined to be either hardly understood or, as more often than not, misunderstood. I came back to Rashid in my early 20s. Many years were spent reciting these verses in circles of friends like a young Stephen Daedalus. Now in my 40th year, I am still as devout a follower as I was 20 years ago or when as a baby I repeated his grand verses from this poem without understanding a word in them, just enjoying the rhytmic beauty of his language. 



*You are Afraid of Life?*

----You are afraid of life?
But life is who you are, and life is who I am!
You are afraid of mankind?
But man is who you are, and man is who I am!

Man is language, man is expression,
but you are not afraid of that!
With the iron-bond of Word and Understanding, man is inextricably tied
With humanity's loins, life is inseparably tied
But you are not afraid of that!

Truth is you are afraid of the "Unsaid"
The time that has yet to come are you afraid of it,
Are you afraid to acknowledge the imminence of it?

---- Many periods of history have passed by before:
of freedom's remoteness, of godhood that is "self-less".
Even then you believe that it's useless to aspire,
that this night of suffocation is to Providence submission!

But what would you know,
that when lips fail to move, hands arise to life.
Hands arise to life to show to the way that is right,
as the expressions of light!
Hands cry out, yelling the end of the night.
You are afraid of light?
But light is who you are, and light is who I am,
You are afraid of light!

----The walls of the city
have been cleansed of the shadows of evil monsters.
The gown of night
has shredded to pieces, crumbled to dust.
From the mass of Humanity, the voice of Individual rises.
A cry of the soul rises.
On the paths of love, as if, some lover's passion leaps,
a new obsession leaps!
Humanity brims with life
Behold humanity laugh, see cities alive
Are you frightened now?
Yes 'Now' is who you are, yes 'Now' is who I am,
You are frightened of 'Now'!
______
Translated by Hamid Rahim Sheikh

----------


## quasimodo1

THE APICULTURALIST
In black veiled hat and canvas gauntlets
Jean Paucton, seventy, climbs the baroque stairs

of the Palais Garnier opera house
to his rooftop apiary.

The theatrical prop man studied beekeeping
at the Jardin’s venerable institute

then hauled onto the seventh floor ledge
his five weathered crates

swollen with honey, nearly a thousand pounds a year.

“The bees make an impression, do they not?”
he declares.
And you, dear poet?

Your little apiary of simile and syntax—the busy bite
that separates truth from Truth?

Do you not weary of the student manuscript, ... {excerpt}


http://www.kenyonreview.org/kro_full.php?file=hahn.php (August, 2009)

----------


## quasimodo1

WHEELING MOTEL

Poems

By Franz Wright

91 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $26.95
Dark Glamour (a review)
By DAISY FRIED
Published: September 17, 2009 NYT http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/bo..._r=1&ref=books

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/bo..._r=1&ref=books

----------


## quasimodo1

Im Jahre eins, das war 


das scharren am boden, aufgekratztes 
schweigen & 
vom tod gefaltet: winterfliegen. 

das erste – ein kriegsherbst, wenn 
die dinge schon von 
einem nerv durchzogen sind, entzündet an 

der luft. die treibjagd holt über 
dem acker die schwerkraft 
der gleise entfernungen 

schrumpfen & wer 
gerade unterwegs gewesen ist, verschwindet 
in seinen gedanken: du 

siehst die fische spuln an zarten strähnen 
männer, die in hohen wellen husten. wenn 
das blos reisende uns abwirft, hörst du 

pferde im abfluss, getrappel & 
eine brise, die 
aus den kanälen chemisch ... {excerpt}








in the year one, that was 


scraping on the ground, scratched up 
silence & 
folded by death: winter flies. 

the first – a wartime fall when 
things have already been 
run through by a nerve, ignited by 

the air. across the field, the battue 
brings back the gravity 
of the tracks distances 

shrink & whoever 
happens to be on the move vanishes 
in his thoughts: you 

see the fish spool men coughing in 
great waves onto fragile strands. when 
what merely travels scraps us, you hear 

horses in the drain, clatter & 
a breeze that 
blows chemically up ... {excerpt}






© Translation Andrew Shields

----------


## Jozanny

I don't know much about poet  Albert Goldbarth , but I thought it would be better to tack him in here rather than start a new thread, though granted this thread is getting long. I find male authors and poets who have bric-a-brac rooms annoying, though I guess I am not one to talk since this latest grand old man earns a living off the MFA circuit.

At first glance, he seems like another post-Frost mid-western romantic, but to quote Jim:
" He's the only poet to win the National Book Critics Circle Award twice."

I have no "fragments" to post this evening though.

----------


## quasimodo1

GRACE
Eyes open in the womb. The struggle arrives to turn darkness into light. Dangling on the wings of
the Phoenix. The creative process begins to turn ugly. Vandalizing and robbing graves of
child prodigies turning into serious discussions of Mass Murder and the therapeutic value of
saturday morning shopping sprees. The betrayal of genius is burning at the stake. The spider
descends. The violence is always there. The web embraces us all. More insidious than
drugs. More pleasurable than sex. Slightly entangled. Slightly confused. That possible
criminal element awakens you to the terror and lonliness of running into the silent pain of
someone else looking to you for answers. Glamorous and well financed pools of blood
profiling on neighborhood corners while smiling at and tempting the boldest gangsta rap. {one of two stanzas}

----------


## quasimodo1

OCTET BEFORE WINTER

The body is immobile, left behind
On the coral leatherette train-seat.
Thoughts revolve with the wheels but
Don't advance, stopped against the present,
The future which the engines bear away.
I want to wrench myself out of time's ballast,
Switch rails. The buildings raise a hideous
Hedge. Then rocks efface themselves
Before amorous, ravaged gardens.
I relinquish the acacias, lilacs, vulnerable
Foliage. Irises on the embankments, vague fairy-tale
Grass. A pact still links me
To the tree trunks, their branches' unpolished
Diamond on grey sky. I want their lines
To keep my cindered skeleton erect.

Often, like anyone, I ask myself
What ties me to life, especially in winter
When the dying year strikes out on its graph
Three hundred and sixty-five specific days circling the sun
Revolving back, as fatally, to night:
Sometimes they are huge bodies, illuminated
Igloos, their heads shrouded in fog
Gestures slow down then, voluptuously,
Like those of someone who knows he's going to faint,
But knows a wall of glass will break his fall
Or there's the tranquil pulse of flames between
What's wished for, what's forbidden, forbidden and wished
Showing a flux, a rhythm, an outpouring
Towards a heart which only believes in mechanical laws
The great watchmaker's clock, which we take apart
Patiently, piece by piece, to convince ourselves
That the poet who holds it poised above the void
Is an unprogrammed computer, an automaton

{two of ten stanzas, translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker}

----------


## quasimodo1

FROM THE DRESSING-ROOM 

Left to itself, they say, every foetus 
would turn female, staving in, nature 
siding then with the enemy that 
delicately mixes up genders. This 
is an absence I have passionately sought, 
brightening nevertheless my poet’s attic 
with my steady hands, calling him my blue 
lizard till his moans might be heard 
at the far end of the garden. For I like 
his ways, he’s light on his feet and does 
not break anything, puts his entire soul 
into bringing me a glass of water, 


I can take anything now, even his being 
away, for it always seems to me his 
writing is for me, as I walk springless 
from the dressing-room in a sisterly 
length of flesh-coloured silk. ... {excerpt}

----------


## Jozanny

> http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...-26063,00.html


I recently purchased an older translation of Cavafy's completed poems and fragments, but haven't taken the dive yet.

Became intrigued because of how his repressed orientation interpreted Hellenism for the 20th century, and hope at some point it is worth a thread. Scholars are disappointed with the new translation.

----------


## quasimodo1

"The Cavafy Archive website was created by the Center for Neo-Hellenic Studies (Spoudasterio Neou Hellenismou) in Athens, Greece, the current home of the poet's Archive. It contains all of Cavafys major works in the translation of Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard (edited by G.P. Savidis), plus select alternative translations. It also contains a wealth of unpublished material from the poets Archive, plus a Cavafy Companion section and up-to-date information on Cavafys seminal presence in todays world, as seen through the web." ...introduction to the Cavafy website-- http://www.cavafy.com/index.asp

----------


## Jozanny

> "The Cavafy Archive website was created by the Center for Neo-Hellenic Studies (Spoudasterio Neou Hellenismou) in Athens, Greece, the current home of the poet's Archive. It contains all of Cavafys major works in the translation of Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard (edited by G.P. Savidis), plus select alternative translations. It also contains a wealth of unpublished material from the poets Archive, plus a Cavafy Companion section and up-to-date information on Cavafys seminal presence in todays world, as seen through the web." ...introduction to the Cavafy website-- http://www.cavafy.com/index.asp


quasi I just wrote you a longer reply, but my pc is unhappy and the link broke, but for now, I bookmarked this site, as it may be useful in the future, thank you.

I will return to what else I wrote another time.

----------


## quasimodo1

Night-hours. The edge of a fuller moon

waits among the interlocking patterns

of a flier's sky.

Sperm names, ovum names, push inside

each other. We are half-taught

our real names, from other lives.

Emphasize your eyes. Be my flare-

path, my uncold begetter,

my air-minded bird-sense.

{excerpt from the title poem of the collection... CAPTAIN LAVENDER)

----------


## quasimodo1

WHEELING MOTEL

Poems

By Franz Wright

91 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $26.95

Dark Glamour (review) 
By DAISY FRIED
Published: September 17, 2009 
"Franz Wright’s frank self-*absorption, combined with his *poems’ structural vivacity and oddball precisions, may make readerly response to his poems dependent on readerly mood."

----------


## quasimodo1

THE GOD WHO LOVES YOU

It must be troubling for the god who loves you 
To ponder how much happier youd be today 
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures. 
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings 
Driving home from the office, content with your week 
Three fine houses sold to deserving families 
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened 
Had you gone to your second choice for college, 
Knowing the roommate youd have been allotted 
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music 
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion. 
A life thirty points above the life youre living 
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point 
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you. 
You dont want that, a large-souled man like you 
Who tries to withhold from your wife the days disappointments 
So she can save her empathy for the children. 
And would you want this god to compare your wife 
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus? 
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation 
Youd have enjoyed over there higher in insight 
Than the conversation youre used to. 
And think how this loving god would feel 
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife 
Would have pleased her more than you ever will 
Even on your best days, when you really try. 
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that 
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives 
Youre spared by ignorance? ... {excerpt}

<http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=172160>

----------


## firefangled

From her book _One Secret Thing_.

*Everything*

And some who are born live only for minutes,
others for two, or for three, summers,
or four, and when they go, everything
goes―the earth, the firmament―
and love stays, where nothing is, and seeks.

{excerpt}

----------


## AuntShecky

Quasi, the other day I got an email from Knopf. Oh boy, I thought, they've accepted my ms! But no, it was to announce Franz Wright's new book. There were two podcasts of Franz himself reading his own poems, but w/o text.
Anyway, I liked the line that was something about bringing one's life home and finding that there was "some assembly required."

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...html?id=177023

----------


## quasimodo1

ALCHOHOL

You do look a little ill. 


But we can do something about that, now. 


Can’t we. 


The fact is you’re a shocking wreck. 


Do you hear me. 


You aren’t all alone. 


And you could use some help today, packing in the 
dark, boarding buses north, putting the seat back and 
grinning with terror flowing over your legs through 
your fingers and hair . . . 


I was always waiting, always here. 


Know anyone else who can say that. .... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Dark Glamour (a review)
By DAISY FRIED
Published: September 17, 2009 
Franz Wright’s frank self-*absorption, combined with his *poems’ structural vivacity and oddball precisions, may make readerly response to his poems dependent on readerly mood. Those who believe constant self-reference is the wrong procedure for poetry — those who are strenuously traditional or strenuously hipster — won’t cotton to “Wheeling Motel.” “You went to death, I to life, and / which was luckier God only knows,” Wright says, apparently to his father, in the book’s title poem. Troubled childhood, bad brain chemicals, addiction, recovery and death dominate Wright’s work. You couldn’t fake his obsessions, not over a 30-year career so steadily, idiosyncratically productive. ...

----------


## quasimodo1

ARTICLE... Marin County, Sort OfLife, shard-to-shard. 
by Kay Ryan 

"This is actually an abstract walk, one I’m making up, a generalized walk based on what I like. I have usually done this on a bicycle, but I was asked to write about a walk, so I’ll walk.

I’m walking along a road, not a busy road, a country road, but one where people do occasionally have things blow out of the back of their truck or their car window or even where people conceivably have littered. In any case, there are scraps of things here and there along the roadside. Bits of things, fragments of color and print, broken shapes, fading pink receipts.

There are whole things too, but I don’t care about them. Except for a while I was very interested in the sheer phenomenon of the number of Styrofoam cooler lids I came across. In a way they were parts, in the sense that they were the top part of a cooler that wasn’t any good anymore, going on down the road in the back of the truck. But I have never been especially interested in any story element in the things that lodge in the grasses in the inevitable ditch by the side of the road. I don’t care if those people’s beer gets hot. Well, of course I never want anybody’s beer to get hot, but what I mean to say is that I’m not interested in the previous life of shards as they reveal things about people; I’m interested in the life in shards, among shards, between shards, shard-to-shard.

There are two related pleasures in studying roadside trash. One is identifying the whole from the part. A particular half-buried bit of orange cardboard can only be part of a Wheaties box. That greasy curve of flat black stuff has got to be from some kind of automotive gasket. I admire how good the mind is, what a small actual bit it needs to call up the whole, and how it attributes value to things simply because it recognizes them. I take the keenest pleasure in knowing that a small trapezoid of gold slashed with red is part of a Dos Equis label. I know it. I’m a weird expert in these identifications. I don’t know how I trained, certainly not consciously. Maybe it’s just that I’ve always enjoyed looking down. I don’t know how many other people really like to do this. Maybe a lot. My brother is even better at it than I am, but maybe it’s just my tiny family." ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

ARTICLE... Athens: Peripatetic Fragments...A new world in the old. 
by A.E. Stallings 

Athenians cannot be proud, the joke goes. Because if their nose is in the air, they won’t see the potholes under their feet. The sidewalk is the most dangerous place to walk: watch out for motorbikes, cars backing up, tree stumps, broken pavement, sunken entrances, marble slick as ice, stray dogs, other people who aren’t looking up.

* * *

All street signs are in the genitive. The road of Heraclitus. So, too, are the surnames of women. She of Psaropoulos. Patronymics. Who are you=to whom do you belong.

* * *

Here is our blue-collar neighborhood, with its incongruous view of the Parthenon, and its butcher, baker, and candlestick maker (in that order) around the corner. With its farmers’ market on Mondays that trucks in at 4:00 am the autochthonous roots of things, like the roots of words, with the Attic and Laconic soil still clinging stubbornly to them. All the greens whose names I do not know.

* * *

Some call my neighborhood Neos Kosmos, the New World. But we are on the borders of Neos Kosmos. We live across the paved-over trickle that was the river, Kallirrhois (“the beautifully flowing”), from the old-town area of Athens, the Plaka, where, on Byron street, beneath the Acropolis, you can buy calendars with ancient Greek pornography. The real name of our neighborhood, known by the post office but none of the taxi drivers, is Cynosargous—the dog Argos, who waited on a dungheap for the exile’s return. The exile’s return, of course, is death.

Cynosargous is the ancient home of the Cynics.

----------


## ipincif

All street signs are in the genitive. The road of Heraclitus. So, too, are the surnames of women. She of Psaropoulos. Patronymics. Who are you=to whom do you belong.
__________________
Meilleur taux prets personnels | Simulation calcul prets personnels en ligne | taux prets personnels

----------


## quasimodo1

Plaint in a Major Key

Without even leaving one's door, 
One can know the whole world.
Laozi

The rumble of the night sounds 
even in the bright daylight 
of morning. Life blooms amid 
the Ten Thousand Things, but 
does not bloom amid the Ten 
Thousand Things. Shrivel-eyed 
I wake up and tend to the One 
here and now, clamoring to be 
let out. Down with the gate, 
out with the boy, to the rooms 
of life's necessities, first 
to void and next to fill. 
The Order is only order which 
is disorder, the only Disorder 
is the disorder that is order. 
We usher ourselves, each in our 
own way, back down the way 
for various brushings, combings, 
other groomings. Each in our 
own way we urge the other 
toward some kind of growth: 
one to assume, the other 
to renounce; one to grow larger, 
the other to grow smaller, 
thereby growing larger. Words 
do not work, and when they do not, 
other words might. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Nabokovs Last Puzzle {a review}
By DAVID GATES
Published: November 11, 2009 --- THE ORIGINAL OF LAURA

(Dying Is Fun)

By Vladimir Nabokov

Edited by Dmitri Nabokov

278 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $35 -- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/bo...r=1&ref=review

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/bo...t.html?_r=1&em

----------


## Virgil

> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/bo...t.html?_r=1&em


Nice to Helen Vendler still around critiquing. She must be up there in age. I don't think I've ever spent a dedicated amount ot time on Ashberry. I probably should.

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/bo...ooksupdateema3 --- EASY

Poems

By Marie Ponsot

----------


## quasimodo1

little tree 

little tree 
little silent Christmas tree 
you are so little 
you are more like a flower 


who found you in the green forest 
and were you very sorry to come away? 
see i will comfort you 
because you smell so sweetly 


i will kiss your cool bark 
and hug you safe and tight 
just as your mother would, 
only don't be afraid 


look the spangles 
that sleep all the year in a dark box 
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine, 
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads, 


put up your little arms 
and i'll give them all to you to hold 
every finger shall have its ring 
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy 


then when you're quite dressed 
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see ...{excerpt} --

----------


## Virgil

> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/bo...ooksupdateema3 --- EASY
> 
> Poems
> 
> By Marie Ponsot


Thanks Quasi. I had never heard of her. Found this one by her on the internet.




> *The Problem of Fiction*
> by Marie Ponsot 
> 
> She always writes poems. This summer 
> shes starting a novel. Its in trouble already. 
> The characters are easya girl 
> and her friend who is a girl 
> and the boy down the block with his first car, 
> an older boy, sixteen, who sometimes 
> ...


[Snip] 
Read the rest here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...html?id=177094

----------


## quasimodo1

you have to love the Poetry Foundation (maybe not so much Poetry magazine)... besides they now sponsor PBS

----------


## quasimodo1

ADVENT 1966

Because in Vietnam the vision of a Burning Babe 
is multiplied, multiplied, 
the flesh on fire 
not Christ’s, as Southwell saw it, prefiguring 
the Passion upon the Eve of Christmas, 
but wholly human and repeated, repeated, 
infant after infant, their names forgotten, 
their sex unknown in the ashes, 
set alight, flaming but not vanishing, 
not vanishing as his vision but lingering, 
cinders upon the earth or living on 
moaning and stinking in hospitals three abed; 
because of this my strong sight, 
my clear caressive sight, my poet’s sight I was given 
that it might stir me to song, 
is blurred. 
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/c...ow/5324494.cms 

--- Dilip Chitre --- his homepage --- In the pool of bliss,Bliss is all ripples." http://thebuckstopshere0.tripod.com/

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/bo...pagewanted=all --- A VILLAGE LIFE

By Louise Glück

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapt...-Fred-Marchant

----------


## quasimodo1

GHAZAL OF THE BETTER-UNBEGUN 



A book is a suicide postponed.
--Cioran
Too volatile, am I? too voluble? too much a word-person?
I blame the soup: I'm a primordially
stirred person.

Two pronouns and a vehicle was Icarus with wings.
The apparatus of his selves made an ab-
surd person.

The sound I make is sympathy's: sad dogs are tied afar.
But howling I become an ever more un-
heard person.

I need a hundred more of you to make a likelihood.
The mirror's not convincing-- that at-best in-
ferred person.

As time's revealing gets revolting, I start looking out.
Look in and what you see is one unholy
blurred person. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.


Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.


Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and *** and camel which adore.


Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss. ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009...ef=global-home ---Dennis Brutus, South African poet... "Poetry" by Dennis Brutus --- http://logosonline.home.igc.org/brutus.htm

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/jour...html?id=238462

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.poetry.org.uk/poetrytrail.htm

----------


## quasimodo1

Struggles with Meaningless Things
In the beginning, there was chaos.
No, that’s not right. 
In the beginning, there was nothing. 
An empty space spread out, big and empty. 
Time flowed by, two years to be specific. Various things were brought in. 
Among them, a desk, a bed, a computer, shelves, chairs (two of them), a folding table,
An electric piano, a fax machine, and then lots of newspapers.
Books. Magazines. Fliers advertising plays. Envelopes. CDs. Faxes from different folks. 
Letters from different people. Unimportant things. Important things. 
Things that might be important one day. 
(Now, all these things, no longer important,
Fill all the available space. 

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

ENNUI

Tea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe,
designing futures where nothing will occur:
cross the gypsy’s palm and yawning she
will still predict no perils left to conquer.
Jeopardy is jejune now: naïve knight
finds ogres out-of-date and dragons unheard
of, while blasé princesses indict
tilts at terror as downright absurd.
{first of two stanzas}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/bo...reviews&st=cse

----------


## quasimodo1

from The Triumph of Love {XIII} 


Whose lives are hidden in God? Whose? 
Who can now tell what was taken, or where, 
or how, or whether it was received: 
how ditched, divested, clamped, sifted, over- 
laid, raked over, grassed over, spread around, 
rotted down with leafmould, accepted 
as civic concrete, reinforceable 
base cinderblocks: 
tipped into Danube, Rhine, Vistula, dredged up 
with the Baltic and the Pontic sludge: 
committed in absentia to solemn elevation, 
Trauermusik, musique funèbre, funeral 
music, for male and female 
voices ringingly a cappella, 
made for double string choirs, congregated brass, 
choice performers on baroque trumpets hefting, 
like glassblowers, inventions 
of supreme order?

----------


## quasimodo1

THE SNOW IS DEEP ON THE GROUND 

The snow is deep on the ground. 
Always the light falls 
Softly down on the hair of my belovèd. 


This is a good world. 
The war has failed. 
God shall not forget us. 
Who made the snow waits where love is. 


Only a few go mad. 
The sky moves in its whiteness 
Like the withered hand of an old king. ... {excerpt}

----------


## Babyguile

Yea I thought of you quasimodo1 rather crudely  :Biggrin:  and came up with this to post, love this poem. 

From *'Mrs Quisimodo'* by _Carol Ann Duffy_ (about the last third of it) 

The bells. The bells.
I made them mute.
No more apreggios or scales, no more stretti, trills
for christenings, weddings, great occasions, happy days.
No more practising 
for bellringers 
on smudgy autumn nights.
No more clarity of sound, divine, articulate
to purify the air
and bow the heads of drinkers in the city bars.
No single
solemn
funeral note
to answer
grief.

I sawed and pulled and hacked.
I wanted silence back.

Get this:

When I was done,
and bloody to the wrist,
I squatted down among the murdered music of the bells and 
pissed.

----------


## quasimodo1

Excellent entry, TheDave ... Duffy doesn't get much notice since being a laureate, in the US at least. "Poetry, above all, is a series of intense moments - its power is not in narrative. I'm not dealing with facts, I'm dealing with emotion." Carol Ann Duffy

----------


## quasimodo1

http://coldfrontmag.com/news/salingers-poets --- Salingers Poets
by John Deming

----------


## quasimodo1

LETTERS FROM THE DEAD


I. From My Mother

You who have read as I read when I was eight
that the sea will disgorge at the end of time
its centuries of dead, walk with me now,
listen with me as a blue rain ticks down
from your roof. This is not Armageddon, just another day
I am out of life, a spirit, today age eight 
and this same sun freckling the autumn grass
drew me out, another morning, summer ending, 
1915 and after, seventy-five years
into a world I never learned to love enough.

Today, hand in hand, we will walk back
until I am that little girl, flowers in hand
she presses into a book, A Child’s Garden of Verses, 
cowslip, Queen Anne’s lace, Wild Clover,
a piece of that day breaking off in my son’s hand
today, June 9, 2007. Now I look down,
he is so small from here, my son at late middle-age.
I watch him press it to his nose, scentless,
his lips, to see him taste it, tasteless, kissing it.
And I would come back, not even when he cries
and the memory of me flickers while he tries, failing at this.
{one of two parts}

----------


## wlz

Dennis Brutus!

----------


## wlz

Dennis Brutus!

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.phillyimc.org/en/dennis-b...ses-reflection

----------


## quasimodo1

CHARITY
{Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust} 
Goethe, Faust* 
three times I didn’t give charity:
1. On a Kurfustendamm avenue
to a woman with a child
Dark birth, Albanian or gypsy or maybe just dirty
2. One girl thrusting herself with an alms box, kinder
kinder kinder, she hit
a small tin drum, Grass’s humpback dwarf voice
Kinder, she repeated, to children of the kinder type, an advertising slogan
an egg, which, upon opening, a surprise inside, inescapable evidence of your death 
3. One more fellow stood by the bookstore with his empty skull extended
feed on wisdom, I advised him 
Books are very nutritious, all who swallow books will
be invited to God’s table
And I did not give any one of them charity

And so
a dark person, vulgar primitive, man-monkey
animal, half-wit, murderer, liar, thief, debaucher 
idiot awoke in me, raised
his head, coloured his un-pretty
mouth, with dishevelled instincts
I fed him the cheapest pizza with cheese and
salami, in the street, the hammering
of a pneumatic drill – every instant someone
lays the groundwork of their own hell

{excerpt}
*"Two souls, at least, live in my breast"

6 September 2007, Berlin

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/bo...html?ref=books

----------


## quasimodo1

A short history of Colombian poetry


February 1, 2010
I am also talking to you: in between woods, in between resins, in between a thousand restless leaves, from a single leaf, small green stain, of lushness, of grace, lone leaf in which the winds that ran through all the beautiful countries where green is made out of every other color, the winds who sang through the countries of Colombia, vibrate. 

Aurelio Arturo http://colombia.poetryinternationalw...j_id=15954&x=1

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.cprw.com/Houlihan/bond.htm

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/bo...html?ref=books

----------


## quasimodo1

WORSHIPPING IMOINU
Whether winter or summer
Whether bombs burst or don’t burst
Beautiful women walk gracefully. 
Faces eyes lips shaded with colours
The women walk.
Whether crossfire or no crossfire, whether deaths or no deaths
Men look at beautiful women.
Handsome men look at beautiful women, ugly men also look.


2

My wife growls
“I want to turn into a mole”, 
She growls daily that she wants to become a mole.
Unable to bear her nagging I gave away a hundred rupees
Telling her she could be either a mole or an egret.
Turning into a swallow she flew away immediately.
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.cprw.com/Houlihan/bond.htm

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/bo...html?ref=books --- THE BEST OF IT, New and Selected Poems by Kay Ryan 270 pages. Grove Press. $24. review by Dwight Garner

----------


## quasimodo1

THE CAVE PAINTERS



Holding only a handful of rushlight 
they pressed deeper into the dark, at a crouch
until the great rock chamber 
flowered around them and they stood 
in an enormous womb of 
flickering light and darklight, a place 
to make a start. Raised hands cast flapping shadows
over the sleeker shapes of radiance. 
They've left the world of weather and panic 
behind them and gone on in, drawing the dark
in their wake, pushing as one pulse 
to the core of stone. The pigments mixed in big shells
are crushed ore, petals and pollens, berries 
and the binding juices oozed 
out of chosen barks. The beasts 
begin to take shape from hands and feather-tufts
(soaked in ochre, manganese, madder, mallow white)
stroking the live rock, letting slopes and contours
mould those forms from chance, coaxing 
rigid dips and folds and bulges 
to lend themselves to necks, bellies, swelling haunches,
a forehead or a twist of horn, tails and manes 
curling to a crazy gallop. 
Intent and human, they attach 
the mineral, vegetable, animal 
realms to themselves, inscribing 
the one unbroken line 
everything depends on, from that 
impenetrable centre 
to the outer intangibles of light and air, even
the speed of the horse, the bison's fear, the arc 
of gentleness that this big-bellied cow
arches over its spindling calf, or the lancing
dance of death that 
bristles out of the buck's 
struck flank. On this one line they leave
a beak-headed human figure of sticks
and one small, chalky, human hand. 
We'll never know if they worked in silence
like people praying—the way our monks
illuminated their own dark ages
in cross-hatched rocky cloisters,
where they contrived a binding
labyrinth of lit affinities 
to spell out in nature's lace and fable
their mindful, blinding sixth sense 
of a god of shadows—or whether (like birds
tracing their great bloodlines over the globe)
they kept a constant gossip up 
of praise, encouragement, complaint. ... {excerpt} http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch....html?id=27210

----------


## quasimodo1

"A Poet Who Doesn’t Do Lofty" -- review by By ELISSA GOOTMAN --- also... slideshow-- http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...?ref=nyregion# ----- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/ny...html?ref=books

----------


## solem grace

At morn-at noon-at twilight dim-Maria! thou hast heard my hymn! In joy and woe- in good and ill- Mother of God, be with me still! When the hours flew brightly by, And not a cloud obscured the sky, My soul, lest it should truant be, Thy grace did guide to thine and thee; Now,when storms of Fate o'ercast Darkly my Present and my Past, Let my Future radiant shine With sweet hopes of thee and thine. "Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore.'

----------


## quasimodo1

THE LIVING FIRE

New and Selected Poems, 1975-2010

By Edward Hirsch

237 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $27 --------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/bo...html?ref=books ...review

----------


## quasimodo1

BALLAD IN A


A Kansan plays cards, calls Marshall
a crawdad, that barb lands that rascal a slap; 
that Kansan jackass scats, 
camps back at caballada ranch.


Hangs kack, ax, and camp hat. 
Kansan’s nag mad and rants can’t bask,
can’t bacchanal and garland a lass, 
can’t at last brag can crack Law’s balls,


Kansan’s cantata rang at that ramada ranch, 
Mañana, Kansan snarls, I’ll have an armada
and thwart Law’s brawn,
slam Law a damn mass war path.


Marshall’s a marksman, maps Kansan’s track, 
calm as a shaman, sharp as a hawk,
Says: That dastard Kansan’s had
and gnaws lamb fatback.


{excerpt...from Poetry Magazine, April, 2010}

----------


## quasimodo1

"Nowadays, you can often spot a work
of poetry by whether it’s in lines
or no; if it’s in prose, there’s a good chance
it’s a poem." Charles Bernstein / A Review (Poet and Anti-Poet) by Daisy Fried, published April 7, 2010 -- { http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/bo...c=me&ref=books } ...Charles Bernstein's website- { http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/ }

----------


## shortstoryfan

Thanks for posting that. Charles Bernstein is definitely on my radar to start reading soon, since he is the most mainstream of prominent member of the Language poets. I'm very interested in their work. I feel like I really do need to understand it to get a lot of poetry that is being published now, and the poetry that will be written in years to come.

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/foun...html?id=186210

----------


## shortstoryfan

http://www.fishouse.org/

Forgive me if this has already been posted here, but I thought people who love contemporary poetry would love it! My teacher is actually on this site, which is how I learned about it...but it really does feature some great up and coming poets like V. Penelope Pelizzon and Oliver de la Paz (well, those are ones I enjoy regularly).

----------


## quasimodo1

{ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/books/14bourne.html } ...and thanks to shortstoryfan for her postings.

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/building

----------


## Milaneli

When I ran away from a home country 
Left the girlfriend and the village 
Took the momentum from Hungary 
Run over the Alps, Pyrenees 
And jumped across the Atlantic 

I caught a Greyhound bus to Austin 
And came through Sacramento 
On the dirty bus station of LA 
Crowded with a colorful graffiti's 

Took an apartment on Columbus Avenue 
Got employed as a carpenter 
But it did not last 
It was expected to forge 
Social Security Number 

Then I met an agent 
Who did not want me back to the roots 
But to launch me 
As an stunt in a movie of children 
From the corn

Some fat lady was eager for love 
So that year I served as a doormat
I paid for the whiskey with smiles 
To one toothless Russian women

Thats how I succeeded in Hollywood 
At present time I'm writing the scripts for the series 
That you at home watching 
With a open jaws 

Mother, what you heard is true 
Thats how I beat a history 
Yes, Juan would also like to say hello 
But right now he has a full mouth 
Of my pride

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/bo...html?ref=books

----------


## quasimodo1

http://chronicle.com/article/Dead-Poets-Society/64989/ --- http://chronicle.com/article/The-New...-Poetry/64249/

----------


## quasimodo1

POEM How the Pope is Chosen by James Tate http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...html?id=179801

----------


## quasimodo1

http://international.poetryinternati...p?obj_id=13844

----------


## quasimodo1

5/6/10... a review by David Orr --- Robert Hasss Empathy and Desire --- 
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/bo...html?ref=books

----------


## quasimodo1

...from the Los Angeles Times: "What made Dylan Roar" ... http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...,2403126.story

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/foun...html?id=186224

----------


## quasimodo1

FROM THE DRESSING-ROOM 


Left to itself, they say, every foetus 
would turn female, staving in, nature 
siding then with the enemy that 
delicately mixes up genders. This 
is an absence I have passionately sought, 
brightening nevertheless my poets attic 
with my steady hands, calling him my blue 
lizard till his moans might be heard 
at the far end of the garden. For I like 
his ways, hes light on his feet and does 
not break anything, puts his entire soul 
into bringing me a glass of water, ...
{one of two stanzas}

----------


## quasimodo1

THE ALBERT CHAIN
Like an accomplished terrorist, the fruit hangs 
from the end of a dead stem, under a tree 
riddled with holes like a sieve. Breath smelling 
of cinnamon retires into its dream to die there. 
Fresh air blows in, morning breaks, then the mists 
close in; a rivulet of burning air 
pumps up the cinders from their roots, 
but will not straighten in two radiant months 
the twisted forest. Warm as a stable, 
close to the surface of my mind, 
the wild cat lies in the suppleness of life, 
half-stripped of its skin, and in the square 
beyond, a squirrel stoned to death 
has come to rest on a lime tree. 

I am going back into war, like a house 
I knew when I was young: I am inside, 
a thin sunshine, a night within a night, 
getting used to the chalk and clay and bats 
swarming in the roof. Like a dead man 
attached to the soil which covers him, 
I have fallen where no judgment can touch me, 
its discoloured rubble has swallowed me up. 
For ever and ever, I go back into myself: 
I was born in little pieces, like specks of dust, 
only an eye that looks in all directions can see me. 
I am learning my country all over again, 
how every inch of soil has been paid for 
by the life of a man, the funerals of the poor. ...
{two of four stanzas}

----------


## quasimodo1

BIG CITY SPEECH
Use meAbuse me Turn wheels of ﬁre on manhole hotheads Sing meSour me Secrete dark matter’s sheen on our smarting skin Rise and shineIn puddle shallows under every Meryl Cheryl Caleb Syd somnambulists and sleepyheads Wake usSpeak to us Bless what you’ve nurtured in your pits the rats voles roaches and all outlivers of your obscene ethic and politics Crawl on usFall on us you elevations that break and vein down to sulfuric ﬁber-optic wrecks through drill-bit dirt to bedrock Beat our browsFlee our sorrows Sleep tight with your ultraviolets righteous mica and drainage seeps your gorgeous color-chart container ships and cab-top numbers squinting in the mist 

© 2009, W.S. Di Piero

----------


## quasimodo1

THE PARABOLIC BALLAD 
My life, like a rocket, makes a parabola 
flying in darkness, -- no rainbow for traveler. 

There once lived an artist, red-haired Gauguin, 
he was a bohemian, a former tradesman. 
To get to the Louvre 
from the lanes of Montmartre 
he circled around 
as far as Sumatra! 

He had to abandon the madness of money, 
the filth of the scholars, the snarl of his honey. 
The man overcame the terrestrial gravity, 
The priests, drinking beer, would laugh at his "vanity": 
"A straight line is short, but it is much too simple, 
He'd better depict beds of roses for people." 

And yet, like a rocket, he flew off with ease 
through winds penetrating his coat and his ears. 
He didn't fetch up to the Louvre through the door 
but, like a parabola, 
pierced the floor! 

Each gets to the truth with his own parameter 
a worm finds a crack, man makes a parabola. 
{excerpt} - { http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/20...-77/?ref=books } - { http://zhurnal.lib.ru/a/alec_v/voncollhtm.shtml }

----------


## quasimodo1

http://chronicle.com/article/The-New...-Poetry/64249/

----------


## quasimodo1

http://media.poetryinternational.org/stream/

----------


## quasimodo1

NOX

By Anne Carson

Illustrated. Unpaged. New Directions. $29.95 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/bo...tml?ref=review --- Review By BEN RATLIFF
Published: June 3, 2010 "Lamentation"

----------


## quasimodo1

a review of "One More Theory about Happiness" by Paul Guest: review entitled "The Art of Pain" by Christopher R. Beha 6/3/10 / 202pp Ecco/Harper Collins 21.99 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/bo...html?ref=books

----------


## quasimodo1

LIMITS

Only he
Remembered the day we met
And only I 
The day we said goodbye:
“Last day of  June, our first blackberry pie,”
He always said.
A wood fire in the summer kitchen,
The hottest day.... A squall in the bedroom.
I can’t remember.


Nor he,
The December cube of  clay,
The storm the day before,
How the bare trees
Played Giant Step in the dawn wind,
Or how
On the other bed, rhythmically
Touching her knuckles to the wall,
My mother slipped forever into fantasy.


Only he
Remembered the spoken hate
(Its change too sheepish to impart)
Saw daggers still growing
In bristling clump out of my heart.


{EXCERPT}



NOTES: This poem is part of a special section of Poetry magazine's May issue



Source: Poetry (May 2010).

----------


## quasimodo1

Excerpt from "Nervous System"

When you look down
inside yourself
what is there?

You are a walking bag of surgical instruments
shining from the inside out

and thats just 
today

Tomorrow it could be different

When I think of the childhood inside me I think of sunlight dying 
on a windowsill 

The voices of my friends 
in the sunlight

All of us running around
outside of our 
deaths


--- http://www.coppercanyonpress.org/300...ading_room.cfm

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/bo...tml?ref=review Review of THE ANTHOLOGIST by Nicholson Baker (review entitled "Ryme and Unreason" by David Orr, September 1, 2009) Also, excerpt from the book... { http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/bo...rr-t.html?_r=1 } -- published September 4, 2009. "Novels about poetry are a dodgy proposition. After all, novelists already have a near monopoly on narrative and discursive fiction — turf once claimed by poetry — and it seems almost impolite for our prose writers, having triumphed so thoroughly over their sister art, to set themselves up as tour guides to poetry’s dwindling estate. And let’s face it, stories involving poets tend to be hokey or, worse, excruciatingly literary." quote from the review

----------


## quasimodo1

But Cummings saw it clearly, though he said he did not go to the Soviet Union with any specific agenda in mind. Early in the book, he has this conversation, which he transcribed in his idiosyncratic style with a hotel clerk:

“Have you any rooms?” I said.

“Yes” (not at all disagreeably).

“How much are they?”

“five dollars. But that includes breakfast.”

“Five… The redfox leans toward me. Why do you wish to go to Russia?

because I’ve never been there.

(He slumps,recovers). You are interested in economic and sociological problems?

no.

Perhaps you are aware that there has been a change of government in recent years? 

yes(I say without being able to suppress a smile).

And your sympathies are not with socialism?

may I be perfectly frank?

Please!

I know almost nothing about these important matters and care even less.

(His eyes appreciate my answer). For what do you care?

my work.

Which is writing?

and painting.

What kind of writing?

chiefly verse;some prose.

Then you wish to go to Russia as a writer and painter? Is that it?

no;I wish to go as myself.

(An almost smile). Do you realize that to go as what you call Yourself will cost a great deal?

I’ve been told so.

{from ‘EIMI: A Journey Through Soviet Russia’ }

----------


## quasimodo1

ENDLESS INTER-STATES 


1


They go down to the expressways, baskets
In hand, they go down with rakes, shovels
And watering cans, they go down to pick


Beans and trim tomato plants, they go down
In wide-brimmed hats and boots, passing
By the glass-pickers, the Geiger counters, those


Guarding the toxic wastes. They go down
Remembering the glide of automobiles, the
Swelter of children in back seats, pinching, twitching,


Sand in their bathing suits, two-fours of Molson’s
In the trunk of the car. They go down, past
The sifters, the tunnellers, those who transport


Soil from deep in the earth, and are content
To have the day before them, are content to imagine
Futures they will inhabit, beautiful futures


Filled with unimagined species, new varieties of
Plant life, sustainable abundance,
An idea of sufficient that is global. Or,


Because cars now move on rails underground,
The elevated roads are covered in earth,
Vines drape around belts of green, snake


Through cities, overgrown and teeming
With grackles and rats’ nests, a wall
Of our own devising, and the night


Watchmen with their machine guns
Keeping humans, the intoxicated,
Out. I am sorry for this version, offer


You coffee, hot while there is still
Coffee this far north, while there is still news
To wake up to, and seasons


Vaguely reminiscent of seasons.



2


Web-toed she walks into the land, fins
Carving out river bottoms, each hesitation
A lakebed, each mid-afternoon nap, a plateau,


Quaint, at least that is my dream of her,
Big shouldered, out there daydreaming
The world into existence, pleasuring herself


With lines and pauses. How else? What is a lake
But a pause? People circling it with structures, dipping
In their poles? Once she thought she could pass by


Harmless. Scraping wet shale, her knees down in it, she
Tries to remember earth, that ground cover. She tries
To reattach things, but why? What if the world


Is all action? What if thought isn’t glue, but tearing?
She sits at the lake edge where the water never meets
Earth, never touches, not really, is always pulling


Itself on to the next.



3


Now she sits by her memory of meadow, forlorn, shoeless.
She could scoop PCBs from the Hudson, she is
Always picking up after someone. But what? What


Is the primary trope of this romp? Where her uterus
Was the smell of buckshot and tar, an old man chasing
Her with a shotgun across his range. Cow pies and


Hornets’ nests, gangly boys shooting cats with BB guns,
Boys summering from Calgary, trees hollowed out,
Hiding all manner of contraband goods. When she peers


In the knotted oak, classic movies run on
The hour, Scout on the dark bark, Mildred
Pierce with a squirrel tale wrap. Nature is over,


She concludes. Nature is what is caught, cellular,
Celluloid. She sticks a thumb in another tree, a
Brownstone, a small girl—her heart a thing locked.


It’s been so long since she felt hopeful. (Perhaps nature
Is childhood.) The morning after Chernobyl
Out there with tiny umbrellas. All those internal


Combustions. This is a country that has accepted death
As an industry, it is not news. She has been warned.
Her ratings sag. She scans her least apocalyptic


Self and sees mariners floating, Ben
Franklin penning daily axioms, glasses lifting
From the river bank, planked skirts on Front,


China-like through the industrious, thinking, traffic
Clogged city, its brick heavy with desire for good.
Memory of meadow, Dickinson an ice pick scratching


Wings in her brain: if you see her standing, if you move
Too quickly, if you locate the centre, if you have other
Opportunities, by all means if you have other opportunities.
{excerpt, 3 of 6 parts} { http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/queyras/ }

----------


## quasimodo1

September 1961

This is the year the old ones,
the old great ones
leave us alone on the road.

The road leads to the sea.
We have the words in our pockets,
obscure directions. The old ones

have taken away the light of their presence,
we see it moving away over a hill
off to one side.

They are not dying,
they are withdrawn
into a painful privacy

learning to live without words.
E. P. "It looks like dying"--Williams: "I can't
describe to you what has been

happening to me"--
H. D. "unable to speak."
The darkness

twists itself in the wind, the stars
are small, the horizon
ringed with confused urban light-haze.

They have told us
the road leads to the sea,
and given

the language into our hands.
We hear
our footsteps each time a truck

has dazzled past us and gone
leaving us new silence.
One can't reach

the sea on this endless
road to the sea unless
one turns aside at the end, it seems,

follows
the owl that silently glides above it
aslant, back and forth,

and away into deep woods. ... --- 

{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Evening Hawk

From plane of light to plane, wings dipping through 
Geometries and orchids that the sunset builds, 
Out of the peak's black angularity of shadow, riding 
The last tumultuous avalanche of 
Light above pines and the guttural gorge, 
The hawk comes. 


His wing 
Scythes down another day, his motion 
Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear 
The crashless fall of stalks of Time. 


The head of each stalk is heavy with the gold of our error. 


Look! Look! he is climbing the last light 
Who knows neither Time nor error, and under 
Whose eye, unforgiving, the world, unforgiven, swings 
Into shadow. 


Long now, 
The last thrush is still, the last bat 
Now cruises in his sharp hieroglyphics. ... {excerpt}
Copyright © 1985 by Robert Penn Warren. 

Source: From New and Selected Poems 1923-1985 (1985) ---

----------


## quasimodo1

AN IMPROVISATION FOR ANGULAR MOMENTUM

Walking is like
imagination, a
single step
dissolves the circle
into motion; the eye here
and there rests
on a leaf,
gap, or ledge,
everything flowing
except where
sight touches seen:
stop, though, and
reality snaps back
in, locked hard,
forms sharply
themselves, bushbank,
dentree, phoneline,
definite, fixed,
the self, too, then
caught real, clouds
and wind melting
into their directions,
breaking around and
over, down and out,
motions profound,
alive, musical! ... 
{excerpt & self-portrait, watercolor}

----------


## quasimodo1

Jayne Cortez: Online Poems


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There It Is

And if we don't fight
if we don't resist
if we don't organize and unify and
get the power to control our own lives
Then we will wear
the exaggerated look of captivity
the stylized look of submission
the bizarre look of suicide
the dehumanized look of fear
and the decomposed look of repression
forever and ever and ever
And there it is

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps...line_poems.htm ---

----------


## quasimodo1

Chinese Whispersby John Ashbery 

John Ashbery 
And in a little while we broke under the strain: 
suppurations ad nauseam, the wanting to be taller, 
though it‘s simply about being mysterious, i.e., not taller, 
like any tree in any forest. 
Mute, the pancake describes you. 
It had tiny roman numerals embedded in its rim. 
It was a pancake clock. They had ’em in those days, 
always getting smaller, which is why they finally became extinct. 
It was a hundred years before anyone noticed. 
 The governor general 
called it “sinuous.” But we, we had other names for it, 
knew it was going to be around for a long time, 
even though extinct. And sure as shillelaghs fall from trees 
onto frozen doorsteps, it came round again 
when all memory of it had been expunged 
from the common brain. 
Everybody wants to try one of those new pancake clocks. 
A boyfriend in the next town had one 
but conveniently forgot to bring it over each time we invited him. 
Finally the rumors grew more fabulous than the real thing: 
I hear they are encrusted with tangles of briar rose, 
so dense 
not even a prince seeking the Sleeping Beauty could get inside. 
What’s more, there are more of them than when they were extinct, 
yet the prices keep on rising. They have them in the Hesperides 
and in shantytowns on the edge of the known world, 
blue with cold. All downtowns used to feature them. 
Camera obscuras, 
too, were big that year. But why is it that with so many people 
who want to know what a shout is about, nobody can find the original recipe? 
All too soon, no one cares. We go back to doing little things for each other, 
pasting stamps together to form a tiny train track, and other, 
less noticeable things. And the past is forgotten till next time. 
How to describe the years? Some were like blocks of the palest halvah, 
careless of being touched. Some took each others’ trash out, 
put each other’s eyes out. So many got thrown out 
before anyone noticed, that it was like a chiaroscuro 
of collapsing clouds. 
How I longed to visit you again in that old house! But you were deaf, 
or dead. Our letters crossed. A motorboat was ferrying me out past 
the reef, people on shore looked like dolls fingering stuffs. 
More 
keeps coming out, about the dogs I mean. Surely a simple embrace 
from an itinerant fish would have been spurned at certain periods. Not now. 
There is a famine of years in the land, the women are beautiful, 
but prematurely old and worn. It doesn’t get better. Rocks half-buried 
in bands of sand, and spontaneous execrations. 
I yell to the ship’s front door, 
wanting to be taller, and somewhere in the middle all this gets lost. 
I was a phantom for a day. My friends carried me around with them. ... {excerpt} ---

----------


## quasimodo1

Tenderness and Rot by Kay Ryan 


Tenderness and rot 
share a border. 
And rot is an 
aggressive neighbor 
whose iridescence 
keeps creeping over. 


No lessons 
can be drawn 
from this however. 


One is not 
two countries. 
One is not meat 
corrupting. 


{excerpt} ---

----------


## quasimodo1

Explorers Cry Out Unheard 


What I have in mind is the last wilderness. 


I sweat to learn its heights of sun, scrub, ants, 
its gashes full of shadows and odd plants, 
as inch by inch it yields to my hard press. 


And the way behind me changes as I advance. 
If interdependence shapes the biomass, 
though I plot my next step by pure chance 
I can’t go wrong. Even willful deviance 
connects me to all the rest. The changing past 
includes and can‘t excerpt me. {excerpt} --- 
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/ny...html?ref=books 


Marie Ponsot, “Explorers Cry Out Unheard” from The Bird Catcher. Copyright © 1998 by Marie Ponsot. Reprinted with the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

----------


## quasimodo1

BENDING THE BOW

We've our business to attend Day's duties,
bend back the bow in dreams as we may
til the end rimes in the taut string
with the sending. Reveries are rivers and flow
where the cold light gleams reflecting the window upon the
surface of the table,
the presst-glass creamer, the pewter sugar bowl, the litter
of coffee cups and saucers,
carnations painted growing upon whose surfaces. The whole
composition of surfaces leads into the other
current disturbing
what I would take hold of. I'd been 

in the course of a letter – I am still
in the course of a letter – to a friend,
who comes close in to my thought so that
the day is hers. My hand writing here
there shakes in the currents of... of air?
of an inner anticipation of...? reaching to touch
ghostly exhilarations in the thought of her. 

At the extremity of this
design
"there is a connexion working in both directions, as in
the bow and the lyre"–
only in that swift fulfillment of the wish
that sleep
can illustrate my hand
sweeps the string. ... {excerpt} 

-- { http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps...line_poems.htm }

----------


## quasimodo1

The Cats Will Know


Rain will fall again 
on your smooth pavement, 
a light rain like 
a breath or a step. 
The breeze and the dawn 
will flourish again 
when you return, 
as if beneath your step. 
Between flowers and sills 
the cats will know. 


There will be other days, 
there will be other voices. 
You will smile alone. 
The cats will know. 
You will hear words 
old and spent and useless 
like costumes left over 
from yesterdays parties. 


You too will make gestures. 
Youll answer with words 
face of springtime, 
you too will make gestures. 


The cats will know, 
face of springtime; 
and the light rain 
and the hyacinth dawn 
that wrench the heart of him 
who hopes no more for you 
they are the sad smile... {excerpt} http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...html?id=182021

Translated by Geoffrey Brock
...  Cesare Pavese

----------


## quasimodo1

Pro Femina


ONE 
From Sappho to myself, consider the fate of women. 
How unwomanly to discuss it! Like a noose or an albatross necktie 
The clinical sobriquet hangs us: codpiece coveters. 
Never mind these epithets; I myself have collected some honeys. 
Juvenal set us apart in denouncing our vices 
Which had grown, in part, from having been set apart: 
Women abused their spouses, cuckolded them, even plotted 
To poison them. Sensing, behind the violence of his manner— 
“Think I'm crazy or drunk?”—his emotional stake in us, 
As we forgive Strindberg and Nietzsche, we forgive all those 
Who cannot forget us. We are hyenas. Yes, we admit it. 


While men have politely debated free will, we have howled for it, 
Howl still, pacing the centuries, tragedy heroines. 
Some who sat quietly in the corner with their embroidery 
Were Defarges, stabbing the wool with the names of their ancient 
Oppressors, who ruled by the divine right of the male— 
I’m impatient of interruptions! I’m aware there were millions 
Of mutes for every Saint Joan or sainted Jane Austen, 
Who, vague-eyed and acquiescent, worshiped God as a man. 
I’m not concerned with those cabbageheads, not truly feminine 
But neutered by labor. I mean real women, like you and like me. 


Freed in fact, not in custom, lifted from furrow and scullery, 
Not obliged, now, to be the pot for the annual chicken, 
Have we begun to arrive in time? With our well-known 
Respect for life because it hurts so much to come out with it; 
Disdainful of “sovereignty,” “national honor;” and other abstractions; 
We can say, like the ancient Chinese to successive waves of invaders, 
“Relax, and let us absorb you. You can learn temperance 
In a more temperate climate.” Give us just a few decades 
Of grace, to encourage the fine art of acquiescence 
And we might save the race. Meanwhile, observe our creative chaos, 
Flux, efflorescence—whatever you care to call it! 
{excerpt} ---

----------


## quasimodo1

W. S. Merwin to Be Named Poet Laureate
By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: June 30, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/bo...html?ref=books --- Song of Three Smiles 

Let me call a ghost, 
Love, so it be little: 
In December we took 
No thought for the weather. 


Whom now shall I thank 
For this wealth of water? 
Your heart loves harbors 
Where I am a stranger. 


Where was it we lay 
Needing no other 
Twelve days and twelve nights 
In each other’s eyes? ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Portrait of the Author

Cesare Pavese 
to Leone

The window that faces this street is always 
an empty abyss. The summer blue overhead 
seems firmer somehow, with its passing cloud. 
Here, nobody passes. It’s just us sitting here. 


My colleague—who stinks—is sitting beside me 
on the public street, and without moving his body 
he strips off his pants. I take off my sweater. 
The stones beneath us are cold, and my colleague 
likes this, and I look at him, and nobody passes. 
And suddenly, framed in the window, a woman, 
brightly colored. Maybe she noticed the stink 
and wanted to see. My colleague stands and looks back. 
He has a sort of continuous beard from his face 
to his ankles, it covers what pants do and pokes out 
through his sweater. That beard stinks all by itself. 
When he jumped through the window, into the dark, 
the woman vanished. My eyes wander up 
toward the nice solid strip of sky—it’s naked too. 


I don’t stink, since I don’t have a beard. The stones 
are cold on the skin of my back, which women like 
because it’s so smooth: what don’t women like? 
But no women pass by. Some ***** passes by 
followed by a male whose fur is rain-drenched 
and stinks bad. The smooth cloud in the sky 
looks down, unmoving: it resembles a leaf pile. 
My colleague has found himself supper tonight. 
Women treat you well when you’re naked. At last 
a kid appears from around the corner. He’s smoking, 
he’s got curly hair, tough skin, and legs like an eel, 
like me. Some fine day, the women will want 
to take off his clothes and sniff for the good stink. 
I stick out a foot as he passes. He falls to the ground, 
and I ask for a cig. We smoke there in silence.
Translated by Geoffrey Brock ---

----------


## quasimodo1

Broken Pot Used as Writing Material

Re-entry to your econiche
Is like the beautifying of a cathedral.
One reads these cloths of stem stitch,
Laid or couched stitch as natural numbers,
One reads a clock from twelve to six
Asserting that they moved when they didn’t.

Boundaries shift for the whole hand,
The left must close a pattern guided
By the right, since signals from the two eyes
Fail to recognise an everyday face.

{excerpt} ---

----------


## quasimodo1

http://media.poetryinternational.org/clips/2010/

----------


## quasimodo1

In Media Universe, Poetrys Small Planet
By DANA JENNINGS
Published: July 22, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/bo..._r=1&ref=books

----------


## quasimodo1

"Nothing is more beautiful than a great humming central electric station that holds the hydraulic pressure of a mountain chain and the electric power of a vast horizon, synthesised in marble distribution panels bristling with dials, keyboards and shining communicators. These panels are our only models for the writing of poetry." from the Guardian article... http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010...els-technology

----------


## quasimodo1

from The Nerve Meter 


(Antonin Artaud) An actor is seen as if through crystals. 
Inspiration in stages. 
One musn’t let in too much literature. 


I have aspired no further than the clockwork of the soul, I have transcribed only the pain of an abortive adjustment. 
I am a total abyss. Those who believed me capable of a whole pain, a beautiful pain, a dense and fleshy anguish, an anguish which is a mixture of objects, an effervescent grinding of forces rather than a suspended point 
—and yet with restless, uprooting impulses which come from the confrontation of my forces with these abysses of offered finality 
(from the confrontation of forces of powerful size), 
and there is nothing left but the voluminous abysses, the immobility, the cold— 
in short, those who attributed to me more life, who thought me at an earlier stage in the fall of the self, who believed me immersed in a tormented noise, in a violent darkness with which I struggled 
—are lost in the shadows of man. 


In sleep, nerves tensed the whole length of my legs. 
Sleep came from a shifting of belief, the pressure eased, absurdity stepped on my toes. 


It must be understood that all of intelligence is only a vast contingency, and that one can lose it, not like a lunatic who is dead, but like a living person who is in life and who feels working on himself its attraction and its inspiration (of intelligence, not of life). 
The titillations of intelligence and this sudden reversal of contending parties. 
Words halfway to intelligence. 
This possibility of thinking in reverse and of suddenly reviling one’s thought. 
This dialogue in thought. 
The ingestion, the breaking off of everything. 
And all at once this trickle of water on a volcano, the thin, slow falling of the mind. 


To find oneself again in a state of extreme shock, clarified by unreality, with, in a corner of oneself, some fragments of the real world. 
{excerpt}

----------


## Paulclem

Hi Quasimodo

I've not looked at this thread before, but flicking through i can see that this must be a labour of love for you. It's certainly a great resource.

 :Thumbsup:

----------


## quasimodo1

Retroduction to American History 


Cats walk the floor at midnight; that enemy of fog, 
The moon, wraps the bedpost in receding stillness; sleep 
Collects all weary nothings and lugs away the towers, 
The pinnacles of dust that feed the subway. 


What stiff unhappy silence waits on sleep 
Struts like an officer; tongues next-door bewitch 
Themselves with divination; I like a melancholy oaf 
Beg the nightly pillow with impossible loves. 
And abnegation folds hands, crossed like the knees 
Of the complacent tailor, stitches cloaks of mercy 
To the backs of obsessions. 


Winter like spring no less 
Tolerates the air; the wild pheasant meets innocently 
The gun; night flouts illumination with meagre impudence. 
In such serenity of equal fates, why has Narcissus 
Urged the brook with questions? Merged with the element 
Speculation suffuses the meadow with drops to tickle 
The cow’s gullet; grasshoppers drink the rain. 
Antiquity breached mortality with myths. 
Narcissus is vocabulary. Hermes decorates 
A cornice on the Third National Bank. Vocabulary 
Becomes confusion, decoration a blight; the Parthenon 
In Tennessee stucco, art for the sake of death. Now 
(The bedpost receding in stillness) you brush your teeth 
“Hitting on all thirty-two;” scholarship pares 
The nails of Catullus, sniffs his sheets, restores 
His “passionate underwear;” morality disciplines the other 
Person; every son-of-a-***** is Christ, at least Rousseau; 
Prospero serves humanity in steam-heated universities, three 
Thousand dollars a year. Simplicity, Flamineo, is obscene; 
Sunlight topples indignant from the hill. 
In every railroad station everywhere every lover 
Waits for his train. He cannot hear. The smoke 
Thickens. Ticket in hand, he pumps his body 
Toward lower six, for one more terse ineffable trip, 
His very eyeballs fixed in disarticulation. The berth 
Is clean; no elephants, vultures, mice or spiders 
Distract him from nonentity: his metaphors are dead. ...


{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

The one whose Reproach I Cannot Evade 


She sits in her glass garden
and awaits the guests - 
The sailor with the blue tangerines
the fish clothed in languages
the dolphin with a revolver in its teeth.

Dusk enters from stage left:
its voice falls like dew on the arbor.
Tiny bells
sway in the catalpa tree.

What is it she hopes to catch in her net
of love? Petals? Conch-shells?
The night-moth? She does not speak.
Tonight, I tell her, no one comes;
you wait in vain.

Yet at eight precisely
the moon opens its theatric doors,
an arm rises from the fountain,
the music box, face down
on her tabouret, swells and bursts
its cover - a tinkling flood of 
rice moves over the table.

She smiles at me, false believer,
smiles and goes in, leaving
the garden empty and my thighs
half-eaten by the raging twilight. 

George Hitchcock 


http://www.philly.com/inquirer/obitu...poets__96.html

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/high...-1225900776230

----------


## quasimodo1

A VILLAGE LIFE

By Louise Glück

72 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $23
"Poets, being creatures of routine, tend to settle into a style sometime in their 30s and plow those acres as if theyd been cleared by their fathers fathers fathers. Read a poets second or third book and you will see the style of his dotage. Poets restless in their forms, unwilling to take yesterdays truth as gospel, are as rare as a blue rose; and rarer still are poets like Eliot, Lowell and Geoffrey Hill, who have convincingly changed their styles midcareer." ...from the review. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/bo...w/Logan-t.html ---

----------


## quasimodo1

The Drowned Children 


You see, they have no judgment. 
So it is natural that they should drown, 
first the ice taking them in 
and then, all winter, their wool scarves 
floating behind them as they sink 
until at last they are quiet. 
And the pond lifts them in its manifold dark arms. 


But death must come to them differently, 
so close to the beginning. 
As though they had always been 
blind and weightless. Therefore 
the rest is dreamed, the lamp, 
the good white cloth that covered the table, 
their bodies. 


And yet they hear the names they used 
like lures slipping over the pond: ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

"It’s surely time to give up the Heaney/Muldoon analogizing. These are men whose poems — in terms of texture and structure, tactics and tone — could not be more dissimilar. But here they are, each with new books, issued within a two-week span by the same publisher. What’s a wide-awake couch potato to do but read them side by jowl? If there’s a better way to spend $50 in a bookstore this weekend, I don't know what it is." ...from the review. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/bo..._r=1&ref=books --- HUMAN CHAIN 

By Seamus Heaney 

85 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $24. {another review... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/bo...ooksupdateema3 }

.MAGGOT 

By Paul Muldoon 

134 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $24.

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...082704859.html --- By Courtney Cook
Saturday, August 28, 2010 

PHANTOM NOISE 

By Brian Turner 

Alice James. 

93 pp. $16.95

----------


## quasimodo1

Deluge by Tamás Emod
translated from the Hungarian by Thomas Ország-Land (October 2010)
Tamás Emod 1888-1938: Hungarian poet, playwright and theatre director.



I. MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE


Beneath a rig of groans, in a tempest of tears,

engulfed by fear as an awesome deluge recurs,



on board a lost and battered, rudderless galley

afloat on the blood of this dreadful time of folly --



like sailors who trust their news to a bottle in the current,

I thrust these final verses into the torrent




so that, beyond death and terror and darkness, you

may still receive them one day in a better future,



you, in whom we have placed our faith and hopes

in vain, for we shall never reach your shores:



free shores, our home ever since the centaurs’ idylls,

cultured Europe, our ancient, classical cradle.



***


We signal our final farewells before the night covers us,

our helpless pleas of distress flashed over the flood,



and still salute the offspring of tomorrow,

we the galley slaves of the present, the ship and the oars



whose festive garlands have been torn away,

we sad and sensitive souls of this brutal age



who have foretold the worst and seen it all

who had screamed out in fear before we fell,



the children lusting for wisdom, humour and trust

before the depth of hell roared over us:



before our plight sinks into blind oblivion,

I send you these lines, the final news of our lives. ...
{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Tribute and Farewell (a review)
By Abigail Deutsch 
NOX By Anne Carson
New Directions, 2010
--- { http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/nox-carson/ }

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.3amMagazine.com/3am/a-vis...t-georg-trakl/

----------


## quasimodo1

Poetry Festival, Newark, NJ -- Urban Beat for Poetry Festival By FELICIA R. LEE
Published: October 5, 2010 -- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/bo..._r=1&ref=books -- "The truth of that statement will be put to the test by an expected audience of about 20,000 poetry lovers at the festival, which is held every two years. They will interact with dozens of the most celebrated poets in the world, appearing in a lineup that this year includes Billy Collins, Rita Dove, Kay Ryan, Mark Strand, Mr. Baraka, Martin Espada, Sharon Olds and Galway Kinnell." Felicia R. Lee, NYT

----------


## quasimodo1

THE SMALL ROOM
The men with the same face are talking all at once,
One is a theorist, another is a theorist,
The rest are all theorists.

Behind the unsealed door a masked man listens –
The sophist with club in hand,
He too is a theorist. And somewhat drunk.

What name shall I give the deaf man
Who closes his eyes and places
His fingers in his ears –
Neither wise nor foolish,
Perhaps intelligent.

He faces the outward view of the same
Street which the blind man, beneath
The balcony, has discovered and rediscovered
Over the years with his hand over his mouth.

And eyes bursting open.
{Togara Muzanenhamo, from Spirit Brides}

----------


## quasimodo1

National Poetry Day: unlock the mathematical secrets of verse --- By Steve Jones
Published: 12:00PM BST 05 Oct 2010 --- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/s...-of-verse.html

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/a...reading/65215/ Article ...one of five installments by Adam Roberts from The Atlantic

----------


## quasimodo1

THE NERVE FIBERS


The nerve fibers, a veil on red music clanging,
cannoned from columns. An anthem bubbling.

Scientifically stretching over the cheeks 
at the edge of one moment. The grey suit passed,

the overcoat, impressions everywhere. 
Watching a negligible dog fetch as if it were human—

his hind legs so honest, so independent—
she stood in a doorway, not beautiful, never 

specially clever, remote from herself. Over and over—
twist, turn, wake up, set going. Doomed to sinking—

decorate the dungeon, be decent. 
The edge of her mind turning meaning for hours

at a time. Hours and days. A sound like a sickle.
Her head a bunch of heather. Then over.

The matted and tangled message, a red square.
The thinking nerves. The door of the room.

Dante : the Inferno. The English : London. 
A piston thumping mechanically behind the screen. ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

from the collection "Sleek for the Long Flight" AN EGG IN THE CORNER OF ONE EYE --- I can only guess what it contains. I lean to the mirror like a teen-ager checking his complexion. Maybe it is sleep. Or a dream in which, like a bee or nursing mother or a radish, you eat to feed others. Or maybe it is a shard of light in the shape of an island from which dogs are leaping into the water, swimming toward a barking that only death can hear. On the eye's other shore life is upside-down. The dogs have swum for days to clamber up and, like an eye in its deathbed, shake out rays of light. Or maybe the light implodes. Or sinks into itself like a turned-off TV, the optic nerve subsiding like a snapped kitestring. I don't know. To open a tear is to kill whatever it was growing. I can't tell the difference between grief and joy. I tell myself that a tear is my dath, leaking. In this way weeping resemmbles menstruation. The egg that will be fertilized never sees the light of day.

----------


## Silas Thorne

NZ Poet Michael Harlow reciting his poem 'I am a Tyger':

http://www.ch9.co.nz/content/michael-harlow-0

----------


## quasimodo1

from the collection "Sleek for the Long Flight" ... SCORPIO 

You are unpredictable, obsessed by sex and death, eager to assert your individuality. You 

can be devious, but charming. You will not be invited to the party. You carry your young 

on your back, because your tail cannot reach there and, instictively, they know that. You 

wish they would get off. If you were born today, you would have been a great basketball 

player except for the accident. Today's Scorpio daughter will be beautiful and intense: 

when her wishes are granted, she's in trouble. When two of you are gathered in my name, 

your tails will snarl in the air like incestuous lariats. You should take care of that 

pressing financial obligation today. You have forgotten something. What do you think it 

is? You are a spine whose legs have failed to evolve into ribs. Your conversation is 

only about you: you never mention me. I am the one who made you what you are. It is my 

fault. Tonight should be devoted to romantic pursuits. Whom shall we chase? We will not 

be invited to the party. You ought to forget about me. You tend to be careless of others. 

You are the only one I have ever loved.

----------


## quasimodo1

THE ASIANS DYING 

When the forests have been destroyed their darkness remains 
The ash the great walker follows the possessors 
Forever 
Nothing they will come to is real 
Nor for long 
Over the watercourses 
Like ducks in the time of the ducks 
The ghosts of the villages trail in the sky 
Making a new twilight 


Rain falls into the open eyes of the dead 
Again again with its pointless sound 
When the moon finds them they are the color of everything 


{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

THE WAY TO THE RIVER 

The way to the river leads past the names of 
Ash the sleeves the wreaths of hinges 
Through the song of the bandage vendor 


I lay your name by my voice 
As I go 


The way to the river leads past the late 
Doors and the games of the children born looking backwards 
They play that they are broken glass 
The numbers wait in the halls and the clouds 
Call 
From windows 
They play that they are old they are putting the horizon 
Into baskets they are escaping they are 
Hiding 


I step over the sleepers the fires the calendars 
My voice turns to you 


I go past the juggler’s condemned building the hollow 
Windows gallery 
Of invisible presidents the same motion in them all 
In a parked cab by the sealed wall the hats are playing 
Sort of poker with somebody’s 


Old snapshots game I don’t understand they lose 
The rivers one 
After the other I begin to know where I am 
I am home 


Be here the flies from the house of the mapmaker 
Walk on our letters I can tell 
And the days hang medals between us 
I have lit our room with a glove of yours be 
Here I turn 
To your name and the hour remembers 
Its one word 
Now 


Be here what can we 
Do for the dead the footsteps full of money 
I offer you what I have my 
Poverty ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

ONE OF THE LIVES 



If I had not met the red-haired boy whose father
had broken a leg parachuting into Provence
to join the resistance in the final stage of the war
and so had been killed there as the Germans were moving north
out of Italy and if the friend who was with him
as he was dying had not had an elder brother
who also died young quite differently in peacetime
leaving two children one of them with bad health
who had been kept out of school for a whole year by an illness
and if I had written anything else at the top 
of the examination form where it said college
of your choice or if the questions that day had been
put differently and if a young woman in Kittanning
had not taught my father to drive at the age of twenty
so that he got the job with the pastor of the big church 
in Pittsburgh where my mother was working and if 
my mother had not lost both parents when she was a child
so that she had to go to her grandmother’s in Pittsburgh
I would not have found myself on an iron cot
with my head by the fireplace of a stone farmhouse
{excerpt} {an article about Merwin... http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs...n/pdmerwin.htm }

----------


## quasimodo1

Lines of Refusal 



Nothing here, just the sound of the heat, the sound of the cars,
nothing, nothing

Sweet unrest

To the oldest son a scythe, to the second a ****, to the third a cat

Must avoid rivers, strivers, and voyeurs

Not gather, not tether, not tie

The young brother came to a town that was completely hung
with black crepe

Wrote his autobiography in exactly thirty-seven words

Crawled into a crawlspace and pulled shut the door

No friend, no grammar, no end

Later, he too will become an imposing statue

No wish, no fission, no sign

Then hurrying across the avenue

Snow and so on

A young red fox and so on

Face and hair and hands and so on

Each with the incomparable taste of its own life in its mouth

----------


## John Trivolta

=really good collection of heart touching poetry .

----------


## quasimodo1

THE WAY TO THE RIVER 

The way to the river leads past the names of 
Ash the sleeves the wreaths of hinges 
Through the song of the bandage vendor 


I lay your name by my voice 
As I go 


The way to the river leads past the late 
Doors and the games of the children born looking backwards 
They play that they are broken glass 
The numbers wait in the halls and the clouds 
Call 
From windows 
They play that they are old they are putting the horizon 
Into baskets they are escaping they are 
Hiding 


I step over the sleepers the fires the calendars 
My voice turns to you 


I go past the juggler’s condemned building the hollow 
Windows gallery 
Of invisible presidents the same motion in them all 
In a parked cab by the sealed wall the hats are playing 
Sort of poker with somebody’s 


Old snapshots game I don’t understand they lose 
The rivers one 
After the other I begin to know where I am 
I am home 


Be here the flies from the house of the mapmaker 
Walk on our letters I can tell 
And the days hang medals between us 
I have lit our room with a glove of yours be 
Here I turn 
To your name and the hour remembers 
Its one word 
Now ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

Rebecca Gould interviews the descendants of Titsian Tabidze, August 2010 --- http://www.guernicamag.com/interview...abidze_8_1_10/

----------


## quasimodo1

FOR THE ANNIVERSARY OF MY DEATH 

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day 
When the last fires will wave to me 
And the silence will set out 
Tireless traveler 
Like the beam of a lightless star 


Then I will no longer 
Find myself in life as in a strange garment 
Surprised at the earth 
And the love of one woman 
...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

TERM

At the last minute a word is waiting
not heard that way before and not to be
repeated or ever be remembered
one that always had been a household word
used in speaking of the ordinary
everyday recurrences of living
not newly chosen or long considered
or a matter for comment afterward
who would ever have thought it was the one
saying itself from the beginning through
all its uses and circumstances to
utter at last that meaning of its own
for which it had long been the only word
though it seems now that any word would do

ONLINE SOURCE: http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/p...erwin/term.htm

----------


## quasimodo1

RAIN LIGHT All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning

ONLINE SOURCE:http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06...anscript1.html

----------


## quasimodo1

The Lovers 


The lovers say nothing. 
Love is the finest of the silences, 
the one that trembles most and is hardest to bear. 
The lovers are looking for something. 
The lovers are the ones who abandon, 
the ones who change, who forget. 
Their hearts tell them that they will never find. 
They don't find, they're looking. 

The lovers wander around like crazy people 
because they're alone, alone, 
surrendering, giving themselves to each moment, 
crying because they don't save love. 
They worry about love. The lovers 
live for the day, it's the best they can do, it's all they know. 
They're going away all the time, 
all the time, going somewhere else. 
They hope, 
not for anything in particular, they just hope. 
They know that whatever it is they will not find it. 
Love is the perpetual deferment, 
always the next step, the other, the other. 
The lovers are the insatiable ones, 
the ones who must always, fortunately, be alone. 

The lovers are the serpent in the story. 
They have snakes instead of arms. 
The veins in their necks swell 
like snakes too, suffocating them. 
The lovers can't sleep 
because if they do the worms ear them. 

They open their eyes in the dark 
and terror falls into them. 

They find scorpions under the sheet 
and their bed floats as though on a lake. 

The lovers are crazy, only crazy 
with no God and no devil. 

The lovers come out of their caves 
trembling, starving, 
chasing phantoms. 
They laugh at those who know all about it, 
who love forever, truly, 
at those who believe in love as an inexhaustible lamp. 

The lovers play at picking up water, 
tattooing smoke, at staying where they are. 
They play the long sad game of love. 
None of them will give up. 
The lovers are ashamed to reach any agreement. ...{excerpt} 

(translated by W. S. Merwin)

----------


## quasimodo1

from GREGORY COWLES" review... "Hayess work is terrific, and characteristic of a certain strain in contemporary poetry: its grounded in narrative even as its linguistically dense and playful, with allusions to formal verse traditions and to pop culture new and old."
--- November 18, 2010, 3:15 pm Lighthead, by Terrance Hayes: A.D.D. Poet Wins N.B.A. Poetry Award
By GREGORY COWLES --- http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2...rd/?ref=review

----------


## quasimodo1

TOUCH ME Summer is late, my heart. 
Words plucked out of the air 
some forty years ago 
when I was wild with love 
and torn almost in two 
scatter like leaves this night 
of whistling wind and rain. 
It is my heart that's late, 
it is my song that's flown. 
Outdoors all afternoon 
under a gunmetal sky 
staking my garden down, 
I kneeled to the crickets trilling 
underfoot as if about 
to burst from their crusty shells; 
and like a child again 
marveled to hear so clear 
and brave a music pour

----------


## quasimodo1

WHEN SHE WOULDN'T 


When her recorded voice on the phone 
said who she was again and again to the piles 
of newspapers and magazines and the clothes 


in the chairs and the bags of unopened mail 
and garbage and piles of unwashed dishes.


When she could no longer walk 
through the stench of it, in her don’t-need-nobody-
to-help-me way of walking, with her head 


bent down to her knees as if she were searching 
for a dime that had rolled into a crack 


on the floor, though it was impossible to see 
the floor. When the pain in her foot she disclosed
to no one was so bad she could not stand 


at her refrigerator packed with food and sniff 
to find what was edible. When she could hardly 


even sit as she loved to sit, all night 
on the toilet, with the old rinsed diapers 
hanging nearby on the curtainless bar 


of the shower stall, and the shoes lined up
in the tub, falling asleep and waking up 


while she cut out newspaper clippings 
and listened to the late-night talk 
on her crackling radio about alien landings 


and why the government had denied them. 
When she drew the soapy rag across the agonizing 


ache of her foot trying over and over to wash
the black from her big toe and could not
because it was gangrene. 


When at last they came to carry my mother 
out of the wilderness of that house ...{excerpt}

----------


## Silas Thorne

Resurrection by Michael Mckimm

As the cod that's cooked in a mountain
of salt comes out delicate as butter, a fur
of disappearances, unrecognisable,
so have I buried the book of our lives
in the salt mines of Cheshire, twenty
miles of white tunnels, two hundred feet deep. (excerpt) 

from http://www.tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/

Thanks q1 for introducing me to Terrance Hayes. I followed the link to another link and then heard him reading his poems.  :Smile:

----------


## quasimodo1

Waipounamu (Wall Poem) 


Hoisting history on his back like a sugar-sack,
the swagger strides along greenstone trails.
All night the crib creeks are humming home,
and drowned towns float in their canvas shrouds.
They are just the ghosts of their original selves,
an emotional investment looted by snow-melt for
schemes to answer the Question of Illumination.
To tap this yearning for a golden age,
singing shepherds held wisps of tussock
which curled like lighted Chinese joss-sticks
on the fan-tan tables of sly-grog dens,
frozen in that glacier known as the past.
In the forgotten graveyards, hair grows into grass,
while wind sifts the sweet vernal over and over,
like diggers letting gold dust pour through their fingers.
The Kingston Flyer is chuffing
on the Great Northern Railway to Wakatipu.
John Turnbull Thompson cut the runholders loose
with a panoramic survey and the confidence of a faithhealer
in the middle of Queen Victoria's Royal Century,
when the boom-time harvest of Celtic place-names
seeded Central like a nouveau-Hibernian dialect
from Balclutha to Gimmerburn to Glendhu Bay.
Winter arrives on time in a glitzblitz of powdery snow.
The hoar-frost is a Quarztopolis of ice crystals,
turning weeping willows into frozen chandeliers. ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

TERM

At the last minute a word is waiting
not heard that way before and not to be
repeated or ever be remembered
one that always had been a household word
used in speaking of the ordinary
everyday recurrences of living
not newly chosen or long considered
or a matter for comment afterward
who would ever have thought it was the one
saying itself from the beginning through ...{excerpt} --- Online Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/p...erwin/term.htm

----------


## quasimodo1

Bella Akhmadulina, Bold Voice in Russian Poetry, Dies at 73 By WILLIAM GRIMES
Published: November 29, 2010 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/wo..._r=1&ref=books

----------


## quasimodo1

THE GREAT LAMENT OF MY OBSCURITY THREE
where we live the flowers of the clocks catch fire and the plumes encircle the brightness in the distant sulphur morning the cows lick the salt lilies 
my son
my son
let us always shuffle through the colour of the world
which looks bluer than the subway and astronomy
we are too thin
we have no mouth
our legs are stiff and knock together
our faces are formeless like the stars
crystal points without strength burned basilica ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

PERISHABLE, IT SAID 


Perishable, it said on the plastic container,
and below, in different ink, 
the date to be used by, the last teaspoon consumed. 


I found myself looking:
now at the back of each hand,
now inside the knees,
now turning over each foot to look at the sole.


Then at the leaves of the young tomato plants, 
then at the arguing jays.


Under the wooden table and lifted stones, looking. 
Coffee cups, olives, cheeses, 
hunger, sorrow, fears— ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

MATHEMATICS


I have envied those 
who make something 
useful, sturdy— 
a chair, a pair of boots. 


Even a soup, 
rich with potatoes and cream. 


Or those who fix, perhaps, 
a leaking window: 
strip out the old cracked putty, 
lay down cleanly the line of the new. 


You could learn, 
the mirror tells me, late at night, 
but lacks conviction. 
One reflected eyebrow quivers a little. 


I look at this 
borrowed apartment— 
everywhere I question it, 
the wallpaper’s pattern matches. 


Yesterday a woman 
showed me 
a building shaped 
like the overturned hull of a ship, 


its roof trusses, under the plaster, 
lashed with soaked rawhide, 
the columns’ marble 
painted to seem like wood. 
Though possibly it was the other way around? 


I look at my unhandy hand, 
innocent, 
shaped as the hands of others are shaped. 
Even the pen it holds is a mystery, really. ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

ANOTHER RIVER 
The friends have gone home far up the valley
of that river into whose estuary
the man from England sailed in his own age
in time to catch sight of the late forests
furring in black the remotest edges
of the majestic water always it
appeared to me that he arrived just as
an evening was beginning and toward the end
of summer when the converging surface
lay as a single vast mirror gazing
upward into the pearl light that was
already stained with the first saffron
of sunset on which the high wavering trails
of migrant birds flowed southward as though there were
no end to them the wind had dropped and the tide
and the current for a moment seemed to hang
still in balance and the creaking and knocking
of wood stopped all at once ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

A Conversation With W.S. Merwin

Often a poet's contribution to his national literature is measured by awards, fellowships, and grants. W.S. Merwin's importance in the world of literature runs deeper and broader than acclaim and recognition. Merwin, as a historic figure, serves as a link from Pound and Auden (Auden selected Merwin's first book, A Mask for Janus, for the 1952 Yale Younger Poet Series) to the contemporary scene. However, it would be a mistake to view Merwin's growth as a mere rejection of contemporary neoclassicism for the pursuit of "daring experiments in metrical irregularity and thematic disorganization" of the sixties. His concern for discipline remains paramount. What makes his poetry attractive is more than an intangible charm. In Merwin, there is something to be learned.

Merwin has published nine books of poetry, including The Carrier of Ladders for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. Moreover, he has written plays, essays, and radio scripts. Merwin has made a large part of his living by translating French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin. His Selected Translations 1948-1968 won the P.E.N. Translation Prize for 1968. Merwin's latest work is Unframed originals (Athenaeum, 1982), his third book of prose. -Jim Brock

{interview -- http://www3.wooster.edu/artfuldodge/...ews/merwin.htm }

----------


## quasimodo1

BREAD {for Wendell Berry}Each face in the street is a slice of bread 
wandering on 
searching 


somewhere in the light the true hunger 
appears to be passing them by 
they clutch 


have they forgotten the pale caves 
they dreamed of hiding in 
their own caves 
full of the waiting of their footprints 
hung with the hollow marks of their groping 
full of their sleep and their hiding 


have they forgotten the ragged tunnels 
they dreamed of following in out of the light 
to hear step after step ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/a...Utterance2.jpg

----------


## quasimodo1

SENTENCINGS



A thing too perfect to be remembered:
stone beautiful only when wet.


* * *


Blinded by light or black cloth—
so many ways
not to see others suffer.


* * *


Too much longing:


it separates us 
like scent from bread,
rust from iron.


* * *


From very far or very close—
the most resolute folds of the mountain are gentle.


* * *


As if putting arms into woolen coat sleeves,
we listen to the murmuring dead.


* * *
http://i840.photobucket.com/albums/z...Hirshfield.jpg

Any point of a circle is its start:
desire forgoing fulfillment to go on desiring. ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

INSOMNIA


Now you hear what the house has to say. 
Pipes clanking, water running in the dark, 
the mortgaged walls shifting in discomfort, 
and voices mounting in an endless drone 
of small complaints like the sounds of a family 
that year by year you’ve learned how to ignore.


But now you must listen to the things you own, 
all that you’ve worked for these past years, 
the murmur of property, of things in disrepair, 
the moving parts about to come undone, 
and twisting in the sheets remember all 
the faces you could not bring yourself to love. ...{excerpt - two of three stanzas}

----------


## quasimodo1

IN THESE SOFT TRINITIES 


Whenever I see two women 
crowned, constellated friends 


it is as if three birch trees wept together 
in a field by a constant spring. 


The third woman isn’t there 


exactly, but just before them a flame 
bursts out, then disappears 


in a blurred, electric shining 
that lifts my hair like an animal’s. 


In an aura of charged air I remember 
my poor mother turned into royalty, 
my sister and me in bobby socks 


endlessly, all summer long 
calling each other Margaret Rose 


and Lillibet, Lillibet, Lillibet, 
pretending to be princesses... 


Now, swollen into these tall blooms 
like paper cutouts in water, 


in each new neighborhood garden 
always, two women talking 


nod their three curly heads together: 
with bits of dirt on their foreheads, speckled 
iris, flaming poppy 


in the backyard dynasties of the multiflora 
it is the famous funeral photograph 
of the Dowager Queen, Queen Mother, stunned Young Queen, 


three stepping stones in marble 
that haunt me forever, clear 
and mysterious as well water, the weight of it 


in a bronze bucket swinging 
powerfully from my hand. 


As the plumcolored shadow rises, 
full as a first child in the orchard, 


the lost gardening glove on the path, 
the single earring tucked 


in an odd corner of the purse and then found 


here double themselves, then triple: 
in these soft trinities 
the lives that begin in us 


are born and born again like wings. ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

THE RETURN don’t go to sleep, don’t
Dear, the road is long yet
don’t go too near 
the forest’s enticements, don’t lose hope

write the address 
in snowmelt on your hand
or lean on my shoulder
as we pass the hazy morning

lifting the transparent storm curtain 
we’ll arrive at where we are from
a green disk of land 
around an old pagoda

there I will guard
your weary dreams
and drive off the flocks of nights
leaving only bronze drums, and the sun

as beyond the pagoda
tiny waves quietly
crawl up the beach
and draw back trembling {translated from the Chinese by Aaron Crippen}

----------


## quasimodo1

THE INDOORS IS ENDLESS 

It’s spring in 1827, Beethoven 
hoists his death-mask and sails off. 


The grindstones are turning in Europe’s windmills. 
The wild geese are flying northwards. 


Here is the north, here is Stockholm 
swimming palaces and hovels. 


The logs in the royal fireplace 
collapse from Attention to At Ease. 


Peace prevails, vaccine and potatoes, 
but the city wells breathe heavily. 


Privy barrels in sedan chairs like paschas 
are carried by night over the North Bridge. 


The cobblestones make them stagger 
mamselles loafers gentlemen. 


Implacably still, the sign-board 
with the smoking blackamoor. 


So many islands, so much rowing 
with invisible oars against the current! 


The channels open up, April May 
and sweet honey dribbling June. 


The heat reaches islands far out. 
The village doors are open, except one. 


The snake-clock’s pointer licks the silence. 
The rock slopes glow with geology’s patience. 


It happened like this, or almost. 
It is an obscure family tale 


about Erik, done down by a curse 
disabled by a bullet through the soul. 


He went to town, met an enemy 
and sailed home sick and grey. 


Keeps to his bed all that summer. 
The tools on the wall are in mourning. 


He lies awake, hears the woolly flutter 
of night moths, his moonlight comrades. 


His strength ebbs out, he pushes in vain 
against the iron-bound tomorrow. 


And the God of the depths cries out of the depths 
‘Deliver me! Deliver yourself!’ 


All the surface action turns inwards. 
He’s taken apart, put together. 


The wind rises and the wild rose bushes 
catch on the fleeing light. ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

"The Best of It: New and Selected Poems" by Kay Ryan (Grove: 288 pp., $24). A lifelong Californian (and U.S. poet laureate from 2008-2010), Ryan creates poetry that is spare, laconic, awash with word play, but with a fierceness underneath. This collection frames the brilliance of her career. {one of his ten best books of 2010} -- by David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times book critic, December 19, 2010 -- http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...0,722150.story

----------


## quasimodo1

Poetry by Terrance Hayes, Connie Wanek, Lisa Robertson & James Schuyler -- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/bo...ew/Burt-t.html -- LIGHTHEAD 
By Terrance Hayes. 
Penguin Poets. Paper, $18. 


ON SPEAKING TERMS 
By Connie Wanek. 
Copper Canyon. Paper, $15. 


LISA ROBERTSONS MAGENTA SOUL WHIP 
By Lisa Robertson. 
Coach House. Paper, $14.95. 


OTHER FLOWERS 
Uncollected Poems. 
By James Schuyler. Edited by James Meetze and Simon Pettet. 
Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $28.

----------


## quasimodo1

NEW FOLK 


I said Folk was dressed in Blues but hairier and hemped. 
After "We acoustic banjo disciples!" Jebediah said, "When 
and whereforth shall the bucolic blacks with good tempers 
come to see us pluck as Elizabeth Cotton intended?" 
We stole my Uncle Windchime's minivan, penned a simple 
ballad about the drag of lovelessness and drove the end 
of the chitlin' circuit to a joint skinny as a walk-in temple 
where our new folk was not that new, but strengthened 
by our twelve bar conviction. A month later, in pulled 
a parade of well meaning alabaster post adolescents. 
...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

AMARYLLIS 


A flower needs to be this size 
to conceal the winter window, 
and this color, the red 
of a Fiat with the top down, 
to impress us, dull as we've grown. 


Months ago the gigantic onion of a bulb 
half above the soil 
stuck out its green tongue 
and slowly, day by day, 
the flower itself entered our world, 


closed, like hands that captured a moth, 
then open, as eyes open, 
and the amaryllis, seeing us, 
was somehow undiscouraged. 
It stands before us now 


as we eat our soup; ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

THE BLUET 


And is it stamina 
that unseasonably freaks 
forth a bluet, a 
Quaker lady, by 
the lake? So small, 
a drop of sky that 
splashed and held, 
four-petaled, creamy 
in its throat. The woods 
around were brown, 
the air crisp as a 
Carr's table water 
biscuit and smelt of 
cider. There were frost 
apples on the trees in 
the field below the house. 
The pond was still, then 
broke into a ripple. 
The hills, the leaves that 
have not yet fallen 
are deep and oriental 
rug colors. Brown leaves 
in the woods set off 
gray trunks of trees. 
But that bluet was 
the focus of it all: ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

AFTER US
I don't know if we're in the beginning
or in the final stage.
-- Tomas Tranströmer

Rain is falling through the roof.
And all that prospered under the sun,
the books that opened in the morning
and closed at night, and all day
turned their pages to the light;

the sketches of boats and strong forearms
and clever faces, and of fields
and barns, and of a bowl of eggs,
and lying across the piano
the silver stick of a flute; everything

invented and imagined,
everything whispered and sung,
all silenced by cold rain.

The sky is the color of gravestones.
The rain tastes like salt, and rises
in the streets like a ruinous tide. ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

REQUIEM FOR THE PLANTAGENET KINGS 


For whom the possessed sea littered, on both shores,  
Ruinous arms; being fired, and for good, 
To sound the constitution of just wars, 
Men, in their eloquent fashion, understood. 


Relieved of soul, the dropping-back of dust, 
Their usage, pride, admitted within doors; 
At home, under caved chantries, set in trust, 
With well-dressed alabaster and proved spurs 
They lie; they lie; secure in the decay 
Of blood, blood-marks, crowns hacked and coveted, 
Before the scouring fires of trial-day 
Alight on men; before sleeked groin, gored head, 
Budge through the clay and gravel, and the sea 
Across daubed rock evacuates its dead.

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/vi...-culture-15564 ------- from Commentary Magazine ---- T.S. Eliot and the Demise of the Literary Culture
Joseph Epstein 
November 2010 ------- The dissociation of sensibility is a reminder that Eliot, as he himself noted, launched a few notorious phrases which have had a truly embarrassing success in the world. Among these were objective correlative and the auditory imagination. Then there are all those sentences of his that, once read, are never forgotten: 

He had a mind so fine no idea can violate it (this of Henry James).

The more perfect the artist the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates.

The progress of an artist is a continual self--sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. 

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things. 

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least somethingdifferent.

----------


## quasimodo1

Variation On a Theme by Rilke


A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting mea sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The days blow
rang out, metallicor it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.

----------


## quasimodo1

from Light: Blue Poles 


Tonight, away begins to go
farther away, and the dream
what do we know of the dream
metallic leaps Jackson Pollock
silvery streams Jackson Pollock
I gaze across the sea


see in the distance your walk and you
pass the Pacific, distant and blue
phallus and Moloch pace my view
on into otherness


on into otherness?
are we in the world after or before
are we or are we not magnetic force
it is apparently me you inform: ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/ar...3fs/TJiPje3Axw ----- Janine Pommy Vega, Restless Poet, Dies at 68 -- By WILLIAM GRIMES
Published: January 2, 2011 --- "Janine Pommy Vega, a poet and intimate of the Beat generation luminaries Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky whose lifelong quest for transcendence took her to San Francisco in the 1960s and ona pilgrimage to neolithic goddess-worship sites in the 1980s, died on Dec. 23 at her home in Willow, N.Y. She was 68." from the obituary -- 
--- http://books.google.com/books?id=X_A...page&q&f=false -- for some of her poems --

----------


## quasimodo1

BUCKDANCER'S CHOICE 

So I would hear out those lungs, 
The air split into nine levels, 
Some gift of tongues of the whistler 


In the invalid’s bed: my mother, 
Warbling all day to herself 
The thousand variations of one song; 


It is called Buckdancer’s Choice. 
For years, they have all been dying 
Out, the classic buck-and-wing men 


Of traveling minstrel shows; 
With them also an old woman 
Was dying of breathless angina, 


Yet still found breath enough 
To whistle up in my head 
A sight like a one-man band, 


Freed black, with cymbals at heel, 
An ex-slave who thrivingly danced 
To the ring of his own clashing light 


Through the thousand variations of one song 
All day to my mother’s prone music, 
The invalid’s warbler’s note, 


While I crept close to the wall 
Sock-footed, to hear the sounds alter, 
Her tongue like a mockingbird’s break ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

THE DUSK OF HORSES 



Right under their noses, the green
Of the field is paling away
Because of something fallen from the sky. 

They see this, and put down
Their long heads deeper in grass
That only just escapes reflecting them

As the dream of a millpond would.
The color green flees over the grass
Like an insect, following the red sun over

The next hill. The grass is white.
There is no cloud so dark and white at once;
There is no pool at dawn that deepens

Their faces and thirsts as this does.
Now they are feeding on solid
Cloud, and, one by one,

With nails as silent as stars among the wood
Hewed down years ago and now rotten,
The stalls are put up around them.

Now if they lean, they come
On wood on any side. Not touching it, they sleep.
No beast ever lived who understood

What happened among the sun's fields,
Or cared why the color of grass 
Fled over the hill while he stumbled,

Led by the halter to sleep
On his four taxed, worthy legs.
Each thinks he awakens where 

The sun is black on the rooftop,
That the green is dancing in the next pasture,
And that the way to sleep ...{excerpt}



http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20385

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## quasimodo1

DEW LIGHT

Now in the blessed days of more and less

when the news about time is that each day

there is less of it I know none of that

as I walk out through the early garden

only the day and I are here with no

before or after and the dew looks up

without a number or a present age
{ https://www.aprweb.org/poem/dew-light }

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## quasimodo1

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=128239404 --- This PBS link has poems 

from Merwin's "The Shadow of Sirius" collection. Also, interview with Merwin on the program 

"Fresh Air". For a complete transcript of the interview... 

{http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=128239404} --- Title ...< 

'Sirius' Poetry From New Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin.

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## quasimodo1

THE HEAVEN OF ANIMALS 

Here they are. The soft eyes open. 
If they have lived in a wood 
It is a wood. 
If they have lived on plains 
It is grass rolling 
Under their feet forever. 


Having no souls, they have come, 
Anyway, beyond their knowing. 
Their instincts wholly bloom 
And they rise. 
The soft eyes open. 


To match them, the landscape flowers, 
Outdoing, desperately 
Outdoing what is required: 
The richest wood, 
The deepest field. 


For some of these, 
It could not be the place 
It is, without blood. 
These hunt, as they have done, 
But with claws and teeth grown perfect, 


More deadly than they can believe. 
They stalk more silently, 
And crouch on the limbs of trees, 
And their descent 
Upon the bright backs of their prey 


May take years 
In a sovereign floating of joy. 
And those that are hunted 
Know this as their life, ...{excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

SOFTEST OF TONGUES

To many things I've said the word that cheats
the lips and leaves them parted (thus: prash-chai
which means "good-bye") -- to furnished flats, to streets,
to milk-white letters melting in the sky;
to drab designs that habit seldom sees,
to novels interrupted by the din
of tunnels, annotated by quick trees,
abandoned with a squashed banana skin;
to a dim waiter in a dimmer town,
to cuts that healed and to a thumbless glove;
also to things of lyrical renown
perhaps more universal, such as love.
Thus life has been an endless line of land
receding endlessly.... And so that's that,
you say under your breath, and wave your hand,
and then your handkerchief, and then your hat.
To all these things I've said the fatal word,
using a tongue I had so tuned and tamed
that -- like some ancient sonneteer -- ... {excerpt} {for the rest of this classic poem... http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs...ov/tongues.htm }

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## quasimodo1

A STOPWATCH AND AN ORDNANCE MAP


A stopwatch and an ordnance map.
At five a man fell to the ground
And the watch flew off his wrist
Like a moon struck from the earth
Marking a blank time that stares
On the tides of change beneath.
All under the olive trees.
A stopwatch and an ordnance map.
He stayed faithfully in that place
From his living comrade split
By dividers of the bullet
Opening wide the distances
Of his final loneliness.

All under the olive trees.
A stopwatch and an ordnance map. ...{excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

MADRIGAL IN TIME OF WAR 

Beside the rivers of the midnight town 
Where four-foot couples love and paupers drown, 
Shots of quick hell we took, our final kiss, 
The great and swinging bridge a bower for this. 


Your cheek lay burning in my fingers’ cup; 
Often my lip moved downward and yours up 
Till both adjusted, tightened, locksmith-true: 
The flesh precise, the crazy brain askew. 


Roughly the train with grim and piston knee 
Pounded apart our pleasure, you from me; 
Flare warned and ticket whispered and bell cried. 
Time and the locks of bitter rail divide. 


For ease remember, all that parted lie: 
Men who in camp of shot or doldrum die, 
Who at land’s-end eternal furlough take 


—This for memento as alone you wake.

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## quasimodo1

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/455367/Poetry/overview --- from South Korea ---- --- POETRY ---- the movie --- http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/02/11.../11poetry.html = Full Review - NYT --

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## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/bo..._r=1&ref=books ---- a review -- Poems of Pain, the Raw and the Remembered --- By DANA JENNINGS
Published: February 9, 2011 ---- "EVERY RIVEN THING" by Christian Wiman -- 93pp, Farrar, Straus & Giroux -- $24

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## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/bo...c=me&ref=books ---- PAUL VIOLI --- OBITUARY entitled "Paul Violi, A Poet both Wry and Sly, dies at 66" -- by William Grimes, April 15, 2011 --- http://www.paulvioli.com/ --- Violi poem... "Counterman" -- http://www.cstone.net/~poems/countvio.htm --

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## chipper

the day the saucers came

by: NEIL GAIMAN

That day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden,
Silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,
And the people of Earth stood and stared as they descended,
Waiting, dry-mouthed to find what waited inside for us
And none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow

But you didn't notice it because
That day, the day the saucers came, by some coincidence,
Was the day that the graves gave up their dead
And the zombies pushed up through soft earth
or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
Came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,
But you did not notice this because

On the saucer day, which was the zombie day, it was 
Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us
A ship built of dead-man's nails, a serpent, a wolf,
All bigger than the mind could hold, and the cameraman could
Not get far enough away, and then the Gods came out
But you did not see them coming because

On the saucer-zombie-battling gods day the floodgates broke 
And each of us was engulfed by genies and sprites
Offering us wishes and wonders and eternities
And charm and cleverness and true brave hearts and pots of gold
While giants feefofummed across the land, and killer bees,
But you had no idea of any of this because

That day, the saucer day the zombie day 
The Ragnarok and fairies day, the day the great winds came
And snows, and the cities turned to crystal, the day
All plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the
Computers turned, the screens telling us we would obey, the day
Angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars,
And all the bells of London were sounded, the day
Animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,
The fluttering capes and arrival of the Time Machine day,
You didn't notice any of this because

you were sitting in your room, not doing anything
not even reading, not really, just
looking at your telephone,
wondering if I was going to call.

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## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/bo..._r=1&ref=books --- On Poetry
How Poets Achieve Their Styles -- By DAVID ORR
Published: April 22, 2011 
---

----------


## quasimodo1

How It Happens 

The sky said I am watching
to see what you
can make out of nothing
I was looking up and I said
I thought you
were supposed to be doing that
the sky said Many
are clinging to that
I am giving you a chance
I was looking up and I said
I am the only chance I have
then the sky did not answer
and here we are
with our names for the days
the vast days that do not listen to us 

— W.S. MERWIN, poet laureate of the United States and author, most recently, of “The Shadow of Sirius,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2009

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## quasimodo1

http://www.salon.com/books/laura_mil...4/05/david_orr --- David Orr on Contemporary Poetry --- salon.com ------- Tuesday, Apr 5, 2011 20:30 ET 
Modern poetry made less terrifying
Critic David Orr explains the mysteries and marvels of contemporary verse and the people who write it. {review of BEAUTIFUL AND POINTLESS} by David Orr -- 18.71 ...a guide to modern poetry

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## quasimodo1

http://www.theparisreview.org/interv...42-octavio-paz --- Octavio Paz, The Art of Poetry No. 42
Interviewed by Alfred Mac Adam --- The Paris Review Interviews... --- Summer, 1991 --

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## quasimodo1

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2..._fact_goodyear --- 
The Literary Life
The Moneyed Muse
What can two hundred million dollars do for poetry?by Dana Goodyear 
February 19, 2007 

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...#ixzz1MZyCqHCY --

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## quasimodo1

FOR THE LAST WOLVERINE

They will soon be down 


To one, but he still will be 
For a little while still will be stopping 


The flakes in the air with a look, 
Surrounding himself with the silence 
Of whitening snarls. Let him eat 
The last red meal of the condemned 


To extinction, tearing the guts 


From an elk. Yet that is not enough 
For me. I would have him eat 


The heart, and from it, have an idea 
Stream into his gnarling head 
That he no longer has a thing 
To lose, and so can walk 


Out into the open, in the full 


Pale of the sub-Arctic sun 
Where a single spruce tree is dying 


Higher and higher. Let him climb it 
With all his meanness and strength. 
Lord, we have come to the end 
Of this kind of vision of heaven, 


As the sky breaks open 


Its fans around him and shimmers 
And into its northern gates he rises 


Snarling complete in the joy of a weasel 
With an elk’s horned heart in his stomach 
Looking straight into the eternal 
Blue, where he hauls his kind. I would have it all 


My way: at the top of that tree I place 


The New World’s last eagle 
Hunched in mangy feathers giving 


Up on the theory of flight. 
Dear God of the wildness of poetry, let them mate 
To the death in the rotten branches, 
Let the tree sway and burst into flame 


And mingle them, crackling with feathers, 


In crownfire. Let something come 
Of it something gigantic legendary 


Rise beyond reason over hills 
Of ice screaming that it cannot die, 
That it has come back, this time 
On wings, and will spare no earthly thing: 


That it will hover, made purely of northern 


Lights, at dusk and fall 
On men building roads: ... {excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

LIKE A SCARF

The directions to the lunatic asylum were confusing; 
most likely they were the random associations 
and confused ramblings of a lunatic. 
We arrived three hours late for lunch 
and the lunatics were stacked up on their shelves, 
quite neatly, I might add, giving credit where credit is due. 
The orderlies were clearly very orderly, and they 
should receive all the credit that is their due. 
When I asked one of the doctors for a corkscrew 
he produced one without a moment's hesitation. 
And it was a corkscrew of the finest craftsmanship, 
very shiny and bright not unlike the doctor himself. 
"We'll be conducting our picnic under the great oak 
beginning in just a few minutes, and if you'd care 
to join us we'd be most honored. However, I understand 
you have your obligations and responsibilities, 
and if you would prefer to simply visit with us 
from time to time, between patients, our invitation 
is nothing if not flexible. And, we shan't be the least slighted 
or offended in any way if, due to your heavy load, 
we are altogether deprived of the pleasure 
of exchanging a few anecdotes, regarding the mentally ill, 
depraved, diseased, the purely knavish, you in your bughouse, 
if you'll pardon my vernacular. O yes, and we in our crackbrain 
daily rounds, there are so many gone potty everywhere we roam, 
not to mention in one's own home, dead moonstruck. 
Well, well, indeed we would have many notes to compare 
if you could find the time to join us after your injections." 
My invitation was spoken in the evenest tones, 
but midway through it I began to suspect I was addressing 
an imposter. I returned the corkscrew in a nonthreatening manner. 
What, for instance, I asked myself, would a doctor, a doctor of the mind, 
be doing with a corkscrew in his pocket? 
This was a very sick man, one might even say dangerous. 
I began moving away cautiously, never taking my eyes off of him. 
His right eyelid was twitching guiltily, or at least anxiously, 
and his smock flapping slightly in the wind. ...{excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS

(Translated By Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard) 

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? 


The barbarians are due here today. 



Why isn’t anything going on in the senate? 
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating? 


Because the barbarians are coming today. 
What’s the point of senators making laws now? 
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating. 



Why did our emperor get up so early, 
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate, 
in state, wearing the crown? 


Because the barbarians are coming today 
and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader. 
He’s even got a scroll to give him, 
loaded with titles, with imposing names. 



Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today 
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas? 
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts, 
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds? 
Why are they carrying elegant canes 
beautifully worked in silver and gold? 


Because the barbarians are coming today 
and things like that dazzle the barbarians. 



Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual 
to make their speeches, say what they have to say? 


Because the barbarians are coming today 
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking. ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

THE MAN-MOTH Here, above, 
cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight. 
The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat. 
It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on, 
and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the 

moon. 
He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast 

properties, 
feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold, 
of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers. 


But when the Man-Moth 
pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface, 
the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges 
from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks 
and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings. 
He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky, 
proving the sky quite useless for protection. 
He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb. 


Up the façades, 
his shadow dragging like a photographer’s cloth behind him 
he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage 
to push his small head through that round clean opening 
and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on 

the light. 
(Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.) 
But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although 
he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt. ...{excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

Eurydice
By H. D. (1886–1961) 
I 


So you have swept me back, 
I who could have walked with the live souls 
above the earth, 
I who could have slept among the live flowers 
at last; 


so for your arrogance 
and your ruthlessness 
I am swept back 
where dead lichens drip 
dead cinders upon moss of ash; 


so for your arrogance 
I am broken at last, 
I who had lived unconscious, 
who was almost forgot; 


if you had let me wait 
I had grown from listlessness 
into peace, 
if you had let me rest with the dead, 
I had forgot you 
and the past. 


II 


Here only flame upon flame 
and black among the red sparks, 
streaks of black and light 
grown colourless; 


why did you turn back, 
that hell should be reinhabited 
of myself thus 
swept into nothingness? 


why did you glance back? 
why did you hesitate for that moment? 
why did you bend your face 
caught with the flame of the upper earth, 
above my face? 


what was it that crossed my face 
with the light from yours 
and your glance? 
what was it you saw in my face? 
the light of your own face, 
the fire of your own presence? 


What had my face to offer 
but reflex of the earth, 
haycinth colour 
caught from the raw fissure in the rock 
where the light struck, 
and the colour of azure crocuses 
and the bright surface of gold crocuses 
and of the wind-flower, 
swift in its veins as lightning 
and as white. 


III 


Saffron from the fringe of the earth, 
wild saffron that has bent 
over the sharp edge of earth, 
all the flowers that cut through the earth, 
all, all the flowers are lost; 


everything is lost, 
everything is crossed with black, 
black upon black 
and worse than black, 
this colourless light. 


IV 


Fringe upon fringe 
of blue crocuses, 
crocuses, walled against blue of themselves, 
blue of that upper earth, 
blue of the depth upon depth of flowers, 
lost; 


flowers, 
if I could have taken once my breath of them, 
enough of them, 
more than earth, 
even than of the upper earth, 
had passed with me 
beneath the earth; 


if I could have caught up from the earth, 
the whole of the flowers of the earth, 
if once I could have breathed into myself 
the very golden crocuses 
and the red, 
and the very golden hearts of the first saffron, 
the whole of the golden mass, 
the whole of the great fragrance, 
I could have dared the loss. ...{excerpt}

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## quasimodo1

La Figlia che Piange

O quam te memorem virgo ... 

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair— 
Lean on a garden urn— 
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair— 
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise— 
Fling them to the ground and turn 
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes: 
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair. 


So I would have had him leave, 
So I would have had her stand and grieve, 
So he would have left 
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised, 
As the mind deserts the body it has used. 
I should find 
Some way incomparably light and deft, 
Some way we both should understand, 
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand. 


She turned away, but with the autumn weather 
Compelled my imagination many days, 
Many days and many hours: 
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers. 
And I wonder how they should have been together! 
I should have lost a gesture and a pose. 
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze 
The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose. 

{ La Figlia che Piange } - the girl who cries --- 
{ O quam te memorem virgo... } - from Virgil: what am I to call you maiden? (... For you do not have a mortal face.)

Source: Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)

----------


## quasimodo1

Paris, October 1936

(translated from the Spanish by Daniel Bosch)

I alone leave all this behind.
I leave this bench, I leave my pants,
the things I’ve done, my “big chance,”
my number split through side to side,
I alone leave it all behind.

From the Champs Elysées or the turn
of the moon’s strange, narrow street,
my death leaves town, my cradle too,
and, alone, cut loose, others at every turn,
the one most like me completes his turn
and dispatches his shadows, singly, discrete. ...{excerpt}

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/bo...html?ref=books ---- Five Poets Seasoned by Life ---- --- By DANA JENNINGS
Published: May 29, 2011 
"One of the great pleasures of poetry is catching a good poet in midcareer. Reading a savvy verse veteran is like watching Sandy Koufax paint a 1-0 shutout in his prime  some pure high heat here, a paralyzing curve there, then a little deliberate deception way down in the dirt." ...

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/bo...ef=bookreviews --- SÔNG I SING, by Bao Phi. 110 pages. Coffee House. $16. --- TRES, by Roberto Bolaño. Translated by Laura Healy. 173 pages. New Directions. $24.95. --- SEEING STARS, by Simon Armitage. 77 pages. Knopf. $25. -- --- HAPPY LIFE, by David Budbill. 119 pages. Copper Canyon. $16 --- THE BEST OF ARCHY AND MEHITABEL, by Don Marquis. 223 pages. Everymans Library. $13.50.

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## stlukesguild

Quasi... good to see you again. I got your e-mail... but I've been so tied up with work... and my work... that I forget to get back to you. Hope things are going well with you and yours. Send me another e-mail when you can. :Wave:

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## quasimodo1

from the nytimes book review... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/books/17maslin.html

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/b...try-May-6.html

----------


## quasimodo1

NATIVE TREES

By W. S. Merwin 
Neither my father nor my mother knew 
the names of the trees 
where I was born 
what is that 
I asked and my 
father and mother did not 
hear they did not look where I pointed 
surfaces of furniture held 
the attention of their fingers 
and across the room they could watch 
walls they had forgotten 
where there were no questions 
no voices and no shade { http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171876 }

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.230...47698997876947

----------


## quasimodo1

THE COMPLETE POEMS

By Philip Larkin

Edited by Archie Burnett

729 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $40. --- { http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/bo...ef=bookreviews }

----------


## quasimodo1

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/31/ar...anted=all&_r=0

----------


## quasimodo1

The Gypsy and the Wind

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes.
The wind sees her and rises,
the wind that never slumbers.
Naked Saint Christopher swells,
watching the girl as he plays
with tongues of celestial bells
on an invisible bagpipe.

Gypsy, let me lift your skirt
and have a look at you.
Open in my ancient fingers
the blue rose of your womb.

Precosia throws the tambourine
and runs away in terror.
But the virile wind pursues her
with his breathing and burning sword.

The sea darkens and roars,
while the olive trees turn pale.
The flutes of darkness sound,
and a muted gong of the snow.
(excerpt... http://boppin.com/lorca/gypsy.html )

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## JBI

Welcome back Quasimodo, that's a nice poem - almost enough to encourage me to learn Spanish, but not quite just yet (maybe once I am 40).

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