National (USA) Poetry Month

[Tzara]

April is National Poetry Month in the USA, an event I should have noted earlier but, you know, life and stuff. (And the Mariners are the hottest team in baseball for, like, a week, which is really, really distracting to me.)

What I would like to propose is that you post a poem that is meaningful to you and talk a bit about why it is meaningful to you. In any case, please indicate source information to comply with fair use requirements (i.e., cite the source [book, magazine, etc.] where others could find the poem).

Comments are welcome, but please do not disparage other member's offerings or their taste in poetry. This is a celebration thread, not a critical one.

Here's my first offering:

Prayer at the Opera
Patrick Donnelly

I had already been weeping quietly
for half an hour at the Academy of Music
by the time Ulysses finally made it home
disguised as a beggar. He was begging
for his son to recognize him, to know him,
and the boy longed to, but a whole kingdom
hung on this, and he was afraid to love a fraud.

When the Croatian baritone
stretched out his hand to the boy,
quivering thin and lonely
on the other side of the stage,
and sung his name softly,
Telemaco, Telemaco, mio diletto,
it was if the floor of the world
tilted the boy into his arms,

and because I thought I heard my father calling,
I thought all voices were my voice begging
You, who made it easy for me to weep:
lend the gift of tears
to a man my mother said cried two times,
when Kennedy was shot,
and at my birth.


Source: The Charge (2003)​

I first encountered this poem on Facebook, of all places. For some reason that does not make sense to me, his posts were presented to me as if we were "friends." Perhaps, in my first, clumsy, introduction to Facebook, I friended him. I don't know.

What I do know is that I find this poem personally emotionally moving, though Donnelly's life and circumstance is very different from my own. Things we share? I often cry at the opera, overwhelmed by the music and the story being portrayed on stage. I also cry about my father, whom I loved very much and who died seven years ago (curiously, I did not cry at his funeral, though, as I felt it was a relief for him from his medical difficulties).

The key line for me is this: "You, who made it easy for me to weep" which I tinterpret as referring to one's life partner, who has opened up the narrator's ability to experience emotion. In Donnelly's case, this is presumably a male companion (he is gay); my analogue is the support I feel from my wife.

In any case, this is a poem that speaks to my love of music (and, specifically, of opera), and of my love of my father, and of my love of my wife.

The thing just crushes me emotionally. Why I love it.

 

[Angeline]

Great idea Tzara.

My first choice:


My Father’s Love Letters
by Yusef Komunyakaa

On Fridays he’d open a can of Jax
After coming home from the mill,
& ask me to write a letter to my mother
Who sent postcards of desert flowers
Taller than men. He would beg,
Promising to never beat her
Again. Somehow I was happy
She had gone, & sometimes wanted
To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou
Williams’ “Polka Dots & Moonbeams”
Never made the swelling go down.
His carpenter’s apron always bulged
With old nails, a claw hammer
Looped at his side & extension cords
Coiled around his feet.
Words rolled from under the pressure
Of my ballpoint: Love,
Baby, Honey, Please.
We sat in the quiet brutality
Of voltage meters & pipe threaders,
Lost between sentences . . .
The gleam of a five-pound wedge
On the concrete floor
Pulled a sunset
Through the doorway of his toolshed.
I wondered if she laughed
& held them over a gas burner.
My father could only sign
His name, but he’d look at blueprints
& say how many bricks
Formed each wall. This man,
Who stole roses & hyacinth
For his yard, would stand there
With eyes closed & fists balled,
Laboring over a simple word, almost
Redeemed by what he tried to say.

Reprinted from Bebitacomida

I apologise to those of you who have seen me discuss this poem before, but I really do love it. It is a great narrative, seen from a young person's perspective, someone old enough to write for his illiterate father. I'd guess someone in his teens who has complicated feelings about his absent mother and brutal father. I'm sure part of the appeal for me is the working-class milieu: I was raised in that world so it touches me.

Ultimately I think it's a poem about love and how it survives even in the most difficult situations. The father still loves the wife he beat and drove away: the son loves his father enough to recognize his abilities in spite of his illiteracy, brutality, maybe a drinking problem. The father gets lost in himself, trying to communicate. But the son also presses down hard when he writes and has little sympathy for the mother who, after all, left him. And yet he thinks about her, the music that she loved, what she might do with the letters. She is very present in the poem even though she is distant, among flowers "taller than men." All this comes across to the reader. The writing is vivid and evocative. It gives the reader so much and at the same time leaves much open to interpretation. Imo it is worth reading over and over to catch all the imagery and nuance.

 

[Tzara]

As some of you may know, I have an interest in jazz music. Not anything near as encyclopedic an interest as Angeline's, but I am very fond of a number of jazz musicians, primarily ones who were prominent in the late 50's through the early 70's. Actually, it's pretty much a handful of musicians, influenced a lot by a high school friend whose LP/CD collection might rival Ms. Jazzaline's, but those few musicians I like, I really like.

I've tried off-and-on to write poems about many of them: Bill Evans (that one I thought worked pretty well), Thelonious Monk (um. . .), Blossom Dearie (maybe OK), Jaco Pastorius (not ready for public viewing at this time). And Chet Baker. I've written a lot of poems (well, drafts of poems) about Chet Baker. He was a trumpet player of some repute, though not in Miles' or Dizzy's class, and a vocalist with a charmingly naive style that struggled to stay on pitch. I adored him.

He was, when young, as handsome as anything, but was also a notorious drug addict who lost his front teeth and had to rebuild his embouchere so he could still play his instrument. Toward the end of his life, he more resembled a meth addict than the Hollywood-like figure of his youth.

Anyway. A couple of years ago, I came across this poem by Lynda Hull. I don't try to write one about Chet anymore; she nailed it.

Lost Fugue for Chet
Lynda Hull

..............................Chet Baker, Amsterdam, 1988

A single spot slides the trumpet's flare then stops
......at that face, the extraordinary ruins thumb-marked
with the hollows of heroin, the rest chiaroscuroed.
......Amsterdam, the final gig, canals & countless

stone bridges arc, glimmered in lamps. Later this week
......his Badlands face, handsome in a print from thirty
years ago, will follow me from the obituary page
......insistent as windblown papers by the black cathedral

of St. Nicholas standing closed today: pigeon shit
......& feathers, posters swathing tarnished doors, a litter
of syringes. Junkies cloud the gutted railway station blocks
......& dealers from doorways call coca, heroina, some throaty

foaming harmony. A measured inhalation, again
......the sweet embouchure, metallic, wet stem. Ghostly,
the horn's improvisations purl & murmur
......the narrow strasses of Rosse Buurt, the district rife

with purse-snatchers, women alluring, desolate, poised
......in blue windows, Michelangelo boys, hair spilling
fluent running chords, mares' tails in the sky green
......& violet. So easy to get lost, these cavernous

brown cafés. Amsterdam, & its spectral fogs, its
......bars & softly shifting tugboats. He builds once more
the dense harmonic structure, the gabled houses.
......Let’s get lost. Why court the brink & then step back?

After surviving, what arrives? So what’s the point
......when there are so many women, creamy callas with single
furled petals turning in & upon themselves
......like variation, nights when the horn's coming

genius riffs, metal & spit, that rich consuming rush
......of good dope, a brief languor burnishing
the groin, better than any sex. Fuck Death.
......In the audience, there’s always this gaunt man, cigarette

in hand, black Maserati at the curb, waiting,
......the fast ride through mountain passes, descending with
no rails between asphalt & precipice. Inside, magnetic
......whispering take me there, take me. April, the lindens

& horse chestnuts flowering, cold white blossoms
......on the canal. He's lost as he hears those inner voicings,
a slurred veneer of chords, molten, fingering
......articulate. His glance below Dutch headlines, the fall

"accidental" from a hotel sill. Too loaded. What do you do
......at the brink? Stepping back in time, I can only
imagine the last hit, lilies insinuating themselves
......up your arms, leaves around your face, one hand vanishing

sabled to shadow. The newsprint photo & I'm trying
......to recall names, songs, the sinuous figures, but facts
don’t matter, what counts is out of pained dissonance,
......the sick vivid green of backstage bathrooms, out of

broken rhythms—and I've never forgotten, never—
......this is the tied-off vein, this is 3 a.m. terror
thrumming, this is the carnation of blood clouding
......the syringe, you shaped summer rains across the quays

of Paris, flame suffusing jade against a girl's
......dark ear. From the trumpet, pawned, redeemed, pawned again
you formed one wrenching blue arrangement, a phrase endlessly
......complicated as that twilit dive through smoke, applause,

the pale hunted rooms. Cold chestnuts flowering April
......& you're falling from heaven in a shower of eighth notes
to the cobbled street below & foaming dappled horses
......plunge beneath the still green waters of the Grand Canal.

Source: Collected Poems (2006)​

One of the great things about Hull's poem is that she can speak with authority to the issue of Baker's drug addiction. She, shortly after being award a scholarship to Princeton, ran away from home and spent ten years as a drug addict, living in various cities. Eventually, she cleaned herself up, earned both a bachelors and masters degree and ended up teaching at various universities.

Cool fact: One of her mentor/teacher/colleagues was Yusef Komunyakaa, who wrote the instroduction to her (posthumous) Collected Poems. Komunyakaa wrote the poem Angie just posted in this thread.

[Cue Twilight Zone music.]

 

[Angeline]

As some of you may know, I have an interest in jazz music. Not anything near as encyclopedic an interest as Angeline's, but I am very fond of a number of jazz musicians, primarily ones who were prominent in the late 50's through the early 70's. Actually, it's pretty much a handful of musicians, influenced a lot by a high school friend whose LP/CD collection might rival Ms. Jazzaline's, but those few musicians I like, I really like.

I've tried off-and-on to write poems about many of them: Bill Evans (that one I thought worked pretty well), Thelonious Monk (um. . .), Blossom Dearie (maybe OK), Jaco Pastorius (not ready for public viewing at this time). And Chet Baker. I've written a lot of poems (well, drafts of poems) about Chet Baker. He was a trumpet player of some repute, though not in Miles' or Dizzy's class, and a vocalist with a charmingly naive style that struggled to stay on pitch. I adored him.

He was, when young, as handsome as anything, but was also a notorious drug addict who lost his front teeth and had to rebuild his embouchere so he could still play his instrument. Toward the end of his life, he more resembled a meth addict than the Hollywood-like figure of his youth.

Anyway. A couple of years ago, I came across this poem by Lynda Hull. I don't try to write one about Chet anymore; she nailed it.

Lost Fugue for Chet
Lynda Hull

..............................Chet Baker, Amsterdam, 1988

A single spot slides the trumpet's flare then stops
......at that face, the extraordinary ruins thumb-marked
with the hollows of heroin, the rest chiaroscuroed.
......Amsterdam, the final gig, canals & countless

stone bridges arc, glimmered in lamps. Later this week
......his Badlands face, handsome in a print from thirty
years ago, will follow me from the obituary page
......insistent as windblown papers by the black cathedral

of St. Nicholas standing closed today: pigeon shit
......& feathers, posters swathing tarnished doors, a litter
of syringes. Junkies cloud the gutted railway station blocks
......& dealers from doorways call coca, heroina, some throaty

foaming harmony. A measured inhalation, again
......the sweet embouchure, metallic, wet stem. Ghostly,
the horn's improvisations purl & murmur
......the narrow strasses of Rosse Buurt, the district rife

with purse-snatchers, women alluring, desolate, poised
......in blue windows, Michelangelo boys, hair spilling
fluent running chords, mares' tails in the sky green
......& violet. So easy to get lost, these cavernous

brown cafés. Amsterdam, & its spectral fogs, its
......bars & softly shifting tugboats. He builds once more
the dense harmonic structure, the gabled houses.
......Let’s get lost. Why court the brink & then step back?

After surviving, what arrives? So what’s the point
......when there are so many women, creamy callas with single
furled petals turning in & upon themselves
......like variation, nights when the horn's coming

genius riffs, metal & spit, that rich consuming rush
......of good dope, a brief languor burnishing
the groin, better than any sex. Fuck Death.
......In the audience, there’s always this gaunt man, cigarette

in hand, black Maserati at the curb, waiting,
......the fast ride through mountain passes, descending with
no rails between asphalt & precipice. Inside, magnetic
......whispering take me there, take me. April, the lindens

& horse chestnuts flowering, cold white blossoms
......on the canal. He's lost as he hears those inner voicings,
a slurred veneer of chords, molten, fingering
......articulate. His glance below Dutch headlines, the fall

"accidental" from a hotel sill. Too loaded. What do you do
......at the brink? Stepping back in time, I can only
imagine the last hit, lilies insinuating themselves
......up your arms, leaves around your face, one hand vanishing

sabled to shadow. The newsprint photo & I'm trying
......to recall names, songs, the sinuous figures, but facts
don’t matter, what counts is out of pained dissonance,
......the sick vivid green of backstage bathrooms, out of

broken rhythms—and I've never forgotten, never—
......this is the tied-off vein, this is 3 a.m. terror
thrumming, this is the carnation of blood clouding
......the syringe, you shaped summer rains across the quays

of Paris, flame suffusing jade against a girl's
......dark ear. From the trumpet, pawned, redeemed, pawned again
you formed one wrenching blue arrangement, a phrase endlessly
......complicated as that twilit dive through smoke, applause,

the pale hunted rooms. Cold chestnuts flowering April
......& you're falling from heaven in a shower of eighth notes
to the cobbled street below & foaming dappled horses
......plunge beneath the still green waters of the Grand Canal.

Source: Collected Poems (2006)​

One of the great things about Hull's poem is that she can speak with authority to the issue of Baker's drug addiction. She, shortly after being award a scholarship to Princeton, ran away from home and spent ten years as a drug addict, living in various cities. Eventually, she cleaned herself up, earned both a bachelors and masters degree and ended up teaching at various universities.

Cool fact: One of her mentor/teacher/colleagues was Yusef Komunyakaa, who wrote the instroduction to her (posthumous) Collected Poems. Komunyakaa wrote the poem Angie just posted in this thread.

[Cue Twilight Zone music.]

That is one wow of a poem: the lush music, the harrowing addiction and its inherent lie, the ensuing emptiness. A heartbreaker of a poem.

I am not surprised by the Komunyakaa connection, what with him teaching at Princeton and having written jazz poetry himself. And he was, for years, on the advisory board of Brilliant Corners, the jazz poetry journal published at Lycoming College.

I have been lately wanting to write about Jaco Pastorious, too. Terry was a huge fan and I came to know more about Jaco from T. And I am reading the Joni Mitchell bio, Reckless Daughter , which has me thinking about him again. He's a big subject, another genius who had such struggles and died tragically and way too young. I don't know what'd I'd focus on or how to approach it. But yeah maybe someday.

 

[Tzara]

One of the things I find interesting about poetry is that I often find that many of the poems I enjoy the most are written by pretty obscure authors, even by poetry world standards. My poem for today is an example of this. It's written by a local (i.e. Seattle area) author, Ed Harkness. He's published three full length collections and a couple of chapbooks, but these were all with very small presses. Finding new writers whose work really resonates with you is one of the pleasures of hanging around bookstores, flipping through random volumes pulled from the shelves.

Anyway, here's the poem:

Spoon
Edward Harkness

Thrift store find. Fifty cents. I like how stout
it is, carved of some uncertain hardwood,
one black scar on the handle suggesting
its owner snatched it off a hot burner.

I like the wear on the tip of the spoon.
Someone stirred and stirred, sanding the right side
of the bowl to near-flatness—the stirrer
left-handed, it appears, more than likely

a woman, perhaps living—wild surmise—
in Iowa in the thirties, baby
balanced on her right hip while she stands
in the heat of her Monarch cast iron stove

stirring porridge or corn mush or mutton stew.
Now it’s my turn to keep milk from scalding,
milk into which I will stir chocolate
pudding powder. It’s three a.m., the third

of January. I can’t claim to see
the light snow that dusts the cars parked out front,
since I’m at the stove stirring the pudding.
I can, however, see grains fall like salt

on the outer sill of the near kitchen
window, just as she too might have seen snow
or rain fall as she stood and stirred, switching
hands when her left grew tired, as my left hand

does now. Yes, it was a woman who carved
the much-used spoon in my hand. And if not
on an Iowa farm, then somewhere else,
preparing countless meals, hanging the spoon

on its nail, through the augured off-center
hole in the handle, taking down the spoon,
putting it on its nail, taking it down,
putting it on, down, on, the years passing,

kids having grown and left the farm, removed,
I’d venture, to the city. So the spoon
contains all the sadness of her left hand.
Even the spoon journeyed away from her,

settling against all odds in my kitchen
to stir the just-now-bubbling pudding.
It’s as if I’ve entered another life,
one where I cook, clean, give birth, raise children,

watch snow whiten a stacked cord of firewood.
It’s as if she’s beside me as I write, as if she has
given me the spoon and taken my free hand
in hers to stroll the garden of our two worlds.

Source: The Law of the Unforeseen (2018)​

What I so love about this poem is how it focuses in on the object, which serves as not only a physical relic of an earlier time, but an emotional relic as well—one that evokes for the poet the spirit of its former owner. It's also a poem that makes excellent use of ordinary language; there's nothing showy about the poem, just a kind of calm examining of the subject. The poem somewhat resembles the style of the late Richard Hugo, also a poet associated with the Pacific Northwest, which is probably not coincidental. Harkness earned his MFA at the University of Montana, where he studied with Hugo.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

My favourite poems seem so prosaic compared to yours, poems learned in school and loved.

 

[Tzara]

My Father’s Love Letters
by Yusef Komunyakaa

On Fridays he’d open a can of Jax
After coming home from the mill,
& ask me to write a letter to my mother
Who sent postcards of desert flowers
Taller than men. He would beg,
Promising to never beat her
Again. Somehow I was happy
She had gone, & sometimes wanted
To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou
Williams’ “Polka Dots & Moonbeams”
Never made the swelling go down.
His carpenter’s apron always bulged
With old nails, a claw hammer
Looped at his side & extension cords
Coiled around his feet.
Words rolled from under the pressure
Of my ballpoint: Love,
Baby, Honey, Please.
We sat in the quiet brutality
Of voltage meters & pipe threaders,
Lost between sentences . . .
The gleam of a five-pound wedge
On the concrete floor
Pulled a sunset
Through the doorway of his toolshed.
I wondered if she laughed
& held them over a gas burner.
My father could only sign
His name, but he’d look at blueprints
& say how many bricks
Formed each wall. This man,
Who stole roses & hyacinth
For his yard, would stand there
With eyes closed & fists balled,
Laboring over a simple word, almost
Redeemed by what he tried to say.

Reprinted from Bebitacomida

I've read this several times now, and (as you said of one I posted) wow. What a good poem. There are so many things I could comment on about this poem but the real crux for me is this:

My father could only sign
His name, but he’d look at blueprints
& say how many bricks
Formed each wall.​

How simply Komunyakaa lays out his love and respect for his father, despite his father's violence against his mother.

This kind of characterization looks simple, but is very, very hard to do.

Excellent poem, Ms. A.

 

[Tzara]

My favourite poems seem so prosaic compared to yours, poems learned in school and loved.

But, dear Annie, that is the point. Post something you love and tell us why you love it. This is a judgment (or, I guess in England, judgement) free thread.

 

[butters]

i'd post walt whitman's 'song of myself' but it's so long. here's a link:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45477/song-of-myself-1892-version


from wiki:

In the poem, Whitman emphasizes an all-powerful "I" which serves as narrator, who should not be limited to or confused with the person of the historical Walt Whitman. The persona described has transcended the conventional boundaries of self: "I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-washed babe .... and am not contained between my hat and boots"

an excerpt:

The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,
The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp,
The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner,
The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,
The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are ready,

The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,
The deacons are ordain’d with cross’d hands at the altar,
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,
The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe and looks at the oats and rye,
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm’d case,
(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother’s bed-room; )
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;
The malform’d limbs are tied to the surgeon’s table,
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods by the bar-room stove,
The machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his beat, the gate-keeper marks who pass,
The young fellow drives the express-wagon, (I love him, though I do not know him; )
The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs,
Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece;
The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee,
As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them from his saddle,
The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other,
The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof’d garret and harks to the musical rain,
The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,
The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemm’d cloth is offering moccasins and bead-bags for sale,
The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-shut eyes bent sideways,
As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat the plank is thrown for the shore-going passengers,
The young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds it off in a ball, and stops now and then for the knots,
The one-year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago borne her first child,
The clean-hair’d Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or in the factory or mill,
The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer, the reporter’s lead flies swiftly over the note-book, the sign-painter is lettering with blue and gold,
The canal boy trots on the tow-path, the book-keeper counts at his desk, the shoemaker waxes his thread,
The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow him,
The child is baptized, the convert is making his first professions,
The regatta is spread on the bay, the race is begun, (how the white sails sparkle!)
The drover watching his drove sings out to them that would stray,
The pedler sweats with his pack on his back, (the purchaser higgling about the odd cent; )
The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock moves slowly,
The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open’d lips,
The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck,
The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other,
(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you; )
The President holding a cabinet council is surrounded by the great Secretaries,
On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms,
The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold,
The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle,
As the fare-collector goes through the train he gives notice by the jingling of loose change,
The floor-men are laying the floor, the tinners are tinning the roof, the masons are calling for mortar,
In single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the laborers;
Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gather’d, it is the fourth of Seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon and small arms!)
Seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs, the mower mows, and the winter-grain falls in the ground;
Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in the frozen surface,
The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes deep with his axe,
Flatboatmen make fast towards dusk near the cotton-wood or pecan-trees,
Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river or through those drain’d by the Tennessee, or through those of the Arkansas,
Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahooche or Altamahaw,

from its opening 30 lines, i adored the exuberance, the breadth and scope of his words, their reach, their arcing, blanketing, all-embracing, intimate, detailed qualities - and for all they make me see, think, and feel.

it was after reading this poem that another lock opened its gates and a flood of poetry erupted from me, some of it even good. it was writing in a way i'd not written before. it gave me 'permission' to create swathes of imagery and rejoice in the actual nature of words i was using.

later on, i switched to haiku, then slowly broadened out a bit more. writing in different styles is always a good exercise with which to experiment and gain some kind of control.

 

[Tzara]

Today's poem is by the late James Merrill, who achieved a number of awards for his writing during his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Award, two National Book Awards, and the Bollingen Prize. Born into a family of immense wealth (his father was one of the founders of the Merrill Lynch investment company) he lived relatively modestly, leaving much of his wealth the charity.

Charles on Fire
James Merrill

Another evening we sprawled about discussing
Appearances. And it was the consensus
That while uncommon physical good looks
Continued to launch one, as before, in life
(Among its vaporous eddies and false claims),
Still, as one of us said into his beard,
"Without your intellectual and spiritual
Values, man, you are sunk." No one but squared
The shoulders of their own unlovliness.
Long-suffering Charles, having cooked and served the meal,
Now brought out little tumblers finely etched
He filled with amber liquor and then passed.
"Say," said the same young man, "in Paris, France,
They do it this way"—bounding to his feet
And touching a lit match to our host's full glass.
A blue flame, gentle, beautiful, came, went
Above the surface. In a hush that fell
We heard the vessel crack. The contents drained
As who should step down from a crystal coach.
Steward of spirits, Charles's glistening hand
All at once gloved itself in eeriness.
The moment passed. He made two quick sweeps and
Was flesh again. "It couldn't matter less,"
He said, but with a shocked, unconscious glance
Into the mirror. Finding nothing changed,
He filled a fresh glass and sank down among us.

Source: Collected Poems (2001)​

What I love about this poem is the atmosphere created by the central image of the flame enveloping the host's hand—a beauty that is both mysterious and evanescent. It serves as an excellent metaphor about how fleeting such moments are in ordinary life.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Four Weddings and a Funeral

Funeral Blues
W.H Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Source All Poetry.

The original poem was written in 1936 and meant to be a satirical piece about mourning for a political leader as part of a verse play The Ascent of F6, by Auden and Christopher Isherwood. It was then rewritten leaving only the first two stanzas of the original and was meant to be sung.
It's probably best known from being read in Four Weddings and a Funeral. See the link above.
I haven't yet come across the original, although I think it's still out there but I'm not sure I'd want to read it anyway as I prefer to remember it as is, because it has a melancholic beauty of love and loss.
"He was my North, my South, my East and West" is the line that affects me the most. Who among us have not felt that all encompassing love?

 

[Tzara]

I like humor in poems, especially satirical or sardonic humor. My selection for today is by Denise Duhamel, whose 1997 volume Kinky is comprised wholly of poems about various manifestations of Barbie, the iconic doll. "Buddhist Barbie," "Mafiosa Barbie," "Barbie in Therapy," and my favorite title, " Barbie, Her Identity as an Extraterrestrial Finally Suspected, Bravely Battles the Interrogation of the Pentagon Task Force Who's Captured Her."

My selection is a bit simpler. In this one, Barbie kind of identifies with a bug:

Literary Barbie
Denise Duhamel

When Barbie reads Kafka's The Metamorphosis,
her whole body aches. She relates
to Gregor Samsa, the salesman-turned-bug,
who tries to explain his transformation
to his family, but who can only
produce tiny insect-squeaks. So many times
that kind of thing has happened to her.
Barbie's ouches gone unacknowledged, silent giggles
indicating appreciated tickles, lost shrill cries
for help. From the other room, she overhears a human
telling her friend that women make Barbie-feet
just before orgasm, pointing their bare toes to the edge
of the bed, even though they aren't wearing high heels.
Barbie has a thought, unsure whether it is
memory or pure imagination:
..........................................It's her, but not her,
under the stars, in a field of wet grass. She looks
like someone she doesn't know—a chubby girl
with problem skin and thick glasses. There is a hand,
her own or someone else's, between her legs
and she feels the beginning of something
she's never felt before. In her terror of pleasure,
she whispers no to it all. And wakes up, immobile,
plastic, looking entirely like someone else.

Source: Kinky (1997)​

One of the reasons I really like this poem is that it's very different from the poems I posted previously. No one is going to think the aesthetic of "Literary Barbie" is at all like the aesthetic of "Lost Fugue for Chet." But that's one of the great things about it—poetry is a term that encompasses a pretty big tent of literary approaches.

I did take pity on Annie and Angie by not posting Duhamel's "Incest Taboo," which is a double sestina (twelve stanzas of twelve lines each, following a proscribed end word pattern, with a six-line envoi).

That one even made my brain hurt a bit, and I like crazy difficult forms.

 

[Tzara]

from its opening 30 lines, i adored the exuberance, the breadth and scope of his words, their reach, their arcing, blanketing, all-embracing, intimate, detailed qualities - and for all they make me see, think, and feel.

I had not liked Whitman until, as a class assignment, I had to read "Song of Myself."

The poem itself was kind of a revelation to me (an appropriate superlative, given Whitman's emulation of the cadences of the KJV Bible). I knew that he was thought of as one of the inspirations for the free verse revolution, but the actual poem is so rhythmic (albeit on the phrasal level rather than the syllabic level) that the "free verse" thing seems ludicrous.

It's rare to see an artist basically found a radically new form of his or her art. Whitman, though, does exactly that, and does it so thoroughly that there aren't a lot of poets emulating him until at least Allen Ginsburg (Howl seems to me very Whitmanian).

Great work. Thank you, Ms. b., for posting it.

 

[Tzara]

Funeral Blues
W.H Auden

I was planning on posting an Auden poem, though probably not this one. The man was an incredibly awesome poet. If you read Richard Hugo's essay on poetry writing The Triggering Town, he keeps talking about (I'm paraphrasing, and probably inaccurately) how you should do this or this or this because you aren't as clever a genius as Auden, who can get away with other approaches to writing poems.

This is a wonderful poem, Annie. Thanks for posting it. My favorite Auden poem is probably "Musée des Beaux Arts," though I had been planning to post "Detective Story," another favorite, instead.

If this is the kind of poem you rather diffidently call a poem "learned in school and loved" then, by all means, post more!

 

[Angeline]

Ok the Barbie poem is funny and serious, maybe even a little scary... possibly because the line about women's feet immediately made me see feet with holes in them.

I recently read that April is Jazz Appreciation Month and suddenly I like April even more. There are so many jazz poems I love but this has been a favorite of mine for OMG 20 years. This is the happy side of jazz!


MAN LISTENING TO DISC
by Billy Collins

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 by 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 Thelonious Monk
for figuring out a way
to motorize -- or whatever -- his huge piano
so he could be with us today.

This 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.

And if any of you are curious
about where this aggregation,
this whole battery-powered crew,
is headed, let us just say
that the real center of the universe,

the only true point of view,
is full of hope that he,
the hub of the cosmos
with his hair blown sideways,
will eventually make it all the way downtown.

Source: The Atlantic, September 1999

If you've been here a while you know I love Billy Collins. I've come to realize he is derivative of Frank O'Hara: they both have many poems set in NYC and both employ an informal, conversational and modern voice in their poems.

But Billy Collins has the more conversational tone, the more to invite you, the reader, in at which point Billy will lay some universal truth on you. And he'll do it in such a breezy patois that you may not even notice that broader meaning.

The character in the poem is just walking down the street, plugged in and enjoying his music. Swap out the disc and battery for a phone and earbuds and it's the way people live these days. Who isn't endlessly absorbed by technology? And who doesn't see herself as the star of her own show, the center of the universe? Who doesn't expect the rest of the world to move aside, at least a little, so she (or he) can bumble on through?

I love that this poem gives you that truth wrapped in such good humor and terrific music I can hear in my head as I read. That delights me! Happy JAM!

 

[UnderYourSpell]

The Listeners
BY WALTER DE LA MARE

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Source: The Collected Poems of Walter de la Mare (1979)

Very interesting article from the Guardian

This is the poem I learnt in school and still remains a firm favourite. The eeriness grabbed me then as now as the horseman keeps his word to return but much too late. Not only does it perfectly described the house and forest but in building the picture it brings the reader inside, makes them feel the world of the dead (The Listeners) now tied to that important place.
Makes you wonder what exactly did happen there (some awful crime?), why did they all vow to return? The Listeners made it on time but died inside, he who was late didn't gain admission and lived to ride away, leaving death to reclaim it's own "And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone."

 

[Tzara]

Poetry is both a written and a performance art—a performance art in the sense that it is (usually) meant to be heard as well as read visually. In my experience, most poets do not read their work particularly well. When you hear someone who does read well, it supercharges the experience of the poem.

Rigoberto González reads his work very well. If you have a chance to hear him read, by all means go listen to him. And while I am posting a poem of his, he's if anything even better reading from his autobiographical prose. Just mesmerizing.

Here's one of his poems:

Thinking Stones
Rigoberto González

......Seattle

She said stones are capable of thought. They had to be:
any object with sound could think. Something about

the waves trapped inside of rock, memory of time.
Something about rock's metallic viscera. The Japanese

had it right, cultivating a contemplation garden on a bed
of sand fluid as blood, each rock electric as a brain, she said.

Dementia brought out the poet in your mother.
I sit at her side writing down what intrigues her: horses,

because they wear a fifth hoof over the mouth; flashlights,
because they can't keep secrets; and stones.

Lately, even the gravel has been buzzing with collective
thought: death, the last mystery of what has crushed

all else beneath its weight. My mother pities that,
and comforts a stone in one hand. I remember

my own soft fist inside her fingers years ago, when
my mother could roller skate and guide me

through the shaky sidewalk. When she laughed, I imagined
doves in flight, seed puffs escaping through the fence,

and everything else that ascends toward light. My mother
doesn't keep her days of wonder, nights of anguish anymore.

I think fossil, I think watermark, about the stubborn
barnacle that makes a tomb of its home. The woman

next to me is the place of my birth and she will free me
to wander the shifting plates of the planet on my own.

She can leave without me, deaf to my cries, my pleas,
my fear of getting locked out of her house. I must stand

before the apathetic windows. No use knocking on the door.
I think sleeping oyster, think coma, think stone.

Source: Black Blossoms (2011)

​

I find this poem especially moving as I am myself dealing with an aging mother. My mom doesn't have dementia, but she is greatly dimished in her physical abilities and is often depressed. It is sometimes difficult for me to remember how caring and loving she was when I was young, but lines like "I remember / my own soft fist inside her fingers years ago" help bring those memories back.

 

[Piscator]

Poetry is both a written and a performance art—a performance art in the sense that it is (usually) meant to be heard as well as read visually. In my experience, most poets do not read their work particularly well. When you hear someone who does read well, it supercharges the experience of the poem.
back.

One of my favorite recitals The History of the Airplane by Lawrence Ferlinghetti


History Of the Airplane

And the Wright brothers said they thought they had invented
something that could make peace on earth
(if the wrong brothers didn’t get hold of it)
when their wonderful flying machine took off at Kitty Hawk
into the kingdom of birds but the parliament of birds was freaked out
by this man-made bird and fled to heaven

And then the famous Spirit of Saint Louis took off eastward and
flew across the Big Pond with Lindy at the controls in his leather
helmet and goggles hoping to sight the doves of peace but he did not
Even though he circled Versailles

And then the famous Yankee Clipper took off in the opposite
direction and flew across the terrific Pacific but the pacific doves
were frighted by this strange amphibious bird and hid in the orient sky

And then the famous Flying Fortress took off bristling with guns
and testosterone to make the world safe for peace and capitalism
but the birds of peace were nowhere to be found before or after Hiroshima

And so then clever men built bigger and faster flying machines and
these great man-made birds with jet plumage flew higher than any
real birds and seemed about to fly into the sun and melt their wings
and like Icarus crash to earth

And the Wright brothers were long forgotten in the high-flying
bombers that now began to visit their blessings on various Third
Worlds all the while claiming they were searching for doves of
peace

And they kept flying and flying until they flew right into the 21st
century and then one fine day a Third World struck back and
stormed the great planes and flew them straight into the beating
heart of Skyscraper America where there were no aviaries and no
parliaments of doves and in a blinding flash America became a part
of the scorched earth of the world

And a wind of ashes blows across the land
And for one long moment in eternity
There is chaos and despair

And buried loves and voices
Cries and whispers
Fill the air
Everywhere


Both the poem and the reading capture the outrage of an old man at a world that keeps on keeping on to the detriment of all, a sentiment I share.

 

[Piscator]

Margaret Atwood is a remarkable poet as well as a novelist, literary analyst and general superhuman. This poem, which is on the first page of Barry Calligan's anthology of Canadian love poems "Lords of Winter and of Love" is one of favourites as it succinctly encapsulates the need to be one with your love.

Variation of the Word Sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

 

[Tzara]

I love both poetry and visual art, so it is perhaps no surprise that I am particularly enamored by ekphrastic poetry—poetry that is based on the experience of another art form, usually, but not always, visual art. Ekphrastic poems can be descriptions of the work being written about, or commentaries on it, or narratives about the events being depicted, etc. etc. One of the first ekphrastic poems I fell in love with is "Not my Best Side" by the British poet U.A. Fanthorpe, which was featured in a poetry textbook I was assigned when I was first at university. The painting referenced in the poem is Saint George and the Dragon by Paolo Uccello, which is in the collection of the National Gallery in London.

Not my Best Side
U. A. Fanthorpe

I

Not my best side, I'm afraid.
The artist didn't give me a chance to
Pose properly, and as you can see,
Poor chap, he had this obsession with
Triangles, so he left off two of my
Feet. I didn't comment at the time
(What, after all, are two feet
To a monster?) but afterwards
I was sorry for the bad publicity.
Why, I said to myself, should my conqueror
Be so ostentatiously beardless, and ride
A horse with a deformed neck and square hoofs?
Why should my victim be so
Unattractive as to be inedible,
And why should she have me literally
On a string? I don't mind dying
Ritually, since I always rise again,
But I should have liked a little more blood
To show they were taking me seriously.

II

It's hard for a girl to be sure if
She wants to be rescued. I mean, I quite
Took to the dragon. It's nice to be
Liked, if you know what I mean. He was
So nicely physical, with his claws
And lovely green skin, and that sexy tail,
And the way he looked at me,
He made me feel he was all ready to
Eat me. And any girl enjoys that.
So when this boy turned up, wearing machinery,
On a really dangerous horse, to be honest
I didn't much fancy him. I mean,
What was he like underneath the hardware?
He might have acne, blackheads or even
Bad breath for all I could tell, but the dragon—
Well, you could see all his equipment
At a glance. Still, what could I do?
The dragon got himself beaten by the boy,
And a girl's got to think of her future.

III

I have diplomas in Dragon
Management and Virgin Reclamation.
My horse is the latest model, with
Automatic transmission and built-in
Obsolescence. My spear is custom-built,
And my prototype armour
Still on the secret list. You can't
Do better than me at the moment.
I'm qualified and equipped to the
Eyebrow. So why be difficult?
Don't you want to be killed and/or rescued
In the most contemporary way? Don't
You want to carry out the roles
That sociology and myth have designed for you?
Don't you realize that, by being choosy,
You are endangering job prospects
In the spear- and horse-building industries?
What, in any case, does it matter what
You want? You're in my way.

Source: Collected Poems 1978-2003 (2005)
​

I mentioned earlier in this thread that I was fond of poetry with a satirical bent, and Fanthorpe's poem certainly delivers on that, with its three ironic narratives describing Uccello's bizarre and rather static painting. It just might be my favorite ekphrastic poem ever, though it has a lot of competition from poets like W. H. Auden and W.C. Williams, who both composed wonderful poems based on Bruegel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.

 

[Tzara]

Ok the Barbie poem is funny and serious, maybe even a little scary... possibly because the line about women's feet immediately made me see feet with holes in them.

I don't remember that, but I was only surreptitiously involved with Barbie at my cousin's house, where I might sneak a look at their romance comics and peek under Barbie's swimsuit for clues about what girls were like. As you might imagine, I did not learn much from that.

If you've been here a while you know I love Billy Collins. I've come to realize he is derivative of Frank O'Hara: they both have many poems set in NYC and both employ an informal, conversational and modern voice in their poems.

But Billy Collins has the more conversational tone, the more to invite you, the reader, in at which point Billy will lay some universal truth on you. And he'll do it in such a breezy patois that you may not even notice that broader meaning.

Y'know, the funny thing is that I was going to say that Denise Duhamel reminded me of Frank O'Hara (though she names among her influences Lucille Ball and Andrea Dworkin[!]).

I love that this poem gives you that truth wrapped in such good humor and terrific music I can hear in my head as I read. That delights me! Happy JAM!

Yeah. I think I agree with that.

 

[Tzara]

As anyone who has paid any attention to my writing here knows, I am very attracted to poetry in fixed forms. Sonnets, triolets, villanelles, stanzaic forms like ottava rima or the Spenserian stanza, I'm fascinated by how poets can work within the constraints of form to produce works of both formal elegance and emotional impact.

Or humor.

Or, like the following poem, something in between. Tom Disch (1940-2008) was probably best known as an author of science fiction (which he published under the name Thomas M. Disch), but he also produced important work in literary criticism, children's books (The Brave Little Toaster), and poetry, the latter often composed in traditional forms.

Villanelle for Charles Olson
Tom Disch

I knew him. I loved him. I sat at his feet.
Now there's a bio that says that he was
A liar, a drunkard, a leech, and a cheat,

But I still remember the way, when we'd meet,
I'd break out a joint and we'd both get a buzz.
I knew him; I loved him; I sat at his feet

While he chanted his measures of variable beat,
In the days when my mustache was nothing but fuzz.
A liar, a drunkard, a leech, and a cheat

Can still be a genius whose work can compete
With Homer's and Dante's—as Maximus does!
I know him. I love him. I would sit at his feet

In the kennels of hell like the dog that I was,
But now I'm the professor, and that is because
I knew him and loved him and sat at the feet
Of a liar, a drunkard, a leech, and a cheat.

Source: About the Size of It (2007)
​

This is a particularly interesting poem for a number of reasons. The first, and perhaps most obvious oddity, is that it is composed in a triple meter—a metrical foot based on three syllables. In this case, the meter is anapestic tetrameter, with some variations (some of the lines lop off the initial unstressed syllable, for example). The chosen meter gives the poem a kind of loopy rhythm, perhaps to emphasize the second oddity—it's not a true villanelle. The classic villanelle is a nineteen line form, comprised of and introductory tercet, four tercets where the first and third lines of the introductory tercet alternatively serve as the last lines of each succeeding tercet, and a four-line ending stanza.

"Villanelle for Charles Olson" drops one of the intermediate tercets, so it's only sixteen lines in length. The result is that it's kind of in the spirit of a villanelle, but a bit cock-eyed (Marilyn Hacker does this the other way, writing villanelles of more than nineteen lines).

The third, and perhaps weirdest, oddity is that the poem seems like a paean to Olson (a prominent avant-garde poet of the 50s and 60s), but someone whom Disch kind of trashed in his review of what he characterized as a negative biography of Olson.

Anyway. Not a great poem, but a very interesting one for me. What this thread is about.

I think.

 

[Tzara]

The Listeners
BY WALTER DE LA MARE

This is quite an interesting poem, Annie, both because it is the kind of poem I encountered as a very young person (and so shaped some of my feelings and opinions about poetry), but also because of its form.

If I look at the first eight lines:

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.​

The rhyme pattern looks like ballad meter: ABCB. But the rhythm isn't right. I think—and it really is I think—that it's in accentual verse, where only the stresses count. I get three per line:

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.​

I'm not sure that's right, but it's basically how I hear it and that is classic accentual verse, which is a very old and fundamental form of verse (think of nursery rhymes).

It gives the poem a very rhythmic feeling, without the sewing machine sound of iambic verse.

Very cool.

 

[Angeline]

As anyone who has paid any attention to my writing here knows, I am very attracted to poetry in fixed forms. Sonnets, triolets, villanelles, stanzaic forms like ottava rima or the Spenserian stanza, I'm fascinated by how poets can work within the constraints of form to produce works of both formal elegance and emotional impact.

Or humor.

Or, like the following poem, something in between. Tom Disch (1940-2008) was probably best known as an author of science fiction (which he published under the name Thomas M. Disch), but he also produced important work in literary criticism, children's books (The Brave Little Toaster), and poetry, the latter often composed in traditional forms.

Villanelle for Charles Olson
Tom Disch

I knew him. I loved him. I sat at his feet.
Now there's a bio that says that he was
A liar, a drunkard, a leech, and a cheat,

But I still remember the way, when we'd meet,
I'd break out a joint and we'd both get a buzz.
I knew him; I loved him; I sat at his feet

While he chanted his measures of variable beat,
In the days when my mustache was nothing but fuzz.
A liar, a drunkard, a leech, and a cheat

Can still be a genius whose work can compete
With Homer's and Dante's—as Maximus does!
I know him. I love him. I would sit at his feet

In the kennels of hell like the dog that I was,
But now I'm the professor, and that is because
I knew him and loved him and sat at the feet
Of a liar, a drunkard, a leech, and a cheat.

Source: About the Size of It (2007)
​

This is a particularly interesting poem for a number of reasons. The first, and perhaps most obvious oddity, is that it is composed in a triple meter—a metrical foot based on three syllables. In this case, the meter is anapestic tetrameter, with some variations (some of the lines lop off the initial unstressed syllable, for example). The chosen meter gives the poem a kind of loopy rhythm, perhaps to emphasize the second oddity—it's not a true villanelle. The classic villanelle is a nineteen line form, comprised of and introductory tercet, four tercets where the first and third lines of the introductory tercet alternatively serve as the last lines of each succeeding tercet, and a four-line ending stanza.

"Villanelle for Charles Olson" drops one of the intermediate tercets, so it's only sixteen lines in length. The result is that it's kind of in the spirit of a villanelle, but a bit cock-eyed (Marilyn Hacker does this the other way, writing villanelles of more than nineteen lines).

The third, and perhaps weirdest, oddity is that the poem seems like a paean to Olson (a prominent avant-garde poet of the 50s and 60s), but someone whom Disch kind of trashed in his review of what he characterized as a negative biography of Olson.

Anyway. Not a great poem, but a very interesting one for me. What this thread is about.

I think.

I think I've told you before that my love of modern poetry is very much influenced by The Young American Poets (1968, edited by Paul Carroll). There are some poems in it by Olson: when I read them I wasn't overly impressed. The poets who really grabbed me were Berrigan, Levertov, Padgett, Saint Giraud (aka Bill Knott). So just to check myself I read Olson's Maximus written (I think) in the early 1980s. Still not so impressed. He's sort of doing what Berrigan was doing in the 60s, but not as well (no funny and ironic like Ted imo). So thank you for posting that poem and reminding me.

Oh and I think a lot of modern American poetry, well from the 1960s on, seems derivative of O'Hara. Maybe it's what I choose to read or maybe it's that the older I get, the less I underestimate his influence. I also feel this way about Wallace Stevens.

Also I agree with you about the purpose of this thread.

PS Your description of the Anapest is helpful to my understanding of how meter can influence tone, so thanks.

 

[Tzara]

Donald Hall is a poet I have always had very mixed feelings about. I find many, even most, of his poems rather bland and uninteresting. A number of prominent critics would suggest that that only exposes my lack of appreciation of the art of poetry, its subtleties and nuances, and so forth. They would be, of course, correct in that assessment. But the fact remains that much of Hall's output leaves me cold.

But I found Without, the book he wrote following the death of his wife, poet Jane Kenyon, profoundly moving. Cried my way through reading it, in fact, though I also cried reading Love Story and avoid watching either of the films To Kill a Mockingbird or It's a Wonderful Life because they both evoke crying jags worthy of institutionalization.

Anyway. My poem for today is by Donald Hall, former Poet Laureate of the United States.

Gold
Donald Hall

Pale gold of the walls, gold
of the centers of daisies, yellow roses
pressing from a clear bowl. All day
we lay on the bed, my hand
stroking the deep
gold of your thighs and your back.
We slept and woke
entering the golden room together,
lay down in it breathing
quickly, then
slowly again,
caressing and dozing, your hand sleepily
touching my hair now.

We made in those days
tiny identical rooms inside our bodies
which the men who uncover our graves
will find in a thousand years,
shining and whole.

Source: White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946-2006 (2006)
​

This is clearly a poem about sex. Well, at least I think it is.

And that's one of the things that is great about it—that it isn't smack-you-in-the-head obvious that it's about sex. Makes it more erotic, I think, and certainly more sensual.

I'd say the poem is about Hall's relationship with his second wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, but since he doesn't organize his poems by previously published volume or by (?) original publication date, that's difficult to determine. In any case, it's a wonderfully rhythmic poem, with the repeated "gold" emulating the thrusts of intercourse, and the sleepy coda memorializing the coupling.

You can listen to crazy-haired Donald Hall read the poem here. Despite the clumsy editing job, it lets you know how the poet hears his own poem. Recommended.