In memoriam, 2014

[Tzara]

I'll link in some poems for each of these poets in the next few days.

• Amiri Baraka, 79, January 9
• Maxine Kumin, 88, February 6
• Bill Knott, 74, March 12
• Russell Edson, 79?, April 29
• Maya Angelou, 86, May 28
• Carolyn Kizer, 89, October 9
• Galway Kinnell, 87, October 28
• Mark Strand, 80, November 29
• Claudia Emerson, 57, December 4

There are other notable poets who died this year, of course. Feel free to mention them here.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Although Kinnell taught at NYU, he had a summer home in Vermont. He retired there, living in a town literally next door to the one in which I live. He used to give free readings at the town library on occasion. I regret I was unable to attend them.

My favorite of his:

St. Francis and the Sow

The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of
the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

 

[butters]

how beautiful, gm. thankyou for posting this.

 

[Tzara]

Amiri Baraka

Born LeRoi Jones, he was an angry (or, more positively, committed) poet/dramatist/novelist concerned about social justice. Perhaps first known for plays like Dutchman and Slave Ship, he later was better known as a poet, even if a controversial one.

Here's one of his poems:

A Poem for Speculative Hipsters

He had got, finally,
to the forest
of motives. There were no
owls, or hunters. No Connie Chatterleys
resting beautifully
on their backs, having casually
brought socialism
to England.
.............Only ideas,
and their opposites.
..........................Like,
.............he was really
.............nowhere.​

Source: Transbluesency: The Selected Poems of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones 1961-1995 (1995)

 

[Tzara]

Maya Angelou

I don't really know Maya Angelou's poems, so I'm just going to offer this one up and hope it is representative. Her fame, of course, is to a great degree because of her book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, so my choice of poem is, I hope, appropriate:

Caged Bird
Maya Angelou

A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.


Source: The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (Random House Inc., 1994)​

 

[Tzara]

Bill Knott was an odd duck who never won anything like a poetry prize or much in the way of peer recognition. He wrote great poetry, though, like this:

Death

Going to sleep, I cross my hands on my chest.
They will place my hands like this.
It will look as though I am flying into myself.​

 

[Angeline]

Born LeRoi Jones, he was an angry (or, more positively, committed) poet/dramatist/novelist concerned about social justice. Perhaps first known for plays like Dutchman and Slave Ship, he later was better known as a poet, even if a controversial one.

Here's one of his poems:

A Poem for Speculative Hipsters

He had got, finally,
to the forest
of motives. There were no
owls, or hunters. No Connie Chatterleys
resting beautifully
on their backs, having casually
brought socialism
to England.
.............Only ideas,
and their opposites.
..........................Like,
.............he was really
.............nowhere.​

Source: Transbluesency: The Selected Poems of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones 1961-1995 (1995)

He also wrote a lot about jazz and poetry, but essays mostly. Of course his poems, many of them, are flavored with a jazz/blues sensibility. There's a great article about Baraka's jazz writing here.

I have to admit though that in general I find his poetry too polemic for my tastes.

 

[Tzara]

Russell Edson was known for his prose poems, which are like little surrealistic stories. He's generally considered a poet, but some think of him as writing flash fiction before people began calling it that.

Here's an example of one of his poems/stories:

The Adventures of a Turtle
Russell Edson

The turtle carries his house on his back. He is both the house and the person of that house.

But actually, under the shell is a little room where the true turtle, wearing long underwear, sits at a little table. At one end of the room a series of levers sticks out of slots in the floor, like the controls of a steam shovel. It is with these that the turtle controls the legs of his house.

Most of the time the turtle sits under the sloping ceiling of his turtle room reading catalogues at the little table where a candle burns. He leans on one elbow, and then the other. He crosses one leg, and then the other. Finally he yawns and buries his head in his arms and sleeps.

If he feels a child picking up his house he quickly douses the candle and runs to the control levers and activates the legs of his house and tries to escape.

If he cannot escape he retracts the legs and withdraws the so-called head and waits. He knows that children are careless, and that there will come a time when he will be free to move his house to some secluded place, where he will relight his candle, take out his catalogues and read until at last he yawns. Then he’ll bury his head in his arms and sleep.... That is, until another child picks up his house....


Source: The Reason Why the Closet-Man is Never Sad (Wesleyan University Press, 1977)​

 

[Tzara]

Claudia Emerson

Ms. Emerson's life is particularly ironic in that her best-known collection, Late Wife, which won the Pulitzer, was largely about her making a new life with a partner who had lost his wife to cancer. Emerson herself lost her life to cancer at 57.

In her memory, I will just link to this poem.