Did he really just say that to me?

*The Card Trick

2009-06-27T12:34:00.001-04:00

Here's another one about my father. With fatherhood so imminent for me, I guess the topic is no surprise.

The Card Trick

I never understood how it did it.
The day was cold and rain spattered down
occasionally onto the windows of the kitchen.
The sound was metallic though the windows were glass.

We were sitting in the living room.
I was twelve, he was in his forties I guess; what
did his age matter to me then.
It was midday but darker than normal
because of the overcast sky.

He had the deck of cards in his hand,
all but the one card I held in mine.
It was a queen of clubs, and it was mine.
I possessed it. I had chosen it randomly
but it had become mine and I loved it like a
long-absent child. My queen of clubs.

He couldn't have known. There was no way.
I was careful to pick it at a random spot from the deck.
He never saw what was in my hand.
But, on command, when I walked into
that kitchen and looked where he told me
(in the freezer next to the ice cube tray)
the small square paper clearly said,
"Hi Joe. You have a queen of clubs.
xoxo
Dad"

Somehow, he had added one plus one and
proved it to be three. I accused him of cheating,
though I didn't know how. I checked the deck,
but it was the same we had used to play rummy
just days before.
I demanded to be told how he did it.
He refused, saying something about
magicians and secrets. It was only the second magic trick
I ever saw him do, and he has done no others
in the twenty years since.

And he will still not reveal it to me.

*Three Flopping Fish

2009-06-26T23:35:00.002-04:00

Sometime during the forth month of this insanely difficult pregnancy, my wife described the feeling of begin pregnant with triplets as "fish flopping around in a bag." I thought that was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard. So came this:

Three Flopping Fish

that's what it feels like.
three fish flopping in a bag.

How am I supposed to understand
what creation feels like, really?

She grows,
every day.
She's bigger and more radiant.
Glowing.

I've put on weight too, but I am neither
glowing nor radiant.

Is that creation?

As Yet Untitled Work in Progress

2009-06-25T23:25:00.003-04:00

Since I haven't posted in ten months, I expect exactly nobody to read this. But that's okay. I've been going through some pretty serious family issues lately and been coming home at night and falling to poetry for some comfort. So I thought I would post something that I've been working on. I don't have a title yet.

"You'll have to sacrifice your wife," he said.
My wife?
"Throw her right into the fire."
But why? I said.
"Then you have to get drunk," he said.
"Very, very drunk.
Maybe even stoned for a while, but
that's not as important.

What? I said.
"...If you really want to be taken seriously," he said.
I do.
"Good. Now, go try to get your father to kill you."
My father?
"...Or your mother. But father's work better. Either one though."
Either one?
"Unless one of them ever hit you...?"
No...
"Or is dying...?"
No, I said.
"Oh," he said. "either one then."

Slight pause.
Okay, I said.
Let me go get my pen.

I've realized how unrealistically lucky I've been in life. I have two parents who love me and were (and still are) great role models for me and my brother; I have a wife who is everything to me; I have a good job that I love (most days); and I have three babies on the way. I've never struggled with alcoholism, drugs, gambling, wars, poverty, incest, cancer or any other common trait among successful writers-- which is part of the reason why I'm convinced I'll never win a Pulitzer.

And from the above comes this poem. I wonder to myself quite often if I have the necessary life experiences to be a successful poet. Have I hurt enough? Have I suffered enough? Honestly, I don't think I have. And I certinly don't want to start now.

I guess I'll just take my chances and stick with living a good, happy life. If that's not enough to make my writing better, well... I'll deal with it.

Dear Landlord

2008-09-07T19:26:00.001-04:00

There are few poems that make me what to laugh out loud, that fully place me in the world of the speaker; this is one of those poems.

DEAR LANDLORD
DEAR LANDLORD
DEAR LANDLORD
by Hattie Gossett

it is raining in my apartment! yes, thats right. raining.

the water is falling freely in the living room, in the hallway, and
in the bathroom.

i have had many promises from you and the super that the holes
in my ceilings would be fixed. but somehow the promises have not
been kept, and so now it is raining in my apartment. (perhaps its
your empty promises and not raindrops that are falling?)

i would like to pay my rent. especially since i owe so much. i have
even purchased money orders and made them out to your corpo-
ration. but to tell you the honest truth, there is something inside
me that just wont let me mail these money orders to you as long
as it continues raining in my apartment.

so i am sending you these xerox copies of the money orders instead.
(see enclosed documents marked exhibit a, exhibit b, etc.) as soon
as the holes have been repaired and it stops raining in my apart-
ment, i will be more than happy to mail the original money orders
to you.

as ever,

tenant 777#6k

Everything about this poem works. From the ironic humor to the lack of punctuation to the formatting of the letter, everything is perfect. Hattie Gossett has a series of poems along this vein, and each one is better than the next.

I’ve always wanted to try to teach my students about the joy of the “found” poem, but I’m always afraid that they will laugh it off and say that it’s just nonsense. As I’m typing now, I’m thinking that this might be the perfect way to introduce that concept.

Mentor

2008-09-02T21:37:00.001-04:00

Yeah, I don’t have much to say for this poem. It sort of speaks for itself.

MENTOR
by Timothy Murphy
Had I known, only known
when I lived so near,
I'd have gone, gladly gone
foregoing my fear
of the wholly grown
and the nearly great.
But I learned alone,
so I learned too late.

I don’t have time to post any comments. I have to go call my grandparents. I’ve been so lax.

But I do have to point out that this is one of the rarest of poems, one that rhymes but is still more dire in tone.

Did I Miss Anything?

2008-09-01T13:38:00.003-04:00

I’m pretty sure that ever teacher out there has read this poem already, but still, with the first day of school finally upon us I feel compelled to post it anyway.

DID I MISS ANYTHING?
by Tom Wayman

Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 percent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I’m about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 percent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring the good news to all people
on earth.

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human experience
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered
but it was one place

And you weren’t here

I know that when I was a student, both in grade school and in college, I must have asked this question to every teacher and professor I ever had. It was innocent enough, I’m sure, and I never meant to offend. But now that I’m a teacher, there is no more annoying and disrespectful question out there (except maybe “can I go to the bathroom” when I’m in the middle of what I thought was an insightful and interesting lesson). Many times have I responded in a sarcastic manner, saying something like, “no, we sat around and discussed our varying degrees of sadness over your absence.” This poem is a much better response.

There are some days when it feels like class has gone so well and the kids are so interested that I really have opened up the secrets of the universe to them. And on those days (which are few and far between, of course) this poem rings so true. The next day is never as effective, despite how much I may try to emulate what worked so well the day before. So when, on that next day, a student asks this question, it is doubly hurtful. What am I supposed to say? “Yeah, you missed a good class, but I know that you’re really just asking if anything is due or any new assignments were given, and since the answer to that is ‘no,’ you’re going to think you didn’t miss anything.” And if I just give in and say “no, you didn’t miss anything,” I’m just giving in and accepting the mindset that every day isn’t important.

So the moral of the story? Rephrase the question! Don’t ask if you missed anything; ask what you missed and what needs to be made up. To all those teachers and professors that I wronged over the years, I truly am sorry. I feel your pain.

What Do Women Want?

2008-08-30T14:39:00.002-04:00

I just finished going through The Poet’s Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux, and I didn’t hate it. I’ve been leafing through it for most of the summer trying to find ideas for and poems to share with my upcoming Creative Writing class, and I’ve found a whole gaggle of potential lessons. So, in honor of the book, I thought I’d post one of Addonizio’s poems that I really like.

"WHAT DO WOMEN WANT?"

by Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress.

I want it flimsy and cheap,

I want it too tight, I want to wear it

until someone tears it off me.

I want it sleeveless and backless,

this dress, so no one has to guess

what's underneath. I want to walk down

the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store

with all those keys glittering in the window,

past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old

donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers

slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,

hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.

I want to walk like I'm the only

woman on earth and I can have my pick.

I want that red dress bad.

I want it to confirm

your worst fears about me,

to show you how little I care about you

or anything except what

I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment

from its hanger like I'm choosing a body

to carry me into this world, through

the birth-cries and the love-cries too,

and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,

it'll be the goddamned

dress they bury me in.

I guess what I find so appealing about this poem (and all that I’ve read from Addonizio so far) is the clear, specific voice of the narrator. Despite the utter lack of physical description, I can totally see the speaker as she searches for this dress, tears it off the hanger, and wears it proudly through the dusty streets. The imagery is very nice, as depicted by the “slinging pigs” and “slick snouts” at the midway point.

All of this, of course, leads to the obvious question of what women want. Having been happily married for five+ years, having a good relationship with my mother and my mother-in-law, and working in a profession where the male-female ratio is something like 20-1, I feel I am as qualified to answer this question as much as any man alive. The simple answer is: she wants whatever the opposite is of what she wanted yesterday. It’s that easy. I’m guessing the speaker of this poem wanted black jeans yesterday, or maybe a nice fancy pair of boots; whatever it was, it was NOT a red dress.

Second Skin

2008-08-28T16:50:00.003-04:00

Here’s a poem about a lying kid. Since I have been known to make up some whoppers in my day, I have always felt a certain kinship with this poem.

SECOND SKIN
by Theodore Deppe

It’s not true that the tornado stripped Billy’s father
before it hurled him to the quarry,

nor that his mother rode the same wind two miles
and was set down, alive, in a field of sprouting corn,

but this is what he told our fifth grade class.
Students raised their hands for details

and, as if he were the teacher, Billy called on us,
explained how firemen split he dress to treat

the countless wounds and found the storm had sealed
each cut with a second skin of weeds and rubbish.

For one day, until Miss Clemency phoned
his baffled father, Billy’s family was lifted

into neighborhood legend. And when she made him
admit his lies, when the red-faced truth

stood before our class with its nose pressed
to a little circle on the chalkboard,

I learned how the storyteller, when the teacher
turns her back, can wink at the audience,

then mime for the pure hell of it
the whirlwind and his mother’s flight.

For whatever reason, whenever I read this I just laugh and picture a younger version of myself as the kid in front of his classroom telling his classmates a wonderfully amazing lie. I guess that means something, though I’m not sure what.

First the kid invents this story about his parents and a tornado. Then he tells it so convincingly that his classmates not only believe him but they go home and tell their parents. But the topper has to be the image of the kid miming, “for the pure hell of it,” his mother’s flight through the air. I’m sure that this is going to be very popular throughout school, and probably grow up to be a game show host or a politician.

What makes this poem work is the completeness of the picture of the kid. Imagery is always something that I appreciate more than anything else in contemporary poetry, and this is a perfect example.

*Tomato Piles

2008-08-27T08:31:00.002-04:00

So I've been working on this poem in my head for a couple months now, and I know that it's still not done, but I wanted to get it out there because it has to be posted in the summer.

Tomato Piles
by Me

Scout died in the spring and that
summer was the first summer
that tomatoes didn’t grow all over
the yard. I was twelve
and confused.
I didn’t see the connection between
the death of our beloved German shepherd
runt, who understood English and
wore a bowtie in our family portrait,
and the random growths of
tomatoes splattered throughout our
backyard.
For that matter, I didn’t understand
why my father always planted those
random little
plants, why he didn’t
just keep the tomatoes in the
vegetable garden where they belonged.
The plants got in the way of everything—we
even used one of them for
third base one summer.
But when I asked my father about
the lack of tomatoes that summer,
he just grinned and
pointed to the small tin urn
that sat on the top
shelf of a bookshelf
in the living room.
“Scout,” he said through
his unshaven orange beard,
“loved to eat tomatoes.”
I knew that already—we all knew that.
The running joke was about
how Scout’s only flaw was that he
kept eating the tomatoes out of the
garden, no matter how
much chicken-wire we put up.

I'm sad to say that, while the dog was real, the story is not (though I've been tossing the idea around in my head for so long that it seems real to me, so maybe that counts). I actually heard the story while having lunch with a couple friends (Billy and Wilbur) and one of them looked at me and said "that sounds like a poem to me." And I agreed.

I really don't know if the point of the poem is clear, because I never explicityly state, "the tomato piles are from Scout's poop." I'm hoping I don't need to, but this is one of those things that is hard because obviously I know what I mean, but will the reader? Well... do you???

My Husband Discovers Poetry

2008-08-25T13:21:00.002-04:00

I found this on poetrydaily.com. Okay, that’s sort of a lie. I found this in the poetrydaily.com book, but that really doesn’t matter. So now I’m wondering why I don’t just delete that first sentence and start over. Hmmm… I don’t have a reason for not doing that… I guess I’m just feeling defiant.

Anyway, title of this poem appealed to me right away because I love poetry yet my wife has never been a fan (well, I shouldn’t say never—I’m pretty sure she loved Shel Silverstein when she was a kid).

MY HUSBAND DISCOVERS POETRY
by Diane Lockward

Because my husband would not read my poems,
I wrote one about how I did not love him.
In lines of strict iambic pentameter,
I detailed his coldness, his lack of humor.
It felt good to do this.

Stanza by stanza, I grew bolder and bolder.
Towards the end, struck by inspiration,
I wrote about my old boyfriend,
a boy I had not loved enough to marry
but who could make me laugh and laugh.
I wrote about a night years after we parted
when my husband's coldness drove me from the house
and back to my old boyfriend.
I even included the name of a seedy motel
well-known for hosting quickies.
I have a talent for verisimilitude.

In sensuous images, I described
how my boyfriend and I stripped off our clothes,
got into bed, and kissed and kissed,
then spent half the night telling jokes,
many of them about my husband.
I left the ending deliberately ambiguous,
then hid the poem away
in an old trunk in the basement.

You know how this story ends,
how my husband one day loses something,
goes into the basement,
and rummages through the old trunk,
how he uncovers the hidden poem
and sits down to read it.

But do you hear the strange sounds that floated up the stairs that day, the sounds of an animal, its paw caught in one of those traps with teeth of steel? Do you see the wounded creature at the bottom of the stairs, his shoulders hunched over and shaking, fist in his mouth and choking back sobs? It was my husband paying tribute to my art.

While this is hardly an event I’ve experienced, I do find it very funny how the author manages to take a somewhat comical situation to a somewhat serious place, and then end it with an image of her crying, howling husband as he reads about her former lover. And it does make me wonder how a writer of any sort avoids offending/upsetting his/her loved ones when writing about awkward things.

The last line somewhat strikes me. The speaker has greatly upset her hubby, and then writes “it was my husband paying tribute to my art.” You hear that sort of mentality all the time from Hollywood-types: “there’s no such thing as bad press,” and I have to wonder how true that is. Is the speaker okay with the fact that her husband is feeling the part of the cuckold because it means that she has written a successful poem?

This question has been on my mind lately because of the movie Tropic Thunder. Today there was an article in the paper all about how offensive the movie is because of the use of the word “retard” and all it’s forms throughout the film. I remember seeing previews for it months ago and thinking that it looked terrible and wondered who would want to see it, but now it’s considered a box-office hit. And I have to wonder: is part of its success due to all the publicity it’s gotten from the many protests that have taken part all over the country? The article I read today was actually an editorial from a parent of a child who has downs syndrome, and how offensive she feels that the movie actually is. But I’ve seen multiple news stories on tv about the protests, and the internet has been full of calls-to-action from angry activists.

Has the publicity for the protesters helped fuel the movie to box office success? I don’t know the answer, but when I read this poem yesterday I immediately thought they were a good parallel.

Jeep Cherokee

2008-08-24T16:33:00.001-04:00

So it’s been nearly a month since my last post, and that’s pretty embarrassing. The only excuse I have is that I’ve been so immersed in finding poems for my new creative writing class (school starts in less than two weeks… ugg) that all my “poetry time” is spent on searching, reading, and copying rather than on posting on my blog. I hereby vow, however, to make at least one post each day from now until the start of school (Sept. 2^nd).

I’m going to do something that I’ve never done before on my blog: I’m going to post a very long poem (I say “very long,” but you have to look at the relative scale of my previous posts. I found this poem while searching online for something else. The first few lines captured me right away and made me want to read the whole thing, despite the fact that I generally get bored easily by longer poems.

JEEP CHEROKEE
by Bruce A. Jacobs

You’ve never known
a single Indian
who wasn’t painted
onto a football helmet
or branded in chrome
on a tailgate, but there you go,
off mashing the landscape
like some edge-city explorer,
flinging yourself toward
new worlds beyond the driveway,
Lewis and Clark
with a seat belt.
Go ahead, you trampling trooper,
you goose-stepping little
Godzilla, you shining beast
of raging fashion,
riding the big teeth
of your tires as if you
would ever follow a dirt road
anywhere but to a car wash.
This is America,
and you’re free to drive
anything you can buy
but I will tell you:
Hitler would love this car-
a machine in which even the middle class
can master the world,
purchase their way through peril
safely as senators.
This is a car for
a uniformed strongman,
a one-car motorcade
through a thatched village
of strangers.
This is the car that will
replace Prozac.
This is the car that Barbie buys
with mad money
after the date with Angry White Ken.
This is the car that makes it safe
to be hateful in public.
Go ahead. Climb in. Look
at yourself, way up there
on the bridge of this
thick-windowed ship of enterprise.
Everybody knows
the only way today is to
buy your way through,
be bigger, be better,
be a bully, be a barger,
be sure you’re safe from the poor,
bustle your way through
each days bombardment
with the muscle of royalty.
You’ve got the power
to bring back the monarchy
four fat tires at a time.
Go anywhere. You’re entitled.
You have squashers rights.
Onward! Accelerate,
you brawny bruising winner,
you self-saluting junta on wheels,
you reclaimer of gold-bricked streets.
Democracy is for people
stuck in small cars
and God has never ruled
through traffic laws.
Get used to the feeling
of having your way.
Each broad cut of the steering wheel
is your turn at conquest.
The power-assisted triumph
of the me
in heavy traffic.
You are rolling proof
that voting is stupid,
that the whole damn machine is fixed
before it leaves the factory,
that fairness is a showroom,
that togetherness is for bus riders,
that TV has the right idea:
there is just you in a small room
on the safe side of glass,
with desire spread out before you
like a ballroom without walls,
and you will not be denied,
you’ve got the moves and the view,
you don’t need government, unions,
bank regulation, mercy,
the soft hands of strangers.
You’ve got 4-wheel drive
and a phone, you’ve got
the friendship of a reinforced chassis,
you’ve got empathy for dictators
without knowing it,
you’ve got freedom from read-view mirrors,
you’ve got wide-bodied citizenship,
you’ve gained Custer’s Revenge:
caissons packed with children and soccer balls
coasting across the plowed prairie,
history remodeled with one great
blaring of jingles and horns:

Hail Citizen King!
Hail the unswerving settler!
Hail the rule of logo!
Hail Jeep Cherokee!

“This is the car that Barbie buys with her mad money after the date with Angry White Ken”!!! What an image! “This is the car that will replace Prozac.” Oh, so true. Why do we buy these big, gas-guzzling cars if not for the thrill of driving up so high above everyone else? How many mothers and teenage rich kids really need the giant car for their off-roading habits?

The best line, though, comes soon after the two above: “This is the car that makes it safe / to be hateful in public.” Now I’ll admit that I have a touch of road rage but I really think that 99% of New Jersey drivers can relate to that. When I’m driving my small Honda Civic and get angry, I just lay on the horn and curse at the idiots in the other cars (usually from Pennsylvania); but when I’m driving my wife’s SUV, I have no qualms about honking, cursing, and then riding the tail of the aforementioned idiot—and I feel perfectly safe doing it. After all, “Democracy is for people / stuck in small cars / and God has never ruled / through traffic laws.”

Henry Clay's Mouth

2008-07-31T21:33:00.001-04:00

Here’s a poem that is just good for no real reason. It makes me happy when I can get all the way through it without having to reread a couple lines… you’ll see why.

HENRY CLAY’S MOUTH
Thomas Lux

Senator, statesman, speaker of the House,
exceptional dancer, slim,
graceful, ugly. Proclaimed, before most, slavery
an evil, broker
of elections (burned Jackson
for Adams), took a pistol ball in the thigh
in a duel, delayed, by forty years,
with his compromises, the Civil War,
gambler ("I have always
paid peculiar homage to the fickle goddess"),
boozehound, ladies' man -- which leads us
to his mouth, which was huge,
a long slash across his face,
with which he ate and prodigiously drank,
with which he modulated his melodic voice,
with which he liked to kiss and kiss and kiss.
He said: "Kissing is like the presidency,
it is not to be sought and not to be declined."
A rival, one who wanted to kiss
whom he was kissing, said: "The ample
dimensions of his kissing apparatus
enabled him to rest one side of it
while the other was on active duty."
It was written, if women had the vote,
he would have been President,
kissing everyone in sight,
dancing on tables ("a grand Terpsichorean
performance ..."), kissing everyone,
sometimes two at once, kissing everyone,
the almost-President
of our people.

There are so many brief clauses here that make sense when spoken or heard aloud, but it’s very difficult to read this cold. The second sentence alone is made up of TWENTY clauses! That’s insane! But somehow, Lux makes it work. Lux always makes it work.

Besides the clauses, this poem contains that trademarked Lux humor (out of nothing). “The ample/ dimensions of his kissing apparatus/ enabled him to rest one side of it/ while the other was on active duty.” Ha! “If women had the vote,/ he would have been President….” Seriously, when I finally untangled this poem and made sense of it, I laughed out loud.

I can say beyond any shadow of doubt that I never in my life expected to either read or laugh at a poem about Henry Clay. Lux is the man!

Baseball and Classicism

2008-07-30T20:38:00.002-04:00

I don’t really remember where I first came across this poem, but as the summer drones on and I find myself wasting away in front of the tv watching baseball games, baseball highlights, and baseball news, I often return to this one simple question: why? Why do I care so much who starts in left field for the Blue Jays against lefties (Kevin Mench) or how many runs are scored on average in day games at Seattle (8.3/game)?

And when I get carried away and find myself absorbed in the minutia of score cards and box scores, I think of this poem:

BASEBALL AND CLASSICISM
by Tom Clark

Every day I peruse the box scores for hours
Sometimes I wonder why I do it
Since I am not going to take a test on it
And no one is going to give me money

The pleasure’s something like that of codes
Of deciphering an ancient alphabet say
So as brightly to picturize Eurydice
In the Elysian Fields on her perfect day

The day she went 5 for 5 against Vic Raschi

It’s easy for me to imagine just what Clark was thinking when he wrote this, and I think that even a non-baseball fan can relate to this too. It’s really just a portrait of (healthy, non-threatening) obsession. In terms of things non-physical/sexual, why do we love what we love? What makes us care about the things we care about, even if we’re “not going to take a test on it/ and no one is going to give [us] money”???

What I don’t easily see is why Clark chose to use Eurydice as his main allusion. She was, according to Greek mythology, the loving and loved wife of Orpheus, the poet and musician. In the Oedipus trilogy, she was the wife of Creon, the selfish king of Thebes and uncle/brother-in-law to Oedipus. I can cay beyond any shadow of doubt that I have no idea what either of those references has to do with baseball.

In can tell you, though, that Vic Raschi was pretty good pitcher for the Yankees, Cardinals, and A’s in the 40’s and 50’s. He’s well-known among baseball fact-junkies as the guy who gave up the first of Hank Aaron’s 755 home runs.

Jersey Rain

2008-07-22T20:39:00.001-04:00

Robert Pinsky was one of the first “contemporary” poets heard read. I remember it very clearly; I was a senior in high school on a trip to the Dodge Poetry Festival, and he was reading in the big tent just before the bus was scheduled to go. We waited to hear him and then hit the road for the long drive back home. I was always glad we waited, and I’m sure that that was a defining moment in my love of poetry. Pinsky was spell-binding. He was serious and silly at the same time, and he read with such passion and grace that I was sure the guy was the greatest writer who ever lived.

Yet despite that experience, I have never been a big fan of Pinsky’s writing. I wanted to love him. I really did. I read through one of his books while in college and was bored to tears. Every now and again, I look up a poem or two of his and go through it, hoping to capture some of the magic of that day 12 years ago, but it’s never been the same. I’ve actually seen him read since then, and again was fascinated by him. So I have been left to think that he’s the type of person who is just better in person and doesn’t translate well into reading.

And then I read this:

JERSEY RAIN
Robert Pinsky

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 the 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

To craze distinction, dry the same as wet.
In ripples of heat the August drought still feeds
Vapors in the sky that swell to drench my state -
The Jersey rain, my rain, in streams and beads

Of indissoluble grudge and aspiration:
Original milk, replenisher of grief,
Descending destroyer, arrowed source of passion,
Silver and black, executioner, source of life.

Man, was I missing something! This poem actually took my breath away. I read it late last night and have had it on my mind since. (I recently discovered the joy of the Amazon Marketplace, where you can buy “used” books for next to nothing, and I’ve purchased a dozen poetry books in the last month. Jersey Rain by Robert Pinsky was one of them.)

Pinsky creates a vivid image of a dull reality. I knew that he was a NJ native, but so few people not named Bruce Springsteen have been able to capture that sense of tough vulnerability that so defines this state. “The chilly liquefaction of day to night,/ The Jersey rain, my rain, soaks all as one:/ It smites Metuchen, Rahway, Saddle River….” Ahh…. just perfect lines. And he manages to do it all while maintaining a very effective and subtle rhyme, which helps create a rhythm of rain throughout.

Now, after reading this poem, I am looking back over the rest of the poem in this book and realizing that, one-by-one, I have been wrong. I’ve gone through the first six or seven poems in the book and loving each of them.

Mr. Pinsky, I apologize. I have been wrong about you for years and I regret wasting this time. What can I say? I wasn’t ready, I guess.

Traveling Through the Dark

2008-07-19T09:12:00.001-04:00

Here’s a nice and thoughtful one for today. Don’t know why I wanted to post it but I woke up this morning with it on my mind after reading it last night, so I guess it had the desired effect of the author.

TRAVELING THROUGH THE DARK
by William Stafford

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason--
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all--my only swerving--,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

When I first read this, I was absolutely appalled that the speaker didn’t try to save the unborn fawn. What kind of monster would kill a helpless, tiny baby deer? But, as usually happens, practicality swept over me and I realized that the did the right thing, as the deer would have most likely been killed on the road just like it’s mother. But just the fact that I’m still thinking about this poem after a full and long night’s sleep tells that it’s quite powerful.

On a possibly unrelated sidebar, I’ve never read a William Stafford poem before but I do have a history with him (maybe). I spent five great years at Monmouth University (four for me, and one for my wife), and one of the buildings there was named after him (or someone else with his name). It occurs to me now that I’m quite lazy for having gone to that school for so long and never actually finding out exactly who the person whose name is on the building was. That’s somewhat shameful, especially finding out that it was a poet’s name, and I pride myself on the fact that I know poetry. I guess I’m lazier and less informed than I thought.

I’ll probably sleep fine tonight.

*Wilbur's Son

2008-07-15T21:25:00.003-04:00

So this poem was inspired by a get-together with a couple friends, including Wilbur, a fellow poetry lover and teacher. Suffice to say, I was struck by something that he said and it stayed with me enough to want to write about it.

I did something I've never done with this poem, and that is I took a different perspective. Most of my writing is from my own perspective using my own voice and my own opinions; with this one, I felt it necessary and more affective to write from my father's perspective. I hope it's clear why I did that and I hope it helps the poem be more real.

WILBUR'S SON
by Me

Today Wilbur told me about his son.
It was perfect, he said.
Wilbur looked down at his forearm,
He fit right there;
and, with his right hand,
he measured out the length from the crook of his elbow
to the bottom of his wrist.
Now, he told me, my son is nineteen,
in college, and smarter than me.
But it was perfect.
He looked me in the eyes, rare for him, and said it
like a great lost troubadour announcing a
universal truth to a desperately quiet audience.
When my son was born, I replied quite easily,
he went bloolp--
I motioned my hands together in front of me
and rushed them both forward,
displaying the suddenness of the moment.
--just like that.
We finished our coffee, talked of other things less
substantial, and went home.
As I made the left to enter the southbound side of the highway
I waved simple salute to Wilbur, heading north,
and I thought of his eyes as he told me of his son.
It was perfect. Bloolp.
How many times have I made that sound
and waved my arms in that gesture?
How many times have I told that story?
Wilbur looked at his forearm and made that hand measurement
as though he’d done it every day for nineteen years.
My car exited the ramp and I accelerated onto the highway,
and thought of Wilbur’s son in college, and mine,
much older. I can’t remember if I ever held him on
my forearm and gazed down at him,
and Wilbur’s wife made him stand next
to her head during their son’s birth.

Optimism

2008-07-05T21:29:00.000-04:00

Here’s one I just found online and I really like a lot. Maybe it’s because I’m such a positive, sun-shine-y person. Obviously.

OPTIMISM
By Jane Hirshfield

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another.
A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers, mitochondria, figs--all this resinous, unretractable earth.

I read the first line and thought I was reading a dull poem about overcoming struggle or lost love or something like that. Boring, I thought. But then the second line hit me like pillow in the face. What an amazing image, “the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam returns over and over to the same shape.” That is so brilliant and so true. It’s quite impressive to note how stubborn, how “resistant,” the foam of a pillow or a mattress truly is.

Then the poem turns into a simple statement of nature. The “blind intelligence” of trees and leaves turns slyly into the grown of other creates (“turtles, rivers, mitochondria, figs”); I was not expecting the author to connect the ideas of resilience and optimism with those of evolution and geology. The leaps from the first line are surprising and yet easy to connect, which is a very difficult combination of elements.

So I have to wonder why the poem is titled as it is, rather than “Resilience” or something like that. Are trees being “optimistic” when they move their leaves to face the sun? It’s one think to ascribe intelligence to plants, but to give them emotions is a bit of a stretch. So if that’s not it, then what am I missing? When things are not working out, we move on and create something else? I guess that seems logical.

I’ve heard of Jane Hirshfield, and even read a few of her poems in various magazines, but this poem makes me wonder if I’ve missed something somewhere. I’m going to be looking up a few more of her poems soon.

Biscuit

2008-07-03T14:34:00.000-04:00

This has been one of my favorite poems for a couple of years now, ever since my best friend Tucker came into my life.

BISCUIT
by Jane Kenyon

The dog has cleaned his bowl
and his reward is a biscuit,
which I put in his mouth
like a priest offering the host.

I can't bear that trusting face!
He asks for bread, expects
bread, and I in my power
might have given him a stone.

Tucker spent Tuesday and Wednesday of this week at daycare. I take him there a few days a week during the school year so he can play and socialize with other dogs, rather than sit and sleep on his little doggie-bed all day long, but he’s very sensitive and now that I’m not going to work every day, his routine is thrown off. So I took him to daycare and plan on taking him every other week or so, just so he doesn’t get too out of whack. I’d take him more often, but it’s a 45 minute drive and I’m not getting paid during the summer, so a couple of days every other week is the best compromise.

Anyway, this poem is as true a poem as I’ve ever read. The dog has complete and utter trust in his owner, and so he truly believes that all his owner would give is something good. Tucker is the same. He doesn’t waste time looking at what I’m giving him; he simply opens his mouth and gobbles down whatever was in my hand. If I chose to put a rock in my hand, he would probably eat it without thinking twice.

I’ve wondered if this poem is an allusion to Cronus and how he was tricked into swallowing a rock, which gave birth to Zeus (and the other Titans). This could simply be a coincidence, but I like the idea that there’s something epic about this poem.

Sunday Morning

2008-07-01T22:18:00.001-04:00

Lately, my wife has been watching Jon and Kate Plus Eight on TLC, and she’s gotten me into it a bit Today, we were watching an episode where the kids were in a pumpkin patch and then a corn maze, and my wife and I just had to laugh at how absurd the whole idea of having that many young kids to take care of would be for us. And that made me suddenly remember this poem that I read a few years back. The connection is somewhat obvious.

SUNDAY MORNING
By Corrine Hales

Crowded around the glowing open mouth
Of the electric oven, the children
Pull on clothes and eat brown-sugared oatmeal.

The broiler strains, buzzing to keep up
500 degrees, and the mother
Is already scrubbing at a dark streak

On the kitchen wall. Last night she’d been
Ironing shirts and trying her best to explain
Something important to the children

When the old mother cat’s surviving
Two kittens’ insistent squealing and scrambling
Out of their cardboard box began

To get to her. The baby screamed every time
The oldest girl set him on the cold floor
While she carried a kitten back to its place

Near the stove, and the mother cat kept reaching
For the butter dish on the table. Twice, the woman
Stopped talking and set her iron down to swat

A quick kitten away from the dangling cord,
And she saw that one of the boys had begun to feed
Margarine to his favorite by the fingerful.

When it finally jumped from his lap and squatted
To piss on a pale man’s shirt dropped below
Her ironing board, the woman calmly stopped, unplugged

Her iron, picked up the gray kitten with one hand
And threw it, as if it were a housefly, hard
And straight at the yellow flowered wall

Across the room. It hit, cracked, and seemed to slide
Into a heap on the floor, leaving an odd silence
In the house. They all stood still

Staring at the thing, until one child,
The middle boy, walked slowly out of the room
And down the hall without looking

At his mother or what she’d done. The others followed
And by morning everything was back to normal
Except for the mother standing there scrubbing.

The tension in this poem rises very slowly and very subtly, but when you look back at the first few stanzas, it’s there and it’s powerful. It’s the slow pace of the rising tension that makes the poem so uncomfortable. The woman snaps, obviously tired from the constant pressures of her children, and she does something horrible to the kitten. But the author has already hooked us from the start, so when the terrible event starts to happen, we’re too much invested in the poem to stop reading.

There are a lot of clues early on about the direness of the poem, especially in the colors. The “brown-sugared oatmeal” and the “dark streak on the kitchen wall” help to paint a very uneasy image. And then the sounds the woman hears (the kittens “insistent squealing,” the screaming baby) complete the sensory impressions.

But the most disturbing part of the entire poem, I think, is that the woman “calmly stopped.” She didn’t get upset or angry. She had not yelled at her kids or the kittens, and she had never given any outward signs of her building anger. But it’s there, under the surface, building since the first lines of the poem. Brilliant stuff.

I’m not trying to imply that the mother from Jon and Kate is going to snap and kill a kitten, but you do have to wonder how anyone is able to have the patience to deal with the constant stresses of being the mother of eight toddlers.

Oranges

2008-06-30T21:57:00.003-04:00

I was reading The Poets Companion today because I’m starting to think already about ideas for teaching creative writing in September and the book has lots of brainstorming exercises. Why I’ve already decided, here at the end of June, to start working on school lesson plans for September I have no idea- what can I say- I’m excited to get started.

Anyway, I was going through the chapter about imagery and came across this poem. I loved it from the start and don’t know how I’ve gone this far without reading it.

ORANGES

by Gary Soto

The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling
At her gloves, face bright
With rouge. I smiled,
Touched her shoulder, and led
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow aisle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted -
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickel in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn't say anything.
I took the nickel from
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady's eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.

Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl's hand
in mine for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.

Lots of poems paint pictures, but so few are able to so completely force the reader into the world as this poem does. I was only a few lines in before I started thinking about how nervous I was while walking to meet that girl—and it wasn’t even me! And thinking about that made me remember the first dates and nervous conversations of my teenage years (which I don’t miss at all, by the way). But for a poem to create such perfect image is a rare treat and so I wanted to share it.

I wonder what the woman behind the counter said to the boy, what she silently said to him when he handed her a nickel and an orange instead of the dime that he owed. Somehow, he managed to get his girl her chocolate, so the woman must have understood. But just the fact that I’ve thought this question means that the author managed to make this “story” real to me the reader.

When I write poems, I always try to focus on imagery because it’s one of the few “literary conventions” that really strike a cord with me (in case you can’t tell). I will definitely use this poem as future motivation when I try to paint a clear picture.

Wild Geese

2008-06-21T22:01:00.001-04:00

I recently bought a Mary Oliver collection. I’ve never particularly like her writing and for some reason I’ve always found her to be quite dull. But lately, reading this book, I seem to be coming around.

WILD GEESE
By Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I suppose that it’s taken me awhile to get used to her simple, natural style. She never tries to do “more” with her poems—she does just enough. She paints a very clear image and connects it to a very clear message and comes out with a very clear poem. (Notice a pattern?)

This poem is very representative of her style. It’s probably her most famous poem, or at least one of her most famous, though I’m not positive about what separates this one from a lot of others. The idea is just that you can always find comfort in the wonders of nature. It’s nice, clear and understandable—but certainly not original.

The first three lines of this poem are wonderful. Walking on your knees is hard enough, but to say “you do not have to” do so implies that there is a reason for doing something so difficult; which in turn implies that you have committed a great sin. Coupled with the first line (“you do not have to be good”), this idea is somewhat disconcerting. You do not have to do things, but maybe you should do them.

Season at the Shore

2008-06-18T21:57:00.001-04:00

Here’s a poem that makes me want to go to the beach—which is odd considering that I hate the sun, hate the sand, and hate shore crowds. But the amazing repetition and sound devices that the poem uses make this one absolutely amazing.

SEASON AT THE SHORE
by Phyllis McGinley

On, not by sun and not by cloud
And not by whippoorwill, crying loud,
And not by the pricking of my thumbs,
Do I know the way that the summer comes.
Yet here on this seagull-haunted strand,
Hers is an omen I understand -
Sand:

Sand on the beaches,
Sand at the door,
Sand that screeches
On the new-swept floor;
In the shower, sand for the foot to crunch on;
Sand in the sandwiches spread for luncheon;
Sand adhesive to son and sibling,
From wallet sifting, from pockets dribbling;
Sand by the beaker
Nightly shed
From odious sneaker;
Sand in bed;
Sahara always in my seaside shanty
Like the sand in the voice
of J. Durante.

Winter is mittens, winter is gaiters
Steaming on various radiators.
Autumn is leaves that bog the broom.
Spring is mud in the living room
Or skates in places one scarcely planned.
But what is summer, her seal in hand?
Sand:
Sand in closets,
Sand on the stair,
Desert deposits
In the parlor chair;
Sand in the halls like the halls of the ocean;
Sand in he soap and the sun-tan lotion;
Stirred in the porridge, tossed on the greens,
Poured from the bottoms of rolled-up jeans;
In the elmy street
On the lawny acre;
Glued to the seat
Of the Studebaker.
Wrapped in the folds of the Wall Street Journal;
Damp sand, dry sand,
Sand eternal.

When I shake my garments at the Lord’s command,
What will I scatter in the Promised Land?
Sand.

I know absolutely nothing about Phyllis McGinley other than the fact that she won a Pulitzer in 1960. When I read this poem, I had that feeling of sheer joy and I just smiled. It’s wonderful when something like that happens, especially when you weren’t expecting it.

The repetition of the word “sand” throughout the poem is powerful, and, like I said in the intro, that’s even more amazing given that I hate the feeling of sand on my skin. What’s more is that the repetition is more than just a literary device; it’s used as a literal representation of the fact that sand really does get everywhere when you go to the beach. The speaker finds it in the house, the car, the newspaper, etc, and that’s absolutely true to life.

In that last stanza, the poem takes a turn into something light-hearted and fun to something maybe a bit more significant. “When I shake my garments at the Lord’s command,/ What will I scatter in the Promised Land?/ Sand.” Great stuff. Sand is a very biblical element; just seeing a picture of a desert makes me think of The Ten Commandments and Charlton Heston’s strong Shatner voice declaring “Let my people go.” (Which is immediately followed by Yul Brynner demanding “So let it be written, so let it be done.”—what great lines!) Are there any biblical stories that don’t take place in sand? So is this poem more of a statement about the fact that sand connects people and places and stories, that it can be a central element of life?

Or maybe the poem is just light-hearted fun. Ah, who cares. I like it either way.

*In the Waiting Room

2008-06-16T22:27:00.005-04:00

So today I burned my hand on the grill. I was using cedar planks for the first time, and they caught on fire. But that's not what burned me. I also was using a metal vegetable container to roast potatoes and broccoli, and the oven mitt I was using wasn't big enough. It hurt. A lot. So I went to the E.R.-- I didn't want to go, but my wife insisted. Since she's not one to over-react (her normal line is "walk it off") I agreed to go. Well, to put it mildly, it was a wonderful evening. Here's what came out of it, totally unplanned. (incidentally, the salmon came out great, and the potatoes were really flavorful; the broccoli was a bit hard, tough)

in the waiting room
by Me

sitting in the crowded emergency room,
burns on my hand from the surprisingly hot grill,
the woman across from me talks to herself.
she complains about how long she’s been sitting there,
waiting to be seen by a doctor,
watching other people be taken ahead of her.
behind me, another woman,
who says she has had a headache since yesterday,
has been waiting since noon.
she’s on the courtesy phone yelling to the answering service
about how long she’s been ignored by the doctors.
she’s angry about the wait, the headache,
the lack of answers from the infuriatingly calm staff,
and she wants to file a formal complaint.
I’m not sure what the courtesy phone is for,
but I don’t think that’s it.

the elderly nurse calls me in after only a few minutes,
takes my blood pressure, assures me that the wait won’t be long.
I comment on the colorful prints on her staff hospital smock,
I laugh at her unfunny joke about the thermometer,
I make cute flirty small talk with her,
and then retake my waiting room seat.
five minutes later, I’m seeing a doctor.
twenty minute later, I’m walking back through the waiting room,
signing the paperwork to leave.
the burns on my hand have softened
and are now covered in balm and gauze.
the woman talking to herself glares at me silently,
then comments to the woman on the courtesy phone
about the unfairness of it all.

Used

2008-06-12T19:08:00.000-04:00

Here’s a Rita Dove poem that I’ve liked for a few years now. It makes me think of my mother and wonder if she ever felt this way.

USED
by Rita Dove

The conspiracy's to make us thin.
Size threes are all the rage,
and skirts ballooning above
twinkling knees are every man-child's
preadolescent dream.
Tabla rasa. No slate's that clean--

We've earned the navels sunk in
grief when the last child emptied us
of their brief interior light.
Our muscles say
We have been used.

Have you ever tried silk sheets?
I did, persuaded by postnatal dread
and a Macy's clerk to bargain
for more zip.

We couldn't hang on, slipped to
the floor and by morning the quilts
had slid off, too. Enough of guilt--
It's hard work staying cool.

Do mothers get this way universally once their children are grown and they’re not having any more babies? Is this something all mothers feel, or just the ones who define themselves as “mother”? (You know the type: the one who, at the end of the day, is nothing else but ‘mom’ and would choose to be ‘mom’ over every other single mark of identification.) It’s not a knock on women who are not this way; my own mother would probably define herself as “teacher” before “mother.” Maybe I’m wrong about that, but even so, I wonder if she ever felt this sort of empty feeling that Dove describes.

My mother slept in my old bedroom on the night I moved to college. I didn’t find this out until years has passed, and I don’t know why she didn’t tell me so when we spoke a few days later. When I left home, she never seemed to have a problem with it. She never had an overly sentimental moment of motherly affection, and I’m grateful for that. But if she was feeling “empty” enough to sleep in my bed, why did she not tell me? And a few years ago, when I was ending a call with her on the phone and accidently said “I love you” in that casual way I end calls with my wife, did she stammer through “uh… I love you too”? That lead me to think about the last time we’d said this to each other, and I honestly couldn’t remember. Needless to say, it hasn’t happened since. (And again, it’s not that I mind. I know my mother loves me. I’m just pointing out that I don’t think she’d define herself as “mother” if she were given the choice.)

It’s weird what poems can bring out. Songs are like this too, and I suppose most art forms are. I had no intention of writing anything about my mother when I sat down at the computer to post this entry, but when I read this poem, it just sort of happened. Someday I’ll write a poem that does this to someone, and then I can die happy.

Big Grab

2008-06-11T22:01:00.002-04:00

I think this poem originally came from one of the humor issues of Poetry. If not, it could have.

BIG GRAB
By Barton Springs

The corn chip engineer gets a bright idea, and talks to the corn
chip executive and six months later at the factory they begin
subtracting a few chips from every bag,

but they still call it on the outside wrapper, The Big Grab, so the
concept of Big is quietly modified to mean More or Less Large, or
Only Slightly Less Big than Before.

Confucius said this would happen: that language would be hijacked
and twisted by a couple of tricksters from the Business Department

and from then on words would get crookeder and crookeder until no
one would know how to build a staircase, or to look at the teeth of
a horse, or when it is best to shut up.

We live in that time that he predicted. Nothing means what it says,
and it says it all the time. Out on route 28, the lights blaze all
night on a billboard of a beautiful girl covered with melted
cheese--

See how she beckons to the river of latenight cars; See how
the tipsy drivers swerve, under the breathalyzer moon!

We're in the wilderness now, confused by the signs, with a
shortness of breath, and that postmodern feeling of falling behind.

In a story whose beginning I must have missed, without a name for
the thing I can barely comprehend I desire, I speak these words
that do not know where they're going.

No wonder I want something more-or-less large, and salty for lunch.
No wonder I stare into space while eating it.

I feel like this poem should be an email forward or something. It’s just like that stupid old cliché (when a butterfly flaps it’s wings…). There’s not much depth to it or hidden meaning; it’s just fun to read.

The last stanza makes me laugh out loud. “No wonder I stare into space while eating it.” I dare you not to think of this poem the next time you see some idiot on the street or in a car or at work who is staring blankly ahead while eating chips from a small crinkly bag. I dare you. I’ll bet you can’t do it.

I Finally Managed to Speak to Her

2008-06-10T21:57:00.000-04:00

This is a poem that makes me glad that I don’t have to go through the nonsense of dating anymore. Not that I ever really had to, seeing as how I married my “high school sweetheart” and all; but still, watching all my single friends do the whole dating thing makes me want to vomit. (Lovely image, I know.)

I FINALLY MANAGED TO SPEAK TO HER
By Hal Sirowitz

She was sitting across from me
on the bus. I said, "The trees
look so much greener in this part
of the country. In New York City
everything looks so drab." She said,
"It looks the same to me. Show me
a tree that's different." "That one,"
I said. "Which one?" she said.
"It's too late," I said; "we already
passed it." "When you find another one,"
she said, "let me know." And then
she went back to reading her book.

This poem illustrates just how hard it is to meet someone. If you’re an introverted person, like the speaker, you have a hard time striking up a conversation with someone. And when you finally do find an opening line, it’s usually quite meaningless and trite. An observation about the trees or the weather is so banal that it puts the intended audience on defense, thinking, what does this weird guy want???

But at least the speaker in this poem finds someone who will (a little bit) play along. Rather than just saying “uh huh” or “okay,” she actually responds with a question and a half-joking statement. That indicates that she is either a very nice person or that she is maybe interested in him too. But either way, she goes back to reading her book, so the speaker obviously thinks that he failed.

When I first read this poem some time last year, my friend Scott had just changed jobs and was working in the city. He took the bus there and had a two-hour commute every day. Sometimes he would call me from the bus while he was riding home (he had to do something to pass the time, I guess). Every now and again, he mention a beautiful woman that was sitting near him, or a “hottie” who was near him on the subway. But my friend is just like the speaker: way too nervous to know what to say to a woman to whom he is attracted, and so, every time, when I asked him “did you talk to her?” he would respond with some excuse as to why he couldn’t have gone up to her this time. There was always an excuse.

So to see this speaker make the move makes me think of Scott on that bus heading home from the city. I always wonder if anyone is looking at him thinking the same thing; I guess that’s human nature though.

Thank god I’m not part of that nerve-destroying world.

What the Doctor Said

2008-06-08T17:30:00.002-04:00

Here’s a poem that I have always found to be somewhat perplexing. Not that it’s difficult or deep or anything like that; it’s just that it states a simple truth of life that baffles me (and I’m sure everyone else too).

WHAT THE DOCTOR SAID
By Raymond Carver

He said it doesn't look good
he said it looks bad in fact real bad
he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before
I quit counting them
I said I'm glad I wouldn't want to know
about any more being there than that
he said are you a religious man do you kneel down
in forest groves and let yourself ask for help
when you come to a waterfall
mist blowing against your face and arms
do you stop and ask for understanding at those moments
I said not yet but I intend to start today
he said I'm real sorry he said
I wish I had some other kind of news to give you
I said Amen and he said something else
I didn't catch and not knowing what else to do
and not wanting him to have to repeat it
and me to have to fully digest it
I just looked at him
for a minute and he looked back it was then
I jumped up and shook hands with this man who'd just given me
something no one else on earth had ever given me
I may even have thanked him habit being so strong.

Carver points out something that confuses and astounds. Why do we say “thank you” to doctors who give us bad news? We all see it, we all know it, and we all know it’s ridiculous—yet we all do it when we’re in that situation.

I have led a very sheltered life, and have been very grateful to the Fates for it. I come from a stable household; my parents love each other and love me; we never struggled for money but never had so much excess that we got spoiled; I never had a best friend betray me or commit suicide or take ill with caner; my grandparents all lived long enough to attend my wedding. I could go on, but I’ll spare you the Little House on the Prairie speech. My point is just that I don’t know much about loss or suffering or sorrow. So when I read a poem like this, it reminds me of that one moment that stands out as the most painful I can remember.

My wife and I got Spaz when we first moved in together about seven years ago. He was a September 11^th cat, one of the abandoned ones whose owners must have either been lost or simply lost track of him. So we adopted him, fell in love with him, and, two months after he arrived, lost him. He had feline AIDS and he was suffering. We had to put him down because it was the only responsible thing to do. But it hurt. A lot. We had him just long enough to be sure that he was a member of our family, and we were comfortable with our routine with him. So that night, a Friday, we took him to the vet and put him down. He had his little green catnip mouse in his paws as he lay on the cold metal table, and we left it with him when we numbly went out of the office. As we walked through the front door, we both were sobbing, practically unable to walk. But for some reason, we both, through our tears, felt compelled to say “thank you” to the vet techs behind the counter. What they were thinking I can’t say, but all these years later I still think of that moment and wonder why did we say that? They just killed our baby and we thanked them!

So this poem rings true, even to me.

*Homonymic Translation

2008-06-06T18:40:00.005-04:00

This poem is my second attempt at a homonymic translation. The original work was a 13th Century Middle English poem called "The Cuckoo Song." I wrote this a few years ago and don't remember why I chose this particular poem as my jumping-off point, but I do remember that I was (at that time) reading a few books about the origins of English diction. So here's the "translation" that I wrote:

Summer is coming in,
The cuckoo sings loudly!
Grow strong and blow more
And spring the world anew.
Sing, cuckoo!

All bleed after the womb,
Lost after calling clues,
Bulling streets, barking underneath.
Merrily sing, cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo,
The cuckoo sings well.
Day swallows the newest news.

I really love the first line of the second stanza, and I've been trying for years to come up with a way to use that line as the focus of a totally original poem; so far, I have failed. But I love the idea that we're born in blood that is not our own and then spend the rest of our lives bleeding ourselves. Juxtapose that with the image of a merry bird singing a happy spring song and it creates an eerie tone that I'm usually at a lost to find in my writing.

This is one of my favorite exercises to do when I'm suffering from writer's block. I will grab any ol' poem in a foreign language that I don't speak (which is all of them) and try to translate it based solely on sound. The result makes no sense at all, but then if you take that translation and attempt to use it to make something new, you can usually find inspiration for something you didn't know you had.

The Rejected Husband

2008-06-03T19:01:00.000-04:00

I don’t know if I have ever read a more depressing poem than this. I’m adding it to the blog now because of a daydream I had yesterday that made me think of it.

THE REJECTED HUSBAND
by Wendell Berry

After the storm and the new
stillness of the snow, he returns
to the graveyard, as though
he might lift the white coverlet,
slip in beside her as he used to do,
and again feel, beneath his hand,
her flesh quicken and turn warm.
But he is not her husband now.
To participate in resurrection, one
first must be dead. And he goes
back into the whitened world, alive.

So, want to cry yet? Nothing like a good ‘ol “dead wife” poem to kill a mood, huh? A guy in my Dodge group read this a few years back and I’ll always remember his sadness when he read it. He was married, but there was something powerful and resonant in his tone as he read it that made everyone see immediately that there was a real connection between the man and the poem.

The imagery is what makes this so affective (and effective, too!). There is a very clear picture of the graveyard, the stone, the man, and it all comes together perfectly. The poet doesn’t say “he remembers her”; instead, he describes the memory of touching his lost wife. A perfect example of the “show, don’t tell” philosophy of writing.

As for me, I had a terrible daydream yesterday about what I would do if I lost my wife. She didn’t answer the phone when I called her, and that’s not like her at all. So being the eternal worrier that I am, I of course imagined her hit by a bus or a bitten by the all-too-common NJ poisonous viper snake. And that was followed by a series of alternating panic and sorrow, and then the realization that I would be just like the subject of this poem: alone, rejected (by death) and sad to even be alive.

What a depressing post. Sorry.

Warning

2008-06-01T21:57:00.001-04:00

I was meandering around www.poemhunter.com (as I often do when I’m killing time on my laptop) and I came across a poet that I’d never heard of. This is not an altogether unfamiliar experience, but here’s the catch: I in the list of “The Top 500 Poems of All Time”! So I was very surprised to see a poet that I’d never heard of listed as having written number 15. I clicked the link and read the poem, and here it is:

WARNING
by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

How much fun is this poem? My wife and I love to laugh at the old ladies in their Red Hats and purple pantsuits; we get a good chuckle at their “kid at heart” mentality, knowing full well that she could one day be among them. But the voice in this poem is hilarious. She knows that she’ll be cranky and cheap when she gets old, and so she’s setting the stage for it now “so people who know me are not too shocked and surprised/ when suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.” What a great concept.

Today we are younger, and thus, have to be more responsible. We can’t do the things that the clichéd “old lady” does because we have to appear mature and “adult.” Why is it that it’s socially acceptable for an old man to take the sugar packets from the restaurant table but if I did it I’d be arrested for petty theft? I’m only half joking, but the idea is true nonetheless. Do the elderly do the strange things they do (as noted in the first two stanzas) because they have forgotten the social norms or do they do them as a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy? Do they realize that the arrogant young (me) make fun of them behind their backs and not care? Or are they ignorant of how they are perceived? I would try to pose these questions to my grandparents (my pop-pop Fred is turning 90 next month) but something tells me I wouldn’t get a serious answer. He’d probably look at me as though he didn’t understand—which makes me wonder if he does understand and just chooses not to give an answer….

Whatever the answer, I’m glad that I found this poem. I tried to look up the author but I haven’t had much luck with it yet.

Purple Bathing Suit

2008-05-29T19:46:00.001-04:00

A couple days ago, I posted Robert Bly’s “It’s Hard for Some Men to Finish Sentences”; today in class we read “Home Burial” by Robert Frost. So it seems that the subject of poor husband/wife relations is here in force. With that in mind, I remembered this Louise Gluck piece that makes me either want to laugh, cry, or sigh (I don’t know which from one reading to the next).

PURPLE BATHING SUIT
by Louise Gluck

I like watching you garden
with your back to me in your purple bathing suit:
your back is my favorite part of you,
the part furthest away from your mouth.

You might give some thought to that mouth.
Also to the way you weed, breaking
the grass off the ground level
when you should pull it up by the roots.

How many times do I have to tell you
how the grass spreads, your little
pile notwithstanding, in a dark mass which
by smoothing over the surface you have finally
fully obscured? Watching you

stare into space in the tidy
rows of the vegetable garden, ostensibly
working hard while actually
doing the worst job possible, I think

you are a small irritating purple thing
and I would like to see you walk off the face of the earth
because you are all that's wrong with my life
and I need you and I claim you.

It looks like it’s just a simple clichéd idea that men are dumb and women are smarter. I’m not really going to argue that point (I’d lose) but I am going to say that this poem is so much deeper than that. The man is weeded and doing it wrong, but at least he’s not facing the speaker. She loves his back, because seeing his back means that he’s not talking to her. So she’s either married to a really annoying man, or Gluck is making a statement that all men (or all lovers?) get annoying after a long enough time.

It’s a funny idea, this older, larger man sweaty as he weeds while wearing an absurd purple bathing suit. And she has so much scorn for him, which is comical and makes me laugh. But is it meant to be funny or sad? I can never tell which. What I do know is that the last line changes everything. She’s spent all the previous lines letting her audience know that her husband is a bit of a fool, and yet in the end she says simply “and I need you and I claim you.” Is that love? Needing someone even if he/she isn’t perfect? Or is that selfish; she wants to possess someone that she doesn’t “like” maybe just because she wants to possess something? It’s not clear, and I think that may be why I like it so much.

*Dinner, Again

2008-05-28T21:11:00.002-04:00

I was reading Billy Collins' Questions About Angels a few days ago (thanks Holly, for reminding me how great this book is!), and I noticed just how many poems in that book are about his dog. This struck me, because it seems so simple, such an easy thing, to write a poem about your own dog. And yet, I've never done it, and that's weird. So I started toying with this. It's a first draft, and I'm sure I'll revise the crap out of it soon enough, but for now, I thought I'd post it here.

Dinner, Again
by me

When she calls you to dinner
do you sigh,
think, oh… good… dryly?
Pork chops… again.
Just what I wanted. More pasta
and meatballs.
Do you put down your newspaper,
your cell phone, your iPod,
and plod to the table,
sit casually, raise fork to mouth,
chew mathematically, and then,
full and filled, return to your more
important drudgery?

But when you call him to dinner,
does he awaken from slumber
like a demon at night,
barrel through the yard or the house,
knowing that this is the most
exciting moment of his life… again?
Does he wonder what is on the menu,
think, oh… I hope it’s re-processed
organic meat byproducts!
Does he wag his tail and spread his drool
on the couch and your pant legs, eager
to see onto the counter as you open the can,
scoop from the bag?

Or does he know that he’ll be eating
today what he ate yesterday, and yesterday,
and yesterday? Is he tired of routine?
Maybe he only runs for his bowl on the floor
because he knows that seeing him
this happy for his dinner
makes you just a bit jealous of
his passion.

Either way,
when he finishes his palatial feast and
returns to the yard or his little cozy bed,
he looks through the fence or the window
at the neighbor kid on his bike,
and he lets out one loud bark!—his own
barbaric yawp—to tell the world
that he—like you—like me—
is satisfied.

It's Hard for Some Men to Finish Sentences

2008-05-26T12:48:00.000-04:00

IT'S HARD FOR SOME MEN TO FINISH SENTENCES
by Robert Bly

Sometimes a man can't say
What he . . . A wind comes
And his doors don't rattle. Rain
Comes and his hair is dry.

There's a lot to keep inside
And a lot to . . . Sometimes shame
Means we. . . Children are cruel,
He's six and his hands. . .

Even Hamlet kept passing
The king praying
And the king said,
"There was something. . . ."

Oh boy. I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever read a poem that contains more simple truth that this short free verse gem by Robert Bly.

Sometimes there is so much to say and yet there is nothing that can be said. Generally, we men are the ones who can’t express ourselves; I know that most days I am content to sit back and just listen to my wife and my mostly-female coworkers and my mother, without adding much to the “conversation.” When my wife gets home from work, she gives me a long recap of her day’s events. When I get home from work, I’ve usually forgotten most of what has already happened that day.

The allusion to Hamlet is a great one. There have been Shakespeare references all over poetry for the last two-hundred years, but I’ve not seen one that uses Claudius’ inability to ask for forgiveness as a connecting device. I’ve not seen Hamlet portrayed as such a… “man.”

We (men) are told from birth that emotional expression is best left to the fairer sex, and I generally agree with that. But I wonder why we have also lost our ability to effectively communicate our lack of emotion as well. Are we so detached from the rest of the world? Are we best fit to live as Tarzan, romping through the jungle with our primate bretheren, communicating with a series of grunts and snorts? Maybe… But the part that really gets me is that I honestly don’t know if I want to be able to communicate better. I am content being self-contained, isolated without my own mind. Is that wrong? Is that what it means to be “a man”?

For such a short poem, this one has a very heavy weight.

Flames

2008-05-25T12:00:00.001-04:00

Enough with the dark poetry. It’s time for some light-hearted fun. And who better to shed some humor onto this blog than the master of sarcasm, Billy Collins?

“Flames”
by Billy Collins

Smokey the Bear heads
into the autumn woods
with a red can of gasoline
and a box of wooden matches.

His ranger's hat is cocked
at a disturbing angle.

His brown fur gleams
under the high sun
as his paws, the size
of catcher's mitts,
crackle into the distance.

He is sick of dispensing
warnings to the careless,
the half-wit camper,
the dumbbell hiker.

He is going to show them
how a professional does it.

The first time I read this poem was a few years ago. I had assigned one of my sophomore classes to create a journal of contemporary poetry. (Let’s just say that that was not one of the easier assignments I’ve ever given.) Most of the journals contained things that were less than impressive, things from the poetry books and websites that make kids hate poetry. But one student found this poem, and oh, how I laughed.

Collins is a true genius when it comes to creating images that stay with you in a comical way, and this poem is a great example of that. Smokey the Bear, angry, carrying a can of gasoline and some matches, determined to set a fire and get some revenge… well that’s just good clean fun for everyone!

But as is common with Collins’ work, I do think that there is a deeper meaning to this poem, something along the lines of “we all get tired of the routines of life.” Maybe I’m just reading into this too much, looking for something unintentional so I can justify my love of this one on a moral level. Ah, who cares. I love it anyway!

"Apostrophe to Man"

2008-05-24T12:00:00.001-04:00

Yesterday’s post made me remember this poem by Millay. It’s older than most of the things that I like to post, but I think it’s worth the exception.

"Apostrophe to Man"
(on reflecting that the world is ready to go to war again)
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself, die out.
Breed faster, crowd, encroach, sing hymns, build bombing planes;
Make speeches, unveil statues, issue bonds, parade;
Convert again into explosives the bewildered ammonia and distracted cellulose;
Convert again into putrescent matter drawing flies
The hopeful bodies of the young, exhort,
Pray, pull long faces, be earnest, be all but overcome, be photographed;
Confer, perfect your formulae, commercialize
Bacteria harmful to human tissue,
Put death on the market;
Breed, crowd, encroach, expand, expunge yourself, die out,
Homo called sapiens.

I read this and I feel like Mel Gibson at the end of Braveheart. I want to go out and fight! I want to yell at the world and argue about stupid people doing stupid things. I want to make people stop being selfish and ignorant and frivolous. That last line is as wonderful a judgment to the human race as I’ve ever seen.

This poem compares to “In The Mourning Time” very well. I can see the two of them making up the body of a college undergrad’s paper on the poetry of human criticism. “Detestable race,” this poem starts, “continue to expunge yourself, die out.” Ouch. Compare that to the final two lines of Hayden’s poem (“but man / permitted to be man”). Millay wants us to die out; Hayden wants us to utterly change ourselves. I wonder who would win in a fistfight.

In the Mourning Time

2008-05-23T21:52:00.005-04:00

I thought I’d post a poem that’s a little darker, a little heavier, than my recent posts. Not that I’m feeling morbid or anything on this lovely holiday weekend; I just thought I’d do something different. And it doesn’t get any heavier than this Robert Hayden gem.

"In the Mourning Time"
by Robert Hayden

As the gook woman howls
for her boy in the smouldering,
as the expendable Clean-Cut Boys
From Decent American Homes
are slashing off enemy ears for keepsakes;

as the victories are tallied up
with flag-draped coffins, plastic bodybags,
what can I say
but this, this:

We must not be frightened nor cajoled
into accepting evil as deliverance from evil.
We must go on struggling to be human,
though monsters of abstraction
police and threaten us.

Reclaim now, now renew the vision of
a human world where godliness
is possible and man
is neither gook nigger honkey wop nor kike

but man

permitted to be man.

I don’t normally like poems that preach. I especially don’t normally like poems that “hurt” to read. But this hurts in a way that reminds me of the power of words. “We must go on struggling to be human.” What a powerful thought. Why should be have to “struggle” to be human? Why should we have to fight to be our true selves?

Wouldn’t it be paradise to live in a “world where godliness is possible”? Wouldn’t it be amazing to completely ignore the stereotyped identities we have thrust upon us (and that we invariably thrust upon others, though we don’t admit it even to ourselves)?

To start the poem with the reference to Vietnam establishes a very dark tone. “As the gook woman howls” is a deadly first line. Very dangerous. He makes this uncomfortable to read, and he doesn’t pull any punches as he progresses through the poem (just look at that last line in the 4^th stanza). Yet to be made “uncomfortable” means that I have been affected, in some way, which is to say that I have been impacted. It makes me think of Brokeback Mountain. That movie, especially the end, hurt to watch. When Jake G’s character is beaten to death at the end… breathless. I remember leaving the theater and not even wanting to talk. That’s what this poem does to me, too. It hurts to read, but that in turn makes me want to read it more.

There are too few poems like this. And those to do exist should be known to the more mainstream public. It would do the world some good to feel something every now and again.

Break the Mirror

2008-05-21T07:00:00.001-04:00

I don’t really remember where I came across this poem, but in my head I’ve known it for years. The last stanza is as prophetic and truthful as they come. And I couldn’t agree with it more.

“Break The Mirror”
by Nanao Sakaki

In the morning
After taking a cold shower
_________What a mistake_________
I look at the mirror.

There, a funny guy
Grey hair, white beard, wrinkled skin
_________What a pity_________
Poor, dirty, old man!
He is not me, absolutely not.

Land and life
Fishing in the ocean
Sleeping in the desert with stars
Building a shelter in the mountains
Farming the ancient way
Singing with coyotes
Singing against nuclear war –
I’ll never be tired of life.
Now I’m seventeen years old,
Very charming, young man.

I sit down quietly in lotus position,
Meditating, meditating for nothing.
Suddenly a voice comes to me:

“To stay young,
To save the world,
Break the mirror.”

This poem has always “spoken to me” (I’m in a cliché mood, sorry). The speaker is so upset after realizing that he has aged that he feels compelled to imagine himself living the life of the transcendental wanderer (i.e. my brother). He pictures himself in the mountains, singing, living with nature. But what makes this poem—for me—is the final three lines. “To stay young,/ to save the world,/ Break the mirror.” What great advice for all of us.

I suppose this poem is relevant to everyone, but to me, it makes me think of my wife. Without sounding too much like a sap, I really do believe that my wife is the most beautiful woman that I have ever met. She can make me laugh with giddy happiness just by smiling, and I can’t imagine her being any different. Yet for years, she has been convinced (like most crazy females) that she needs to keep losing weight. She always complains about her legs being too fat or something as ridiculous as that. I used to try to convince her that she doesn’t need to work out twice a day and she can sometimes eat some extra dessert, but I gave up on that after years of being told “you don’t understand.” But recently, she’s been easing up on the exercise for various reasons, and she told me just yesterday about how happy she’s been with the change. I really couldn’t be happier about that myself, and so I thought this particular poem would be a fitting tribute to my wife and her relaxed attitudes.

To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now

2008-05-20T19:39:00.001-04:00

I would like to dedicate today’s post to my best friend, Tucker.

“To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now”
By Billy Collins

Nobody here likes a wet dog.
No one wants anything to do with a dog
that is wet from being out in the rain
or retrieving a stick from a lake.
Look how she wanders around the crowded pub tonight
going from one person to another
hoping for a pat on the head, a rub behind the ears,
something that could be given with one hand
without even wrinkling the conversation.

But everyone pushes her away,
some with a knee, others with the sole of a boot.
Even the children, who don't realize she is wet
until they go to pet her,
push her away,
then wipe their hands on their clothes.
And whenever she heads toward me,
I show her my palm, and she turns aside.

O stranger of the future!
O inconceivable being!
whatever the shape of your house,
however you scoot from place to place,
no matter how strange and colorless the clothes you
may wear,
I bet nobody there likes a wet dog either.
I bet everybody in your pub,
even the children, pushes her away.

Oh, how Tucker can create a stink. Nobody anywhere in the world can create a foul odor with such little effort as my dog. When he is wet, dumpsters bow down humbly before him. When he is gassy (which is most days) sewer pipes sing his name. So when I read this Billy Collins gem a few weeks ago, my first thought was, poor dog; he’s so mistreated.

My favorite of Tucker’s many endearing habits is when he farts. (Forgive the crassness, but sometimes it’s necessary to fully embrace the human condition.) When he is sitting, looking aloof and forlorn in that woe-is-me manner that only dogs can successfully project, sometimes he lets one fly. It’s generally a squeaky fart, one that is reminiscent of a balloon that is losing its air. Well, I just fall to pieces laughing every time because when he does it, he turns his head and looks back down at his own backside. I can just hear his thoughts; where did that noise come from? Oh, how I laugh! Every time, like a baby with a newly-discovered plush toy, I laugh. The look on his face is just priceless, and imagining him puzzled by the sound just puts me over the edge.

So what does any of this have to do with this poem? Well, not too much other than the fact that the smell of the wet dog that is ignored makes me think of Tucker. The poems works on that dry-humored level that only a few poets have mastered. There are some real universal truths, Collins seems to say, and one of them is that nobody likes the smell of a wet dog.

The Feet Man

2008-05-19T20:01:00.001-04:00

So today I was driving home, listening to the radio, and some random line of some background song struck some cord in my head that sparked a memory of a poem that I remember loving. The song had nothing to do with anything other than the fact that I was too lazy to change the station, but the poem it reminded me of (for absolutely no good reason) is below:

The Feet Man
by Philip Dacey

The worst job I ever had was nailing
Jesus’ feet to the cross on the
assembly line at the crucifix factory.
Jesus! I’d never thought of myself
as religious before that, but when
I had to strike those nails—I figured
it up once—more than two thousands times
a day, my mind began seeing things:
little tremors along the skin, jerks of
those legs that were bonier than
models’ legs, his eyes imploring,
forgiving. I swear, if a tiny drop of blood
had oozed out of that wood at my pounding,
I wouldn’t have been surprised at all.
I was ripe for a miracle, or a vacation.
All I got was worse: with each blow
of the hammer, I flinched, as if I
were the one getting pierced. Doing
that job day after day was bad enough,
but doing it to myself—my arms
spread out from one end of my paycheck
to the other—was crazy. I began
to sweat constantly, though the place
was air-conditioned. It wasn’t long before
the foreman took me aside and told me
I was taking my job too seriously, that
if I wanted to keep it I had better calm down.
He was right. I pulled myself together
like a man and put all pointless thoughts
out of my head. Or tried to. It wasn’t easy:
imagine Jesus after Jesus coming down
at you along that line, and you with
your hammer poised, you knowing
what you have to do to make a living.

Having just typed this (because I couldn’t find it online anywhere), I realize that it’s way too good for me to have almost forgotten. My Doge Poetry group read it a few years ago and it’s been in a dusty binder ever since. I really should have taken it out and let it breathe a long time ago.

The images in this poem are both haunting and comical at the same time, a rare combination that is a bit disturbing in and of itself. “Imagine Jesus after Jesus coming down/ at you along that line, and you with/ your hammer poised….” Wow. For an agnostic like me, that’s a very foreboding picture. The poet (does anyone know anything else by him?) couples that striking image with the very funny “I was ripe for a miracle, or a vacation.” Ha!!!

The worst job I ever had was working for ETS, hand scoring AP tests for the arrogant and the ignorant who insisted that there must have been a mistake and they couldn’t possibly have done as poorly as the machine-scored test report said. That was mind-numbing work, especially considering that the whole summer I spent doing it, we (the entire group of us—maybe 15 people?) only found ONE mistake. But my boring job was nothing compared to some of the things that other people have to do ever day. I can’t imagine having to work in a crucifix factory, though in my head I picture it being very poorly lit and musty, with dark wood walls and a loud train whistle that blows at lunch time.

The Voice You Hear When You Read Silently

2008-05-18T20:17:00.001-04:00

This is one of those poems that I can read over and over and find new lines to love each time.

THE VOICE YOU HEAR WHEN YOU READ SILENTLY
by Thomas Lux

is not silent, it is a speaking-
out-loud voice in your head: is it spoken,
a voice is saying it
as you read. It's the writer's words,
of course, in a literary sense
his or her voice, but the sound
of that voice is the sound of your voice.
Not the sound your friends know
or the sound of a tape played back
but your voice
caught in the dark cathedral
of your skull, your voice heard
by an internal ear informed by internal abstracts
and what you know by feeling,
having felt. It is your voice
saying, for example, the word barn
that the writer wrote
but the barn you say
is a barn you know or knew. The voice
in your head, speaking as you read,
never says anything neutrally — some people
hated the barn they knew,
some people love the barn they know
so you hear the word loaded
and a sensory constellation
is lit: horse-gnawed stalls,
hayloft, black heat tape wrapping
a water pipe, a slippery
spilled chirr of oats from a split sack,
the bony, filthy haunches of cows. . . .
And barn is only a noun — no verb
or subject has entered into the sentence yet!
The voice you hear when you read to yourself
is the clearest voice: you speak it
speaking to you.

First, I was taken by the simple title and message: we all bring a whole slew of baggage with us when we do anything, including read a poem. Lux uses the randomly simple example of a barn. When I think of that word, the first thing that comes to mind is my mother-in-law’s shed. She bought it a few years back and painted it bright barn red. We’ve spent a lot of time in that yard; our dogs playing, cookouts, gossiping, etc. It’s a nice association that I have with the word. So if the narrator of a poem only says the word “barn” without any more description, it already has a positive connotation to me.

Then the poem goes a bit further. The voice that you hear when you read to yourself is you “true” voice, the one that really is who you are at your deepest level. That’s an interesting idea, especially when you consider that some people don’t read a whole lot! So when you make those subconscious associations, like with the word barn, the voice that tells you to be positive or negative (without using any words to tell you) is the voice of you. So to find out who you really are inside, you simply must read and see what your inner voice makes you feel.

Thomas Lux is my idol.

*Mozart's Mistakes

2008-05-16T19:00:00.006-04:00

I had this concept in my head and wanted to so something with it.

Mozart's Mistakes
by me

Michael Jackson never would have had to write
“Heal the World”
so I would never have to get that clichéd, horrible song
stuck in my head—though I’ll never
admit that I have all the lyrics dancing in my head.

But no, he did. He had do.
What choice did he have?

Ted Kazinski, nine-eleven, Oklahoma City…
just names and dates
rather than chapters in history books.
The Middle East would just be a dusty
spot on the map that school kids would learn and then
forget after the test.

Stupid Mozart.
He never made a mistake.
His music is beautiful and timeless,
the tones linger in opera houses and
movie soundtracks,
elevator muzak and department store backgrounds.
The man never made a mistake!
Or did he?
Think about it:
maybe he did make a mistake or two along the way,
but his pride didn’t let him fix them, so he settled for
“The Magic Flute” and “Cossi fan tutti.”
Or maybe he was great when he was young, and by the
time he aged, he just didn’t care anymore.
Or maybe, just maybe, he knew he was missing an occasional note,
a minor chord here, a dulcet melody there—
and he didn’t want to risk being too perfect,
more perfect than he already was.

He was great—no question.
Dead for 200 years and he’s still the best.
But could he have been better?
If he had fixed those mistakes that he insisted were not mistakes—
the mistakes that we don’t know are mistakes
because we’re not smart enough to see them—
think of what he could have accomplished.
Instead of becoming a legend, Mozart could have been a god.
He could have fixed the world,
not just entertained it.

I wouldn’t have to double-check the locks on my car door when I
drive by a group of dark-looking young men
in the city.

I may even have rolled down my window and waved.

I love the concept, but I'm not sure I like the way it came out. I'm just trying to prove the point that it's absurd to say that the man never made a mistake. EVERYONE makes mistakes and to believe that someone was perfect at his craft is absolutely rediculous. The greatest minds throughout history were not perfect people, I'm sure. I'll bet if you talked to Mrs. Gandhi she'd tell us that her hubby snored in his sleep. I'm sure that Mrs. Plato hated her husband's foot odor. To think that Mozart was perfect just shows that we forget the truth and only remember the fictionalized version of history.

1969

2008-05-11T21:33:00.000-04:00

So I’ve spent the last two days sorting through boxes of old pictures of my grandparents. My dad’s dad is going to be 90 in June and we’re having a big party for him, and my contribution is to create a “This is Your Life” sort of film for him. With that in mind, I thought a poem about nostalgia would be appropriate.

1969
By Tony Gloeggler

My brother enlisted
in the winter. I pitched
for the sixth grade Indians
and coach said
I was almost as good
as Johnny. My mother
fingered rosary beads,
watched Cronkite say
and that's the way it is.
I smoked my first
and last cigarette. My father
kept his promise,
washed Johnny's Mustang
every weekend. Brenda Whitson
taught me how to French kiss
in her basement. Sundays
we went to ten o'clock Mass,
dipped hands in holy water,
genuflected, walked down
the aisle and received
Communion. Cleon Jones
got down on one knee, caught
the last out and the Mets
won the World Series.
Two white-gloved Marines
rang the bell, stood
on our stoop. My father
watched their car
pull away, then locked
the wooden door. I went
to our room, climbed
into the top bunk,
pounded a hardball
into his pillow. My mother
found her Bible, took
out my brother's letters,
put them in the pocket
of her blue robe. My father
started Johnny's car,
revved the engine
until every tool
hanging in the garage
shook.

The speaker tells the story of receiving the news that his brother died in Vietnam. Each member of the family reacts in a different way. Mom prayed, Dad started brother’s car, and speaker passive-aggressively pounded a baseball into his glove. All three are logical and understandable reactions, though I would hold that there are no real “inappropriate” reactions to getting such news.

The reason that I chose this poem is the great number of war pictures that I saw this weekend. My grandfather has never been a particularly vocal man, at least not when it comes to his time in the army. Seeing him in his uniforms, holding his guns, drinking with his buddies, really threw me for a loop. How do I react to seeing pictures of a man in the midst of a war when there is nobody in my life whom I can less easily picture fighting a war? He is calm, laid back, forgetful, and as passive as any human who has ever lived. Today, we met for brunch, which has been planed for a few weeks. He spoke to his daughter (and my aunt) on the phone before we left and told her that he was going to a wedding today. Where he got that idea I have no idea, and when we arrived at the restaurant, I wonder what was going through his head; was he expecting a wedding ceremony?

The point that I’m trying to make is that there is a whole world, a whole life, that was lived by my grandfather that I just don’t know about. He’s told me the story of why he joined the Army (he was sixteen and broke so he lied about his age and enlisted) and he told me about the places he traveled to (Japan, Italy, Hawaii, Alaska), but he never talks about what he went through or the people he knew. Poems like this make me think about that life he lived, and the nostalgia he must feel, even though he never talks about it.

Wife Hits Moose

2008-05-07T18:23:00.000-04:00

I couldn’t let the heavy tone of the last poem that I posted sit at the top of my blog for too long. It’s too depressing. So here’s another gem from Thomas Lux to lighten things up a bit.

WIFE HITS MOOSE
By Thomas Lux

Sometime around dusk moose lifts
his heavy, primordial jaw, dripping, from pondwater
and, without psychic struggle,
decides the day, for him, is done: time
to go somewhere else. Meanwhile, wife
drives one of those roads that cut straight north,
a highway dividing the forests

not yet fat enough for the paper companies.
This time of year full dark falls
about eight o'clock -- pineforest and blacktop
blend. Moose reaches road, fails
to look both ways, steps
deliberately, ponderously . . . Wife
hits moose, hard,

at slight angle (brakes slammed, car
spinning) and moose rolls over hood, antlers --
as if diamond-tipped -- scratch windshield, car
damaged: rib of moose imprint
on fender, hoof shatters headlight.
Annoyed moose lands on feet and walks away.
Wife is shaken, unhurt, amazed.

-- Does moose believe in a Supreme Intelligence?
Speaker does not know.
-- Does wife believe in a Supreme Intelligence?
Speaker assumes as much: spiritual intimacies
being between the spirit and the human.
Does speaker believe in a Supreme Intelligence?
Yes. Thank You.

Do I really need to say anything at all?

The simple story-telling narrative is funny enough, but when Lux adds the last stanza, he takes this poem to a whole new level. “Does the moose believe in a Supreme Intelligence?” Ha! As far as the story goes, the moose is simply “annoyed” so I doubt he “thinks” about too much at all. And I just love that Lux chose to have his wife hit a moose rather than a deer or a dog or something more “swift”; moose are generally portrayed as slower, less intelligent then other wildlife, so to hit one generally means you’re a bad driver. So he’s saying in a less-than-subtle way that his wife is a bad driver. Does it make me a bad person that I picture my wife every single time that I read this?

How We Danced

2008-05-07T18:02:00.002-04:00

HOW WE DANCED
By Anne Sexton

The night of my cousin’s wedding
I wore blue.
I was nineteen
and we danced, Father, we orbited.
We moved like angels washing themselves.
We moved like two birds on fire.
Then we moved like the sea in a jar,
slower and slower.
The orchestra played
‘Oh how we danced on the night we were wed.’
And you waltzed me like a lazy Susan
and we were dear,
very dear.
Now that you are laid out,
useless as a blind dog,
now that you no longer lurk,
the song rings in my head.
Pure oxygen was the champagne we drank
and clicked our glasses, one to one.
The champagne breathed like a skin diver
and the glasses were crystal and the bride
and groom gripped each other in sleep
like nineteen-thirty marathon dancers.
Mother was a belle and danced with twenty men.
You danced with me never saying a word.
Instead the serpent spoke as you held me close.
The serpent, that mocker, woke up and pressed against me
like a great god and we bent together
like two lonely swans.

When I first read this poem, I did not know it was Anne Sexton. I read through the first half and thought it was a lovely portrait of a beautiful moment between a father and a daughter. I thought the speaker, a young woman, saw her father as the stereotypical patriarchal archetype and that was all. Daddy’s little girl. Then “the serpent” woke up.

I felt sick. I was shocked. I was convinced I had read it wrong and that I must have missed something or maybe I just have a dirty mind. I felt so disturbed by it that I literally was uncomfortable reading it. Unfortunately for me (and for the speaker), I didn’t read it wrong. The girl’s father “loves” her. Horrible.

When I read things like this I am again reminded how naive and how sheltered I’ve been in my life. I just didn’t want to believe this poem. I remember seeing 8mm, a Nicholas Cage movie from 1999, which caused me a similar reaction. The main character is a private investigator who is hired to investigate the disappearance of a teenage girl. After following her trail all over the country, he finds himself searching through the darkest areas of human existence: child pornography and snuff films. Suffice to say, the outcome of the film was so incredibly disturbing that I still, nearly 10 years later, think about it very regularly. I have a feeling this poem has affected me in the same manner.

Asking for My Younger Brother

2008-05-06T21:31:00.002-04:00

This is a poem that touches me for a reason that I can’t explain at all. The raw emotion is simply overwhelming.

ASKING FOR MY YOUNGER BROTHER
By Franz Wright

I never did find you.
I later heard how you'd wandered the streets
for weeks, washing dishes before you got fired;
taking occasional meals at the Salvation Army
with the other diagnosed. How on one particular night
you won four hundred dollars at cards:
how some men followed you and beat you up,
leaving you unconscious in an alley
where you were wakened by police
and arrested for vagrancy, for being tired
of getting beaten up at home.
I'd dreamed you were dead,
and started to cry.
I couldn't exactly phone Dad.
I bought a pint of bourbon
and asked for you all afternoon in a blizzard.
In hell
Dante had words with the dead,
although
they had no bodies
and he could not touch them, nor they him.
A man behind the ticket counter
in the Greyhound terminal
pointed to one of the empty seats, where
someone who looked like me sometimes sat down
among the people waiting to depart.
I don't know why I write this.
With it comes the irrepressible desire
to write nothing, to remember nothing;
there is even the desire
to walk out in some field and bury it
along with all my other so-called
poems, which help no one--
where each word will blur
into earth finally,
where the mind that voiced them
and the hand that took them down will.
So what. I left
the bus fare back
to Sacramento with this man,
and asked him
to give it to you.

I guess this poem is so great (to me) because it really touches a nerve. The speaker so obviously feels a pain that he cannot explain, a pain that haunts him enough to leave bus fare for a younger brother that he doesn’t even know. And the apostrophe, the fact that he’s speaking directly to his brother—the impact that has is incalculable. If this were a story about his brother, that’d be one thing; but the fact that this is a letter to his brother makes this so much more personal and, thus, more powerful.

My brother is my best friend (besides my wife). We have a great relationship despite the fact that he is as opposite from me as a person gets. To put it mildly, I’m a long, straight, gray line while he’s a curvy, crooked flash of a thousand colors. I’m married, have a steady job, a nice house, three pets, and am hoping for kids relatively soon. He’s… loving life. And because we’re so different, I worry about him not being happy. I’m a very empathetic person (though I try my best not to let it show), and it makes me sad to think that someone that I care about (and there aren’t that many of those people running around) could be sad. So this poem, this speaker, really hits a nerve with me. He loves his brother though the brother is long lost.

I hope I never know that feeling of loss and sadness, though I’m sure I will at some point in my life. Everyone does. I’ve just been very lucky so far. And poems like this remind me of that.

Tonight at Noon

2008-05-05T16:26:00.001-04:00

Today I thought I’d share a poem that have a very strong memory attached for me.

TONIGHT AT NOON
By Adrian Henri

Tonight at noon
Supermarkets will advertise 3p extra on everything
Tonight at noon
Children from happy families will be sent to live in a home
Elephants will tell each other human jokes
America will declare peace on Russia
World War I generals will sell poppies on the street on November 11th
The first daffodils of autumn will appear
When the leaves fall upwards to the trees

Tonight at noon
Pigeons will hunt cats through city backyards
Hitler will tell us to fight on the beaches and on the landing fields
A tunnel full of water will be built under Liverpool
Pigs will be sighted flying in formation over Woolton
And Nelson will not only get his eye back but his arm as well
White Americans will demonstrate for equal rights
In front of the Black house
And the monster has just created Dr. Frankenstein

Girls in bikinis are moonbathing
Folksongs are being sung by real folk
Art galleries are closed to people over 21
Poets get their poems in the Top 20
There's jobs for everybody and nobody wants them
In back alleys everywhere teenage lovers are kissing in broad daylight
In forgotten graveyards everywhere the dead will quietly bury the living
and
You will tell me you love me
Tonight at noon

The first time I heard this, it was being read by a man who is a fellow teacher and poetry-lover. He has the same basic taste in poetry as me and tends to like the humorous side of things; so when he started reading this poem and the first few paradoxes were in my ears, I started to chuckle. As the poem progressed, and I heard them continue, and some were funny (“and the monster has just created Dr. Frankenstein”) and some were more social commentary (“white Americans will demonstrate for equal rights/ in front of the Black house).

But than that last couple lines. Oh my. It hit me like the proverbial ton of proverbial bricks. “Oh,” I yelled in my brain. “Oh, it’s a love poem!” I absolutely did NOT see it coming, but now, looking back, it all makes perfect sense. The speaker is talking about all of these things because he/she knows that there is no chance that his/her love will ever return. So it’s the whole “when pigs fly” cliché coming back in a new, original way. How great!

The whole theme of unrequited love is everywhere in poetry, but it’s rare for it come be told in such a surprising way. It’s difficult to write a love poem, and I always say that it’s the hardest topic to write about because it’s so personal yet so universal, so when I find one that is as innovative and powerful as this I tend to like it all that much more.

*Untitled

2008-05-04T17:13:00.004-04:00

I have been working on this poem for a few months now. It's had many different incarnations and I don't know if this is the best, but it's certainly the most honest.

Untitled so far
by me

In bed. At night. The quiet.
You breathe in, soft, through your nose,
rhythmic and smooth.
I turn off my light,
cover my legs, my shoulders.
I turn on my side.
My eyes adjust to the dark and
I see your hair, your shoulders,
the sheets rise and fall.

I want to reach out,
to touch your back,
to feel your heart on my arm
as I wrap myself around you.
I want to finger your hair,
let my breath rise and fall
with your breath.

Instead, I reach for a pillow,
wrap it in my arms—cold, soft, silent.
Close my eyes.
But I don’t touch.
I don’t touch.
But I feel. I feel the slight press of your body
on bed, the slight tilt
of the mattress as it bends underneath you,
the quiet rap of your heart when I—
pillow in hand—
lay my ear flat to the cold sheet.

And that is enough.
That is enough.

I have been trying for the last few weeks to find the title. Someone suggested to me that "Lust" was appropriate, but I'm not sure. I wanted something that emphasises the desire, which "Lust" does, but I don't want it to be confused with a sexual desire, because it's absolutely not sexual. It's about the love, the longing. I'll keep trying and repost when I come up with something.

You and I are Disappearing

2008-05-04T16:32:00.000-04:00

YOU AND I ARE DISAPPEARING
by Yusef Komunyakaa

The cry I bring down from the hills
belongs to a girl still burning
inside my head. At daybreak
she burns like a piece of paper.
She burns like foxfire
in a thigh-shaped valley.
A skirt of flames
dances around her
at dusk.
We stand with our hands
hanging at our sides,
while she burns
like a sack of dry ice.
She burns like oil on water.
She burns like a cattail torch
dipped in gasoline.
She glows like the fat tip
of a banker’s cigar,
silent as quicksilver.
A tiger under a rainbow
at nightfall.
She burns like a shot glass of vodka.
She burns like a field of poppies
at the edge of a rain forest.
She rises like a dragonsmoke
to my nostrils.
She burns like a burning bush
driven by a godawful wind.

How is it possible for a poem to contain so many similes without sounding repetitive? There are ten versions of “she burns like…” and every single one of them sounds necessary. The desperation in the speaker’s voice as he recalls a lost love is sad and tragic, and the constant fire images lead me to believe that he is in pain remembering her.

I’ve not read too many of Komunyakaa’s poems, but I just might have to pick up one of his chapbooks or something because I just love this poem. I know he is local, from Trenton originally, and I’m pretty sure that he teaches at NYU; other than that, I know very little about him.

The Expulsion

2008-05-04T16:13:00.001-04:00

Anyone who knows me knows that my favorite brand of humor tends to be a bit on the sexist side. Every chance I get I mock the fairer sex, knowing all the while that it’s only out of complete and utter admiration that I do so.

So when I read this poem, one that starts with the image of Adam being happy because he can now blame Eve for everything that is wrong in the world, I can’t help smiling at the absurdity.

THE EXPULSION
by Katha Pollitt

Adam was happy - now he had someone to blame
for everything - shipwrecks, Troy,
the gray face in the mirror.

Eve was happy: now he would always need her.
She walked on boldly, swaying her beautiful hips.

The serpent admired his emerald coat,
the Angel burst into flames
(he'd never approved of them, and he was right).

Even God was secretly pleased: Let
History Begin!

The dog had no regrets, trotting by Adam's side
self-importantly, glad to be rid

of the lion, the toad, the basilisk, the white-footed mouse,
who were also happy and forgot their names immediately.

Only the Tree of Knowledge stood forlorn,
its small hard bitter crab apples

glinting high up, in a twilight of black leaves:
how pleasant it had been, how unexpected

to have been, however briefly,
the center of attention.

This poet, Katha Pollitt (whom I’ve never heard of other than this one poem), manages to capture all the different perspectives on “the expulsion” from Eden. Adam was happy because he could blame women, God was happy because it marked the start of history, the dog was happy because it is now Man’s favorite, etc… each perspective could be a story unto itself. But Pollitt combines them all to make one, simple tale. What a wonderful piece.

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

2008-05-03T16:34:00.001-04:00

PREFACE TO A TWENTY VOLUME SUICIDE NOTE
by Amiri Baraka

Lately, I’ve become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelops me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus…

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night, I tiptoed up
To my daughter’s room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there…
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands

This was the second Amiri Baraka poem I ever heard (we all know the first, don’t we?), and it was enough to convince me that the man is more than just an angry anarchist who likes to cause a stir.

“Nobody sings anymore.” Wow. The emptiness and sorrow in that line alone is enough to make me pause when I read. And the visual of a depressed older man creeping into his daughters room, only to find her praying… wow. There are so many small, powerful images in this short, compact poem that it’s a wonder more people don’t read Baraka’s poems.

The title is extremely powerful, which is rare. Most of the time, a title on a poem seems like an arbitrary thing, something thrown in after the fact that summarizes what’s written, In this case, the title gives the poem a whole new depth. The speaker’s thoughts, as they are presented in the poem, seem to be the thoughts of a man on the footsteps of his own mortality. But would I have thought “suicide” when reading if the title wasn’t there? I don’t know. But why is the suicide note 20 volumes? Why so long? Is there a significance to the number?

You, Reader

2008-05-03T14:18:00.002-04:00

For Christmas last year, someone bought me Billy Collins' newest book, The Trouble with Poetry. Unfortunately, it got lost in a pile of books, tools, bills, and other such dross that I completely forgot that I had it. Last night, after countless "debates" with my wife about the pile of junk in my office, I finally decided to attempt to tackle the beast and clean up (just a bit). Well low and behold, what do I find? The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins! It was like finding a crisp new twenty dollar bill blowing in the wind on a city street.

The only thing that I knew about the book was that it was not very well received by the masses. The reviews on Amazon are uncharacteristically negative and a quick Google search of the book's title will result in a lot of negative comments from dissatisfied poetry enthusiasts. But to me, it was definitely worth the risk of disappointment because-- hey, this is Billy Collins.

This is the first poem in the book:

YOU, READER
by Billy Collins

I wonder how you are going to feel
when you find out
that I wrote this instead of you,

that it was I who got up early
to sit in the kitchen
and mention with a pen

the rain-soaked windows,
the ivy wallpaper,
and the goldfish circling in its bowl.

Go ahead and turn aside,
bit your lip and tear out the page,
but, listen—it was just a matter of time

before one of us happened
to notice the unlit candles
and the clock humming on the wall.

Plus, nothing happened that morning—
a song on the radio,
a car whistling along the road outside—

and I was only thinking
about the shakers of salt and pepper
that were standing side by side on a place mat.

I wondered if they had become friends
after all these years
or if they were still strangers to one another

like you and I
who manage to be known and unknown
to each other at the same time—

me at this table with a bowl of pears,
you leaning in a doorway somewhere
near some blue hydrangeas, reading this.

This is the only poem in the book that I've read so far, and I'm more than happy with it. It reminds me so much of my students and their simple, innocent arrogance. Whenever I teach a poet like William Carlos Williams or E.E. Cummings, they always say, "I could have written this," or "What's the big deal? This doesn't say anything poetic." They see the world and the poems quite literally, forgetting to take into account the simple beauty of observation. I am sometimes able to convince them than those poets are better than they (the students) seem to realize, that the poems contain more than a simple statement about a bowl of plums or a man who sells balloons.

In this poem, Collins answers the all-too-common argument of "I could have written that." His simple reply: I wrote it first, sorry. This will not go down as one of his most lasting or artistic pieces, but to me, this poem is absolutely perfect.

It's Raining in Love

2008-05-03T12:57:00.002-04:00

This is a poem that always makes me smile. Since yesterday's post was a bit of a downer, I thought today I'd go for something more humorous.

IT’S RAINING IN LOVE
By Richard Brautigan

I don't know what it is,
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl
a lot.

It makes me nervous.
I don't say the right things
or perhaps I start
to examine,
evaluate,
compute
what I am saying.

If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?"
and she says, "I don't know,"
I start thinking: Does she really like me?

In other words
I get a little creepy.

A friend of mine once said,
"It's twenty times better to be friends
with someone
than it is to be in love with them."

I think he's right and besides,
it's raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
That's all taken care of.

BUT

if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
"Do you think it's going to rain?"
and I say, "It beats me,"
and she says, "Oh,"
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think: Thank God, it's you, baby, this time
instead of me.

To make being in love a bad thing (though tongue-in-check, of course) is hard to do, but Brautigan manages to do it with seeming ease. We've all felt that sickness, the ache of unrequited "like" and so it's easy to relate to the speaker. When the turn comes, and the speaker looks at a woman who in "in like" with him, he's just happy it's not himself that's feeling the pain. Genius.

This is just another poem that emphasizes the story-telling aspect of contemporary poetry that I find so appealing for some reason. It doesn't try to do anything but narrate a man's thoughts on being in love; there are no poetic devices, no overt rhymes or meters, nothing to make it a textbook poem. But I challenge anyone to tell me that this isn't brilliant. Go ahead. I'll bet you can't do it.

Infidelity

2008-05-01T20:01:00.003-04:00

The May issue of Poetry came in the mail yesterday. As has been the case in recent months, I find myself more excited to receive the magazine then I am when I'm reading it. There just hasn't been much in it lately to make me glad I'm a subscriber. The poetry all seems to... well, I guess "boring" is the only word for it. It's filled with the sort of self-possessed drivel that makes it easy to understand why most people we meet can't name any living poets.

The only real exception to this is "Infidelity," by Philip White, whom I've never heard of:

INFIDELITY
by Philip White

“Talking only makes me feel more alone,”
you said once in the car outside the clinic.
Two years later, you spoke the same sentence
word for word one night after friends had gone.
Within a month, you’d erased yourself…
Erased? “To absent oneself,” I found scribbled on
a wrapper a year later…

Now sunlight and tree
shadow rush over the windshield of the car:
I’m talking with my new wife—then gone, absented.
“Sometimes I feel almost too much joy,”
you wrote from the balcony of your cheap
hotel in Paris. “What are you thinking?” she asks.
Light shutters across us. Wherever you are
in me I’m there, though it’s not what you wanted.

I read this three times and was, every time, deeply impacted. The way in which he describes the moving on process, the pain, the self-doubt... heart-breaking stuff. And the word "absented" is just different enough yet understandable enough to be the perfect word, which is something that I love to see. When a poet finds that one word, the only word, that can truly capture the meaning, it makes a huge difference.

What I love most about this poem is the fact that I can really put in that rarest of the rare classes: the poem that I can't relate to but makes me feel something emotionally anyway. Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar" is the best example of this (it's a religious poem in which the speaker addresses his own afterlife and hopes that he'll meet God upon his death- most days, I don't believe in God at all). Bruce Springsteen's "Racing in the Street" is another (a song about car racing, a subject that has absolutely no meaning to me whatsoever). This poem is about moving on after a divorce, something I hope never to know. But the way that the speaker is so obviously haunted is very compelling to me.

*The Crossbow

2008-04-30T18:16:00.002-04:00

Yeah, I wrote this a while back after reading a series of Thomas Lux poems, so I was in a bit of an absurdest mindset. I don't know that this is one of my favorite things that I've written, but I wanted to try and emulate Lux's style. The publisher I met with liked it enough to request a copy, so it's here. If you've got any suggestions please tell me because it's definitely a work in progress.

The Crossbow
by me

I met a man who had been shot in the head with a crossbow.
He was out hunting with his friend,
a friend who was eventually the best man in his wedding.

They were out hunting and it was an accident.
Why anyone would choose to hunt is beyond me,
but to hunt with a crossbow would be like trying to swim the Pacific—
it’s possible, but there’s got to be an easier way.

So he was shot in the head.
I asked him if it still hurt and he said
it never hurt.
He never felt it.
He saw the blood,
heard the bone crack,
and watched as his friend looked at him with what he called
“suicide eyes.”
But he didn’t feel anything but a gentle shove on his skull.

At first, he told me, it felt like a painless kick from a mule;
When I pressed him further, he admitted that he had never actually been kicked by a mule, so the comparison may not have been valid.

The team of doctors took pictures and videos and still, eight years later,
give lectures about this man.
But for all their talk and all their study,
they never removed the bow from his head.
They told him that to do so would surely cause his brain to bleed and other such fun things to occur.
They just trimmed the arrow point down to a nub.
So he combed his hair over the smooth cut shaft and you really didn’t know it was there
unless you happened to catch him coming out of the shower,
which I never did.

But this man, whom I met during a particularly boring hockey game,
is dead now.
He was killed by an infection in his heart.
The infection started in his arm,
Traveled through his blood, and ruined his heart.
A mosquito bit him and gave him the infection.

That was three years after the arrow.

Citrus City

2008-04-30T18:01:00.001-04:00

About a year ago, I brought some students to a poetry workshop sponsored by Dodge. While there, one of the poets read this poem that the entire audience loved (and anything that impresses a bunch of teenagers must be great!). I searched and searched online but was never able to find the poem or remember the poet's name, so I've had shades of this poem in my head since them but not been able to truly appreciate it. A few weekends ago, I was at a poetry reading and, sure enough, there was that poet again! So this time, I spoke to him briefly after the reading and got a copy of his book. The poet's name is Patrick Rosal, and this is the poem that I remember:

CITRUS CITY
By Patrick Rosal

When I walk down Second Avenue
the first
sun-spent day of spring
and the scent of dropped
flowers spilled bottles of OE and mints
begins to burn from the asphalt and people
strip to the waist reminded of some first urge
to be naked against the city air
(eight million breaths
at any given moment)
I see a boy devour
the last slice of an orange
and my mouth waters
so I buy one for myself
at the closest stand The citrus drips
down my wrists
from the corners of my lips
and I realize it’s been some time
since I’ve seen anyone
eat an orange outside
I look into the eyes of Manhattanites who
look me in the mouth
and I think: perhaps she
tastes the same
tart under her tongue and maybe
she will head straight for a fruit stand and buy
a navel to eat on the street too
and someone
will see her or two people will see her love her skirt
sprayed with the minuscule burst of juice
so they buy lots of oranges
eat one on the bus heading
uptown (toward all those oranges
in the Bronx) and the person stepping off
at twenty-third walks crosstown to Chelsea
surrenders his organic nut bar
stops at a fruit stand
and maybe someone en route to Chinatown
bumps into the guy from Chelsea
and remembers his
first orange
at a picnic
as a child
on a beach—
in the Phillippines—
in August
So he buys two oranges
Goes home to his lover
whose drape of sweat
smells like the day
and since he’s already eaten one along the way
they sit across from each other
and share
the remaining one:
its packed flesh a brief but cool
reprieve from their apartment
steaming like an engine
and this is how a whole city’s
eating oranges:
the first sun-spent spring day—
an orgy of them

I'm really glad that I found this, because this really is a great poem. Usually, memory makes things better/worse than reality, but in this case I think I was completely justified to search for this poem. The idea that the entire city is connected by the eating of an orange is a truly beautiful one.... ah! It's so refreshing to read.

I can't say that I quite understand the spacing of the lines though. I don't know if the format is going to show up on this blog or not, but the lines are spaced out somewhat randomly. Random lines are indented to the right end of the previous lines, and that gives it a very wide-open feel. I like that it slows things down and leaves a lot of space, but I'm wondering what the reasoning is for Rosal to have chosen the specific lines to indent that he did.

I haven't had a chance to really digest the book, called Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive. I like to read something many times before deciding if I like it or not, so I'll reserve comment on the book as a whole; but I will say that I am definitely looking forward to finding out if there are any other poems as emotion-inducing as "Citrus City" in Rosal's collection.

How to Like It

2008-04-27T15:32:00.000-04:00

HOW TO LIKE IT
By Stephen Dobyns

These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let’s go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let’s tip over all the trash cans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let’s pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let’s dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater which hasn’t been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let’s go down to the diner and sniff
people’s legs. Let’s stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man’s mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder
where the eyes of animals fixed in his headlights
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a trailer truck lit up like Christmas
roars past and his whole car briefly shakes.
The dog says, Let’s go to sleep. Let’s lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he’ll pull over and rest a while before
starting again, and at dusk he’ll crest a hill
and there, filling a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let’s just go back inside.
Let’s not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing? The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let’s go make a sandwich.
Let’s make the tallest sandwich anyone’s ever seen.
And that’s what they do and that’s where the man’s
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept—
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.

I found this poem two weeks ago and I can honestly say that I have not had it out of my head for more than a very few minutes since then. This poem is an example of everything that is great about modern poetry.

First, there is a talking dog, and that’s just funny. The dog’s voice is used to reflect the man’s desires; what dog-lover doesn’t do that? I always think that my Tucker (a pit mix) must have the same thoughts that I do, and when I give him a voice, it always is simple and base, yet very “philosophical,” just like the speaker’s dog. The man wants to do something crazy? The dog wants to pick up girls and “rip their clothes off.” The man wants to go home? “Let’s just go back inside. Let’s not do anything tonight.”

Next, there is a deeper, more profound purpose to this poem. The last three lines are as beautiful and as powerful as any I’ve read in a very long time. How does a person just keep going when everything seems so hard? How can we continue living when it seems like there’s no point? Well, if you just stop looking, you never know where you may find the answer. For all we know, the answer is in the refrigerator.

The best part of this poem for me is the surprise. I read the first couple lines and fully expected this to be just another boring, nature-is-great kind of poem. I absolutely did not expect to like this poem at all, but as soon as the story of the man and his dog starts, I’m hooked. Finding beauty somewhere that you don’t expect it to be is as wonderful a human experience as there is.

*The Poet

2008-04-26T17:02:00.002-04:00

So one day, about two months ago, I was at my Dodge Poetry class, and there was another guy there whom I've known for a few years. He's slightly past middle age, plays guitar in an Irish band, and teaches at an inner-city school in Trenton. In other words, he's a guy that I respect very much. Well, we sat down and class started and I looked across the table and saw that Billy was writing his poetry notes using one of those small, eraser-less mini-golf pencils. That struck me-- for some unknown reason-- as very profound. How could someone as intelligent, as talented as Billy find it possible to construct anything coherent with such a primitive writing utensil? It later occurred to me that he was just doodling and writing a few notes, hardly trying to search for any deep philosophical truths of the universe.

But that image of a man, a poet, who writes like that... well, it was powerful to me. I really liked the possibility that something profound could be composed with something so simple. And I decided right there that I wanted to try to write something using that image. So, thanks Billy!

The Poet
(with thanks to Billy O'Neal)
by me

He composed his lines with grace
and eloquence and style.
His phrases were candy fresh from pop-pop’s sweater pockets,
crinkling as it’s unwrapped,
hard and sweet
as I slide it through my mouth against my teeth and
Tongue and lips.
Tasting the poems, I wonder how someone could so
perfectly capture any real truth
using nothing but the incompleteness of words.

Once, I saw him from a distance,
As he sat alone in a library
by a window.

He had books open on the table and papers spread around him,
franticly staring down at them,
hand on top of his thinly-topped head,
searching for the secret, the truth, the word.
He leaned over the books like a bird
guarding his young in the nest,
waiting to feed them and then push them off a bough
to fly or fall.

From the isle between Mystery and Biography,
I watched him, never
considering an approach.

He was scribbling on a pad with
a mini-golf pencil--
short, eraserless, permanent—
Mumbling quietly to the words on the page;
Barely visible over the crook of his fingers,
like a ghost leaving a thin lead trail.

As a teenager, I kept scores
On pocket-sized cards during first dates,
Usually flubbing the numbers to make things more fun.
At the end of the night, I put the half-pencil
back into the small box
next to the cash register, knowingly
grinning at the bored kid behind the counter,
winking or shrugging, depending
on how the night had gone.
I wonder if the poet ever keeps score.

Romantic Moment

2008-04-24T21:19:00.000-04:00

So Tony Hoagland is every bit as fun to read as Billy Collins, but his style is very different. I’m not sure if I can quite put my hand on exactly why Hoagland is different than Collins, but I can always tell the poems of one from the other. With that said, both poets are absolutely amazing at turning the serious into the silly and then bringing it right back to serious.

I had the pleasure of meeting Tony Hoagland a few weeks back and I have to say that it was an eye-opening experience. He was the featured speaker at the Clearing the Spring, Tending the Fountain Common Gathering up at Drew University in Madison, NJ. He read some of his poems and some of his favorite poems, and then he spoke for a bit about “life as a poet.” What was really great, though, was that, after the presentation, he spoke to me like we were buddies at a card game. I was talking Doc Long, a friend and Dodge Poet who happened to know Tony Hoagland, when Tony came over to us and began chatting. He worked his way in to the conversation, asked me questions, laughed at my sad attempts at humor, and made me completely forget that I was talking to a poetical genius.

ROMANTIC MOMENT
by Tony Hoagland

After seeing the nature documentary we walk down Canyon Road
into the place of art galleries and high end clothing stores

where the mock orange is fragrant in the summer night
and the smooth adobe walls glow fleshlike in the dark.

It is just our second date, and we sit down on a bench,
holding hands, not looking at each other,

and if I were a bull penguin right now I would lean over
and vomit softly into the mouth of my beloved

and if I were a peacock I'd flex my gluteal muscles to
erect and spread the quills of my cinemax tail.

If she were a female walkingstick bug she might
insert her hypodermic proboscis delicately into my neck

and inject me with a rich hormonal sedative
before attaching her egg sac to my thoracic undercarriage,

and if I were a young chimpanzee I would break off a nearby treelimb
and smash all the windows in the plaza jewelry stores.

And if she were a Brazilian leopard frog she would wrap her impressive
tongue three times around my right thigh and

pummel me lightly against the surface of our pond
and I would know her feelings were sincere.

Instead we sit awhile in silence, until
she remarks that in the relative context of tortoises and iguanas,

human males seem to be actually rather expressive.
And I say that female crocodiles really don't receive

enough credit for their gentleness.
Then she suggests it is time for us to go

to get some ice cream cones and eat them.

This was one of the poems that he read, and it made an impression on the entire audience. We all laughed and clapped and have a great time while he was reading. He read the first six lines of the poem as though it were going to be serious and somber, and he totally set us up, having not read the poem before. When he read the line “and if I were a bull penguin right now I would lean over/and vomit softly into the mouth of my beloved,” the audience broke open and roared with laughter.

The poem is Hoagland’s take on the all-too-common topic of the poor communication between men and women. This is a topic near and dear to my heart, as my wife and I seem to have two differing views on communication. I am the typical male; I prefer to say little and only speak up when there’s something significant to say. My wife likes to talk, and talk she does. In the morning, while watching tv, in the shower, while laying in bed… she will talk wherever, whenever, about whatever. So poems like this… well, they usually make me smile.

Child Development

2008-04-23T18:06:00.000-04:00

It's no secret that Billy Collins is an idol of mine. The man is consistently able to find a way to say something incredibly profound in a way that is comical and/or light-hearted. His style is very simple, very narrative, which is the only way that I know how to write. This poem is one of my favorite of his poems:

Child Development
by Billy Collins

As sure as prehistoric fish grew legs
and sauntered off the beaches into forests
working up some irregular verbs for their
first conversation, so three-year-old children
enter the phase of name-calling.

Every day a new one arrives and is added
to the repertoire. You Dumb Goopyhead,
You Big Sewerface, You Poop-on-the-Floor
(a kind of Navaho ring to that one)
they yell from knee level, their little mugs
flushed with challenge.
Nothing Samuel Johnson would bother tossing out
in a pub, but then the toddlers are not trying
to devastate some fatuous Enlightenment hack.

They are just tormenting their fellow squirts
or going after the attention of the giants
way up there with their cocktails and bad breath
talking baritone nonsense to other giants,
waiting to call them names after thanking
them for the lovely party and hearing the door close.
The mature save their hothead invective
for things: an errant hammer, tire chains,
or receding trains missed by seconds,
though they know in their adult hearts,
even as they threaten to banish Timmy to bed
for his appalling behavior,
that their bosses are Big Fatty Stupids,
their wives are Dopey Dopeheads
and that they themselves are Mr. Sillypants.

I am a somewhat immature person, but I've always prided myself on the fact that I can be mature when I need to be (but only when I need to be). But I can't tell you how many times during the course of a day that I want to call someone "bozo" or "dumbo." I'm not much for vulgarity, so my most creative names are generally along the lines of an angry toddler's rants. When I first read this poem, I'm pretty sure I laughed out loud.

I love the lines, "The mature save their hothead invective/for things: an errant hammer, tire chains,/or receding trains missed by seconds...." When I do something stupid (like forget my lunch at home, or stub my toe on the shower, or fall out of a chair--which I do pretty regularly) I usually yell "son of a monkey," which makes no sense at all. I don't know why I say it or where it came from, but I know that I'd prefer to yell one of the other such colorful obscenities, the ones that Collins so obviously want to say in his poem but avoids.

The truly great thing about this poem is the simple message that it contains: we're all just kids at heart, no matter what "mature" situation we find ourselves in. When we get angry, when we get frustrated, we think the same juvenile thoughts as the average 8-year-old; we just have learned to cover them up and hide or suppress our own negative thoughts. It's a very simple truth that the world forces us to be "mature" even when we would prefer to just stick out our tongue and laugh.

*The Security System

2008-04-22T19:33:00.002-04:00

Since my last post was a poem that reminded me about my father, I thought today I'd post a poem I wrote that ended up being about my father. Here it is:

The Security System
by me

The smell of the air just before the rain,
As the thunder gently rolls in the Jersey background,
Is the smell of my father when I was a kid.
He would lift open the wooden garage door and
Set up folding chairs.
As the thunder came closer and the rain fell, suddenly heavy,
That smell would get so strong that it was hardly noticeable
Anymore.
Sometimes he would click on the little radio and find a random station,
And in those moments, it seemed like the stations knew
The importance of the occasion, and they
Forgot all about DJs and commercials,
And played nothing but classic background favorites that made the rain
Sound that much more musical.
And when the breeze became a wind, and the wind became strong, that smell flooded the garage,
And the rain knew it was time to slow, to trickle, to stop.
A car would come down the narrow street and the tires on the wet road
Made a wet sound, and soon enough,
The smell was gone.
While my dad reached overhead to shut the garage door, I would fold the chairs and carry them,
One at a time (because that’s all my little arms could carry),
Back to their leaning spot against the opposite wall.
There was an old ten speed bike that never had air in the tires
--And seemed to me to be nothing but a gross home for spider webs--
That my dad would use as a security system.
He would lean the handle of the bike over the top of the metal bracket
Of the door and then take a rotten wood block and jam it from the top of the door to a nail he had long ago hammered into the ceiling.
There was no actual lock on the door,
But my father made do.
That was him:
That lock, that garage, that smell.
I love that smell.

I wrote this about a year ago because I had recently read a number of poems about rain, and one day decided to think about that smell. This is what came out. It's simple narrative poetry, lacking any rhyme or meter-- I like to say that's because rhyme and meter don't fit the poem, but it's probably because I'm not very good at those things.

Blog Title

2008-04-21T21:14:00.000-04:00

If anyone would believe me, I would start this entry with "So people ask me all the time...." But nobody reads this blog, and nobody has ever asked me (and nobody probably ever will ask me) where the blog gets its name. Well, heck, I'll tell you anyway.

Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?
By Robert Hershon

Don't fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge

My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?

What he doesn't know
is that when we're walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand

I came across this poem a couple years back in Poetry magazine. I think it was in the annual humor issue, though I'm not sure of that. The poem struck me immediately because it instantly made me smile. Just look at the title? It goes from something serious (or at least neutral) with "Sentimental Moment" to something that is the set-up to a joke ("Why did the baguette cross the road?"). What a great juxtaposition of two different mindsets. I truly want to know where the title came from, but alas, I have no idea. And why did the author use the word "baguette" instead of just "bread" or "loaf" or something else more common? I can only assume that it's to sound more French, which, in our wonderful American version of life, automatically injects a sense of formality.

I also can't help thinking about my father when I read this poem. I'm half-a-year short of my thirtieth birthday, I'm married happily, I've held down a good job since graduating near the top of my college class, and yet my father still feels the need to delude himself into believing that I'm a teenager. "Call your grandparents," he tells me. "Save your money." These are the stalwarts. But then he tells me things like, "you should make reservations when you go to busy restaurants because they can get crowded." Thanks, Dad. Don't get me wrong; I love my dad. He's at the top of my favorite people list, behind only my wife and tied with my brother and mother (I may have a more specific ranking system, but I'm not dumb enough to put it in writing). Anyway, when I read this poem, I think that this is something that, if he were more poetical, my dad would think or say to me. I know that he tries to see me as an adult, but something tells me that he'll always want to pay for dinner, and he'll randomly give me $20 from his wallet when he thinks I need it.

The other thing about this poem is its simplicity. If I ever get around to posting my own poems, you'll see that I prefer a very simply, prose style. This poem is short but it is very clear in the picture that is being painted. There's a father who loves his son, and this is what he thinks. It doesn't need to be made more complex, more "literary," than this poem, and I appreciate that.

******************
I'm part of a poetry appreciators group that meets on Saturday mornings during the spring, and for our first meeting of 2008 I brought this poem to share with the others. It was one of four pieces I had with me that day, and it was the one I chose to read aloud. At the end of that first session, we shared copies of all our poems, and, oddly enough, another member of the group (a bear of a man named Wilber-- whom I just love) also brought this one. When we discussed it, I again was struck by the power of poetry. I brought this poem because it made me think of my dad; Wilber brought the poem because it made him think of his kids. And we both love it.

Wow! I've got a blog!

2008-04-21T21:04:00.000-04:00

So I'm not sure if this is lame or if this this is great... I'll let you know when I decide.

I'm also not sure who "you" are or if I'll ever actually publish this online, but for now, I thought I'd at least start something different.

I've been writing a lot of poetry lately, and I'm quite sure most if it isn't that good, so I figured now would be a great time to make my contribution to the great pointless mass of information on the internet. The world will always need some fake-intellectual's crappy poetry! I also thought that I would start posting some poems that have an impact. I'm always reading something and thinking, "wow, I'd like to share this with someone," but too few people actually seem to care about poetry.

So I guess the point of this blog will be to share poetry, be it mine or someone else's. I won't go so far as to assume that anyone will ever actually care about this blog, but if you stop by, feel free to comment. Just know that I'll probably make fun of you because you're reading some jerk's blog and that's just weird!