|
|
|
|
|
A Potentially Possibly Provisionally Great Blog
Friday, March 05, 2010 V.3.1. Back home in San Antonio after ten days on the trail, I have some good stuff for you, including my feature poet, Don Schaeffer. Don holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from City University of New York (1975) and lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba with his wife, Joyce. His recent poetry has been published in The Loch Raven Review, The Cartier Street Review, The Writers Publishing, Lilly Lit, Burning Effigy Press, Understanding Magazine, Melange, Tryst, Quills, and others. His first book of poetry, Almost Full was published by Owl Oak Press early in the summer of 2006. His work has appeared a number of times in "Here and Now" but this the first time as our featured poet. Before starting, I note in passing that I surely would enjoy featuring artists and photographers in upcoming "Here and Now" issues. All I need is 20-25 jpegs and a short bio sent to me at allen.itz@gmail. In addition to the pleasure enjoyed by all "Here and Now" readers from such a display of art, I would get a break from having to dig around in my increasingly dusty and spider-webbed vault for old photos of my own that I can make look new. Although it's hard to say for sure until they are actually on-line, I think I do like how this week's photo experiments turned out. Pictures aside, here are our poets and poetry for this week. 14 short verses Don Schaeffer 1875 Me sunspots Arizona sunrise El Paso at an early hour, again even old dogs dream the hunt David St. John Chapter Forever An Essay on Liberation Me Valentine Don Schaeffer A Wish For My Dreamer Catherine Tufariello Keeping My Name Chemist's Daughter Don Schaeffer Visitations Me a potentially possibly provisionally great poem Robert Pinsky The Forgetting Me what a great day, they say Don Schaeffer The Arrival Sheila Ortiz Taylor Mid-Life Love Star Trek Me blowhard Anna Akhmatova Instead of a Preface Epilogue I Epilogue II Don Schaeffer The First Inkling of Need from In the Trail of the Wind Native American poems and ritual orations Me characteristics of snow before time ends Catherine Bowman Obituary For a South Texas Politician Me fellow travelers  I start this week with poems from Ten Thousand Leaves - Poems from the Manyoshu. The Manyoshu, which can be translated as "A Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves," was compiled in its final form in the eighth century. Containing 4,516 poems, the collection has been honored as the purest expression of the early Japanese spirit. This book includes 136 poems from the collection, selected and translated by Harold Wright. 1. Let us not cease to enjoy ourselves in drink since the plants and trees Which burst to bud in springtime will but wither in the fall 2. Your favorite flowers that are growing near the house have bloomed and faded Yet, the tears that fill my eyes have not begun to dry 3. On the hill near home flowers of the fall bush clover will soon be scattered How I wish she'd seen them now before they're harmed by the wind 4. The flowers of the plum were covered with fallen snow which I wrapped up But when I tried to have you see it was melting in my hands 5. The sun of spring has melted the snow away likewise, your heart Must have melted entirely since no message comes from you 6. When spring arrives the frost on the river's moss is melted away In such a way my heart melts over longing for your love 7. Near my loved one's house there is now in full bloom a flowering plum tree If it ever gives forth fruit then I will know what to do 130. Instead of suffering this longing for my loved one I would rather choose To become a stone or tree without feelings or sad thoughts 131. Although every year the plum bursts in bloom again I live in a world Hollow as a locust shell where spring does not return 132. To love someone who does not return that love is like offering prayers Back behind a starving god within a Buddhist temple 133. The things you told me were said to stave off silence and to console me When I came to know the truth oh, the bitterness I felt! 134. Using fine pillars of the highest grade cypress does he woodsman Fabricate in wasted haste a mere temporary hut? 135. It is fortunate for any man who an live so long to hear The sound of his wife's voice till his black hair turns to white 136. If from your mouth there hung a hundred-year-old tongue and you would babble I still would not cease to care but indeed my love would grow  Here is my first piece from Don Schaeffer, featured poet for this week. Don presents us with some interesting ideas as is usually the case with Don's poems. 1875 When Charles Darwin is doing his thing the world is gears clothed in brass with leather seats handles of ivory and wood. Survival is the final and fierce machine of judgment. And we all stand in the light of mechanics and count our virtues with a one, two, three. If we need help in testing our degeneracy there are plenty of carnival performers with tests For a penny you know how you stack up. You enter the great competiton-of-life dance and get your rank, then turn rank into index and carry the evolution quotient in your heart.  Now I have four short poems - the "coming home" poems I wrote as we returned from the trip I told you about last week. sunspots past white-robed mountains, the virgin-brides of western California, past San Bernardino, and the car-choked debris of Los Angeles to the dry brown hills of north Arizona bright yellow flowers, brushy and thick, climb the hills like sunspots across the rising drab and dreary Arizona sunrise red rising sun behind cotton ball clouds a pattern like red and pink and black on dimpled desert hills it is Phoenix rising through a shower of morning fire El Paso at an early hour, again deep desert blue seeping through the black night sky even before the first peach of sunrise shows behind the mountains a quiet Sunday morning just like in the movies even old dogs dream the hunt home is the hound from his run in the hills content now to nap by the fire and dream of the chase and, sometimes even old dogs, of runs to come when sleep is done  The next poems are by David St. John from his book Study of the World's Body, published by Harper in 1994. St. John was born in California, in 1949, and educated at California State University, Fresno, where he received his B.A. In 1974, he received an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. He is the author of six books of poetry. His awards include the Discover/The Nation prize, the James D. Phelan Prize, and the Prix de Rome fellowship in literature. He has also received several National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and a Guggenheim Fellowship. St. John currently teaches in the English Department at University of Southern California, Los Angeles. I just bought the book this morning. Scanning through it to select the two poems I'm going to use, I think now that I already have a copy of the book. Sadly, I think my poetry library has grown to the point that I need to do periodic inventories before buying anything new. Well, forget that, just way to much trouble. For the limited cost of a used book, I think i'd rather just buy duplicates. Chapter Forever I remember I was 9 or 10 so the year I guess Was 1959 my aunt was showing me the city Of Sausalito & the houseboats Where some of her friends had once lived On a patch of grass by the sidewalk A girl sat with her legs crossed holding In her left hand a perfectly blank tablet The size of a transistor radio & in her right An unused pen she was staring right out Into the Pacific & as we walked by My aunt shrugged & said Too bad No inspiration We passed a coffee shop & in its doorway a couple stood just talking He was on the top step & she was looking up at him From the step below he rubbed his beard & as We passed he winked at us That's Lenny Bruce My aunt said & though we kept on walking After a block or so I turned around to see He was still joking with the woman Palms upturned he was slowly drawing both arms up Into a full cross his head fell limply to one side & the woman started laughing even harder I remember She was laughing so hard pretty soon she was almost Bent over almost crying I think crying An Essay on Liberation He stood naked at one of the two windows She kept open in all weathers in her Corner room at the back of the old building As the sun rose he watched a man Dragging a handcart along the narrow alley below & across the court a young boy was turning His face from side to side in a freckled mirror From the temples in the old section of the city He could hear the first sequence Of morning prayers & to the west he could see The dulled bronze domes of The Church of the Orthodox Where at any moment the bells would begin to chime & in the streets crisscrossing the city From the old section to the sea The tanks & personnel trucks began moving quietly Into position in their orderly & routine way & the bells began sounding from their tower They were answered by the echoing concussion of mortars As the daily shelling of the hills began & she was slicing small pieces of bread the size of coins To fry in goat butter & chives she was naked Kneeling on one of the worn rugs thrown at angles across The scarred floor she glanced up at him & smiled Nodding for no reason in particular & in spite of The fact the one phrase he'd taught her perfectly Began with the word for free though it ended With nothing  It's well past Valentine's day now, but I did write a Valentine Day's poem, just haven't had a chance to post it. I really put some credit in the bank with this one, as well as keeping a couple of dollars from Mr. Hallmark's greedy hands. Valentine she was a slight little girl, barely twenty-one and i was a quietly satisfied bachelor in my thirties we met through our work a veteran myself, my assignment was to find jobs or job training for veterans especially those just returning from VietNam she, fresh from college, was a counselor for a federal job training program and before long i was finding a reason to visit her office just about every day and by the time we were married a year later our little county had more veterans in federal job training than any other county in the state it will be, two weeks from now, 34 years since the day i arrived in her office with my first hand full of veterans’ training applications and the shy little girl has become a fiercely determined advocate for children in trouble and the quietly satisfied bachelor is still quietly satisfied, but hardly remembering how it was to be alone 34 Valentine's Days since that first day and even with all the changes during the course of those years, one thing is as it always has been - she is still and will always be my one and true Valentine  Now, our second poem from featured poet Don Schaeffer A Wish For My Dreamer Watching yourself in the early morning adding plots to your dreams. Like time was a set of tinker-toy blocks, set your dreams in motion. Make up good dreams, I say to her as we are wishing good night. Please don't frighten yourself, my dear. Make dreams that give you joy.  The next poem is by Catherine Tufariello, from her book, Keeping My Name, published in 2004 by Texas Tech University Press. Tufariello has taught literature and writing courses at Cornell, The College of Charleston, and the University of Miami. Her poems and translations have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry and The Hudson Review. Keeping My Name "T as in Tom...U...F as in Frank," I tell the voice at the bookstore or the bank, Knowing the chances of its being right On form or package are extremely slight Unless the clerk repeats (and most won't bother) This catechism I learned from my father - T as in Tom, U, F as in Frank. For this ritual I have myself to thank - Twice I've had and forfeited the chance To trade the burden and extravagance Of five syllables for one or two. I couldn't do it when I said "I do," Not even after three years in the south, Where voweled names are angled in the mouth. What's in a name? Why, a family line, Identity, tradition, but in mine I had the gallop of the Latin dactyle; Tufa, crumbly stuff, so rich tactile, So unlike Grandpa's monumental granite; And, from the intrepid who could scan it, I had the liquid lilting of iello (One teacher sang it sweetly as a cello); And those plump vowels, juicy and alive - At one per syllable, I had all five. In school, through endless dreamy afternoons, I brooded like a druid casting runes Over the page to see how many words My name would make, releasing them like birds From the magician's cloak I always wore. Every year they multiplied, to more Than I'd thought possible, as rat and tale, Tall and tell gave way to trill and flail, If and far to float, aloft and lift. One day a rill might bubble from a rift, The next an elf warble a silver lute, A leering troll swig ale or proffer fruit, One taste of which might lead to fault and fall. They scattered and I catalogued them all: Found fore and after, leaping fire and air (With sandstone, all the elements were there), Caught Uriel, Milton's angel of the sun, Bright Ariel, Will Shakespeare's airy sprite, Hidden in the middle, in plain sight - Caught him in my net, then let him go, Happy in his charms as Prospero. Chemist's Daughter Thumping the dinner table, Dad would say it too was atoms - massed in galaxies made mainly of empty space. At night, the bees' drone of electrons woke me - a Milky Way was whirling on the tip of my fingernail, ten thousand planets dancing on its pale half moon. Would bed, desk, dresser lose their grip on the braided rug? Outside was empty space - dark deserts stretched between the yellow face of the moon and our backyard, where I would slip through the glittering snowcrust, playing astronaut. The world looked solid. It was wild as thought.  Here's another fine piece from featured poet, Don Schaeffer. Visitations When I think of Joyce tonight, I'm subject to the justice of the void. I can wish like a child but it will not come true. Winter is the best time to think of it when my coat is not enough to keep out the truth of the cold. I can plead that I had no choice but I merely watch another tightening of the vice and listen to the alarm drawing blood in my ear. My denials are like a child's eager wishes. The elders, faces darkened, shake their heads. He knows, they all say, deep inside he knows, as I pound my fists on the bed.  I've been told it's important to start any new endeavor with confidence and high hopes. So here's my first daily poem of the week a couple of weeks ago. a potentially possibly provisionally great poem i don't know what this poem is going to be about but i'm pretty sure it's gonna turn out great cause last night, in my den, watching Wheel of Fortune i had this great idea and i said, wow! that'd be a great poem i'll write it tomorrow morning, i said and Reba was all excited about it wagging her tail and whatnot so i'm thinking she thought it was a good idea except, since she went deaf she's come to believe that any time she sees my lips move i must be saying "let's go for a walk" and she gets all excited wagging her tail and whatnot so i wouldn't regard her first reaction that this was gonna be a great poem as proof-positive that it is actually going to be a great poem we'll see i guess, but the proof is in the pudding as they say (and i don't know why they say because i have no idea what the heck that means, proof, pudding, what exactly does one have to do with the other) so, questionably coherent old saying aside i'm going to have to finish this poem to see whether it really is a good poem or if Reba just though i was saying "let's go for a walk" as usual and i'm really looking forward to finding out about whether this is really a good poem or just a poop in the dark but we're going to have to wait until tomorrow because i have run out of time this morning so i'll just have to finish this potentially possibly provisionally great poem tomorrow and i need the extra time anyway to remember what the great idea was that caused Reba to get excited, setting her to wagging her tail and whatnot or not  Despite the fact that he's a great poet, I've never used a poem by Robert Pinsky in "Here and Now." That's not because I don't like his poems, but, because he's a great poet, his books cost more, even used, than my "Here and Now" budget usually allows. Well, at $5.98, I finally got this one, Gulf Music, published in 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The Forgetting The forgetting I notice most as I get older is really a form of memory: the undergrowth of things unknown to you young, that I have forgotten. Memory of so much crap, jumbled with so much that seems to matter. Lieutenant Calley. Captain Easy. Mayling Soong. Sibby Sisti. And all the forgettings that preceded my own: Baghdad, Egypt,Greece, The Plains, centuries of lootings of antiquities. Obscure atrocities. Imagine! - a big tent filled with mostly kids, yelling for poetry. In fact It happened, I was there in New Jersey at the famous poetry show. I used to wonder, what if the Baseball Hall of Fame overflowed With too many thousands of greats all in time unremembered? Hardly anybody can name all eight of their great-grandparents. Can you? Will your children's grandchildren remember your name? You'll see, you little young jerks: your favorite music and your political Furors, too, will need to get sorted in dusty electronic corridors. In 1972, Chou En-lai was asked the lasting effects of the French Revolution: "Too soon to tell." Remember? - or was it Mao Tse-tung? Poetry made of air strains to reach back to Begats and suspiring Forward into air, grunting to beget the hungry or overfed Future. Ezra Pound praises the Emperor who appointed a committee of scholars to pick the bets 450 Noh plays and destroy all the rest, the fascist. The stand-up master Steven Wright says he thinks he suffers from Both amnesia and deja vu: "I feel like I have forgotten this before." Who remembers the arguments when jurors gave Pound the only prize For poetry awarded by the United States Government? Until then. I was in the big tent when the guy read his poem about how the Jews Were warned to get out of the Twin Towers before the planes hit. The crowd was applauding and screaming, they were happy - it isn't That they were anti-Semitic, or anything. They just weren't listening. Or No, they were listening, but that certain way. In it comes, you hear it, and That selfsame second you swallow it or expel it: an ecstasy of forgetting.  When you get a really great day in South Texas, you just have to talk about it. what a great day, they say it's the kind of day that makes people who don't know about August think they've found a little corner or heaven right here in south central Texas - 55 degrees under clear skies beaming with bright winter sun the sidewalks are crowded with people driven to the outdoors by the call of the best day of the year and the Riverwalk is awash in a hundred languages all saying in their own idiom, "wow! what a day." stores along the way all have their doors propped wide open to let in the fresh air to purge from all their crowded retail corners several years of stale, greedy air i am walking through the day sucking all the wonder of it in, relishing it, savoring it, storing it so that i might remember it in the days of August i know are coming  Now, poem number four from Don Schaeffer The Arrival A human being is a heavy weight. You can't expect one to arrive lightly. Not like a feather, not on tippy toes, body behemoth making great waves in its wake A human being blasts everything. Boom! The big guns in the harbor sound. The weakest run. If you will have me I will change your life. And I will join you but only if you laugh.  Here are two poems by Sheila Ortiz Taylor, from her book Slow Dancing at Miss Polly's, published by The Naiad Press in 1989. Taylor, born to a large Mexican-American family in Los Angeles in 1939 has published six novels, a memoir and this book of poetry. After completing her Ph.D. at UCLA, Florida State University hired her to teach 18th century British literature. Gradually she drifted toward teaching in the creative writing program and helping to found a women's studies program. In time she was awarded an endowed professorship and served as associate chair of the English department. She is now retired as professor emerita. Mid-Life Love Do you remember when you learned to paint in Mrs. Beardsley's kindergarten class? Do you remember yourself in your father's old shirt the arms cut off leaning over orange juice cans of fragrant calcimine? Do you remember when she split your world with news that faces were not pink that skies instead of floating touched the ground? Tonight, love, I tell you the skies float purple and the green calcimine tiger eats alive our Mrs. Beardsley We lie in one another's arms now belly to scarred belly pink again loving ourselves alive - artists once more Star Trek Sometimes there is a quiet in you like the quiet in space where stars breathe Sometime there is a rhythm in you unsyncopated as starfall on an accidental night Sometimes there is a space in you galaxies could not hold, if you know what I mean I have seen you launch, rockets on fire, the countdown of heart and splitting sound - me on the ground0 growing smaller  It was a big storm, came up out of nowhere, catching me completely by surprise. blowhard i was stretched out in my recliner LBJ style (if you don't take your pants off it ain't a real nap, he said) and snoring in mellow nap mode when all the ticketytockers and clingadeclangers and tingalalingers on the patio began to dust up a storm of tickeyytocks and clingadeclangs and tigalalingers from a hard north wind blowing in whipping the trees, tossing garbage can lids like Frisbees sailing through the air (Pluto Platters the inventor called them; he died last week, the ultimate nap undisturbed by any wind from any direction) waking me up among other thing blue northers we used to call these things, coming up from the north out of a coal-black sky like the devil on a cloud hopping Harley blowing "head for cover" the mamas would say to us kids playing in the dirt patch under the chinaberry tree out front the devils coming and he's ablowing hard  Next, I have a couple of short poems by Anna Akhmatova from Selected Poems of Anna Akhmatova. Akhmatova was born in 1889 and died in 1966. In her youth she was an icon of pre-Revolutionary Russian literary society. In her later years she became unofficial spokesman for all those who suffered through Stalinist repression. During WWII she was briefly rehabilitated by authorities because of her patriotism, but was soon repressed again and continued under official sanction until near the end of her life when her international reputation couldn't be ignored any longer. The two poems are epilogues to her longer series of poems, Requiem. Akhmatova introduces the series of poems with this: Instead of a Preface In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months in the prison lines of Leningrad. Once, someone "recognized" me. Then a woman with bluish lips standing behind me, who, of course had never heard me called by name before, woke up from the stupor to which everyone had succumbed and whispered in my ear (everyone spoke in whispers there): "Can you describe this?" And I answered: "Yes, I can." Then something that looked like a smile passed over what had once been her face. April 1, 1957 Leningrad Epilogue I I learned how faces fall, How terror darts from under eyelids, How suffering traces lines Of stiff cuneiform on cheeks, How locks of ashen-blond or black Turn silver suddenly Smiles fade on submissive lips And fear trembles in a dry laugh. And I pray not for myself alone, But for all those who stood there with me In cruel cold, and in July's heat, At that blind, red wall. Epilogue II Once more the day of remembrance draws near, I see, I hear, I feel you: The on they almost had to drag at the end, And the one who tramps her native land no more, And the one who, tossing her beautiful head, Said: "Coming here's like coming home." I'd like to name them all by name, But the list has been confiscated and is nowhere to be found. I have woven a wide mantel for them From their meager, overheard words. I will remember them always and everywhere, I will never forget them no matter what comes. And if they gag my exhausted mouth Through which a hundred million scream, Then may the people remember me On the eve of my remembrance day. And if ever in this country They decide to erect a monument to me, I consent to that honor Under these conditions - that it stand Neither by the sea, where I was born: My last tie with the sea is broken, Nor in the Tsar's garden near the cherished pine stump, Where an inconsolable shade looks for me, But here, where I stood for three hundred hours, And where they never unbolted the door for me. This, lest in blissful death I forget the rumbling of the Black Marias, Forgot how that detested door slammed shut And an old woman howled like a wounded animal. And may the melting snow like tears From my motionless lids of bronze, And a prison dove coo in the distance, And the ships of the Neva sail calmly on. March 1940  Here's the last poem for the week from featured poet, Don Schaeffer. Thank you, Don, for making your work available to us. The First Inkling of Need The gesture is what amuses us as it says I am playing I am not in time out I have not yet quit. Watching the well washed little boys in the table near the door I see how they practice gestures making sure for each other they are vivid, saying, I am playing play with me. Some day we will be real members and this will count. Don't leave me.  Here are several very short pieces from In the Trail of the Wind, with the descriptive subtitle, American Indian Poems and Ritual Orations. The collection was published in 1971 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book is divided into subsections by subject. I've picked poems from several of these sections, beginning with: The Beginning This is a poem from the Maya. Then He Descended Then he descended while the heavens rubbed against the earth, They moved among the four lights, among the four layers of the stars. The world was not lighted; there was neither day nor night nor moon. Then they perceived that the world was being created. Then creation dawned upon the world. In the Trail of the Wind This piece is from the Kiowa. That Wind That wind, that wind Shakes my tepee, shakes my tepee, And sings a song for me And sings a song for me. Give Us Many Good Roads This prayer is from the Sioux. Grandfather, the flowering stick you gave me and the nation's sacred hoop I have given to the people. Hear me, you who have the power to make it grow! Guide the people that they may be as blossoms on your holy tree, and make it flourish deep in Mother Earth and make it full of leaves and singing birds. Home From the Makah - Song Mine is a proud village, such as it is, We are at our best when dancing. The Deer This short poem is from the Pima. I notice several poems from the Pima in this section - all seem to be from the deer's point of view as the hunted. I don't know that has any cultural meaning - maybe it says something about the people, maybe not - but it was interesting to me. Black-Tailed Deer song Down from the houses of magic, Down from the houses of magic Blow the winds, and from my antlers And my ears they stronger gather. Over there I ran trembling, Over there I ran trembling, For bows and arrows pursued me. Many bows were on my trail. The Words of War Here are two from the Sioux. War Song clear the way in a sacred manner I come the earth is mine Song of Reproach soldiers your fled even the eagle dies Among the Flowers That Enclose Us An Otomi love poem - To a Woman Loved In the sky, a moon; on your face a mouth. In the sky, many stars; On your face, only two eyes. On Death Here two short pieces on "death." The first from the Iroquois and the second, a more subdued and accepting view from the Maya. The Being Without a Face Our Grandfathers, now dead, and in whom our minds rested in trust, decreed, because they did not know its face, the face indeed, of that Being that abuses us every day, every night, that Being of Darkness, lying hard by the lodges where it is black night, yea, that Being which here at the very tops of our heads, goes abut menacing with its couched weapon - with its uplifted hatchet - eagerly muttering its fell purpose, "I, I will destroy the Work - the Commonwealth," they decreed, I say, that therefore they would call it the Great Destroyer, the Being without a face, the Being Malefic in Itself, that is Death. The Moon and the Year The moon and a year travel and pass away: also the day, also the wind. Also the flesh passes away to the place of its quietness. Of Rain and Birth From the Aztecs, this welcome of rain. Songs of Birds 1. In time of rain I come: I can sing among the flowers I utter my song; my heart is glad. 2. Water of flowers foams over the earth: My heart was intoxicated. Dreams This one, from the Chippewa, I can identify with right now, as I watch our short winter/spring here in South Texas begin to slip away. Dream Song as my eyes search the prairie I feel the summer in the spring Skipping several sections, here is a last poem from the last section of the book. We Shall Live Again Two pieces, the first from the Papago and the second from the Aztec. Come All Come all! Stand up! Just over there the dawn is coming. Now I hear Soft laughter. They Shall Not Wither They shall not wither, my flowers, They shall not cease, my songs. I, the singer, lift them up. They are scattered, they spread about. Even though on earth my flowers may wither and yellow, they will be carried there, to the innermost house of the bird with the golden feathers.  Here are a couple of short poems, the last to come out of my recent travels. characteristics of snow soft as goose down as it drifts to earth, becoming brittle and crisp in the night, crunching as you walk in the morning, melting under the noonday sun to a brown, soupy slush as night falls again i think i could find and analogy to life in that, if i were a poet desperate for a poem in the morning before time ends ten days - five states, snow in four of them back home now where the edge of spring arrives too soon and will pass too quickly to summer, too hot and too long trying to get back into the zone where days are measured not by calendars and dates and miles passed and to-dos done but by the passing of the sun east to west, and cycles of the moon, full to dark, and by poems written and quiet moments when a contemplative life seems not a waste of time but a harvesting of the fruits of time peace, a slower heart beat, time, before time ends  My next poem is by Catherine Bowman, from her book 1-800-Hot-Ribs. The book was published in 1993 by Gibbs-Smith Publisher. It was the poet's first book and winner of the 1992 Peregine Smith Poetry Contest. Bowman was born in El Paso. She received her bachelors degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio and a M.F.A. from Columbia University. After teaching in New York City public schools, she is currently Ruth Lilly Professor of Poetry at Indiana University. Obituary For a South Texas Politician Dropped smack dab from a hole in the bucket, into the piney backwoods of the swampy Big Thicket. Oldest of eight human beanpoles. Son of a son of diamondback rattlesnake-handling gospelites and holy Moses hot rodders. Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive. A studded Moabite gone south in a lame Chevrolet. He treated the land like a blond bombshell. made her wear neon red lipstick, lift live chickens with her cunt, whisper the secrets of oil. He crawled across her breasts like tequila. Last night our sons sank down to dig up his three-day-old grave and anchor the man to the earth. Not that we thought he could fly, but the dead often rise to the surface. All they found were two pinched feet. His liver was too big for death. It heaved up into the sky, a five-lobed and livid rain cloud that spewed out unclean water into the open mouth of our cattle. The cows turned listless and strange. From the cow shit vegetables grew in the shape of his tuberous face. Our children ate them for dinner and their tongues turned yellow and thin. His widow poisons us with his blood preserved in pretty-pretty French perfume bottles. She bastes it over potted goose, eye of rib, roast pig. His pig hairs tickle our dreams into stuffed jellymares. His fat chop knuckles stir up Storms, Floods, Tornadoes, Worms, Lice, Lockjaw, Night. His tongue licks a our backs at night when we are in bed. Toenail forks, nostril spoons, ankle knives.  I wrote this a couple of weeks ago. It seems a miracle to me that, every morning, I sit down to write a poem without a thing in my head. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, there comes a first line dragging along behind it a poem that becomes, like a parade, as it passes. It's a little scary sometimes, as I write that first line with no thought of what comes next, and it comes anyway, usually leading me down trails I had never thought of before. fellow travelers it's like opening the gate in the morning and letting your brain out for a run, keeping up as best you can, trying to keep it out of the rose bushes and other places you prefer undiscovered on any given day like this, having just completed my daily read of the morning newspaper, this could become a melancholy poem if i let it because i am a patriot and what i see in the papers is my country in decline, the greed and shallowness of its people, my people, taking it down, nowhere showing either will or capacity to change but it is a bright and beautiful morning and i will not let this become a melancholy poem, will set aside the decline of my country until the next morning's paper and speak instead of how like a lonely man i am, though i am not - like a lonely man because i speak to my animals as the lost and bereft sometimes do, not because i expect them to understand or respond but because creatures grow closer when they hear the voice of others, develop affinities and empathies that could never grow in silence so i talk to my cats in the morning, address them by name, good morning, George, i say, and you're looking dapper this morning, Billy Goat, i say, and, Mama, dark and yellow-eyed Mama, how cantankerous you are today, always in such a foul mood, can you not be pleasant even one morning a week, and when they meow and talk back to me i meow back, my best effort at the accents of their feline lingo, meow, i say, meow, meow, meow, in various tones and pitches and we spend a few minutes in each other's company and poor old battered Kitty Pride, i speak to her every night as she settles in beside me and i scratch her head and ask her, please don't snore so loud tonight, Kitty, i say, i need my sleep for i have poems to write tomorrow and she curls her head under her leg and begins to snore as i would expect, since it was the sound of my voice that soothed her, not any particular words or requests and Reba, my beautiful deaf Reba, do i not stroke her head and whisper to her when she whimpers in her sleep and does she not, knowing, if not my voice, the breath of my voice and my touch, settle from her dreams into quiet sleep-breathing yes, my walk today could lead me to melancholy and fearful places, but i have my friends and i'd rather walk with them, setting aside such distractions as melancholy and despair for the deeper bonds between us, we unlike-creatures fellow-traveling, sharing the voice and sounds of life  That concludes this weeks sermon. Next week, I will feature Washington poet, Gary Blankenship, with some of his recent work in a form I'm guessing many of us have never heard of, the "Cherita." I'll have more details on that form, along with Gary's poems, next week. In the meantime, recall the ancient lesson - all work presented in this blog remains the property of its creators. My stuff just floats about and you can grab a piece if you want it. Just remember to tell where it came from. I am allen itz, and while I may not be the boss of you, I am the boss of myself and this blog. Cause I made it, that's why. |
||||
|
||||
| Archives May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 February 2010 March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010 August 2010 September 2010 |
||||
|
||||
| Links Loch Raven Review Mindfire Renewed Holy Groove Records Tryst Poems Niederngasse BlazeVOX Eclectica Michaela Gabriel's In.Visible.Ink zafusy The Blogging Poet Poetsarus.Com Wild Poetry Forum Blueline Poetry Forum The Writer's Block Poetry Forum The Word Distillery Poetry Forum Gary Blankenship The Hiss Quarterly Thunder In Winter, Snow In Summer Lawrence Trujillo Artsite Arlene Ang The Comstock Review Thane Zander Pitching Pennies The Rain In My Purse Dave Ruslander S. Thomas Summers Clif Keller's Music Vienna's Gallery Shawn Nacona Stroud Beau Blue Downside up Dan Cuddy Christine Kiefer David Anthony Layman Lyric Scott Acheson Christopher George James Lineberger Joanna M. Weston Desert Moon Review Octopus Beak Inc. Wrong Planet...Right Universe Poetry and Poets in Rags Teresa White Camroc Press Review The Angry Poet |
Post a Comment