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Winter Hills
Saturday, March 31, 2012 Strange to be doing a "Winter Hills" blog in the near-summer, but that's when I took the pictures. So there you go. And, by the way, something confusing to some people that I've been meaning to clear up: the date you see on each post is not the date the blog was posted, but the date I began to put it together. For the past several months I've been working a couple of weeks ahead, which explains the strange dates. I start with the photos, then do the anthology poems (if I'm doing an anthology), then the other poets from my library, the my old poems (if I'm using any), then my new poems as I write them, usually putting the last new poem in the day I post. All the secrets revealed. I chose for my anthology this week, German Poetry in Transition: 1945-1990. The book was published in 1999 by the University Press of New England. The book is divided into 10-year segments, 1945-1955,1955-1965, then, 1975-1990. I will be pulling at least one poet to feature from each section. All the poems in the book were translated by Charlotte Melin, German and English on facing pages. Here are this week's treats. stalking the Baskerville’s hound and such Paisley Rekdal a crash of rhinos on getting a dog and being told that what i really want is a child Me a long time coming a mid-winter poem Gottfried Benn Can Be No Mourning Me I hate writing about the weather again Li-Young Lee The Weight of Sweetness From Blossoms Me all brothers of all brothers Ingeborg Bachmann Safe Conduct Me through a break in the clouds Thomas Rabbitt Among the Missing Waterskiing Through Middle Age Exit from the Hotel Lexington Me it is hard Peter Huchel On the Death of Virginia Woolf Reiner Kunze The Present Suicide Tim Seibles A Jitterbug for Spring Something Silver-White Me early fulcrum Barbara Kohler Self -portrait Uwe Kolbe To Start With The Guilty Parties Times Annarose Kirchner Sunday Me why is Monday the first day of the week? Page Richards Afternoon in Cancun Just Off Cancun Folk Festival Me again today Volker Braun The Wall Me I could be racing  For my first poem of the week, I have this. I should say it's not the first poem I wrote last week, just the first one that didn't bore the crap out of me. stalking the Baskerville’s hound and such a foreboding morning, cold, shifting winds, a heavy sky offering slight promise of daylight, patches of thick blowing mist, memories of Holmes recalled, afoot on the fog-blinded moor, stalking the Baskerville’s hound… a gloomy promise-me-nothing day ahead it seems, but nothing lethal as is being promised for the panhandle and Oklahoma, where Oakies get high as an elephant’s eye, and Kansas and those other flat places where tornados play kiss-your-ass-good-by on a regular basis this time of the year and I’m proud to live in an area where our greatest fear is hurricanes which usually give a week to a week and a half notice when they want to play blow-your-house-down though we did have a couple of little tornados a couple of miles south a few weeks ago, blew down a couple of house and sent normally more sedate chickens aflying in the wind and it’s a pity but after seeing that one around Dallas picking up tractor-trailer trucks and tossing them off to the next county I’m thinking we aren’t doing so bad around here - except a fella with a flat-top haircut just walked in, the third fella with a flat-top I’ve seen in the past two days and that’s about three too many cause, goddammit, I did the 50s once and it was not the best of times except for very boring people and I don’t want to do it again which is not to say that if I had to choose between going back to the 50s or going to Oklahoma I’d wouldn't go back to the 50s in a well-digger’s minute cause you know, a hell’uv a lot more poetry came out of the 50s than ever came out of Oklahoma except for Merle Haggard who, all by himself, is worth passing through Oklahoma for, except not when they’re doing tornados and such  From my library this week, I start with two poems by Paisley Rekdal from her book A Crash of Rhinos, published by The University of Georgia Press in 2000. Rekdal grew up in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of a Chinese American mother and a Norwegian father. She earned a BA from the University of Washington, an MA from the University of Toronto Centre for Medieval Studies, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of the poetry collections A Crash of Rhinos , her first, Six Girls Without Pants in 2002, and The Invention of the Kaleidoscope in 2007, as well as the book of essays The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In, also in 2000. Rekdal has received a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, a Village Voice Writers on the Verge Award, and a Fulbright Fellowship to South Korea. Her work has been included in numerous anthologies, including Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century in 2006 and the 2010 Pushcart Prize Anthology. When this book was published, she taught at the University of Wyoming and now teaches at the University of Utah. The first of the two poems this week is the title poem from her book a crash of rhinos What's your pet name? Collective noun? What will Snookums do today? Your bedmate pulls quarters magically from behind your ear, one for each hour you've spent together. When he stops there's fifty cents sliding into the sheets and his tongue covering the pink cauliflower of your nipple. "Beautiful defects," he whispers into your body. "Ah, Nature." Roll away, don't care if he calls you "Thumper." By noon you'll be nose to nose anyway, a sloth of bears, snoozing your way into this relationship. Ah, Nature. You could tell him its startling face is not its defects but its sameness. A uniformity suggestive of some single-cell prototype, our Adam/Eve genome plucked, as scientist think, from the thread of a lightning bolt. Darling, today you're more than anonymous, one sexy blip among the thousand couples grunting in each other's arms; defined by Loving, your action. Flying geese only recognized by the form they make in the sky. A crash of rhinos, piece of asses. Stinkhead: everything come in boring droves of hogs. This is how you get here. Mid-morning he tallies your union in terms of snakes, tarantulas, the evolutionary needs of common flagellates till you scorn science: its primal urge to pair like scared cows shoved ass to ass in circle for defense. A clutch of penises! What is love but fear? on getting a dog and being told that what i really want is a child For years I considered the journey. What meals I'd make, what cities I'd conquer, the foreign thighs of walls tattooed with graffiti. I imagined the exhaustion of mornings up, without a home, the pushing on, and thought of sailors hovering the frozen river crusts, or the way stones struck the mouth of Magellan walking through the Verzin gates. How they burst through lip and gums! And how dangerous their animals must have seemed to him with their yellow faces and small teeth. And the, of course, I thought about how Magellan knew his men all hated him, the one Portuguese on a ship of Spaniards, irritating ad obvious as a nipple. How they plotted to revolt at each intersection of sea and cheered when the unknown natives threw stones. Perhaps I am promiscuous, the way some sailors choose to love themselves on long journeys and Magellan, when he reached each new port, lay on its fish-rotted quay and sobbed. What I want is the dust of towns, canyons full of dead seas and the sun a killing god. No need for wars or discipline, to make my body a bark for others cast adrift, bobbing like buoys or ice flows. There are monsters on the Pole, Magellan wrote. And giants, a handsome people. Though he never knew what to say of the woman who crawled aboard his boat to see if it was true: that dinghies suckle from the mother ship like pups from wooden bitches. And snuck a loosened nail deep inside herself to carry as she hobbled home, nursing it in secret as if its iron was really gold.  As I've mentioned before, my next book is a book of five travel poems, each poem recording the sights and details of road trips I took over the past five years or more ago. I have an announcement about the book at the end of this post. After that book, I have a collections of poems from 2011 I expect to publish some time next year. I'm in the selection process for that book. Starting with the three hundred sixty five I wrote during the course of the year (I write a poem each day), I'm down to only twenty or twenty five more than the eighty-five or so I need for the book. This where it gets to the hard part. By this time all the ugly puppies have been set aside and what's left are the ones I like. This week, I'm going to give an advance look at some of those still in the running, including the next two. a long time coming fever chills aching bones a dark poem all the long night’s making forgotten now black cloud covers the rising sun dispersed by the cold spreading light night to day long time coming a mid-winter poem I have the feel of a string running out, a slackness in my lifeline, all I am reduced to loose ends I’ve done many things in my life good and worthwhile things, though none lasted longer than it took for my shadow to fade around the corner my proudest legacies remembered only by me - like clouds blown apart by the wind, so much more fragile than I had imagined and now the line that anchored me to the future has gone slack and I feel just another of the world’s many forgettable loose ends  My first poet from the anthology is Gottfried Benn, from the 1945-1955 section. Benn was born in 1886. He served in the German army’s medical corps during WWI and used his clinical experiences as inspiration for his first collections of poetry, Morgue und andere Gedichte published in 1912 and Fleisch, from 1917. The only major German author to initially ally himself publicly with the Nazis, he quickly became disillusioned with the Nazi regime and joined the military as a physician. But conversion came too late to undo the damager to his reputation. It wasn't until 1949 that he made a comeback with his book, Statische Gedichte, then won the highly regarded Bucher Prize in 1951, just five years before his death. Can Be No Mourning In that tiny bed, a child's bed almost,Droste died (on view in her museum in Meersburg), on his sofa Holderlin in a cabinetmaker's tower, Rilke, George, it is true, in Swiss hospital beds, in Weimar the large dark eyes of Nietzche rested on a white pillow till his last glance - all of it rubbish or no longer around, indeterminable, insubstantial in painless, permanent decay. We bear within us seeds of all gods, the gene of death, the gene of lust - who sundered them: the words, the objects, who mixed them: the pains and the place where they end, wood with streams of tears, for a few short hours a miserable home. Can be no mourning. too far, too vast, too far removed now bed and tears, no No, no Yes, birth and bodily pain and faith a welling, nameless, a flicker, something unearthly stirring in its sleep moved bed and tears - go to sleep!  Here's another poem from last week. I hate writing about the weather again I hate to write about the weather again, but there’s so damn much of it rain in the desert, snow in unsnowy places, record heats and record colds and tornados blowing and twisting and pounding good green meadows and mainstreets and playgrounds and thistles and shamrocks no wait that’s a music program on NPR and they don’t do tornados there just bagpipes which are the next worse thing to twisting and blowing tornados closely edging out accordions and good night Irenes and battle hymns of the republic experiences to be avoided at all cost unless it’s Flaco Jimenez doing conjunto and Tex-Mex and German, Polish, Mexican polkas so you see even in the realm of accordions there are gradations of good and bad which is not the case with tornados or bagpipes and, jeez, I really hate all this writing about the weather again even if there is so damn much of it  Next from my library, I have two poems by Li-Young Lee. The poems are from her collection, Rose, published by BOA Editions, Ltd. in 1986. Lee was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents. His maternal grandfather was Yuan Shikai, China's first Republican President, who attempted to make himself emperor. Lee's father, who was a personal physician to Mao Zedong while in China, relocated his family to Indonesia, where he helped found Gamaliel University. His father was exiled and spent 19 months in an Indonesian prison camp in Macau. In 1959 the Lee family fled the country to escape anti-Chinese sentiment and after a five-year trek through Hong Kong and Japan, they settled in the United States in 1964. Li-Young Lee attended the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Arizona, and the State University of New York at Brockport. Lee began writing while at the University of Pittsburgh and was strongly influenced by classic Chinese poets, in particular Li Bai and DuFu. The Weight of Sweetness No easy thing to bear, the weight of sweetness. Song, wisdom, sadness, joy: sweetness equals three of any of these gravities. See a peach bend the branch and strain the stem until it snaps. Hold the peach, try the weight, sweetness and death so round and snug in your palm. And, so, there is the weight of memory: Windblown, a rain-soaked bough shades, showering the man and the boy. They shiver in delight, and the father lifts from his son's cheek one green leaf fallen like a kiss. The good boy hugs a bag of peaches his father has entrusted to him. Now he follows his father, who carries a bagful in each arm. See the look in the boy's face as his father moves faster and farther ahead, while his own steps flag and his arms grow weak, as he labors under the weight of peaches. From Blossoms Fro blossoms comes this brown paper bag of peaches we bought from the boy at the bend in the road wehre we turned toward signs painted Peaches. From laden boughs, from hands, from sweet fellowship in the bins, comes nectar at the roadside, succulent peaches we devour, dusty skin and all. comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat. O, to take what we love inside, to carry within us an orchard, to eat not only the skin, but the shade, not only the sugar, but the days, to hold the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into the round jubilance of peach. There are days we live as if death was nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.  Here's another possible for next year's book. all brothers of all brothers yes, it’s true, I talk to my animals… even Reba who can’t hear me, but she can see my lips move and know she’s on my mind, like the blind cat knows she is not alone in the dark when I stroke her head as I pass, like the friendly nod I exchange with people I pass on the street because we all need to know we are not alone in the dark - such an acknowledgment of our shared passage we should pass on to the creatures around us - balm to repair the primordial weld that has bound us all since creation, the weld that is separating now as all become remote from the others… if you believe in God, remember he created us all as part of his plan and it is not our place to redraw the blueprints of his creation; if you do not believe in God, remember instead that we are all creatures at base of common offspring, basic elements that give us, as our relatives, the snake, the bird, the fish in the ocean the lion in the field, our neighbor across the fence, the daffodil growing wild as any creature on the meadow, the earth beneath our feet and the stars that shine overhead, all brothers of all brothers in our most basic construction  From the 1955-65 section of the anthology, I have the poet Ingeborg Bachmann. Bachmann was born in Austrian in 1926, the daughter of a headmaster. She studied philosophy, psychology, German philology, and law at the universities of Innsbruck, Graz, and Vienna. In 1949, she received her Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Vienna. After graduating, Bachmann worked as a scriptwriter and editor at the Allied radio station Rot-Weiss-Rot, a job that enabled her to obtain an overview of contemporary literature and also supplied her with a decent income. She moved to Rome in 1953, where she spent the large part of the following years working on poems, essays and short stories as well as opera libretti in collaboration with Hans Werner Henze, which soon brought with them international fame and numerous awards. Ingeborg Bachmann died in 1973 in Rome three weeks after a fire in her bedroom. Local police concluded that the blaze was caused by a lit cigarette. Withdrawal symptoms when her stay in hospital interrupted her long habit of compulsive pill-taking may have contribued to her death. Safe Conduct With sleep-drunk birds and wind-shot trees the day gets up, and the sea empties a foaming goblet to him. The rivers course to the great water, and the land puts promises of love into the mouth of the pure air with fresh flowers. Earth wants no mushroom of smoke, no spitting up of creatures against the sky, with rain and angry lightning bolts she wants to stop the unspeakable voices of destruction. With us she wants to see the motley brothers and the gray sisters awake, king fish, her highness the nightingale and the fire prince salamander. For us she plants corals in the sea, commands woods to keep quiet, the marble to swell its beautiful vein, the dew once more to walk across ashes. Earth wants safe-conduct into the universe, receiving each day from its night, so that another thousand na done one mornings will be of the old beauty by youthful graces.  This is another poem from last week. through a break in the clouds through a break in the clouds this morning, a little sliver of crescent moon much diminished since last sighted, a week ago, full and plump and orange in rising… before the clouds… late-night early-morning sky-watching, nights devoid of stars, or any light but the hazy glow of the city reflected on the soft underbellies of unmoving clouds… I think again of the ancient people and their worship of the night sky, the stars and moon their only light, the stars their map of kind and tribe, a storybook of the past and the future and the gods who opened and closed each day; who made the winds blow or stop blowing; who made wet life fall from the sky and who pushed it away to make the damp earth crumble from the dry of their displeasure… the night sky, the back story of all days, all the lights for them to read, learning in the lights their own place in creation, and how they must have trembled on nights like the ones we’ve had here for the past week, no moon, no stars, no story, no map, no sign in the dark of any place for them… alone, heads bowed in a darkest dark unknown to us now, when our own light shines into space, making us an luminous marker on the universal face of the cosmic night, how we push ourselves to the edges now, how different from the humble those from whom we came, how much more unknown to us our proper place then to those who trembled in the dark of an unlit night… through a break in the clouds this morning, a little sliver of crescent moon, even so diminished, still the mistress of our dreams, still the tie that binds us to our oldest hopes and fears  I have three poems by Thomas Rabbitt, from his book, The Abandoned Country, published in 1988 by Carnegie Mellon University Press. Rabbitt taught at the University of Alabama from 1972 until 1998. His first book, Exile, won the 1974 "Pitt Prize" (the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum). A winner of fellowships from the Alabama Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, his poems have appeared in many and have been reprinted in a dozen anthologies, including Best American Poetry 2000 and The Pushcart Prize XIX. From 1979 to 1990 Rabbitt served first as editor and then co-editor of the Alabama Poetry Series which published twenty books. I could find no more recent information on the poet. It appears from Amazon that his most recent work was published in 2005. I do note from the book that he worked on a horse farm for many years, even as he was teaching at the University of Alabama. Among the Missing The bay filly tied to the stoutest apple tree Finds the right height sucker to break and put Her left eye out. She is crying her left eye out. Already the ooze of half her world is what I get For my stupidity. With her face to the sun, Her muzzle trapped by the small green apples, She lets the black stud mount. Sour, green maternity. She broods. This half of what she'll ever see Right now, through sharp leaves, the sunlight dapples. Waterskiing Through Middle Age My boat surging away pulls you out and up. In the cove behind us your lovely daughter Mary, Tan, blond and supple as a perfect lung, shouts. She's sliding the long waterfall down to the beach. Who knows what visitations we have missed? You lift your left foot, drop that ski,balance Everything. You list. You turn. You spray White water in an arc that shines and has to last. Who says the lake is hard? Your best friends Lie to you about your age. You watch the rope Quiver, a yellow line through August's long delay. When you can, you turn back to her and wave. The trees have blended, the steep shore dropped away. Careful. Our small dark friends are going fast. Exit from the Hotel Lexington The manager has posted warnings In English, French, German, Japanese: I will be silent, I will not stay too late, And should my dripping shower rot Its way through twenty-seven floors, I will pay, his notice says. I will To have this all again rebuilt. A Lufthansa pilot runs the elevator down. Among the ferns, a Samurai tends bar. This could be Lisbon, the war not yet begun. The bell-hop palms his jingling pockets And once again the skinny Cuban waiter Offers me, point-blank, his gun. the back-bar is ebony, trimmed with gilt. Forty-eighth Street is walking me west Toward dissolution,pushing me through October, the cold late sunday afternoon. Diamond merchants tote black Homburgs, Earlocks,black cases full of jewels Into the evening they hope is safe. Sewer gases rise the lost heat of summer, Lift the cold island we all move through. I must push west, toward Times Square, Forty-second Street. I still smell trouble, Small demeaning sins, loss of what is now. When done I'll return to the hotel. The Jews by then will have all gone home. Again, one life will not have been enough.  Here's another prospect for the 2013 book. Very much an old man's poem, I think, or maybe just a man feeling very old. it is hard sick slept all day dreams of when I made things happen sweet it was in my dreams ~~ watching the blind cat bounce like a pin ball from wall to wall until she finds her way; soft bounces, her pink nose against the wall, then turn sometimes a turn into a bedroom that goes nowhere, marooned in the dark beyond her personal dark until I find her sitting, waiting for the world to make sense again, then I take her where I think she wants to go ~~ doctor appointment today, five and a half minutes, she will give me new pills and four and a half minutes of advice - I will take the first ignore the second… young and pretty, what does she know about being old? ~~ I find comfort in my regular place around my regular people why do I ever think I need more ~~ I find comfort in thinking of other places, other people, where I can be the mysterious stranger in the back of the room things I might not ever see before or since people who know even less about me then I know about them ~~ it is hard to be happy young or old, it is hard to know the true nature of happiness from temporary desire ~~ it is hard to live in a world where nothing happens unless you make it  Next, I have two poets from the 1965-75 section of the anthology. The first poet is Peter Huchel. Born in 1903 near Berlin, Huchel died in 1981. Traveling and studying throughout much of Europe, he published his first poems in 1931, then begin writing plays for German radio. During the Second World War, he served as a soldier until he was taken prisoner by the Russians in 1945. After his release, he began working for East German radio and in 1949, he became editor of the influential poetry magazine Sinn und Form. After the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, Huchel came under attack from the East German authorities and the following year he was forced to resign his position and, from 1962 to 1971, lived in isolation in his house under Stasi (secret service) surveillance. In 1971, he was finally permitted to leave the German Democratic Republic and move, first to Rome, then to Staufen im Breisgau, where he died. On the Death of Virginia Woolf She forgot the ashes on the warped piano keys, the flickering light in the windows. It began with a pond, the came the stony path, the trellised well, overgrown with artemisia, the pitted watering place under the elm where the horses once stood. Then came the night that was like a falling water. Sometimes, for hours, a bird spirit half hawk, half swan, just above the reeds from which a blizzard howled. My second poet fro9m the 65-75 period is Reiner Kunze. Born in 1933, Kunze is a German writer and former East German dissident. He studied media and journalism at the University of Leipzig. In 1968, he left the GDR state party SED following the communist Warsaw Pact countries invasion of Czechoslovakia in response to the Prague Spring. He had to publish his work under various pseudonyms. In 1976 his most famous book The Lovely Years, which contained critical insights into the life and the policies behind the Iron Curtain, was published in West Germany to great acclaim. In 1977, the East German regime expatriated him and he moved to West Germany. He now lives near Passau in Bavaria. His writings consists mostly of poetry, though he wrote prose as well, including essays. He is also a translator of Czech poetry and prose. The Present what do I keep behind lock and seal? no conspiracy not even pornography The past, daughter To know it can cost the future Suicide The last of all doors But one has never knocked on all the others  Next, two poems, one short, the other not so short, by Tim Seibles, from his book Hurdy Gurdy, published in 1992 by the Cleveland State University Poetry Center. Seibles, born in Philadelphia in 195,) is the author of five collections of poetry. His honors include an Open Voice Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center.[1] Seibles earned his B.A. from Southern Methodist University in 1977, then remained in Dallas after graduating and taught high school English for ten years. He received his M.F.A. from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 1990. He is a professor of English and creative writing at Old Dominion University, as well as teaching in the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing and teaching workshops for Cave Canem. A Jitterbug for Spring All along the lake the larks send their sweet scat trough the air. It's April. New weather jazzes the leaves. The late sun - a long note blown across the water. near shore a tadpole itching for legs. This next piece is a poem after my own heart. Who needs some pitiful, jealous little god when you have a whole universe of stars and all you have to do to know them is to lift your head. (This observation led to write a poem, included here later.) Something Silver and White Last night I saw the moon and remembered the earth is also just a rock riding the infinite dark wave of space - that somewhere else deep down in the MIlky Way someone very different could look up from a garden tosee something silve-white candling faintly above a hilltop and think that dull star seems so weary near the rest, not knowing that all of us are living on that small taste of light buying food calling friends, killing each other sleeping and sometimes staring back into the speckled blackness. You know you can spend your whole life glancing at your watch while everything mysterious does everything mysterious the way gravity keeps everybody close to the ground. It is hard to believe this huge, wet stone is always flying through space - and hard to admit there's really nothing to hold onto while we build houses and fences and thousands of churches as though this glove were just a fat blossom atop some iron stalk grown from God's belly. After sailing this blue ark so many years together you might think we would be kinder because, no matter what anybody says about anybody else, we were all born to this planet suddenly blinking under the same star and the evening sky means the universe is floating.  This is the place in the order of things where I would be placing my poem for today. But, the hard truth is that my poem for today is the most boring collection of words piled upon each other in this computer since it was first sparked to life, probably somewhere in Korea. Accordingly, I am not going to put my poem for the day here. Instead, these two poems projected for my 2013 book. Two night poems. early continuing to wake up god-awful early 3 a.m. - 4 a.m. sit outside listening to the city night under an anorexic moon looking for stars in a city-bright sky pining as always for a night in West Texas where the dark is dark and the stars spill out of the sky like gems from a jeweller’s black velvet sack… dark on the desert where far coyotes sadly howl and across the scrub and sand quiet winds blow whispers from the mountains… but not here in the quasi-dark and never-quiet where we make do, living in the city taking what the city offers, knowing the desert and the mountains are there waiting fulcrum birds gather in the trees at twilight knowing all the secrets of night, drawing together as dark draws them in, settles them into the soft cradle of a crescent moon I feel twilight and shadows approaching cannot find the fulcrum that is my own ascendant moon  Here, now, are a couple of poems from the 1975-1990 section of the anthology. The first of the poems is by Barbara Kohler. Born in 1959 in Burgstädt, Kohler grew up in Saxon Penig. After completing high school, she studied to become a skilled worker in the textile industry, but went on to work instead as a geriatric nurse and as a lighting technician at a local theater Between 1985 and 1988 she completed a study of literature. After German reunification she was unemployed and trying to succeed as a professional writer. SShe published her first poems in 1991, wrote for various newspapers and essays and catalog essays on visual arts. Since 1994 Kohler has lived in Duisburg . Self-portrait I Place Myself Before faits accomplis (the wall in my back semi-dark in my head my hand between my thighs screaming for some world: opaque what I sometimes see through as camouflage for a certain dis- inclination to be TRANSPARENT in order not to disappear I go underground agent provocateur in the third person THE I IS THE REFLECTION OF MY REFLECTION: HE SHE IT the incomplete present as tense form of any revolt against having been said according to the rules of german gram- mar tortured by silence I talk for dear life risking myself word by word head and collar should be washed again - that's just like me... The next several poems are by Uwe Kolbe. Kolbe was born in East Berlin in 1957 to a family that sailed the inland waterways. He was raised in East Berlin, undertook military service after leaving school in 1976, and first published his poetry in the journal Sinn und Form in June 1976. In 1980–81 he began study at the Johannes R. Becher Literary Institute in Leipzig, East Germany's leading centre for the study of poetics and creative writing. Between 1982 and 1985 he was banned from publishing because of anti-regime statements, particularly one in acrostic form in a poem, which the censors had failed to notice. He survived this period by taking up literary translation. From 1982–1987 he published the magazine Mikado. In 1985 he was granted a visa which permitted him to travel to western Europe and the United States. From the summer of 1988 he lived in exile in Hamburg, but returned to Berlin in 1993. From 1997–2004 he was Director of the Literature and Theatre Studio at the University of Tübingen, and has since returned to live in Berlin. To Start With Well, let me start right now by confessing how much mulish conscience keeps on nagging, and ho, though far, there sharply stands before me that homeland which I yet disparage loudly. Dear friends, if half in weal and all in woe, that west grub often bloats my eastern gut, it's all because of what the elbe brings. That makes the tenderest dove a stringy morsel. To mother don't I live on milk and honey? does father not insist on bond as virtue? And hint in sly ways at his loyal Russia? But as for me, and to the point of madness I seek a land, un-German, undivided, and equidistant from both Daimlerland and Prussia. The Guilty Parties die, unfortunately, most of the time of a cold in a big bed close to an airport i.e. of natural causes Times Five times people told me about rapes Four times I saw men in fistfights Three times some mistreated their dogs in front of my very eyes Two times I ran to the youth office for my girlfriend Once I wanted to strangle my sick mother I am eighteen, Grew up under Socialism. Have not lived through a war. And, finally, I have this short poem by Annerose Kirchner, for whom I can find not current biography. She, or someone with the same name, does have stuff on YouTube though, which I didn't look at. Sunday Flying carpet dealers exchange one to one downs for tin soldiers. My mind thinks German and tries on muzzles, which are handed out free, or go for a dime a dozen. Tomorrow, a boozy voice whispers in my ear, we emigrate.  All the potential keeper-poems I've selected so far were written during the dark and dreary days of winter. I'm thinking I should move on to poems from a brighter season to break up the gloom. why is Monday the first day of the week looking for a toe-hole to get me started this morning, i latch onto the idea that this is Monday, the first day of the first full week of the new year and that leads me to thinking why is Monday the first day of the week? and that’s obvious, it’s the old “on the seventh day he rested” thing, which means the eight day was Monday, time for the Most High Commuter to get back to work overseeing all that he had created, or did he slip off, instead, to do some new creating somewhere else and why did he need a day of rest, anyway, he being the all powerful Whosit and Whatsit, you’d think all this creating would be like a snap of his mighty finger, once for the heavens and once for the earth, then an all-purpose multi-snap for all the plants and creatures the lions and tigers and bears, oh my, and squash and cherries and trees and porcupines and the geese and hummingbirds and crab grass and red, red roses and dogs peeing in the park and cats sleeping and sleeping and spiders and dung beetles and maybe a single dedicated snap to whip up a human being, a man first, of course, and then a woman - product of left over manly parts,- and for both the he and the she, he invented those words as well, for until then there were no words to even imagine a he or a she - making up arms and legs for both and lungs and tongues and noses and toes and forty-seven miles of intestines and hearts that beat and break and blood and piss and shit and boogers, too, and sexually-explicit play areas and occasionally a brain, an accident, probably or maybe an oversight, a worn-out, late afternoon, sixth-day goof, creating a being capable of asking questions, demanding answers, and a mighty pain-in-the- all-powerful-celestial-ass every since which begs the question, why, do i, being a pretty mighty pain-in-the-ass myself, continue to think of Monday as the first day of the week - it’s time, i think, in order to be true to my non-believing beliefs, to designate Wednesday as the first day of the week which makes it now this minute an early morning middle of the week Monday, the day the religiosos babosos meet here for breakfast and i wish they’d hurry and get here and i hope they have something interesting to say this morning, - not like the last couple of weeks when all they’ve talked about was football - a real deep and meaty conversation that’ll give me something interesting to write about because right now i can’t think of any darn thing and that’s a dangerous situation, because, lacking anything deep and meaty to write about, i’m not too proud to bull- shit  Next,I have three poems by Page Richards, from her book,Lightly Separate, published in 2007 by Finishing Line Press. The poet studied at the University of Pennsylvania,Harvard University and Boston University. A recipient of a grant from the Mellon Fellowships in the Humanities from the Vermont Studio Center, and a fellowship from the Salzburg Seminar, at the time of publican she was teaching at the University of Hong Kong. Afternoon in Cancun We arrived late, flamingoes stretched by an ad on the road. Flat under our money fits as the woman behind glass nods. Even the dust is tolerable, almost natural. rails dangle and gates flake white as possums' underbellies. It's seedy though nothing is lost. Tall, loose as yolks, pink forms shuffle their mass,stumble on stones, are made to move; bountiful, big, brightly made,with a late plumage of speech, we find the stage and a man with a whip wrapped around his neck, as though he has nothing to do with it all,calls, "Birds, here." Just Off Cancun Our engine stalled, the moped dead, we thought. Small,overdressed, steaming in my nylon shift I held my own, clambered after you keeping my light coat on. As the dessert cooled a shot in the distance illuminated what remained: green rocks shoved against the hardening sky. Then I made more sense, we imagined ghosts when it got dark. the gods liked us well enough to settle on a blanket laid with fare: your army knife, a slab of miniature soap, a handy wind. Love is not the word for you, nor a candle or we might have made it through the night in peace. Instead we found the key, turned the engine on both of us good alone. Folk Festival It was when the rains came and Judy Collins took off her shoes I put my head way back to look for you ahead of me and the stars suffered a heave and a ho on our strained behalf but for a minute while I packed up out things. Clear sheets of water bristled and broke into lousy thousands thumping our heads as though we'd won something back. In a quiet moment when our towels lagged brown behind us, wet and full, you finally turned to me the way an abandoned box car settles into funneled desert sands. I knew it was our last year, last month, I saw it happening, and I shiver.  This is the last of my new poems from last week. again today I didn’t fall out of love again today and I didn’t learn all the secrets of life again today, but I don’t despair which is one of the important secrets of life I did learn again today and I didn’t win the lottery again today or grown taller or thinner or braver or smarter once again none of those things did I do today I didn’t out box the reigning heavyweight world champ today and neither did I win the Indianapolis 500 neither of those things did I do again today I didn’t submit a plan for world peace again today and watch, grateful tears of joy in my eyes, as my plan was adopted unanimously, winning approval of all the varied diplomats and dignitaries while they all, representatives of all the varied nations on this small ever-spinning earth, gathered in a circle singing kumbaya, dancing together, Arab and Jew, Shiite and Sunni, evangelical and atheist, young and old, white and black, of healthy body and in terminal pain, broad minds and narrow minds, witty and half witted, tall and short, fat and thin, thieves and suffers from theft, murders and the murdered arisen, together in tripsichoric embrace, harmonizing in death grip entangled, operatic in forgiving and forgetting, mercy pled, mercy given, and all the oppressors of all the masses and all the masses, dancing, all, in tearful acceptance of forgiving and forgetting, mercy pled and mercy given I didn’t do that again today but I have still a few days left, so, who knows in the meantime, I did write a poem again today, another entry in the log of a good-time-Charlie’s grasp at a day that counts for better than nothing-much to brag about again today  For my final poem from the anthology this week I have this piece by Volker Braun. Unusual for Wikipedia, Braun's biography is a very poor English translation from German. I've reconstructed the best I could Braun was born in 1939 in Dresden. His work includes poetry, plays, novels, short stories and non-fiction. He worked in mining and civil engineering before he studied philosophy in Leipzig. He was successful in publishing critiques of the socialist state for a period, even though a member of the East German Communist party, due to his ability to maneuver within the system. His work included spoken poems, theater pieces, novels and stories. Braun worked as an artistic director at the Berliner Ensemble. After the events of the Prague Spring, he became more open in his criticism of the life in Socialism and the possibility of reform. After that, he would be watched over strongly by the Stasi. Since 1976, Braun worked at the Deutschen Theater Berlin (German Theater Berlin)and from 1979 he was active again in the Berliner Ensemble. He left the Writer's Union of East Germany in 1982. Braun belonged to the supporters of an independent "third way" for East Germany and, after reunification, he occupied himself with critiques of the foundations for the failure of East Germany. In 1986 he was awarded the Bremer Literature Prize and 1992 he received the Schiller Memorial Prize. He was awarded a stipend of the Villa Massimo and became a guest lectturer of the University of Wales in 1994. In 1996, he received the Deutschen Kritikerpreis (German Critic Prize), became a member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, the Sächsischen Akademie der Künste (Saxon Academy of the Arts) and held Poet-lecturer at the University of Heidelberg. He received the Erwin Schrittmatter Prize in 1998 and the Georg Büchner Prize in 2000. From 1999 to 2000, he was the Brother Grimm professor at the University of Kassel. He would be elected to the Director of the Literature Section of the Akademie der Künste in 2006. . Volker Braun lives in Berlin. The Wall 1 Between the peculiar cities that bear the same Name, among much cement Iron, wire, smoke, the shots Of motors at the merging point Of all the wonders of this peculiar land there stands out A construction, striking among the wonders In this astonishing country, Foreign country. Accustomed To suspension bridges and steel towers And whatever else runs to the border by way of material and machines, theyeye Still does not comprehend his here. Among all the riddles: that is Almost their solution. Terrible It holds back, stone border, What knows no bounds: War. And it holds In the peaceful land, for it must be strong Not poor, those who flee the wolves: the lambs. t/his is a slap In the face of those who should go where they want, not To mass graves, the "People of the thinkers." But what holds me so strongly, the half Country that has changed with me, now It is more secure, but Am I still going to change it? Protected By the tanks, does it enjoy Its peace almost peacefully? Heavy From guns fall the shots: On those whom it might hold better In other ways. The walls stand Speechless and cold in the wind the flags whip. 2 Those behind the newspapers Bark at the cement and, scorched By the broadcasts, run away from the dust Of construction sites or along the barbed-wire Piously sing among brothers and Beneath churches scrape tunnels: those Blind hens find themselves Dead center in gun sights. Incomprehensible, However, for them is that which divides These cities. Because it is not Made of cement staring them right in the face. It is not a wall that divides us. That is filth made of cement,take That away then, with blow torches Tear it to pieces with crowbars Put it into the grass: when they no longer Flee with their skins to sell at the market Chop out the barricades. When those Who still want to change borders are powerless Smash the border. The last tank Crushes it and vice versa. So that it will be gone. Now let that be. 3 But I say: there stands throughout the city, Unimposing, architecture's long non-construction Paint it black the firewall (shit on it) Because it is not Our shame: show it. Do not make a garden of it during Some August, do not turn the dirt over In wide beds, with lilies over the mines Plant nettles, nor carnations Do not increase, between the peculiar Cities, the riddles,roaring Do not adorn the land With its misery. And do not let the grass grow Over the open shame: it is not ours, show it.  Here's my last poem for the week, another possible for the 2013 book. I could be racing I could be racing my Stutz Bearcat through the high mountain passes of Abrakazam, if I wanted to, or trading tequila shots with the Duchess de Whirl I could do that… or I could be riding hell for leather across the rocky steppes of Kerikombati, eating roast pig on the pristine white sands of Jazmaka de Mir, or attending a Hollywood premier with the bountifully bodacious Hungarian star of the evening Lotta Shigotta or I could go hang gliding over the deep, red canyons of Tashtaganskastan, if I wanted, or I might pilot my jumbo Lear to a birthday bash for the Prince of Cisco-Ferlingetti… lots of other stuff like that I could be doing today… but I have a poem to write first, then the new Harry Potter movie that opened just last night, I could take my niece to that, and there’s my geraniums that need some watering, and a whole drawer full of socks needing emergency organizational attention important stuff… real life… real life stuff that proves I am living and not just part of someone else’s Stutz Bearcat dream  We're done. All the normal usual about everything here belonging to who created it. And I'm still allen itz, owner and producer of "Here and Now" and bookseller to the stars (anyone who buys one of my books is a star by definition). I sent my book of road poems, Places and Spaces, off to the publisher yesterday, so I expect in a couple of weeks I'll be adding it to the list below. And, speaking of the books below, I've never quoted a price on them because the retailers usually set their own price, which sometimes changes. Presently, the books are priced from $4.14 to $5.99, depending on which one you buy and which of the retailers you buy it from. Pretty damn cheap, considering my first book, in print, originally sold for $35. I'm turning into the five and dime of poetry. I'm pricing the new book at $3.99, though retailers may have it for less. As of now, here's what I have out there for your reading pleasure. (And, by the way, if you buy one of these amazingly cheap books and like it, a review on the purchase site would be appreciated.) "Always to the Light"  "Goes Around, Comes Around"  "Pushing Clouds Against the Wind"  And For those of a print-bent, available on Amazon "Seven Beats a Second"  |
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