fragments of contemporary poetry

.....My former former wife has become a unique poet;
most of my work,
such as it is is done.
Full moon was October second this year,
I ate a mooncake, slept out on the deck
white light beaming through the black boughs of the pine
owl hoots and rattling antlers,
Castor and Pollux rising strong
—it’s good to know that the Pole Star drifts!
that even our present night sky slips away,
not that I’ll see it.
Or maybe I will, much later,
some far time walking the spirit path in the sky,
that long walk of spirits—where you fall right back into the
“narrow painful passageway of the Bardo”
squeeze your little skull
and there you are again


waiting for your ride

{last half of this poem, Waiting for your Ride, by Gary Snyder}

I couldn’t shake the sea noise out of my head,
the shell of my ears sang Maria Concepcion,
so I start salvage diving with a crazy Mick,
name O’Shaugnessy, and a limey named Head;
but this Caribbean so choke with the dead
that when I would melt in emerald water,
whose ceiling rippled like a silk tent,
I saw them corals: brain, fire, sea fans,
dead-men’s-fingers, and then, the dead men.
I saw that the powdery sand was their bones
ground white from Senegal to San Salvador,
so, I panic third dive, and surface for a month
in the Seamen’s Hostel. Fish broth and sermons.
When I thought of the woe I had brought my wife,
when I saw my worries with that other woman,
I wept under water, salt seeking salt,
for her beauty had fallen on me like a sword
cleaving me from my children, flesh of my flesh! --- {fromThe Schooner 'Flight'
by Derek Walcott }

Goodbye to Tolerance
by Denise Levertov


.....And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread,
blood donors. Your crumbs
choke me, I would not want
a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped
by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never
falter: irresponsive
to nightmare reality.


It is my brothers, my sisters,
whose blood spurts out and stops
forever
because you choose to believe it is not your business.


Goodbye, goodbye,
your poems
shut their little mouths,
your loaves grow moldy,
a gulf has split
the ground between us,
and you won’t wave, you’re looking
another way.
We shan’t meet again—
unless you leap it, leaving
behind you the cherished
worms of your dispassion,
your pallid ironies,
your jovial, murderous,
wry-humored balanced judgment,
leap over, un-
balanced? ... then
how our fanatic tears
would flow and mingle
for joy ... {excerpt}


Denise Levertov, “Goodbye to Tolerance” from Poems 1972-1982. Copyright © 1975 by Denise Levertov.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98jun/poets.htm

"Discovering" Young Poets
How some of the best-known poets of this century

got that way

by Peter Davison

William Stafford is a master. He belongs to that category of artists the Japanese have named national treasure. He offers works of art as well as sharp ideas about the craft. One of the most amazing gifts to poetry is his theme of the golden thread. He believes that whenever you set a detail down in language, it becomes the end of a thread...and every detail—the sound of the lawn mower, the memory of your father's hands, a crack you once heard in the lake ice, the jogger hurtling herself past your window—will lead you to amazing riches.

William Blake said:

I give you the end of a golden string
Only wind it into a ball
It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate
Built in Jerusalem’s wall.

I asked Stafford one day. “Do you believe that every golden thread will lead us through Jerusalem’s wall, or do you love particular threads?” He replied, “No, every thread…only the golden string knows where it is going, and the role for a writer or reader is one of following, not imposing.”

—From the Introduction to William Stafford’s The Darkness Around Us Is Deep by Robert Bly.


If I could Be Wallace Stevens

The octopus would be my model—
It wants to understand; it prowls
The rocks a hundred ways and holds
Its head aloof but not ignoring .
All its fingers value what
They find. “I’d rather know,” they say.
“I’d rather slime along than be heroic.”

My pride would be to find out; I’d
bow to see, play the fool,
ask beg, retreat like a wave—
but somewhere deep I’d hold the pearl,
never tell… {excerpt}

—William Stafford, from The Darkness Around Us Is Deep

A Morris Dance


Across the Common, on a lovely May
day in New England, I see and hear
the Middle Ages drawing near,
bells tinkling, pennants bright and gay—
a parade of Morris dancers.

One plucks a lute. One twirls a cape.
Up close, a lifted pinafore
exposes cellulite, and more.
O why aren't they in better shape,
the middle-aged Morris dancers?

Already it's not hard to guess
their treasurer—her; their president—him;
the Wednesday-night meetings at the gym.
They ought to practice more, or less,
the middle-aged Morris dancers.

Short-winded troubadours and pages,
milkmaids with osteoporosis—
what really makes me so morose is
how they can't admit their ages,
the middle-aged Morris dancers. ...

{excerpt}

-------------------------------------------------------

Interviews July 16, 2008
Mary Jo Salter talks about her new collection,

Phone Call to the Future; editing The Norton

Anthology of Poetry; and her early days as an

assistant poetry editor at The Atlantic.

by Sarah Cohen

-------------------------------------------------------

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807u/mary-jo-salter



The Poet's Poet {interview with Mary Jo Salter}

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by firefangled

I
One Should Not Talk To a Skilled Hunter About What Is Forbidden By the Buddha
- Hsiang-yen

...
Peeling skin back (Kai
reminded us to chant the Shingyo first)
cold pelt. crinkle; and musky smell
mixed with dead-body odor starting.

Stomach content: a whole ground squirrel well chewed
plus one lizard foot
and somewhere from inside the ground squirrel
a bit of aluminum foil.

The secret.
and the secret hidden deep in that.

---

Thanks for this, I love it.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0825/p25s01-bogn.html



------------------------

Poet Kay Ryan: A profile
By Elizabeth Lund

"Kay Ryan may be the only American poet who

describes her writing process as "a self-imposed

emergency," the artistic equivalent of finding a

loved one pinned under a 3,000-pound car. These

"emergencies," she says, allow her to tap into

abilities she wouldn't normally have, much like a

father who single-handedly lifts a vehicle off his

child. In Ms. Ryan's case, however, what has

survived because of her efforts over the past three

decades is a singular voice and vision. Her poems -

with their compact size and technical precision,

their wit and sharp intelligence - have been praised

by critics for their ability to do and say things that

none of her contemporaries can match." ----------{excellent article about Kay Ryan and her methods, August 25, 2004}

Gulls
by Jorie Graham


Those neck-pointing out full bodylength and calling
outwards over the breaking waves.
Those standing in waves and letting them come and
go over them.
Those gathering head-down and over some one
thing.
Those still out there where motion is
primarily a pulsing from underneath
and the forward-motion so slight they lay
their stillness on its swelling and falling
and let themselves swell, fall ...
Sometimes the whole flock rising and running just
as the last film of darkness rises
leaving behind, also rising and falling in
tiny upliftings,
almost a mile of white underfeathers, up-turned, white spines
gliding over the wet
sand, in gusts, being blown down towards
the unified inrolling awayness
of white. All things turning white through
breaking. The long red pointing of lowering sun
going down on (but also streaking in towards) whoever
might be standing at the point-of-view place
from which this watching. This watching being risen
from: as glance: along the red
blurring and swaying water-path:
to the singular redness: the glance a
being-everywhere-risen-from: everywhere
cawing, mewing, cries where a
single bird lifts heavily
just at shoreline, rip where
its wing-tips (both) lap
backwash, feet still in
the wave-drag of it, to coast
on top of its own shadow and then down to not
landing. ... {first stanza}

Jazz Fan Looks Back



I crisscrossed with Monk
Wailed with Bud
Counted every star with Stitt
Sang "Don't Blame Me" with Sarah
Wore a flower like Billie
Screamed in the range of Dinah
& scatted "How High the Moon" with Ella Fitzgerald
as she blew roof off the Shrine Auditorium
Jazz at the Philharmonic

I cut my hair into a permanent tam
Made my feet rebellious metronomes
Embedded record needles in paint on paper
Talked bopology talk
Laughed in high-pitched saxophone phrases
Became keeper of every Bird riff
every Lester lick
as Hawk melodicized my ear of infatuated tongues
& Blakey drummed militant messages in
soul of my applauding teeth
& Ray hit bass notes to the last love seat in my bones.... {excerpt}

If you read it fast it's almost scat. Certainly jazz. This is cool, Quasi

PUSH BACK THE CATASTROPHES

I don't want a drought to feed on itself
through the tattooed holes in my belly
I don't want a spectacular desert of
charred stems & rabbit hairs
in my throat of accumulated matter
I don t want to burn and cut through the forest
like a greedy mercenary drilling into
sugar cane of the bones

Push back the advancing sands
the polluted sewage
the dust demonsthe dying timber
the upper atmosphere of nitrogen
push back the catastrophes


Enough of the missiles
the submarines
the aircraft carriers
the biological weapons
No more sickness sadness poverty
exploitation destabilization
illiteracy and bombing
Let's move toward peace ... {excerpt}

SOJOURNS IN THE PARALLEL WORLD
We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension--though affected,
certainly, by our actions. A world
parallel to our own though overlapping.
We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.
Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life: ... {excerpt}

Archangel Cathedral


The coffins of great Russian princesses stand
in the basement of the Moscow Kremlin. They
were brought there in the 30s from the
destroyed Voznesensky Monastery.

There where the angels weave the sky,
where there is the triumph of the last dream,
where the cellar secrets conceal,
I asked myself: For whom

have I lived and suffered this life?
I didn’t fall prostrate in prayer,
I always sang my own words
in the dark storehouse of useless tsaritsas.

Here, under the gigantic splinter-bar of walls
there is disparagement of forgetfulness.
I stand over poisoned Glinskaya,
her pillaged tomb.

And over us now red flags,
now the alcoholic madness of the country.
Only timid bones can be seen
through the robbers’ hole in the sarcophagus.

In these cracks of the royal masonry,
in this mould of terrifying corners,
there are the denouements of chronic illness,
the revelation of prophetic words. ... {excerpt}

[translated by Richard McKane]

I Am Goya

I am Goya
of the bare field, by the enemy's beak gouged
til the craters of my eyes gape
I am grief.

I am tongue
of war, the embers of cities
on the snows of the year 1941
I am hunger.

I am the gullet
of a woman hanged whose body like a bell
tolled over a blank square
I am Goya...

from I Am Goya

tr. Stanley Kunitz


Elegy for My Mother

I canceled your funeral, mother;
you can't be resurrected in this day and age.

Mama, forgive these repeated gatherings.
I know you face has long since turned to snow;
I have taken you from the crematorium
and will place you now beside Father.

This spring we let earth fall
into your graves at the Novodevichi Monastery:
Voznesensky and Voznesenkaya rest there now
and the earth is given new life.

Whatever you touched has become holy:
the benches in the square, and Ordynka Street
behind them, are holy;
over Catherine's birch tree
shines your maternal light.

What did earth offer you, Antonina?
Mad for lilies of the valley,
you were an intellectual in a worker's kerchief
with the backbone of a tragedienne...

Unsung Russia you were,
guarding hearth and home;
a young wife, you combed our troubles, drew them,
with your hair, back into a bun tight as a fist...

Now you'll be a stranger when you waken me at night;
the little Akhmatova volume will fly open on its own:
What is it that torments you, Antonina?
Tonya?...

I have not spoken these words with condescension;
Whoever reads them, please do not wait.
Rush with lilies of the valley to your mother,
for mine I cannot- its too late.

from Elegy for My Mother
tr. William Jay Smith and F.D. Reve