fragments of contemporary poetry

The River Pilgrim: A Letter

At eighteen, I thought the Sixhibaoux wept.
Five years younger, you were lush, beautiful
Mystery; your limbs — scrolls of deep water.
Before your home, lost in roses, I swooned,
Drunken in the village of Whylah Falls,
And brought you apple blossoms you refused,
Wanting Hand Snow woodsmoke blues and dried smelts,
Wanting some milljerk's dumb, unlettered love.
That May, freight chimed zylophone tracks that rang
To Montréal. I scribbled postcard odes,
Painted le fleuve Saint-Laurent come la Seine —
Sad watercolours for Negro exiles
In France, and drempt Paris white with lepers,
Soft cripples who finger pawns under elms,
Drink blurry into young debaucery,
Their glasses clear with Cointreau, rain and tears.

Continued here: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpo...arke/poem1.htm

This is from his verse novel Whylah Falls, which I am currently reading. So far it is absolutely incredible (75 of175). The influence of Pound's translation from Li Po is clear in this piece, though the central theme of Clarke's work in my opinion is African-Canadian Identity, and cultural identity in general. He seems quite the poet, and is somewhat of a renown academic in Canada, currently teaching in the English department at the University of Toronto.



On another note: just finished Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson; I found it interesting, but will wait to see if others have read it before discussing it more in depth, and posting my opinions/interpretations.

JBI... I'm currently reading through Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson. I've read Plainwater some time ago. I'll probably finish in a day or so as I have the bad habit of reading several books at once... on top of the fact that school has just started back and I'm into lots of work on lesson plans, pacing charts, standards, and other nonsense. Any other takers? Surely Jozy would be up for a little foray into Carson.

Hummingbird by Milton Acorn.

One day in a lifetime
I saw one with wings
a pipesmoke blur
shaped like half a kiss
and its raspberry-stone
heart winked fast
in a thumbnail of a breast.

In that blink it
was around a briar
and out of sight, but
I caught a flash
of its brain
where flowers swing
udders of sweet cider;

Continued here: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpo...corn/poem4.htm

Acorn is one of my favorite Canadian poets. His verse has the incredible value of not sounding like Wallace Stevens, like most other contemporary verse tends to do, and also has a fresh set of metaphor, and diction, giving it a distinctive flavor, and an imagistic feel that can only be described as Canadian.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/01/bo...ks&oref=slogin Obituary... Ahmed Faraz: Outspoken Urdu Poet, dies at 77 by Haresh Pandya, 9/1/08

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121883343091845417.html

THE LAMMAS HIRELING

After the fair, I'd still a light heart
and a heavy purse, he struck so cheap.
And cattle doted on him: in his time
mine only dropped heifers, fat as cream.
Yields doubled. I grew fond of company
that knew when to shut up. Then one night,
disturbed from dreams of my dear late wife,
I hunted down her torn voice to his pale form.
Stock-still in the light from the dark lantern,
stark-naked but for one bloody boot of fox-trap,
I knew him a warlock, a cow with leather horns.
To go into the hare gets you muckle sorrow,
the wisdom runs, muckle care. I levelled
and blew the small hour through his heart.
The moon came out. By its yellow witness
I saw him fur over like a stone mossing.
His lovely head thinned. His top lip gathered.
His eyes rose like bread. I carried him
in a sack that grew lighter at every step
and dropped him from a bridge. ... {excerpt}

THE INVISIBLE MENDER (My First Mother)

I'm sewing on new buttons
to this washed silk shirt.
Mother of pearl,
I chose them carefully.
In the haberdashers on Chepstow Place
I turned a boxful over
one by one,
searching for the backs with flaws:
those blemished green or pink or aubergine,
small birth marks on the creamy shell.
These afternoons are short,
the sunlight buried after three or four,
sap in the cold earth.
The trees are bare.
I'm six days late.
My right breast aches so
when I bend to catch a fallen button
that strays across the floor.
Either way,
there'll be blood on my hands.
Thirty-seven years ago you sat in poor light
and sewed your time away,
then left.
But I'm no good at this:
a peony of blood gathers on my thumb, falls
then widens on the shirt like a tiny, opening mouth.
I think of you like this —
as darkness comes,
as the window that I can't see through
is veiled with mist ... (excerpt)

WATCHING FOR DOLPHINS


In the summer months on every crossing to Piraeus
One noticed that certain passengers soon rose
From seats in the packed saloon and with serious
Looks and no acknowledgement of a common purpose
Passed forward through the small door into the bows
To watch for dolphins. One saw them loose

Every other wish. Even the lovers
Turned their desires on the sea, and a fat man
Hung with equipment to photograph the occasion
Stared like a saint, through sad bi-focals; others,
Hopeless themselves, looked to the children for they
Would see dolphins if anyone would. Day after day

Or on their last opportunity all gazed
Undecided whether a flat calm were favourable
Or a sea the sun and the wind between them raised
to a likeness of dolphins. Were gulls a sign, that fell
Screeching from the sky or over an unremarkable place
Sat in a silent school? Every face

After its character implored the sea.
All, unaccustomed, wanted epiphany,
Praying the sky would clang and the abused Aegean
Reverberate with cymbal, gong and drum.
We could not imagine more prayer, and had they then
On the waved, on the climax of our longing come

Smiling, snub nosed, domed like satyrs, oh
We should have laughed and lifted the children up
Stranger to stranger, pointing how with a leap
They left their element, three or four times, centred
On grace, and heavily and warm re-entered,
Looping the keel. ... {excerpt}

THE COMING OF THE COLD

I

The late peach yields a subtle musk,
The arbor is alive with fume
More heady than a field at dusk
When clover scents diminished wind.
The walker's foot has scarcely room
Upon the orchard path, for skinned
And battered fruit has choked the grass.
The yield's half down and half in air,
The plum drops pitch upon the ground,
And nostrils widen as they pass
The place where butternuts are found.
The wind shakes out the scent of pear.
Upon the field the scent is dry:
The dill bears up it acrid crown;
The dock, so garish to the eye,
Distills a pungence of its own;
And pumpkins sweat a bitter oil.
But soon cold rain and frost come in
To press pure fragrance to the soil;
The loose vine droops with hoar at dawn,
The riches of the air blow thin. ..... {excerpt, 1 0f 3 parts from The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke}

From The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
PP 61-63

THE SHAPE OF THE FIRE

I

What's this? A dish for at lips
Who says? A nameless stranger.
Is he a bird or a tree? Not everyone can tell.

Water recedes to the crying of spiders.
An old scow bumps over black rocks.
A cracked pod calls.

Mother me out of here. What more will the bones allow?
Will the sea give the wind suck? A toad folds into a stone.
These flowers are all fangs. Comfort me, fury.
Wake me, witch, we'll do the dance of rotten sticks.

Shale loosens. Marl reaches into the field. Small birds pass over water.
Spirit, come near. This is only the edge of whiteness.
I can't laugh at a procession of dogs.

In the hour of ripeness the tree is barren.
The she-bear mopes under the hill.
Mother, mother, stir from your cave of sorrow.

A low mouth laps water. Weeds, weeds, how I love you.
The arbor is cooler. Farewell, farewell, fond worm.
The warm comes without sound.

II

Where's the eye?
The eye's in the sty.
The ear's not here
Beneath the hair.
When I took off my clothes
To find a nose,
There was only one shoe
For the waltz of To,
The pinch of Where.

Time for the flat-headed man. I recognize that listener,
Him with the platitudes and rubber doughnuts,
Melting a the knees a varicose horror.
Hello, hello. My nerves knew you, dear boy.
Have you come to unhinge my shadow?
Last night I slept in the pits of a tongue.
The silver fish ran in and out of my special bindings;
I grew tired of the ritual of names and the assistant keeper of the
Mollusks:
Up over a viaduct I came, to the snakes and sticks of another winter,
A two-legged dog hunting a new horizon of howls.
The wind sharpened itself on a rock;
A voice sang:

Pleasure on ground
Has no sound,
Easily maddens
The uneasy man.

Who, careless, slips
In coiling ooze
Is trapped to the lips,
Leaves mare than shoes;



Must pull off clothes
To jerk like a frog
On belly and nose
From the sucking bog.

My meat eats me. Who waits at the gate?
Mother of quartz, your words writhe into my ear.
Renew the light, lewd whisper.
{2 of 5 parts}

TEN QUESTIONS FOR MONA

From the Boston Review




I’m sitting at the same table again, in the hopes.
This time I’m sitting where you were.
Like a fragrance you had stayed to rise,
*
having felt just long enough under your hat,
wanting exactly what you want.
Like a fragrance you had strayed.
*
There are masculine and feminine willows
moving about this room.
Just now tiny machines manufacture noises
*
devoting themselves to the removal
and the placing. Tiny machines
manufacture noises producing
*
in me a feeling of productivity.
Just now a shadow
approached from the west door spilling
*
a glance upon me, sorry, I thought
it was you sitting down in the place
where your hands shook as you poured
*
evening’s sweet wine out in photographs.
I watched you grow older in the approach.
Summers are loose and feathery
*
in consequence as a high school, or a time,
or a camp in which Right Now is a time.
You say you think of it in a good way,
*
in the long approach, i.e. laughter
and lightness and etcetera time
of staying too long and leaving too soon,
*
sitting across from you, that absolute
conditional you sitting down in the place
where I had been a glance upon me.
*
Right Now is a time. A child needs
to be moved less fearfully
than thinking of something else.
*
What flower do you bring a flower?
I’d curl up in the wrist, but there’s a cat
already named there for luck and howling. ... {excerpt}
*

Do not ask, my love.....

by Faiz Ahmad Faiz

Do not ask, my love, for the love we had before:
You existed, I told myself, so all existence shone,
Grief for me was you; the world’s grief was far.
Spring was ever renewed in your face:
Beyond your eyes, what could the world hold?
Had I won you, Fate’s head would hang, defeated.
Yet all this was not so, I merely wished it so.
The world knows sorrows other than those of love,
Pleasures beyond those of romance:
The dread dark spell of countless centuries
Woven with silk and satin and gold brocade,
Bodies sold everywhere, in streets and markets,
Besmeared with dirt, bathed in blood,
Crawling from infested ovens,
My gaze returns to these: what can I do?
Your beauty still haunts me: what can I do?
The world is burdened by sorrows beyond love,
By pleasures beyond romance,
Do not demand that love which can be no more.

English Translation By Mir Habib

From the Boston Review

RILKE'S ARGUMENT WITH DON GIOVANNI



I never thought
I'd be anything like you . . .
I was drawn up, as in a whirlwind, by their gaze
and wished to live there forever -- a soul around my soul --
astonished, perhaps, to be wanted there at all --

who was Mitzi in the army; the boy fainting by the wall at school.

But then, when the wincing not right
began in my head; when I wanted
so much to be loved in the moment I found my separateness
still there, still real -- I needed
the one who could be told anything, even the thing
that drove her away.

People will say I disliked the body; it's the easiest
explanation, for someone who talked with angels.
But my dear ones will know something different,
how astonished and careful
I could be, like a boy
given something unbelievable,
the pale gold flare at the bottom of the stream.

The men of our time burst into them
like the brusk hussar
at the dressing-room door in Strauss's Ariadne.

I loved their talents
as if they were my own talent,
a surer hand to reach the brush, the page --
transfixed with knowing
how a child shapes itself, willless, in the dark.

And they must have felt something heavy in me, too rich,
too complete in itself. They dreamed
stronger dreams in my presence.
But the weight was what sank, what even I couldn't hold.

I always hoped the right one
would arrive like wind,
that freshly, instantly touching everywhere.
I never remembered
the nature of wind is to pass by. ... {excerpt}

FROM LIGHTENINGS: VIII

The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.
The anchor dragged along behind so deep
It hooked itself into the altar rails
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,
A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
And struggled to release it. But in vain. ... {excerpt}

*
From Seeing Things (Faber & Faber, 1991).
*

http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2...-ever-written/ Review of "The Book of Counted Sorrows" entitled The Most Dangerous Book of Poetry Ever Written by Gregory Cowles current price, used... 800.00