Poetry Bookclub 2

We need a first choice for the elimination. So you would go with Roethke, yes? Also, at this point, other collections can be added.

Again... I would be in for Roethke. He was certainly a good choice and it has been a while since I've read him. Out of the list so far my second choice would be Paz and third Akhmatova.

OK then, pick three in decending order and I'll do the handicapping. How about Sunday, 12 midnight for a cutoff on selections?

Ok. Roethke, Bishop, Moore.

Taking note of these choices... The others involved in first poetry bookclub were Quark, JBI, DARK MUSE, Dapper Drake, Il Penseroso and sofia 82. They will get a heads-up.

Scheherazade has informed me that we can vote on ten options. So, unless there is other input, we'll have that vote Monday.

"The Lanyard" {from the collection, THE TROUBLE WITH POETRY, by Billy Collinns}

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the pale blue walls of this room,
bouncing from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past --
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sickroom,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
... {excerpt}

Crossing the Water {from the collection of the same name by Sylvia Plath}
Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
Where do the black trees go that drink here?
Their shadows must cover Canada.

A little light is filtering from the water flowers.
Their leaves do not wish us to hurry:
They are round and flat and full of dark advice.

Cold worlds shake from the oar.
The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes.
A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand; ... {excerpt}

http://gawow.com/roethke/poems/32.html Some selections of Roethke's poetry, not necessarily from the collection mentioned above.

Plath, Bishop, Akhmatova

Thank you Muse. A sample of Langston Hughes... The Weary Blues



Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway. . . .
He did a lazy sway. . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf.” ... {excerpt}

Spenser's Ireland
by Marianne Moore


has not altered;--
a place as kind as it is green,
the greenest place I've never seen.
Every name is a tune.
Denunciations do not affect
the culprit; nor blows, but it
is torture to him to not be spoken to.
They're natural,--
the coat, like Venus'
mantle lined with stars,
buttoned close at the neck,-the sleeves new from disuse.

If in Ireland
they play the harp backward at need,
and gather at midday the seed
of the fern, eluding
their "giants all covered with iron," might
there be fern seed for unlearn-
ing obduracy and for reinstating
the enchantment?
Hindered characters
seldom have mothers
in Irish stories, but they all have grandmothers.

It was Irish;
a match not a marriage was made
when my great great grandmother'd said
with native genius for
disunion, "Although your suitor be
perfection, one objection
is enough; he is not
Irish." Outwitting
the fairies, befriending the furies,
whoever again
and again says, "I'll never give in," never sees

that you're not free
until you've been made captive by
supreme belief,--credulity ... {excerpt}

If I understand quasi correctly, this is my vote:

1.Roethke
2.Johnson
3.Ungaretti

I must say, I am a practitioner of the art quasi, and had something of a small press recognition in the 80's--but I tip my hat--the breadth and depth of your dedication is a shining example, even for a cynic like me.

Gracias Jozanny (there's a title for something). A sampling of Ungaretti...
Variations On Nothing


That negligible bit of sand which slides
Without a sound and settles in the hourglass,
And the fleeting impressions on the fleshy-pink,
The perishable fleshy-pink, of a cloud...

Then a hand that turns over the hourglass,
The going back for flowing back, of sand,
The quiet silvering of a cloud
In the first few lead-gray seconds of dawn... {excerpt}

"An enormous mass of liquid mercury, barely undulating; vague hills in the distance; flocks of birds; a pale sky and scraps of pink clouds... Little by little the white-and-blue architecture of the city sprouted up, a stream of smoke from a chimney, the ochre and green stains of a distant garden. An arch of stone appeared, planed on a dock and crowned with four little towers in the shape of pine trees. Someone leaning on the railing beside me exclaimed, 'The Gateway of India!'" Octavio Paz

...waves of heat; huge gray and red buildings, a Victorian London growing among palm trees and banyans like a recurrent nightmare, leprous walls, wide and beautiful avenues, huge unfamiliar trees, stinking alleyways,... ...women in red, blue, yellow, deliriously colored saris, some solar, some nocturnal, dark-haired women with bracelets on their ankles and sandals made not for the burning asphalt but for fields... ...public gardens overwhelmed by the heat, monkeys in the cornices of the buildings, **** and jasmine, homeless boys.... Octavio Paz