The family’s hope? That he was too far gone
to notice she was gone. But when he asked for her
for four weeks running, it didn’t seem quite fair
to reassure him with—She’ll be back soon.
So when, pale blue eyes jumping in his head, he said
again, Nurse, where’s my Meg?, as if she were a stranger
(her, his own Bridget, sixth child and sole daughter!),
she told him—Poppa, listen: Momma’s dead.
The news plunged deep into that drowned brain.
He bowed his weighty head. She took his hand—
Had she made a mistake? Could he understand?
. . . Maybe, for when he raised his face again,
he wore a look of rationality triumphant:
I knew it. Otherwise, she would have come.
from Brad Leithauser's Curves and Angles, via Andrew Shields.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Dean Young: Selected Recent and New Errors
My books are full of mistakes
but not the ones Tony’s always pointing out
as if correct spelling is what could stop the conveyor belt
the new kid caught his arm in.
Three weeks on the job and he’s already six hundred
legal pages, lawyers haggling in an office
with an ignored view of the river
pretending to be asleep, pretending
to have insight into its muddy self.
You think that’s a fucked-up, drawn-out metaphor,
try this: if you feel you’re writhing like a worm
in a bottle of tequila, you don’t know
it’s the quickness of its death that reveals
the quality of the product, its proof.
I don’t know what I’m talking about either.
Do you think the dictionary ever says to itself
I’ve got these words that mean completely
different things inside myself
and it’s tearing me apart?
My errors are even bigger than that.
You start taking down the walls of your house,
sooner or later it’ll collapse
but not before you can walk around
with your eyes closed, rolled backwards
and staring straight into the amygdala’s meatlocker
and your own damn self hanging there.
Do that for awhile and it’s easier to delight
in snow that lasts about twenty minutes
longer than a life held together
by the twisted silver baling wire
of deception and stealth.
But I ain’t confessing nothing.
On mornings when I hope you forget my name,
I walk through the high wet weeds
that don’t have names either.
I do not remember the word dew.
I do not remember what I told you
with your ear in my teeth.
Further and further into the weeds.
We have absolutely no proof
god isn’t an insect
rubbing her hind legs together to sing.
Or boring into us like a yellow jacket
into a fallen, overripe pear.
Or an assassin bug squatting over us,
shoving a proboscis right through
our breast plate then sipping.
How wonderful our poisons don’t kill her.
-- First appeared in Poetry, July-Aug 2008
Monday, October 18, 2010
Reading
Visual Arts Centre Poetry and Prose Reading
Wednesday October 20, doors 7pm, show 7:30pm, $5 at the door
School of Art / McClure Gallery: 350 Victoria Avenue, Montreal
Ian Ferrier is one of the core writer/performers in the North American scene. His CD, What is This Place, was released by Bongobeat Records, 2007.
Fortner Anderson has published several audio recordings of his work and has read in Canada, the United States and Europe. http://www.fortneranderson.com/
Aspasia Worlitzky is Spanish teacher and comedian. Book of poems: ¿Adónde vas madre? Anthology: Conjuro de luces, Voces sin fronteras, Presencia femenina.
Endre Farkas is a poet and playwright who is often ahead of his time and loves the curves of life.
Brian Campbell's second poetry collection is Passenger Flight (Signature Editions, 2009). He has been published widely, and was shortlisted for the 2006 CBC Literary Award. http://www.briancampbell.ca/
Dale Matthews's first poetry book, Wait for the Green Fire, was published by New Orleans Poetry Journal Press in 2010.
Mike Di Sclafani is a musician, videographer and sound artist. He took part in the Agence TOPO’s multimedia exhibit Astres (2006) creating the sound effects
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Charles Harper Webb: Prayer for the Man Who Mugged My Father, 72
May there be an afterlife.
May you meet him there, the same age as you.
May the meeting take place in a small, locked room.
May the bushes where you hid be there again, leaves tipped with razor-
blades and acid.
May the rifle butt you bashed him with be in his hands.
May the glass in his car window, which you smashed as he sat stopped
at a red light, spike the rifle butt, and the concrete on which you'll
fall.
May the needles the doctors used to close his eye, stab your pupils
every time you hit the wall and then the floor, which will be often.
May my father let you cower for a while, whimpering, "Please don't
shoot me. Please."
May he laugh, unload your gun, toss it away;
Then may he take you with bare hands.
May those hands, which taught his son to throw a curve and drive a nail
and hold a frog, feel like cannonballs against your jaw.
May his arms, which powered handstands and made their muscles jump
to please me, wrap your head and grind your face like stone.
May his chest, thick and hairy as a bear's, feel like a bear's snapping
your bones.
May his feet, which showed me the flutter kick and carried me miles
through the woods, feel like axes crushing your one claim to man-
hood as he chops you down.
And when you are down, and he's done with you, which will be soon,
since, even one-eyed, with brain damage, he's a merciful man,
May the door to the room open and let him stride away to the Valhalla
he deserves.
May you—bleeding, broken—drag yourself upright.
May you think the worst is over;
You've survived, and may still win.
Then may the door open once more, and let me in.
May you meet him there, the same age as you.
May the meeting take place in a small, locked room.
May the bushes where you hid be there again, leaves tipped with razor-
blades and acid.
May the rifle butt you bashed him with be in his hands.
May the glass in his car window, which you smashed as he sat stopped
at a red light, spike the rifle butt, and the concrete on which you'll
fall.
May the needles the doctors used to close his eye, stab your pupils
every time you hit the wall and then the floor, which will be often.
May my father let you cower for a while, whimpering, "Please don't
shoot me. Please."
May he laugh, unload your gun, toss it away;
Then may he take you with bare hands.
May those hands, which taught his son to throw a curve and drive a nail
and hold a frog, feel like cannonballs against your jaw.
May his arms, which powered handstands and made their muscles jump
to please me, wrap your head and grind your face like stone.
May his chest, thick and hairy as a bear's, feel like a bear's snapping
your bones.
May his feet, which showed me the flutter kick and carried me miles
through the woods, feel like axes crushing your one claim to man-
hood as he chops you down.
And when you are down, and he's done with you, which will be soon,
since, even one-eyed, with brain damage, he's a merciful man,
May the door to the room open and let him stride away to the Valhalla
he deserves.
May you—bleeding, broken—drag yourself upright.
May you think the worst is over;
You've survived, and may still win.
Then may the door open once more, and let me in.
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
Anis Shivani: What Is the State of American Poetry? Leading American Poets Speak
Anis Shivani: What Is the State of American Poetry? Leading American Poets Speak
When this article appeared in Huffington post three weeks ago, I immediately posted it to Facebook, as a kind of bookmark for myself, where it also got some positive response from literary readers. Posting there was a simple click-click process. It's more cumbersome to cross-post attractively on Blogger -- especially to import an eye-catching image.
Anyway, at the time I was too busy to read it myself, but there's a lot of worthwhile material here, which I'm reading now -- interviews with Clayton Eshleman, Annie Finch, Ron Silliman, and Danielle Pafunda, along with videos, poems on pdfs, and further links to their works. Anis Shivani did a really good job in bringing these poets to a wider audience. (CBC could take a cue here...)
To me articles like this are of particular interest, since they form a natural follow-up to my own article "Can Poetry Matter -- 15 Years After", itself a response to the seminal essay by Dana Gioia that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, now 19 years ago.
When this article appeared in Huffington post three weeks ago, I immediately posted it to Facebook, as a kind of bookmark for myself, where it also got some positive response from literary readers. Posting there was a simple click-click process. It's more cumbersome to cross-post attractively on Blogger -- especially to import an eye-catching image.
Anyway, at the time I was too busy to read it myself, but there's a lot of worthwhile material here, which I'm reading now -- interviews with Clayton Eshleman, Annie Finch, Ron Silliman, and Danielle Pafunda, along with videos, poems on pdfs, and further links to their works. Anis Shivani did a really good job in bringing these poets to a wider audience. (CBC could take a cue here...)
To me articles like this are of particular interest, since they form a natural follow-up to my own article "Can Poetry Matter -- 15 Years After", itself a response to the seminal essay by Dana Gioia that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, now 19 years ago.
Monday, October 04, 2010
Two Aubades: Philip Larkin and John Donne
An aubade is a lyric about dawn -- it may be a joyous celebration of morning, or a lament that two lovers must part. Think Romeo and Juliet. Think "Morning Has Broken", the great song popularized by Cat Stevens.
Below are two aubades, one by Philip Larkin, the other by John Donne. Donne's poem is by far the more famous -- heavily anthologized, it's among The Classic Hundred, I think. A poem of tremendous verve and gusto, it's also, well, more than a tad artificial, with its tight meter and rhyme, its apostrophe to the sun -- is old Sol in his regular courses really so "unruly"? -- but his devices enable him to generate some great lines, like "I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink" and the oft-quoted "hours, days, months, which are the rags of time." Larkin's poem owes much to Donne -- there are a few image-echoes here, and doubtless he wouldn't have written it this way had not Donne's poem been among his prior reading. (I also hear echoes, in his lament about religion, of Arnold's Dover Beach.)
Clearly Larkin is well-nigh our contemporary, and his poem I relate to strongly -- I've endured many a night just like this. Donne's poem, for all its brilliance, seems more a rhetorical exercise.
AUBADE
Philip Larkin
I work all day, and get half drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not used, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never:
But at the total emptiness forever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says no rational being
Can fear a thing it cannot feel, not seeing
that this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no-one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source:
Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I.
E. K. Chambers, ed.
London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 7-8.
Below are two aubades, one by Philip Larkin, the other by John Donne. Donne's poem is by far the more famous -- heavily anthologized, it's among The Classic Hundred, I think. A poem of tremendous verve and gusto, it's also, well, more than a tad artificial, with its tight meter and rhyme, its apostrophe to the sun -- is old Sol in his regular courses really so "unruly"? -- but his devices enable him to generate some great lines, like "I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink" and the oft-quoted "hours, days, months, which are the rags of time." Larkin's poem owes much to Donne -- there are a few image-echoes here, and doubtless he wouldn't have written it this way had not Donne's poem been among his prior reading. (I also hear echoes, in his lament about religion, of Arnold's Dover Beach.)
Clearly Larkin is well-nigh our contemporary, and his poem I relate to strongly -- I've endured many a night just like this. Donne's poem, for all its brilliance, seems more a rhetorical exercise.
AUBADE
Philip Larkin
I work all day, and get half drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not used, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never:
But at the total emptiness forever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says no rational being
Can fear a thing it cannot feel, not seeing
that this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no-one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
THE SUN RISING
John Donne
BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Thy beams so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou think ?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."
She's all states, and all princes I ;
Nothing else is ;
Princes do but play us ; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus ;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source:
Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I.
E. K. Chambers, ed.
London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 7-8.
Back in the saddle...
The last month I've been busy with teaching and two grant applications.
The summer was a good and productive one -- wrote/revised a number of poems I'm quite happy with (including a couple that got accepted by Saranac Review), took trips to Quebec City and Baie St-Paul, to Toronto, and to my partner's mother's cottage north of Napanee, Ont. Reading highlights included Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (it has to be one of the best novels I've ever read -- I've been meaning to read it for quite some time), Camu's L'etranger (reread, this time en Francais), and, among poetry, which was mostly read online and in anthologies, Susan Briscoe's The Crow's Vow, Pris Campbell's Seatrails, and a book of tanka entitled The Ink Dark Moon, Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu translated by Jane Hirshfield (with Marco Aratani). The latter was a brilliant read -- one I especially recommend.
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