New Subtitle and Unpredictably Irregular Poetry Exposure #14

Scratch that last note, my new subtitle will be "How To Pretend To Be A Genius".  What do you think?

TURN OFF THE NEWS

anxiety gallops through chatter
fading century’s martial insanities
brain struggles to sum up “shut up”
articulation fails
walking shadow slides across faces

dusk over epitaphs
ash hair rusty litanies

dead friends and rain
paradise is an idiot
bones vines cold day
old vulture in airlock

scorpion dust
sneeze

-Anselm Hollo (Poet Anti-Laureate of the U.S.)

Unpredictably Irregular Poetry Exposure #13

Prologue to the Adagios Quartet

One narrow world that might be anywhere; but, for you,
it's here and it's now, now. Palest full moon in the window,
muted blue-grey shadows, smoke coiling within
variegated scintillae of light.

Just lie there.

Don't move.

That's good. Nothing like a man who can follow
the figures of beauty, fathom the fingers, the splaying
of light. Your hands are beautiful, smooth
and worn, firm and supple, a hint of moisture
glancing off the wet plucked eye suspended in the balance,
in the frame, and yes, I'm calling your name, seeking, seeking, speaking
from experience, from what I know you crave; so, come,
here, now. I know what you need and you know how good
it can feel, giving yourself over to the abandoning emptying
and to keep breathing, hot, like that, on the back of my neck. Man . . .

Did a dame ever have it so good, so easy, a place to worship,
a temple in which to slide moist lips and eloquent tongue narrating
a wordless world turning upsy-turvy placing these jewels
ever so gently between teeth, and time, and breathe,
hallelujah, breathe, breathe, breathe. Wild and wondrous
before this fragility of need and it's heavenly to kneel,
desire flickering defiantly among stilled shiftings of forever,
lovely so opened, awake in my mouth. And, you know,

it's the rhythm,
it's the glide and sway, it's you moving with me and I with you
tasting the sweet explosions spectacularly cascading
across the moon drifting slowly
out of this poem, this frame, this time, air porous
with inevitability, menace and caress held at bay, thighs tangling
in strands of the futureless future guttering
among shafts of light and yes, that's it and that's all.

- Judith Fitzgerald gives an interesting assemblage of notes to her poem on her website.

The Humble and Defecatory Posture (and Unpredictably Irregular Poetry Exposure #12)

Something humble, placid even, about inert feet under stall doors.  The defecatory posture is an accepting posture, it occurs to him.  Head down, elbows on knees, the fingers laced together between the knees.  Some hunched timeless millennial type of waiting, almost religious.  Luther's shoes on the floor beneath the chamber pot, placid, possibly made of wood, Luther's 16th century shoes, awaiting epiphany.  The mute quiescent suffering of generations of salesmen in the stalls of train-station johns, heads down, fingers laced, shined shoes inert, awaiting the acid gush.  Women's slippers, centurion's dusty sandals, dock-worker's hobnailed boots, Pope's slippers.  All waiting, pointing straight ahead, slightly tapping.  Huge shaggy-browed men in skins hunched just past the firelight's circle with wadded leaves in one hand, waiting.

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

Shittard
Squitard
Crackard
     Turdous.
Thy bung
Hath flung
Some dung
      on us.
Filthard
Cackard
Stinkard:
     St. Antonie's fire seize on
           thy toane,
If thy
Dirty
Dounby
     Thou do not wipe ere
            thou be gone.

Will you have any more of it?  Yes, yes (answered Grangousier.)  Then said Gargantua,

A ROUNDLAY
In shiting yesday I did know
The sesse I to my arse did owe:
The smell was such came from that slunk,
That I was with it all bestunk:
O had but then some brave Signor
Brought her to me I waited for,
       in shiting:
I would have cleft her watergap,
And joyn'd it close to my flip-flap,
Whilest she had with her fingers guarded
My foule Nackandrow, all bemerded
     in shiting.

Gargantua and Pantagruel - Francois Rabelais

Unpredictably Irregular Poetry Exposure #11

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

A poem should be motionless in time 
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, 
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time 
As the moon climbs.

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean
But be.

-Archibald MacLeish 

Nativity of the Theotokos (also Unpredictably Irregular Poetry Exposure #10)

 "The Mother of God"

The threefold terror of love; a fallen flare
Through the hollow of an ear;
Wings beating about the room;
The terror of all terrors that I bore
The Heavens in my womb.

Had I not found content among the shows
Every common woman knows,
Chimney corner, garden walk,
Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothes
And gather all the talk?

What is this flesh I purchased with my pains,
This fallen star my milk sustains,
This love that makes my heart's blood stop
Or strikes a Sudden chill into my bones
And bids my hair stand up? 

-W.B. Yeats

"Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell"

Down through the tomb's inward arch
He has shouldered out into Limbo
to gather them, dazed, from dreamless slumber:
the merciful dead, the prophets,
the innocents just His own age and those
unnumbered others waiting here
unaware, in an endless void He is ending
now, stooping to tug at their hands,
to pull them from their sarcophagi,
dazzled, almost unwilling. Didmas,
neighbor in death, Golgotha dust
still streaked on the dried sweat of his body
no one had washed and anointed, is here,
for sequence is not known in Limbo;
the promise, given from cross to cross
at noon, arches beyond sunset and dawn.
All these He will swiftly lead
to the Paradise road: they are safe.
That done, there must take place that struggle
no human presumes to picture:
living, dying, descending to rescue the just
from shadow, were lesser travails
than this: to break
through earth and stone of the faithless world
back to the cold sepulchre, tearstained
stifling shroud; to break from them
back into breath and heartbeat, and walk
the world again, closed into days and weeks again,
wounds of His anguish open, and Spirit
streaming through every cell of flesh
so that if mortal sight could bear
to perceive it, it would be seen
His mortal flesh was lit from within, now,
and aching for home. He must return,
first, in Divine patience, and know
hunger again, and give
to humble friends the joy
of giving Him food--fish and a honeycomb.

-Denise Levertov 

Unpredictably Irregular Poetry Exposure #9

"Daddy" by: Sylvia Plath

You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time-- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You-- Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I'm finally through. The black telephone's off at the root, The voices just can't worm through. If I've killed one man, I've killed two-- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now. There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

Unpredictably Irregular Poetry Exposure #8

"Skunk Hour"
For Elizabeth Bishop

Nautilus Island's hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son's a bishop. Her farmer
is first selectman in our village;
she's in her dotage.

Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
of Queen Victoria's century,
she buys up all
the eyesores facing her shore,
and lets them fall.

The season's ill--
we've lost our summer millionaire,
who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean
catalogue. His nine-knot yawl
was auctioned off to lobstermen.
A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.

And now our fairy
decorator brightens his shop for fall;
his fishnet's filled with orange cork,
orange, his cobbler's bench and awl;
there is no money in his work,
he'd rather marry.

One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull;
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . .
My mind's not right.

A car radio bleats,
"Love, O careless Love. . . ." I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat. . . .
I myself am hell;
nobody's here--

only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their soles up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes' red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.

I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air--
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail.
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare.

-Robert Lowell

"The Armadillo"
For Robert Lowell

This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,

rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.

Once up against the sky it's hard
to tell them from the stars --
planets, that is -- the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars,

or the pale green one. With a wind,
they flare and falter, wobble and toss;
but if it's still they steer between
the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,

receding, dwindling, solemnly
and steadily forsaking us,
or, in the downdraft from a peak,
suddenly turning dangerous.

Last night another big one fell.
It splattered like an egg of fire
against the cliff behind the house.
The flame ran down. We saw the pair

of owls who nest there flying up
and up, their whirling black-and-white
stained bright pink underneath, until
they shrieked up out of sight.

The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,

and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft! -- a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.

Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!

-Elizabeth Bishop

Unpredictably Irregular Poetry Exposure #7

The dead swans lay in the stagnant pool.
They lay. They rotted. They turned
Around occasionally.
Bits of flesh dropped off them from
Time to time.
And sank into the pool's mire.
They also smelt a great deal.

-Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings

Unbelievable...

Unpredictably Irregular Poetry Exposure #6

"Ode to the Confederate Dead"


Row after row with strict impunity
The headstones yield their names to the element,
The wind whirrs without recollection;
In the riven troughs the splayed leaves
Pile up, of nature the casual sacrament
To the seasonal eternity of death;
Then driven by the fierce scrutiny
Of heaven to their election in the vast breath,
They sough the rumour of mortality.

Autumn is desolation in the plot
Of a thousand acres where these memories grow
From the inexhaustible bodies that are not
Dead, but feed the grass row after rich row.
Think of the autumns that have come and gone!--
Ambitious November with the humors of the year,
With a particular zeal for every slab,
Staining the uncomfortable angels that rot
On the slabs, a wing chipped here, an arm there:
The brute curiosity of an angel's stare
Turns you, like them, to stone,
Transforms the heaving air
Till plunged to a heavier world below
You shift your sea-space blindly
Heaving, turning like the blind crab.

Dazed by the wind, only the wind
The leaves flying, plunge

You know who have waited by the wall
The twilight certainty of an animal,
Those midnight restitutions of the blood
You know--the immitigable pines, the smoky frieze
Of the sky, the sudden call: you know the rage,
The cold pool left by the mounting flood,
Of muted Zeno and Parmenides.
You who have waited for the angry resolution
Of those desires that should be yours tomorrow,
You know the unimportant shrift of death
And praise the vision
And praise the arrogant circumstance
Of those who fall
Rank upon rank, hurried beyond decision--
Here by the sagging gate, stopped by the wall.

Seeing, seeing only the leaves
Flying, plunge and expire

Turn your eyes to the immoderate past,
Turn to the inscrutable infantry rising
Demons out of the earth they will not last.
Stonewall, Stonewall, and the sunken fields of hemp,
Shiloh, Antietam, Malvern Hill, Bull Run.
Lost in that orient of the thick and fast
You will curse the setting sun.

Cursing only the leaves crying
Like an old man in a storm

You hear the shout, the crazy hemlocks point
With troubled fingers to the silence which
Smothers you, a mummy, in time.

The hound bitch
Toothless and dying, in a musty cellar
Hears the wind only.

Now that the salt of their blood
Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea,
Seals the malignant purity of the flood,
What shall we who count our days and bow
Our heads with a commemorial woe
In the ribboned coats of grim felicity,
What shall we say of the bones, unclean,
Whose verdurous anonymity will grow?
The ragged arms, the ragged heads and eyes
Lost in these acres of the insane green?
The gray lean spiders come, they come and go;
In a tangle of willows without light
The singular screech-owl's tight
Invisible lyric seeds the mind
With the furious murmur of their chivalry.

We shall say only the leaves
Flying, plunge and expire

We shall say only the leaves whispering
In the improbable mist of nightfall
That flies on multiple wing:
Night is the beginning and the end
And in between the ends of distraction
Waits mute speculation, the patient curse
That stones the eyes, or like the jaguar leaps
For his own image in a jungle pool, his victim.

What shall we say who have knowledge
Carried to the heart? Shall we take the act
To the grave? Shall we, more hopeful, set up the grave
In the house? The ravenous grave?

Leave now
The shut gate and the decomposing wall:
The gentle serpent, green in the mulberry bush,
Riots with his tongue through the hush--
Sentinel of the grave who counts us all!

-Allen Tate

Read his commentary on the poem here.

Unpredictably Irregular Poetry Exposure #5

Two poems this time, one a translation, the other...well, you'll figure it out.

New Translation of Polina Barskova
by Ilya Kaminsky

A Still Life

Saturday morning. Schubert. Frosya torments the slipper.
White hydrangea. (Remember, as in Sapunov?)
I lie on the floor between dolls, small hats, t-shirts.
I stare at you, and close my eyes.

Music for performance over water? Over waters?
The German rhythm stops
like a member of the National-Socialist party in a frightened mouth.
You sit by the computer, covered with light ice
covered with your porcelain beauty.

And waters of Schubert like thousands of tiny mice boil in your mouth.
I’ve been looking at you for three years, like a maniac at the
corpse’s cameo
waiting—the policemen will arrive—they’ll begin to yell
beat me with a shoe, and I will lay quietly on the floor.
Know nothing. Hear nothing. Nothing.
The white hydrangea, a fistful of fireworks
in the sky, as if
some celestial mole labors in the sky.
—Mishenka, it is too bright?
—It is not too bright.
Bubbles of Schubert. Tears bubbling in my mouth.

(From Guernica, May 2007)

I Love Me, Vol. I

Pete Lee

Frustrate Lee? Let art surf:
Regard a mad rager,
dessert-stressed
flesh self,
radar,
drab bard
(anal was I ere I saw Lana),

flee to me, remote elf!
Raft far!
O, desire, rise, do!
Dog sit in a lap, pal, an' it is God!
(Dog doo! Good God!)
Bosses sob,
nudists I dun,
sex at noon taxes --

risen or prone, sir?
Egad! No bondage!
Cigar? Toss it in a can, it is so tragic...
But sad Eva saved a stub.
God, to have Eva. Hot dog!
Madam, I'm Adam!

(From Marginalia Vol.3, Issue 1)

Unpredictably Irregular Poetry Exposure #4

I know these are predictably frequent, but some poetry should be read every day.

LA HORA

Cada minuto de este oro
¿no es toda la eternidad?

El aire puro lo mece
sin prisa, como si ya
fuera todo el oro que
tuviera que acompasar.

(¡Ramas últimas, divinas,
inmateriales, en paz;
ondas del mar infinito
de una tarde sin pasar!)

Cada minuto de este oro
¿no es un latido inmortal
de mi corazón radiante
por toda la eternidad?

-Juan Ramon Jimenez

I will not attempt to translate, as my Spanish is by no means poetic, but you should be able to get the drift with all these cognates. "Oro" means gold, "prisa" means to hasten, "ondas" are waves. This should help.

Undpredictably Irregular Poetry Exposure #3

Though you may know him for this poem, I better enjoyed William Carlos Williams' "Perpetuum Mobile: The City", whose first few stanzas read thus:

"—a dream
we dreamed
each
separately
we two

of love
and of
desire—

that fused
in the night—

in the distance
over
the meadows
by day
impossible—
The city
disappeared
when
we arrived—

A dream
a little false
toward which
now
we stand
and stare
transfixed—

All at once
in the east
rising!

All white!
small
as a flower—

a locust cluster
a shad bush
blossoming

Over the swamps
a wild
magnolia bud—
greenish
white
a northern flower—

And so
we live
looking—"

And which can be heard in its entirety here.

Unpredictably Irregular Poetry Exposure #2

O Florida, Venereal Soil

A few things for themselves,
Convolvulus and coral,
Buzzards and live-moss,
Tiestas from the keys,
A few things for themselves,
Florida, venereal soil,
Disclose to the lover.

The dreadful sundry of this world,
The Cuban, Polodowsky,
The Mexican women,
The negro undertaker
Killing the time between corpses
Fishing for crayfish...
Virgin of boorish births,

Swiftly in the nights,
In the porches of Key West,
Behind the bougainvilleas,
After the guitar is asleep,
Lasciviously as the wind,
You come tormenting,
Insatiable,

When you might sit,
A scholar of darkness,
Sequestered over the sea,
Wearing a clear tiara
Of red and blue and red,
Sparkling, solitary, still,
In the high sea-shadow.

Donna, donna, dark,
Stooping in indigo gown
And cloudy constellations,
Conceal yourself or disclose
Fewest things to the lover ---
A hand that bears a thick-leaved fruit,
A pungent bloom against your shade.

-Wallace Stevens

(I thought it fitting considering my recent vacation!)

Unpredictably Irregular Poetry Exposure #1

This thing, that hath a code and not a core,
Hath set acquaintance where might be affections,
And nothing now,
Disturbeth his reflections.
-Ezra Pound