suddenly, in every tree...

By way of example…

much & nothing, part 3

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Tess Gallagher

Choices


I go to the mountain side
of the house to cut saplings
and clear a view to snow
on the mountain. But when I look up,
saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in
the uppermost branches.
I don’t cut that one.
I don’t cut the others either.
Suddenly, in every tree,
an unseen nest
where a mountain
should be.

*

As I read this piece by Tess Gallagher, collected in a marvelous anthology, The Poets Guide to the Birds (Anhinga Press, 2009), edited by Judith Kitchen and Ted Kooser, I find it supporting my premise of the writing process – allowing the poem to find us. The grand awakening that is embodied in the line “Suddenly, in every tree” is the turning point – in my reading of the poem – for the poet to find his or her voice, and for the poem to settle into that voice. The poem’s final line posits that this is the way it should be.

This is a remarkable poem that carries inside it the Buddhist principle of no nature, of being one with and not separate. In our creative selves, we may want to force – say – the poem, but that is not the truth, nor is it the way. The strongest reality is the unseen presence, the shadow figure, the vision. That part or place which is often ignored in the mad dash to find the great truth. If the unseen nest is not realized, all that remains is contrivance. It may be well-structured and well-accepted, but it’s not the real piece of writing it could have been.

I am certain that Gallagher would not want the reading of her poem to be limited to a focus on the creative process. The fact that it also speaks volumes – from such a few lines – about daily living, about relationships, about our connection with the natural world, about the self, is the underpinning of the poem’s strength.

Note how the nest, though hidden, unnoticed, is already well-established and thriving when the poem’s speaker, searching for what she believes is a greater find – vast drifts of snow over mountains – finds, as if by accident, the nest, the home. This realization shows that the speaker’s life will never be the same, and that is one of the true marks of greatness.

one...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

e. e. cummings


l(a

le
af
fa

ll

s)
one
l

iness

*

Such an interior wonder – a perfect expression of image and emotion. The more I think about this piece, the less I can say … and that’s the way it should be.

hidden recess of the will...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Mark Johnston

War Movie in Reverse


Holes close to smooth skin
when the shrapnel flashes out.
The shores of burns recede,
and flames leap with their hot metal
back into the bomb that rises,
whole and air-borne again,
with its gathered blast.
Leading the plane perfectly,
the bomb arc back slowly
through the open gates
and disappears into the waiting belly.
The bombardier lifts
his peering eye from the sight.
Swallowing its wake,
the plane returns to base
with its countermanded mission.
The pilot, irresolute now, faces
his commandant, who marches,
brisk and backward
to the general’s lair.
The general takes back the orders.
But into what deep and good and hidden
recess of the will
go his thoughts of not bombing?

*

Johnston’s poem moves from such a disturbing reality to a confrontation with the self ... “thoughts of not bombing”. Sometimes, you cannot save everyone, but you can save yourself. You can make the right choice. It’s been there all along.

A poem, certainly, for our times. I keep it with me always.

this fabric woven and sewn...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Nancy White

Woven and Sewn


You are no virgin, listen. You must stop here.
Sit on the curb and look like a bum.
Hold still until you feel it, too.
There is a no rising in you like green sap like power.
Do not drill into your side. The world is not asking for this.
You are meant to stream upward. No compromise only pause.
Sit in the dirt of the road until you see.
If it takes years it takes years.
This will cost less than the life you would drain from your side.
If you are hungry sleepless cold it is nothing to the other
         suffering.
There is no such have to that lie.
We once told it too. Don't be ashamed.
You are part of this fabric woven and sewn.
But not this what you contemplate willingly today.
You may hate us for these words. It passes.
Believe you are the one in danger. Sit down.

                      - from New Letters and Verse Daily

*

“Sit in the dirt of the road until you see.” – Oh, yes. True writing is lonely business. It flourishes in isolation, and tends to disappear in the spotlight ... shapeshifting to and with the voices around it. Sometimes there is too much noise in the world, and the truth goes away, puts on a mask. This recent poem by Nancy White, author of Sun, Moon, Salt (Word Works, 1992), urges us to stop, to listen.

A collective unconscious does resonate in “You may hate us for these words,” near the concluding lines. The central question in the poem is twofold: into what fabric are we “woven and sewn” and who does the weaving, the sewing. When I read these lines, I want to move beyond the self. The I becomes the fabric – or at least a part of the fabric. “Hold still,” White writes, “until you feel it too.” The current of poetry that surrounds us. We’ve been there. We’re no virgins.

I have no doubt that “until you see” must, however, transcend my simple reading of the poem. That is such a large notion. It may take years to see the rest of one’s life – all the possibilities. There may be hunger, sleeplessness, cold – and here the poet intends the states of the soul or the creative self. The alternative? A suffering that is the loss of that “life you would drain from your side”. The life you would let go of or not attain at all. One certain danger – allowing that life to slip away.

consume...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

José Garcia Villa

            – from “Lyrics”

22


O Lovely. O lovely as a panther. O
Creation’s supremest dissenter.
Enter. Teach me thy luminous ire.
O jeweled, pacing, night-displacing
Fire. O night’s nimble-dancing, No-
Saying lyre. Embrace me. Defy me.
Reave me. None shall defend me.
Not God. Not I. Purify me. Consume
Me. Disintegrate me to thy ecstasy.
O lovely and without mercy. O dark-
Footed divinity. O Lovely and Terrible.
O Death-irreducible. O Unimpeachable.

*

The ecstasy at work in José Garcia Villa’s poem is the voice in the presence that is the poem. Its power made dark and beautiful in the form of a panther. The great “dissenter” – a bit of paradoxical language music – that enters. Using enjambments, line after line, forces the reader to lunge forward. The stop and go syntax is a perfect fit for the tone that is a radiant anger, a glow of passion:

O jeweled, pacing, night displacing
Fire.

The energy of the language creates a poetry that is bold, stripped-down to essentials – a music that is both holy and sensual: “Not God. Not I.” … but “dark-Footed … Lovely and Terrible”. The idea of language as violence – in its creative workings – is a focus that Villa, a Filipino / Asian / American and giant of an underread, brilliant poet … and here recall the famous photo, Gotham Book Mark, 1948, of Villa with, among others, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Randall Jarrell, Edith Sitwell … a poet who would continue to develop throughout his oeuvre an expansive, unorthodox use of syntax, punctuation, and grammatical mechanics.

This piece presents a vision of poet as creator … as one might encounter in the world of Jorge Luis Borges’ El Hacedor. There is a truth here that is “without mercy,” a poetics that is relentless in forcing the reader to a new place. But it’s a place that is welcomed. No turning back.

Villa’s collected poems, Doveglion, was published this summer (2008) by Penguin Classics – a collection made inevitable by the success of The Anchored Angel: Selected Writings (Kaya, 1999), Eileen Tabios’ edited volume that reintroduced his neglected work to the English speaking world. His is a poetry that is raw and fearless.

split like spun glass...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Marianne Moore

Fish


wade
through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash-heaps;
opening and shutting itself like

an
injured fan.
The barnacles which encrust the side
of the wave, cannot hide
there for the submerged shafts of the

sun,
split like spun
glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
into the crevices—
in and out, illuminating

the
turquoise sea
of bodies. The water drives a wedge
of iron throught the iron edge
of the cliff; whereupon the stars,

pink
rice-grains, ink-
bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green
lilies, and submarine
toadstools, slide each on the other.

All
external
marks of abuse are present on this
defiant edifice—
all the physical features of

ac-
cident—lack
of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and
hatchet strokes, these things stand
out on it; the chasm-side is

dead.
Repeated
evidence has proved that it can live
on what can not revive
its youth. The sea grows old in it.




*

An amazing use of line and music. The language, from the first stanza, is rich and direct. The form is a paradox of tight, determined lines that appear to be open, free. That is the poet’s deception. Moore is such a master of control that the music becomes spontaneous for the reader who must surrender to the force of the poetry.

A beautiful poem about – as Richard Howard has said – survival. I agree.

shadows come to life...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Nin Andrews

What Is It About the Past


the Old Country where the children we were
walk around in black and white
movies, long nights with bugs
flying in my window, dreams
slippery as wet fish, moans
in the air from our parents’ room? Horses


kicked at their stalls, heat
shivered in the summer skies. Sleepless
we held our breath, saw shadows
come to life and pulled them inside
us, shutting our eyes. I denied
they existed, denied


we existed, remembering the nuns
at school who wore black to hide
their whiteness, wore black
to show us they were servants
of God. I still dream them at night
lifting their heavy gowns
as the past unreels, a soundless
movie on a white wall with nobody watching.

*

“What Is It About the Past” resonates for me as a companion piece of sorts to Stanley Kunitz’ marvelous “Three Floors” – a poem about memory that recreates childhood, loss, sounds and shadows in a near horrific way. I doubt that Andrews had Kunitz’ poem in mind when she wrote her lines, but both poems approach the subject and theme in similar fashion.

Andrews’ poem creates an accurate scene of the solitude required for memory. Note the closing lines that carry the motion of the past:

                                             a soundless
movie on a white wall with nobody watching

All the pieces of a life that define, not so much its worth, but its specific qualities. The poet’s use of enjambments, of various forms, is forceful and accelerates the read in the lines: bugs / flying, Horses / kicked, heat / shivered, shadows / come, night / lifting. This is a strong and satisfying quality in the poetry. Enjambments of a more descriptive nature such as dreams / slippery and soundless / movie reflect the brokenness of the speaker’s world. This technique adds a certain discordant quality that supports the fragmentary nature of memory and the uncertainty implied in the poem’s title.

The opening stanza focuses on the physical world of walking and nights and bugs and moans. Although the actions become increasingly disjointed as the poem progresses, the setting remains a familiar one. Andrews is gifted at creating a reality that is complete with sight and sound, but this reality does fracture. The “nights / with bugs flying” shifts to “shadows come to life” and the disturbing dream of nuns, in black and white – the imagery referencing not just the clothing but also an absence of color or reality in the dream – “at night / lifting their heavy gowns”. With each line, the speaker becomes more remote and withdrawn, yet is able to connect with and involve the reader in a clear, inescapable way.

Andrews closes the poem with a paradox: the soundless movie that unreels with no one watching – a memory that is being uncovered, at least in part, though never fully explained. The reader sees all, yet nobody is watching. The image continues to move beyond the space and boundary of the piece. I find that amazing and appealing, and a perfect ending for the work.

the innards of this house...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Edison Jennings

Feeding the Fire


Down the chute the coal chunks come, black and brittle
from time’s press, packed with essence of dim forests,
funk of flora, fungiforms, relics of the Paleozoic
destined for my furnace, fire-bellied Baal that warms
the innards of this house.
                                        I toss the flame a shovel load
and feel the blaze of opaque past transfigured into infrared,
then kick shut the furnace door and wipe the smudge
of pitch-black dust that seams the lifeline of my palm.


             – published in The Kenyon Review and Poetry Daily

*

“Feeding the Fire” is a compressed force of lyrical beauty – the music, an expected tool in Edison Jennings’ poetry, is integral to every line. Alliteration gives life to the imagery in such a pleasing way. This is a poem that springs from a rich tradition: Dickinson, Frost, Robert Lowell. The brevity of the piece forces the reader into a clear, exact view of a scene that is transformed. A simple, small act of shoveling coal into a furnace in winter takes on characteristics of ritual or myth, somehow becoming a larger exploit of individual action and emotion.

At no time, however, does the poem lose its accessibility, and that, no doubt, is because of Jennings’ painterly approach to imagery. The language is rich, without question, but he approaches the poem with a painter’s hand in giving the piece its detail: the black and brittle coal, the smudge on the palm, the fire and heat in “the innards of this house”. This aspect of his craft is evident in many poems – “Apple Economics,” “Thermodynamics,” and “Chiaroscuro” … to name three. The visual features of “Feeding the Fire” are quite specific: the chute, the coal chunks, dim forests, fungiforms, the furnace of the house. As the poem closes, the act of kicking shut the furnace door, then wiping coal dust from the hands – though mundane and very physical – startle the reader into a changed state. Something is happening. Something universal. The dust that seams the lifeline, that part of the universe we lay claim to – history, architecture, the arts, relationships, spirituality, the physical and sensual world – becomes our lives. This is the fire we feed, and continue to do so. It sustains us.

Jennings’ music in the lines is pleasing to the ear:

and feel the blaze of opaque past transfigured into infrared,
then kick shut the furnace door and wipe the smudge
of pitch-black dust…

The physical presence in the poem is so familiar to me. This is a poetry that appeals to the tongue – funk of flora and my furnace, fire-belied Baal – yet never loses its importance to the page. I’ve read the work many times, and each reading is fresh because the fires change as I change. That gives the poem a certain transcendence and, in my view, a touch of greatness.

waiting for a sign...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Felicia Mitchell

Album


1.

In the photograph I do not take,
my father’s feeding tube
feeds itself on his body:
the body that he has willed to outlast
every possible medical intervention.
And though he is not underground,
or lying in a wooden coffin,
there are flowers around his remains:
the Judas branch I snapped out front,
the hotel’s daffodils, azalea blooms
from my mother’s garden.
All of these fit in a Styrofoam cup.
All of my father fits in one bed.

2.

In the photograph I do not take,
my father is not smiling
but his hand is waving,
its bandages white like flags of surrender.
He is waving at his grandson
whose yo-yo is a pendulum,
whose eyes are very sad,
whose note to his grandpa
written so precisely in a schoolboy’s hand
is answered with the truth
by a man who cannot hear himself speak it:
“Not so good, Guy, not so good.”

3.

In the photograph I do not take,
my mother is out of the picture.
As much as she has seen, she has never seen this.
She has never seen quite this.

4.

In the photograph I do not take,
nobody can see my cousin Walter
seated at the foot of the bed.
My father’s companion since his death,
Walter takes up so little room
not even the night nurse mentions him
to her supervisor, or turns him in to God
for being AWOL from the hereafter.
Walter the politician has no pull now,
but he lets my father in on little secrets
and pulls the blanket over his toes.

5.

In the photograph I do not take,
all my father’s children are standing by
at the same time in the same room.
The black hair John pulled from our father’s head
to mantle his own bald head is long.
Of all of us, he knows the most.
He knows how veins burn out and needles hurt
and nights are long when your roommate sleeps.
He knows how handicapped the healthy are,
how hard it is for them to focus
when they pass through the door downstairs
to halls that smell of old urine.
Our father knows that John knows the most
and holds the hand whose last pulse he counted.
The rest of us fan out like angel wings
on either side, waiting for a sign.

6.

In the photograph I do not take,
I am crying tears like baroque pearls
in different, scattered sizes,
and the miracle is that they fall
painlessly from my tear ducts.
The camera is not on a tripod.
My arm is long enough, my fingers deft.
I can capture myself in time.
Later, I will string the pearls with silk thread
that looks nothing like a feeding tube.
I will wear them to my father’s grave.
Another daughter might bury them.
I will wear them to my father’s funeral
every day I wear them
and I will wear them every day.


             – published in Blood Orange Review

*

The form of Mitchell’s poem is marvelous, each section exhibiting the extreme value placed on what is not there, what does not happen, what is not said. That is a powerful and disturbing theme. “Album” possesses a thread of ache that connects the reader with all those moments of loss that life must present. In the opening section, the waiting for silence in the hospital room – such a universal moment of living death – amid flowers … the Judas branch, daffodils, azalea blooms … gives way to the devastating lines that show Mitchell’s mastery of her craft:

All of these fit in a Styrofoam cup.
All of my father fits in one bed.

Presented with such an image, the reader cannot escape the poem.

The poet is relentless in penetrating the tiny details of life – as in the closing section:

Later, I will string the pearls with silk thread
that looks nothing like a feeding tube.
I will wear them to my father’s grave.
Another daughter might bury them.

In four brief lines, the poem, presenting an emotionally charged setting with clarity, reveals the speaker on an intimate level. The lines show hurt and loss with as great a depth as is possible.

Mitchell, however, does not intend the poem to finalize itself with release. She is writing about the Sisyphusian experience of loss – no easy answers ... no getting over. The poetry shows a surrendering to the necessity of continuance – the poem’s speaker wearing tears like pearls:

every day I wear them
and I will wear them every day.

After reading this poem, I am forced to inventory my own experience. This is a poetry not easily shaken – if at all. Am I jealous of the work – as Seamus Heaney would say? Most certainly. “Album” is a poem I would give anything to experience in the creative act – ink being scratched over the infinite blank of the page.

wings of words...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Rita Sims Quillen

Back When I Wrote Poems


I was younger, stronger, quicker then
With beautiful white wings of words.
I could soar over currents of hot syllables
Invincible, the wind exhilarating
Taking my breath.
Deliberately initiating death spirals
Arching my back at just the right moment,
I’d pull up, skimming over the upturned faces below
Land on a promontory and smile,
Very pleased with myself.

Today when I mounted the current,
I had to fight for altitude
Wings stiff slow uncertain—
This wind only hurts.
Worst of all
Below me there are no faces
Only a black bottomless pond
Mirror shining my pale face back to me
No place to go
But the ground.

*

Quillen, a poet who either consciously or unconsciously echoes Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Constantly Risking Absurdity,” illustrates, with effective delivery, the life of the artist – a theme she revisits on occasion throughout her oeuvre. Each poem written makes the next one more difficult. The artist is demanding, relentless, unsatisfied. Yet, words do appear.

Although she is a writer forever attached to the literary topography of Appalachia – a clear strength in her writing – Quillen has never written a more universal poem. The more our writing life extends, the more remarkable and illusive finding the way becomes. It does not get easier. As Quillen writes, “there are no faces,” showing the loss of recognition and recognizing the writer must encounter. That is in the texture of our being. Words, at least for a time, may soar – the wind delivering them to a multitude of landscapes beyond the control of the pen, but the poet will, irrevocably, hit the ground. The magnificent will flatten. Then begins the vital but nearly impossible burden of another flight. And another. Still another.

This poem opens Her Secret Dream (Wind Publications, 2007), a collection that presents Quillen’s extraordinary range of craft and subject matter. It is a book that confirms the ache – an important word for the poet – at the core of human experience. She’s a gifted writer, absolutely determined to recreate her physical world with language. And she is successful.

this warm, dry space...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

James Owens

Encounter

On a cold morning in spring. Raining. I’m driving by, my
different atmosphere. She is walking the gravel border of the
road, small, I guess twelve years old, lugging a plastic sack of
groceries with both hands, hooded sweatshirt already soaked,
her face pale and wet, plastered with dripping strands of red
hair. I can’t offer a ride. Think of her teeth chattering, think of
her tiny feet chilled in wet socks. Imagine her backing away
from the open car window, afraid because she’s been warned
about this, maybe her worried grandmother tearful with the
police after she gets home with the story. One doesn’t offer
rides these days, even though I am harmless. I see that you
can’t be sure, that you suspect me, no matter that I’m the one
who invited you into this warm, dry space where I am speaking.
Think of those decayed narrative conventions that once meant
so much between us. Think of syntax. Remember the persuasion
of sentences, their supple pressures and release.

*

An amazing piece in the early pages of James Owens’ latest collection, Frost Lights a Thin Flame (Mayapple Press, 2007) – a group of poems that is very place-centered, peopled with authentic characters. This poem, with its straight-ahead narrative approach, captures me. Owens’ focus is to draw in the reader, and he’s successful. The reader enters the poem in a real and physical sense. The equivalent would be watching a movie, only to realize that somehow you had moved inside the actual film, becoming a character in the story. The speaker in the poem, in story-like manner, using a tone and language that is absolutely expected, creates a setting with believable characters.

Two-thirds of the way through the poem, however, the universal voice, without warning, becomes very personal, speaking directly to the reader ... speaking directly to me. The feeling created by this approach is unnerving. The speaker at no time appears to step outside the poem; instead, the reader, in Gregor Samsa-like fashion, has a realization of being inside the poem, without ever noticing the shift. It simply happens. An incredible feat. Owens never explains how – nor does he need to. I’m a believer.

“Encounter” ultimately shows itself as being focused on the power of language to illustrate, clearly, the nature of lost connections. Notice the bent of the wording: decayed narrative conventions, syntax, persuasion of sentences. The “pressures and release” at the end intensify the transportation into this brief and unusual world. My exact experience when first reading the poem was to feel as though I were a time traveler, trapped inside an episode of The Outer Limits. “Trapped” is the proper response with Owens’ poem. He focuses on difficult matters – the impossibility of befriending, because of the very nature of the world, a young walker, caught in the cold rain. The speaker, as would most any reader, wants to help but cannot. All the characters here – speaker, walker, reader – need to connect, but cannot – and that is the point – in this most improbable landscape of the poem itself.

to find yourself...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Molly Peacock

Chance


may favor obscure brainy aptitudes in you
and a love of the past so blind you would
venture, always securing permission,
into the back library stacks, without food
or water because you have a mission:
to find yourself, in the regulated light,
holding a volume in your hands as you
yourself might like to be held. Mostly your life
will be voices and images. Information. You
may go a long way alone, and travel much
to open a book to renew your touch.

*

Marvelous lines that have no false notion of what the poem is supposed to do – to speak to that part in each on of us that studies a very personal version of self, that strives to go beyond, to know without knowing. This is who we are... “Mostly your life / will be voices and images.” Peacock writes of the mission to find the self as a necessary journey that everyone must take. I’m fascinated by the power of words here, of the ability of a book “to renew your touch”. To hold a book as you would like to be held. Connections.

Words carry their own immortality. When I speak aloud a poem by Rumi, Han-shan, Emily Dickinson … Bishop or Brooks or Stafford, I must use, in a real sense, their breath. I must breathe the words as they breathed them, must speak the lines as they spoke them. A continual renewal.

in the nothing...

My own poetry is dead – or at least is dying a slow, meandering death. There are flashes of something I once thought I might try to say, or believe I could say, but the ink never quite finds the page the way I think it should. So, the rest is silence.

And what I cannot say, I say very well – in leaving it alone. In forgetting to remember. In the nothing that will have its way.

Gregory Orr says it as it was always meant to be said.

*

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Gregory Orr

Two Poems About Nothing

          “I’ll write a song about nothing at all . . .”
               —Guillaume IX of Aquataine (1071–1127)


When I was young
I fell in love
with nothing.
Nothing had
my heart.
I was a moody
unpleasant youth;
even my mother
disliked me.
What are you
brooding about?
she’d ask.

                    Nothing
I’d answer.
For once, she
approved.
You’re good
for nothing,
she said, and
nothing is good
enough for you.

*

When I was a child
nothing was everywhere.
It lay thick on leaves
and gathered in pools
under cedar trees.
Nothing filled
our barns
and grazed our pastures.
Nothing was so abundant
we never thought
to praise or prize it.
Those days are gone
forever. Now nothing
is scarce
and we lack for nothing.

no spoon to hold...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Naomi Replansky

Epitaph 1945


My spoon was lifted when the bomb came down
That left no face, no hand, no spoon to hold.
A hundred thousand died in my home town.
This came to pass before my soup was cold.

*

A fragment of such a dark moment in history. Somehow guilt, regret, and angst never leave us. We think war is about ideology, about ownership, about politics, power. But, it’s really about food, about innocence, shock, about the disappearance of the day to day.

no idea why...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Arthur Sze

Slanting Light


Slanting light casts onto a stucco wall
the shadows of upwardly zigzagging plum branches.

I can see the thinning of branches to the very twig.
I have to sift what you say, what she thinks,

what he believes is genetic strength, what
they agree is inevitable. I have to sift this

quirky and lashing stillness of form to see myself,
even as I see laid out on a table for Death

an assortment of pomegranates and gourds.
And what if Death eats a few pomegranate seeds?

Does it insure a few years of pungent spring?
I see one gourd, yellow from midsection to top

and zucchini-green lower down, but
already the big orange gourd is gnawed black.

I have no idea why the one survives the killing nights.
I have to sift what you said, what I felt,

what you hoped, what I knew. I have to sift
death as the stark light sifts the branches of the plum.

*

Sze’s poem has a dark quality, a hint of the unknowable, that is so compelling – “what you say, what she thinks, // what he believes”. A “quirky and lashing stillness,” all for Death. The chance of all things is such a powerful weapon. Why this one, and not that one?

The lines in this piece are thin, bare, resistant. Amid all this presence in life, the orange gourd is “gnawed black” – no doubt – from within – something hidden, determined, relentless. The bitterness here is that when you know, it’s already done, already finished. Nothing left. Stark light ... shadows of branches ... stillness ...

the last bright routes, survivor...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Anne Sexton

Her Kind


I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.






~

an alternate reading...



*

A brilliant declaration of fire-breathing words that rail against conformity ... and need no illumination. They carry their own light.

I can’t escape the brutal honesty in Sexton’s lines – and certainly not the deep anguish in realizing the cost of such truths.

just couldn’t grasp it...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Denise Duhamel

Ego


I just didn’t get it –
even with the teacher holding an orange (the earth) in one hand
and a lemon (the moon) in the other,
her favorite student (the sun) standing behind her with a
      flashlight.
I just couldn’t grasp it –
this whole citrus universe, these bumpy planets revolving so slowly
no one could even see themselves moving.
I used to think if I could only concentrate hard enough
I could be the one person to feel what no one else could,
sense a small tug from the ground, a sky shift, the earth changing
      gears.
Even though I was only one mini-speck on a speck,
even though I was merely a pinprick in one goosebump on the
      orange,
I was sure then I was the most specially perceptive, perceptively
      sensitive.
I was sure then my mother was the only mother to snap –
“The world doesn't revolve around you!”
The earth was fragile and mostly water
just the way the orange was mostly water if you peeled it,
just the way I was mostly water if you peeled me.
Looking back on that third-grade science demonstration,
I can understand why some people gave up on fame or religion or
      cures –
especially people who have an understanding
of the excruciating crawl of the world,
who have a well-developed sense of spatial reasoning
and the tininess that it is to be one of us.
But not me – even now I wouldn’t mind being god, the force
who spins the planets the way I spin a globe, a basketball, a
      yoyo.
I wouldn’t mind being that teacher who chooses the fruit,
or that favorite kid who gives the moon its glow.

*

Duhamel’s is such a necessary voice in our poetry. A biting humor – penetrating, real. This poem carries me back to the smell & sound of hardwood floors in elementary school. The coat closet. A swing set the size of a small village.

And, yes, wouldn’t I like to be the one to give the moon its glow. Wouldn’t we all –

Spend time with Duhamel’s poetry, and you will begin to hear a different way to say the extraordinary.

even the monsters we defy...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Claude McKay

If We Must Die


If we must die—let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;
Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

*

A poem with longing, an ache for community, at its center. A poem of strength, of courage ... of a fierce and certain honor, and the willingness to live or die by the heart.

cracked and twilight mirrors...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Robinson Jeffers

Love the Wild Swan


“I hate my verses, every line, every word.
Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.
Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch
One color, one glinting
Hash, of the splendor of things.
Unlucky hunter, Oh bullets of wax,
The lion beauty, the wild-swan wings, the storm of the wings.”
–This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your … self?
At least Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.

*

A beautiful piece that reflects the deep look and sound of language – pencils & twigs … grass blades & wings … bullets, mirrors & eyes – urging the reader to explore the wilderness of self – to explore, knowing the search will never find its rest.

Jeffers, a meticulous artist with words, strikes out to declare the object of imagination, but he does this with the full understanding that he can never say the unsayable.

The object of the poem is always greater than the poem.

cover us...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

H.D.

Oread


Whirl up, sea –
Whirl your pointed pines,
Splash your great pines
On our rocks;
Hurl your green over us,
Cover us with your pools of fir.

*

Not a poem about the sea, not a poem about woodlands or rocky slopes. This is a work about motion. In six lines, five forceful verbs: whirl, whirl, splash, hurl, cover. H.D., a master imagist, creates a vortex of green whose intention is movement. Not to move us, but to allow us to witness this movement – an active yet contained energy.

Because of the work’s title, I could project symbolism onto the various images – of sea, rocks, pines, and fir, of your, our, and us – but that would be a mistake. The poem is what it is. And there’s beauty in that.