catch the hidden...

Eamon Grennan

Gifts


Saphire, emerald, amethyst of
the magpie's feathers when
sunshine snags them. Otherwise
—as now in clouded, ordinary
light—plain black and white, the
head and neck pure soot or onyx.
These colours keep our eyes
alive, as if any short-lived,
intermittent pact between our
gaze and their flashfire amulets
might be near the heart of some
unspoken matter. Likewise, you
may catch the hidden redbreast's
small sweet voice, as if the
scarlet soul of the fuchsia were
singing in silence to itself, letting
itself be heard.

(for Sister Ruth Dowd)

*

Enjoyed this poem at Verse Daily this morning - Wonderful piece. The sound of the words read aloud shows the real life of this poem.

not you, not you...

Charles Wright

The Woodpecker Pecks, but the Hole Does Not Appear

It’s hard to imagine how unremembered we all become,
How quickly all that we’ve done
Is unremembered and unforgiven,
                                                   how quickly
Bog lilies and yellow clover flashlight our footfalls,
How quickly and finally the landscape subsumes us,
And everything that we are becomes what we are not.

the heron breaking branches...

Linda Gregg

Now I Understand


Something was pouring out. Filling the field
and making it vacant. A wind blowing them
sideways as they moved forward. The crying
as before. Suddenly I understood why they left
the empty bowls on the table, in the empty hut
overlooking the sea. And knew the meaning
of the heron breaking branches, spreading
his wings in order to rise up out of the dark
woods into the night sky. I understood about
the lovers and the river in January.
Heard the crying out as a battlement,
of greatness, and then the dying began.
The height of passion. Saw the breaking
of the moon and the shattering of the sun.
Believed in the miracle because of the half heard
and the other half seen. How they ranged
and how they fed. Let loose their cries.
One could call it the agony in the garden,
or the paradise, depending on whether
the joy was at the beginning, or after.

*

A powerful poem - for my days - I keep wrapping my head around. Gregg has such a brilliant hand and ear.

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.

the bell within...

Bob Hicok

Flaw


Hands, the fit of them, to the neck. God’s making

an end for the arm, murder, His, forgive me, my

pronoun, my rage, if in practice I lift them

to the window, morning’s jet mirror, who, and what

you did, the cracked bell within, is not evil, but to ring it

is


                  - from Michigan Quarterly Review and Poetry Daily

*

A daring little piece. The control of punctuation is superb. A cry. A recognition of weakness. The lifting of the hands to the window, an incomplete act of the creative nature. Potential, but nothing more. Always disassociated, fragmented, confined.

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.