Author: Meryl

Summer reading

Posted on by Meryl in Prose

I know that you’re supposed to take up some frivolous books for the summer, but perhaps influenced by the morning and evening fog that characterizes coastal California, my reading has been more dour. I mentioned these books in an earlier post: A Century of Horrors, by Alain Besançon, Hope Against Hope, by Osip Mandelstam’s wife, Nadezhda, and most of Secondhand Time (I couldn’t get through all of it), by Svetlana Alexievich. I also just reread Czesław Miłosz’ The Captive Mind. All of these books deal with the phenomenon of Communism as it has been practiced since the Russian Revolution. Besançon’s thesis is that while Nazism was horrific, it was a brief nightmare compared to Communism. The Shoah was intense, killed millions, but was defeated and rejected.

Communism, on the other hand, while originating in an idealistic set of premises, has for over a century imprisoned, murdered, and instilled terror in many more millions, and is still doing so. It’s a powerful book, and lays out facts in a reasoned argument that’s hard to deny. Continue reading “Summer reading” →

Charles Wright

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

Larry has been doing a series of poetry broadsides–letterpress copies of poems, suitable for framing.  He has selected poets of roughly his age group, and this one is on his upcoming list.

The Silent Generation

Afternoons in the backyard, our lives like photographs

Yellowing elsewhere,

xxxxxxxxxxxxx In somebody else’s album,

In secret, January south winds

Ungathering easily through the black limbs of the fruit trees.

 

What was it we never had to say?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Who can remember now—

Something about the world’s wrongs,

Something about the way we shuddered them off like rain

In an open field,

xxxxxxxxxxxConvinced that lightning would not strike.

 

We’re arm in arm with regret, now the left foot, now the right foot.

We give the devil his due.

We walk up and down in the earth

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx We take our flesh in our teeth.

When we die, we die. The wind blows away our footprints.

Charles Wright

Reading through old work

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

It’s a chore to try to decide what’s worth keeping, but once in awhile I go through my old work and throw a bunch away, put a smaller number of poems and notes in a folder called, Worth Another Look, which means I’m not ready to say keep, but not ready to discard. I’ll have to let a bit more time go by and go through the process again.

This snippet went into that folder:

The Other Woman

There’s always another woman.
It’s axiomatic.
She is always there.
She may not even exist.
Nonetheless…

Why I include the simple things

Posted on by Meryl in Stuff Larry Sez

This is mostly a literary blog, poetry, selections from novels and non-fiction. I have been reading a lot of literature about Nazism and Totalitarianism lately, including A Century of Horrors, Secondhand Time, and rereading Hope Abandoned. This was a very illuminating process. The stultifying political correctness of today, the offhand denigration of the capitalist democracy that supports us all, masks a kind of group think that Orwell would recognize and chide us for. We don’t see through it–the deadening of individual thought this self censorship promotes in the service of inclusiveness, identity politics, diversity.

Continue reading “Why I include the simple things” →

Into the Mystery

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

Here is the final poem from Tony Hoagland’s new book, Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God.

Into the Mystery

Of course there is a time of afternoon, out there in the yard,
a time that has never been described.

There is the way the air feels
among the flagstones and tropical plants
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxwith their dark, leathery-green leaves.

There is a gap you never noticed,
dug out between the gravel and the rock, where something lives.

There is a bird that can only be heard by someone
who has come to be alone.

Now you are getting used to things that will not be happening again.

Never to be pushed down onto the bed again, laughing,
and have your clothes unbuttoned.

Never to stand up in the rear of the pickup truck
and scream while blasting out of town. Continue reading “Into the Mystery” →

The Garden Master

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

I want to post some photos of my garden, and thought about what poem to go with it. Theodore Roethke was the great poet of gardens, his father ran a nursery. This one came to mind, earthy, slightly menacing.

Florist’s Root Cellar

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!— Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

Theodore Roethke

And here are the photos, not menacing at all.

 

The other wedding poem

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

I was at a wedding this weekend, and had to choose a poem to read. I chose Cantatrice, by Berryman, but this was in the running till the last day:

For What Binds Us

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,

nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they’ve been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before. Continue reading “The other wedding poem” →

The garden at its best

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

The Epiphyllum, an air plant, blooms once a year. The rest of the year it’s dull, flat brownish green. When it blooms, the whole garden glows.

One year, while auditing a class on prosody, I wrote a cinquain about it:

Bee in the Epiphyllun

From squat
slabs of cactus
they flame up, these giant
scentless siren calls. Even I
want in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the wine-red selvage of the west…

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

This poem by William Carlos Williams is new to me, arriving in my email from the American Academy of Poets. I like it especially because of the last lines, which I might be in myself. And I like this very dorky picture of him, too.

A Love Song

I lie here thinking of you:—

the stain of love
is upon the world!
Yellow, yellow, yellow
it eats into the leaves,
smears with saffron
the horned branches that lean
heavily
against a smooth purple sky! Continue reading “From the wine-red selvage of the west…” →

Those Polish Poets

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

World War II and Poland seemed to create a unique environment for poetry. That unfortunate Catholic country, smack between Russia and Germany,  produced dozens of wise, chastened, articulate writers, many of whose poems I’ve posted in the past. One I hadn’t read before is Ryszard Krynicki.  He mostly writes short, bitter, ironic poems, like salt on the rim of the glass:

Rights

–What rights?
do you mean?
The right to life?
You can’t extend it even by an instant,
though you’re dying of curiosity:
who won, who killed.
–The right to fight?
The right of the fittest comes first…
So you’re speaking not of human
rights, Continue reading “Those Polish Poets” →

Children’s Poetry

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

I’ve been thinking a lot about rhyme lately, how it’s almost impossible to write a contemporary poem with conventional rhyme, but songs and nursery rhymes still rely on rhyme. Children especially love rhyme, and some of my favorite children’s poetry is by A.A. Milne, who in addition to Winnie the Pooh, has two books of children’s verse, Now We Are Six and When We Were Very Young.

I was reciting these to my grandson the other day, to both of our delight:

Disobedience

James James				
Morrison Morrison			
Weatherby George Dupree			
Took great				
Care of his Mother			
Though he was only three.		
James James				
Said to his Mother,			
"Mother," he said, said he;		
"You must never go down to the end of the town, if
you don't go down with me."		


James James				
Morrison's Mother			
Put on a golden gown,			
James James				
Morrison's Mother			
Drove to the end of the town.		
James James				
Morrison's Mother			
Said to herself, said she:		
"I can get right down to the end of the town and be
back in time for tea."			

King John				
Put up a notice,			
"LOST or STOLEN or STRAYED!		
JAMES JAMES				
MORRISON'S MOTHER			
SEEMS TO HABE BEEN MISLAID.		
LAST SEEN				
WANDERING VAGUELY			
QUITE OF HER OWN ACCORD,		
SHE TRIED TO GET DOWN TO THE END OF	
THE TOWN - FORTY SHILLINGS REWARD!	


James James				
Morrison Morrison			
(Commonly known as Jim)			
Told his				
Other relations				
Not to go blaming him.			
James James				
Said to his Mother,			
"Mother," he said, said he,		
"You must never go down to the end of the town with-
out consulting me."			


James James				
Morrison's Mother			
Hasn't been heard of since.		
King John				
Said he was sorry,			
So did the Queen and Prince.		
King John				
(Somebody told me)			
Said to a man he knew:			
"If people go down to the end of the town, well, what
can anyone do?"				

(Now then, very softly)			
J. J.					
M. M.					
W. G. du P.				
Took great				
C/o his M*****				
Though he was only 3.			
J. J.					
Said to his M*****			
"M*****," he said, said he:		
"You-must-never-go-down-to-the-end-of-the-town-if-
you-don't-go-down-with ME!"