Literature - Meryl Natchez

In the supermarket

Posted on December 1, 2014December 2, 2014 by Meryl in Poetry

Even a poem for Black Friday… or part of a poem, by Agi Mishol, a Hungarian-born poet who lives in Israel and writes in Hebrew. This is the first (and I think best) part of three part poem from the Ecco Anthology of International Poetry:

In the Supermarket

Through the supermarket aisles I push a cart
as if I were the mother of two heads of cauliflower,
and navigate according to the verse-list
I improvised this morning over coffee.
Sale banners wave to shoppers
studying the labels of packaged food
as Muzak entertains the frozen birds. And I too,
whose life is made of life, stride down the dog-food aisle
toward Mr. Flinker who confides in my ear that only the body
crumbles but the sipirt remains young forever, believe me.
I believe, but now let me turn to Granny Smith and McIntosh.
Hurry, hurry, folks, I’m the supermarket bard,
I’ll sing the rustle of cornflakes,
the curve of mutinous cucumbers,
until the cash register will hand me
the final printed version
of my poem. Continue reading “In the supermarket” →

Something not too soppy…

Posted on November 24, 2014 by Meryl in Poetry

I was looking for a poem that was appropriate for thanksgiving, but not too sentimental. This one seemed to fit the bill.

Te Deum

Not because of victories
I sing,
having none,
but for the common sunshine,
the breeze,
the largess of spring. Continue reading “Something not too soppy…” →

Keats

Posted on November 17, 2014November 18, 2014 by Meryl in Poetry

I rarely post poems by 19th century poets, preferring to stay with the contemporary. But in this poem by John Keats, if you simply substitute modern pronouns for “thy” and “thine” and “thou,” seems to me it could have been written tomorrow.

And Keats, 1795 – 1821, is just barely a 19th century poet. This poem is almost 200 years old.

The Living Hand

Continue reading “Keats” →

Gerald Stern

Posted on November 10, 2014November 12, 2014 by Meryl in Poetry

Gerald Stern, born in 1925, will be here reading in Albany on this Friday evening at St. Albans’ Church. I’ve always wanted to meet him, as my family name is Stern, and he looks very much like a relative. Here’s one of his poems that I particularly like: Continue reading “Gerald Stern” →

The immigrant writer

Posted on November 9, 2014 by Meryl in Prose

So many writers and artists have had to leave their country for political reasons. In his wonderful, strange novel, Love and Garbage, the Czech writer, Ivan Klima (translated by Ewald Osers) articulates the problems of exile succinctly. He is at a party at a university in the United States:

“…they all turned out to be pleasant to me and full of smiles as Americans are, and with varying degrees of urgency they asked me to explain what on earth possessed me to want to leave their free and wealthy country to return home, to a poor and unfree country, where they’d probably lock me up or send me to Siberia. I tried to be equally pleasant. I conjured up some kind of patriotism, some kind of mission, until I hit on a convincing explanation. I said that back home people knew me. Even if I had to sweep up garbage in the streets I would be for them what I was, what I wanted to be to the exclusion of anything else, a writer, whereas here, even if I could drive around in my little Ford, I would always be just one of those immigrants on whom a great country had taken pity. These were my boastful words. In reality I wanted to return home, to the place where there were people I was fond of, where I was able to speak fluently, to listen to my native language.”

Continue reading “The immigrant writer” →

Galway Kinnell

Posted on November 3, 2014November 3, 2014 by Meryl in Poetry

If you are lucky in your life, you have a chance to meet a larger-than-life spirit, one whose presence becomes an ongoing inspiration. Galway Kinnell was that for me. I met him at a time in my life when I was consumed by work and family and hadn’t written a poem in years. It was the first night of the first poetry workshop at Squaw Valley Community of Writers (1986). He was in charge, and after dinner he explained that we needed to write a poem and submit it by 8 am for the next day’s workshop. He was welcoming, matter of fact, made the impossible seem possible.

The spirit of that workshop–the idea that after you read your poem, someone immediately jumps in and says something they like about it, that no one offers criticism unless asked, that discussion focuses on what is working in the poem–leads to better work from everyone. The self-censorship that is the enemy of good work diminishes. I’ve written some of my best poems at Squaw Valley, and Galway’s spirit lingers still.

Here I am, with Sharon Olds, Brenda Hillman and a woman whose name I’ve forgotten on the last night of the last time he was there.

Galway
I’ve posted poems of his before: St. Francis and the Sow, Blackberry Eating, Weaving the Morning, Everyone Was in Love… but here’s one I haven’t posted:

Daybreak

On the tidal mud, just before sunset,
dozens of starfishes
were creeping. It was
as though the mud were a sky
and enormous, imperfect stars
moved across it as slowly
as the actual stars cross heaven.
All at once they stopped,
and, as if they had simply
increased their receptivity
to gravity, they sank down
into the mud, faded down
into it and lay still, and by the time
pink of sunset broke across them
they were as invisible
as the true stars at daybreak.

Galway Kinnell

Cornelius Eady

Posted on October 27, 2014October 27, 2014 by Meryl in Poetry

I took a workshop one day from Cornelius Eady at Squaw Valley. It was my favorite session of the week, almost at the end, everyone exhausted, hardly a poem to be found in any of us. Cornelius, upbeat, made it all work. Here’s a poem of his from his book of the same name:

Hardheaded Weather

1.
These leaves which have yellowed and are aloft
Or waving like bright hands at their stems as I drive my
Small red car under this raw and whipped
November sky. Continue reading “Cornelius Eady” →

Secular Love

Posted on October 20, 2014October 20, 2014 by Meryl in Poetry

If you’ve heard of Michael Ondaatje, it’s probably as the author of The English Patient, which was made into the movie (lampooned by Elaine on Seinfeld). But Ondaatje is that rare author who writes equally well in multiple formats. His memoir, Running in the Family, is a terrific book about growing up in Sri Lanka (the Ceylon), and he has several books of poetry. Today’s poem is from Secular Love, and is one of my favorites.

I can imagine the origin of this poem as a musing–what if I were one of those men peeling cinnamon bark? Then taking off from there, using the richness of those memories to weave into this sensuous love poem.

The Cinnamon Peeler

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek.
You could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would stumble
certain of whom they approached,
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon. Continue reading “Secular Love” →

Monday poem

Posted on October 13, 2014 by Meryl in Poetry

I’ve been thinking about this little syllabic by Sylvia Plath, a riddle of nine lines, each with nine syllables:

Metaphors

I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.
Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.
I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there’s no getting off.

Sylvia Plath

Did you get it?

Polish poetry

Posted on October 6, 2014October 7, 2014 by Meryl in Poetry, Travel

I’ve been reading through the luminous translations Mira Rosenthal has done of the work of Tomasz Różycki, a contemporary Polish poet. It’s a delight to read them here in Krakow, where they take on an additional resonance, although Różycki is from Opole, northeast of Krakow. This poem, dedicated to one of the most famous Polish poets, Czesław Miłosz, gives a sense of a land and a poetic spirit that has survived a tortured history.

The Rainy Season

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxFor Cz. M.

We drove through Wrocław, black sea of ruins,
which exiles later wanted to rebuild
to look at least a little like Lwów
so that it did not become a dream, a dream. Continue reading “Polish poetry” →

Czeck poetry

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Meryl in Poetry

I picked up a little bilingual anthology here, and so far like Pavel Kolmačka best. He writes short, imagistic poems. Here are a couple:

To forget nothing, miss nothing
of this day drawing to an end.
Motionless, solemn, unaware of time
watching at the window falling snow.

******************************** Continue reading “Czeck poetry” →

Russian poem

Posted on September 22, 2014September 27, 2014 by Meryl in Poetry

Anna Akhmatova never left Russia, although she had a difficult life here–persecuted, unpublished, her family and friends always at risk. Here’s an Akhmatova poem that seems to me to speak to her choice to stay. We saw this painting of her today, by Isaac Levitan, at the Russian Museum.

Lot’s Wife

And God’s luminous messenger, larger than life,
led the one righteous man along the black mountain.
But regret cried out to his wife:
“It’s not too late, you can still catch a glimpse
of Sodom, the red rooftops of home,
the square where you sang, the yard where you spun,
the tall house, its windows abandoned—
the house where your sons and daughters were born.”

She looked back—a sudden arc of pain
stripped her eyes of sight,
fused her feet to the ground—
her flesh became transparent salt.

Who will mourn this nameless woman?
She seems the least of all we lack.
Yet I, for one, can never forget
how she gave her life for one look back.

Anna Akhmatova, 1924

Continue reading “Russian poem” →