Category: Poetry

mine and others

Yannis Ritsos

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

This morning in my email I found this poem from the Paris Review. I loved the tone of it–quiet, haunting–no pretentions or duties.

Achilles After Dying

He was very tired—who cared about glory any longer? Enough was enough.
He had come to know enemies and friends—purported friends:
behind all the admiration and love they hid their self-interest,
their own suspicious dreams, those cunning innocents.
Now,
on the little island of Leuce, alone at last, peaceful, no pretensions,
no duties or tight armor, most of all without
the humble hypocrisy of heroism, hour after hour he can taste
the saltiness of evening, the stars, the silence, and that feeling—
mild and endless—of general futility, his only companions the wild goats.
But here too, even after dying,
he was pursued by new admirers—usurpers of his memory, these:
they set up altars and statues in his name, worshipped, left.
Sea-gulls alone stayed with him; now every morning they fly down to the shore,
wet their wings, fly back quickly to wash the floor of his temple
with gentle dance movements. In this way
a poetic idea circulates in the air (maybe his only justification)
and a condescending smile for everyone and everything crosses his lips
as he waits yet again for new pilgrims (and he knows how much he likes that)
with all their noise, their Thermos bottles, their eggs and phonographs,
as he now waits for Helen—yes, that same Helen for whose
fleshly and dreamy beauty
so many Achaeans and Trojans (he among them) were destroyed.

Yannis Ritsos—Translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley

Natalie Diaz

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

I know I’ve posted something from  her book, Post-Colonial Love Poem, but I came across this one recently and love the sensuality in contrast to the landscape and car details.

If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert

I will swing my lasso of headlights
across your front porch,
let it drop like a rope of knotted light
at your feet.
While I put the car in park,
you will tie and tighten the loop
of light around your waist —
and I will be there with the other end
wrapped three times
around my hips horned with loneliness.
Reel me in across the glow-throbbing sea
of greenthread, bluestem prickly poppy,
the white inflorescence of yucca bells,
up the dust-lit stairs into your arms.
If you say to me, This is not your new house
but I am your new home,
I will enter the door of your throat,
hang my last lariat in the hallway,
build my altar of best books on your bedside table,
turn the lamp on and off, on and off, on and off.
I will lie down in you.
Eat my meals at the red table of your heart.
Each steaming bowl will be, Just right.
I will eat it all up,
break all your chairs to pieces.
If I try running off into the deep-purpling scrub brush,
you will remind me,
There is nowhere to go if you are already here,
and pat your hand on your lap lighted
by the topazion lux of the moon through the window,
say, Here, Love, sit here — when I do,
I will say, And here I still am.
Until then, Where are you? What is your address?
I am hurting. I am riding the night
on a full tank of gas and my headlights
are reaching out for something.

Natalie Diaz
originally appeared in The New York Times Magazine (April 1, 2021).

Keetje Kuipers

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

At the Minnesota Northwoods Writers’ Conference, Keetje Kuipers gave a knock-out reading. I bought her most recent book, All its Charms, and have been slowly reading through it. She has the amazing ability to make her poetry seem like easy, natural speech, while at the same time packing so much into each word.  I especially love the tenderness in her work. Here’s a sample:

Landscape with Ocean and Nearly Dead Dog

Should I lay him on the slab at the vet’s? Let
somebody else do the work? Or back at home

in the yard, my coward’s hand on the syringe,
the last of the bird song in our ears? Now I find

one pink shell, one gray, watch my daughter
knee-deep in the waves as a child swims toward her

chewing flecks of styrofoam. It’s chicken, says the girl,
Eat it. And the ibis eyeing them, god-only-knows

in its gullet. What makes me want to take these fractures
home? The shale of blue plastic covered in stony

warts, starfish arm severed in the night, feelers
still tickling the air. I hold the dog’s head

in my lap, let him smell on my salted hands
every little thing we’re willing to give up.

Keetje Kuipers

Zagajewski

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

I just finished a slim, posthumous book of Adam Zagajewski’s poems. This little poem seems to me to capture exactly how it feels to long to write when you can’t:

Wind

We always forget what poetry is
(or maybe it happens only to me).
Poetry is a wind blowing from the gods, says
Cioran, citing the Aztecs.

But there are so many quiet, windless days.
The gods are napping then
or they’re preparing tax forms
for even loftier gods.

Oh may that wind return.
The wind blowing from the gods
let it come back, let that wind
awaken.

from The Life
translated by Clare Cavanagh

Raymond Carver

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

It’s rare that a writer can work well in both prose and poetry. Raymond Carver, best known for his short stories, has also written some intriguing short poems. Here’s one:

Sunday Night

Make use of the things around you.
This light rain
outside the window, for one.
This cigarette between my fingers,
these feet on the couch.
The faint sound of rock-and-roll,
the red Ferrari in my head.
The woman bumping
drunkenly around in the kitchen . . .
put it all in,
make use.

Raymond Carver

Elms

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

My high school had an ancient Dutch Elm on a hillside that was the logo of the school, so the blight that hit the elms was devastating, not just for itself, but for the school’s identity. The school recovered, of course, though the elm did not. So the title caught my attention when I saw Valencia Robin’s poem. But the quality of the poem was what made me post it here–it’s turn from and return to the absence of trees so imbued with sadness:

Valencia Robin
first printed in the New York Times and later iin Poetry Daily

 

 

 

Dreams

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

One of the deep pleasures of this blog is discovering poets I hadn’t encountered before whose work dazzles me. Today it’s Megan Nichols, whose poem I first read in Poetry Daily. My mother, a psychoanalyst, was a thoughtful interpreter of dreams. It was her forté–she could ask the right questions to eke out the often confusing meaning. So I found this poem especially vivid and moving as it cascades to the action of the ending.

Interpreting Dreams

If everyone in the dream is you
(and everyone in the dream is you)
then when you stand naked in the classroom,
you are the classmates, the teacher, and the flesh.
And when your mother drowns you in the tub
you are the mother, the child, and the bathwater.
And when all your teeth fall out at once, think
of yourself as not just the Chiclets clattering
to the tile, not just the empty mouth gaping, gums
softening like frozen yogurt melt. No, think
of yourself as the fall too, not the thing that will fall,
or the thing that has fallen, not the force behind
the falling, nor the thing that falls. You are the verb,
the act of, the motion as it moves.

Megan Nichols

from Threepenny Review

Not Monday, but…

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry, Stuff Larry Sez

I will be rafting next week, so this post is for next Monday.  I saw this lovely lobster poem in Sean the Sharpener’s morning missive–poems about crustaceans. I had previously posted Nemerov’s wonderful lobster poem. Kay had an “s” on flamenco, which I ruthlessly and presumptuously removed. I hope she doesn’t mind. Also in Sean’s post was a link to a Robert Johnson tune,

I enjoy Robert Johnson’s music, but to me every tune of his seems the same, which I mentioned to Larry. “But that’s because when Alan Lomax recorded him, he only wanted him to play the blues,” said Larry. “He played all kinds of music, popular tunes, dance tunes, whatever people wanted, but that’s the only recording of him we have.”

He went on to tell me that when Lomax’s recording came out, in 1961 it had a huge influence on the Rolling Stones and other rock groups in England, which then came back across to influence American rock and roll. Robert Johnson was almost unknown when he died, and for decades after, but when that record came out his influence was huge.

“Too bad he’d already sold his soul at the crossroads and died,” I commented, referring to a legend about Johnson.

“Well, at least he attained an aristocratic place in hell,” was Larry’s quick response.

All this to bring you this little poem:

Crustacean Island

There could be an island paradise
where crustaceans prevail.
Click, click, go the lobsters
with their china mits and
articulated tails.
It would not be sad like whales
with their immense and patient sieving
and the sobering modesty
of their general way of living.
It would be an island blessed
with only cold-blooded residents
and no human angle.
It would echo with a thousand castanets
and no flamenco.

Kay Ryan
from Elephant Rocks

 

Back from Bemidji

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

I had a wonderful week in Northern Minnesota, and heard many new poems, I’m sure I will be posting some soon. But this one has been on my mind for awhile, by Louise Glück.

Crossroads

My body, now that we will not be traveling together much longer
I begin to feel a new tenderness toward you, very raw and unfamiliar
Like what I remember of love when I was young—

love that was so often foolish in its objectives
But never in its choices, its intensities.
Too much demanded in advance, too much that could not be promised—

My soul has been so fearful, so violent:
forgive its brutality.
As though it were that soul, my hand moves over you cautiously,

not wishing to give offense
but eager, finally, to achieve expression as substance:

It is not the earth I will miss,
it is you I will miss.

Louise Glück

from A Village Life, 2009

You can hear her read it here.

Subscriptions…

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

I discovered by accident that the subscribe feature to this blog had broken, because a  plugin from Google. is no longer supported. Not only could new users not subscribe, but previous subscribers no longer were receiving the blog.  I reinstated several I was aware of, and if you know of others, please tell the to resubscribe. This has been going on for a few months, so you can scroll back and sample what you missed.

Here’s your Monday poem a day early:

The Axe Blade

There she is again, studying her face
in the mirror of an axe blade, which reflects,
as well, the hand-shaped welt
wrapping her jaw. While the baby on her lap
feeds, she dreams about that man
asleep on the couch. How the steel wedge
plunged into the skull might well loose
the lover it once housed, the one who
could run the back of his hand along her neck
such that every bone in her body would exhale.
Who would sit on the tub’s edge singing
to her as he eased the sponge along her tired back,
The axe has her dreaming
how bloodshed begets beauty.
And when she hears the throaty rattle
from the other room, she sits
the infant in his crib,
grips the axe, and goes
to find her man.

Ross Gay
from Bringing the Shovel Down

Charif Shanahan

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

I met Charif several years ago at the memorial for Linda Gregg–he had been one of her students. I’m so happy to have seen his poems popping up in magazines lately.  I love especially the way this poem leads up to its terrific last stanza. His new collection, Trace Evidence, just came out from Tin House books.

On Exiting Universitätsspital Zürich, New Year’s Eve, 2015

The open air had the predictable sparkle
After two months not only indoors
But flat on my back, waiting, mostly,
For the neck they kept cutting open to heal

So that when they wheeled me out through double
Doors and the tram passed across my field
Of view and the scattered strangers flecked
The white blur my eyes made

Like floaters after a long sleep, I felt,
Sudden in my plexus, the exact angle of loss
I had lived with when I lived here
As though it had waited for me to return so as

To enter me again, as though I had not
Lived four years without it, elsewhere, where
They say life is, regardless of where you are,
So that as the bells of the Fraumünster rang

From inside the steeples, the tail
Of the lake stretching out of view between
The hills on either side, I became,
As an actor becomes, animated, populated by

Someone else’s feelings, someone else’s spirit—
And now, a few years later still, I know
To ask if this complex of feeling, deep-frozen,
Waiting for me, was my actual life—

Not a portion of the life, not
A possible life, but my tangled and patient
Actual implausible resilient fucked-up life?

Charif Shanahan

 

The Gift

Posted on by Meryl in Poetry

I came across this poem again (written 52 years ago, by a man who had lived through World War II in Europe) just as the dense gray fog was tuning to tepid sun this morning. It was in another of Sean Singer’s composite emails. It’s uncharacteristically short and tender, and the line “To think that I was the same man did not embarrass me,” makes me remember what I love about poetry.

The Gift

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body, I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

Czesław Miłosz, Berkeley 1971
translated by the poet