So yes, we are still amid a global pandemic that has killed a few million people, but it’s spring, we have a sane president, I’ve had both my vaccinations and I’m feeling uncharacteristically optimistic. So I am working on a project, putting together some resources on poetry for university students and community.
So I have two questions.
1. What resources about poetry would you be interested in?
2. What common misconceptions do people have about poetry?
Let me know in the comments!
Inspired by the painting that Wikipedia used yesterday on its homepage, on President Barack Obama’s last day.
“Hope” George Frederic Watts, 1886
There have always been moments
Like this: the whole world a weeping
Woman, half-collapsed, up to her knees
In tears for our unborn futures.
There/like/woman/in: blah
Moments/weeping/knees/future: so-so
good enough start; carry on.
In 1886, my great-grandparents chose
(or turned?) (Look this up; give context;
History is personal and political:
The sweat of a single brow, the blood
Of thousands soaking a nation’s fields)
Since then, the vote and indoor plumbing:
Yes, all that. But also, a nuclear arsenal
In the small idle hands of a man
With neither conscience nor safeguards.
And so, this lyre–all strings but one long since
Broken, washed away in these salt waves,
The tears of my people, my tears–
And all the air above this musician
Awaiting the quiet note still to come perhaps
From this final trembling audacious
String and the transformation
That may yet follow its music.
So yesterday I was struggling to write a blogpost about how we need to vote to avoid turning this country into an English-speaking version of 1930s Italy or Germany, how if we fail our country now, we are both figuratively and literally screwed, all our buried racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia, all our buried shit will come up from where it has been buried for so long and will be turned into public policy.
I am a student of history. I know how that sort of thing turns out.
And I was trying to write this, I found it easier to write about writing, something neutral and safe. But I am a writer and I cannot stay neutral and safe. Yesterday on Facebook, I put out a post saying this:
“Well, even if Wednesday does not begin with a hail of jackboots, we have our work cut out for us trying to unfuck this country from its toxic political discourse and the reality of recharged institutional oppressions. Where do we even begin?”
And while many of my friends focused on my (apparently) original use of the verb “unfuck,” my old friend Jack Reynolds wrote the following:
“Where to begin? Create things of beauty; art, music, poetry, food. Step out of comfort zones with small acts of kindness, not random unplanned ones but something to do everyday. Smile. Tell a joke. Give compliments. Break bread (gluten free if needed) with others and find out what makes them tick. As Dan Berrigan once said “Lets tell the truth to each other and see what happens.” Make community. Don’t search for it, make it or it’ll never happen. Smile. Take quiet time and not take ourselves too serious. Take others seriously. Be grateful for any and all things that are beautiful and unearned and are gifts. I heard a sailor say that you can’t control the wind but you can control the sail.”
He is wise.
So I thought I would write a poem to give us hope, because I seriously believe that this is a huge part of what art is for. So this is my offering to you and to God and whatever other gods might be out there: for sanity and liberty and the hope that this country stands for.
Election Eve, November 7, 2016
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live…” Deuteronomy 30:19-20
The moon is half-and-half tonight, like
A mitzpah coin holding out its promise:
That this is not some space-opera dystopia,
Where the creepy demagogue wanna-be
Is going to shoot down the moon, leave
All our tides raging out of control, our seas
Washing their bloody waves, troughing through
Our silent, ravaged, grey cities. No. Never.
The moon will remain to govern all our tides,
Those of water, those of blood: like clockwork.
The shining silver half-coin will grow to full,
Showing that we shall be together, not long hence,
With what this country was always meant to be:
The melted alloy of many elements, the gift given,
The promise kept: that we are stronger together,
And together we can heal all the broken pieces.
In Response to Nadia’s Misdirected Email, I State Exactly What I Am Looking For Balance. The ability to stand on one foot, on a tightrope, and juggle AR-15s, ethics and dollar bills, while chanting the U.S. Constitution, in tongues. Or good health. Unweighted dreams. A mechanism for disagreeing without needing to annihilate the opposition. […]
via In Response to Nadia’s Misdirected Email, I State Exactly What I Am Looking For — O at the Edges
That moment when you look in your closet
For the only green shirt you own and even
Consider wearing all red and hoping to run into someone
Colorblind. That daft hope that someone, anyone
Will say, “Top of the morning to you!” just
So you can reply, “And the rest of the day to you!”
That memory of being able to wear a green sweater
To school instead of the uniform cranberry, because
Irish Americans are exactly that weird and yes, we did
Go to Catholic school. That craving for corned beef,
With or without the cabbage and Guinness. That dread
Of someone spelling it St. Patty’s as if the bishop was
Named Patricia. That memory of the one single time
You ever drank green beer, and that quizzical look
People give you when you have a Polish last name.
Illustration by Sandra Boynton.
“My Foucault-friend, who is now an anthropologist, observes that in the West we tend to think of made things as being false” (Biss).
If the poem I make is a false thing, as made as my house,
As false as your eyelashes that you also made this morning,
As thing-like as your car that falsely carried you
To work yesterday and just as falsely, eventually,
Carried you home last night, then how am I to cultivate
Truth like a garden of earthy, homegrown delights?
If my poem, made from words, which presumably also
Have been made, in this case by our ancestors
Who agreed what the grunt would mean, and the hiss
And the slow accumulation of consonants, then how
Can beauty be real, since there too we simply have to
Agree on the symmetry and style of another face?
If the song you made from notes just lying around
The universe is false, if the story you told yourself
Of love and loss and, eventually, redemption and love
Again, if that too is made and therefore false, what hope
Do any of us have to find the real thing, the true and
The beautiful thing, the unmade heart beating to ours?
Biss, Eula. “‘The Folded Clock,’ by Heidi Julavits.” Review. New York Times. 27 Mar. 2015. Web. 10 Feb. 2016.
Even in December, your eyes are prodigal
Green like the low and leafy mountains
Of my youth, or variegated green like an autumn
Field that the breeze fingers and the sun flickers
Over, the bright greens of still summer and the faded
Sepia greens of summer drifting away.
Lie back as you would adrift on the ocean,
That constantly floating green that wraps the globe
In an embrace of waves constantly, constantly
Ebbing green, flowing green, the flash of sunlight
On the mighty roaring green, the hiss of foam
Like a promise or a kiss. Such greens dazzle
This heart, which far away contemplates that one
Distinct gift of the rainbow that light presents us, this time
Through you as you look in this direction, unseeing
But seen, showing all the lively greens—friendship,
Envy, desire and wrath—we come to know through your eyes,
So prodigal green, even in cold December.
Fall has been lingering this year. Normally, cold weather in Boston starts at the beginning of November, and by “cold” I am thinking below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature at which I begin to consider locating my long Johns. The first (usually uneventful) snowfall tends to be between Thanksgiving and the start of December. Not this year.
I’ve heard people say how “lucky” we’ve been with the mild weather, but in my book if the weather is routinely 20-30 degrees different than the usual temperature not for a day or a week but for (so far) a month and a half, that has got to be a bad sign. It also means that I have had a hard time accepting that Christmas is really on the way. I keep forgetting to pick up the wreath I usually put on the inside of our main door (trees don’t work in a small apartment with a large cat).
Now as the high glaciers melt into green
Ocean water, rising, rising, now when we look up
Expecting the water to fall in flakes for hungry tongues,
Now the sky is grey and strangely warm.
Unseasonal, that’s what it is. The nights are long
Just as you might expect, but the air lacks crispness,
The blue of the afternoon sky lacks snap. I cannot say
I feel lucky. Even after nine feet of snow in Boston,
Which only finally melted six months ago, I fear
What might be coming: either ten feet this winter, or,
Possibly, none at all. Either way we lose. Already
Polar bears are drowning for lack of arctic ice.
Already small Pacific islands are losing ground
The way an old man loses hair: a little at a time,
Then all at once. It’s the opposite with the stores,
Switching the candy and hangings from one holiday
To the next overnight and at least three weeks early.
I cannot make that transition at all this year. So much
Worry about the Earth, not enough glad tidings.
Too much grey and drear, not enough merry and bright.
In the face of this, I force myself to find a small, green
Wreath for the inside of my door, to dangle small golden
Pigs—for abundance—a red bow to remind me to take
The bull by the horns and face the absence of winter
And the endless presence of winter, both living in me
As I move through the warming world feeling colder
Now than I ever felt as a child in a snow fort. Courage,
Says the angel in the branches. Embrace hope.
One of the great inventions of the 20th century is Refrigerator Poetry, little boxes of magnetized words with which anyone with a rudimentary understanding of grammar can make unfathomable stabs at Poetic Meaning or at least Colorful Descriptions of Nothing Much. For those of us with decades of practice and training, we can make (with enough words, including articles, prepositions and S’s) Art Sublime, or At Least Almost.
It is one thing to do this on one’s own refrigerator. In that case, you are the person responsible for all the lost articles and S’s, so if you can’t make it work, you have no one to blame but yourself (and possibly your roommates).
Much more fun is Stealth Refrigerator Poetry, which is when you go to a party and, when your Host is off Hosting, you steal into the kitchen and rearrange their words to be something sublime, humorous, useful, or at last resort, unfathomable. When it is someone else who is to blame for too much penury and not enough the, you can claim to be Tragically Limited by your Medium, with which You Did Your Best. It can help, if you know in advance that the party will have magnetized words, to wear a beret to the party. This is called Priming your Audience.
As a working poet, I often have the opportunity to write for specific circumstances, as I mentioned a few days ago when I offered the poem I wrote for the wedding of some friends many years back. This is called occasional poetry. It is a more public poetry, in comparison with what might be considered the “more intimate … lyric” poem (Sugano 5).
Wikipedia tells us:
‘As a term of literary criticism, “occasional poetry” describes the work’s purpose and the poet’s relation to subject matter. It is not a genre, but several genres originate as occasional poetry, including epithalamia (wedding songs), dirges or funerary poems, paeans, and victory odes. Occasional poems may also be composed exclusive of or within any given set of genre conventions to commemorate single events or anniversaries, such as birthdays, foundings, or dedications.’ (Occasional)
Some occasions are not as obvious as those listed here. For example, many years ago a good friend ended up on the wrong end of a restraining order from her roommate and bunked on my couch for three days while she sorted it out. When the judge had thrown the roommate out of court and out of my friend’s apartment, and after all the dust had settled, my friend had an Exorcism Party, for which I wrote the following poems. The goal was not only to celebrate the end to an excruciating time but also what I think of as the prophetic task of reminding us to forgive our enemies eventually.
…
The Exorcism, First Movement: The Beans
…
oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi
(out with the devil, in with good fortune)
…
In this place, we rise and shout:
Good luck in and demons out!
To darkness that has gathered here,
We now demand: Go! Disappear!
…
In foreign lands, where now sunlight
Is rising silver on beached stones,
Many-colored demons wrapped
In deerskins wander winter night
Free. They fear one thing alone.
They tremble when they hear beans tapped
…
Together, gathered for the rite
Of Setsubun, Bean-Throwing Fest,
Which, every February, means
The end of winter-darkened fright.
All folk have ways to expel the Beast;
There they drive it out with beans.
…
But here no Oni stalk our night,
Steal our rice, upset our shelves
Or walk the night to work us ill.
It’s with each other that we fight:
The dark fire is within ourselves
To stoke or extinguish as we will.
…
Now in this place, we rise and shout
To darkness that has gathered here,
Forgiveness in and anger out!
We eat the beans. It disappears.
…
…
The Exorcism, Second Movement: The Book
…
The book proclaims
that God’s voice
strips the bark from trees
standing in the wilderness
arms raised–
…
Your money or your life–
How long O Lord–
How long can I stand
…
here without skin. The wind is cold;
the thunder cracks through; each layer
around layer cowers.
…
The book reminds
that wilderness is wild
but not empty.
Look!
the voice shouts,
you do not stand alone:
all around you I have planted
my people, whose arms reach out.
…
Now
the voice whispers
Now
I will sing you
into new skin.
…
…
We Speak of Exorcism, Yet
…
demons never lived here. Just a woman
surrounded by light, who ground the heels of her
palms into her eyes, a woman surrounded
by the spirit, who steadfastly refused
…
to inhale. We must know the spirit; like a child-
…
woven paper chain, it rises and falls
here between us, these people you have
…
called to your side in trouble. We all have
breathed, these forty days, its freshening wind.
…
The spirit is the only part of God
I trust: out of darkness, invisible eyes see us
…
in our frailty. We skitter below like woodmice
cowering alone–we think–waiting,
…
praying for the spirit to swoop down,
not a dove but a hunting owl: accurate,
terrifying, saving us.
…
…
When She Has Finally Moved Out
…
After the room has emptied, you weigh
the air between winter-locked windows
with your kitchen scale: lighter, easier
to breathe now. You take a sip
…
of tea, the saucer in your left hand as
you wander, a sacrament. Liberated
like this air, like this room’s white door
now you are swinging
…
wide
…
open–
Occasional Poetry. Wikipedia. 9 Jan. 2015. Web. 25 April 2015.
Sugano Marian Zwerling. The Poetics of the Occasion. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1992.
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