Monday’s Verse, April 7/09

Readers,

I just learned that a good friend of mine (and the best friend of my dad, who turns 72 this day) died this morning. Mike was a professor of French, so I’m dedicating this François Villon poem, first in its original, and then in a translation by MV favorite Galway Kinnell, to him. -ed.

BALLADE

Je connais bien mouches en lait
Je connais à la robe l’homme
Je connais le beau temps du laid
Je connais au pommier la pomme
Je connais l’arbre à voir la gomme
Je connais quand tout est de même
Je connais qui besogne ou chôme
Je connais tout, fors que moi-même

Je connais pourpoint au collet
Je connais le moine à la gonne
Je connais le maître au valet
Je connais au voile la nonne
Je connais quand pipeur jargonne
Je connais fols nourris de crèmes
Je connais le vin à la tonne
Je connais tout, fors que moi-même

Je connais cheval et mulet
Je connais leur charge et leur somme
Je connais Bietris et Belet
Je connais jet qui nombre et somme
Je connais vision et somme
Je connais faute des Bohêmes
Je connais le pouvoir de Rome
Je connais tout, fors que moi-même

Prince, je connais tout en somme
Je connais colorés et blêmes
Je connais mort qui tout consomme
Je connais tout, fors que moi-même

***

BALLADE

I know flies in milk
I know the man by his clothes
I know fair weather from foul
I know the apple by the tree
I know the tree when I see the sap
I know when all is one
I know who labors and who loafs
I know everything but myself.

I know the coat by the collar
I know the monk by the cowl
I know the master by the servant
I know the nun by the veil
I know when a hustler rattles on
I know fools raised on whipped cream
I know the wine by the barrel
I know everything but myself.

I know the horse and the mule
I know their loads and their limits
I know Beatrice and Belle
I know the beads that count and add
I know nightmare and sleep
I know the Bohemians’ error
I know the power of Rome
I know everything but myself.

Prince I know all things
I know the rosy-cheeked and the pale
I know death who devours all
I know everything but myself.

Monday’s Verse, March 30/09

Readers,

If I’m not mistaken we’ve yet to run a poem by Kay Ryan, the relatively newly-appointed Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress, aka “Poet Laureate.” Prior to winning a major poetry award in 2004, Ms. Ryan was little-known. I’m not going to say much about this piece but do wish an art history expert (or even someone who remembers an undergrad class) would peep up about what the heck she’s talking about with this vanitas business. -ed.

DEATH BY FRUIT

Only the crudest
of the vanitas set
ever thought you had to get
a skull into the picture
whether you needed
its tallowy color
near the grapes or not.
Others, stopping to consider
shapes and textures,
often discovered that
eggs or aubergines
went better, or leeks,
or a plate of string beans.
A skull is so dominant.
It takes so much
bunched up drapery,
such a ponderous
display of ornate cutlery,
just to make it less prominent.
The greatest masters
preferred the subtlest vanitas,
modestly trusting to fruit baskets
to whisper ashes to ashes,
relying on the poignant exactness
of oranges to release
like a citrus mist
the always fresh fact
of how hard we resist
how briefly we’re pleased.

-2000

Monday’s Verse, March 23/09

Here’s something quite amazing: a John Ashbery poem. I fecking love John Ashbery (anagram: “a BJ; he’s horny”). And yes, he’s that guy with the funny name and the funny poems which are so “hard” they don’t always seem funny. His aim, he once admitted, was “to produce a poem that the critic cannot even talk about.” But that should not prevent us from reading them, and talking about them. Maybe we have to adjust the way we talk about them. And the way we read. We often talk about the critic’s quiver of analytic arrows in this forum, but Ashbery has also said, “For me, poetry is very much the time that it takes to unroll, the way music does… it’s not a static, contemplatable thing like a painting or a piece of sculpture.”

This poem is one you really have to step into, maybe twice, to get the feel of. It’s long, but listen to it unroll like a fugue. Or flow like a river?

-ed.

PS: Visitors to the northern Italian town of Pavia will appreciate the final stanza.

INTO THE DUSK-CHARGED AIR

Far from the Rappahannock, the silent
Danube moves along toward the sea.
The brown and green Nile rolls slowly
Like the Niagara’s welling descent.
Tractors stood on the green banks of the Loire
Near where it joined the Cher.
The St. Lawrence prods among black stones
And mud. But the Arno is all stones.
Wind ruffles the Hudson’s
Surface. The Irawaddy is overflowing.
But the yellowish, gray Tiber
Is contained within steep banks. The Isar
Flows too fast to swim in, the Jordan’s water
Courses over the flat land. The Allegheny and its boats
Were dark blue. The Moskowa is
Gray boats. The Amstel flows slowly.
Leaves fall into the Connecticut as it passes
Underneath. The Liffey is full of sewage,
Like the Seine, but unlike
The brownish-yellow Dordogne.
Mountains hem in the Colorado
And the Oder is very deep, almost
As deep as the Congo is wide.
The plain banks of the Neva are
Gray. The dark Saône flows silently.
And the Volga is long and wide
As it flows across the brownish land. The Ebro
Is blue, and slow. The Shannon flows
Swiftly between its banks. The Mississippi
Is one of the world’s longest rivers, like the Amazon.
It has the Missouri for a tributary.
The Harlem flows amid factories
And buildings. The Nelson is in Canada,
Flowing. Through hard banks the Dubawnt
Forces its way. People walk near the Trent.
The landscape around the Mohawk stretches away;
The Rubicon is merely a brook.
In winter the Main
Surges; the Rhine sings its eternal song.
The Rhône slogs along through whitish banks
And the Rio Grande spins tales of the past.
The Loir bursts its frozen shackles
But the Moldau’s wet mud ensnares it.
The East catches the light.
Near the Escaut the noise of factories echoes
And the sinuous Humboldt gurgles wildly.
The Po too flows, and the many-colored
Thames. Into the Atlantic Ocean
Pours the Garonne. Few ships navigate
On the Housatonic, but quite a few can be seen
On the Elbe. For centuries
The Afton has flowed.
If the Rio Negro
Could abandon its song, and the Magdalena
The jungle flowers, the Tagus
Would still flow serenely, and the Ohio
Abrade its slate banks. The tan Euphrates would
Sidle silently across the world. The Yukon
Was choked with ice, but the Susquehanna still pushed
Bravely along. The Dee caught the day’s last flares
Like the Pilcomayo’s carrion rose.
The Peace offered eternal fragrance
Perhaps, but the Mackenzie churned livid mud
Like tan chalk-marks. Near where
The Brahmaputra slapped swollen dikes
And the Pechora? The São Francisco
Skulks amid gray, rubbery nettles. The Liard’s
Reflexes are slow, and the Arkansas erodes
Anthracite hummocks. The Paraná stinks.
The Ottawa is light emerald green
Among grays. Better that the Indus fade
In steaming sands! Let the Brazos
Freeze solid! And the Wabash turn to a leaden
Cinder of ice! The Marañón is too tepid, we must
Find a way to freeze it hard. The Ural
Is freezing slowly in the blasts. The black Yonne
Congeals nicely. And the Petit-Morin
Curls up on the solid earth. The Inn
Does not remember better times, and the Merrimack’s
Galvanized. The Ganges is liquid snow by now;
The Vyatka’s ice-gray. The once-molten Tennessee s
Curdled. The Japurá is a pack of ice. Gelid
The Columbia’s gray loam banks. The Don’s merely
A giant icicle. The Niger freezes, slowly.
The interminable Lena plods on
But the Purus’ mercurial waters are icy, grim
With cold. The Loing is choked with fragments of ice.
The Weser is frozen, like liquid air.
And so is the Kama. And the beige, thickly flowing
Tocantins. The rivers bask in the cold.
The stern Uruguay chafes its banks,
A mass of ice. The Hooghly is solid
Ice. The Adour is silent, motionless.
The lovely Tigris is nothing but scratchy ice
Like the Yellowstone, with its osier-clustered banks.
The Mekong is beginning to thaw out a little
And the Donets gurgles beneath the
Huge blocks of ice. The Manzanares gushes free.
The Illinois darts through the sunny air again.
But the Dnieper is still ice-bound. Somewhere
The Salado propels irs floes, but the Roosevelt’s
Frozen. The Oka is frozen solider
Than the Somme. The Minho slumbers
In winter, nor does the Snake
Remember August. Hilarious, the Canadian
Is solid ice. The Madeira slavers
Across the thawing fields, and the Plata laughs.
The Dvina soaks up the snow. The Sava’s
Temperature is above freezing. The Avon
Carols noiselessly. The Drôme presses
Grass banks; the Adige’s frozen
Surface is like gray pebbles.

Birds circle the Ticino. In winter
The Var was dark blue, unfrozen. The
Thwaite, cold, is choked with sandy ice;
The Ardèche glistens feebly through the freezing rain.

Monday’s Verse, March 16/09

While perusing this book, “Hush,” by American poet David St. John for poems on our theme of dislocation, I found this one that was just too good to pass up. Plus I’m on spring break and can’t realistically be expected to sit on my ass searching for poems completely on point, can I? This gentle lyric reminded me of the one we read about the piano a couple months ago, especially in its final simile. As for dislocation–well, your editor is in Chicago sleeping on a fold-out couch, doesn’t that count for something? Have a good week and GO BUTLER.

THE EMPTY DANCE HALL

Resin swirls across the floor.

The country band has left;

and a mandolin

still sits in a window,

half a wooden pear.

The dry boards creak and pop,

the brass chandelier clinks softly.

I take the mandolin, and go out

under the ivy arbor,

and the swaying canopy of oak.

A folding chair falls shut

on the patio;

on the dark, uneven bricks.

I lean in the doorway,

and slide my fingers along

the rosewood neck.

As I begin to play

the wind rises,

like a girl

getting up from her chair,

for the last dance.

-1975

Monday’s Verse, March 9/09

Well I just discovered this great poem, thanks to a tip from an alert reader, but I don’t know anything about the author. Which is OK–I’m just gonna leave that section blank and let others fill in if they want to. You don’t have to be an expert: Any jag can do the Google and then say, Ah yes, I remember first hearing Ann Deagon read from her work at an exclusive reading in a chateau outside Prague, an affair which was actually catered by Roger Waters. She was born…” Seriously, enlighten me, and lie if necessary.

Anyway I really dug this one with its lyric shape and sound and allusions, where vision–a mirror–refracts the speaker’s POV on a relationship, displacing her from her rather quotidian surroundings. -ed.

IN CAMERA OBSCURA

To often lately
my eyes have strayed
across the beveled mirror that reflects
our bedding
to the prismatic edge
where an un-world of color, clashing in planes
kaleidoscopes into a rage of light
the subdued furnishings of our ten years.

What message shall I leave
walking out of our mirror, out of your life?
I do not have illusions. I know
now here is forever framed in nowhere,
movement is an illusion of stopped frames
and all loves out of focus.
We have seen each other through a glass darkly;
I do not expect to see anyone more clear.

I leave this room, love,
only to walk a little in the sun
wear green while my season lasts
and then take on
the kaleidoscopic colors of decay.

-1974

Monday’s Verse, March 2/09

Revisiting a classic. This, one of my very favorite poems, goes out to all my Boston and NY homies with a snow day. And it fits with our recent theme: reading Stevens is almost always disorienting. Stay warm,

mjl

*****

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

–from Harmonium, 1923

Monday’s Verse, February 23/09

Themes of dislocation, disorientation, fragmentation, confusion:

We’d think pastoral poetry is NOT the place to find them. Ah, but the pre-Raphaelites, for all their willful archaism, never did anything straight-up, did they? Note that here Christina Rossetti (1830 – 1894) takes a genre that promises the MOST connection with terra firma and gives us a sense of dislocation that is psychological, not existential, and seemingly caused by the absence of some other, not by overwhelming conditions in the world. Still: what is supposed to be happening in this site of saying will not happen because of an absence, a loss (If he comes the next day/ He’ll not find her at all). I just found it interesting that in my search for poems from the mid-to-late 20th century, I stumbled across this mid-19th century artifact. And there’s always some nice music in Rossetti’s poems.

-ed.

SONGS IN A CORNFIELD

A song in a cornfield
Where corn begins to fall,
Where reapers are reaping,
Reaping one, reaping all.
Sing pretty Lettice,
Sing Rachel, sing May;
Only Marian cannot sing
While her sweetheart’s away.

Where is he gone to
And why does he stay?
He came across the green sea
But for a day,
Across the deep green sea
To help with the hay.

His hair was curly yellow
And his eyes were grey,
He laughed a merry laugh
And said a sweet say.
Where is he gone to
That he comes not home?
To-day or to-morrow
He surely will come.
Let him haste to joy
Lest he lag for sorrow,
For one weeps to-day
Who’ll not weep to-morrow:
To-day she must weep
For gnawing sorrow,
To-night she may sleep
And not wake to-morrow.

May sang with Rachel
In the waxing warm weather,
Lettice sang with them,
They sang all together:—

‘Take the wheat in your arm
Whilst day is broad above,
Take the wheat to your bosom,
But not a false love.
Out in the fields
Summer heat gloweth,
Out in the fields
Summer wind bloweth,
Out in the fields
Summer friend showeth,
Out in the fields
Summer wheat groweth;
But in the winter
When summer heat is dead
And summer wind has veered
And summer friend has fled,
Only summer wheat remaineth,
White cakes and bread.
Take the wheat, clasp the wheat
That’s food for maid and dove;
Take the wheat to your bosom,
But not a false false love.’

A silence of full noontide heat
Grew on them at their toil:
The farmer’s dog woke up from sleep,
The green snake hid her coil.
Where grass stood thickest, bird and beast
Sought shadows as they could,
The reaping men and women paused
And sat down where they stood;
They ate and drank and were refreshed,
For rest from toil is good.

While the reapers took their ease,
Their sickles lying by,
Rachel sang a second strain,
And singing seemed to sigh:–

‘There goes the swallow—
Could we but follow!
Hasty swallow stay,
Point us out the way;
Look back swallow, turn back swallow, stop swallow.

‘There went the swallow—
Too late to follow:
Lost our note of way,
Lost our chance to-day;
Good bye swallow, sunny swallow, wise swallow.

‘After the swallow
All sweet things follow:
All things go their way,
Only we must stay,
Must not follow; good bye swallow, good swallow.’

Then listless Marian raised her head
Among the nodding sheaves;
Her voice was sweeter than that voice;
She sang like one who grieves:
Her voice was sweeter than its wont
Among the nodding sheaves;
All wondered while they heard her sing
Like one who hopes and grieves:—

‘Deeper than the hail can smite,
Deeper than the frost can bite,
Deep asleep through day and night,
Our delight.

‘Now thy sleep no pang can break,
No to-morrow bid thee wake,
Not our sobs who sit and ache
For thy sake.

‘Is it dark or light below?
Oh, but is it cold like snow?
Dost thou feel the green things grow
Fast or slow?

‘Is it warm or cold beneath,
Oh, but is it cold like death?
Cold like death, without a breath,
Cold like death?’

If he comes to-day
He will find her weeping;
If he comes to-morrow
He will find her sleeping;
If he comes the next day
He’ll not find her at all,
He may tear his curling hair,
Beat his breast and call.

Monday’s Verse, February 14/09

The past two Valentine’s Days I have made short stabs at explicating this Diane Wakoski poem, a MV tradition for about 8-9 years. This year it will speak for itself. Beware, enjoy, and have a great week. -ed.

BLUE MONDAY

Blue and the heaps of beads poured into her breasts
and clacking together in her elbows;
blue of the silk
that covers lily-town at night;
blue of her teeth
that bite cold toast
and shatter on the streets;
blue of the dyed flower petals with gold stamens
hanging like tongues
over the fence of her dress
at the opera/opals clasped under her lips
and the moon breaking over her head a
gush of blood-red lizards.

Blue Monday. Monday at 3:00 and
Monday at 5. Monday at 7:30 and
Monday at 10:00. Monday passed under the rippling
California fountain. Monday alone
a shark in the cold blue waters.

You are dead: wound round like a paisley shawl.
I cannot shake you out of the sheets. Your name
is still wedged in every corner of the sofa.

Monday is the first of the week,
and I think of you all week.
I beg Monday not to come
so that I will not think of you
all week.

You paint my body blue. On the balcony
in the soft muddy night, you paint me
with bat wings and the crystal
the crystal
the crystal
the crystal in your arm cuts away
the night, folds back ebony whale skin
and my face, the blue of new rifles,
and my neck, the blue of Egypt,
and my breasts, the blue of sand,
and my arms, bass-blue,
and my stomach, arsenic;

there is electricity dripping from me like cream;
there is love dripping from me I cannot use–like acacia or
jacaranda–fallen blue and gold flowers, crushed into the street.

Love passed me in a business suit
and fedora.
His glass cane, hollow and filled with
sharks and whales. . .
He wore black
patent leather shoes
and had a mustache. His hair was so black
it was almost blue.

“Love,” I said.
“I beg your pardon,” he said.
“Mr. Love,” I said.
“I beg your pardon,” he said.

So I saw there was no use bothering him on the street.

Love passed me on the street in a blue
business suit. He was a banker
I could tell.

So blue trains rush by in my sleep.
Blue herons fly overhead.
Blue paints cracks in my
arteries and sends titanium
floating into my bones.
Blue liquid pours down
my poisoned throat and blue veins
rip open my breast. Blue daggers tip
and are juggled on my palms.
Blue death lives in my fingernails.

If I could sing one last song
with water bubbling through my lips
I would sing with my throat torn open,
the blue jugular spouting that black shadow pulse,
and on my lips
I would balance volcanic rock
emptied out of my veins. At last
my children strained out
of my body. At last my blood
solidified and tumbling into the ocean.
It is blue.
It is blue.
It is blue.

-1968

Monday’s Verse, February 2/09

I know, I know, y’all thought I was gonna print some ode to the Pittsburgh Steelers today. Well here’s my paean: way to go Steelers, GREAT Super Bowl game for all. No, having been in Boston all weekend I’m suffused with a nostalgia I didn’t even know was there. Thought of many ghosts while walkling in Central and Harvard Squares, including that of Anne Sexton (1928-1974).

It’s no surprise that her name anagrammizes to a bashful high school student’s reaction upon first reading her work: “N-n-neato, sex!” This poem, however, finds Sexton in an expansive mood, using the river as a universalizing touch for her moment of personal reflection. One gets that way around rivers, no? Sometimes, you can step into the same river twice. -ed.
JUST ONCE

Just once I knew what life was for.
In Boston, quite suddenly, I understood;
walked there along the Charles River,
watched the lights copying themselves,
all neoned and strobe-hearted, opening
their mouths as wide as opera singers;
counted the stars, my little campaigners,
my scar daisies, and knew that I walked my love
on the night green side of it and cried
my heart to the eastbound cars and cried
my heart to the westbound cars and took
my truth across a small humped bridge
and hurried my truth, the charm of it, home
and hoarded these constants into morning
only to find them gone.

Monday’s Verse, February 2/09

All,

I decided last week, during  my brief researches into Anne Sexton, that I will produce a little theme-pack on disorientation and directions for the next few weeks. Note: the exception will be next week, and those who have been in this game a while know why that is. Monday’s Verse will also run on Saturday next week, couple days early.

But for now, disorientation. It’s been said that themes of dislocation and fragmentation came to the forefront of poetry in English following World War I–perhaps appropriately, following social upheavals and physical destruction on a scale most Europeans had not witnessed before (one can complicate this claim, but here is probably not the place to do so). This theme was pushed even further in the post-World War II era, when the type of horror was not only harsh to witness, but difficult to understand. Artists of all genre (painting, film, theater, novel, etc.) used disorienting techniques and themes in an attempt to come to grips with the unreal reality they lived in. I only mention these thumbnail sketches because I consistently see in the mid-late 20th century art that I favor, poems and paintings that end up looking like directions to some kind of hellish wake. The language (or in painting, representational technique, or in film, camera placement) may be normal, even prosaic. But the ground shifts beneath one’s feet, and people and objects lose their reference: “where the people are alibis/ and the street is unfindable for an/ entire lifetime.” Even an upper-crust Bostonian like Sexton was not immune. -ed.
45 Mercy Street
In my dream,
drilling into the marrow
of my entire bone,
my real dream,
I’m walking up and down Beacon Hill
searching for a street sign –
namely MERCY STREET.
Not there.

I try the Back Bay.
Not there.
Not there.
And yet I know the number.
45 Mercy Street.
I know the stained-glass window
of the foyer,
the three flights of the house
with its parquet floors.
I know the furniture and
mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,
the servants.
I know the cupboard of Spode
the boat of ice, solid silver,
where the butter sits in neat squares
like strange giant’s teeth
on the big mahogany table.
I know it well.
Not there.

Where did you go?
45 Mercy Street,
with great-grandmother
kneeling in her whale-bone corset
and praying gently but fiercely
to the wash basin,
at five A.M.
at noon
dozing in her wiggy rocker,
grandfather taking a nap in the pantry,
grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid,
and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower
on her forehead to cover the curl
of when she was good and when she was…
And where she was begat
and in a generation
the third she will beget,
me,
with the stranger’s seed blooming
into the flower called Horrid.

I walk in a yellow dress
and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes,
enough pills, my wallet, my keys,
and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five?
I walk. I walk.
I hold matches at street signs
for it is dark,
as dark as the leathery dead
and I have lost my green Ford,
my house in the suburbs,
two little kids
sucked up like pollen by the bee in me
and a husband
who has wiped off his eyes
in order not to see my inside out
and I am walking and looking
and this is no dream
just my oily life
where the people are alibis
and the street is unfindable for an
entire lifetime.

Pull the shades down –
I don’t care!
Bolt the door, mercy,
erase the number,
rip down the street sign,
what can it matter,
what can it matter to this cheapskate
who wants to own the past
that went out on a dead ship
and left me only with paper?

Not there.

I open my pocketbook,
as women do,
and fish swim back and forth
between the dollars and the lipstick.
I pick them out,
one by one
and throw them at the street signs,
and shoot my pocketbook
into the Charles River.
Next I pull the dream off
and slam into the cement wall
of the clumsy calendar
I live in,
my life,
and its hauled up
notebooks.