Neo-Modernist Poetry

VIEW OF THE MISSISSIPPI FROM FORT HILL AT VICKSBURG BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL PARK AND CEMETERY

2011-06-13T12:18:00.002-05:00

From the wide meandering drive
you look away, beyond the lines
of white anonymous markers,
down to where the barges
are pushing past the piers,
each as slow as the hour hand of a clock,
while tiny speedboats whine
like mosquitoes as they skip up and down,
skimming the water
to better their times.

The tape-recorded tour guide at Fort Hill
makes it a point to say
that it isn’t the River that you see
—“the River” around here
always means the Mississippi—
but the Yazoo Diversion Canal,
an artificial waterway
created by the Army Corps of Engineers
after the River shifted away
and left Vicksburg behind.

The real Mississippi winds,
like a snake uncoiling, on the other side
of the shifting sandbars and temporary islands
that lie in the distance,
looking like solid ground
covered with undergrowth, willow, and pine.

Several hours further down,
at New Roads in the Parish of Point Coupé,
the River once twisted itself out this way.
On the Louisiana side
they made the old bed into a resort,
a playground for aquatic sports,
called False River Lake.
They have sail-boating and skiing there,
and trolling and fishing from the shore
lined now with substantial real estate.

It all sounds pretty dull and safe,
and perhaps it is.
Perhaps there’s a point to be made
for placidity, though: The Chinese say,
with Mandarin politesse,
“May you live in interesting times,”
—when they don’t mean to bless.

More than once the River has
struck at a town;
of that rip-roaring sinful place,
Natchez-under-the-Hill,
there isn’t much left now;
and at Grand Gulf,
half an hour south of here,
fifty-six blocks of busy, sleepy people
sloughed off into the water
bit by bit, without a sound.

Only a few minutes away,
antique and beautiful,
the clock-faced steeples of Port Gibson wait,
set back decorously not-too-near
the soft slopes of the Little Bayou Pierre,
a minor tributary that every one there
calls “By a Pier.”
They watch the town’s two bridges—
the skeletal old one, mostly sucked down
in the great storm of ’Fifty-Four,
and the squat new one, that sheer mass and weight
have held in place so far.

_

Out of the Sixties

2011-02-10T16:18:00.002-05:00

Oh, look! Look! Here they come,
with beads and braids and tie-dyed feathers,
the hippie happie demonstrators
marching against the world’s Darth Vaders,
laughing and singing and loving each other,
blithe gofors for somebody’s alternate kingdom,
marching, dancing, turn up the speakers,
into the rainbow, into the visions,
the sacred weed, the magic mushroom,
into the Happy Place, Walden, Eden,
the compound ruled by the loving leader,
the sex and the sweats and the screams of laughter,
and into the night of the trussed pigslaughter,
the barren tears, the begging and pleading,
the belly ripped open, a bloody melon,
wasting, wasting, all fall down,
—Trust me, trust always and only the young.

Haiku, Group 3

2010-07-27T14:52:00.005-05:00

Reading a book on haiku, the tradition and the lives of masters, has led me to try to record a certain transience and pathos in a few. The following are winter poems.

The park is sunny, windy and cold;
What's that whipped and whirling thing--
An oak leaf or a sparrow?

On a bare black branch, a crow
Hunches motionless against the pale
Yellow sky of sunset.

Thunderstorms break the night;
Lightning spotlights the flat bedroom,
Outlining everything in black.

Book Review by an Anonymous British Reviewer in the Times

2010-06-13T22:35:00.025-05:00

BOOK REVIEW BY AN ANONYMOUS BRITISH REVIEWER
IN THE TIMES
An Anthology of French Poetry from Nerval to Valéry, in English Translation. Edited by Angel Flores. Garden City, N. J.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958.

After due consideration,
I tried reading a translation
Of French poets from Nerval to Valéry;

And although the Gallic nation
Holds them all in veneration,
I confess that they are not my cup of tea.

It’s as dreadful as the antics
Of the German High Romantics,
And they go about as far—about as deep

In that dark and bulgy wood
Where the moonlight drips like blood
Among trees that clutch at you and creep,

And where flowers that devour
Yawn open by the hour,
And monsters pursue you, and weep.

They were all full of spleen,
If you know what I mean,
And if you read the volume you will see

Forty stanzas of angoisse
Ladled out like vichyssoise
As the entrée to a long course of ennui;

And the endless sad complainte
That the living are all dead
In the head,
And the dead …
really ain’t.

And their stories: Jules Laforgue
Ended up inside a morgue—
Couldn’t pay for a burial place;

And Stephan Mallarmé
Faded mystically away,
Like his symbols, into some inner space.

Then there’s evil Charles Baudelaire,
Who proclaimed himself the heir
Of the Devil, after reading Edgar-Poe;

Worst of all, Paul Verlaine,
Like Van Gogh, went insane,
And tried to kill his lover Rimbaud.

(Save for jaunty, debonair
Guillaume Apollinaire,
They are really not the sort you’d want to know.)

Now Baudelaire may have been
Quite a specialist in Sin,
And Rimbaud as Rambaudnctious as could be,

But after reading this anthology
I can say without apology,
It offers no Illuminations for me.

The Politically Correct "Little Red Riding Hood"

2010-05-17T12:40:00.058-05:00

The Politically Correct "_Little Red Riding Hood"_ was taken from http://www.danshort.com/pcred/ on 17 May 2010.

This version of the story is not new--it goes back at least to the 70's when the hysteria was at one of its periodic peaks--but it is still good for a laugh, especially these days, when there is not much to make anyone smile.

I think that the satire is aimed less at modern reform movements such as the ecological, postcolonial, and feminist movements (although their extremes have provided a lot of material for it) than at the attempts to rewrite human culture, in reality a type of censorship... the agenda being to make it impossible for one to say or write--and therefore impossible to think--certain things that offend the reformers. In any case, the parody of the jargon is hilariously accurate.

I have made some minor editorial changes, indicated by curly brackets.

There once was a young person named Little Red Riding Hood who lived on the edge of a large forest full of endangered owls and rare plants that would probably provide a cure for cancer if only someone took the time to study them.

Red Riding Hood lived with a nurture giver whom she sometimes referred to as “Mother,” although she didn’t mean to imply by this term that she would have thought less of that person if a close biological link did not in fact exist. Nor did she intend to denigrate the equal value of nontraditional households, and she was sorry if this was the impression conveyed.

One day her mother asked her to take a basket of organically grown fruit and mineral water to her grandmother’s house.

“But mother, won’t this be stealing work from the unionized people who have struggled for years to earn the {exclusive} right to carry all packages between various people in the woods?”

Red Riding Hood’s mother assured her that she had called the union boss and gotten a special compassionate mission exemption form.

“But mother, aren’t you oppressing me by ordering me to do this?”

Red Riding Hood’s mother pointed out that it was impossible for {wymyn} to oppress other {wymyn} because all {wymyn} were oppressed until all {wymyn} were free.

“But mother, then shouldn’t you have my brother carry the basket, since he’s an oppressor, and should learn what it’s like to be oppressed?”

Red Riding Hood’s mother explained that her brother was attending a special rally for animal rights, and besides, this wasn’t stereotypical {wymyn’s} work, but an empowering deed that would help engender a feeling of community.

“But won’t I be oppressing Grandma, by implying that she’s sick and hence unable to independently further her own selfhood?”

But Red Riding Hood’s mother explained that her grandmother wasn’t actually sick or incapacitated or mentally handicapped in any way, although that was not to imply that any of these conditions were inferior to what some people called “health.” Thus Red Riding Hood felt that she could get behind the idea of delivering the basket to her grandmother, and so she set off.

Many people believed that the forest was a {sinister} and dangerous place, but Red Riding Hood knew that this was an irrational fear based on cultural paradigms instilled by a patriarchal society that regarded the natural world as an exploitable resource, and hence believed that natural predators were in fact intolerable competitors.

Other people avoided the woods for fear of thieves and {"psychopaths"}, but Red Riding Hood felt that in a truly classless society all marginalized peoples would be able to come out {of the woods} and be accepted as valid lifestyle role models.

On her way to Grandma’s house, Red Riding Hood passed a {woodcutter}, and wandered off the path, in order to examine some flowers. She was startled to find herself standing before a Wolf, who asked her what was in her basket. Red Riding Hood’s teacher had warned her never to talk to strangers, but she was confident in taking control of her own budding sexuality, and chose to dialogue with the Wolf.

She replied, “I am taking my Grandmother some healthful snacks in a gesture of solidarity.”

The Wolf said, “You know, my dear, it isn’t safe for a little girl to walk through these woods alone.”

Red Riding Hood said, “I find your sexist remark offensive in the extreme, but I will ignore it because of your traditional status as an outcast from society, the stress of which has caused you to develop an alternative and yet entirely valid world view. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I would prefer to be on my way.”

Red Riding Hood returned to the main path, and proceeded towards her Grandmother’s house. But because his status outside society had freed him from slavish adherence to linear, Western-style thought, the Wolf knew of a quicker route to Grandma’s house.

He burst into the house and ate Grandma, a course of action affirmative of his {natural role} as a predator. Then, unhampered by rigid, traditionalist gender role notions, he put on Grandma’s nightclothes, crawled under the bedclothes, and awaited developments.

Red Riding Hood entered the cottage and said, “Grandma, I have brought you some cruelty-free snacks to salute you in your role of wise and nurturing matriarch.”

The Wolf said softly, “Come closer, child, so that I might see you.”

Red Riding Hood said, “Goddess[es]! Grandma, what big eyes you have!”

“You forget that I am optically challenged.”

“And Grandma, what an enormous, what a fine nose you have.”

“Naturally, I could have had it {enhanced} to help my acting career, but I didn’t give in to such {superficial} societal pressures, my child.”

“And Grandma, what very big, sharp teeth you have!”

The Wolf could not take any more of these species-ist slurs, and, in a reaction appropriate for his accustomed {function in his natural niche in the ecosystem}, he leaped out of bed, grabbed Little Red Riding Hood, and opened his jaws so wide that she could see her poor Grandmother cowering in his belly.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Red Riding Hood bravely shouted. “You must request my permission before proceeding to a new level of intimacy!”

The Wolf was so startled by this statement that he loosened his grasp on her. At the same time, the {woodcutter} burst into the cottage, brandishing an axe.

“Hands off!” cried the {woodcutter}.

“And what do you think you’re doing?” cried Little Red Riding Hood. “If I let you help me now, I would be expressing a lack of confidence in my own abilities, which would lead to poor self-esteem and lower achievement scores on college entrance exams.”

“Last chance, sister! Get your hands off that endangered species! This is an FBI sting!” screamed the {woodcutter}, and when Little Red Riding Hood nonetheless made a sudden {movement}, he swung the axe and sliced off her head.

“Thank goodness you got here in time,” said the Wolf. “The {juvenile} and {the older female} lured me in here. I thought I was a goner.”

“No, I think I’m the real victim, here,” said the {woodcutter}. “I’ve been dealing with my anger ever since I saw her picking those protected flowers earlier. And now I’m going to have such a trauma. Do you have any aspirin?”

“Sure,” said the Wolf.

“Thanks.”

“I feel your pain,” said the Wolf, and he patted the woodchopper on his firm, {tight backside}, gave a little belch, and said “Do you have any {natural, organic antacid}?”

More Haiku

2010-04-13T16:17:00.005-05:00

Heat presses on my skin,
Sweat trickles, summer rain on glass.
A mosquito wants to drink.

A night wind stirs the oaks,
The pale moon rounds a ledge of cloud...
Torn shadows streaming past.

Midnight, clear and chill,
An empty winding road... Black mountains
Move to hide the moon.

Illumination

2010-03-17T14:28:00.009-05:00

I floated down, trailing my luminous clouds
into the hot dusty square, and landed among people
who were happily wallowing in the dirt
with their dogs and chickens.
They stopped rolling over each other
and began to throw stones, shouting
that I was dragging bloody rags and that I stank.
As the crowd surged toward me,
I picked up a stone, threw it,
and fled down a narrow, dirty alley.

They Walked Away

2010-03-17T14:02:00.002-05:00

They walked away, they said,
and it was a long way, and hard,
and they insisted on
telling all about it, so did they
really walk away?

This Is Just to Say

2010-02-18T13:31:00.013-05:00

I have moved
you
out of my
life

which
you were probably thinking
you had

taken over

Forgive me
you were disastrous
so mean
and so cold

In response to a feminist imitation
of William Carlos Williams

Four Haiku

2010-02-05T16:58:00.039-05:00

Recently I happened to see a group of translations of Japanese haiku in a textbook, and was reminded that there had been a great vogue for haiku when I was an undergraduate. Like many others, I tried my hand at writing haiku, but I thought then, and have continued to think, that the requirement of limiting oneself to five- and seven-syllable lines is unrealistic for the English language.

According to the two basic-Japanese textbooks that I have seen, English grammar is very different from the Japanese, and so are the time values of English syllables (and therefore English rhythms), and so is English intonation; and the times that I have heard Japanese spoken confirm this judgement. Because of these differences, the five- and seven-syllable lines of haiku in English sound excessively constrained---I would even say mannered, affected.

At different times I experimented with restrictions such as five, seven, and five words, and later five, seven, and five grammatical parts of speech (infinitives and phrases like "out of" counting as one part), but I did not find them satisfactory.

Then I hit on writing lines that approximated trimeter, tetrameter, and trimeter--and I liked the results. The form suggests the brevity of Japanese haiku, but not the artificial truncation required by syllabic haiku in English, and it appropriately awakens echoes of English lyric poetry just as Japanese haiku are intended to evoke well established Japanese literary associations.

Should anyone object that the results are not really haiku, I remind them that syllabic haiku in English are not really haiku either, but mechanical imitations. They are more abbreviated in relation to their language and culture than the Japanese; and they lack--because native speakers of English, writers as well as readers, lack--the cultural values and the associations, especially those of Buddhism, essential to the Japanese tradition.

The following poems are examples of natural-sounding haiku in English.

Below the thorny stem,
Fallen petals make another
Rose, a broken fan.
3.ii.10

Less than a minute’s rain!
Among the pebbles on the beach
The small drops darken, then fade.
3.ii.10

A full moon overhead:
Oculus lighting a cobalt dome,
Or just a perfect pearl?
5.ii.10

Creek water swift and clear,
Shifting sand-ripples under my feet,
Which of us travels farther?
5.ii.10

Roman Spring

2010-01-05T15:35:00.005-05:00

In memoriam Iraida Rivera vda. de Serbiá

The final flooding of the year subsides
and catching us by surprise a new sun rises
on faded brick and soot-stained masonry
miraculously undissolved by age and rain.
This time the drowned earth did not succumb:
The fertile stench of garbage rises; fresh black loam
steams, rainbowed with microscopic life
where light—the winter light withdrawn
from ledge and vaulted arch and dome
—strikes prisms from
the polyhedral
cathedral
of the
flies’
eyes,
and
every rock
and veiny stone
that cracked and split
at ten below in the iron streams
bursts along sparkling seams and sings,
and every briar, brake and spray
flashes, drips light, spits, sputters, uttering
the resinous green flames of spring.

Author's Words

2009-11-27T22:38:00.174-05:00

A few months ago, someone writing in the name of an RSS feed mill emailed me and asked for a description of this blog in the form of some "Author's Words." I sent a preliminary version of the following text, and a week later checked the feed mill. The text had not been posted(?). I have checked several times since then, and still--nothing. So I am posting it here, amplified, as an explanation of my poems.

A Euro-American in his seventh decade, I grew up in an environment of reading, and by the time I began to learn to read and write I was convinced that words work magic. And I was determined to learn to produce this magic. Nothing in my subsequent experience has vitiated this vision.

A good poem—potent words in a powerful order—is enchantment, wonder-working, magic. Like music, it moves and transports us; it is a psychic journey without drugs; it expands consciousness and perceptions and the capacity for feeling. Like a movie, it takes us on a mental roller-coaster ride; unlike a movie, it does not depend on graphics and sound effects, but on the verbal equivalents of these things.

Like all art, it provides a specialized pleasure, which we call "esthetic," meaning the satisfaction of a complex of desires--desires for perceptions of order, proportion, and coherence; for pleasurable sensations including (among other things) the pleasurable expenditure of energy and the surprise caused by the unexpected ingenious use of language; and for some degree of correspondence to the world we inhabit. It does this while it invites us to contemplation by means of words.

Therefore, the poet must know words and be skilled in choosing and ordering them, and in using all the elements and components of language: ALL the elements: rhythm, intonation, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, connotation as well as denotation, grammar, syntax, figurative and rhetorical language, and allusions... because the greater the number of resources well employed, the more powerful the effect--the more intense the esthetic pleasure; and because resources clumsily or ill employed weaken or destroy the desired effect, or create an undesired effect. (You, dear reader, should recognize here the long shadow of Edgar Poe.)

And, because he lives among others, the poet must use his power ethically and prudently. The power of words to move people to force social change has been amply documented in our time--very noticeably, in fact, ever since the Renaissance and the Reformation. The power of words to cause serious social--and in individuals, psychological--damage has also been documented. Evidence of this can be found in the history, psychology, and self-help sections of any library or bookstore.

At the time that I studied English-language literature (I have an advanced degree in the field), the dominant critical philosophy was the New Criticism; its principal method was the analysis of the text. By the end of the 1960’s it was considered old-fashioned by those who had the most access to the media, both academic and anti-academic.

With the passage of time, the tendency to depreciate the values of the New Criticism has grown worse, producing a corresponding deterioration in the quality of the reader's experience (the metaphorical roller-coaster ride), to the point that many English-language poems published today by the small presses and little magazines, and enshrined in the popular teaching anthologies, sound and look like translations made by unskillful translators.

One either ends up confused, wondering what the point of the piece was, or goes away with the impression that, for the writer and the publisher, any piece of writing deserves to be called a poem if only it expresses "politically correct" (that is, fashionable) sentiments in the current jargon and in lines that break off mid-phrase before reaching the right margin of the page. This is glaringly evident in the United States.

But the New-Critical approach is still the most rewarding mode of study for a poet, and is the best guide in the construction of poetic texts on the foundation of whatever the world or the unconscious psyche offers one. Why? Because poems are, first of all, texts.* And because, second, nothing lacking a minimum of coherence can hold the attention of a person of at least average intelligence. A person who takes poems seriously wants to explore the coherence, the internal resonances, as well as the verbal magic of effective poems, whether simply as a reader or as a writer in search of models of structure and verbal skill.

Since a poem is a linguistic construct, a work of verbal art, the vehicle of an esthetic experience, it follows that a piece of writing which is primarily an exercise for letting off steam or the vehicle of an ideology will not be a poem, or at least not a very good one. These kinds of writing—-whether criticism or what passes for creation—-are psychotherapy or politics, more or less disguised. Of course, we all need some kind and some degree of therapy at times throughout our lives, and political participation is a vital concern of everyone, but these things are not poetry and they only adulterate the poems in which they are substitutes for the poet’s art.

*Even the performers who populate the poetry-slam and rapper circuits declaim words that were first written texts--unless they have created and memorized their performances in an exclusively oral fashion. Performers in pre-literate {e. g., Homeric} societies did this, but I doubt that contemporary performers can. Close to 40 years' experience as a teacher has convinced me that the typical Americans who began school after 1960 have very little capacity for, or interest in, remembering anything except their social lives and entertainment preferences. Evidence for this is found in the growing crisis in education, with increasing numbers of school drop-outs and steadily decreasing scores on the standardized exit and entrance examinations across the country--while "reality TV" and celebrity/entertainment websites and blogs proliferate.

Given this situation, it seems reasonable to infer that even such performers as those mentioned above must have recourse to the aid of the written word. So, as long as there are poems, there must be texts of poems.

Message

2009-10-01T23:13:00.003-05:00

Coming for me! I read the message
In letters of fire on my skin.
In lightning on the night sky.

Whittling

2009-09-20T23:32:00.004-05:00

Speaking of tombstones, like you said,
I don't want one; it's not just the cost, it's . . .
My philosophy of justice.

To sink a stone slab at my head,
Engraved with dates and deeds,
As if to render up accounts
To any stranger who can read,
Would be to weight my spirit down
When it ought to be most free.

My wife used to say,
"People have expectations.
"It's the basis of society."

That's just how people are, you see.
If they think they've known you,
They think they own you.
So even when you're dead and gone,
They still want to judge you on
What you have and haven't done.

I'll tell you a secret, though--one
Better kept than it should be--
Death's a release, from even a good life.

As for me, I've had all a man needs;
I had a wife;
I have children I love, and they love me.

After the Exile

2009-08-31T04:14:00.007-05:00

After our exile from that holy place,
It seemed that every stony, thorn-bound path
Led back to the high wall and flame of wrath
Implacably convicting us of sin.

And one day as I wandered, questioning
The reason for the Tempter and the Tree,
If knowledge were so high a good, and we
Created to aspire, who was at fault

That we had fallen? Could it be, the thought
Of our being like Him had called forth His ire,
Caused our expulsion by the sword of fire?
Would nothing ever bring Him to relent?

Each day now brought new errors to repent:
Self-centeredness, demanding from each face
An image of itself; and new disgrace
Bred of complacence in Abel, and Cain's hate. . . .

Again I saw the Angel at the Gate.
His face shone like the Sun. I stopped, in doubt
Whether to go or stay. Then he held out
His arms to me and said, "May I come in?"

And I was opened to receive God's grace.

A RIDDLE

2009-08-03T13:39:00.006-05:00

How I am bound taut, drawn down
by these gigantic hands
to the framework that holds me from below!
The slightest tap upon this rack
can make me quiver into sound.
And when
against the cross-pull of the strands
that come and go
I shudder and vibrate,
the whole body of my world resounds.
Should I lie slack
along all my length
in complete contact with this ground,
nor it nor I would resonate:
There would be no music then.
It is this thing
perversely called a bridge,
that separates
and holds me back
from everything--this hard threshold,
this stumbling block--produces strength,
gives power to strain,
and makes me sing.
Sometimes so vibrant is the pain
that thrills me through, I know
they are stroking me again
(fingers pressing, probing how
to raise my cry up to a scream)
with that delicate, pitiless bow.

How they must be enjoying it now.

(A FIDDLE)

There Having Been No Announcement

2009-07-03T23:42:00.016-05:00

There having been no announcement,
The work was far advanced
When I happened on the scene:

Some insect shell was underway--
Head, thorax, abdomen, and wings
Silently gliding, sustained by teams
Of ants intently stroking it along.

It almost seemed
The funeral caisson of a king
In mute procession to the tomb,
Or a Venetian war trireme
Measuring the sea.

In spite of their tenacity
And the roughness of the ground,
From time to time sharp gusts of wind
Carried away the outer hangers-on
Of the excited throng
That always seems to swarm around
The edges of great undertakings.

Feeling the wind beset them,
They must have just reared up, let go,
And let themselves be swept away.

Those that remained
Did not miss them. Steady and slow,
The small cortege moved on.

But I could not dismiss them so.
They made me think
Of all the launchings I have seen:
Ships, missions to the moon, balloons....

Outfitted in yellow, red, and blue,
Brass bands blare martial music
While dancers prance in Mardi Gras costumes;

Flags flap and crackle in the wind,
And ribbons stretch, and streamers stream;
The vendors of souvenirs, soft drinks, and ice cream
Pop up everywhere;
Phineas Phogg and the Wizard of Oz
Usurp the atmosphere.

And then the tiny gondola swings
Beneath a silken dome that swells and nods
Like some old Narnian Monopod
Just come to life and visibility;

Ropes creak and strain.
The crowd falls still.
The frail ship and its cargo sway
Upward, and slowly shrink away.

And we turn back to work again,
For all our momentary transport,
Earthbound--yet not quite the same.

Balloons, Oz, Phineas Phogg,
And Monopods!
And gondolas and triremes--

Incongruities fit for the Renaissance,
That delighted in such things:
For the well-designing ministers and kings
Who took advantage of
The occasions and displays of state
To awe the bumptious populace,
That always managed anyway
To turn the most elevated rites
Into subversive play.

Perhaps of all the things we boast
To set us off from other creatures,
This is the most peculiarly human way
Of behaving. It is our nature
To take a strictly utilitarian thing
And make it turn back on itself and say
Something entirely different, and mean more
Than we had thought before.

It will be this, as much as our technology,
That will save us from the fate
Of the socially more advanced--
The relentless and complete
Totalitarian organization
Of the six- and the four- and the two-legged ants.
_

Between the Lines

2009-06-02T23:57:00.032-05:00

I'm the "Princess" Story Book,
Full of things so fine--
You really have to study me
If you want to read between my lines!

I'm the lovey-dovey dove,
Singing and flirting!--You be
The tree I perch in. Shush! Don't move!
Everybody's listening and looking at me!

I'm the garden spiderweb
All spangled and diamonded with dew....
The angle where I display myself,
That's you.

I'm the black orchid, I'm the blue rose--
I beautify any spot
In which I pose.
You? The pot.

I'm the green green green green grass,
I am so pretteeee!
You be the dandy lyin' weed
--What do you mean, you "don't agree"?

I can be anything! Do anything, I can!
Because I am Woman! You hear me?

--What do you mean, you don't want to be
What I say?
Aw, you aint no man,
Anyway.
_

Graffiti

2009-05-07T23:32:00.023-05:00

"The Critic and the Lawyer but behold
The baser side of literature and life."
Byron, Don Juan, X: 14: 1-2

Sincerity's no guarantee
Of art--of poetry least of all.
Sincerity's what the confessor hears,
It's what the nurse and medic see,
Or worse. I sometimes feel
The greatest sincerity's what we read
On restroom walls:
"I want to . . ." "Call me . . ."
"Whoever reads this is a queer . . ."

Call it ignorance; call it rage,
The major symptom of our age;
Call it, if you will, sheer lust
Perverted and fertilized by disgust,
It shows the basest need
Constrained by fear, and thus
It is sincere, even when in part
Unconscious.

But . . . art?

Secrecy in publicity--as lawyers cheat
In private, yet magnify the law:
"The law exists apart."
"The law exacts awe."
"Law does not swerve."

Indeed, like all means which have been
Self-elevated into ends,
The law remains erect
Long after those means it was meant to serve
Are not.

The law does not respect
The sticky issues of the human heart,
Which usually turn out to be,
On close examination, rather raw--
The raw material, in fact, of art.

True practitioners and those who know,
On the other hand, elaborate from need,
But know that need is not enough
Without the skill to take the rough
And mold and change and make it flow
Into some stubborn form . . . or wave,
That startles while it captivates,
Releasing us as it enslaves.

But even so,
Like law, it's a necessity--
I mean art merely,
Not sincerity.
It helps us live with one another
And with ourselves--if not like brothers,
At least in a natural sort of order
While we remain, oh so sincerely,
Selfish, unloving, cowardly.

1980, revised 2009
_

Above the Eaves

2009-02-16T20:59:00.003-05:00

Slight acrobat, it
Darts, veers, and pirouettes
On the edge of sight,
Teeters for a split-
Second on the tip
Of a wing and dis-
Appears--
. . . . . . Not play, not display,
But insight--skill
Intent on survival,
That makes us feel
The top of the sky
Is far away.
_

Not the Blues

2009-01-16T00:40:00.005-05:00

When I meet you coming down the street,
I hear the music, I feel the beat.

When you look me in the eye,
I take off and start to fly.

When you give me your warm hand,
I don't know if I'll ever land.

When your sweet tongue touches mine,
I drink lightning, I taste wine.

When you touch me here and there,
My knees collapse, I gasp for air.

Let me love you like I want to do,
I never loved nobody like I love you.

RIFF:

My hair stands on end,
I get ice under my skin,

My eyes go blind,
Lightning shoots down my spine,

My hands start to shaking,
My chest starts to aching,

My knees start to give,
I don't know if I'll live,

I can't breathe, I can't see,
You electrify me.
_

At Balzac's Monument

2009-01-01T04:17:00.019-05:00

I turned the corner. At my approach,
Balzac, you rose before me like a ghost
of unquiet conscience--a slow,
up-poured eruption of volcanic force
arrested in the stillness of this place,
to stand as if blasted by God's eye of wrath
and weathered into desert stone
like Lot's wife at her turning back
toward the destruction of her city.
I stopped, astounded by
your gouged eyes staring forever
and your severed hands--sign
of the immortality and martyrdom
awarded by an implacable art
for having gazed too long at the obscene
spectacle of our stupidity.
--Thus the sentence. But on whom,
you or us, is the judgment come?
The answer, if there is one, lies
within the sunlight and torrential
silence that clothes you.
And in your keeping still
your tormented vigil
over this old French city of small ruins.
_

Winter Landscape

2008-12-09T00:38:00.005-05:00

Along a line of low hills where
Dark pine, and oak stripped to winter runes,
Glint in the cold as if carved from stone,
A flock of black birds scores the air,
Crackling like static, and disappears.

In a hoarse whisper the wind dies down.

Field and pasture lie brown and bare
Beneath the moon's high, soundless soaring.
_

The Question

2008-10-30T16:09:00.015-05:00

What will you do, poor human,
When you discover,
At your death, that God is not
Your Mafia grandfather,
But vacant, immense
And numberless as the stars--
Like being alone,
And faceless.
_

Song for a Rock Group (For Mérida)

2008-07-02T00:43:00.014-05:00

I look at you,
You look at me--
You with the eyes of an angel, a demon--
What do you see?

I say Hello,
You sing the refrain
Of a song that says things that I don't understand--
What does it mean?

You take my hand--
Is it for real?
All of a sudden I'm falling, I'm flying--
What do you feel?

CHORUS
I lie awake all night
Thinking of you,
Stumble around in a daze all day,
Don't know what to do....
When will I see you again?
Will it be today?
Sometimes you seem to be
So far away.
Sometimes I think I'll never know
What you mean to say.

June 1985
_

Pascal Restated

2008-07-02T00:33:00.008-05:00

As often as I say there is an afterlife,
You say, "Not so."
Friend, let us cease this useless strife
About what can't be proved true or untrue:
If I am wrong, I'll never know--
If you are, I must pity you.
_

(Ekphrastic) Henri Matisse: Woman Before an Aquarium

2008-06-17T16:46:00.009-05:00

Bette Davis with nothing to do,
In a rare moment of rest.

She has nothing to do but wait.
She wants a cigarette.
_

some contemporary poets and poetry

2008-05-05T00:08:00.014-05:00

They work hard,
going to great lengths
that it be not overcharged
with either music or sense,
and their labors are rewarded:
it isn't.
_

To the Music of Mozart

2008-01-27T19:52:00.012-05:00

Symphony No. 27 in G, K. 199: Second Movement, Andante

For Dr. Louis Dollarhide

Smiling, three women come into the salon,
Three young women under the high ceiling.

While all around them the mute world is sleeping,
Feeling the hush of the late afternoon,

They curtsey together and, turning and circling,
Smoothly they move to invisible music.

Softly the strings sound--and clarinet and flute,
Two shafts of bright sunlight in a shadowy room.
_

Rilke in the Reading Room

2008-01-07T23:25:00.014-05:00

Neither a prophet nor a man possessed
with eyes of wildfire and haywire hair,
the quiet expert in the corner there
brings nothing new to feed your chic unrest.

Beside gigantic fronds, half hidden by
the outsized sofas of the Reading Room,
a hunter stalks among the elephants.
Unlike the bright birds and the beasts of prey,
he does not shoulder through some alien gloom
with tribal arrogance, gauche elegance.

Of the movement of the mind behind it,
his disappearance is the only hint--

A study by da Vinci, a shark's fin
shearing water as it zeroes in
_

At Sea

2008-01-06T22:13:00.025-05:00

Night comes, releasing me

and free as a ship at sea, with all around

only the spun horizon by
triangulation from the stars
to tell

and out into the star-expanded space
my soul pursues the still
still changing souls

. . . and bodies lie
like ore in the mother-lode
the ages vent their pressure in
the subterranean chambers of the brain
slow, dissolve, and crystals realign

imponderably Earth inclines
toward where all meet
what sustains

what sustains the planet as

and huger more oppressive each next day's
juggernaut unretarded overtakes

what sustains

what

darkly . . .

Stars

beneath the Earth

Off the island of Key West, 1970
_

Vanity Fair

2007-05-13T14:33:00.014-05:00

You wake up, out of nowhere, in a carny county fair,
And everything's for sale, and you are poor.

Like most, you pay for the right to pay more and more
For less and less: cracked kewpie doll, torn teddy bear,

Grease-soaked corn-dog that turns to glue in the throat,
And a chance to gawk at the two-headed man
and the woman with the legs of a goat.

Your head whirls till flat earth's a tilted carrousel,
And you stagger among the enameled saddles,

A child bedazzled by every flashy-twirly-flashy thing,
You lurch to the hysterical calliope,
you lunge for the flying brass ring.
_

(untitled)

2007-05-03T21:56:00.004-05:00

The conclusion that I have not been able to avoid is that none of the passers-by sees either this pool or me. No one ever seems to stop by the low round curb; nobody, as far as I can tell, even glances this way.

One can't blame them--it's not the sort of thing that calls attention to itself; it is, one would almost say, nondescript. Neither large nor small (although its width does not permit one to reach across it), apparently it is not wide enough to allow the formation of ripples; none is ever seen.

Within the low circle of its rim, the water is almost as invisible as if the pool were empty. No light is reflected from the surface; nor, when I lean over it, do I ever see my own reflection. It reflects nothing.

I don't know how deep it is, or where the water comes from--if, after all, the liquid in the pool be water. It is not unlike ether or alcohol in its lack of density, except that it has no properties or effects, not even that of annulling sensations. It is perfectly colorless, absolutely odorless and tasteless.

I do not wish to be here, but I cannot move away; I cannot stop dipping my hand to drink, never feeling either thirsty or satisfied.
_

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackboard

2007-05-02T19:08:00.027-05:00

(Moments in the life of an English teacher, with a nod to Wallace Stevens)

Notice: Part of this poem includes a parody of the offensive language characteristic of "gangsta rappers" and similar performers. The term "gangsta rapper" is not a racial but an "artistic" label, and therefore the parody of "gangsta" language is not a racial slur but a criticism of its sociopathic content. In part the poem satirizes not only the sex/gender slurs made by such people but also their degradation of the English language. It was written several years before the radio personality Don Imus broadcast his troublesome and over-publicized expression. Wallace Stevens's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" has been parodied and imitated a number of times, and in different ways.

1

Among twenty snowy pages
The only cutting thing
Was the eye of the parody.

2

I was of three minds,
Like a book
In which there are three parodies.

3

The parody slipped in among the editor's papers;
It was a small sabot in the machine.

4

A chalk and a blackboard
Are one.
A chalk and a blackboard and an instructor are one
Huge parody.

5

I do not know which to prefer,
The parody of inflections
Or the inflections of parody:
The writing,
Or the whistling after.

6

Lines of cathartic broken prose filled the long page
With barbaric gas.
The shadow of a parody
Crossed and re-crossed my mind.
The mood
Traced in the parody
An inexplicable snicker.

7

Yo, gangsta rappers, hip-hoppers and wanna-be's,
Why yo ice-cracks showz?
Dont-cha see, da pa-ro-dee
Dissin ya durdy hoze?

8

I know the sober, stately cadences of standard English,
Its friendliness to earthy, concrete words;
But I know, too,
That the parody is involved....

9

When the parody was circulating,
It went around and around,
Cutting many circles.

10

At the counterpoint of the parody's
Open scoring on the page,
The hawkers of cacophony
Would gasp, aghast.

11

They overrode the country
In a million DJ vans;
They had no fears, no cares!
They never suspected
The parody would overtake them.

12

The crowd is streaming overhead,
The Mall slides by.
Somewhere a parody is hatching.

13

This Twilight has been a Dark Age
For ages.
An Ice Age has descended,
Colder than glaciers.
A parody poises itself
Among the pages.
_

From The Autobiography of Emily Dickinson

2007-05-02T18:28:00.035-05:00

1

I've run to welcome--Absence--
To greet--a closing Door--
And followed after--Echoes--
Footsteps--
Still recede--before--

A Mountain or a Desert--
Were easier--to arrest
Than embrace a--
Flickering--
As it vanishes--

To try to apprehend--a Phantom
Exacts exhausting Toil--
Nature abhors a Vacuum--
I'll
Avoid--a Void

2

Christ must love you--I must not--
My white Calvary--be--
Perfect like That--without the Spot
Of sad Carnality--

Lepers--God enjoins--in Love--
Law casts out--Unclean--
"Vox Populi Vox Dei"
Festers in Irony--

3

Before--a Plank between two Cliffs--
Below--revolves--the Abyss--
Behind me--Clouds--that mourn and lower--
Into Eternities--

Horizons of wide Silence--List--
As--less than Decimal--
I feel the Universe--lean down--
To watch--when I shall Fall--
_