tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80819592024-03-13T16:56:15.406-03:00Days: 2004-2012Carol PetersCarol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.comBlogger1301125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-27190960120938531802012-11-25T17:55:00.003-03:002019-01-21T08:08:25.546-03:00Diane Wakoski<span style="font-family: inherit;">[from <a href="http://www.blacksparrowbooks.com/titles/wakoski.htm" target="_blank">Diane Wakoski</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Toward-New-Poetry-Poets/dp/0472063073/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353876772&sr=8-1&keywords=toward+a+new+poetry+wakoski" target="_blank">Toward a New Poetry</a></i>, <a href="http://www.press.umich.edu/" target="_blank">Michigan</a>, 1980]
</span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">what
I would like to do is be as real in my writing as I am in life, and
I’m a fairly real character in life. I would like to come off the
page, and be alive and singing and telling the truth, and telling the
history, and at the same time making poetry out of it. I think of
that as being what twentieth-century free verse is all about. . . .</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I
think that poetry is an act of problem solving, which means that if
there are no problems solved there is no poetry to be written. . . .</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The
purpose of the poem is to complete an act that can’t be completed
in real life. . . .</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">what
real poetry was all about was creating a personal mythology rather
than simply participating in the mythology of your culture. . . .</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">that’s
of course our great quest: how to maintain the passion in its purest
and its most violent — and I think I use that word advisedly —
violent form. But have it in fact contained as an artifice. I don’t
want the snakes in my head to turn you to stone. I do not want the
heat of my anger to melt you into a puddle [laughter]. And yet I
don’t think that art can exist unless there is that power to turn
you to stone or to melt you to your gaseous elements. . . .</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">here’s
a little discrepancy in my work because male and female sexuality are
terribly important to me. If you’re going to ask me questions of
how do I resolve them, maybe that is the problem solving that I am
involved with because in some way I’ve always felt that it’s my
destiny to be the spirit. And yet what I chafe about most in life is
being treated as a spiritual person rather than a sex object
[laughter] and woman by the man that I love. But, and maybe that’s
what my poetry is really about, is, is, is this life journey between
the body and the spirit. There’s no easy answer to it. I don’t
think you become spirit by denying the flesh, and living in hair
shirts. And yet in some way you do become spirit by simply not
acknowledging the flesh. But again because we are body, that sounds
like denial. I don’t think denial is the answer. Because what
denial becomes in the physical son cutting off the head of the
father, or whatever physical act that happens. So, so . . . these are
problems that fascinate me, and perhaps what a lot of my poems are
about. How do you solve these problems? . . .</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Vision”
is what is most private, intimate, eccentric, unusual, unique,
visionary about the person. By definition it would have to be that
part of you which is somewhat repressed or put down because it
doesn’t fit in with the forms. But it may be not be forbidden . . .
it may not just be repressed or put down because of convention. It
may be in fact the part of you that you have to create that is
completely unique. In other words, the ability to create something
unique about yourself. And you can still be quite an acceptable human
being and a good member of society and a nice friend and a good lover
and any number of other things. But you probably can’t be a poet if
you can’t create yourself as unique in some way.</span><br />
<br /></div>
<br />Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-28416161625186184242012-11-06T08:14:00.001-03:002012-11-06T08:15:39.097-03:00Lynda Hull[from <a href="http://www.cerisepress.com/03/08/making-history-bearable-lynda-hull-and-reading-newark/view-all" target="_blank">Lynda Hull</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Poems-Lynda-Hull/dp/1555974570/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352200344&sr=8-1&keywords=lynda+hull" target="_blank">The Collected Poems</a>,</i> <a href="http://www.graywolfpress.org/" target="_blank">Graywolf</a>, 2006]<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>Hollywood Jazz</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Who
says it’s cool says wrong.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
For
it rises from the city’s</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
sweltering
geometry of rooms,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
fire
escapes, and flares from the heels</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
of
corner boys on Occidental</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
posing
with small-time criminal</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
intent
— all pneumatic grace. This</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
is
the music that plays at the moment</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
in
every late-night <i>noir</i>
flick</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
when
the woman finds herself alone, perfectly</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
alone
in a hotel room before a man</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
whose
face is so shadowed as to be</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
invisible,
one more bedroom arsonist</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
seeing
nothing remotely</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
cool:
a woman in a cage</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
of
half-light, Venetian blinds.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
This
is where jazz blooms, in the hook</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
and
snag of her zipper opening to</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
an
enfilade of trumpets. Her dress</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
falls
in a dizzy indigo riff.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I
know her vices are minor: sex,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
forgetfulness,
the desire to be someone,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
anyone
else. On the landing, the man</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
pauses
before descending</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
one
more flight. Checks his belt. Adjusts</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
the
snap brim over his face. She smoothes</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
her
platinum hair and smokes a Lucky</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
to
kill his cologne. And standing there</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
by
the window in her slip, midnight blue,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
the
stockings she did not take off,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
she
is candescent, her desolation</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
a
music so voluptuous I want</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
to
linger with her. And if I do not</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
turn
away from modesty or shame,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I’m
in this for keeps, flying with her</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
into
fear’s random pivot where each article</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
glistens
like evidence: the tube of lipstick,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
her
discarded earrings. When she closes</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
her
eyes, she hears the streetcar’s</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
nocturne
up Jackson, a humpbacked sedan</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
rounding
the corner from now</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
to
that lavish void of tomorrow,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
a
sequence of rooms: steam heat, modern,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
2
bucks. Now listen. Marimbas.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
His
cologne persists, a redolence</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
of
fire alarms, and Darling,</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
there
are no innocents here, only</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
dupes,
voyeurs. On the stairs</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
he
flicks dust from his alligator</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
shoes.
I stoop to straighten</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
the
seams of my stockings, and</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
when
I meet him in the shadows</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
of
the stairwell, clarinets whisper</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>Here,
take my arm. Walk with me.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/uploads/authors/lynda-hull/448x/lynda-hull.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="261" src="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/uploads/authors/lynda-hull/448x/lynda-hull.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lynda Hull</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i><br /></i></div>
Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-42564705602132454752012-10-05T16:27:00.004-03:002012-10-05T16:29:33.955-03:00Aracelis Girmay<span style="font-family: inherit;">[from <a href="http://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/poetry/crossroads/new_american_poets/aracelis_girmay/" target="_blank">Aracelis Girmay</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Animalia-American-Poets-Continuum/dp/193441462X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349465090&sr=8-1&keywords=kingdom+animalia+girmay" target="_blank">Kingdom Animalia</a>,</i> <a href="http://www.boaeditions.org/" target="_blank">BOA</a>, 2011]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">& When We Woke</span></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It
rained all night. It did not rain.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I
strapped my life to a buoy — & sent it out.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">&
was hoping for a city whose citizens sing</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">from
their windows or rooftops,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">about
the beauty of their children</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">&
their children’s eyes, & the color of the fields</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">when
it is dusk. & was hoping for a city</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">as
free as the rain, whose people roam</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">wherever
they want, free as any real, free thing is free.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Joyful.
Green. & was hoping</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">for a
city of 100 old women whose bones</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">are
thick & big in their worker hands</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">beautiful
as old doors. & when we woke,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">dear
reader, we’d landed in a city of 100 old women</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">telling
their daughters things. & when we turned</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">to
walk away, because we did not think we were citizens</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">of
this strange & holy place, you & I, the hundred old</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">women
said, <i>No, No! You are one
of us! We are your</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">mothers!
You! You! Too! Come & listen to our secrets.</span></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">We
are telling every person with a face!</span></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">&
they stood us in a line facing the sea,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">(because
that is the direction we came from)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">&
behind us there was another line of women</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">&
another, & we sang songs. & we filled the songs</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">with
our mothers’ names. & we filled the songs</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">with
trees for our mothers to stand under,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">&
good water for our mothers to drink. & we filled</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">the
songs with beds for our mothers to lay down in</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">&
rest. We filled the songs with rest. & good food</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">for
our mothers to eat. We made them a place</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">in
our singing, & we faced the sea.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">We
are still making them a place</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">in
our singing. Do you understand?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">We
make them a place where they can walk freely,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">untouched
by knives or the police who patrol</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">the
borders of countries like little & fake hatred-gods</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">who
patrol the land though the land says, <i>I
go on</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">&
on, so far, you lose your eye on me.</span></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">We
make our mothers a place in our singing & our place</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">does
not have a flag or, even, one language.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Do
you understand? We sing like this for days</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">until
our throats are torn with singing. Do you understand?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">We
must build houses for our mothers in our poems. I am not sure,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">but
think. This is my wisest song.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://latinopoetryreview.blogspot.com.ar/2012/05/latin-featured-poets-4-interviews.html" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hnsfnko6y-Q/T8PR7xFta4I/AAAAAAAAAQ4/9m_yiPvr9mU/s1600/Gilmay.jpg" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://latinopoetryreview.blogspot.com.ar/2012/05/latin-featured-poets-4-interviews.html" target="_blank">Aracelis Girmay</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-13943938657232311442012-09-11T09:12:00.000-03:002012-09-11T09:12:06.890-03:00Cate Marvin[from <a href="http://www.catemarvin.com/">Cate Marvin</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fragment-Head-Queen-Cate-Marvin/dp/1932511512/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347365233&sr=8-1&keywords=fragment+of+the+head+of+a+queen">Fragment of the Head of a Queen</a></i>, <a href="http://www.sarabandebooks.org/">Sarabande</a>, 2007]<br />
<br />
Landscape with Hungry Girls<br />
<br />
There’s blood here. The skyline teethes the clouds<br />
raw and rain’s course streams a million umbilical<br />
cords down windows and walls. Everything gnaws,<br />
and the pink polish on their girl-nails chips, flakes<br />
off as they continue to dig through towering heaps<br />
of refuse. It’s a story, as usual. As usual, a phone<br />
and dead silence. Or the phone: a lobster to the ear.<br />
Girls resigned to being girls. The softer faces they<br />
find in the mirrors. The limp shake, a hand placed,<br />
a flower wilting moist on the man’s palm. Or hard<br />
handshakes deemed “aggressive”: snakes. O, girls.<br />
All of them carefully watching carefully the faces<br />
of their sleeping men, even when their own faces<br />
are
more beautiful in their watching, and if only they’d<br />
watch their own faces beneath the revolving lights<br />
sliding between the blinds: they are blinded from<br />
watching their men sleep so dumbly. The headaches,<br />
the insistent grip of a gnawing stomach, eating itself.<br />
Thinking hunger is strength, how hurt they are, girls<br />
picking at food on their plates. <i>I like a girl who eats.</i><br />
Careful, what you say you want. The moon is distant,<br />
yet cousin to her face: our genders worse than alien.<br />
Bleeding is something everyone does. You don’t call.<br />
Girls snack on skyscrapers, girls gut their teddy bears,<br />
and girls saw their own faces off. What is it to lack<br />
compassion? When you walk through a zoo, do you<br />
not think the animals it houses could have been you?<br />
Who would you be, how hungry, if you were a girl<br />
feeding only on the meek sleep of male countenance?<br />
Would you stand vigil, would you starve as they do?
<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/uploads/authors/cate-marvin/448x/cate-marvin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="261" src="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/uploads/authors/cate-marvin/448x/cate-marvin.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cate Marvin</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-45659139944984910932012-09-09T09:24:00.000-03:002012-09-09T09:24:51.385-03:00Marianne Moore[from <a href="http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/moore/moore.htm">Marianne Moore</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Poems-Marianne-Moore/dp/0670031984/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1347192972&sr=8-2&keywords=marianne+moore+complete+poems">The Poems of Marianne Moore</a></i>, ed. <a href="http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/wsas/academics/english/gschulman.htm">Grace Schulman</a>, <a href="http://us.penguingroup.com/static/pages/publishers/adult/viking.html">Viking</a>, 2003]<br />
<br />
A Grave<br />
<br />
Man looking into the sea,<br />
taking the view from those who have as much right to it as you have<br />
to it yourself,<br />
it is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing,<br />
but you cannot stand in the middle of this;<br />
the sea has nothing to give but a well excavated grave.<br />
The firs stand in a procession, each with an emerald turkey foot<br />
at the top,<br />
reserved as their contours, saying nothing;<br />
repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of the<br />
sea;<br />
the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.<br />
There are others besides you who have work that look —<br />
whose expression is no longer a protest; the fish no longer<br />
investigate them<br />
for their bones have not lasted:<br />
men lower nets, unconscious of the fact that they are desecrating<br />
a grave,<br />
and row quickly away — the blades of the oars<br />
moving together like the feet of water-spiders as if there were no<br />
such thing as death.<br />
The wrinkles progress among themselves in a phalanx — beautiful<br />
under networks of foam,<br />
and fade breathlessly while the sea rustles in and out of the seaweed;<br />
the birds swim through the air at top speed, emitting catcalls as<br />
heretofore —<br />
the tortoise-shell scourges about the feet of cliffs, in motion beneath<br />
them;<br />
and the ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouses and noise of<br />
bellbuoys,<br />
advances as usual, looking as if it were not that ocean in which<br />
dropped things are bound to sink —<br />
in which if they turn and twist, it is neither with volition nor<br />
consciousness.
<br />
<br />
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Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-38709376907717713562012-08-27T06:40:00.000-03:002018-05-21T08:28:00.488-03:00Ann Townsend<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">[from <a href="http://poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_townsend.php" target="_blank">Ann Townsend</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Store-Erotics-Gerald-Cable-Series/dp/187885111X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346059071&sr=8-1&keywords=ann+townsend+dime+store" target="_blank">Dime Store Erotics</a>, </i><a href="http://www.silverfishreviewpress.com/" target="_blank">Silver Fish Review</a>, 1998]</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><b>Trimmings</b></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">Restless,
pulled outside by fog</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">and
fitful rain, she carries scissors</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">and
basket to trim the last wild things.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">She
crouches, wind-shaded,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">before
parsley, tarragon, thyme:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">herbs
weep into her hands,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">spiders
scatter across pine needles.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">Half-dark,
wholly cold,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">the
evening of first frost</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">falls
down as rain, cool mouth</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">against
her unprotected neck.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">Across
the lake her lover waits</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">in
a room warm with smoke,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">jukebox's
muted melody,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">deep
brown bottles ranged</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">across
the bar. Once she leaned</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">into
his mouth, whiskey sweet</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">between
them. The tiny napkins</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">beneath
their drinks grew wet</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">with
condensation. Then</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">their
fingers touched,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">an
accidental convergence of the stars.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">She
shakes loose a bunch of sage.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">It
swings like a heavy skirt</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">in
her hands, one caterpillar</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">dropping
free. In the sky</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">the
constellations fuzz and fade.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><b>After
the End</b></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">Because
I left him there so you could see</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;"> his
body, broken by the fall, the hawk's</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">small
relatives hopped from higher branches</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;">and
called a kind of glee that he was dead.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;">By
afternoon, the ground around him dusted</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">with
feathers and gravel kicked up, he looked</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;">like
a bundle of rags tossed</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">from
a car and tumbled there, but still</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;">graceful,
neck flung back in the moss and dirt,</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;">and
the yellow claws curled to question marks.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">Then
the trees were quiet, the other voices</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;">gone.
When a car turned into the driveway,</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">I
knew it wasn't you. They sat a while,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"> f</span><span style="color: #222222;">our
men, the same dark suits, carefully</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;">tended
hair. Missionaries: I could tell</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">from
the window where I stood beyond</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;">their
line of sight. All their doors opened</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">as
if by a common feeling, something</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;">unseen
and insistent in the air.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;">They
did not see the hawk lying there, dead</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">from
its long fall, or age, or driven down</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;">by
the crows that nest in the pines above.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">They
did not see me. I stepped back, behind</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;">the
curtain, and wished you home, who could see</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;">these
things and know what is beloved, what is dead.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><b>Mid-February,
White Light</b></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">Country
music and a black dog barking</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">on
a chain, and the voices of grown children</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">complaining
— <i>Dad, when are we
going to burn</i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;"><i>this
pile?</i> — cast over from
next door</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">on
the first nearly warm afternoon.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">Everyone
has come out to see the sun.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">Slow
bees cluster at the porch step</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">and
the cat has wakened in a pool of light.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">So
when the chainsaw coughs into gear,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">to
clear dead wood away from the gas line,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">it's
like some strange natural description —</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">the
ground frozen in its dream of January</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">creaking
beneath our feet,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">the
impetus of metal cutting into wood,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">the
urge to flight when the bee</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">hazards
its way, wind-driven or scent-impelled,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">into
my hair — to touch, to continue.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">Even
our unmade bed, framed by the peeling</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">slats
of the bedroom window,</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">looks
not like a tranquil reminder</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">but
disturbed, shaken from a measured stillness</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">of
white sheets, pillows, red quilt</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">cast
on the floor, a reduction from action to disorder.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">Or
the gift of a warm wind that feels wet.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-78540371893268395312012-08-11T11:46:00.000-03:002012-08-11T19:54:07.726-03:00Noelle Kocot[from <a href="http://www.harpandaltar.com/interior.php?t=r&i=1&p=11&e=12">Noelle Kocot</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sunny-Wednesday-Noelle-Kocot/dp/1933517395">Sunny Wednesday</a></i>, <a href="http://www.wavepoetry.com/">Wave</a>, 2009]
The Poem of Force
after <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Weil">Simone Weil</a>'s <a href="http://people.virginia.edu/~jdk3t/WeilTheIliad.pdf">Essay on <i>The Iliad</i></a><br />
<br />
How often have I lain beneath a roof of trees and sestinas,<br />
Sestinas and trees, the chasmus of my timid hopes decked<br />
Out in the styles of the day,<br />
Losing myself in novels of corporeal sunshine and a home<br />
Where a samovar is always gurgling on the stove, and men of frivolous<br />
or serious wives<br />
Tie self-strung misery around their necks. And knowledge<br />
<br />
Is a shining lamp that lights the hieroglyphs of love and suffering, and<br />
no knowledge<br />
Is enough to put it out. I used to dream of a sestina<br />
Whose very presence would ignite the longing of an ancient wife<br />
Who'd swim the matrices of grace into the waves that swept the deck<br />
Of a ship leaving its home<br />
Of drowsy cows and frogs waiting by the river as the day<br />
<br />
Blinked over never-ending fields. But today<br />
I feel in almost perfect balance with the world, and any knowledge<br />
That I had or have is but a lying down in the glass casket of my<br />
thoughts, the long small home<br />
I can barely even find were it not for this sestina<br />
Crashing like painted rain against my eyes decked<br />
With brazen orchid light. And were I not a wife<br />
<br />
And mother to these thoughts, I'd take my wifely<br />
Ringless hand and draw the curtains on the days<br />
Of an atavistic reaching out and clear the deck<br />
For something more untoward than the acknowledgment<br />
That we are riveted between laughter and the abyss, like characters<br />
in a sestina<br />
With all the lines crossed out. I find my home<br />
<br />
When I travel the near and distant byways, I find my home<br />
With the wives<br />
Of absent heroes put to sleep in the sleep of bronze, and in sestinas<br />
That haven't borne witness to a single day<br />
Of war, arrows flying on both sides but none to pierce the knowledge<br />
That we ourselves are a deck<br />
<br />
Of marked cards that decorate<br />
The history of our homeless<br />
Tribe. To know<br />
This is to understand Hector's grief for the long-robed wives<br />
As he stood outside Troy's walls in the rising of the day<br />
Waiting for his death, and trembling, his soul mourning its fate of<br />
being trapped inside a thing — to understand this is to return to an<br />
age of epics, not sestinas.<br />
<br />
For now I have only the bare knowledge of all wives<br />
Who've ever decked their homes<br />
With the talismans of the day, and my talismans are sestinas.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://bombsite.com/images/attachments/0009/5853/kocot_pic_body.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://bombsite.com/images/attachments/0009/5853/kocot_pic_body.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Noelle Kocot</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-57725357167119588222012-07-22T18:20:00.000-03:002012-07-22T18:25:56.491-03:00Javier Marías[from <a href="http://javiermariasblog.wordpress.com/">Javier Marías</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Heart-So-White-Javier-Mar%C3%ADas/dp/0811215059/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1342992142&sr=8-1">A Heart So White</a></i>, tr. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Jull_Costa">Margaret Jull Costa</a>, <a href="http://ndbooks.com/">New Directions</a>, 1992]<br />
<br />
Real togetherness in married couples and indeed in any couple comes from words, not just the words that are spoken — spoken involuntarily — but the words one doesn't keep to oneself — at least not without the intervention of the will. It isn't so much that there are no secrets between two people who share a pillow because that's what they decide — what is serious enough to constitute a secret and what is not, if it is not told? — rather it's impossible not to tell, to relate, to comment, to enunciate, as if that were the primordial activity of all couples, at least those who have become couples recently and are still not too lazy to speak to one another. It isn't just that with your head resting on a pillow you tend to remember the past and even your childhood, and that remote and quite insignificant things surface in your memory, come to your tongue, and that all take on a certain value and seem worthy of being recalled out loud; nor that we're disposed to recount our whole life to the person resting their head on our pillow, as if we needed them to be able to <i>see</i> us from the very beginning — especially from the beginning, that is, from childhood — and to witness, through our telling, all those years before they knew us and during which time, we now believe, they were waiting for us. Neither is it simply a desire to compare, to find parallels or coincidences, the desire to know where each of you was in all the different eras of your two existences and to fantasize about the unlikely possibility of having met each other before; lovers always feel that their meeting took place too late, as if the amount of time occupied by their passion was never enough or, in retrospect, never long enough (the present is untrustworthy), or perhaps they can't bear the fact that once there was no passion between them, not even a hint of it, while the two of them were in the world, swept along by its most turbulent currents, and yet with their backs turned to each other, without even knowing one another, perhaps not even wanting to. Nor is it that some kind of interrogatory system is established on a daily basis which, out of weariness or routine, neither partner can escape, and so everyone ends up answering the questions. It's rather that being with someone consists in large measure in thinking out loud, that is, in thinking everything twice rather than once, once with your thoughts and again when you speak, marriage is a narrative institution. Or perhaps it's just that they spend so much time together (however little time that is amongst modern couples, it still amounts to a lot of time) that the two partners (but in particular the man, who feels guilty if he remains silent) have to make use of whatever they think and whatever occurs to them or happens to them in order to amuse the other person; thus, in the end, there's not a single tiny corner of all the events and thoughts in an individual's life that remains untransmitted, or rather translated matrimonially. The events and thoughts of the others are transmitted too, those they've confided to us in private, that's where the expression "pillow talk" comes from, there are no secrets between people who share a bed, the bed is like a confessional. For the sake of love or its essence — telling, informing, announcing, commenting, opining, distracting, listening and laughing, and vainly making plans — one betrays everyone else, friends, parents, brothers and sisters, blood relations and non-blood relations, former lovers and beliefs, former mistresses, your own past and childhood, your own language when you stop speaking it and doubtless your country, everything that anyone holds to be secret or perhaps merely belongs to the past. In order to flatter the person you love you denigrate everything else in existence, you deny and abominate everything in order to content and reassure the one person who could leave you; so great is the power of the territory delineated by the pillow that it excludes from its bosom everything outside it, and it's a territory which, by its very nature, doesn't allow for anything else to be on it except the two partners, or lovers, who in a sense are alone and for that very reason talk and hide nothing — involuntarily. The pillow is round and soft and often white and after a while that roundness and whiteness become a replacement for the world and its weak wheel.
<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://bombsite.powweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Mar%C3%ADas-c-EL-PAIS-2006-alta.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="329" src="http://bombsite.powweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Mar%C3%ADas-c-EL-PAIS-2006-alta.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Javier Marías</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2257/2537316958_2c21ca04b6_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2257/2537316958_2c21ca04b6_z.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Margaret Jull Costas</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-91942036592714776312012-07-13T18:18:00.000-03:002012-08-25T06:35:48.079-03:00Steve Shavel<span style="font-family: inherit;">[from <a href="http://www.wavepoetry.com/search?q=steve+shavel">Steve Shavel</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Small-Brides-Survive-Extreme-Cold/dp/0972348735/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342213915&sr=8-1&keywords=how+small+brides+survive">How Small Brides Survive in Extreme Cold</a></i>, <a href="http://www.wavepoetry.com/">Verse Press</a>, 2003]</span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">How Small Brides Survive in Extreme Cold [excerpt]</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">2</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Every
word occludes another, just as</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">every
perspective cuts across some larger circuitry — logjams</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">of
purposiveness, the whole farrago</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">of
incidence, everything a something</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">taken
out of context, the stunned minnow</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">in
the heron's crop</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;">mouthing
the vowels of </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="background-color: white;">horror,</span></i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;">
or the way</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">you
wake up sometimes with a</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">loded
word on the tongue</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">the
odd fragment</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">of
dream cipher (today no</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;">kidding
it was </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="background-color: white;">tatterdemalion</span></i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;">).</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">But
of the mechanism, spring-</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">wound,
that drives these recirculating</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">waters,
disgorged on the hill towns in</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;">last
night's storm or unlocked </span></span></span></span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">from
the rockface its last</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">blue
icicle integument, trundling</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">past
stubborn milltowns and</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">former
milltowns, their trestles</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">cantilevers
and</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">crumbling
abutments,</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">their
sullen smokestacks,</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">rosettes
of identical split-</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">level
around the cul-de-sac,</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">sluiced
through the archaic reactor</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">whose
lab-coated acolytes</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">scrutinize
the apparatus, tending</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">the
device</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">its
dread core their queen</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">hived
and bloated with light,</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">turning
bend after bend</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">of
perturbation to get here</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">where
the currents slow to spread their snares</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">and
drop their sediment —</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">we
are all of us oblivious,</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;">taken
in entirely by the parade </span></span></span></span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">of
forms, the events and detritus</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">that
drift across the meniscus of consciousness.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Only
the sandpiper it seems</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">sees
past its own reflection —</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">and
the kingfisher, who lunges now</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">through
the shattered pane</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">to
that low strange corridor</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">its
glimpse of minnow where</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;">last
year's leaves in a </span></span></span></span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">spectral
cortege, lit</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">with
the amber half-light</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">of
the after-life</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">leach
their tannins or settle</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">little
by little a skeletal tracery</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">into
the bottom silt,</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">thick
as the dust of an undisturbed</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">necropolis.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">While
above an unseen hand works feverishly</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">to
smooth the sheet of other-being</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">over
the ever-unmade bed of the river.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">And
while I'm going on like this</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">a
something noses closer through the shallows,</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">something
I didn't notice, nor</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">he
me til</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">thwack</span></span></span></i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">and
recoil</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">the
beaver startled startles back</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">his
blackjack tail on the water's pate</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">then</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;">thwack</span></span></span></i><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;">
again</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> KERTHUNK</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">in
spreading rose-windows</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">of
concussion. The Willow-Manitou</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">looks
on and marvels.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">An
after-sprite of droplets shivers down.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Several
weeks now he's been at it</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">this
waterlogged carpetbagger</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">interloping
both the banks up and down.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Daylong
the air endures the rasp</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">and
crepitation of his handiwork, a</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">jigsaw
of precision, each chiselled branch</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">a
deftly-placed sprag in the works.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">For
these two are pitted</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">here
and everywhere</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">one
against the other:</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">the
curving intelligence of river,</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">the
Cartesian architectonic</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">of
the beaver, part iconoclast</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">breaking
the symmetries,</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">troubling
the face of the waters, part</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">masonic
artificer, geometrician,</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">master
anaesthetician, plotting and fretting</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">to
put the river under and</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">three
or four in confederacy</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">equal
to an entire</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">army
corps of engineers.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">But
for now the river doesn't give a damn.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Rather
it is the dam that gives.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">And
so on and so forth through the spate of May . . .</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://covers.openlibrary.org/a/id/5542657-M.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="215" src="http://covers.openlibrary.org/a/id/5542657-M.jpg" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Steve Shavel<br />
[photo by Jenna Sunshine]</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-51556417672254320792012-07-02T18:07:00.000-03:002012-07-02T18:07:05.167-03:00Daniel Nathan Terry[from <a href="http://www.danielnathanterry.com/">Daniel Nathan Terry</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Waxwings-Daniel-Nathan-Terry/dp/1590213556/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1341262883&sr=8-2&keywords=waxwings">Waxwings</a>, </i><a href="http://www.lethepressbooks.com/">Lethe</a>, 2012]<br />
<br />
Photograph, 1984<br />
<br />
Swallow this<br />
house — bedroom window paned<br />
like a roadside cross<br />
erected for a reckless boy, wreath<br />
of camera-flare, paper flower of real grief<br />
with too bright a center, edges finally fading<br />
in shoebox weather.<br />
You know<br />
what happened there.<br />
You know<br />
this is more than a snap-<br />
shot. Flat as it seems, it will swell<br />
on your red tongue and will become<br />
those rooms — that room with its pale boy<br />
sinking to his knees, again, sinking<br />
into shadowed corners.<br />
Come,<br />
fold into black origami.<br />
Come, unhinge<br />
your jaw like the copperhead you saw<br />
becoming a blackbird in the woods — mouth-first,<br />
then your throat, your white ribs and pink gut.<br />
All that's left of you<br />
must muscle through<br />
the flapping wing, thin legs trembling,<br />
one skeletal foot curling inward.<br />
It's in you now —<br />
the song, the sin, the bones, the room, him<br />
telling you it's alright, and every man does it<br />
when a girl leaves him empty-<br />
handed.<br />
Swallow this<br />
house, blackbird-who-became a snake. Swallow<br />
this house and keep yourself<br />
from remembering<br />
how to sing.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.onepausepoetry.org/images/made/danielnathanterry_new_252_338_s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.onepausepoetry.org/images/made/danielnathanterry_new_252_338_s.jpg" width="297" /></a></div>
Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-72907637647254188822012-05-31T10:22:00.000-03:002012-05-31T11:50:29.177-03:00Evie Shockley[from <a href="http://english.rutgers.edu/faculty/facultyprofiles/297-eshockley.html">Evie Shockley</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-black-Wesleyan-Poetry-Series/dp/081957287X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338469915&sr=8-1">The New Black</a>,</i> <a href="http://www.wesleyan.edu/wespress/">Wesleyan</a>, 2011]<br />
<br />
<i>dear ace bandage,</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
the wound is hard to place.<br />
the wound is not your job.<br />
i thought i needed you, but<br />
things are already tight. you<br />
are like putty in my hands,<br />
or is my thinking colored?<br />
flesh tone or dial tone? who<br />
you gonna call? your pretty<br />
silver broach sets in, holds<br />
you at a tension. could it<br />
clasp the skin together long<br />
enough for two flaps to re-<br />
attach? miss match. rematch.<br />
love. ace. deuce. game. open.<br />
<br />
<i>dear cuddly dharma,</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
you make it easy to say no,<br />
just. i turn a blind eye to<br />
temptation after staring hard<br />
into your hydrogen smile. we<br />
spoon, and i hate to stir, but<br />
fetish is always in the mix.<br />
even fate looks glamorous<br />
by lamplight. spotlight. hot.<br />
wound or would? would or<br />
wooden? batter batter batter!<br />
you have a dream of night-<br />
marish proportions. where<br />
there's a will, there's aweigh.<br />
unanchored. unmoored. off.<br />
<br />
<i>dear existential fallacy</i>,<br />
<br />
i need you to be concrete.<br />
you need me to liquidate<br />
my account. pour, pour me,<br />
with my fluid tale. tail, to<br />
hear you tell it. fluent in six<br />
currencies. dirty lucre. you<br />
tracking bills counterfeited<br />
by the page. lyre, lyre, pants<br />
the town crier. griot. seer.<br />
sikh. psyche. that, baby, went<br />
out with the dirty dishwasher.<br />
cross my palm with olives:<br />
i will tell you your pastime.<br />
your passive voice is dated.<br />
<br />
<i>dear gift horse,</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
open wide. now bite down.<br />
that incident was not an<br />
accident. don't. act like i'm<br />
stupid. do you come with<br />
a saddle? which way to<br />
the sunset? that's the thing<br />
about possibility: it's dark<br />
in there. you can't judge<br />
an r&b song by its covers.<br />
colors. dolores is blue: why<br />
must she give up her security<br />
blanket? she's had it since<br />
she was born. my, what sharp<br />
teeth you have! all the better.<br />
<br />
<i>dear ink jet,</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
black fast. greasy lightning.<br />
won't smear. won't rub off.<br />
defense: a visual screen: ask<br />
an octopus <i>(bioaquadooloop).</i><br />
footprints faster than a speed-<br />
ing bully, tracking dirt all<br />
over the page. make every<br />
word count. one. two. iamb.<br />
octoroon. half-breed. mutt.<br />
mulatto. why are there so few<br />
hybrids on the road? because<br />
they can't reproduce. trochee<br />
choking okay mocha. ebony,<br />
by contrast, says so much.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.eveningwillcome.com/pic-eshockley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="315" src="http://www.eveningwillcome.com/pic-eshockley.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Evie Shockley</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-39159241686096267662012-05-10T13:44:00.000-03:002012-05-12T10:33:12.477-03:00Julie Carr<a href="http://quarterlyconversation.com/sarahof-fragments-and-lines-by-julie-carr">Julie Carr</a>’s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sarah-Fragments-National-Poetry-Series/dp/1566892511/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336668000&sr=8-1">Sarah — of Fragments and Lines</a>, </i><a href="http://www.coffeehousepress.org/">Coffee House</a>, 2012]<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Conception Abstracts<br />
<br />
Heat teems from the meat of the form<br />
<br />
Tame heat if tame form, if maimed form then fierce.<br />
Seems eaten, this mate, this timed tenant.<br />
<br />
<br />
Tenured member of my own passive nature, I tested the<br />
tine of the task. Desperate for some apt rapture, tapped<br />
the lap of the master. Faster. Water and laughter, the<br />
last splatter of summer, later, the hot slap of not<br />
sleeping. Walled by fault, the taut self slipped. And to<br />
what heights after?<br />
<br />
<br />
[untitled]<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
In the second week of solid rain, Sarah. You woke at dawn with </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
a head of dream. Clover’s fell enthusiasm expands in the </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
perpetual bath. Sarah. The lamp suspended in the garden, </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Sarah: Cheshire-like and falsely dear. We make boats of juice </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
bottles, houses of cereal boxes, cats of toilet paper, eggs of </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
lavender and stone. Sarah. At the festival of water we watch an </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
orchestra of children sway to the music of their strings. And in </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
your room you succumb. Learn as you are dying how to </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
behave like one near dead. As magpie, you are eave-bound, </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
acquisitive, indiscriminate. Beak clipping the scraps of your old </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
existence, the strings of your future weave, Sarah. As duck you </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
are industrious, with a reed in your possession, across pond </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
you slide. But here, tatter-head, you are forced into days, </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
broken into hours, and those hours mercilessly sliced.
</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://poetry.arizona.edu/sites/poetry.arizona.edu/files/images/authors/julie-carr.JPG?1327371044" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://poetry.arizona.edu/sites/poetry.arizona.edu/files/images/authors/julie-carr.JPG?1327371044" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Julie Carr</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-1523059731113375652012-05-08T16:12:00.001-03:002012-10-02T18:28:28.205-03:00Arecelis Girmay<span style="font-family: inherit;">[from <a href="http://www.hampshire.edu/faculty/agirmay.htm">Arecelis Girmay</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Animalia-American-Continuum-ebook/dp/B006R6Z1BY/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&qid=1336504257&sr=8-1">Kingdom Animalia</a>,</i> <a href="http://www.boaeditions.org/">BOA</a>, 2011]</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Small Letter</span><br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">do not go, this day, the red</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">of bridges, my little, stay</span></span><br />
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">beside me over</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">the ruins of san francisco.</span></span><br />
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">go, but do not go</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">from me, my one,</span></span><br />
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">my love, my very kin</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">who I laughed with in our sleep</span></span><br />
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">every night, my dream</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">beside your dream, for a year.</span></span><br />
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">wrecking ball despedida, wreck</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">the great rooms in my chest & take</span></span><br />
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">my last song, but do not leave me</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">on this earth, my one</span></span><br />
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">without my one. how would</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">the hand ever live, if it knew</span></span><br />
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">it would never braid your hair</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">again, or hold your face?</span></span><br />
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">it would get up & walk</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">away forever then.</span></span><br />
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">one by one my breaths</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">would go out looking: a procession</span></span><br />
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s1"></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;">of homeless dogs,</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> or clouds</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-2333410989456833212012-03-22T19:05:00.001-03:002012-03-27T08:55:45.107-03:00Robert Duncan[from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Duncan_(poet)">Robert Duncan</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/H-D-Collected-Writings-Robert-Duncan/dp/0520272625/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1332453697&sr=8-1">The H. D. Book</a>,</i> <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/">California</a>, 2012]<br />
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Threads are spun out and are woven, from event into event. Hands work the dancing shuttles of a close net to make things real, to realize what is happening. A tapestry of a life appears in the mesh of many lives, a play. But just as when we weave a complex of lines a cloud or atmosphere appears, a texture or cloth, something more than the threads told, and out of that texture appear, not only the figures we were translating into our design, but other figures of the ground itself; so a “life” appears in the work itself. The weaving or the painting or the writing is “subjective,” is an act out of however we can do it; the “subject matter” is “objective,” is some thing or event as actual as ourselves which we reach out to capture, to draw into a texture with ourselves. In the medium, our work and this thing become mixed, changed then. A ground appears as a new condition of what we are doing. . . .</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
“the mind is upborne upon the emotional surge” [Pound]</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
There is a threatened chastity of mind in Pound that would put away, not face, the thought of hellish things, here in considering the Divine World, as later in considering fascism, where also he cannot allow that the sublime is complicit, involved in a total structure, with the obscene — what goes on backstage. Spirit in <i>The Cantos</i> will move as a crystal, clean and clear of the muddle, even the filth, of the world and its tasks thru which Psyche works in suffering towards Eros. . . .<br />
<br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The style of the artist, his signature or control, is . . . analogous to his character, the operation of energies in repression, of challenge and attack upon the world about him . . . The grace of the artist is analogous to his nature, a given thing, the operation of energies in freedom, of response and self derivation from the world. Style, being wrested from Nature, is mastery; Grace, being given, is the service. The Art here being to keep alive in one process mastery in service, service in mastery. . . .</span><br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span><br />
<span class="s1">Paradise or first Eden survives in its never having yielded satisfaction. A rapture that leaves the poet hungry for rapture.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-39806128834207370382012-01-28T17:33:00.000-03:002012-01-28T17:43:46.136-03:00João Cabral de Melo Neto[from <a href="http://pippoetry.blogspot.com/2010/12/joao-cabral-de-melo-neto.html">João Cabral de Melo Neto</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Education-Stone-Selected-Bilingual-Portuguese/dp/0974968013/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327781923&sr=8-1">Education by Stone: Selected Poems</a>,</i> tr. <a href="http://www.zimbojam.com/culture/literary-news/1898-richard-zenith-talks-poetry-identity-and-pessoa.html">Richard Zenith</a>, <a href="http://www.archipelagobooks.org/">Archipelago</a>, 2005]<br />
<br />
Party at the Manor House [excerpts]<br />
<i>(Congressional rhythm, Northeast accent)</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
1<br />
<br />
– The sugar mill worker<br />
in a large or small mill<br />
– Is the same mill worker<br />
with a different rhyme.<br />
– The sugar mill worker<br />
in a raw mill or refinery:<br />
– "Sugar mill worker"<br />
is the crucial denominator.<br />
– Any sugar mill worker<br />
from any Pernambuco:<br />
– When he says "sugar mill worker"<br />
will have said everything.<br />
– Whatever his name,<br />
position or salary:<br />
– By saying "sugar mill worker,"<br />
he will have said it all.<br />
<br />
11<br />
<br />
– The sugar mill worker<br />
in female form<br />
– Is an empty sack<br />
that stands on two feet.<br />
– The female mill worker<br />
is essentially a sack<br />
– Of sugar without<br />
any sugar inside.<br />
– The sugar mill worker<br />
in female form<br />
– Is a sack that cannot<br />
conserve or contain,<br />
– She's a sack made<br />
just to be emptied<br />
– Of other sacks made in her<br />
nobody knows how.<br />
<br />
2<br />
<br />
– The sugar mill worker<br />
looks like us from a distance:<br />
– Looking closer one sees<br />
what sets him apart.<br />
– The sugar mill worker<br />
up close, to a sharp eye:<br />
– Is in all respects human<br />
but at half the price.<br />
– He is missing nothing<br />
that you and I have,<br />
down to every detail,<br />
like any normal man.<br />
– He's the same, yet seems<br />
to have been cut out<br />
by the dull scissors<br />
of a third-rate tailor.<br />
<br />
7<br />
<br />
– The sugar mill worker<br />
looks like flesh and blood:<br />
– Looking closer one sees<br />
just what substance he is.<br />
– The mill worker's body<br />
when actually touched<br />
– Proves to be different,<br />
of a thinner consistence.<br />
– Its texture is rough<br />
and at the same time slack,<br />
like cheap cotton cloth<br />
or like cotton scraps.<br />
– Like well-worn cloths<br />
torn and tattered<br />
to where, in our language<br />
cloths become rags.<br />
<br />
12<br />
<br />
– The sugar mill worker<br />
seems to be of our clay:<br />
– Looking closer one sees<br />
that his clay was grayer.<br />
– The sugar mill worker<br />
is shadowy and dim:<br />
– He never learns to shine<br />
like the sugar mill's steels.<br />
– He can't even shine<br />
like the duller copper<br />
of the vats he stirs<br />
in the smaller mills.<br />
– He never even learns<br />
to shine like the hoe handles<br />
he dry polishes daily<br />
with his sandpaper hand.<br />
<br />
13<br />
<br />
– The sugar mill worker<br />
when he's at work:<br />
– Everything he works with<br />
feels heavy to him.<br />
– It's as if his blood,<br />
though thinner than ours,<br />
weighed on his body<br />
like juice when thick.<br />
– Like sugarcane juice which,<br />
after much cooking,<br />
gets thicker and thicker<br />
until it's molasses.<br />
– The sugar mill worker<br />
has a heavy rhythm:<br />
– Like the final molasses<br />
leaving the final vat.<br />
<br />
9<br />
<br />
– The sugar mill worker<br />
yellowishly lives<br />
among all that blue<br />
which is always Pernambuco.<br />
– Even against the yellow<br />
of the canefield straw,<br />
his yellow is still yellower,<br />
for it reaches his morale.<br />
– The sugar mill worker<br />
is the quintessential yellow:<br />
– Yellow in his body<br />
and in his state of mind.<br />
– This explains his calm,<br />
which can appear as wisdom:<br />
– But it's not calmness at all,<br />
it's nothingness, inertia.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiof4XV1bN28pWi_8a0Ya9qgJ_qubQwHfaEc-G-rQ-FogeFF0iKgRRcXIzqQC06TBGXKvIfb1knAutP1dTQ5BlN_vpSnpWiI9itY50g8JKuXR9dsOLBt8ideiqxCIPz5qyLpoa6Hw/s1600/Jo%C3%A3o+Cabral+de+Melo+Neto_Juvenil_Santa_Cruz_1935.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiof4XV1bN28pWi_8a0Ya9qgJ_qubQwHfaEc-G-rQ-FogeFF0iKgRRcXIzqQC06TBGXKvIfb1knAutP1dTQ5BlN_vpSnpWiI9itY50g8JKuXR9dsOLBt8ideiqxCIPz5qyLpoa6Hw/s400/Jo%C3%A3o+Cabral+de+Melo+Neto_Juvenil_Santa_Cruz_1935.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">João Cabral de Melo Neto, 1935</td></tr>
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<i><br /></i>Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-34589560168607645722011-12-20T14:30:00.000-03:002011-12-20T14:30:01.776-03:00João Cabral de Melo Neto[from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo%C3%A3o_Cabral_de_Melo_Neto">João Cabral de Melo Neto</a> in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Twentieth-Century-Latin-American-Poetry-Bilingual/dp/0292781407/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324402121&sr=8-1">Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry</a></i>, ed. <a href="http://lit.mit.edu/people/stapscott.php">Stephen Tapscott</a>, <a href="http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/">Texas</a>, 1996]<br />
<br />
Weaving the Morning<br />
<br />
1.<br />
<br />
One rooster does not weave a morning,<br />
he will always need the other roosters,<br />
one to pick up the shout that he<br />
and toss it to another, another rooster<br />
to pick up the shout that a rooster before him<br />
and toss it to another, and other roosters<br />
with many other roosters to criss-cross<br />
the sun-threads of their rooster-shouts<br />
so that the morning, starting from a frail cobweb,<br />
may go on being woven, among all the roosters.<br />
<br />
2.<br />
<br />
And growing larger, becoming a cloth,<br />
pitching itself a tent where they all may enter,<br />
inter-unfurling itself for them all, in the tent<br />
(the morning) which soars free of ties and ropes –<br />
the morning, tent of a weave so light<br />
that, woven, it lifts itself through itself: balloon light.<br />
<br />
<i>tr. <a href="http://galwaykinnell.com/">Galway Kinnell</a></i><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.substantivoplural.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/joao-cabral-de-melo-neto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="234" src="http://www.substantivoplural.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/joao-cabral-de-melo-neto.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">João Cabral de Melo Neto</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-50821814077214713352011-12-05T14:07:00.001-03:002011-12-05T14:19:29.077-03:00Alice Notley[from <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/books/review/Brouwer-t.html?ref=books">Alice Notley</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Culture-of-One-ebook/dp/B004H0M88Q/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1323104970&sr=8-2">Culture of One</a>, </i><a href="http://us.penguingroup.com/">Penguin</a>, 2011]<br />
<br />
Culture of One<br />
<br />
Marie made things in the gully: she made her life, sure, more than practically anyone else did, but she wrote things down on paper discarded in the dump and she made figures out of wood and rocks and cord and burntness and whatever. The figures didn't really look like anyone, maybe her a little, and the dogs the same color as everything with wolf mouths, I mean coyote.<br />
<br />
Every once in a while a kid burned down her shack, while she was out foraging. Then her works both written and made out of stuff would get burnt. She'd start again. She always remembered how to do it.<br />
<br />
Where does culture come from? It comes from the materials you do it with.<br />
<br />
When she made the shark out of rotting wood, I guess it was just a fish. A carp, probably, but she called it a shark. She put a little woman in its mouth, but it wasn't her; and it wasn't me, whatever I say. It was the wood calling out. It was just some woman, no it wasn't even a woman.<br />
<br />
What are you going to do when they burn up your shack? I don't care, it'll still be great here.<br />
<br />
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<br />Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-86622502644039054792011-11-17T11:41:00.001-03:002011-11-17T11:52:04.049-03:00Marianne Boruch[from <a href="http://authormark.com/artman2/publish/Innisfree_7_22A_Closer_Look_Marianne_Boruch.shtml">Marianne Boruch</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fallen-Wesleyan-Poetry-Marianne-Boruch/dp/0819569534/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1321540779&sr=8-3">Grace, Fallen From</a></i>, <a href="http://www.wesleyan.edu/wespress/">Wesleyan</a>, 2011]
<br />
<br />
A Moment<br />
<br />
Maybe it's common, this sort<br />
of first meeting. But once, before a guest house<br />
in Germany, the friend<br />
of a friend to come by, and dinner –<br />
that's it, we'll go to dinner, have the famous<br />
<i>spargel,</i> that rare white asparagus, only<br />
in May, our evening pre-arranged by phone,<br />
by email. I need to say again we<br />
hadn't met. Outside I stood<br />
at the door, it being spring, every tree<br />
gloriously poised. And a stranger,<br />
another woman, she too waiting<br />
but near the curb, looking<br />
this way and that, attentive to traffic, hours<br />
from dusk because we were north,<br />
near the sea. And tall, she was towering,<br />
older than I was, hugely<br />
made-up, such meticulous work<br />
behind that elegant finish. Then the friend<br />
of my friend – could that be? –his<br />
parking, his pulling himself<br />
out of that tiny car.<br />
Please understand. I'm usually<br />
right there rushing in, because the world<br />
requires that, loves the quickening<br />
of that. But I was<br />
or I wasn't. Or I was small<br />
but there is smaller. To my left, a door.<br />
Some tree flowering at my right.<br />
I watched as he<br />
to that woman said my name<br />
so charmingly, a question, tilting<br />
his head, <i>are you . . . ? sorry to disturb,</i><br />
<i>are you . . . ?</i> And in that pause –<br />
her vague focusing on him, her loose<br />
finding him now – I leaned forward,<br />
simply curious: what<br />
would she say? smile? yes? tell him yes?<br />
So the thread breaks. So water in a glass<br />
clouds and maybe clears.<br />
So I waited, giving up<br />
everything, to anyone,<br />
just like that.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.buzznet.com/assets/users10/solisoleil/default/marianne-boruch--large-msg-114435823824-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://cdn.buzznet.com/assets/users10/solisoleil/default/marianne-boruch--large-msg-114435823824-2.jpg" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marianne Boruch</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-78069256025709645642011-10-30T18:46:00.000-03:002011-11-01T15:25:09.996-03:00Octavio Paz[from <a href="http://www.poesi.as/Octavio_Paz.htm">Octavio Paz</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Poems-Octavio-Paz-1957-1987/dp/0811211738/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320010626&sr=8-1">The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz: 1957-1987</a></i>, ed. <a href="http://quarterlyconversation.com/the-eliot-weinberger-interview">Eliot Weinberger</a>, <a href="http://ndbooks.com/">New Directions</a>, 1990]<br />
<br />
Duration<br />
<br />
"Thunder and wind: duration."<br />
<i>I Ching</i><br />
<br />
I<br />
<br />
Sky black<br />
Yellow earth<br />
The rooster tears the night apart<br />
The water wakes and asks what time it is<br />
The wind wakes and asks for you<br />
A white horse goes by<br />
<br />
II<br />
<br />
As the forest in its bed of leaves<br />
you sleep in your bed of rain<br />
you sing in your bed of wind<br />
your kiss in your bed of sparks<br />
<br />
III<br />
<br />
Multiple vehement odor<br />
many-handed body<br />
On an invisible stem a single<br />
whiteness<br />
<br />
IV<br />
<br />
Speak listen answer me<br />
what the thunderclap<br />
says, the woods<br />
understand<br />
<br />
V<br />
<br />
I enter by your eyes<br />
you come forth by my mouth<br />
You sleep in my blood<br />
I waken in your head<br />
<br />
VI<br />
<br />
I will speak to you in stone-language<br />
(answer with a green syllable)<br />
I will speak to you in snow-language<br />
(answer with a fan of bees)<br />
I will speak to you in water-language<br />
(answer with a canoe of lightning)<br />
I will speak to you in blood-language<br />
(answer with a tower of birds)<br />
<br />
<i>– translated by Denise Levertov</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
Duración<br />
<br />
"Trueno y viento: duración."<br />
<i>I Ching</i><br />
<br />
I<br />
<br />
Negro el cielo<br />
Amerilla la tierra<br />
El gallo desgarra la noche<br />
El agua se levanta y pregunta la hora<br />
El viento se levanta y pregunta por ti<br />
Pasa un caballo blanco<br />
<br />
II<br />
<br />
Como el bosque en su lecho de hojas<br />
tú duermes en tu lecho de lluvia<br />
tú cantas en tu lecho de viento<br />
tú besas en tu lecho de chispas<br />
<br />
III<br />
<br />
Olor vehemencia numerosa<br />
cuerpo de muchas manos<br />
Sobre un tallo invisible<br />
una sola blancura<br />
<br />
IV<br />
<br />
Habla escucha respóndeme<br />
lo que dice el trueno<br />
lo comprende el bosque<br />
<br />
V<br />
<br />
Entro por tus ojos<br />
sales por mi boca<br />
Duermes en mi sangre<br />
despierto en tu frente<br />
<br />
VI<br />
<br />
Te hablaré un lenguaje de piedra<br />
(respondes con un monosílabo verde)<br />
Te hablaré un lenguaje de nieve<br />
(respondes con un abanico de abejas)<br />
Te hablaré un lenguaje de agua<br />
(respondes con una canoa de relámpagos)<br />
Te hablaré un lenguaje de sangre<br />
(respondes con una torre de pájaros)<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.hispanicla.com/palabra/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Octavio-Paz-1936.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.hispanicla.com/palabra/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Octavio-Paz-1936.jpg" width="360" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Octavio Paz, 1936</td></tr>
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<br />Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-78795081385667272342011-10-22T16:37:00.000-03:002011-10-22T16:38:05.869-03:00César Vallejo[from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesar_Vallejo">César Vallejo</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Poetry-Bilingual-C%C3%A9sar-Vallejo/dp/0520261739/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319311970&sr=8-1">Complete Poetry: A Bilingual Edition</a></i>, ed./tr. <a href="http://www.claytoneshleman.com/">Clayton Eshleman</a>, <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/">University of California</a>, 2007]<br />
<br />
Distant Footsteps<br />
<br />
My father is asleep. His august face<br />
expresses a peaceful heart;<br />
he is now so sweet . . .<br />
if there is anything bitter in him, it must be me.<br />
<br />
There is loneliness in the house; there is prayer;<br />
and no news of the children today.<br />
My father stirs, sounding<br />
the flight into Egypt, the styptic farewell.<br />
He is now so near;<br />
if there is anything distant in him, it must be me.<br />
<br />
My mother walks in the orchard,<br />
savoring a savor now without savor.<br />
She is so soft,<br />
so wing, so gone, so love.<br />
<br />
There is loneliness in the house with no bustle,<br />
no news, no green, no childhood.<br />
And if there is something broken this afternoon,<br />
something that descends and that creaks,<br />
it is two old white, curved roads.<br />
Down them my heart makes its way on foot.<br />
<br />
<br />
Los Pasos Lejanos<br />
<br />
Mi padre duerme. Su semblante augusto<br />
figura un apacible corazón;<br />
está ahora tan dulce . . .<br />
si hay algo en él de amargo, seré yo.<br />
<br />
Hay soledad en el hogar; se reza;<br />
y no hay noticias de los hijos hoy.<br />
Mi padre se despierta, ausculta<br />
la huida a Egipto, el restañante adiós.<br />
Está ahora tan cerca;<br />
si hay algo en él de lejos, seré yo.<br />
<br />
Y mi madre pasea allá en los huertos,<br />
saboreando un sabor ya sin sabor.<br />
Está ahora tan suave,<br />
tan ala, tan salida, tan amor.<br />
<br />
Hay soledad en el hogar sin bulla,<br />
sin noticias, sin verde, sin niñez.<br />
Y si hay algo quebrado en esta tarde,<br />
y que baja y que cruje,<br />
son dos viejos caminos blancos, curvos.<br />
Por ellos va mi corazón a pie.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimlJDE97s9jD1fLYYRvOORMqEPFWUmN-q2TjqGRunxjxJd2c0ccZ_XM_ZvrzKqF33FXcsZXVKKKdr2pNa8BwxxLJPdCZ2rsDg0kx45mP1KifNxDL8KGuBEzaF9eHPCz9XaJ3ZfDQ/s1600/vallejo_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimlJDE97s9jD1fLYYRvOORMqEPFWUmN-q2TjqGRunxjxJd2c0ccZ_XM_ZvrzKqF33FXcsZXVKKKdr2pNa8BwxxLJPdCZ2rsDg0kx45mP1KifNxDL8KGuBEzaF9eHPCz9XaJ3ZfDQ/s400/vallejo_1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">César Vallejo</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-48736183658763300302011-10-07T15:20:00.002-03:002011-10-07T15:21:26.332-03:00Joanna Catherine Scott[from <a href="http://www.joannacatherinescott.com/">Joanna Catherine Scott</a> & <a href="http://www.mainstreetrag.com/JCScott_2.html">John Lee Conaway</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Innocent-House-Joanna-Catherine-Scott/dp/1599483181/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318010660&sr=8-1">An Innocent in the House of the Dead</a></i>, <a href="http://www.mainstreetrag.com/">Main Street Rag</a>, 2011]<br />
<br />
In Which You Tell Me You Have Set Islam Aside . . .<br />
<br />
I used to dream, you say, that one day<br />
I would take a pilgrimage to Mecca,<br />
<br />
but I have given Islam up,<br />
I have taken my name off all the lists,<br />
<br />
I no longer go to pray.<br />
Although I pray to Allah in my heart,<br />
<br />
I thank him for the Qur'an,<br />
which I also have inside my heart.<br />
<br />
Get knowledge and understanding,<br />
it instructs me.<br />
<br />
And so I read and read and think,<br />
and argue with myself, and others too,<br />
<br />
and have become a wiser person<br />
on account of it.<br />
<br />
Which is why I have set Islam aside.<br />
What point is there,<br />
<br />
I came to understand,<br />
in fighting with an enemy<br />
<br />
who has the upper hand?<br />
What point in setting myself up<br />
<br />
for persecution by the guards and wardens<br />
because I wear the Muslim cap<br />
<br />
and fast for Ramadan?<br />
A man must act upon his wisdom.<br />
<br />
So I have set aside the kufi.<br />
I do not abase myself.<br />
<br />
I have light within me, though.<br />
They cannot take that away.<br />
<br />
<br />
. . . And I Drive Home in the Rain<br />
<br />
The fallen sky laying itself out<br />
and laying itself out along the road<br />
<br />
like grey-clad pilgrims<br />
abasing themselves full-length<br />
<br />
and rising,<br />
and then the abasement<br />
<br />
and the rising up again,<br />
end-to-ending themselves<br />
<br />
like inchworms inching their way<br />
across grey countryside<br />
<br />
toward the holy city,<br />
pelted on, and blown up<br />
<br />
into a thousand falling fragments<br />
by lumbering grey trucks.<br />
<br />
Gathering themselves together.<br />
Shaking off the insult.<br />
<br />
Rising and abasing.<br />
Rising and abasing.<br />
<br />
And being blessed for it.<br />
And being blessed for it.<br />
<br />
That glittering<br />
spinning off the wheels.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.fridaycenter.unc.edu/images/stories_scott.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="301" src="http://www.fridaycenter.unc.edu/images/stories_scott.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Joanna Catherine Scott</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-25493709206232330232011-09-16T09:29:00.000-03:002011-09-16T09:30:00.186-03:00Virgil via Kimberly Johnson[from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil">Virgil</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Georgics-Poem-Land-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140455639/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316174876&sr=8-1">The Georgics: A Poem of the Land</a>,</i> tr. <a href="http://www.kimberly-johnson.com/">Kimberly Johnson</a>, <a href="http://www.penguin.com/">Penguin</a>, 2009]<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Book One [excerpt]</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
For this the golden sun maintains its orbit</div>
<div>
marked through the zodiacal twelve in marches fixed.</div>
<div>
Five zones comprise the firmament, of which one ever blushes</div>
<div>
under the flaring sun, ever scorched by its fire.</div>
<div>
Around this at the poles to right and left stretch</div>
<div>
bleak zones, ice-crusted and dark with storms.</div>
<div>
Between the ice and middle fire, two zones to frail humanity</div>
<div>
by grace of God are granted. A path cuts through them both</div>
<div>
on which oblique the ranks of constellations spin.</div>
<div>
As the earth surges steeply up to Scythia</div>
<div>
and the Rhipean crags, so it sinks sloping to Libya's south.</div>
<div>
The zenith ever vaults above us, the nadir</div>
<div>
underfoot glowers at inky Styx and shades infernal.</div>
<div>
Vast with sinuous coils here glides the Serpent,</div>
<div>
weaving like a river round and through the Bears –</div>
<div>
two Bears that fear to plunge the ocean's plane.</div>
<div>
There, they say, may lurk dank night</div>
<div>
and the shadows ever clotting under night's shroud . . .</div>
<div>
or else Dawn removes from us, returns their day</div>
<div>
and when sunrise with his panting team first breathes</div>
<div>
on us, there ruddy Vesper kindles the late hour's lights.</div>
<div>
So we can forecast weather though the sky</div>
<div>
equivocate, so know the harvest-day, the time to sow,</div>
<div>
when to smack with oars the sea's treacherous slate</div>
<div>
and when to launch the bristling fleet</div>
<div>
or in the woods to topple the ready pine.</div>
<div>
Not in vain do we observe the rise and set of signs</div>
<div>
and the year, orderly in its four dissimilar seasons.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Liber I [excerpt]</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Idcirco certis dimensum partibus orbem</div>
<div>
per duodena regit mundi sol aureus astra.</div>
<div>
quinque tenent caelum zonae; quarum una corusco</div>
<div>
semper sole rubens et torrida semper ab igni;</div>
<div>
quam circum extremae dextra laevaque trahuntur</div>
<div>
caeruleae, glacie concretae atque imbribus atris;</div>
<div>
has inter mediamque duae mortalibus aegris</div>
<div>
munere concessae divum, et via secta per ambas,</div>
<div>
obliquus qua se signorum verteret ordo.</div>
<div>
mundus ut ad Scythiam Rhipaeasque arduus arces</div>
<div>
consurgit, premitur Libyae devexus in Austros.</div>
<div>
hic vertex nobis semper sublimis; at illum</div>
<div>
sub pedibus Styx atra videt Manesque profundi.</div>
<div>
maximus hic flexu sinuoso elabitur Anguis</div>
<div>
circum perque duas in morem fluminis Arctos,</div>
<div>
Arctos Oceani metuentis aequore tingui.</div>
<div>
illic, ut perhibent, aut intempesta silet nox,</div>
<div>
semper et obtenta densentur nocte tenebrae;</div>
<div>
aut redit a nobis Aurora diemque reducit,</div>
<div>
nosque ubi primus equis Oriens adflavit anhelis,</div>
<div>
illic sera rubens accendit lumina Vesper.</div>
<div>
hinc tempestates dubio praediscere caelo </div>
<div>
possumus, hinc messisque diem tempusque serendi,</div>
<div>
et quando infidum remis impellere marmor</div>
<div>
conveniat, quando armatas deducere classis,</div>
<div>
aut tempestivam silvis evertere pinum.</div>
<div>
nec frustra signorum obitus speculamur et ortus,</div>
<div>
temporibusque parem diversis quattuor annum.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://kimberly-johnson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/kimbio.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="http://kimberly-johnson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/kimbio.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kimberly Johnson</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br /></div>
Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-18999564968152377692011-08-16T15:34:00.006-03:002011-08-16T16:32:45.789-03:00James Lord[from <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/6118447/James-Lord.html">James Lord</a>'s <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/My-Queer-War-James-Lord/dp/0374532753?ie=UTF8&tag=carolpeters-ab20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">My Queer War</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=carolpeters-ab20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0374532753" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /></i>, <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/fsg.aspx">Farrar, Straus & Giroux</a>, 2010]<br />
<br />
I went along to the nearby rue Christine, No. 5, to call on Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas. The two women had recently been escorted in an army plane around Germany, Miss Stein making speeches to the troops and posing on the blasted terrace of Hitler's hideaway in Berchtesgaden. The GIs apparently enjoyed Gertrude's no-nonsense, didactic but natural talk, and we were encouraged to consider her a folksy mother of us all. . . .<br />
<br />
her rue Christine salon was regularly crowded with eager listeners to the cello voice of that imposing lady. And the presence of all those soldiers, like all the Picassos on the walls, seemed to everyone concerned a delightful and self-evident demonstration of cultural inevitability.<br />
<br />
Miss Stein took me by the arm into the entry hall. She had read the play and had clearly read it with care. "Your writing reads well," she said, "and maybe someday writing will be a reality for you, and I have one piece of advice to give you that every writer who is going to be a real writer must be given sometime by somebody, and it is to consider your emotions more carefully. A real writer must be very sure of his emotions before putting a pen to paper, so that is what I advise you to do, to consider your emotions more carefully." . . .<br />
<br />
Miss Stein returned with Basket on a leash . . . she spoke of the GIs who were already being shipped from home for discharge. Their visits had begun to weary her, but she was sorry to see them go. And sorry for them as well, she added, because never again in their lives would they be so happy.<br />
<br />
At that moment there was hardly an American in uniform who didn't long to shed it as quickly as possible. We were sick of the army, sick of the war and its stresses and qualms. I disagreed with Miss Stein and said so.<br />
<br />
She stopped abruptly and faced me on the sidewalk in the sun. Repeating what she'd already said, she dogmatically added that war possesses an irresistible appeal for young soldiers caused by the thrill of a superhuman power to kill with impunity, and because of it, because of the naive confidence that no harm can come to them, they have at their fingertips a greater power than ever in their lives they will wield again, and they are like bloodthirsty gods united in the climactic comradeship of killing, and that is why they will never again be so happy.<br />
<br />
I was indignant at the pontifical self-assurance of the lady, solid as cement in her tweed suit, and I once more said that I disagreed with her.<br />
<br />
She said it didn't matter because I was too young, too inexperienced, and too obutse in my emotions to realize she was right.<br />
<br />
I stood there. I was transfixed. And then I said she was not right, she was wrong, she was a stupid old woman and didn't understand anything.<br />
<br />
I turned away. Without waiting for her to answer, I turned away abruptly and left her standing there in the street with her white dog on the leash, walked to the rue des Grands Agustins without once glancing back, went around the corner, and I never saw Gertrude Stein again. . . .<br />
<br />
I was shaken with anger at having been talked down to by an elderly woman. But I realized she'd been amazingly prescient and had understood the true facts of life of fighting men as well as I did, though she had never faced artillery fire or faced a Nazi tank. My irritation wanted to be vindicated even at the cost of making Miss Stein appear to have been in the wrong. So I climbed the staircase to Picasso's studio and rang the bell. He opened a crack and asked what I wanted at that inconvenient hour. When I replied that his friend Gertrude was talking nonsense, the door swung wide, and he beckoned me inside, saying to tell all, tell all. I may have fiddled with the truth, but this suited Picasso, who muttered, That slut! That pig! He said she'd always been a Fascist, had a weakness for Franco. For Pétain too. Imagine. An American. A Jew. Fat as a pig; once sent him a photo of herself standing in front of an auto, and you couldn't see the auto she was so fat. As for Toklas, that little witch, why does she wear her hair in bangs? Picasso laughed out loud. She had had a horn in the middle of her forehead. A growth like a rhinoceros. So they made the ideal couple, the hippopotamus and the rhinoceros. But then Alice had the horn cut off and her bangs are supposed to cover up the hole. And Gertrude Stein talks about my pictures as if she'd painted them herself.<br />
<br />
His laughter suddenly ceased. He shook himself like a bather who has just emerged from ice-cold water, turned away from me, saying he had important things to do upstairs, I would have to leave.<br />
<br />
Click <a href="http://squarewhiteworld.com/2010/05/07/giacometti-james-lords-biography-essential-reading-excerpts-apercus-porte-paroles-therefrom-with-added-emphases-emboldenments-bignesses-and-an-inversion-or-two/">here for more on Lord, Giacometti, others</a>.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://squarewhiteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/James-Lord-@-400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://squarewhiteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/James-Lord-@-400.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">James Lord by Balthus</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-74208757969583323652011-07-31T22:17:00.000-03:002011-07-31T22:17:26.307-03:00Robert Duncan[from <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Robert-Duncan-Denise-Levertov/dp/0804745684?ie=UTF8&tag=carolpeters-ab20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=carolpeters-ab20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0804745684" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;" width="1" /></i>, ed. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bertholf">Robert J. Bertholf</a> & <a href="http://english.stanford.edu/bio.php?name_id=56">Albert Gelpi</a>, <a href="http://www.sup.org/">Stanford</a>, 2004]<br />
<br />
[Duncan to Levertov, 13 May 1963]<br />
<br />
convention as "form" = <br />
<br />
goes along with the natural is formless; man puts the world in order//<i>or(2)</i> with God formed the world as a paradigm in the beginning and disorder enterd thru man's sin. Only by conventicle, good behaviour, does man return to the lost order. A poem (subject always to man's sinfulness) attempts to atone by obedience to prescription. Here freedom = (a) disorder or (b) sin.<br />
<br />
organism as "form" =<br />
<br />
all experience is formal – We feel things at all only in so far as we awake to the form. Here the form of the poem <i>is</i> the feeling (and where form fails, feeling fails). "Inner" and "outer" are, if we could grasp the terms of cosmic form, in tune. We have only to discover the scale (so here I am organic as well as linguistic).<br />
<br />
"linguistic" form =<br />
<br />
the artist uses language to make forms, and in this he [is] in a creature/creator relation to a god who is also creature/creator of the whole. Where "organic" poetry refers to personal emotions and impressions – the concourse between organism and his world: the linguistic follows emotions and images that appear in the language itself as a third "world;" true to what is happening in the syntax as another man might be true to what he sees or feels.<br />
<br />
free verse =<br />
<br />
the poem does not find or make but expresses, and the poem has its virtue in the ecstatic state or emotional state aroused by rhythms and rime even, where the poet can pour forth what he feels//<i>and/or</i> God speaks thru the poet once his voice is free. Here form = restriction I'm thinking of a Hassidic interpretation of the law against making a graven image meaning that speech should not be made in that sense but speak from the heart. Free verse just doesn't believe in the struggle of rendering in which not only the soul but the world must enter into the conception of the poem. Experience is an engagement and responsibility to outer as well as inner.<br />
<br />
Two forms of free verse would be Amy Lowell's impressionism and Ginsberg's "Howl."<br />
<br />
[Duncan to Levertov, 28 November 1961]<br />
<br />
You see you have three presences for me, Denny, that touch the deepest life feeling. One is the Denise I have been able openly to speak of, the companion in art – where in certain poems of yours, by grace of your “poet,” I am brought into that heart of life that poetry opens: then this poet you are I love because you are most true. No . . . it seems more that through loving this you so I come to love what is most true. And then, sometimes you are a poetic conscience for me. Not that my truth will be like yours – but that just where I fail my own poet, I betray this love.<br />
<br />
Then there is, related, another presence: an idea of you or something you mean to me – yet it also seems to be really you and to reach the heart. I am troubled here, Denise, to make it clear, but just as my poet has existed in the light of your poet, my self does. And the "to thine own self be true" has existed, for always now it seems, as if that meant being true in your eyes. So I am always just that shy of, just that troubled in thinking of your love or mine because so often I seem to fail so miserably to "be myself." Maybe, I wanted to say "Be loyal to my self" but also "love me as I am not my self."<br />
<br />
The third is just your real actual presence, where I have never felt these ghosts of conscience. When I've been with you, Denny, you are at last just you and I could no possibly not be just me as I am. That's what I did want to write most – how real all the rest is – but the pure joy, all the ever-lasting delight of these times in my life when I am actually with you.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://jacketmagazine.com/28/px/rd1922.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="398" src="http://jacketmagazine.com/28/px/rd1922.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Robert Duncan, Yosemite Park, 1922</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8081959.post-89182538214946720442011-07-23T16:46:00.002-03:002011-07-23T20:04:24.789-03:00Elena Milán[from Elena Milán @ <i>Mouth to Mouth: Poems by Twelve Contemporary Mexican Women</i>, ed. <a href="http://www.forrestgander.com/">Forrest Gander</a>, <a href="http://www.milkweed.org/">Milkweed</a>, 1993]<br />
<br />
Alucinación I<br />
<br />
Supongamos que una zona del mundo se ha unido<br />
del Atlántico al Pacifico,<br />
de Portugal al Japón;<br />
desde el Mediterráneo y Mar del Norte,<br />
al Artico hacia el este.<br />
Supongamos que soplan mitos extraños<br />
desde las viejas cavernas de Altamira<br />
y las ruinas del Turkistán,<br />
algo así como naves vikingas<br />
y nuevas leyendas de tártaros y samurais.<br />
Supongamos que el gobierno yanki no les gusta<br />
y deciden desestabilizarlo.<br />
<br />
<br />
Hallucination I<br />
<br />
Let's supose a zone of the world falls together<br />
from Atlantic to Pacific,<br />
from Portugal to Japan;<br />
from the Mediterranean to the North Sea<br />
to the eastern Arctic.<br />
Let's suppose strange myths lift<br />
from the ancient caves of Altamira<br />
and the ruins of Turkistan,<br />
something like Viking ships<br />
and fresh legends of Tartars and samurai.<br />
Let's suppose the Yankee government doesn't please them<br />
and they decide to destabilize it.<br />
<br />
<i>tr. Forrest Gander</i>Carol Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04939321886306936715noreply@blogger.com0