Readings.

To hear the poets read their work will always change the work. Kinnell seems more friendly, Berryman even more eccentric, Hirshfield calming to an almost disturbing degree, and Bukowski charms in ways that only he can. It is good to read but just as important to listen.


Galway Kinnell reciting "The Bear"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-D7oJoqDi0


John Berryman reading "Dream Song 29"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGIr7fGdo6o

Jane Hirshfield reading a few poems.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfgHgNkHx9M

Charles Bukowski reading "The Night I Killed Tommy"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BESYAb-5snU

Galway Kinnell and his hands.

Galway Kinnell has good hands. We listened to him speak, again at Smith College's Poetry Center. This is a place that I cannot recommend enough. It is a gift to that school and that community. Kinnell signed a book for us and shook our own, softer, hands. His were the strong hands of someone who has worked in many different ways. These kinds of hands build wonderful things from houses to poems. Kinnell has been all over the world, has translated many works, has been involved in a good number of important historical events. He carries these experiences close to his soul and puts them to paper in a beautiful way. The hand that shook my own and had written this poem was a map of a life well-lived. we should all hope for such hands.




The Bear


1

In late winter
I sometimes glimpse bits of steam
coming up from
some fault in the old snow
and bend close and see it is lung-colored
and put down my nose
and know
the chilly, enduring odor of bear.


2

I take a wolf's rib and whittle
it sharp at both ends
and coil it up
and freeze it in blubber and place it out
on the fairway of the bears.

And when it has vanished
I move out on the bear tracks,
roaming in circles
until I come to the first, tentative, dark
splash on the earth.

And I set out
running, following the splashes
of blood wandering over the world.
At the cut, gashed resting places
I stop and rest,
at the crawl-marks
where he lay out on his belly
to overpass some stretch of bauchy ice
I lie out
dragging myself forward with bear-knives in my fists.


3

On the third day I begin to starve,
at nightfall I bend down as I knew I would
at a turd sopped in blood,
and hesitate, and pick it up,
and thrust it in my mouth, and gnash it down,
and rise
and go on running.


4

On the seventh day,
living by now on bear blood alone,
I can see his upturned carcass far out ahead, a scraggled,
steamy hulk,
the heavy fur riffling in the wind.

I come up to him
and stare at the narrow-spaced, petty eyes,
the dismayed
face laid back on the shoulder, the nostrils
flared, catching
perhaps the first taint of me as he
died.

I hack
a ravine in his thigh, and eat and drink,
and tear him down his whole length
and open him and climb in
and close him up after me, against the wind,
and sleep.


5

And dream
of lumbering flatfooted
over the tundra,
stabbed twice from within,
splattering a trail behind me,
splattering it out no matter which way I lurch,
no matter which parabola of bear-transcendence,
which dance of solitude I attempt,
which gravity-clutched leap,
which trudge, which groan.


6

Until one day I totter and fall—
fall on this
stomach that has tried so hard to keep up,
to digest the blood as it leaked in,
to break up
and digest the bone itself: and now the breeze
blows over me, blows off
the hideous belches of ill-digested bear blood
and rotted stomach
and the ordinary, wretched odor of bear,

blows across
my sore, lolled tongue a song
or screech, until I think I must rise up
and dance. And I lie still.


7

I awaken I think. Marshlights
reappear, geese
come trailing again up the flyway.
In her ravine under old snow the dam-bear
lies, licking
lumps of smeared fur
and drizzly eyes into shapes
with her tongue. And one
hairy-soled trudge stuck out before me,
the next groaned out,
the next,
the next,
the rest of my days I spend
wandering: wondering
what, anyway,
was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that poetry, by which I lived?



From NEW AND SELECTED POEMS by Galway kinnell
Houghton Mifflin

Denise Levertov and a fitting poem.

It is cold out. I have biked through the ice and snow a few times now and it has been lonely. It has been beautiful. Observant poets, artists, people find the amazing in the mundane. The lovely in the overwhelming.

Denise Levertov influenced many, many poets. I came to her through reading Jim Harrison. I am thankful for her influence and his introduction. Levertov has written some of the most elegant poems i have read. She writes poetry with a journalist's eye. She captures the moments and events within her language and the reader is,simply,there.

New York is, to me, the perfect city. It has all of the seasons. It has every book I would ever need. It has lives on top of lives to witness and watch and be a part of. It has a deep history and it has its troubles. I compare every city I am in with New York. This poem begs the reader to go home tonight and take a walk in the city, the suburb, or the country and watch everything happen.

It is cold out. Go be overwhelmed.



February Evening in New York


As the stores close, a winter light
opens air to iris blue,
glint of frost through the smoke
grains of mica, salt of the sidewalk.
As the buildings close, released autonomous
feet pattern the streets
in hurry and stroll; balloon heads
drift and dive above them; the bodies
aren't really there.
As the lights brighten, as the sky darkens,
a woman with crooked heels says to another woman
while they step along at a fair pace,
"You know, I'm telling you, what I love best
is life. I love life! Even if I ever get
to be old and wheezy—or limp! You know?
Limping along?—I'd still ... " Out of hearing.
To the multiple disordered tones
of gears changing, a dance
to the compass points, out, four-way river.
Prospect of sky
wedged into avenues, left at the ends of streets,
west sky, east sky: more life tonight! A range
of open time at winter's outskirts.

From: COLLECTED EARLIER POEMS 1940-1960 By Denise Levertov New Directions

Place.

It is important to think of where we have come from. It is as much a part of us as anything can be. It shapes us. It influences what we think of new places. The Great Lakes, to me, are the best waters in the world. I have been swimming in Lake Superior in the summer and winter. That water does not change much or feel very different from one season to the next. My most lovely friend calls the big lake Mother Superior. I can very much understand that feeling.

I have swam in Lake Huron when the water felt like a warm bath and the sun burned my skin. The Great Lakes are not all the same even if they run into and through one another. They each have a personality. They each have a poetry that is specific to them. Lake Erie is the tough one, Superior is the powerful one, Huron is the gentle one, Michigan is the mixed-up one, and Ontario is the other one.

Wherever I have been I have thought back on these waters. I have come home and walked the pebbles and rocks of the Superior shore until I have found the place where I knew I would feel better. I have felt that lake change me. It is poetry to think about the place we come from.

Punk songs and country ballads.

What are songs if not poetry? This is where poetry becomes multidimensional. There are songs that work not because the beat holds everything together but because the words grab hold of our thoughts and never let go again. It happens all the time in good films with honest dialogue. The words mix with the actions and it becomes otherworldly, we watch transfixed by our emotions that have been triggered within this synthesis. We remember our favorite lines the way people used to recite lines of poetry. This is how poetry grows with technology and medium, how it lives in the world around us. It really is everywhere.

The first song is from The Clash and represents a time,mentality, and place as well as any poem. The second song is by Merle Haggard and represents cowboy poetry in a wonderful way.



WHITE MAN IN HAMMERSMITH PALAIS
(Strummer/Jones)

Midnight to six man
For the first time from Jamaica
Dillinger and Leroy Smart
Delroy Wilson, your cool operator

Ken Boothe for UK pop reggae
With backing bands sound systems
And if they've got anything to say
There's many black ears here to listen

But it was Four Tops all night with encores from stage right
Charging from the bass knives to the treble
But onstage they ain't got no roots rock rebel
Onstage they ain't got no...roots rock rebel

Dress back jump back this is a bluebeat attack
'Cos it won't get you anywhere
Fooling with your guns
The British Army is waiting out there
An' it weighs fifteen hundred tons

White youth, black youth
Better find another solution
Why not phone up Robin Hood
And ask him for some wealth distribution

Punk rockers in the UK
They won't notice anyway
They're all too busy fighting
For a good place under the lighting

The new groups are not concerned
With what there is to be learned
They got Burton suits, ha you think it's funny
Turning rebellion into money

All over people changing their votes
Along with their overcoats
If Adolf Hitler flew in today
They'd send a limousine anyway

I'm the all night drug-prowling wolf
Who looks so sick in the sun
I'm the white man in the Palais
Just lookin' for fun

I'm only
Looking for fun

By The Clash


MAMA TRIED

The first thing I remember knowing,
Was a lonesome whistle blowing,
And a young un's dream of growing up to ride;
On a freight train leaving town,
Not knowing where I'm bound,
No-one could change my mind but Mama tried.
One and only rebel child,
From a family, meek and mild:
My Mama seemed to know what lay in store.
Despite all my Sunday learning,
Towards the bad, I kept on turning.
'Til Mama couldn't hold me anymore.

And I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole.
No-one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried.
Mama tried to raise me better, but her pleading, I denied.
That leaves only me to blame 'cos Mama tried.

Dear old Daddy, rest his soul,
Left my Mom a heavy load;
She tried so very hard to fill his shoes.
Working hours without rest,
Wanted me to have the best.
She tried to raise me right but I refused.

And I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole.
No-one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried.
Mama tried to raise me better, but her pleading, I denied.
That leaves only me to blame 'cos Mama tried.

By Merle Haggard

Obligatory Pablo Neruda.

Today is a fine day to suffer through love poems.
Today is a fine day.



Neruda understands. For AKB.


LEANING INTO AFTERNOONS
Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
towards your oceanic eyes.

There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames,
its arms turning like a drowning man's.

I send out red signals across your absent eyes
that smell like the sea or the beach by a lighthouse.

You keep only darkness, my distant female,
from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges.

Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets
to that sea that is thrashed by your oceanic eyes.

The birds of night peck at the first stars
that flash like my soul when I love you.

The night gallops on its shadowy mare
shedding blue tassels over the land.

Pablo Neruda



YOUR LAUGHTER
Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.

Do not take away the rose,
the lance flower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.

My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.

My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.

Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.

Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die.

Pablo Neruda





WALKING AROUND

It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie
houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse
sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails

and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the
night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist
houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical
cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic
shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.


Translated by Robert Bly

Pablo Neruda

Another poem by me.

"BETWEEN THE HILLS AND THE SEA"

it is lovely here with the sun coming through the eastern windows
off of the olive covered hills spotted with small white villas with red clay roofs.
the patio is of sand-colored brick and the tables are in blues
or yellows with the opposite colored chairs.

it is hot this early in the morning and there is no breeze from the sea
there is salt in the air and the waves can just be heard over the cars
that fill the street and the voices of the busy and burning people
who do not wish to speak.

the professor walks slowly down the hill in the same tweed suit
he has worn for ten years in this land. he does not seem to sweat
but he does smell strongly of it and cigarettes which he does not
smoke here, only at home.

he sits in the same seat every morning with a black coffee and a glass
of water without ice. he reads and marks books that are encased in
ornate leather covers with red beads embroidered into the shapes of
birds and trees. always alone.

the runner is in her thirties. strong and pretty and severe. chestnut
hair pulled into a ponytail. light blue shirt and shorts with expensive
shoes that change slightly every month, become new again. stretches
one leg then the other. drinks an apricot tea.

the runner stares at the hills whether she has company or not. sometimes
a man runs with her. never the same man. the men talk and laugh while
she looks up into the groves. she has smiled only once at the children
who did not notice.

they are in and out, too many to track or remember the names of. they
bring drinks and bread back to their parents or they skip school, hiding
in the cooler shadows within. they are always polite and their voices timid
in the darker corners.

the professor and the runner were there. five children. a happy tourist group
of eleven. a young couple and an old. the barista and the two waiters who were
laughing at some joke when the woman with suffering strapped to her walked in and sent them all away.

Jim Harrison and the art of a complicated life.

I was just speaking with a friend and we agreed that no author can write about the north like Jim Harrison. I think that this point could be furthered. No author can write about the world of love, bears, trees, bars, pseudo-Indians, the Upper Peninsula, heartbreak, foolishness, crime, Montana, fat dogs, Arizona, women, men, Nebraska, and the list goes on and on. No one can write like Harrison about the world. That period could easily be an exclamation point but I am trying to not be overly hyperbolic.

He was born in Grayling, Michigan. This is in the pines just north of my own hometown. He uses Michigan as his literary fodder. It is a special, gorgeous place full of strange people. I grew up witnessing the busted lives that he writes about. His novels, novellas, and nonfiction flow with his books of poetry in that the subjects are all interesting, soulful, and just a little messed up. The quirks of his characters keep them believable in, sometimes, far-fetched circumstances. The world of Jim Harrison is the one we live in but observed much more closely. The destructive relationships that seem normal are exposed in his writing. The depth, talent, and keening pain of the local ne'er-do-well makes the reader look around their community in a new way. The men and women love and hate with a true and admirable passion. Broken marriages still hold some fire while some "serious" love is false and mistaken. The interaction between Harrison's character's and their environment is simply perfect in its execution.

This poem is an excellent example of environment and relationship.

If you are looking for a good read this winter pick up Harrison's BROWN DOG novellas. They span the last twenty years of his career and they are magnificent.




Older Love

His wife has asthma
so he only smokes outdoors
or late at night with head
and shoulders well into
the fireplace, the mesquite and oak
heat bright against his face.
Does it replace the heat
that has wandered from love
back into the natural world?
But then the shadow passion casts
is much longer than passion,
stretching with effort from year to year.
Outside tonight hard wind and sleet
from three bald mountains,
and on the hearth before his face
the ashes we’ll all become,
soft as the back of a woman’s knee.


From SAVING DAYLIGHT By Jim Harrison Copper Canyon Press

Brenda Hillman, experiments, and solitary perspective

I enjoy any work of art that makes me think or feel something i was not expecting. I love talented experimentation. Often, experiments fail just so that the next one can succeed. What is learned from the failure is useful to the extreme. It would be good for all of my scientist friends to keep that in mind, it is a universal truth. Smile, as best you can, at the failed experiment and move on with the new tools garnered.

Brenda Hillman experiments with poetry's form throughout her work. I feel that this poem is very successful in that it has the ability to be read in a multiplicity of ways.

Hillman seems to take on three or four conversations at once and her use of space and form within the poem make these discussions possible. She steps away from common boundaries. She speaks with a few different voices without being confusing or sounding forced. The poem describes itself without being overbearing. Some poems are written in one sitting and others are conceptualized over a period of weeks, months, or years. The work put into this poem is something to be admired. It is satisfying to read over and over and that is successful, boundary pushing, experimentation.

Hillman can write many types of poems. This is a beautiful poem of the desert southwest, her birthplace, that shows the stark landscape as a mirror of the family's thoughts. It is a simple poem that works, magically like the sandstone and massive sky, on our little minds. The Saguaro only becomes more and more impressive the closer one gets to it. The perspective changes our place in the world. We become powerful in our loneliness. We learn that our boundaries are self-imposed. The mind wants to experiment with someone or without.

To write a simple, lovely poem and a long experimental poem with the same energy and passion and voice is brilliance, gorgeous brilliance that is rare. It is as rare as a single raindrop on the sandstone where the Saguaros live, a fleeting gift.



Saguaro

Often visitors there, saddened
by lack of trees, go out
to a promontory.

Then, backed by the banded
sunset, the trail
of the Conquistadores,

the father puts on the camera,
the leather albatross,
and has the children

imitate saguaros. One
at a time they stand there smiling,
fingers up like the tines of a fork

while the stately saguaro
goes on being entered
by wrens, diseases, and sunlight.

The mother sits on a rock,
arms folded
across her breasts. To her

the cactus looks scared,
its needles
like hair in cartoons.

With its arms in preacher
or waltz position,
it gives the impression

of great effort
in every direction,
like the mother.

Thousands of these gray-green
cacti cross the valley:
nature repeating itself,

children repeating nature,
father repeating children
and mother watching.

Later, the children think
the cactus was moral,
had something to teach them,

some survival technique
or just regular beauty.
But what else could it do?

The only protection
against death
was to love solitude.



By Brenda Hillman
From FORTRESS Wesleyan University Press

Snow and Ice and a Poem.

Poetry is lovely at any time, but it can often deepen the mood that the reader may already have. Poetry and art reflect not just the artist but the reader and observer. On my bike ride to campus this morning, as I attempted to stay upright, I thought about all of the work that had to be done today. I felt overwhelmed by the elements and my busy schedule. I fell near Wayne Street because my mind was buried by the junk of life. I would not have fallen if I had been paying attention to the place I was in at that moment, if I had been more aware and present. This poem is about staying up on the bike and being a little more alive in everything we do. That is not why I originally wrote it but, hey, art evolves like everything else.







”no such thing as passionate economics”
she may be seventy or eighty but her hair has been white
since her mid-forties.
the people who would know this are buried on hills spread
through five states. she sits in a purple over-stuffed chair
in a corporate bookstore on her bus route reading a guide on
tuscany.
her lips are moving with words but her voice faints
just the other side of her mouth. the teeth are all hers.
a steady hand. she drinks her half-cafs free
because the business school barista has dreamed of kissing her green eyes
that burn when she whispers her hellos.
he is handsome and embarrassed by wanting to become rich enough
to send her over the sea through the gate of gibraltar
to drink dark wine on sun-warmed hills.


someday, soon, she will not pick up the guide
and his education will have taught him that there is money to be had
in the dreams of old ladies
that he must be more careful when his own eyes close
that everyone is vulnerable when they are alone
and everyone is alone.

Ekphrastic poems.

Ekphrastic poetry is nothing new. The Greeks and, later, the Romans built some of the basic classics with Ekphrasis in mind. It is, in a tiny but accurate nutshell, poetry about other works of art. It is a synthesis of one existing work with inspiration and creation of a new work. It blends talents and, often, gives a fresh view of how art can be perceived. John Keats "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is one of the most well-known Ekphrastic poems. Read it.

There are many Ekphrastic poems, almost every poet has written at least one. This poem is mine. It is in response to Edward Hopper's Office at Night 1940. I Recommend reading the poem then looking at the painting. Hopper is well known for his colors, the mysterious nature of his subjects, and the reality of his situations. Look at more of his paintings, or any work of art really, and see what starts bouncing in your head. Then write it down.

Carla and Kolchek

It is dark out, past suppertime, and Carla cannot remember

where she left her cherry lipstick.

She wore her blue-grey dress for her now missed date

with the man who would not become her husband.

They should have left four hours ago but

Mr. Kolchek was behind again. Failing

in an almost professional way that seemed natural

like a blessed ignorance of what was expected of him.

He chose this carpet of grass for just these occasions.

Carla knew that. She knew that Mr. Kolchek kept her

late for not so gentlemanly reasons. She knew he would not act

first so she steadily brightened her lips

to, maybe, force his hand. He dreamed of laying her down

in the field between their desks and kissing away that horrid

color from her thoughtful lips. He would never do this

it was not in him to do things well. Mr. Kolchek could feel Carla

thinking and it took all of his control to not stand up and yell

“Let’s get the hell out of here. We can go drink and dance.

We can eat at Minny’s or Salvatore’s and fall home together.”

Never. He would just continue to look busy and Carla

would get the work done. This is why they could not find one another

they needed the other to be crushed under tiny hopes,

sliced within but still enclosed like a ruptured artery

within a show quality heart.

This would go on until they retired to opposite coasts

or died or found anyone they could fool into marriage.

Carla’s lipstick was in Mr. Kolchek’s left breast pocket.

Denis Johnson: not too easy on the mind.

Denis Johnson is, simply, a fine writer. His stories, novels, and poems are creative and disturbing to a degree that is nearly unfathomable. It is a sign of the power of Johnson that he can put a happy person in a sour mood with just a few words. The train wrecks that are some of Johnson's works take the moment that the reader feels safe in and makes that reader more than a little uncomfortable, makes the safe world feel a bit shaky. He takes foundations that seem solid and shows decay and weakness bubbling to the surface. He makes the problematic nature of coexisting impossible to ignore. The poems of Denis Johnson can make a reader look up from the page and sense that all is not well.
Without hyperbole this is phenomenal writing.
Be patient and read. Then take a walk.

Talking Richard Wilson Blues, by Richard Clay Wilson

You might as well take a razor

to your pecker as let a woman in your heart.

First they do the wash and then they kill you.

They flash their lights and teach your wallet to puke.

They bring it to you folded—if you see her

stepping between the coin laundry and your building

over the slushy street and watch the clothing steam,

you can’t wait to open up the door when she puts

the stairs behind her and catch that warmth between you.

It changes into a baby. “Here’s to the little shitter,

the little linoleum lizard.” Once he peed on me

when I was changing him—that one got a laugh

from the characters I wasted all my chances with

at Popeye’s establishment when it was over

by the Wonderland. But it’s destroyed

now and I understand one of those shopping malls

that are like great monuments of blindness

and folly stands there. And next door,

the grimy restaurants of men with movies

where they used to wear human faces,

the sad people from space. But that was never me,

because everything in those days depended on my work.

“Listen, I’m going to work,” was all I could say,

and drunk or sober I would put on the uniform

of Texaco and wade into my life.

I felt like a man of honor and substance,

but the situation was dancing underneath me—

once I walked into the living room at my sister’s

and saw that the two of them, her and my sister,

had turned sometime behind my back not exactly

fatter, but heavy, or squalid, with cartoons

moving across the television in front of them,

surrounded by laundry, and a couple of Coca-Colas

standing up next to the iron on the board.

I stepped out into the yard of bricks

and trash and watched the light light

up the blood inside each leaf,

and I asked myself, Now what is the rpm

on this mother? Where do you turn it on?

I think you understand how I felt.

I’m not saying everything changed in the space

of one second of seeing two women, but I did

start dragging her into the clubs with me. I insisted

she be sexy. I just wanted to live.

And I did: some nights were so

sensory I felt the starlight landing on my back

and I believed I could set fire to things with my fingers—

but the strategies of others broke my promise.

At closing time once, she kept talking to a man

when I was trying to catch her attention to leave.

It was a Negro man, and I thought of black limousines

and black masses and black hydrants filled

with black water. When the lights came on

you could see all kinds of intentions in the air.

I thought I might smack her face, or spill a glass,

but instead I opened him up with my red fishing knife

and I took out his guts and I said, “Here they are,

motherfucker, nigger, here they are.”

There were people frozen around us. The lights had just come on.

At that moment I saw her reading me and reading me

from the end of the world where I saw her standing,

and the way the sacred light played across her face

all I can tell you is I had to be a diamond

of ice to manage. Right down the middle from beginning to end

my life pours into one ocean: into this prison

with its empty ballfield and its empty

preparations for Never Happen.

If she ever comes to visit me, to hell with her,

I won’t talk to her, and my son can entertain

himself. God kill them both. I’m sorry for nothing.

I’m just an alien from another planet.

I am not happy. Disappointment

lights its stupid fire in my heart,

but two days a week I staff

the Max Security laundry above the world

on the seventh level, looking at two long roads

out there that go to a couple of towns.

Young girls accelerating through the intersection

make me want to live forever,

they make me think of the grand things,

of wars and extremely white, quiet light that never dies.

Sometimes I stand against the window for hours

tuned to every station at once, so loaded on crystal

meth I believe I’ll drift out of my body.

Jesus Christ, your doors close and open,

you touch the maniac drifters, the fireaters,

I could say a million things about you

and never get that silence out of time

that happens when the blank muscle hangs

between its beats—that is what I mean

by darkness, the place where I kiss your mouth,

where nothing bad has happened.

I’m not anyone but I wish I could be told

when you will come to save us. I have written

several poems and several hymns, and one

has been performed on the religious

ultrahigh frequency station. And it goes like this.



From: The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly: Poems Collected and New.
by Denis Johnson Harper Collins

Jane Hirshfield

The Woodpecker Keeps Returning

The woodpecker keeps returning

to drill the house wall.

Put a pie plate over one place, he chooses another.

There is nothing good to eat there:

he has found in the house

a resonant billboard to post his intentions,

his voluble strength as provider.

But where is the female he drums for? Where?

I ask this, who am myself the ruined siding,

the handsome red-capped bird, the missing mate.


From: After by Jane Hirshfield Harper Collins





I saw Hirshfield give a reading in Northampton, Mass. It was at the Smith College Poetry Center and it remains the most beautiful presentation of poetry I have ever witnessed. It was altering how this soft voiced woman could lead us to the place that she felt we needed to go. She has a Buddhist eye for the world. Hirshfield's Buddhism is not just a way of living but her very life itself. This is a poet who keeps her ego in check and allows the poem to work its way into our minds without force. The poems stay and change the reader's perception of the commonplace. If you are out of sorts read as much Hirshfield as you possibly can.

Norman Dubie: the one we begin with.

I am not going to give a biography of Dubie. If you like the poem you can find out plenty about him using the box you are facing. He is, like the very best of artists and people, exceptionally difficult to define. Sometimes he bombards the reader with language. At other times, like with this poem, he lays out a simple story and allows the twists within the simplicity to make the impact. He is very capable, which cannot be said of every poet, of giving his mark or voice to all of his work. This poem plays with the epic. It is Biblical. It is historical. It is violent. It might even be accurate. That seems to be the joke that Dubie is trying to get at. It is not a funny joke as much as it is an educational quip. Why is one year so different from any other? Why do we build our history in the way that we do? Which events constitute our remembrance and, historically and artistically speaking, what is truly important? Why write a poem?

These are the types of questions that good poems force the reader to ask. It is not enough, it is important but not enough, to just say "I like it" or "I do not like it" and leave it at that. There are reasons and questions and thoughts provoked. It may be that you do not like this poem or you may want to run out and buy all the Dubie you can find but there must, in either case, be a reason. It is very good to find reasons and think about them.

My advice would be to read at least twenty more Norman Dubie poems. That would be reasonable.




An Annual of the Dark Physics

The Baltic Sea froze in 1307. Birds flew north

From the Mediterranean in early January.

There were meteor storms throughout Europe.

On the first day of Lent

Two children took their own lives:

Their bodies

Were sewn into goatskins

And were dragged by the hangman’s horse

The three miles down to the sea.

They were given a simple grave in the sand.

The following Sunday, Meister Eckhart

Shouted that a secret word

Had been spoken to him. He preached

That Mary Magdalene

Sought a dead man in the tomb

But, in her confusion, found

Only two angels laughing. . .

This was a consequence of her purity

And her all too human grief.

The Baltic Sea

Also froze in 1303—

Nothing happened that was worthy of poetry.

From: The Mercy Seat by Norman Dubie
Copper Canyon Press

Welcome friends.

Trout will be a place for the reading, critique, and thinking through of poems. I do not hold poetry to any formal standard. I find some of John McPhee's literary journalism to be exceptionally poetic, actually most of it. I believe that Moby Dick is one long poem. A very, very long poem. That being said I greatly admire the work of "actual" poets ranging from Jane Hirshfield to John Berryman to Ashley Capps. The long and longer of this idea would be that poetry is all art that is talented, thoughtful, and makes the audience look away and honestly feel something.

That is what I will be trying to do with Trout. It may be simple or it may be impossible. If you find one thought here that makes your stomach drop or you become disturbingly happy reading an Ashbery or Bukowski feel free to let me know that I have succeeded.