Anyone, anyone?
Someone, anyone, suggest a poem to cheer me up. Came back to a patient just diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor. His entire family came with him. One sobbed. Another screamed at me over and over. A youngish girl looked frozen. I need a vacation. I think I need a vacation from everything: Medicine, Poetry, Editing, everything. I know I am tired from flying yesterday, and I know I am tired of poetry-world pettiness. I sometimes wish every single person out there who wrote poems were forced to edit poetry for a magazine for even 1 year. I guarantee it would change all of you. I am tired of people sniping at me because I rejected their precious poems. We get 36,000 poems and we publish 65-80. There are a lot of magazines out there, folks. Do what I do. Send your rejected poems to another magazine and move on. And I am tired of people thinking they have the RIGHT to insult me, to slander me, to send me lovely little anonymous messages.
So, suggest to me a great poem. Someone tell me about a poem you love and why you love it. Because that is what Poetry is about. Not this bullshit posturing and childish behavior.
posted by C. Dale @ 10:42 AM
14 comments
14 Comments:
This is my favorite poem. By Stephen Dunn from Loosestrife
Tiger Face
Because you can be what you're not
for only so long,
one day the tiger cub raised by goats
wandered to the lake and saw himself.
It was astounding
to have a face like that, cat-handsome,
hornless, and we can imagine he stared
a long time, then sipped
and pivoted, bemused yet burdened now
with choice. The mother goat had nursed him.
The others had tolerated
his silly quickness and claws.
And because once you know who you are
you need not rush,
and good parents are a blessing
whoever they are, he went back to them,
rubbing up against
their bony shins, keeping his secret to himself.
but after a while the tiger who'd found
his true face
felt the disturbing hungers, those desires
to get low in the reeds, swish his tail
charge.
Because he was a cat he disappeared
without goodbyes, his goat-parents relieved
such a thing was gone.
And we can imagine how, alone and beyond
choice, he wholly became who he was---
that zebra or gazelle
stirring the great blood rush and odd calm
as he discovered, while moving, what needed
to be done.
C.Dale,
This is the title poem from a 2003 book by Cynthia Rylant, marketed to kids. Rylant pulls off a whole book of these poems ("God Got a Couch" [from Pottery Barn, no less], "God Got Cable," "God Found God," etc.) without veering into the cutesy (or not much). I think it makes a good small present for adult poets, even if they don't believe in any organized god or religion (I don't).
God Went to Beauty School
He went there to learn how
to give a good perm
and ended up just crazy
about nails
so He opened up His own shop.
"Nails by Jim" He called it.
He was afraid to call it
Nails by God.
He was sure people would
think He was being
disrespectful and using
His own name in vain
and nobody would tip.
He got into nails, of course,
because He'd always loved
hands--
hands were some of the best things
He'd ever done
and this way He could just
hold one in His
and admire those delicate
bones just above the knuckles,
delicate as birds' wings,
and after He'd done that
awhile,
He could paint all the nails
any color He wanted,
then say,
"Beautiful,"
and mean it.
Right on. An oldy but (very) goody for you:
The Brain is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.
The brain is deeper than the sea,
For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.
The brain is just the weight of God,
For, lift them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.
--Emily Dickinson
This is one of my favorite poems.
THE SHAMPOO Elizabeth Bishop
The still explosions on the rocks,
the lichens, grow
by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.
They have arranged
to meet the rings around the moon, although
within our memories they have not changed.
And since the heavens will attend
as long on us,
you've been, dear friend,
precipitate and pragmatical;
and look what happens. For Time is
nothing if not amenable.
The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where,
so straight, so soon?
-- Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,
battered and shiny like the moon.
Love poem with dandruff...She can write about anything!
hey c. dale, how about aimee nezhukumatathil's poem:
THE WOMAN WHO TURNED DOWN
A DATE WITH A CHERRY FARMER
Fredonia, NY
Of course I regret it. I mean there I was under umbrellas of fruit
so red they had to be borne of Summer, and no other season.
Flip-flops and fishhooks. Ice cubes made of lemonade and sprigs
of mint to slip in blue glasses of tea. I was dusty, my ponytail
all askew and the tips of my fingers ran, of course, red
from the fruitwounds of cherries I plunked into my bucket
and still — he must have seen some small bit of loveliness
in walking his orchard with me. He pointed out which trees
were sweetest, which ones bore double seeds — puffing out
the flesh and oh the surprise on your tongue with two tiny stones
(a twin spit), making a small gun of your mouth. Did I mention
my favorite color is red? His jeans were worn and twisty
around the tops of his boot; his hands thick but careful,
nimble enough to pull fruit from his trees without tearing
the thin skin; the cherry dust and fingerprints on his eyeglasses.
I just know when he stuffed his hands in his pockets, said
Okay. Couldn't hurt to try? and shuffled back to his roadside stand
to arrange his jelly jars and stacks of buckets, I had made
a terrible mistake. I just know my summer would've been
full of pies, tartlets, turnovers — so much jubilee.
hope this helps.
barbara jane
To Those Capable of Deriving the Greatest Benefit
by Lydia Kalytiak Davis
Let's sort the injury from the injured,
Asking: What field? What battle?
Is this the site of your disaster?
An emergency room full of old friends.
Someone asking: Recollect, if you will,
A poem of Pindar's: That which above all
Shines through everything. Shines through
Each thing present all around.
Everything quietly unconcealing in the golden hospital
Light. Here's the chart, the anamnesis, of how and when
We want to kill each other, let each other die.
We, the living, breathe
Although we have lost old friends.
We have left them behind like dirty bandages.
We have left them ripped open, wide.
We've left rooms saying: Fuck you
And you and you.
Saying: Recollect if you will . . .
Everyone quietly decomposing under the golden
Hospital light. Saying: That which shines through . . .
Saying: Let strophe equal antistrophe.
We, the breathing, live
Although we've lost limbs and brain stems,
Let us now sort the injured from the injury . . .
R. Creeley's "If":
Up the edge of the window out to
tree's overhanging branches sky
light on facing building up to
faint wash blue up on feet ache
now old toes wornout joints make
the wings of an angel so I'd fly.
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God, there are so many poems. Two of my favorites are The Heaven of Animals and The Panther, but both are anthologized to death.
Here is another one, though, that I've loved since I first encountered it nearly ten years ago.
SCHOOL
"David Talamantez on the Last Day of Second Grade" San Antonio, Texas 1988
David Talamantez, whose mother is at work, leaves his mark everywhere in the schoolyard,
tosses pages from a thick sheaf of lined paper high in the air one by one, watches them
catch on the teachers' car bumpers, drift into the chalky narrow shade of the water fountain.
One last batch, stapled together, he rolls tight into a makeshift horn through which he shouts
David! and David, yes! before hurling it away hard and darting across Barzos Street against
the light, the little sag of head and shoulders when, safe on the other side, he kicks a can
in the gutter and wanders toward home. David Talamantez believes birds are warm blooded,
the way they are quick in the air and give out long strings of complicated music, different
all the time, not like cats and dogs. For this he was marked down in Science, and for putting
his name in the wrong place, on the right with the date instead of on the left with Science
Questions, and for not skipping a line between his heading and answers. The X's for wrong
things are big, much bigger than Talamantez's tiny writing. Write larger, his teacher says
in red ink across the tops of many pages. Messy! she says on others where he has erased
and started over, erased and started over. Spelling, Language Expression, Sentences Using
the Following Words. Neck. I have a neck name. No! 20’s, 30's. Think again! He's good
in Art, though, makes 70 on Reading Station Artist's Corner, where he's traced and colored
an illustration from Henny Penny. A goose with red-and-white striped shirt, a hen in a turquoise
dress. Points off for the birds, cloud and butterfly he's drawn in freehand. Not in the original
picture! Twenty-five points off for writing nothing in the blank after This is my favorite scene
in the book because . . . There's a page called Rules. Listen! Always working! Stay in your seat!
Raise your hand before you speak! No fighting! Be quiet! Rules copied from the board, no grade,
only a huge red checkmark. Later there is a test on Rules. Listen! Alay ercng! Sast in ao snet!
Rars aone bfo your spek! No finagn! Be cayt! He gets 70 on Rules, 10 on Spelling. An old man
stoops to pick up a crumpled drawing of a large family crowded around a table, an apartment
with bars on the windows in Alazan Courts, a huge sun in one corner saying, Tomush noys!
After correcting the spelling, the grade is 90. Nice details! And there's another mark, on this paper
and all the others, the one in the doorway of La Rosa Beauty Shop, the one that blew under
the pool table at La Tenampa, the ones older kids have wadded up like big spitballs, the ones run
over by cars. On every single page David Talamantez has crossed out the teacher's red numbers
and written in giant letters, blue ink, Yes! David, yes!
XXXVIII (from Stephen Crane's The Black Riders)
The ocean said to me once,
"Look!
Yonder on the shore
Is a woman, weeping.
I have watched her.
Go you and tell her this-
Her lover I have laid
In cool green hall.
There is wealth of golden sand
And pillars, coral-red;
Two white fish stand guard at his bier.
"Tell her this
And more-
That the king of the seas
Weeps too, old, helpless man.
The bustling fates
Heap his hands with corpses
Until he stands like a child
With a surplus of toys."
The Improvement
by John Ashbery
Is that where it happens?
Only yesterday when I came back, I had this
diaphanous disaffection for this room, for spaces,
for the whole sky and whatever lies beyond.
I felt the eggplant, then the rhubarb.
Nothing seems strong enough for
this life to manage, that sees beyond
into particles forming some kind of entity—
so we get dressed kindly, crazy at the moment.
A life of afterwords begins.
We never live long enough in our lives
to know what today is like.
Shards, smiling beaches,
abandon us somehow even as we converse with them.
And the leopard is transparent, like iced tea.
I wake up, my face pressed
in the dewy mess of a dream. It mattered,
because of the dream, and because dreams are by nature sad
even when there's a lot of exclaiming and beating
as there was in this one. I want the openness
of the dream turned inside out, exploded
into pieces of meaning by its own unasked questions,
beyond the calculations of heaven. Then the larkspur
would don its own disproportionate weight,
and trees return to the starting gate.
See, our lips bend.
In a week I might think of the perfect poem, but because now is when you need it and because a good curse and fierce affection
can be comforting, this by Martin Espada:
For the Jim Crow Mexican Restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts Where My Cousin Esteban Was Forbidden to Wait Tables Because He Wears Dreadlocks
I have noticed that the hostess in peasant dress,
the wait staff and the boss
share the complexion of a flour tortilla.
I have spooked the servers at my table
by trilling the word burrito.
I am aware of your T-shirt solidarity
with the refugees of the Americas,
since they steam in your kitchen.
I know my cousin Esteban the sculptor
rolled tortillas in your kitchen with the fingertips
of ancestral Puerto Rican cigarmakers.
I understand he wanted to be a waiter,
but you proclaimed his black dreadlocks unclean,
so he hissed in Spanish
and his apron collapsed on the floor.
May La Migra handcuff the wait staff
as suspected illegal aliens from Canada;
may a hundred mice dive from the oven
like diminutive leaping dolphins
during your Board of Health inspection;
may the kitchen workers strike, sitting
with folded hands as enchiladas blacken
and twisters of smoke panic the customers;
may a Zapatista squadron commander the refrigerator,
liberating a pillar of tortillas at gunpoint;
may you hallucinate dreadlocks
braided in thick vines around your ankles;
and may the Aztec gods pinned like butterflies
to the menu wait for you in the parking lot
at midnight, demanding that you spell their names.
Thank you all for these. They really did help. I am so tired right now I need to just go home. I have a case in the OR tomorrow, and I need to be sharp. I am leaving the dictations for tomorrow. I am just leaving them here despite the fact it will bother me to do so.
You all ROCK, you know... I apologize for my rant of earlier today. I am just tired.
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