Shadowards

Assignment

2009-05-14T11:08:00.000-07:00

Hey guys. We are usually all together in Mosow at some point in the summer. Let try to get a topic to write about for our next meeting. How about a poem for each season.

So, lets title them Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall.

How about it?

On the Muse

2009-02-23T10:35:00.000-08:00

I visited the blog of author Benjamin Parzybok today and found this nugget. As a former software developer, I took issue with her false dichotomy between engineering and the creative process (especially considering that the "T" in TED is for Technology). Otherwise, I enjoyed her classical approach to inspiration and writing. It has been years since I (we?) seriously attempted new poetry, though I did hear that distant tune of beckoning while I was living in Wisconsin last Fall. This is not to say that the Muse has left me - just that we are working together on different projects now, most notably my recent infatuation with video production. And I think Gilbert leaves room for that at the end of her talk. It's a good twenty minutes but worth the listen.

Here for the taking

2007-12-04T13:49:00.000-08:00

j.a.arrick

She came to see me at lunch time. Slender fingers
reached out over the table as she quietly asked, “I
hope you aren’t allergic to peanut butter.” It stuck
to the top of my mouth.
“I’m not”.

She wore a blue dress with a white sweater. Her red
hair was like a bunch of small slinkies tied at the
top of a cliff. I hid my hair was because it was short and rough.
“Do you like my hat?”

Her eyes said, “I can’t wait to get you home” as they
burned with hope. I could see my brown eyes in her
blue.
“I don’t mean to stare.”

She said, “I have waited my whole life for you to come
along.” I knew it was time and that she was the one.
“Can I call you mom?”

The end of this present life must come, whether sooner or later

2007-10-13T14:57:00.000-07:00

He rises from his car, a cane touching first where he will step
and limping step by shuffling step in sneakers crisply tied and white
he joins the crowd around the car -upturned onto its side.

He sees the stop sign now and puts -grandfatherly- his hand upon the car;
it cools as we call to her inside, entombed, blanketed
by airbag and glass.

She unclasps her seatbelt and climbs out, legs wobble, we reach
for her and marvel, we proclaim her miracle,
we resolve to improve our faith, resolve to increase our prayers.

She pales and shakes and sits upon the curb
and stares at the anchors of blood lowered from her hand.
The brush with death sickens us and leaves an acid taste inside our mouths.

But the man, hair still perfectly placed,
returns to the crumpled crib of his car, heart-beating and feeling
-more than he had for many years- alive alive alive.

The distinctions among created things; and their different rankings by the scales of utility and logic

2007-10-08T05:29:00.000-07:00

My youngest son dragoned in zippered green fabric
waves a red shovel and hoe and Adams an Eden in the hall.
My oldest son dumptrucks a wagon of brown plastic horses
onto the ranch of the rug and rides a smile
into the western afternoon, full of wrangling.

With the autumning of my body
I weigh the jump-roping of their play-
from hot-rods, dinosaurs, and hard-hatted Indians
with six-shooters and wooden spoons belted to their sides
to the jackhammering through leaves
behind the Frankensteined soccerball-
the scales midlife into crisis.

Later, as my sons -on their stomachs- teeter-totter their legs,
I shiver when a tower of blocks Babel them
as it nine-elevens to the floor.

-Remy

Pierre Bonnard's Nude in a Bathtub

2007-09-25T17:22:00.000-07:00

Perichoresis

j. a. arrick

Where is the to be or not to be seen?

-the man in the chair to the right of Ophelia.

Her face is not found nor bound hands and feet

rather, Athena’s chiseled figure is entombed

with weather faded stone.

Inferno fired cinderblocks holds

room in dance, and her, like paralysis’

daughter, songless, danceless, unclapped,

floats and therefore seem not to be.

He was not to be no more, but was to dance

In warmth and caress, with hand on side

Arm in air, and step in light, her face to his

The room decrease, their love crescendo

He was to dance. Instead, he is absent.

The room awaits the fiddle and horn,

and poises to tap a vibrant tune,

illuminates with joy and verve;

but there is not to be a dance

the couple is not to be.

nor anymore, Ophelia

Day in a Game

2007-09-17T19:19:00.000-07:00

J. Andrew Arrick

An Endless summer brings a glare from the cedar slated balcony.

Flat up, a steep silled window looks to the shrubs then the row of trees,

Converse All Stars clean white and black,

scrape the sill and fill the cracks with gravel

as out the foxhole to the great known battle field of yard;

they fly with no avail.

With sword in hand, the sheathed tin

with glass buttons glares at a sweaty brow.

Up the slated porch with drawn arrows

The shots fly into white ninja target.

CHARGE!!! Lieutenant Johnson orders

Saracen blades drawn to down frail foe

of shrub and tree, in clump and row.

Retreat, that imminent thing these friends of summer darn not disobey,

with a snake path sprint from gunfire and mortars.

All caps leap off heads from brushing arrows.

From fair haven foxhole, the dawning comrade yelps like a bard in battle.

From room tombed bed knobs where slates shadows are gone

and the shaggy best friend pants and yawns.

With summer drowning and windows shut,

sweat is swiped from brow and bed again at days end.

End of bright from summer’s glare the boys in lair

in cover in pillow, lay with sleepy nights under balcony.

Assignment

2007-08-18T09:22:00.001-07:00

Who's up for one?

Sonnet II

2007-07-20T21:43:00.000-07:00

Here's my second sonnet ever, as read recently at James' house. I know there were objections to the "before the face of God" bit, as being lazily abstract. I'm working on it, but in the meantime, any suggestions?

- b.c.

ii.

I peer, my face against the streaming pane
like Japheth in the backseat of a car,
at the rain on the rocks:
The waters are
rising, grasping below the asphalt edge
of the road, and I wonder how could Cain
have thought that grain could make sufficient hedge
around our sin; could keep our heads above
the waves.

In saffron hues beside the road
the aspens burn with sacrificial love:
A momentary storm shrouds gray their flame
and in a flood suspended, cleansing rain
lifts up as mist before the face of God
like smoke ascending from a martyr’s pyre
to shelter dust from death with dust afire.

The Lost Touch

2007-04-23T13:52:00.000-07:00

I just wrote something for the first time in several months and thought I'd post it here. It needs work. It needs to be savaged.

[Update: Thanks Davis. Here are some changes.]

The Lost Touch

On my magazine a wet handprint,
ominous as, the next morning in the meadhall,
Grendel’s arm,
and on this month’s electric bill
thumbmarks like drops from a dog’s mouth
placing a warm ball on the couch:
the vestige of a husky mailman and Louisiana’s late May.
Later that summer I saw his direct geometry, from house to house,
tender between the flowerbeds, the sky of his shirt,
through the bushes, ducking under low limbs.
Terminally shy and a stutterer,
I never remember his name,
yet he makes an indelible mark on life
like a leaf’s first swoosh across the dirt, like a shadow
of a bird flicked over
the face of a child.
Our deciduous lives make thin marks upon the world,
but these scuffs, dents, furrows pressed in table wood,
chips, frays, lost paint from figurines,
these are what personalize the world.

His face is blistered in sweat and forced
from complaints along his route to wear
pale blue gloves to keep his sopping
from soaking the mail.
But I miss the message he delivered with each letter,
written in invisible words -much too shy to say aloud-
that said, I carried this, it bears my touch.
I mothered this into your hand.
Take and open in remembrance of me.

A Field Along I-84

2006-11-18T09:06:00.000-08:00

Another edit. I cut the second stanza entirely. Is there not enough setup for the ending?

A Field Along I-84

I am confronted on the right and on the left with
Absolute Flatness -
tilled but unplanted:
a desire unfulfilled -

and I am compelled to grasp the landscape like a tablecloth
or the end of a skein of rough wool
and pull,

supressed at first
then desperate,
piling up the sheets of dirt at my feet:
Searching for mountains.

Washington Scrubland

2006-11-18T09:00:00.000-08:00

An edit, for your critique:

Washington Scrubland

Sage and scrub-grass
perch on the surface of the desert
like grit on sandpaper,
grievous and vital,
superposed upon the dirt
and clinging to the rocks in a
thousand narrow gorges
that score the desert's crackling skin
like wrinkles on an old man's neck.

Words Arranged from Anne Frank’s Diary

2006-11-09T05:50:00.000-08:00

This might be the dying gasp of Shadowards.

Six or seven years ago I came across the Found Poem phenomenom. A couple years later I was reading Anne Frank's diary (sounds so prurient to say that) and decided to take some of her phrases and craft them together. This is what I came up with.

Words Arranged from Anne Frank’s Diary

"Ich danke dir fur all das Gote und Liebe und Shone" -Anne Frank

I take a leisurely look
at the person called "Anne Frank"
and browse through the pages of her life
as though she were a stranger.

I feel like a songbird
whose wings have been ripped off
and who keeps hurling itself
against the bars of its dark cage.

I think spring is inside me.

Why shouldn’t we kiss each other
in times like these?
I’m longing–
really longing for everything.

Jews and Christians alike are waiting,
the whole world is waiting
and many are waiting for death.
Peter said, "the Jews have been
and always will be
the chosen people."
Anne said, "Just this once, I hope
they’ll be chosen for something good."

An empty day, though clear and bright,
Is just as dark as any night.
I think spring is inside me.

We still love life
we haven’t yet forgotten the voice of nature,
and we keep hoping,
hoping for

everything.

I don’t think building sandcastles in the air
is such a terrible thing to do
as long as you don’t take it too
seriously. I think spring is inside me.
It’s easier to whisper your feelings
than to shout them from the rooftops.
But where there’s hope, there’s life.

I think spring is inside me.

On Rhythms

2006-10-27T15:11:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting post on poetic rhythms by Doc Leithart.

On a Poet

2006-10-20T16:03:00.000-07:00

Rae Armantrout, poet, in the most recent issue of American Poet, discusses this poem by Joseph Massey (from his chapbook Property Line) saying:

"The connotations of the few nouns, verbs, and adjectives in this small poem tug in two opposed directions. On one side we find "vortex", "navigate," and "path" -words which suggest purpose and concentration. On the other side we find "unraveled" and the cloud of "gnats." These words suggest entropy adn randomness. Among these objects of attention an Olsonian tension "holds." The subject-noun of the poem, "hummingbird" occipies middle ground. We expect a humming bird's movement to be erratic, flitting, but here the bird is seeen as almost comicall purposeful and direct, pursuing its ends through an entropic world. Is the poem, like the humingbird, penetrating determinedly into a world of receding and collapsing phenomena? Is the tension in th epoem (in all poems?) between such precision and such unraveling?

The is much to say about the sound of this poem and the way the syllables juxtapose. There are the six assonant short "a"s in "gnats", "nasturtiums", "navigates", "unraveled", "gravel" and "path"; the subtle scrambled rhyme in "hummingbird" and "nasturtium" the off-rhyme of "unraveled" and "gravel"; and there's the way stress falls on the first syllable in so many of these words, i.e. "Hummingbird", "vortex", "navigates", "gravel". As Olson says, a "head shows" in the play of (these) syllables indeed.

I find it refreshing and somehow also sobering to observe the way Massey sticks so closely to the perceptual world. Like William Carlos Williams, he challenges us to see the value in putting things in words. What does dependo n that famous red wheel barrow or on these nasturtiums? Is the question retro or is it time to ask again? How do we move from perception to experience, from experience to thought?" What sort of "property line" divides on e perceptual event from another?"

***

Something to discuss perhaps.

"Are We Roses?" On the Bosnian Genocide

2006-10-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

This was found in the ole files, unfinished. It's another From Friday poem and less intimidating that TSEliot swill.

"Are We Roses?" On the Bosnian Genocide
She writes down a scar, then erases "when I remembered that skin was unlikely to survive."
—Courtney Angela Brkic*

She examines her face for what will last:
only bones and eliminates the eyes,
cheeks, lips, hair and nose,
but teeth will stay -horrible in their openness.
"Are we roses?" a Bosnian child asks
near the stony fields of Herzegovina.

Not just the dead of old massacres remain
but the missing and bereft. An excavation team
provides the sole consolation the gone can leave:
a corpse; the victim turned over to mourners.
A rose patterned china cup in the rough hands
of the little girl, "Are we like roses?"

Mass graves examined: "Do not look
at faces or hands," she’s advised. Because the skin
does not survive, she reminds herself. The wad
of bones, the mudstuck writhe of barren spines,
the body’s hieroglyphs of crushed anklebones,
splintered ribs, wrinkled wrists and pelvis dust;
each spell "killing fields" in decaying calcium and cloth.
"Are we roses?" she asks, her mouth as fragile as a cup,
her hands become the coarsest cradle for a stone.

When the girl was young a pinecone
put into her crib acquainted her
with hardship, pressed against her skin.
There’s a threadbare coarseness to her eyes
as she asks a final time, "Are we roses?"

The mother, soon to die, throws open the door
and gestures to the dust, "We are brush
clawing at the mountainside."

From "BOOKS OF THE TIMES; On the Killing Fields of Bosnia, Invoking Mother Courage" by Richard Eder, a review of The Stone Fields by Courtney Angela Brkic in the New York Times August 6th, 2004.

*pronounced BER-kitch

Wasteland Remix

2006-10-05T15:53:00.000-07:00

A number of years ago I began a Wasteland remix. Using the original Eliot poem, I took structures, rhythms, and even his own mad methods of composition to write my own, personally filled poem. I only got so far as the first section (Burial of the Dead) butI thought it might be interesting to see. Moreso than "Fluency" at least.

Badlands
(after T.S. Eliot)

Go & tell the king that
The sky is falling in
When it's not
Maybe not.
-Radiohead, 2+2=5

I. A Parable for the Dead

Spring is foolish for its progeny
spreading seed carelessly,
I remember when this hill was dead
and green a dream of immaturity.
Winter was logical, reasoning
dust to dust, fading
life into shades of grey.
Sunrise a shocking conclusion rising from the sea,
a little overcast, stopping in the coffeehouse,
then into a leisurely stroll along the stores,
drinking and chatting about the wares.
"I hate antiques, especially the shabby chic."
I remember, she said, the whirlpool in the stream
as a girl, my sisters and I, would walk
along the rocks, how slick they were,
but we don’t go there anymore.
On the farm it’s peaceful even at night,
the coyotes sing before they leave.

Out of the whirlwind grasping at the wind:
What is dust? Prophet,
if you can, what rough beast slouches
to Jerusalem to be born?
It screams "Peace, Peace!" when there is no peace,
its throat cracks for lack of wine. Only
dash yourself upon the rock
(many are dashed upon this rock)
and ask what Babel gives to you.
Oh Jonah, go down, down,
down, and I will meet you there
or I will come down and grind you into dust.

Old Bad Eyes,
Old Bad Eyes,
The Shepherd
Won’t leave me alone.

We searched for yarrow on the summer solstice.
I called her flower-petal eater
—yet when we came back, late, from the whirlwind garden
your arms held everything, Ophelia, and wet your hair.
The river passed an unkept pit, strewn with petals.
O churlish priest, a ministering angel
will she be when thou liest howling.
Kai pempo Lazarus hina bapto akron daktulos hudor*

Mavis, the twisted alchemist,
was banished, nevertheless
a crafty serpent to the promised land
acts as Charybdis with his tail
pointing to the dead, to Olaf glad and big
(more brave than me, more blond than you),
to Matilda, called Primavera by the pilgrim,
the lady beyond the fire.
Here is the soldier with the spear, here the Rood,
here is one like Woden with his ravens
whispering in his ear. I do not see
the quizzling, nor the ivory of his leg.
If you see the woman in the streets,
I have confessed, tell her so
and I’ll bring the sheets to wrap her in
to keep her stench back from my nose.

City of seven hills
under a canopy of a future flood,
a split ocean a people crossed
to scatter their bones, dry, across
the other land. Grumbling carried their exodus,
each man set his heart to dust,
past where the Levites kept their guard,
where pooled old blood of bulls and goats.
There I saw one I knew and called to him, "Achen!
You who were with me at the battle of A-I,
that silver planted last week in your tent
have you reaped your fruits of it?
Might I have my cut?
but keep clear of open sepulchers,
lest you see yourself go down —that’s home to man!
you blindman, my mirror, my friend!

*transliterated from the Greek, meaning:
(and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water)

Fluency

2006-09-28T07:20:00.000-07:00

This is another From Friday poem (A Life in Thrown Paint, and On the Highest Edge of Strings) that was slower in coming than the previous. I feel the first stanza is agonizing, but I've been blind as to what to do so I decided to release it to you guys and perhaps you'll free up my brainlock.

Fluency

"La foi." -Mozart Bastien, 58, said in French. After some work, he and his translator came up with the word he meant in English. "Faith."

—New York, NY
He went to sleep. He woke.
A stroke had stilled Mozart Bastien's tongue.
For three years silent,
the uncarved stone of words
lay unmoved in his mind.

A pastor in his former land,
often called to pray for ailing men,
now fired from his factory job,
he laid in bed, "I still have faith in God."
he said by speaking with his hands.

He prayed for fluency to return,
silence a gravestone in his mouth.
He prayed for work, for meaning aside from money.
And when his tongue was remade flesh
he went down on hands and knees and cried,
"This is liberte'."

From the article "The Neediest Cases; After a Stroke, a Torturous Battle to Put Thoughts Into Words, and to Work Again" by Monica Potts published in the New York Times December 16, 2005.

Wallace Stevens

2006-09-19T16:29:00.000-07:00

Thought I would post this poem by Wallace Stevens for comment and instruction. It seems to flow nicely with the classical/romantic poetry of Remy's which we have been enjoying of late.

"The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage"

But not on a shell, she starts,
Archaic, for the sea.
But on the first-found weed
She scuds the glitters,
Noislessly, like one more wave.

She too is discontent
And would have purple stuff upon her arms,
Tired of the salty harbors,
Eager for the brine and bellowing
Of the high interiors of the sea.

The wind speeds her,
Blowing upon her hands
And watery back.
She touches the clouds, where she goes
In the circle of her traverse of the sea.

Yet this is a meagre play
In the scrurry and water-shine,
As her heels foam -
Not as when the golden nude
Of a later day

Will go, like the centre of sea-green pomp,
In an intenser calm,
Scullion of fate,
Across the spick torrent, ceaselessly,
Upon her irretrievable way.

- Wallace Stevens

Sometimes Venus Springs

2006-09-18T16:05:00.000-07:00

Continuing my neo-romantic love poetry.

Sometimes Venus Springs

fully formed

her shoulders like eggshell
in a cliff of moonlight
her throat like fish in water
shimmering her voice
like a taut rope
in a well rising
her midnight filled the room

my mouth enstoned
tongue of gravel
my knees
like dry ponds
in undisturbed mountains
my eyes pineconed
in the loam of night

all flesh is silt
my arms, old walls
need of care
need of touch
like melted snow
need of her breath
like new glass
against my side

her robe broke like clouds
brunette rain
the flesh of lightning
eyelash thunder
light spackled
like waterdrops
the earth rumbled like a breaking oak

the gulch of desire
crumbled split and

filled

The Birth of Fidelity

2006-09-12T06:27:00.000-07:00

This one has been floating around in pieces for a long time (I think some parts may have been presented to you all before). Sorry it's not as sexy as Rem's last few offerings.
I do not feel dogmatically about any part of this. I still consider it incomplete. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

"The Birth of Fidelity"

Search the southern sands
For husks cast up at the tide-line.
Pry inside with withered hands,
Rich with pearling shine
But empty.

Olive faced as Hecate,
Dancing slow above the earth
To rhythms beaten with a whisper:
Feathered, desperate,
Yet absurd.

Darker than the last
Yet brighter still, though fading
Breaks the dead-shelled, hardened cast
To lift him born anew,
Though trembling.

The Thousand Warships of My Eyes

2006-09-11T14:28:00.000-07:00

In terms of subverting pagan antiquity, at least with me, it really comes down to the adage "make it new". With "Icarus after Orgasm" I wanted to take away all that grand pity the Greek narratives are so gloomily after. Yes, the Icarus story is about the folly of youth, but look at how noble it was. And that's how we read that story, I just wanted to enjoy myself, I wanted to go higher, I was seduced by the beauty of the sun. Biblically speaking folly is gross, destructive, and childish. So I had Daedylus speaking the Proverbs to him. Still pity, still sin, but (I hope) sin exposed.

But please, I don't have a limitless supply of these things. There needs to be more stuff written. Let's discuss. Maybe we should turn this into poetry discussion page as well. Maybe in a few days someone can put up a question or short essay (what's important in poetry? sort of questions) or maybe discuss a poem written by someone published.

Here goes some love poetry:

[Edited since first posting]

The Thousand Warships of My Eyes

My Helen of the bedsheets
wage a war against me,

a war of attrition,
wear me down,

break the bridge of my resistance,
scar the walls of my arms,

uproot the crops of my mouth,

and I will surrender in the sheets
of cold winter’s bed.

But at the point of defeat,
hidden in pillows,

while you revel in victory,

a parade of fingers,
the rough wooden horse of my hands

...legs like the city of Troy

Icarus After Orgasm

2006-09-06T18:29:00.000-07:00

I disdain classical allusion for the same reason that I disdain "-eths", "o'ers", and "t'was", but more than that, I just don't fancy the pagan myths. It's like trying to have affection for "Birth of a Nation" because it's the first film. The whole aura in English Electives around the gods has a sort of antiquarian-necrophilia about it. Satan and his cohorts have been reduced to wobbly-headed bobs. I get the gigglies when I see a movie with demonic apparitions waving salt-shakers around, chittering the dishes. That's not a sign of power, that's a sign of weakness.

So it tickles me when Carl Dennis mentions Icarus and says "a whale, not some silly boy". That's how I like my classical allusions. Dismissive, sly.

Thanks for the words on my old stuff. It's been in my head so long I can't see the faults. And a note: in the original poem there are highly artistic indents that really add zing, pep, and gollygosh to the poem (but I still cannot figure out how to html an indentation worth a damn).

Icarus After Orgasm
Daedalus Speaks

My warnings bore no fruit,
Icarus, my son, my son,
but he had a famine for an ear,
and a heart of dry wood
wishing fire.

She was like the sight of a single bird
flying over a field of stones,
the sun, a slower similar yearning,
and Icarus took her like wings
and plied her to the sky of his desire.

Her bed swept him up like vanilla in a candle’s flame
and Egyptian linen rippled against
the curvatures of his back,
becoming tiny question marks of surprise, pleasure
at the muscles of her body.

Do not seek the woman of fire.
Do not fly to her embrace, I cried.
Icarus, O Icarus, my son.
She laid low many
seeking the burning touch of her hand.

In her hands Icarus quivered
and his heart, a bird without snare.
O Icarus, my son,
my son,
her fire turned his wings to stone.

When Icarus came
flickering like a feather in wind to the woman of lust,
sweat running like wax,
he fell –O Icarus my son–
to the unruly, soiled bed,

melting into the depths of the sea of his heart.

Roman Marriage in Antiquity

2006-08-31T07:17:00.000-07:00

Some more old stuff. This is one of my "dirty classical" poems. Did I ever post Icarus After Orgasm here? I have a growing hatred for romantic uses of Romanisms, Greek gods, et cetera. Classical allusions bore me unless they're subverted. Admittedly, What They'll Never Understand doesn't fit this, but I consider that more of a character discription. By the way, in depicting the filthy practices of the Romans I have used appropriate language.

Roman Marriage in Antiquity

The loss of virginity is, as they say, vi non sine.
Or, not without violence is a woman robbed
of her virginity, and divinity is employed
to help the Roman male enact this rite. This replacing
taking the newly wedded bride to the idol of Priapus
and commanding her to sit on his phallus.
Instead the god Domiducus is invited
to "lead her home" (domum ducere),
and the god Domitius installs her there
with the goddess Manturna to see that she "remain"
(manere) in faith to her husband. In terms of modesty
there was none, as more gods were brought into the act.
In all likelihood lusting, elbowing each other
out of the way after their role was done, the god of the pillow
blesses what heads will there soon lay, the goddess of the sheets
strips nude the bed at the approval of goddess
Virginesis, there as witness.
The Father Subigus (to subdue, subigere) readies the manacles
of his hands to spread the ankles,
and Mother Prema (to press, premere)
sets her girth on the virgins legs
waiting for goddess Pertunda (to pierce, pertundere)
to loose the virgin girdle,
all under the watchful
eager eyes of Venus, the goddess of lust,
depraved sex, fellatio, and cunnilingus.
And soon, after the gods have done their work,
the Roman male may enjoy his bride
with all Olympia at his back,
clucking their tongues
and fumbling with immortal cocks and cunts.

The Crossword

2006-08-24T16:09:00.000-07:00

To keep this page from getting stale I've gone into the ole files and pulled out something from circa 2003. I'm working on another newspaper poem. I might throw it up to get some help with it.

The Crossword

The kiss she left him with had all the force and fire
of a golf clap. She glances back to make sure
all eyes are on the smallness of her skirt
(a Berlin wall of newspapers crash
at the swing, like a silent bell, of hips,
as she walks away, a row of old ears ringing
before boxscores and editorials re-form cubicles).
The boyfriend tugs at the sewer of his pants,
"She toys with me" whispered in his hands.

A study group, circled around their books,
stare like castaways at the bottom of their boat,
the idealist among them parts his lips,
"Every invention is a wager for utopia"
he says, and drinks rapidly a glass of water.

A mathematician is asked about belief in god.
He mutters, pulling a pencil from above his ear,
"My business is the infinite, what do you think?"
and slowly fills out a five letter word for transience.

-Remy

Airport Barista

2006-08-07T21:16:00.000-07:00

Though your coffee skin and Veda voice
Allude to ties to Vishnu,
I see that Man on the golden tree
Is strung up on your neck.

By the honest lure of your low-caste eyes,
I am drawn, like sheep,
To the shimmering destruction
Of your Shiva smile.

Who knows how wide the gulf of faith,
The gulf of space, the gulf of Want between us?
Would I could convince, convict,
Convert you with a kiss!

If not for my fleeting flight,
If not for my weakened knees, my better judgment,
And if not for that glittering pledge around your finger,
I might this moment dare to do instead of dream.

A Life in Thrown Paint

2006-08-07T12:02:00.000-07:00

"It was a healing space, and they were both in great need of being healed" -Audrey Flack, 75, on the house Jackson Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner, escaped to.

-East Hampton, NY
Light stung the sanddunes near a smashed car made soft
in the new morning.
Earlier that year a wife
off by Accabonac Creek, Lee Krasner,
part pragmatist, part masochist, waited
for husband Jackson Pollock to return from what rough rage
he drank into or
from whose blatant arms he slouched into,
or from what unconcious canvas had filled his mind
with slapped color, and his arms with
spontaneous motion; spill or pour,
stab or sprinkle.

Was he the paint or place
where it came to rest?
What dark bruising pushed his hand to drive the nail
inside the slack and pooled paint?
The string congealed
upon his art could be a sign of hope -a lifeline laid
to save
what was buried in the struggling flood. Or
was it to make a noose among the taut
and jerking paint?

When she left him
taking her faith in him
he lashed and poured his abuse
upon himself. He became
a painting for wrath and flung his car beyond the frame of streets.

A "From Friday" poem by Remy Wilkins from the article “At Jackson Pollock’s Hamptons House, a Life in Spatters” by Ellen Maguire

An attempt for the Trinity

2006-08-04T10:41:00.000-07:00

This is my attempt at doing something for the Trinityfest. It won't be submitted, but it does expose my return to classic forms, even of the most hated "end-rhyme". I've recently tinkered with the Pantoum ("On the Highest Edge of Strings") and with the sonnet form. None are "tight" (because that's a quality for multiplication tables, not poetry), but I wanted to see what you guys think. So far, everyone has been nonplussed with the following poem. But is it b/c they're disappointed with my return to endrhyme or is it b/c this poem just falls flat. Tell me. Really though, I wrote this because of the title, which I love. The poem is like a Thomas Lux poem after reading the Proverbs.

Loved by Sharks

Her body is a corpse. Teeth like a burnt forest.
Perverse. Her eyes are like boiled eggs.
Lurking at every corner of the sea. Her house
is the way unto the deep. Watch your legs

if you swim aside into her way. If you
stray into her path, a bird into a snare,
you become her bread of secrecy.
Rage has built her house, has hewn out fear,

the wounded are pulled down into the black.
Relentless, she's never closed an eye in rest.
Do not descend into her chamber of death,
for her lust is like a fire unto the chest.

She is cunning and hungry as a harlot.
She will clothe the simple man in scarlet.

-Remy

On the Highest Edge of Strings

2006-08-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

"I can tell a story" -Buteo Huang, 45, master kite maker on his kite exhibit.

-Sunshia, Taiwan
Using newsprint and bamboo with mashed sticky rice
as homemade glue

a young Buteo Huang constructed kites.
“You can send anything you want into the sky.”

30 years experience now and countless 2 a.m. testflights,
he builds stories like wings and sends them up

on the highest edge of strings. Buteo constructed kites
linking a boy's wonder of the air

with a grown man's sense of prayer. This is how
he spends his nights. "That's the most interesting thing

about kites," he said with fire like wings in his eye
and a grown man’s sense of prayer,

"You can send anything you want
into the sky," linking a boy’s wonder of the air.

-Remy

From the article "His Visions of Taiwan Soar, From a Long String" by Emily Vasquez

Assignment III

2006-08-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

This is something I've been doing for years. Every Friday I buy (when I can get it) the NYTimes, which has some of the most compelling and genre pushing articles in newspapers today, and every now and then an article will jump out at me. Certain phrases, images. So the assignment is write a poem inspired/based on an article (an ad even) from a newspaper.

Guidelines

2006-07-21T10:08:00.000-07:00

Trizzyfest 06 is about to kick off and among the activities is a Meat Poetry Contest. Poetry about Meat. Buzzword is Incarnation. Anyway, among the rules there are some guidelines that I thought I'd post. Maybe we can interact with them.

The best poems will:
a. Surprise us in the first line, then even more in the last
b. Provide an intriguing image or small story
c. Clearly and precisely lead a readers’ imagination (no obscurity)
d. Give us plenty of sensory detail, without forcing conclusions on us
e. Rise above mere description and provide a symbol of all of life
f. Omit redundant language and images (kills surprise)
g. Omit arbitrary, unneeded elements (everything should have a reason)
h. Break these guidelines in creative ways

Disagreements? Additions? Should there be no obscurity at all or should the poem not rely on obscurity?

If interested in entering: Email them at trinitypoems[at]yahoo[dot]com by 12:00pm August 5, 2006

The Pessimist/Platonist, at the altar, unkindly:

2006-06-30T20:43:00.000-07:00

I swore I’d never settle,
To Perfect I was true.
But water finds its level,
And in my puddle I found you.

The one I loved yet loves another,
The one you wanted wanted more.
So leech on leech let’s starve each other,
That two may bleed instead of four.*

For lack of standards I won’t scold you,
Your Maybe vanquished by my Is,
At least my arms consent to hold you,
Though mine do not compare to his.

Not flattered that you’ll wed me,
Your hateful compromise,
Indifferently I bed thee,
My consolation prize.

*props to T-Banks for this gem of a line.

2newPoems

2006-06-29T06:44:00.000-07:00

The Well

stronger is the rock
than the rope

though the rope
grooves the rock

but the rock
is stronger than the rope

Hezychasm

I ascend the church steps
a prayer on my lips,
my one year old son follows
climbing on his knees.
These steps no longer stained with blood
from the penitents’ pious crawl.
Their contrite acts of suffering
transformed
to the joy of a one year old
never so free.

-Remy

Two Poems (Revised)

2006-06-23T05:26:00.000-07:00

Now They Listen

The teacher drones on
pissing a splash and trickle
and a room away
student ears
prick up and redden.

Terrabund

I laid my son
naked in the dirt
on his eighth day
and watched

as he pushed his heel
furrowed his brow
and the dirt
to learn his work and end.

A Field Along I-82

2006-06-17T12:31:00.000-07:00

I am confronted on the left and on the right with
Absolute flatness -
Tilled but unplanted,
a desire unfulfilled -

The Absolute will not fit within me,
and the fear of it comes up quietly,
grinning behind my right shoulder

and I am compelled to grasp the lanscape like a tablecloth
or the end of a skein of rough wool
and pull,

suppressed at first
then desperate,
piling up the sheets of dirt at my feet;
searching for mountains.

Irrigation Sprinklers

2006-06-17T12:27:00.000-07:00

The waters of the deep
are steered upon their course through
miles of plastic piping,
bursting out upon the cursed dust
in machined arches, catching the Sun
and parsing his conversation
into it's disparate parts,
reminding
and assuring us of harvest.

[untitled]

2006-06-17T12:17:00.000-07:00

Sage and scrub grass
perch on the surface of the desert
like grit on sandpaper,
uncomfortable and vital,
blanketing the sand and dirt
and clinging to the rocks in a
thousand narrow gorges
that score the desert's crackling skin
like creases on an old man's neck.

Assignment #2

2006-06-14T09:08:00.000-07:00

Remember the goal of these assignments is not to write good poems, but to write. So if you're struggling on an Abecedarian Masterpiece, shelf it and move on.

The next assignment is: short poems.

I noticed that nearly all the poetry I've written recently have been between 30 to 40 lines. Not wanting to become quite some monochromatic I checked out A. R. Ammon's Really Short Poems.

Poetry is about moments and lately mine have been huge, sprawling things (one forthcoming), but there's something about brevity that lends weight. The glory of Ammons is how he takes a single moment and frames it, very much like haiku.

Mirrorment

Birds are flowers flying
and flowers perched birds.

To see how much he accomplishes in the title and two lines is impressive. He also does comedic proverbs:

Lost and Found

Apostasy is such, if you doubt on,
You return by the road you set out on.

Their
Sex Life

One failure on
Top of another

***
Brilliant. But despite the brevity he still operates with ephiphany.

Hollows

The whirlwind lifts
sand into itself to hide

holy spun emptiness or to
erect a tall announcement

where formed
emptiness is to be found.

Transfer

When the bee lands the
morning glory bloom
dips some and weaves:
the coming true of
weight
from weightless wing-held
air
seems at the touch
implausible.

"Where formed/ emptiness is found" is perhaps the best definition of poetry ever offered. And from "Transfer" the whole poem builds to its final word and that word makes the whole poem work. Short poems can frame the words in a way that longer poems cannot. For the best use of the word "petulantly" see Robert Creeley's The Gift. Or consider WCW's The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

You don't realize how bold "depends" is until you finish the poem. The poem depends on that single word "depends". It's like the Proverbist when he says "there are three things I do not understand, a ship in the midst of the sea." and we think "uh, buoyancy?".

So this is the assignment: write several short poems. No longer than ten lines-ish.

Odhinn on the Tree

2006-06-03T14:45:00.000-07:00

Here is the assignment as tortured by me. I've been wanting to do something on NorthMyth for a while. Honestly, I'm not at all satisfied with this...it reads like notes to a decent poem I might write in the future. Notes to the Weird below.

Odhinn on the Tree

His name means Fury and Poetry.
He hung upon the Yggdrasil Tree.

Ye sons of Ask, ye daughters of Embla sing
of eight-legged Sleipnir of his thunderous ride to Jotanland
of Ulfrin, his bride, of the nine wave maidens.

To learn the Runes he became a wounded X,
Grungir, his spear, crooked into his side.

Sing ye drinkers of Kvasir’s bloody brew
of Baldr’s loss, of Loki’s fire, of the spacious fields of Idavoll,
and the nine nightly rings of Draupnir.

Wisdom cost his eye at Mimir’s Well and knowledge
came by ravens from Creation’s corner to the sacred Hall.

Ye sons of Ask, ye daughters of Embla sing
of the gruesome Quest of Naglfar, of the Valkyries final cry,
and of the Zed of Ragnarok

for his name means Fury and Poetry,
for he hung upon the Tree.

-Remy

Notes:
Odhinn, pronounced "Oh-thin", is better known as Odin.
Yggdrasil Tree holds heaven and earth and hell together.
Ask and Embla were the first humans created by Odin.
Sleipnir was Odin's horse.
Kvasir was killed and from his blood a brew was made that when drank made men poets.
Baldr long story short, he died.
Loki was imprisoned as fire once.
Mimir's Well is the Well of Knowledge.
Odin's ravens were Huginn (thought) and Muninn (memory).
Naglfar is a ship made entirely from nails of the dead.
Valkyries are the choosers of the slain.
Zed is the letter z, here used to indicate the end.

Poetry Assignment

2006-05-18T18:00:00.000-07:00

Assignments are tricky things because every poet is different in what inspires them so I think the best assignments are pretty wide open.

So the topic/ theme/ starter word is: Abecedarian.

To get you started here's a neat selection of different uses of this form. But feel free to to "stretch" the form.

Several Psalms are written this way, so it's God approved.

Trans-parent

2006-05-10T19:22:00.000-07:00

Would I be totally ignored if I posted an assignment for everyone to do? Let me know.

Once again I speak in a Voice not my own, through a character. I wanted compact lines that worked singularly and like punchlines as well.

Trans-parent

She saw thru
me, I think, but

I saw thru her shirt.
She did not see

(the body exposed,
undefended, unbeknownst,

has more to say
than the mind can manage.

Language need not be
complex if nude,

naked as Adam,
as Eve in Eden)

the faint black
of her nipples,

miniature mountains
surrounded in snow

and the 5 a.m. fog
of her cream colored blouse.

Words fall.
I forgot

what I was saying.
In silence

the body takes its solo,
long suppressed

in accompaniment;
the body into symbol,

a grammar of bones,
commas of flesh and hair.

The body is never demur
except in sleep;

otherwise it is always
speaking, reading,

for the body understands
the body.

Mine could barely
make out the body of Eve

in early morning.
My body spoke

foolish things,
of embracements

in sand and grass.
Unlanguaged.

The mind stutters
at translating

the grid of fingertips
rubbing fingertips,

the belief that someday
they will interlock

and unlock,
someday they will open.

Perhaps that’s why
I shook her hand.

Perhaps we stood open.
Adam and Eve.

I think
her body knew

but her mind ignored
the flesh text:

the common dance,
the shifting of weight,

the cocking of an ear.
She did not see it, but I

became naked in that instant.
We were as two parents

in the visible garden
transparent and

hungry.
Later I imagine

her embarrassment
as a girlfriend

praises sarcastically
her bralessness,

her brazenness.
And then she’ll think

of me then,
how invisible my words

had been,
how screaming the room

had seemed,
how I stood

with open mouth.

-Remy

Easterkings

2006-04-10T19:13:00.000-07:00

An Easter poem from a couple of years ago.

Easterkings
Fading is the worldlings pleasure

On the third day God made
plants to rise
out of the house of dust:
flowers, birds, and green,
whereas men have thrown down to the house of dust
less careful than seeds, less hopeful
than grenades,
many fathers, daughters, mothers, sons,
for many years;
the earth building its collection of dead,
stacked like cracked plates.

Late last year walking through the evening streets,
cataloguing leaves of yellow, brown, and red,
my wife wanting names for them,
I dragged my feet through lately fallen oak leaves,
Ezekiel’s bones, my Eve remarks,
and who can make them green again?
Oh Lord, you know.

Birds scatter in the chambers of the bush, its shaded
ventricles of leaves, like they have eaten forbidden
fruits, and I am God, and they are in my garden.
But today I am forgiving as my life grows naked,
the rose of my body wilts,
and I will fall into the earth,
but only to a depth

that springtime cannot resist;
its long fingers
with flowers birds and green

-Remy

The Slow Omega of His Mouth

2006-04-07T16:04:00.000-07:00

Review of "Waters Under the Earth" by Robert Siegel

The poetry of Robert Siegel is human in the only meaningful way, that of giving voice to the voiceless. In its small center of vocabulary, in its repetition of the recognized elements of the world, his poetry is a routine, weighing every new thing in the light of the old and well known. He rises from the mundane yet never in escape, for he is always oriented to this world in a sort of benediction for the next.

The world of Robert Siegel is full of moons and mirrors: “Some kind of universe turns here.” (Walden Communion), “Something surrounds us/ we have to lose everything else to find.” (The Surgeon After Hours), “Tomatoes, peaches, even the crumbs// on the table grew heavy with meaning” (The Annunciation). All things work together to reflect a greater meaning, the mouth’s “slow omega” (Cow Burning), an “ultimate vowel” (Canoe at Evening), “rich with a word you cannot own.” (Daddy Long Legs).

Many of his strongest poems come from the fourth section where he speaks for the animals, giving a reflection of their glories. Here’s how he describes the silverfish: “a sinuous trireme, delicate and indecent// sexual and cleopatric” and the mole: “I am a prophet/ my eyes white and sealed”. The poems in the collection move from meditations on fishing, to the biography of St. Joseph of Cupertino, to feeding pigs all with subtle lines and underplayed meanings.

The book has its share of misses and missteps, a tendency to overuse repetition to convey precise moments: “again and again”, “round and round”, “on and on”, “over and over” (used in four different poems), with an occasional clunky image leading to distrastraction: “stiff as nickels in the dawn”, “the dandruff of angels” (describing snow), and “Red of the firetruck in the night” (describing primary red). None of these miscalculations are unforgivable and certainly pale in the face of its strengths.

The “Waters Under the Earth” pursues the mystery abounding in the world and Robert Siegel is relentless in seeing it everywhere, like the man who is reminded of his lover by every object or the mystic who cannot even close his eyes without seeing the face of God, he rehearses for us the small wonders of earth and sky.

-Remy

Winter Stubble

2006-03-20T07:58:00.000-08:00

In hope that this page will not die I have decided to begin posting increasingly sexy poems so that interest will again rise. This poem, not really that sexy, belongs to the Farmyard Cycle (Walking the Farmer's Fields, Without the Farmer, Aphids Flying) though it is distinct in composition from them. I expect format issues.

Winter Stubble

The earth’s old face
Shaved by harvest
Bristling

Not like a new fire
But the knees of working jeans
Roused as a cornered cat
I have forgotten how your body
Moves like ripeness on the hills
Trees like a toothless mouth
Line a throat of halved wheat stalks

The religion in my mind
Furrowed is old
Plow it under Burn it
Three days past harvest
The fields clod
Congeal like a flagellated back
Winter whimpers
Clouds curl stretch and wane
I have forgotten how the skies close
when you close your eyes
Here December cuts down
Darkens
An unlucky cat and a crossed path
Here faith is the blank orgasm of snow
Windtossed Comatosed
My throat is a line of sickness
I strip it and fill my mouth
With slick nasal silt and spit
The fallow gall
It yellows the ground
I have forgotten how warm
Your hand can feel how
Sunlight
Then snow melts Winter
Was a bold gesture snaking
Days are driven like a plow through months

Then living seeds
burst green
quick
I have forgotten how I entered you
like a leaf enters air.

-Remy

The One

2006-03-02T18:07:00.000-08:00

Green, blue, yellow and red -
God is down in the swamps and marshes
Sensational as April and almost incredible the flowering of our catharsis.
A humble scene in a backward place
Where no one important ever looked
The raving flowers looked up in the face
Of the One and the Endless, the Mind that has baulked
The profoundest of mortals. A primrose, a violet,
A violent wild iris - but mostly anonymous preformers
Yet an important occasion as the Muse at her toilet
Prepared to inform the local farmers
That beautiful, beautiful, beautiful God
Was breathing His love by a cut-away bog.

- Patrick Kavanagh

Poet Hit by Bus Scatters Poems

2006-02-11T09:37:00.000-08:00

This one still needs a little more spit and polish, as they say in the old country. Thanks already to Ben who has already tightened it up, plus added a few of the little dots at the end of sentences.

Poet Hit by Bus Scatters Poems
"We must bury ourselves in these ruins"

His manuscript flew up like the hands of supplication
and I found myself saying "Dear god-"
The papers curled and corkscrewed;
they coptered down as if on rescue missions
settling mostly on the grass.
He landed ten feet past the stop sign.
I couldn't see the gnarl from where I stood,
people (statued in a semicircle) blocked my view.
He would be gurneyed to where he died.

I chose to take a poem among the scattered
sheets rather than take time for prayer
and hooked one in sewer-rush,
already sogged in drainward sail,
but there in the cess, galled in wash,
a pinecone was lodged in curbteeth.
I took up its frayed body, dripping
like a crushed egg and carried it home,
swaddled in the paper of the poem.

Born green and tightly wound, pinecones
are fortified against the world,
holding the self against the self,
knives out. Not so for us;
children at birth begin to flail,
learn to take, suck, grab:
a righteous selfishness that all belongs
inside us all. But slowly
we close, wither, reject.
The old are as shut doors, locked as tombs.
The pinecone defines itself
with itself before gasping like a child,
before opening like new moons, becoming
gibbous on every horizon of limb,
giving its sharpness to the world,
losing its fingers like shingles in wind,
knowing that the world will rise,
while we refrain from dirt till we return to dirt.

A critic once said of his work:
"His poetry is without periods because it sails
...because it never stops"
as the energy of the van's forward move
was given to the poet midstreet
and he became the wind
that carried his words.
Later the poem became an egg
that carried a pinecone in utero.

At the time of dying the poem
lays like a cloth on the face of my desk
unread. Without it
I would never have gained
the pinecone;
the pinecone in whose snarled maw
I see myself,
in whose broken husk
I see even the ruin of the world.

-Remy

MacDonough's Song--Rudyard Kipling

2006-02-01T11:26:00.000-08:00

Some excellent political cynicism here:

WHETHER the State can loose and bind
In Heaven as well as on Earth:
If it be wiser to kill mankind
Before or after the birth—
These are matters of high concern
Where State-kept schoolmen are;
But Holy State (we have lived to learn)
Endeth in Holy War.

Whether The People be led by The Lord,
Or lured by the loudest throat:
If it be quicker to die by the sword
Or cheaper to die by vote—
These are things we have dealt with once,
(And they will not rise from their grave)
For Holy People, however it runs,
Endeth in wholly Slave.

Whatsoever, for any cause,
Seeketh to take or give,
Power above or beyond the Laws,
Suffer it not to live!
Holy State or Holy King—
Or Holy People’s Will—
Have no truck with the senseless thing.
Order the guns and kill!
Saying—after—me:—

Once there was The People—Terror gave it birth;
Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth.
Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, O ye slain!
Once there was The People—it shall never be again!

Ithaca Looks to Lazarus for Water

2006-01-19T20:22:00.000-08:00

Here Ulysses, with his dread cries,
mounts the shore with sudden sackings
pricking in his thighs.

And yet this ground lies fallow,(
loved in dog's years),
and the ministrations of its thrumming
hold the seeds in pious furrows.
Here are shells, cracked with dying;
sharp and mad like a coffin's price.

And still, lifting up,
the surpliced crane calls the dust to wonder:
If the dog had withered sooner,
would there yet be a realm to plunder?

- ben carnahan

i like this one, and would like to make it better. please say mean things.

Sonnet 175- Resisting Despondency

2006-01-14T20:53:00.001-08:00

Something I conceived of last Summer but never really bothered to execute until a few nights ago. Enjoy.

Should I in sorrow bury me for grace,
And grieve for her desired, and denied?
If I this tragic office did embrace,
Would't prove affection which found no fair reply?
If I did so intern me (Where for love
I'd dress me with the dead) might I redeem
My faith that love was love indeed, and prove
Me in the suit I'd played? But what esteem
Is there in flattering affections failed?
I'll leave dead love to bury its own dead,
Now she no more envigored grows dread pale.
I'll not for passion's ghost now hang my head,
For though love's raiment once I did wear proud,
I'll not lie with love in her burial shroud.

Thomas Banks

The Jew

2006-01-07T23:52:00.000-08:00

Not as anti-Semitic as it looks. In fact, not anti-Semitic at all. Take a closer look.

Law increasing his transgression,
Israel, Jacob, wrestles with the LORD.
Never righteous, ever faithless
Chosen people prostitutes the Word.
Out of Egypt, into promise,
Led, delivered, banished, but brought home,
“Not-my-people shall be called my own.”

David’s Son so long awaited,
Adonai, Messiah, crucified.
Victory over death and slavery
Impudently silenced and denied,
Satan slain, but Torah glorified.

Weight of law for him unlifted,
Israel, Jacob, ever grasps the heel.
Longing after signs and shadows--
Sabbath, circumcision, serpent--still
Offering blood of bulls and goats will
Not suffice to purge that deepest dye.

The Meekness of Reading

2005-12-31T08:37:00.000-08:00

[This was written in response to an article in a magazine save for the last two paragraphs which is just for you guys -Remy]

In the downward economy of reading, poetry readers see nothing but bear economies. We don’t see the worth of a poem unless the principle of reading is returned manifestly after one reading.
In my experience there are many, many poems worth reading once but of those fewer are worth reading again. Very often it is the case that great poetry is never worth reading once, sometimes is it worth reading twice, but typically great poetry pays off on the third and fourth readings, but at this point many investors have pulled their interest and have placed it into the safe and immediately rewarding newspapers, novels, and magazines.

Few readers and fewer reviewers reward opacity because it can initially pass for obscurity, but while density yields fruit, the obscurant is merely yielding, is merely Zeno’s infinite regress, bringing us nowhere for nothing. But the facets of opacity are innumerable, each unique to the poet, each book and poem is a mystery cult, we the readers are the catechumen, the initiates, we must learn the lingo and liturgy, we must, to put it bluntly, submit.

This struck me as I worked through a book, as the craft and clues of the work saturated me, as it shaped and reshaped my expectations, and, finally, as it rebuilt my conclusions. A reader used to submit to the writer to the degree that St. Augustine was shocked, and a little appalled, that his mentor Ambrose was reading silently, that the ears were not submissive to the voice.
This is why poetry used to be important, why it was read; not to give breath to the unrhymed doggerel of our dogmas, not to affirm our beliefs as we see them, but to challenge our assumptions, upturn us, or even to reshape our beliefs in a radical way. In the reading of poetry as the opacity becomes more transparent -not that ultimate clarity is possible for the reader or for that matter, the writer- we should find among our reviewers similar readers, initiates in the taurobolium, who have grappled with the book and found its voice instead of that all too typical complainer who found only one poem that was worth reading, meaning only that it was worth reading once. Or worse the reviewers whose only goal is to advertise their own prose and praise or censor falls wherever the strength of their own vocabulary lies.

Even poetry that aims at delight, and here we are talking about good poetry, can still change the way we see the world, but in someways to do this only makes the work of the poem more difficult because the revolution is hidden, disguised in delight. It is only when readers begin to approach poetry with a diligence to read the work as planned that its challenges to our view of the world are revealed, and the new perspective walks abroad.

Some very good reading on this would be Cleanth Brooks’ "The Well Wrought Urn" who talks about the role of paradox in poetry, using as his examples Wordsworth, Donne, Pope, Shakespeare, and, to have a modernist in the mix, WBYeats. I noticed at Amazon that there was a used copy for sale for 4 dollas. Tis a steal at twice the price. And the previously mentioned Stephen Dobyn's "Best Word, Best Order" is an excellent work as well. (used, under 6 bones @Amazon).

A Christmas poem by E.E. Cummings

2005-12-25T11:21:00.000-08:00

from spiralling ecstatically this

proud nowhere of earth's most prodigious night
blossoms a newborn babe: around him, eyes
--gifted with every keener appetite
than mere unmiracle can quite appease--
humbly in their imagined bodies kneel
(over time space doom dream while floats the whole

perhapsless mystery of paradise)

mind without soul may blast some universe
to might have been, and stop ten thousand stars
but not one heartbeat of this child; nor shall
even prevail a million questionings
against the silence of his mother's smile

--whose only secret all creation sings

A detailed discussion of this poem (and other poems) can be found at my email group on Cummings: The Whole Garden Will Bow.

A Defense of Accessible Poetry

2005-12-23T08:46:00.000-08:00

Remy had some good comments on Billy Collins that can be found under the Billy Collins post below. It triggered a few things that I have been thinking about, or at least one. (This is not a defense of Billy Collins necessarily. He is very NPR and very "pop" poetry. That said, I still like him.)

There are many differences between the poetry that I have been enjoying over the past year and the poetry that the group seems to prefer. The element that I want to talk about is accessibility. I like poetry that is accessible.

(Here's why->) I find (and I do believe the individual has something to do with it) that accessible poetry is more useful, and I like useful. If I write a poem with difficult or ambiguous metaphors, or "hard-to-get" allusions, I can't read it to my wife on her birthday. I can't read it to my parents on their anniversary. It may be a spectacular poem. Really. The kind of poem ya'll would clap for at one of our meetings. But my wife doesn't read enough poetry (gasp!), nor do my parents and many others. I could read it to them, and they would sincerely "like it," but then ask, "What does it mean?" (I still find myself asking that when I hear the poems we read.)

Now you might reply, "So you like easy poetry." In one sense, this is true, but not in the sense you are probably thinking. I do like poetry that is easy to read. But that is why it is so challenging to write. The poet's task is to take a difficult metaphor or allusion and make it understandable to a ten year old. Or, perhaps the poet takes a particularly simple image, but they twist it in such a striking way that it blows your mind.

This twist is what I was going for in Driving Mother. I don't think I did a particularly great job, but it illustrates the point. I try to take the simple relationship between a mother and son, a situation almost everyone is familiar with, and turn it on its head by showing how the relationship flips when the son has to take care of his mother. The conclusion that the reader is supposed to draw from the poem is that the mother's actions toward her son are compassionate instead of annoying like all young men experience when they are young.

I have never read that poem to my mother. But you can be sure that she would be crying her eyes out without having me explain what I just did. The poem is accesible.

Josh Stevenson just informed me that Ted Kooser deals with this topic in The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice fo Beginning Poets. Evidently he deals specifically with accessiblility and usefulness. Check it.

Letting Go by Matthea Harvey

2005-12-22T14:59:00.000-08:00

From Matthea Harvey's wonderful and wonderfully tited "Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form" (which is the second best title for a book of poetry, topped only by Stephen Dobyns "Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides").

Letting Go

The first time he saw a bell do a full somersault
Against the sky everything afterwards felt too
Flat on his back during break he saw clouds
Regardless of whether his eyes were open or
Not the geese on the pond below nor the plants
Around it reflected his new perspective he expected
Them to swim at a slant or to detect a dizziness in
The daisies were partly covered by a late snow but
Their yellow centers shone through like bells in
Fog mutes the pealing but can’t completely conceal
It made sense to him the first time he was told that
Bells were made loud so the Lord would listen
Because it did often seem like he wasn’t paying any
Attention and discipline and a pair of leather gloves
Were required for beginner’s lessons in the tower
Later he went without and got rope burns to show for
This didn’t hurt him what did was letting go when
He wanted to hang on and go clanging up into the sky.

Consolation by Billy Collins

2005-12-21T09:48:00.000-08:00

How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,

wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.

How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,

fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard

and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.

There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous

domes and there is no need to memorize a succession

of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.

No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's

little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.

How much better to command the simple precinct of home

than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.

Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?

Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyes camera

eager to eat the world one monument at a time?

Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice,

I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress

known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning

paper, all language barriers down,

rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.

And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone

willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.

I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal

what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.

It is enough to climb back into the car

as if it were the great car of English itself

and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off

down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna.

Billy Collins

Inclinado en las tardes

2005-12-19T12:10:00.000-08:00

Thought I'd break in the new format with some proven poetry. I just picked up this collection last week. Every bit as lovely as I remember it being, and the illustrations by Picasso are superb. Hope you all enjoy this selection. Cheers.
- ben

Leaning into the Afternoons

Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
toward 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 move like the sea near a lighthouse.

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

Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets
to that sea that beats on your marine 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 blued tassels over the land.

- Pablo Neruda (tr. W. S. Merwin)
from Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924)

A New Direction

2005-12-14T10:34:00.000-08:00

Poets-

I have been reading about "team blogs" and have a proposal for you. Now we musn't flatter ourselves. This site is not one that is frequented by a great many people other than ourselves. But, it might be fun if it was.

Of our current members, there are faithful posters, there are those with one or two, and there are some with none at all. This site is not one that you can visit every day and fine new and interesting discussions.

What I'd like to do is open the posting option up to more than our original members. This is where the "team blog" thing comes into play. We can allow others to request to become team members, which gives them posting rights. It does not give them access to edit the html or anyone elses posts, etc. In other words, its safe. I would act as administrator and would have the power to delete posts and defrock team members.

The fun part of this is that if we invite our friends, we just might get some interested parties. I am not confident of that, but its a win win situation. Feedback would be appreciated.

Isaac

Indent How-To

2005-12-12T09:25:00.000-08:00

In response to Remy's question on how to indent- there might be a better way to do this, but I don't know it. But this should work. Compose your post in the "compose mode." When you are finished, got to the "edit html" tab, and for every space that you would like to add insert "& n b s p ;". I put spaces in between them, but you should not. I did that so that it would not dissapear and show up as a space. And to prove it, I am going to indent the next paragraph:

There, you see, I have done it. If you have further questions, just ask. I am sorry for not posting any of my poems. When I visit the site, I am usually at work, and my poems are not.

Portrait of a Young Girl (1896-97)

2005-12-12T08:23:00.000-08:00

[Unfinished, in Pencil, Gustave Klimt]

“for sleep. The fabric

defines the surface,
  the story,
so we are drawn to is,”
—Jorie Graham

Scholars disagree as to who she is
wearing a gown of light-pencil strokes,
gentle as fog, unyielding and yielding,
disappearing
as you travel down, like leaving,
a spectre of desire, a ghost of motion.

She leans forward and looks back,
the way I want to live,
and I feel her eyelashes,
though only graphite darkness over eyes,
I count each one, felt against my cheek, like
I am paper.

* * *

Reading a book of poetry I come across
another poem on Gustav Klimt.
In a decadent mood I read
the last line of the poem first
to see if it came to the same conclusion as I.

And this the great problem for Christianity:
the need to know now how the story
will end, with less than perfect interest for now.
So I’ve sworn off late night advents,
cloud-chariots, horn blasts from Heaven, scrolls
  rolled and unrolled,
in favor of suspense and the fabric of the story.

The last line of the poem:
  the argument
has something to do
  with pleasure

* * *

There are no last lines
in the drawing of the girl, only
finished and fleshed
in the imaginations of the heart.

* * *

The poet describing two paintings: one,
the one I’m interested in,
is a woman “graphic/pornographic”
with faint strokes of paint
streaming down,
the failed fig leaves of Eve to cover
the forbidden fruit of her body.
Unfinished before Klimt died.

* * *

And the paper of the portrait of the girl
is the color of nudes by candlelight,
easy to imagine she’s naked underneath.
Her black hair like rivulets of come-hither fingers,
the dark eddies of bedroom eyes,
maybe saying: put your pencil down

  and follow me
to scattered papers, to nightgowns on the ground,
to italicize a word or two in the story of the night.
And maybe that’s why

* * *

when I hear the story of Christ
interrupting earth, Deus ex,
bumbling in His world gone awry,
taking home His toys, storming,
turning off the lights, cranky,
His people saved from inconvenience,
cliche, patience,
raptured from a failing fairy tale,
when I hear this I don’t believe.

  I just don’t believe God eternal
would write a legless drama;
aim at comedy, chicken out of tragedy,
middle into sentimental, and,
on account of conscience,
retire into night
from His day job of Omniscience.

* * *

Gustave Klimt tells a story;
  his argument
something to do with pleasure.

* * *

The days leave, over its shoulder
whispering, Fear not
  and Follow me,
hands curling like paper over flame,
its secret room behind a painting,
a portrait undone,

a story unfinished,
the pencil and paintbrush
put to the ground.

-Remy

She That is Worth Reading

2005-12-08T13:04:00.000-08:00

I am not hungry for so many attributes,

Cheap qualities as cheaply bound in One,
(e.g., Blonde, 5'9", etc.)

Because these are simply footnotes on a page,
The book in which they are contained not worth the browsing.

Better what I find in you, in the several strange and subtle tangents
I had overlooked before.

You hide more in your layered binding, and are spelled out in a playful miniscule
Which I am only now begun to grasp.

The pleasure of your cursive being is in the cadence of your entirety,
Not in diverse fragment chapters, disassembled in a single glance-
You, lover, are not fully had, read only once.

Tom Banks

Farmlife

2005-11-26T11:10:00.000-08:00

This is the 3rd poem in a cycle that I have just now deemed Farmlife. "Aphids Flying" would be part one, with the lost farm poem (but now is found) being part two, this being the third. I plan to look over part two, perhaps revise, and post it later. Suggestions for a better title than "Farmlife" desired.

-Remy

Walking the Farmer’s Fields
Pearls that were his Eyes

Like a diver of pearls I walk
these hills perpetually without breath,
searching for eggs, blind eyes in eyelids
like oysters; an inverted ocean above
aghast with void.

With the hillocks my imagination
(the mind’s misshapen eye)
has the flicker of wheat yearning;
the dark skinned arms waving,
the dance of wind through
limbs will bring the rain, and suddenly
my superstition finds under a three angled
cleft of weeds a torah of eggs, each one
the greatest commandment, each one
a plea for mercy, prostrate in prayer.

At the nadir of descent,
the logic of gravity loosens,
the pearl diver buries his hand,
his lungs a harvest of flame:
he takes the ocean’s gold
and leaps and rises away.

The Widowed

2005-11-17T19:04:00.000-08:00

Ladies and Gentlemen,

here's an oldie, initially one of my least favorite of my "god" poems, now contending for numero uno (partially D.J.'s fault). have at her:

The Widowed

Within the temple of the purer scratch the mystics
As the pennywise and threadbare squall without
And beg the magi to relate the farce again,
Sparing no faces of friends or maidens,
Nor dusting the blue ashes behind the altar
With the broidered hems of crimson vestments.

Above the icon-candles, the grime of a thousand prayers
Marks the love of sinners for the damned.
Distraught with growing fear of heaven,
The beggars laugh and call the noon a lie,
But close their eyes upon the fire of self,
Prying with their hearts at the widowed hands of God.

- ben

Celestial Parade

2005-11-13T23:55:00.000-08:00

What is this virgin stillness lo,
that shakes the sleeping spell
from dormant eyes? What is this calm
repose that scales the fjeld
to herald dawn's advancing light?
What this tranquility -
supreme quiescence, paramount?
What this serenity,
embracing in its advent glow
the slumber of the earth,
whose eastern hills prepare to grant
the rising glory birth?
The long-awaited genesis
alights when day is born;
'tis only then I understand
the silence of the morn.

The sky is blue with winter - cloud-
less, pure sublime. The air
is quiet in a silent breath
of humble vigor. Sphere
within a sphere - the glorious sun
at lesser zenith warms
the frozen earth in mild thaw.
The light of noonday forms
a blinding spectacle: the white
ice crystal meadow gleams
and forests made of trees of glass
surround snow-water streams.
The mountains peak where colors meet
in age-old boundaries.
Horizons hide where heavens rest
behind the alpine frieze.

Transfigured hangs the firmament.
The haze of heaven's veil
divides to join the severed spheres
as evening aura trails
the mortal ivory flame's descent
through hosts of softened rays.
The uniform azure reveals
ethereal display:
sheer turquoise yields to sapphirine;
the day-star bleeds velour
that wraps through western silhouettes
with ribbons lavender.
Diffused in blush, the glory rests
with patience to ascend,
in sleep secure with promise sure
to rise and live again.

Aphids Flying

2005-11-05T10:14:00.000-08:00

The aphids among the hard angled light
are a moveable braille boiling
like a scene from a snowglobe,
beehive busy in the summer heat.
The wheat empty of the sap
they eat have forced them too the air.
Behind them the sun-stroked stalks
have made the Midas dream
a dangerous and dry reality.

I sweep the grain truck’s bed
of last harvest’s viscera–
the chaff, missed seed, and dust
go among the bugs. The sundial
of my shadow moves as if in meditation.
The finger of the sun underlines my life,
deciphering like an ancient text,
rune or cuneiform, hieroglyph,
or some as yet unknown script.

The aphids seek another host,
for fields of unready bread.
Their six hour lives of exhaustive gluttony
hum like a rumor of war.
But lined on power lines are swallows
translating the scribble of infested air,

they spear through the swollen swarm
like tongues across on song.

-Remy

Imago domini

2005-10-26T20:51:00.000-07:00

Boys and Girls,
I think this one may have made an appearance at a previous incarnation of the Circle. Nevertheless, here it be:

These eyes,
twin suns eclipsed,
reflect the terror of the stars that dance
before the mighty face of God
as they in joy
and perfect fear
draw solace form their savior’s breath.
So then
her eyes,
as mirrors veiled,
reflect in faded hues
the face of Christ, Jehovah God
incarnate in her tarnished lord.

- bennett carnahan

Sonnet 161

2005-10-22T10:20:00.000-07:00

I find myself progressed in thee, as though
You were an arc enscripted in the heavens,
That I know not the dark of depth below,
But only thee, the eternal zenith given
In grace, unknown to waste away, nor fall
From course in glory traced. Unlike to Phaethon
That in splendor to the mind must I recall,
Who sought to vantage unreigned hubris on
The apex of the stars, aspired to heights
Above all else distinguished, in which act he proved
A flame forfeit to fate, but one more light
By fortune's breath extinguished. Pray let me, love,
In thy trajectory keep, thee cherishing,
That are an apogee unperishing.

Thomas Banks

An Hypothesis of Mortality

2005-10-17T13:09:00.000-07:00

“And death i think is no parenthesis”
-E. E. Cummings

I dissect the ant with my fingernail. Not amputate, amputate
seeks to heal. I guillotine. Ant’s last thought was why that
white edge of sky must weigh on his shoulders so. I flick
its head into ambiguity. Then. The mind is roughly
falsetto as it moves metaphysical. The daylight is
sotto voce, dust motes are tentative around the
gingko tree, like light through stained glass.
What lies between right and wrong? Is
what separates them thick or
thin? Is true a foot and false
a cotton sock wrapped
around? Is faith
heads and reason tails?
The body wants to curl into
a question mark at death. We
pull taunt the corpse, enter it into
the grave as a hyphen, separating. Ants
and other insects aren’t inhibited by aesthetics
when they die -eyes remain open, their bodies bare
before the world, hooked by rigor mortis. Lucan tells us
that the dead whose bodies are not covered are covered by
the sky. The body curves into a circle -our best guess at eternity.
I nudge the ant under dust to hide that final question -unless, that is,

we decide that death is not a question but hyphenation,
it lies between the sound and ear, it separates the beauty

from the note , it rests between the membrane and the air.
Either way we sing to the dead. The body becomes the

front parenthesis or an ear. Those not covered are covered
by the sky. And I’ve lost the ant as if the final parenthesis.

-Remy

A Germ

2005-10-14T18:26:00.000-07:00

Gents,

This is a selection from an Alexander Pope ripoff of mine I recently revised. The whole poem is a bit lengthy to post, and I figured you wouldn't really want to be reading heroic couplets for longer than 20 lines anyway.

Love's no more than a lauded yeast to me,
That kneaded throught the flour of faculty
Invites a dimm'd perspective to infect
This cursed man, new subject to defect.
First tasting Love, he fancies that it is
Unique by virtue of his merits, his,
Yea, his alone, and far too rarified
That other paramours could dare imply
That their unleavened longings yet might stand
In summit with the Love he holds in hand.
So Love, herself augmenting, tears from grace
His judgment, and sets passion in its place.
And if for him Love should go unrequited,
No doubt he shall feel singularly spited,
For he who loved unique, (or so believed)
Shall in the selfsame manner go to grieve,
No peer now living that can sympathize
With one who makes such stars of earthly eyes
With a fidelity unmatched, untouched,
Incomporable, and (fate thus willing) crushed.
Now more and more he thinks himself apart,
While with his do a thousand weighted hearts,
Blindly communing in dejection moan
How fortune makes an alien each alone.

Clever Regrets

2005-10-12T21:39:00.000-07:00

Gentlemen,

Some meaningless wordplay.

Davis

I
eye
the weight
and wait,
resenting
the scent of
my sweater, wet
with sweat and rain,
the musty mem'ry
that must remind me
of evenings spent and lost,
the Eve I never found,
the -isms I admired,
the IS I wish I wasn't,
the symmetry I always forced
in simple explantions of
the chaos of creative impulse,
decaying like my good intentions
to standard, trite iambic poetry
with stanzas tiered to look just like a tree.

7/4

2005-10-08T10:25:00.000-07:00

Your laugh's my favorite holiday,
Reminding me especially of when
We sent the ant hills blazing bright,
T'was then your Roman Candle laughter caught
My ear the first of many times.
With it we celebrated us,
With shots of cheap cerveza like
The cherry bombs which we sent down
That unsuspecting drain. It was when
We tied the red pimento clusters of
The M100's to the tails
Of sleeping dogs- better far we let
You lie, but try this on, from us
With love. Each rabid spark still stays
WIth me, as does the yelping of
The dog, Matched with the cracker blasts
In a barbaric harmony.
But most of all resounds the laugh
That lit the sparkler with which
You signed your name on me, intangibly-
I cannot recall how many times-
But still remains, of all things, my 4th of July.

Thomas Banks

Poem on a Theme of Prudentius

2005-10-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

A Hymn After Dying

The Soul is torn from the Flesh it encompasses
Rotting to dust, abandoned as God
"Eli, Eli lama sabachthanai?"
Crying descends as the soul into clouds

As our first father died, as his body was broken
As the mother of all was born from his side
As Abraham, Israel: Chosen of God
Disobedient, broken, pruned from the tree
Burned down to dust by the breath of the serpent
An offering of blood for the grafting of nations

So the soul which is shorn of the flesh it encompasses
Yearns for the day when it finally is whole
When Adam in love is united with Eve
When Abram, as Abraham, fathers the world
When the Church, in her millions, without spot or wrinkle
Stands at the altar to join with her Lord
Then the souls of the dead, of flesh uncorrupted
At their nuptial feast will lie down with the Lamb

- bennett carnahan

Terminal

2005-10-06T07:57:00.000-07:00

The airport is dead with dead ends,
the runways, skittering with runaways.
The land is full of concrete throats
yawning long notes of humanity
into the hollowness of air.

The flight attendant moves through
the preflight routine as languid
as a stripper too long on the stage,
a fatigue as loud as the engine’s roar,
her blonde hair is abandoned desperation.

At each burst and clatter and jerk,
the turbine’s slow claw into the air,
her lips silently count the feet
put between her failures, above her past.
A runway is her hope for everyday.

The false things stay below.
Now safe she serves the drinks
and rests her purity on the smiles she gets,
but exodus is only in the air,
because there is no promised landing.

-Remy

E. E. Cummings

2005-10-06T07:49:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't get the memo I've started a group to discuss the Sacred in the poetry of Edward Estlin Cummings.

You can join here: http://groups.google.com/group/thewholegardenwillbow

So far I've only discussed four poems, which can be found in the archive.

Driving Mother

2005-09-30T18:33:00.000-07:00

The first time I pulled out of our driveway
I got sideswiped by the back of her hand.
Something about looking both ways,
but from then on there was always something.
I couldn’t pull out in traffic without
the sharp intake of breath,
and a firm hand on my forearm
became a regular part of turning corners.

Mom came to live with us last week.
Mostly she just sits in her chair,
but occasionally she climbs to her feet
to get a glass of water.
The slightest waver has me up
on the edge of my seat.

Isaac Grauke

Welcome

2005-09-30T18:29:00.000-07:00

Gentlemen,

The Circle of Poets may yet ride again. If there is interest, let the poetry and criticism flow. If not, that's fine too. I just thought it would be fun to try a little mouth to mouth resuscitation on the Circle of Poets.

Isaac

Shadowards

2005-09-26T09:24:00.000-07:00

A poetry reading and writing group founded upon discussion of the great writers, the proven poets, and a pursuit of our own writing as it stands in their shadow.

Become A Member

2005-09-25T09:54:00.000-07:00

If you would like to become a Posting Member of Shadowards please email the group and introduce yourself.

When you have been approved, we will email you an invitation. Thanks for joining us.