The Poetry Cosmos

[ejp626]

Have an unusual query. I'm trying to track down a poem, sort of a long rambling poem with the following lines towards the end:

JESUS SAVES

JESUS SAVES

JESUS SAVES GREEN STAMPS

I thought the most likely candidates were early Amiri Baraka or Paul Blackburn, but I've been pretty carefully through their work and I can't find it. It might be some obscure New York poet in a chapbook I read somewhere, which makes it a needle in a haystack. The last google search didn't turn up anything, so I am wondering if this rings any bells. Thanks.

Eric

Just shows how senile I am. Did another google search and I asked this on the board back in 2004! Maren gave me a lead but it didn't pan out. The only hits are for bumper stickers and t-shirts, but I am 85% sure this was a poem. I have this weird visual memory, where I can usually remember where interesting quotes are in a book, i.e. top, middle or bottom of a page and left or right page. That's as far as it goes, so it isn't as useful as a photographic memory, but it does come in handy sometimes while browsing books. Anyway I can basically see the layout, but not the author or title. Oh well. One day...

Edited November 28, 2008 by ejp626

[poetrylover3]

The Basic Con by Lew Welch

Those who can’t find anything to live for,

always invent something to die for.

Then they want the rest of us to

die for it too.

Other favorite poets have to include Wallace Stevens, A R Ammons, William Carlos Williams, Pablo Neruda (especially The Captain's Verses, some of the most beautiful love poetry I know), Ruth Stone (my former teacher), Louise Gluck-October especially, William Butler Yeats, e.e. cummings, Walt Whitman, Longfellow.

Anthologies are also noteworthy for making the acquaintance of lesser known and "foreign" poets- including Hayden Carruth's The Voice That Is Great Within Us, Carolyn Forche's Against Forgetting, Peter Forbes' Scanning The Century, The Library of America anthologies of American Poetry: The 17th and 18th Centuries; The Nineteenth Century (what a magnificent gift this is!!!); The Twentieth Century. I'm just now becoming acquainted with Language For A New Century. The Norton Anthology of Poetry remains an essential and basic text.

I'm as nuts on poetry as I am on Jazz so this could be a great thread. I'll close this with one of Whittier's less well known poems What The Birds Said, which I find extraordinarily powerful: WHAT THE BIRDS SAID

by: John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

The birds against the April wind

Flew northward, singing as they flew;

They sang, "The land we leave behind

Has swords for corn-blades, blood for dew."

"O wild-birds, flying from the South,

What saw and heard ye, gazing down?"

"We saw the mortar's upturned mouth,

The sickened camp, the blazing town!

"Beneath the bivouac's starry lamps,

We saw your march-worn children die;

In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps,

We saw your dead uncoffined lie.

"We heard the starving prisoner's sighs

And saw, from line and trench, your sons

Follow our flight with home-sick eyes

Beyond the battery's smoking guns."

"And heard and saw ye only wrong

And pain," I cried, "O wing-worn flocks?"

"We heard," they sang, "the freedman's song,

The crash of Slavery's broken locks!

"We saw from new, uprising States

The treason-nursing mischief spurned,

As, crowding Freedom's ample gates,

The long-estranged and lost returned.

"O'er dusky faces, seamed and old,

And hands horn-hard with unpaid toil,

With hope in every rustling fold,

We saw your star-dropt flag uncoil.

"And struggling up through sounds accursed,

A grateful murmur clomb the air;

A whisper scarcely heard at first,

It filled the listening heavens with prayer.

"And sweet and far, as from a star,

Replied a voice which shall not cease,

Till, drowning all the noise of war,

It sings the blessed song of peace!"

So to me, in a doubtful day

Of chill and slowly greening spring,

Low stooping from the cloudy gray,

The wild-birds sang or seemed to sing.

They vanished in the misty air,

The song went with them in their flight;

But lo! they left the sunset fair,

And in the evening there was light.

[ejp626]

Guess I haven't done a very good job updating this. I have been buying a handful of poetry books, mostly books that I was a bit on the fence about when I was younger, but were now super cheap on amazon or half.com. For instance, I picked up Thom Gunn's The Man with Night Sweats and A.R. Ammons' Garbage for close to $5 (w/ shipping). Wow, Gunn's book really was a flashback to the height of the AIDS epidemic in the US, but I think this book does stand the test of time (not as sure about his other work). Anyway, there are sufficient ties between Thom Gunn and August Kleinzahler that his name kept cropping up as I made these purchases. Now I had never heard of Kleinzahler but he has quite an impressive ouvre, including a recent book with a totally kick-ass title: The Strange Hours Travellers Keep. So in a very short period of time I've become a bit of a fan and picked up 4 of his books and have pre-ordered his newest collection (it's out in hardback but the paperback is a bit cheaper). It didn't hurt that he is another case where they must have over-printed and you can get most of his books for a couple of bucks. His mature work tends to be in the style of the urban vignette, fairly accessible with perhaps some surreal touchs (not nearly as much as Simic though). So I think this was a pretty good find and am happily exploring his work.

I was also surprised to see that Adrienne Rich has a new collection out called Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth. I've been a fan of her work for a long time, but this is not a particularly strong collection. For me the highlight was the title poem and not much else, but I will wait and reread at a time when I am not so pressed for time. I might be a bit more enthusiastic then or at least more forgiving.

Edit: I see that way up in the thread Paul mentioned Kleinzahler, but I didn't pick up on it. We seem to have a constellation of favorite poets in common, so I guess I'll check out some of the others. I'd also echo the praise for Neruda, and I have a fair bit of his work, but like Gluck I find each collection can be completely different from the last.

Edited February 12, 2009 by ejp626

[jazzbo]

T. S. Eliot was the poet that most inspired me. . . .

My favorite poem though may be this one from William Wordsworth. . . . .

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

[Joe]

Have an unusual query. I'm trying to track down a poem, sort of a long rambling poem with the following lines towards the end:

JESUS SAVES

JESUS SAVES

JESUS SAVES GREEN STAMPS

I thought the most likely candidates were early Amiri Baraka or Paul Blackburn, but I've been pretty carefully through their work and I can't find it. It might be some obscure New York poet in a chapbook I read somewhere, which makes it a needle in a haystack. The last google search didn't turn up anything, so I am wondering if this rings any bells. Thanks.

Eric

Just shows how senile I am. Did another google search and I asked this on the board back in 2004! Maren gave me a lead but it didn't pan out. The only hits are for bumper stickers and t-shirts, but I am 85% sure this was a poem. I have this weird visual memory, where I can usually remember where interesting quotes are in a book, i.e. top, middle or bottom of a page and left or right page. That's as far as it goes, so it isn't as useful as a photographic memory, but it does come in handy sometimes while browsing books. Anyway I can basically see the layout, but not the author or title. Oh well. One day...

Eric -- just a guess, but you might look into the work of Bob Kaufman. And even if these lines don't belong to Bob, I think you'll dig his work (assuming you don't know it already.

CRANIAL GUITAR: SELECTED POEMS

[Serioza]

Hanshan was a legendary figure associated with a collection of poems from the Chinese Tang Dynasty in the Taoist and Chan tradition. He is honored as an incarnation of the Bodhisattva -figure Manjusri in Zen lore. In Japanese and Chinese paintings he is often depicted together with his sidekick Shide or with Fenggan another monk with legendary attributes.

Sitting alone in peace before these cliffs

the full moon is heaven's beacon

the ten thousand things are all reflections

the moon originally has no light

wide open the spirit of itself is pure

hold fast to the void realize its subtle mystery

look at the moon like this

this moon that is the heart's pivot

I love the joys of the mountains,

wandering completely free,

feeding a crippled body another day,

thinking thoughts that go nowhere.

Sometimes I open an old sutra,

more often I climb a stone tower

and peer down a thousand-foot cliff

or up where clouds curl around

where the windblown winter moon

looks like a lone-flying crane

[ejp626]

A few items of interest regarding Charles Simic. He has a new (2008) collection called That Little Something. I enjoyed it. I thought the 1st and 3rd sections were strongest.

The book in that funny phase when it is starting to get pulped and there are lots of very cheap copies at the on-line stores (the number of books you can get for a penny (plus shipping) nowadays is just astonishing).

Also, BBC is doing a series on poet laureates. Not familiar with most of them, but this is a short segment featuring Simic: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00k107b

It will be available for about 5 more days.

[ejp626]

Have an unusual query. I'm trying to track down a poem, sort of a long rambling poem with the following lines towards the end:

JESUS SAVES

JESUS SAVES

JESUS SAVES GREEN STAMPS

I thought the most likely candidates were early Amiri Baraka or Paul Blackburn, but I've been pretty carefully through their work and I can't find it. It might be some obscure New York poet in a chapbook I read somewhere, which makes it a needle in a haystack. The last google search didn't turn up anything, so I am wondering if this rings any bells. Thanks.

Eric

Just shows how senile I am. Did another google search and I asked this on the board back in 2004!

Well, I was fairly close. I've been scanning and then recycling a ton of paper lately. Kind of feels like passing my entire academic career through a shredder at 50 pages a pop -- though not quite so satisfying. Anyway, this reminded me that I never got the answer to this question, so I went back to the interwebs, and what do you know, now this poem shows up, cited in Google Books a couple of places. I know there is a lot of controversy over Google Books and copyright etc., but I think what they are doing is great.

Anyway, it turns out it is not Baraka but Don L. Lee (aka Haki Madhubuti) "In the Interest of Black Salvation." Now I just need to track down if I have the chapbook the poem is in. It turns out he is releasing a new volume of his collected poetry -- and is giving a reading in Hyde Park next week, though I don't think I will be able to make it. Well, I'll keep an eye out to see if he is doing any downtown or northside readings.

[jeffcrom]

Have an unusual query. I'm trying to track down a poem, sort of a long rambling poem with the following lines towards the end:

JESUS SAVES

JESUS SAVES

JESUS SAVES GREEN STAMPS

I thought the most likely candidates were early Amiri Baraka or Paul Blackburn, but I've been pretty carefully through their work and I can't find it. It might be some obscure New York poet in a chapbook I read somewhere, which makes it a needle in a haystack. The last google search didn't turn up anything, so I am wondering if this rings any bells. Thanks.

Eric

Just shows how senile I am. Did another google search and I asked this on the board back in 2004!

Well, I was fairly close. I've been scanning and then recycling a ton of paper lately. Kind of feels like passing my entire academic career through a shredder at 50 pages a pop -- though not quite so satisfying. Anyway, this reminded me that I never got the answer to this question, so I went back to the interwebs, and what do you know, now this poem shows up, cited in Google Books a couple of places. I know there is a lot of controversy over Google Books and copyright etc., but I think what they are doing is great.

Anyway, it turns out it is not Baraka but Don L. Lee (aka Haki Madhubuti) "In the Interest of Black Salvation." Now I just need to track down if I have the chapbook the poem is in. It turns out he is releasing a new volume of his collected poetry -- and is giving a reading in Hyde Park next week, though I don't think I will be able to make it. Well, I'll keep an eye out to see if he is doing any downtown or northside readings.

Wow - had no idea this thread was here - this is the first post I noticed since I joined back in March. I have the Don Lee poem in a book called Understanding the New Black Poetry, edited by Stephen Henderson, but it was published in 1972, so it would probably not be much easier to find than the original chapbook.

Anyway, I'm excited to see this thread. Here's one from memory - I can vouch for the words, but not the line breaks or punctuation. It perfectly captures the feeling I had wandering the beautiful and unfamiliar streets of Copenhagen 'round midnight after hearing Jesper Thilo's quartet last week.

Morning Joy

Piano buttons stitched on morning lights;

Jazz wakes with the day.

As I awaken with jazz,

Love lit the night.

Eyes appear and disappear

To lead me once more

To a green moon.

Streets paved with opal sadness

Lead me counterclockwise

To pockets of joy

And jazz.

-Bob Kaufman

[king ubu]

Die Junta erlässt Richtlinien für Folterer

Es ist strengstens verboten, zu foltern

ohne einen triftigen Grund zum Foltern.

Ob ein triftiger Grund zum Foltern

vorliegt, ergibt sich am besten durch Foltern.

Stellt es sich im Laufe des Folterns

heraus, dass kein triftiger Grund zum Foltern

vorliegt, so sind alle Spuren des Folterns

zu beseitigen, indem der Gegenstand des Folterns

beseitigt wird. Der Tod wird daher nicht durch Foltern

bewirkt, obwohl er die Folge des Folterns

sein mag. Wer immer diese Wahrheit über das Foltern

leugnet, gibt damit triftigen Grund zum Foltern.

Felix Pollak (1909 Wien - 1987 Madison, USA)

taken from this great book:

[ejp626]

Anyway, it turns out it is not Baraka but Don L. Lee (aka Haki Madhubuti) "In the Interest of Black Salvation." Now I just need to track down if I have the chapbook the poem is in. It turns out he is releasing a new volume of his collected poetry -- and is giving a reading in Hyde Park next week, though I don't think I will be able to make it. Well, I'll keep an eye out to see if he is doing any downtown or northside readings.

Wow - had no idea this thread was here - this is the first post I noticed since I joined back in March. I have the Don Lee poem in a book called Understanding the New Black Poetry, edited by Stephen Henderson, but it was published in 1972, so it would probably not be much easier to find than the original chapbook.

Anyway, I'm excited to see this thread. ...

Well, I found a copy, though now I can't recall which of his early chapbooks it was in. It seems he has not kept it in print whenever he puts out a new collected or selected poems. I think it is unfortunate, but I guess he has mellowed and doesn't want to attack the church anymore.

On a much more debased note, Roger Ebert has been running a limerick competition here: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/11/ho...eet_mrlear.html

I guess the competition will be open for another few days. A little of this goes a long way, and there are already 250+ limericks at the site. Still, some of them are awfully clever. Probably 70% or more are dirty. Here is a "clean" one that I submitted:

The world’s too much with us, he sighed.

To reimagine the world, I have tried,

emulating the Greeks.

This lasted for weeks,

then I threw myself into the tide.

[Teasing the Korean]

Big fan of Weldon Kees, e.e. cummings, Wallace Stevens.

Read poetry pretty regularly on the bus or subway during the 12 years or so I lived in the northeast.

Since I've gone over to the dark side and drive a car, I don't get to read as much in general as I used to.

I lugged all of my poetry books to my office. It's nice to close the door once in a while and revisit a favorite poem I haven't read in a long time.

---------------------------

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early

And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he'd call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love's austere and lonely offices?

- Robert Hayden

Edited November 21, 2009 by Teasing the Korean

[AllenLowe]

reading a Langston Hughes bio - there was a great poet.

[Joe]

Saw Tomaž Šalamun read last night. Tremendous poet from Slovenia.

http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v7n1/poetry/salamun_t/index.htm

[Matthew]

Just finished reading (again!) James McMichael's Each In A Place Apart, and again I came away thinking that it was the best American poem in the last fifty years, a work of poetic genius IMHO.

[ejp626]

The poem is based directly on Giacometti's piece of artwork in the MOMA: Palace at MOMA. It turns out more than one person has been inspired by this somewhat haunting piece (or its title at minimum). There is a play by Howard Moss and an album by ex-Wilco member Jay Bennett. This is perhaps too literally inspired by the piece, but in the process of writing it, I developed a longer sequence of poems of 7-8 poems about the goings-on in this strange kingdom.

The Palace (at 4 A.M.)

This early in the morning,

few are up except those supposed to chase the bats away.

The backbones are all hung up in the closet.

The are sorted out, lined up by size.

The should be taken to the cleaners.

The guests are folded up and tucked under their beds

on the fourth floor.

A tiny woman, dressed all in red, enters through the main door.

She has missed the last train.

She stands in the hallway,

rain dripping off her red coat onto the carpet.

There are three large doors behind her.

She will stand there until dawn.

On the second floor,

the bathtub tilts against the wall at an oblique angle.

A plastic pillow floats in the tub all night.

It waits for someone with a wet head.

An eagle sits on the roof

and screams.

Edited March 26, 2010 by ejp626

[Tom Storer]

I recently discovered the Scottish poet Don Paterson, who is also poetry editor at Faber & Faber. I think he's fantastic. His poem that seems to be most often reproduced is this sort of sonnet:

Waking with Russell

Whatever the difference is, it all began

the day we woke up face-to-face like lovers

and his four-day-old smile dawned on him again,

possessed him, till it would not fall or waver;

and I pitched back not my old hard-pressed grin

but his own smile, or one I'd rediscovered.

Dear son, I was mezzo del' cammin

and the true path was as lost to me as ever

when you cut in front and lit it as you ran.

See how the true gift never leaves the giver:

returned and redelivered, it rolled on

until the smile poured through us like a river.

How fine, I thought, this waking amongst men!

I kissed your mouth and pledged myself forever.

- Don Paterson

This is also perhaps his most frankly sentimental poem, which of course is part of its appeal. He also writes longer and less straightforward poems, and he can have a wicked sense of humor.

I also like Derek Walcott very much--he has a new book out of which I read a rave review. Also Robert Creeley, James Merrill, and W.S. Merwin when I have the patience to supply the punctuation. I recently read a book by Carol Ann Duffy called "The World's Wife," a witty collection of pieces from the point of view of the missus of famous male characters from history and mythology.

Of historical poets, I like Shakespeare, of course; John Donne; Keats; Whitman; Dickinson; and I have a special fondness for Robert Frost, the first poet I was aware of (literally--my second-grade teacher had been a nurse for Frost in his last years and read us "The Pasture" and "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening").

[ghost of miles]

Video clip of Frank O'Hara in 1966 (not long before his death) reading Having a Coke With You

[Serioza]

Drunk, don't let your beezer* sag:

As the poet said,

“It's one colour with our flag,”

— Bloody flaming red!

There's nothing that will force our guild

To change its social ritual;

The common happiness we build,

And piss on individual.

* * *

The roads which led to Russia's sorrow

Went through blind faith and merry-making;

Collective march to “bright tomorrow”

Has ended in hangovered waking.

Igor Guberman

Edited September 9, 2011 by Serioza

[jeffcrom]

I had forgotten about this thread - again. Tonight I thought of Ai - a "1/2 Japanese, Choctaw-Chickasaw, Black, Irish, Southern Cheyenne, and Comanche" poet who writes amazing, chilling character poems. The title poem of her 2003 collection Dread is on my mind tonight - it's a portrait of New York City policewoman Shirley Herlihy, who is obsessed with finding some trace of her brother's remains in the World Trade Center rubble. That poem is too long to post here, but here's another great Ai poem, from Killing Floor.

THE GERMAN ARMY, RUSSIA, 1943

For twelve days,

I drilled through Moscow ice

to reach paradise,

that white tablecloth, set with a plate

that's cracking bit by bit

like the glassy air, like me.

I know I'll fly apart soon,

the pieces of me so light they float.

The Russians burned their crops,

rather than feed our army.

Now they strike us against each other like dry rocks

and set us on fire with a hunger

nothing can feed.

Someone calls me and I look up.

It's Hitler.

I imagine eating his terrible, luminous eyes.

Brother, he says.

I stand up, tie the rags tighter around my feet.

I hear my footsteps running behind me,

but I am already going.

[ejp626]

Every now and then I forget this thread, and I'm the one who started it!

I'll try to look up Dread. Sounds interesting if more than a little depressing.

Anyway, these are the first two stanzas of W. H. Auden's Atlantis:

Being set on the idea

Of getting to Atlantis,

You have discovered of course

Only the Ship of Fools is

Making the voyage this year,

As gales of abnormal force

Are predicted, and that you

Must therefore be ready to

Behave absurdly enough

To pass for one of The Boys,

At least appearing to love

Hard liquor, horseplay and noise.

Should storms, as may well happen,

Drive you to anchor a week

In some old harbour-city

Of Ionia, then speak

With her witty sholars, men

Who have proved there cannot be

Such a place as Atlantis:

Learn their logic, but notice

How its subtlety betrays

Their enormous simple grief;

Thus they shall teach you the ways

To doubt that you may believe.

...

The poem is much on my mind these days, since it ends this play called Strangers by Ninaz Khodaiji. I've set up a staged reading of Strangers next week in Chicago, and I had to go off and write to get official permission from Curtis Brown to include the entire poem as part of the performance. Which is a good example of why it is rarely worth including others' work as an element of your work. Too many hurdles in today's world, though the people at Curtis Brown were very reasonable.

Edited September 10, 2011 by ejp626

[ejp626]

I think I had said I would include something of the newer poems out of Merwin's Migration, which I just picked up. This one is about John Berryman (author of the brilliant The Dream Songs) and apparently a bit of a mentor to Merwin.

I don't know if the audio here still works (I couldn't get it to):

Berryman on-line

I won't quote the whole thing (you can follow the link for that), but I did like Berryman's advice to Merwin, which ends the poem:

as for publishing he advised me

to paper my wall with rejection slips

his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled

with the vehemence of his views about poetry

he said the great presence

that permitted everything and transmuted it

in poetry was passion

passion was genius and he praised movement and invention

I had hardly begun to read

I asked how can you ever be sure

that what you write is really

any good at all and he said you can't

you can't you can never be sure

you die without knowing

whether anything you wrote was any good

if you have to be sure don't write

[ejp626]

I should have noted "Berryman" is from Opening the Hand (1983), while this poem is from Merwin's 1988 collection The Rain in the Trees:

Waking to the Rain

The Night of my birthday

I woke from a dream

of harmony

suddenly hearing

an old man not my father

I said but it was

my father grasping

my name as he fell

on the stone steps outside

just under the window

in the rain

I do not know

how many times

he may have called

before I woke

I was lying

in my parents’ room

in the empty house

both of them dead

that year

and the rain was falling

all around me

the only sound

Interestingly, this is on-line at something called the Merwin Conservancy: http://www.merwinconservancy.org/tag/waking-to-the-rain/

which seems to be a mix of nature conservancy, poet commune and on-line hang-out.

[Larry Kart]

Sheep Trails Are Fateful To Strangers

Dante would have blamed Beatrice

If she turned up alive in a local bordello

Or Newton gravity

If apples fell upward

What I mean is words

Turn mysteriously against those who use them

Hello says the apple

Both of us were object.

***************************

There is a universal here that is dimly recognized.

I mean everybody says some kinds of love are horseshit.

Or invents a Beatrice to prove that they are.

What Beatrice did did not become her own business.

Dante saw to that. Sawed away the last plank anyone

he loved could stand on.

Jack Spicer -- "The Heads of the Town Up to the Aether"

[jeffcrom]

I had forgotten about this thread - again. Tonight I thought of Ai - a "1/2 Japanese, Choctaw-Chickasaw, Black, Irish, Southern Cheyenne, and Comanche" poet who writes amazing, chilling character poems. The title poem of her 2003 collection Dread is on my mind tonight - it's a portrait of New York City policewoman Shirley Herlihy, who is obsessed with finding some trace of her brother's remains in the World Trade Center rubble. That poem is too long to post here....

I'll try to look up Dread. Sounds interesting if more than a little depressing.

I did end up posting "Dread" here. It somehow seemed important to me to type it up and post it today.