The Poetry Cosmos

[BillF]

Causley was well known in English poetic circles, particularly as a regional poet from Cornwall, the westernmost county of England. I used to work with a guy from Cornwall who had been taught in school by Causley.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Causley

[ejp626]

Causley was well known in English poetic circles, particularly as a regional poet from Cornwall, the westernmost county of England. I used to work with a guy from Cornwall who had been taught in school by Causley.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Causley

Yes, that makes sense. Perhaps I should rephrase it to ask whether he is still in the UK canon. I'm not really sure why the name would have been somewhat familiar to me, but perhaps he was in an older poetry anthology I read. What was particularly interesting to me is that he continued writing poems until 2000, though he eventually moved away from rhymes to blank verse. He also wrote some children's stories and poems.

Of course, canons are funny things. I have run across two poets who are supposedly in the Canadian poetic canon - Louis Dudek and Raymond Souster. They've both wrote a huge amount of poetry, but I have never come across them before and I do read pretty widely. I like some of Souster's earlier poems, but find his work of later decades pretty forgettable. On the whole, Dudek strikes me as the better and more interesting poet over his whole career.

Still canons are funny things. Apparently in the U.S., Karl Shapiro is still (barely) in, but Harvey Shapiro is out. I think both are good, but Harvey Shapiro speaks to post-war times much better, along with Alan Dugan, who is just clinging onto his place in the canon.

[AllenLowe]

well I suppose it's ok to post here, as well, my first published poem (from Tablet):

Hell: A Jew in Maine

I lost my mind in Maine

Sending emails in deranged tongues

To organizations of the deaf and the dumb –

To Amy, Queen of Ovations, sipping tea

On Congress Street – oh Amy do you see the smoke across the water,

The late night calls, oh angry daughter

of the monarch?

I saw other minds of other generations

Walking Portland streets, the empty page, no, the empty stage of life -

In Maine, where everything is closed on Sundays – and Mondays and every

Other day; or the Space, where life is younger than the consciousness of life.

I bared my soul to your stages, Amy, but

you sent my letters back – with accusation and lies, Amy.

So here I sit, in Maine, in hell,

No hope left not even coins or wishing well.

Bleeding from my brain my mind the ears the eyes

Both eyes blinded

By Amy’s spear of sharpened light – unprotected day, or night

I sit at my screen exposed to the infra red of the dying and the dead

Who call me daily, to assemble with them in Congress Square –

Or is it Longellow, where the poet watches performances by folkies saddened

By the end of folklore? Or does he see the tired world musicians who sit with oud and wail?

Not all are dead here, most just stare with hollow eyes.

But the dead call me in my sleep and I answer “let me earn my keep”

To which they say you died the day you set foot in Portland –

and I say nothing; they are right. They are right. They are right.

Here homeless Jews cower in temples

where the ink on Torah runs

like blood in the Minsk-like streets of Maine,

of Maine where a Jew’s best days

Were fueled by benzadrine and smoked weeds, if only they could

Brave the light: take the pill and light the paper –

For tenements in Maine are in the mind –

And prison here is in the mind – and dying here is in the mind,

and death seems a spot on my left lobe –

but the mind has taken over.

Amy do you hear me?

Vermont is where the lakes run over -

Maine was where you took the high ground –

why did you tell lies, in public, about the things I sent?

I don’t know where the best minds of my generation have gone

I only know my own mind leaks like a silver sieve -

Scattering Ideas that roll around my feet, so I kick them under the bed with

the books, the music, the dust balls and the last sentence

that I spoke before a dream took over and killed the last sentence

that I spoke.

The schwitzes of the dead give off corpse-like steam

The automat is where I dreamt of Philo Farnsworth

Man of tele- vision, Barbara told me – “meet his daughter.”

West end Avenue and Brownsville streets;

Amy have you visited these places where my dead sleep?

Do you know a thing of Dave Schildkraut and his friend Triglia,

who both now sleep In Bird’s nest, remembering, in sleep, their better days,

When Lester Young told Dave he understood his ways?

Amy do you know the life beyond the dancing troupes of grants and seminars,

Where unconscious scholars tell you what you already know?

Did Julius just tell me that I shouldn’t care

Because his kidney never arrived and he sat up In bed and fell back down,

And watched the ceiling sink into his heart?

Where were you, Amy, when that happened? Did you call the medics,

Did you try to defibrilliate before it was much, much too late?

(so sorry Julius, that death came so soon; I keep your picture on my wall

alone; I will not share the space).

Amy did you sit with me at The West End when Dicky Wells

pointed his slide at the wall and sent a message to the ages?

Did you hear Al Haig’s tales of Billy Berg’s, or of Bird’s last call?

Did Tommy Potter open the door of his brownstone castle and

Tell you why Doris was Bird’s real wife? Did Percy France give you advice on life?

Did you listen to Duke Jordan spit and curse, his voice cutting like a knife?

Did Jaki Byard tell you, as a young 25, that he trusted you because you understood his life?

Did you sit and talk of three bosses with Francis Paudras while Bill Evans lay

in his coffin and Joe Puma took the stage?

Did Curley Russell smile when he talked of side life in the shadow of Bird ?

Or did Dizzy tell you tales of Schildkraut’s strange but genius ways?

Did Walter Bishop narrate, for you, the Life of Bud Powell?

Did Joe Albany mention casually as you eased along on the East Side Highway the horse-drugs he took, or the reason why, for 10 long years, he never spoke to Bird?

( “I will call my autobiography ‘I Licked Bird’s Blood’ he says, in memory of needles shared.)

Did Bill Triglia tell you of the Orthodox wedding where Bird showed up to play with him and Wilbur Ware, and where an old Jewish man, inspired by Bird song, danced on a table?

Did Jackie McLean offer you a job?

Or did you simply send my message back, Amy?

Did you speak with Martin Luther King in Coney Island while the waves beat against the sand?

Did you hear Dwight McDonald call your name?

Did you share a stage with Eubie Blake or Roswell Rudd

or with Doc, who once pushed the valves while Bessie sang?

Did Abbie Hoffman and Timothy Leary stare you in the eye with lysergic innervision while 200,000 children of America screamed in unison for Nixon to fly away?

Did you watch the Dead in Central Park in 1967 while Garcia drove the band, Pigpen gave them life, and thousands stared in disbelief?

Did you stand next to Genet while Mingus fired his drummer?

did Charlie Haden explain to you, in 1969, with patient cadence, how he accompanied Ornette?

Did you sit at Muddy Waters’ feet and feel the earth move? Did your mother tell you of the one-armed Wittgenstein who taught her, or of Ravel’s shimmering gift?

Or did you simply send my message back, Amy?

Because you knew I was long dead.

A shade, a shadow, a body, not at rest

But a body just the same.

Drained of fluid by the embalming Portland night;

You knew, Amy, that the dead cannot talk back

You knew, Amy that the dead cannot argue with the money in your hand

You knew, Amy that the dead cannot find an audience for their grievances

You knew, Amy that the dead have lost their voice

You knew, Amy that the dead are dead are dead are dead are dead.

Forever.

[ejp626]

As I believe I indicated, I have submitted the anthology proposal to a publisher and am waiting... Given the work I put in, I might shop it around if they decide to pass, though anthologies are a pretty hard sell, given the difficulty with clearing the rights. Never one to leave well enough alone (kind of a commonality around here), I have been uncovering a few more poems that might fit, including one that someone recommended to me (you didn't include Larkin's Whitsun Weddings ).

Here is a poem I just came across that I think is actually fairly interesting, but would not include it because it would be such a drag having to justify why I am including a poem by an admitted adulteress who seems to feel no shame. Perhaps in the 1980s and even early 90s this wouldn't even have raised any flags, but times are different now. Also I don't think it is such an amazing poem (relative to all the other ones) that I would want to really fight for it. If I thought it had a really unique perspective (above and beyond the illicitness of the journey), I might take the risk...

Asking for Directions

by Linda Gregg

We could have been mistaken for a married couple

riding on the train from Manhattan to Chicago

that last time we were together. I remember

looking out the window and praising the beauty

of the ordinary: the in-between places, the world

with its back turned to us, the small neglected

stations of our history. I slept across your

chest and stomach without asking permission

because they were the last hours. There was

a smell to the sheepskin lining of your new

Chinese vest that I didn't recognize. I felt

it deliberately. I woke early and asked you

to come with me for coffee. You said, sleep more,

and I said we only had one hour and you came.

We didn't say much after that. In the station,

you took your things and handed me the vest,

then left as we had planned. So you would have

ten minutes to meet your family and leave.

I stood by the seat dazed by exhaustion

and the absoluteness of the end, so still I was

aware of myself breathing. I put on the vest

and my coat, got my bag and, turning, saw you

through the dirty window standing outside looking

up at me. We looked at each other without any

expression at all. Invisible, unnoticed, still.

That moment is what I will tell of as proof

that you loved me permanently. After that I was

a woman alone carrying her bag, asking a worker

which direction to walk to find a taxi.

From All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems by Linda Gregg.

On-line source

[jeffcrom]

I was fortunate enough to meet Desmond Egan tonight. Here is his most well-known poem:

PEACE
(For Sean MacBride)

by Desmond Egan

just to go for a walk out the road
just that
under the deep trees
which whisper of peace

to break the bread of words
with someone passing
just that
four of us round a pram
and baby fingers asleep

just to join the harmony
the fields the blue everyday hills
the puddles of daylight and

you might hear a pheasant
echo through the woods
or plover may waver by
as the evening poises with a blackbird
on its table of hedge
just that
and here and there a gate
a bungalow's bright window
the smell of woodsmoke of lives

just that

but Sweet Christ that
is more than most of mankind can afford
with the globe still plaited in its own
crown of thorns

too many starving eyes
too many ancient children
squatting among flies
too many stockpiles of fear
too many dog jails too many generals
too many under torture by the impotent
screaming into the air we breathe

too many dreams stuck in money jams
too many mountains of butter selfishness
too many poor drowning in the streets
too many shantytowns on the outskirts of life

too many of us not sure what we want
so that we try to feed a habit for everything
until the ego puppets the militaries
mirror our own warring face

too little peace

[ejp626]

I thought I would get around to posting a poem by Constance Urdang but am not quite ready to get that up (perhaps over the weekend). In the meantime, I ran across another fairly obscure poet -- Denise Duhamel. She is from the East Coast (born in Rhode Island, college and young adulthood near NYC) but now is teaching writing in Florida.

She is a bit playful, maybe a bit postmodern in her outlook. In 2009, she came out with a collection (Ka-Ching) all about Money and its influence on Americans and American society. (And even some poems about how it is taboo for women in particular to seem too concerned about money or at least to talk about it.) Not all the experiments work, but some are fun; she perhaps tries a bit too hard at being clever and isn't quite as concerned about writing memorable poems.

One interesting subset of poems (with the most gravitas) are about a fairly terrible accident that happened to her parents (on an escalator in a casino) and them deciding whether to sue or to settle. Denise reports on a far more positive windful that she experienced in the poem "$900,000."

I think the poem in the collection I like the most is "$600,000," which is actually a prose poem. I'll just quote part of it here:

In 1986, my roommate talked me into getting my first ATM card. We both had checking accounts at Citibank, which became known as Shitibank because it wouldn't divest its South African assets. ... At some point, my roommate started being late with her rent, which terrified me, as my name was the only name on the lease. ... When she was three months behind, I told her she'd have to leave. She said I'd go far in this world because I was a conscienceless bitch, even though I'd changed from Shitibank to Chemical. ...

[Larry Kart]

My translation, from some years back, of Eugenio Montale's famous "L' anguilla" (The Eel):

The Eel

The eel, siren of ice-bound seas,

who leaves the Baltic

to reach our seas, our rivers,

our estuaries, who traces

their depths against the current,

from thinning streams, to fingerling rills,

ever deeper, deep in the heart of stone,

filtering through veins of mud until

one day light darts from the chestnuts

to catch its quiver in a stagnant pool,

in ravines that descend

the Appenine peaks to Romagna;

eel, torch, whip, arrow of Eros

on earth, which only our gullies

or the dried-up creeks of the Pyrennees

again guide to paradises of fecundity;

green spirit seeking life

where there is only parched ground;

scintilla that says everything begins

when all seems ashes, a buried stump;

eel, tiny rainbow-iris,

twin to those your lashes frame,

that you send shining, intact,

to the center of the sons

of man, immersed

in your slime, can you

not call her sister?

[John Litweiler]

Homework
by Allen Ginsberg
Homage to Kenneth Koch
If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my dirty Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap,
scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in
the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly
Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge
out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little
Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood &
Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out
the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,
& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an
Aeon till it came out clean

[ejp626]

I think Constance Urdang is a bit of an under-recognized poet. I actually think she is in the same league as (and has some similarities to) Jane Kenyon, but Kenyon is so much better known. Of Urdang's 6 or so poetry collections, I think Only the World (Pitt Poetry, 1983) is the strongest. "Brazil" is from this collection.

Brazil

Preferring travel books to travel

There will always be those who

Will never visit Brazil

Or set off with four natives in a canoe

In pouring rain, paddling up savage rivers;

Only in dreams

They touch down amid exuberant foliage

Sinking into the embrace

Of those moist, ardent airs,

Tuning their ears

To skin-drum and nose-flute,

Scenting at a distance

"The authentic smell of danger."

Blazing no trail, claiming no territory,

Confronting the sublimities of nature

On toothy peaks and boiling seas

"Singularly unmoved," at ease

Among companions forever congenial,

For them all else can be dispensed with

But history taken from Shakespeare,

Geography from Robinson Crusoe,

And the mangroves and swamps of Brazil

Where they will never set foot.

[jeffcrom]

In post #60, I posted a poem by Natasha Trethewey. I just finished reading her collection Native Guard, and found this poem almost overwhelming. Like a Charlie Parker solo or a Beethoven symphony, it's an amazing technical achievement and a strongly emotional expressive statement at the same time.

Myth

I was asleep while you were dying.

It's as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow

I make between my slumber and my waking,

the Erebus I keep you in, still trying

not to let go. You'll be dead again tomorrow,

but in dreams you live. So I try taking

you back into morning. Sleep-heavy, turning,

my eyes open, I find you do not follow.

Again and again, this constant forsaking.

*

Again and again, this constant forsaking:

my eyes open, I find you do not follow.

You back into morning, sleep-heavy, turning.

But in dreams you live. So I try taking,

not to let go. You'll be dead again tomorrow.

The Erebus I keep you in - still, trying -

I make between my slumber and my waking.

It's as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow.

I was asleep while you were dying.

- Natasha Trethewey

[page]

Wow, it is beautiful Jeff! Really clever written.
Lately I have been getting back to jazz musicians who set poems to music, since that is my own ambition too. Someone who was so kind sharing one of his own with me personally is the jazz musician Kelly Roberti. I have been admiring his work for a few years now.
This poem/song is on his album "Slumber, the Ballads of Kelly Roberti". This album features the vocalist Jeni Fleming.



"Faithful"

"A prayer will be heard

If it’s centered in your heart

And it’s from that golden place inside

That spot your warmest tears reside

A cry will be heard

If it’s in a quiet voice

And you’re faithful

Within it

You’re faithful

Begin it

Be faithful

Stay with it

And be true...
"

from "Faithful" by Kelly Roberti
You can read the whole poem here: http://kellyroberti.com/poetic-thought/27/

You can here snippets of the album here:

Music and poems by Kelly Roberti. Kelly Roberti - bass, Alan Fauque - sax, Eric Funk - piano and Jeni Fleming - vocals. Part of "Faithful" is the third fragment.

Edited December 31, 2013 by page

[alankin]

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but John Hollenbeck composed settings for Kenneth Patchen poems for his Claudia Quintet album "What is the Beautiful?"

Readings are by Kurt Elling and Theo Bleckmann, accompanied by Hollenbeck, Ted Reichman, Chris Speed, Matt Moran, Drew Gress, and Matt Mitchell.

[ejp626]

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but John Hollenbeck composed settings for Kenneth Patchen poems for his Claudia Quintet album "What is the Beautiful?"

Readings are by Kurt Elling and Theo Bleckmann, accompanied by Hollenbeck, Ted Reichman, Chris Speed, Matt Moran, Drew Gress, and Matt Mitchell.

Sounds interesting. I'll try to check it out.

[alankin]

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but John Hollenbeck composed settings for Kenneth Patchen poems for his Claudia Quintet album "What is the Beautiful?"

Readings are by Kurt Elling and Theo Bleckmann, accompanied by Hollenbeck, Ted Reichman, Chris Speed, Matt Moran, Drew Gress, and Matt Mitchell.

Sounds interesting. I'll try to check it out.

I've liked a lot of Hollenbeck's work and have enjoyed this one too.

[Joe]

Perhaps some of you know author Fred Moten for his wonderful study IN THE BREAK: THE AESTHETICS OF THE BLACK RADICAL TRADITION? Mr. Moten is also a poet of some accomplishment, and his latest, THE FEEL TRIO, is just out from Letter Machine Editions. While not quite an ekphrasis on Cecil Taylor's music, it is a book indebted that draws ideas of rhythm and "cellular organization" from Taylor (IMO at least). But there's a lot more going on here as well. Please allow me to recommend.

http://www.lettermachine.org/feeltrio.html

An excerpt:

[jazzbo]

Plan Accordingly

You can't rush old people.

They're going to take their time

And you're just going to have to like it.

Edited May 21, 2014 by jazzbo

[jeffcrom]

Tonight I listened to Steve Lacy's "jam opera," The Cry, based on the poetry of Taslima Nasrim. Here's her poem "Cannonade."

Special Branch guards are on twenty-four hour duty

in front of my door

Who comes and who goes, when I leave, when I enter the house,

they write down everything in a notebook,

who my friends are, whose waist I embrace as I laugh.

Whom I whisper to... everything.

But the things they cannot note down are

which thoughts come and go in my head,

What it is that I nurture in my consciousness.

The government has cannons and rifles

and a little mosquito like me has a sting.

[ejp626]

I've been reading quite a bit of poetry, and perhaps I ought to post a few choice poems.

For the moment, just one from W.H. Auden's The Quest:

The Hero

He parried every question that they hurled:
"What did the Emperor tell you?" "Not to push."
"What is the greatest wonder of the world?"
"The bare man Nothing in the Beggar's Bush."

Some muttered: "He is cagey for effect.
A hero owes a duty to his fame.
He looks too like a grocer for respect."
Soon they slipped back into his Christian name.

The only difference that could be seen
From those who'd never risked their lives at all
Was his delight in details and routine:

For he was always glad to mow the grass,
Pour liquids from large bottles into small,
Or look at clouds through bits of coloured glass.

[jazzbo]

If You Never Come to Me

Tom Jobim/english lyrics by Ray Gilbert

There's no use

Of a moonlight glow
Or the peaks where winter snows

What's the use of the waves that will break
In the cool of the evening
What is the evening
Without you
It's nothing

It may be
You will never come
If you never come to me
What's the use of my wonderful dreams
And why would they need me
Where would they lead me
Without you
To nowhere

What's the use of the waves that will break
In the cool of the evening
What is the evening
Without you
It's nothing

[JSngry]

One more -

Don't grab your coat now.

Don't grab my coat either.

Norman Granz say one more.

He must be lookin' at Lionel Hampton.

[Mark Stryker]

The Accompanist

-- William Matthews

Don't play too much, don't play

too loud, don't play the melody.

You have to anticipate her

and to subdue yourself.

She used to give me her smoky

eye when I got boisterous,

so I learned to play on tip-

toe and to play the better half

of what I might. I don't like

to complain, though I notice

that I get around to it somehow.

We made a living and good music,

both, night after night, the blue

curlicues of smoke rubbing their

staling and wispy backs

against the ceilings, the flat

drinks and scarce taxis, the jazz life

we bitch about the way Army pals

complain about the food and then

re-up. Some people like to say

with smut in their voices how playing

the way we did at our best is partly

sexual. OK, I could tell them

a tale or two, and I've heard

the records Lester cut with Lady Day

and all that rap, and it's partly

sexual but it's mostly practice

and music. As for partly sexual,

I'll take wholly sexual any day,

but that's a duet and we're talking

accompaniment. Remember "Reckless

Blues"? Bessie Smith sings out "Daddy"

and Louis Armstrong plays back "Daddy"

as clear through his horn as if he'd

spoken it. But it's her daddy and her

story. When you play it you become

your part in it, one of her beautiful

troubles, and then, however much music

can do this, part of her consolation,

the way pain and joy eat off each other's

plates, but mostly you play to drunks,

to the night, to the way you judge

and pardon yourself, to all that goes

not unsung, but unrecorded.

Edited March 28, 2015 by Mark Stryker

[ejp626]

I've been reading quite a few of Philip Levine's later poems. This one is from Breath (2004)

The West Wind

When the winter wind
moves through the ash trees
in my yard I hear
the past years calling
in the pale voices
of the air. The words,
caught in the branches,
echo a moment
before they fade out.
The wind calms, the trees
go back to being
merely trees and not
seven messengers
from another world,
if that's what they were.
The alder, older,
harbors a few leaves
from last fall, black, curled,
a silent chorus
for all those we've left
behind. Suddenly
at my back I feel
a new wind come on,
chilling, relentless,
with all the power
of loss, the meaning
unmistakable.

Apparently there was an audio clip of this over at Slate, but it has been removed: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/poem/2001/06/the_west_wind.html

Perhaps I'll be able to track it down.

[alankin]

Nice.

[page]

The Accompanist

-- William Matthews

Wow! Amen! ha.

Things

There are things in life,

things that may never happen

and I don't mean 'things'

but people.

People you may never meet.

Beautiful people

who touch your soul

speaking their heart,

true and open.

To witness is to share,

to look is to know.

I knew,

when I saw you.

© 2009 page a.r.r.

[jeffcrom]

I'm doing a show in July with the remarkable Chattanooga poet Laurie Perry Vaughen. She didn't want to include this poem, because it's so dark, but relented when I told her how much it meant to me.

This seems to be a very personal poem for Laurie. In case it's not clear what's going on in the third stanza, she was robbed at gunpoint while trying to get into her apartment.

 

Voice Lessons

First, we learn again to breathe.

Your father dies and your mother
carries his memory around
like a canister of oxygen.

The back door key escapes your hand
and cold becomes a trigger,
really anything metal at the kiss
of the back of your neck.

You see a bridge, the woman.
Watch her jump,
but now, only remember
the more awkward climb
over the lattice guard, the rail.

You read the obituaries
for her proper name,
learn she was a teacher of signs,
a language only for the deaf.

The white bicycle leans
on a kick, a crutch.

Your son asks "Why?" of the world.
Care Bears pose
at roadside shrines.

We can sing what we can't say,
swing words on a hinge, pulley long vowels
up from our diaphragm,
run our tongue across the Braille.

- Laurie Perry Vaughen