from one golden page to another

It's still April 30 in my timezone, though just barely. I've had a busy day—among other things, I started a new job—but I'm also feeling a little bittersweet about the end of the month. It seems like it's gone by unusually quickly; I wish I'd had a little more time with April, this year.

On the other hand, there's always next year. See you then, and here's one to be going on with:

for forty years
the sheets of white paper have
passed under my hands and I have tried
    to improve their peaceful

emptiness putting down
little curls little shafts
of letters words
    little flames leaping

not one page
was less to me than fascinating
discursive full of cadence
    its pale nerves hiding

in the curves of the Qs
behind the soldierly Hs
in the webbed feet of the Ws
    forty years

and again this morning as always
I am stopped as the world comes back
wet and beautiful I am thinking
    that language

is not even a river
is not a tree is not a green field
is not even a black ant traveling
    briskly modestly

from day to day from one
golden page to another.

—Mary Oliver (b. 1935), "Forty Years," from West Wind, 1997 (and Poetry Magazine, March 1996). I love a lot of poets, and a lot of poetry, but there's something about Mary Oliver that gets me right in the heart, every single time.

but still, like air, I'll rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

—Maya Angelou (1928-2014), "Still I Rise," from And Still I Rise, 1978.

I was going to post a different—and much less famous—Angelou poem today, but, I don't know. Sometimes I just need to be reminded that this poem exists in the world.

people who have nothing in common but love

Today, this poem is for Liam Payne.

First of all, it’s a big responsibility,
especially in a city like New York.
So think long and hard before deciding on love.
On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security:
when you’re walking down the street late at night
and you have a leash on love
ain’t no one going to mess with you.
Because crooks and muggers think love is unpredictable.
Who knows what love could do in its own defense?

On cold winter nights, love is warm.
It lies between you and lives and breathes
and makes funny noises.
Love wakes you up all hours of the night with its needs.
It needs to be fed so it will grow and stay healthy.

Love doesn’t like being left alone for long.
But come home and love is always happy to see you.
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life,
but you can never be mad at love for long.

Is love good all the time? No! No!
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.

Love makes messes.
Love leaves you little surprises here and there.
Love needs lots of cleaning up after.
Sometimes you just want to get love fixed.
Sometimes you want to roll up a piece of newspaper
and swat love on the nose,
not so much to cause pain,
just to let love know Don’t you ever do that again!

Sometimes love just wants to go out for a nice long walk.
Because love loves exercise. It will run you around the block
and leave you panting, breathless. Pull you in different directions
at once, or wind itself around and around you
until you’re all wound up and you cannot move.

But love makes you meet people wherever you go.
People who have nothing in common but love
stop and talk to each other on the street.

Throw things away and love will bring them back,
again, and again, and again.
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it.
And in return, love loves you and never stops.

—Taylor Mali (b. 1965), “How Falling in Love is like Owning a Dog,” from What Learning Leaves, 2002.

wiser far than I

I missed yesterday because I was feeling like death. I am still kind of feeling like death, but here are two poems that go together, for yesterday and today. I may have posted the first one, back in 2008 when I posted a Renaissance Poetry Miscellany, but it's been a long time, and I've never posted the second. They do, I feel, play best together.

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

—Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), "The Passionate Shepherd To His Love," in print in 1599, but certainly in manuscript before then, with a terminus ad quem of 1593. Spelling and punctuation modernized, mostly to my preferences.

*

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we shall some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.

There will the river whispering run
Warmed by thy eyes more than the sun,
And there th'enamoured fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee than thou him.

If thou to be so seen be'st loth,
By sun or moon, thou dark'nest both,
And if my heart have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.

Let others freeze with angling-reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treach'rously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare or windowy net:

Let coarse, bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest;
Or, curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes' wand'ring eyes.

For thee, thou need'st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait;
That fish that is not caught thereby,
Alas, is wiser far than I.

—John Donne (1572-1631), "The Bait," uncertain date, but likely 1590s; 1633 in print. Spelling and punctuation modernized to my preferences, but with reference to the Longman Donne (ed. Robin Robbins), which has the most excessive extensive editing of any Donne edition in my possession.

To do this properly I should probably also include The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd, generally attributed to Walter Ralegh. But I like the strict juxtaposition of Marlowe and Donne, which is all one really needs to be like, "SO METAPHYSICAL POETRY."

love is not as simple

When it's late at night and branches
are banging against the windows,
you might think that love is just a matter

of leaping out of the frying pan of yourself
into the fire of someone else,
but it's a little more complicated than that.

It's more like trading the two birds
who might be hiding in that bush
for the one you are not holding in your hand.

A wise man once said that love
was like forcing a horse to drink
but then everyone stopped thinking of him as wise.

Let us be clear about something.
Love is not as simple as getting up
on the wrong side of the bed wearing the emperor's clothes.

No, it's more like the way the pen
feels after it has defeated the sword.
It's a little like the penny saved or the nine dropped stitches.

You look at me through the halo of the last candle
and tell me love is an ill wind
that has no turning, a road that blows no good,

but I am here to remind you,
as our shadows tremble on the walls,
that love is the early bird who is better late than never.

—Billy Collins (b. 1941), "Adage," from Ballistics, 2008.

One of the things I love about Billy Collins—and the things I love about Billy Collins are legion, because he's one of my favorite poets—is the way he takes familiar things, like tropes, and cliches, and daily life, and the ordinary world, and gives them just enough of a turn to show them in a different light, and make you see them in a different way. On some level that's just poetry, but the way Collins does it is transformative and delicate and magical, and sometimes funny and sharp-edged and dangerous, in a way that I really appreciate.

five ways to kill a man

I collect war poetry. It's not really intentional, it's just a thing I do. I collect a lot of different kinds of poetry, to be fair—in the back of my mind I am always thinking "What will I post next April?"—but war poetry is one of my major categories. War poetry gets under my skin.

There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man:
you can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it. To do this
properly you require a crowd of people
wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
man to hammer the nails home.

Or you can take a length of steel,
shaped and chased in a traditional way,
and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
But for this you need white horses,
English trees, men with bows and arrows,
at least two flags, a prince and a
castle to hold your banquet in.

Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
allows, blow gas at him. But then you need
a mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
and some round hats made of steel.

In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
miles above your victim and dispose of him by
pressing one small switch. All you then
require is an ocean to separate you, two
systems of government, a nation's scientists,
several factories, a psychopath and
land that no one needs for several years.

These are, as I began, cumbersome ways
to kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neat
is to see that he lives somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century, and leave him there.

—Edwin Brock (1927-1997), "Five Ways to Kill a Man," 1972. In this case, from Five Ways to Kill a Man: New and Selected Poems (Enitharmon, 1997), though also, reportedly, heavily anthologized. I learned when looking up the poem that Brock wrote it after hearing Britten's War Requiem for the first time, which is not a huge surprise to me, somehow.

ever-fixed mark

Happy alleged birthday, Shakespeare. You're pretty much my favorite forever.

With a first line taken from the tv listings

A man is haunted by his father's ghost.
Boy meets girl while feuding families fight.
A Scottish king is murdered by his host.
Two couples get lost on a summer night.
A hunchback murders all who block his way.
A ruler's rivals plot against his life.
A fat man and a prince make rebels pay.
A noble Moor has doubts about his wife.
An English king decides to conquer France.
A duke learns that his best friend is a she.
A forest sets the scene for this romance.
An old man and his daughters disagree.
A Roman leader makes a big mistake.
A sexy queen is bitten by a snake.

—R. S. Gwynn (b. 1948), "Shakespearean Sonnet."

that feeling at the end of day

Poetry is as necessary
To life
As salt is to stew
As garlic is to pasta
As perfume is to summer nights
As shaving lotion is to mornings
As your smile is to
My happiness

Poetry is as significant
To life
As yeast is to bread
As butter is to toast
As grapes are to wine
As sugar is to lemons
How else will we get
Lemonade

Poetry is to me
Your voice
Your touch
Your laughter
That feeling at the end of day
That I am
Not alone

—Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943), "The Significance of Poetry," from Chasing Utopia, 2013. In a total coincidence, I posted Nikki Giovanni on this same day last year. I really love this collection, and hope to be posting poems from it for a good long time.

bright star

I love the sonnet more than any other poetic form except possibly the villanelle, and I haven't posted a single one so far this year. This does happen—sometimes I get caught up in feelings and free verse, and fall down on the job when it comes to form—but sonnets are very important to me, and so is this dude called John Keats.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

—John Keats (1795-1821), "Bright Star," 1820.

This is the revised version of "Bright Star," copied by Keats into "his volume of Shakespeare c. October 1, 1820, when he and Severn were on their way to Italy. Brown's draft of the first version was dated 1819" (note on "Bright Star," Selected Poems and Letters by John Keats, edited by Douglas Bush (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959), 342). Bush's notes are hilarious, and certainly out of date, but I agree with him that the revised version of the sonnet is better than the first draft. It's still not my favorite of Keats' sonnets, though I appreciate the weird shit he does with the rhymes; but that first line is famous, and I think it's certainly worth reading the rest of the poem. Plus, sonnets.

song of myself

I am torn in two
but I will conquer myself.
I will dig up the pride.
I will take scissors
and cut out the beggar.
I will take a crowbar
and pry out the broken
pieces of God in me.
Just like a jigsaw puzzle,
I will put Him together again
with the patience of a chess player.

How many pieces?

It feels like thousands,
God dressed up like a whore
in a slime of green algae.
God dressed up like an old man
staggering out of His shoes.
God dressed up like a child,
all naked,
even without skin,
soft as an avocado when you peel it.
And others, others, others.

But I will conquer them all
and build a whole nation of God
in me—but united,
build a new soul,
dress it with skin
and then put on my shirt
and sing an anthem,
a song of myself.

—Anne Sexton (1928-1974), "The Civil War," from The Awful Rowing Toward God, 1975.

perhaps in the nook of a cousin universe

This is another poem I got from wintercreek. I think my favorite thing about this poem might actually be the title, but I do love a love poem.

My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers
of my palms tell me so.
Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish
at the same time. I think

praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think
staying up and waiting
for paintings to sigh is science. In another dimension this
is exactly what's happening,

it's what they write grants about: the chromodynamics
of mournful Whistlers,
the audible sorrow and beta decay of "Old Battersea Bridge."
I like the idea of different

theres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass,
a Bronx where people talk
like violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehow
kind, perhaps in the nook

of a cousin universe I've never defiled or betrayed
anyone. Here I have
two hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your back
to rest my cheek against,

your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish.
My hands are webbed
like the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezed
something in the womb

but couldn't hang on. One of those other worlds
or a life I felt
passing through mine, or the ocean inside my mother's belly
she had to scream out.

Here when I say "I never want to be without you,"
somewhere else I am saying
"I never want to be without you again." And when I touch you
in each of the places we meet

in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that are dying
and resurrected.
When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life,
in each place and forever.

—Bob Hicok (b. 1960), "Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem," from Plus Shipping, 1998.

half-tipsy with the wonder of being alive

We were talking about the great things
that have happened in our lifetimes;
and I said, "Oh, I suppose the moon landing
was the greatest thing that has happened
in my time." But, of course, we were all lying.
The truth is the moon landing didn't mean
one-tenth as much to me as one night in 1963
when we lived in a three-room flat in what once had been
the mansion of some Victorian merchant prince
(our kitchen had been a clothes closet, I'm sure),
on a street where by now nobody lived
who could afford to live anywhere else.
That night, the three of us, Claudine, Johnnie and me,
woke up at half-past four in the morning
and ate cinnamon toast together.

"Is that all?" I hear somebody ask.

Oh, but we were silly with sleepiness
and, under our windows, the street-cleaners
were working their machines and conversing in Italian, and
everything was strange without being threatening,
even the tea-kettle whistled differently
than in the daytime: it was like the feeling
you get sometimes in a country you've never visited
before, when the bread doesn't taste quite the same,
the butter is a small adventure, and they put
paprika on the table instead of pepper,
except that there was nobody in this country
except the three of us, half-tipsy with the wonder
of being alive, and wholly enveloped in love.

—Alden Nowlan (1933-1983) "Great Things Have Happened," from What Happened When He Went to the Store for Bread, Nineties Press, 1993. (I first encountered this poem on tumblr, and tracked it down to Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac, which is an invaluable source for my National Poetry Month posts.)

To be fair, I do have a lot of feelings about the moon landing, although it didn't happen in my lifetime. (I frequently think fond, slightly sad thoughts about that one fic I wrote that one time about Steve Rogers watching the footage of the moon landing that I can't actually post because it's a sequel to a story I'm never going to finish and a prequel to a story I'm never going to write, and it doesn't really work out of context.) But anyway. I like this poem.

uncontradicting solitude

When I was a child, I thought,
Casually, that solitude
Never needed to be sought.
Something everybody had,
Like nakedness, it lay at hand,
Not specially right or specially wrong,
A plentiful and obvious thing
Not at all hard to understand.

Then, after twenty, it became
At once more difficult to get
And more desired—though all the same
More undesirable; for what
You are alone has, to achieve
The rank of fact, to be expressed
In terms of others, or it's just
A compensating make-believe.

Much better stay in company!
To love you must have someone else,
Giving requires a legatee,
Good neighbours need whole parishfuls
Of folk to do it on—in short,
Our virtues are all social; if,
Deprived of solitude, you chafe,
It's clear you're not the virtuous sort.

Viciously, then, I lock my door.
The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside
Ushers in evening rain. Once more
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.

—Philip Larkin (1922-1985), "Best Society," unpublished in the poet's lifetime, but I quote from the textual note (because I love textual notes) in The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin, Ed. Archie Burnett (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012): "Wkbk 3 (1/3/19) contains five and a half pages of drafts of four stanzas and an additional fifth .... The copy-text is Hull DPL 2/3/17: t.s., with a title, a comma after 'Then' in l. 9, and a quotation from Wordsworth ('Prelude II, 298, 'solitude more active even than "best society"') in holograph. At the end of the text, in t.s.: 'unfinished'" (607). I sometimes worry when I start to overidentify with Philip Larkin, but I do love this poem, unfinished or not.

the mower mown

I have been shamefully neglecting my own literary period, this year. Let's do something about that, shall we? This is my favorite of the Mower Poems, because it is the most self-aware and self-consciously ridiculous, and because it knows its own genre so very well. (I am also pretty fond of The Mower to the Glow-Worms. How can you not love a poem about glow-worms?)

Hark how the Mower Damon sung,
With love of Juliana stung!
While everything did seem to paint
The scene more fit for his complaint.
Like her fair eyes the day was fair,
But scorching like his am’rous care.
Sharp like his scythe his sorrow was,
And withered like his hopes the grass.

‘Oh what unusual heats are here,
Which thus our sunburned meadows sear!
The grasshopper its pipe gives o’er;
And hamstringed frogs can dance no more.
But in the brook the green frog wades;
And grasshoppers seek out the shades.
Only the snake, that kept within,
Now glitters in its second skin.

‘This heat the sun could never raise,
Nor Dog Star so inflame the days.
It from an higher beauty grow’th,
Which burns the fields and mower both:
Which mads the dog, and makes the sun
Hotter than his own Phaëton.
Not July causeth these extremes,
But Juliana’s scorching beams.

‘Tell me where I may pass the fires
Of the hot day, or hot desires.
To what cool cave shall I descend,
Or to what gelid fountain bend?
Alas! I look for ease in vain,
When remedies themselves complain.
No moisture but my tears do rest,
Nor cold but in her icy breast.

‘How long wilt thou, fair shepherdess,
Esteem me, and my presents less?
To thee the harmless snake I bring,
Disarmèd of its teeth and sting;
To thee chameleons, changing hue,
And oak leaves tipped with honey dew.
Yet thou, ungrateful, hast not sought
Nor what they are, nor who them brought.

‘I am the Mower Damon, known
Through all the meadows I have mown.
On me the morn her dew distills
Before her darling daffodils.
And, if at noon my toil me heat,
The sun himself licks off my sweat.
While, going home, the evening sweet
In cowslip-water bathes my feet.

‘What, though the piping shepherd stock
The plains with an unnumbered flock,
This scythe of mine discovers wide
More ground than all his sheep do hide.
With this the golden fleece I shear
Of all these closes every year.
And though in wool more poor than they,
Yet am I richer far in hay.

‘Nor am I so deformed to sight,
If in my scythe I lookèd right;
In which I see my picture done,
As in a crescent moon the sun.
The deathless fairies take me oft
To lead them in their dances soft:
And, when I tune myself to sing,
About me they contract their ring.

‘How happy might I still have mowed,
Had not Love here his thistles sowed!
But now I all the day complain,
Joining my labour to my pain;
And with my scythe cut down the grass,
Yet still my grief is where it was:
But, when the iron blunter grows,
Sighing, I whet my scythe and woes.’

While thus he threw his elbow round,
Depopulating all the ground,
And, with his whistling scythe, does cut
Each stroke between the earth and root,
The edgèd steel by careless chance
Did into his own ankle glance;
And there among the grass fell down,
By his own scythe, the Mower mown.

‘Alas!’ said he, ‘these hurts are slight
To those that die by love’s despite.
With shepherd’s-purse, and clown’s-all-heal,
The blood I staunch, and wound I seal.
Only for him no cure is found,
Whom Juliana’s eyes do wound.
’Tis death alone that this must do:
For Death thou art a Mower too.’

—Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), "Damon the Mower." Probably July-August 1652, first publication 1681.

(Just in case you were wondering, my favorite Marvell poem—and, indeed, one of my favorite poems of all time—will always be the gloriously insane wonderland that is Upon Appleton House.)

to hold off chaos at arm's length

With the exception of the inestimable John Donne, W.H. Auden is my favorite poet. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one of them is that he was exceptionally prolific, and had a kind of poetic range and breadth that's hard to match—or even, sometimes, to imagine. Auden was very, very good at what he did, and he was wry and witty and sarcastic and clever and emotional and true, sometimes all at once. I post an Auden poem every year, but it's always a challenge to figure out which one it's going to be, because there are so many that I love, for so many different reasons.

But today is my birthday, and it's one of those big round number birthdays, so let's go with this one. I post it with both irony and fondness—precisely as much irony, I have no doubt, as Auden intended; late Auden is like this a lot, and I find him delightful.

Our earth in 1969
Is not the planet I call mine,
The world, I mean, that gives me strength
To hold off chaos at arm's length.

My Eden landscapes and their climes
Are constructs from Edwardian times,
When bath-rooms took up lots of space,
And, before eating, one said Grace.

The automobile, the aeroplane,
Are useful gadgets, but profane:
The enginry of which I dream
Is moved by water or by steam.

Reason requires that I approve
The light-bulb which I cannot love:
To me more reverence-commanding
A fish-tail burner on the landing.

My family ghosts I fought and routed,
Their values, though, I never doubted:
I thought the Protestant Work-Ethic
Both practical and sympathetic.

When couples played or sang duets,
It was immoral to have debts:
I shall continue till I die
To pay in cash for what I buy.

The Book of Common Prayer we knew
Was that of 1662:
Though with-it sermons may be well,
Liturgical reforms are hell.

Sex was of course—it always is—
The most enticing of mysteries,
But news-stands did not then supply
Manichaean pornography.

Then Speech was mannerly, an Art,
Like learning not to belch or fart:
I cannot settle which is worse,
The Anti-Novel or Free Verse.

Nor are those Ph.D's my kith,
Who dig the symbol and the myth:
I count myself a man of letters
Who writes, or hopes to, for his betters.

Dare any call Permissiveness
An educational success?
Saner those class-rooms which I sat in,
Compelled to study Greek and Latin.

Though I suspect the term is crap,
If there is a Generation Gap,
Who is to blame? Those, old or young,
Who will not learn their Mother-Tongue.

But Love, at least, is not a state
Either en vogue or out-of-date,
And I've true friends, I will allow,
To talk and eat with here and now.

Me alienated? Bosh! It's just
As a sworn citizen who must
Skirmish with it that I feel
Most at home with what is Real.

—W.H. Auden (1907-1973), "Doggerel by a Senior Citizen," for Robert Lederer, May 1969.

tell a new story

Is it still the 13th? I had a surprisingly busy day. Here is a poem that is excellent to read late at night, and is also by a friend of mine! My friend Charlie has been spending National Poetry Month Aprils with me since my very first year of posting poems, a million years ago in 2007 when we were both in college, and now he is a published poet! HOW COOL IS THAT? I love this poem.

The night the paintings opened, we
were young again,
outside the lines and still wet. Your feet
left blue on the marble floor when you
came over with your guitar and
gave me a lopsided wink. I finally
put down that goddamned hairbrush and
shook out my curls, smears of carmine
sliding on your skin like the heart
your artist had decided
was broken. We
were hungry, so
ducking between the sprinkler systems
and the flames, we
stole some of Cézanne’s peaches and
ran out to tell a new story.

—Charlie Byrd, "Pentimento," published in Liminality Issue No. 2, Winter 2014/2015, here.

the batteries of orchards

It's a truly gorgeous day here in New York City; I wore a polka dot dress and red lipstick to brunch, and now I am sitting on my couch with all the windows open.

Bless air's gift of sweetness, honey
from the bees, inspired by clover,
marigold, eucalyptus, thyme,
the hundred perfumes of the wind.
Bless the beekeeper

                              who chooses for her hives
a site near water, violet beds, no yew,
no echo. Let the light lilt, leak, green
or gold, pigment for queens,
and joy be inexplicable but there
in harmony of willowherb and stream,
of summer heat and breeze,
                                         each bee's body
at its brilliant flower, lover-stunned,
strumming on fragrance, smitten.

                                                  For this,
let gardens grow, where beelines end,
sighing in roses, saffron blooms, buddleia;
where bees pray on their knees, sing, praise
in pear trees, plum trees; bees
are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them.

—Carol Ann Duffy (b. 1955), "Virgil's Bees," from The Bees, 2009/2013.

I bought this book last year, in no small part because of the title—I am pretty easy for bee-related merchandise, because I am a bit of a Renaissance Humanist in my heart—and it's a wonderful collection. I really like Carol Ann Duffy.

one of many circles

I've always had really mixed feelings about Wallace Stevens, in part because of this poem. I can never decide how I feel about this poem. I might hate it? I might not hate it? Lately, however, I keep thinking that somebody should apply it to The Raven Cycle. LIKE. I MEAN. JUST THINK ABOUT IT: BLACKBIRDS. UNKNOWABILITY. TIME LAPSES. TREES. Okay, whatever, I am going to go finish reading Blue Lily, Lily Blue and think about all of the OT5 fic I should probably write. Please carry on.

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,  
The only moving thing  
Was the eye of the blackbird.  

II
I was of three minds,  
Like a tree  
In which there are three blackbirds.  

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.  
It was a small part of the pantomime.  

IV
A man and a woman  
Are one.  
A man and a woman and a blackbird  
Are one.  

V
I do not know which to prefer,  
The beauty of inflections  
Or the beauty of innuendoes,  
The blackbird whistling  
Or just after.  

VI
Icicles filled the long window  
With barbaric glass.  
The shadow of the blackbird  
Crossed it, to and fro.  
The mood  
Traced in the shadow  
An indecipherable cause.  

VII
O thin men of Haddam,  
Why do you imagine golden birds?  
Do you not see how the blackbird  
Walks around the feet  
Of the women about you?  

VIII
I know noble accents  
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;  
But I know, too,  
That the blackbird is involved  
In what I know.  

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,  
It marked the edge  
Of one of many circles.  

X
At the sight of blackbirds  
Flying in a green light,  
Even the bawds of euphony  
Would cry out sharply.  

XI
He rode over Connecticut  
In a glass coach.  
Once, a fear pierced him,  
In that he mistook  
The shadow of his equipage  
For blackbirds.  

XII
The river is moving.  
The blackbird must be flying.  

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.  
It was snowing  
And it was going to snow.  
The blackbird sat  
In the cedar-limbs.

—Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," in this case from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, 1954, but originally published in Harmonium, 1923.

works every time

My friend Clare mentioned this poem on twitter this morning, and I thought, "oh, yeah, that one." This one has been in my "to post" folder for a while now, and today seems like a good day for it, somehow.

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?

I don't enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,
I don't enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.

—Margaret Atwood (b. 1939), "Siren Song," originally published in Poetry magazine, February 1974. Packs a punch, this one. I love it.

down that white road

Today I went to see Furious 7. It was wonderful, and then the last ten minutes made me cry my eyes out, which is more or less what I expected. As it turns out, trying to find a poem that in any way encapsulates my feelings about the Fast and the Furious franchise is pretty much impossible, so here is a painful and gorgeous Derek Walcott poem about dead friends, instead.

Half my friends are dead.
I will make you new ones, said earth.
No, give me them back, as they were, instead,
with faults and all, I cried.

Tonight I can snatch their talk
from the faint surf's drone
through the canes, but I cannot walk

on the moonlit leaves of ocean
down that white road alone,
or float with the dreaming motion

of owls leaving earth's load.
O earth, the number of friends you keep
exceeds those left to be loved.

The sea canes by the cliff flash green and silver;
they were the seraph lances of my faith,
but out of what is lost grows something stronger

that has the rational radiance of stone,
enduring moonlight, further than despair,
strong as the wind, that through dividing canes

brings those we love before us, as they were,
with faults and all, not nobler, just there.

—Derek Walcott (b. 1930), "Sea Canes," from Sea Grapes, 1971/1976. I went to the Strand after the movie and bought a whole new edition of Derek Walcott poems, and still I only ever seem to post poems from Sea Grapes. Admittedly, it is a pretty phenomenal collection.

the heart convulsive learns

It's an Emily day, don't you think?

The Heart has narrow Banks
It measures like the Sea
In mighty — unremitting Bass
And Blue monotony

Till Hurricane bisect
And as itself discerns
It's insufficient Area
The Heart convulsive learns

That Calm is but a Wall
Of Unattempted Gauze
An instant's Push demolishes
A Questioning — dissolves.

—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), "The Heart has narrow Banks," Poem 960, 1865. In this case, from the R.W. Franklin edition of The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999).

Citing Dickinson is notoriously difficult, because both her manuscript history and her print history are fascinating and complex; she also wrote seven zillion poems. For those interested in manuscript studies and textual scholarship and lyric poetry and Dickinson, I highly recommend Virginia Jackson's Dickinson's Misery.

and a star to steer her by

I've never posted this poem before, because every time I think about posting this poem, the Kris Delmhorst song starts playing in my head. It's a lovely song, and there is a really wonderful Slings and Arrows vid by heresluck to the song, which also starts playing in my head every time I think about this poem. But I also love the poem, so here's to you, John Masefield.

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy life.
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

—John Masefield (1878-1967), "Sea Fever," from Salt-Water Ballads, 1902.

calm and work

Lord Whoever, thank you for this air
I'm about to in- and exhale, this hutch
in the woods, the wood for fire,
the light—both lamp and the natural stuff
of leaf-back, fern, and wing.
For the piano, the shovel
for ashes, the moth-gnawed
blankets, the stone-cold water
stone-cold: thank you.
Thank you, Lord, coming for
to carry me here—where I'll gnash
it out, Lord, where I'll calm
and work, Lord, thank you
for the goddamn birds singing!

—Thomas Lux (b. 1946), "Poem in Thanks," in this case from New and Collected Poems, 1975-1995 (Houghton Mifflin, 1997).

but everyone knows sorrow is incurable

Happy Easter to those celebrating, and Chag Sameach a couple of days late for the beginning of Passover. This is always a weird time of year for me, because I never really manage to do Passover, and I don't do Easter because I am Jewish, and also I tend to forget that both holidays are happening. I like holidays, but I have never been very observant about them.

I'm more observant about personal anniversaries, which is one thing I especially appreciate about doing National Poetry Month every year: it allows me to chronicle events in some unexpected and important ways. Since my brother died in March of 2011, I've taken April 5—the day we held his memorial—as a day to post a poem about grief, or loss, or mourning. My brother would undoubtedly hate most of these poems (he wasn't much for poetry), but to be honest, it's not really about him. Grief is more universal than that, and reading—and sharing—poems about loss remind me that even though my experience is my own, and every person's experience is different and singular, I am not alone.

This is also your content warning for the following poem: it's about grief, and it's a little devastating.

"What everyone should know about grief"
is why I buy the magazine.
Between aerobic virtue on one page
and the thrills of Machu Picchu on another
grief finds its marketable stage.

The living tell their chronicles
of hurt and lost and dead.
In syncopated copy they rehearse
"the cost of rage," "the comfort of belief,"
in words and captioned movements of the head.

The story proffers help:
advises talking as the healing cure,
commends long walks, and therapies,
assures the grieving that they will endure,
and then it gently cautions: let go, move on.

But everyone knows sorrow is incurable:
a bruised and jagged scar
in the rift valley of the body;
shrapnel seeded in the skin;
undoused burning pyres of war.

And grief is one thing nearly personal,
a hairline fracture in an individual skull;
homemade elegy which sounds its keening
in the scarred heart's well;
where it is too deep to reach

the ladder of light
sent down from lands above,
where hands write words
to work the winch
to plumb the shaft below.

—Ingrid de Kok (b. 1951), "What Everyone Should Know About Grief," from Transfer, 1997, though in this case from Seasonal Fires: New and Selected Poems (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006). I first read a version of this poem that was missing the last two stanzas, and weirdly I think I like it better when the poem feels like it ends in the middle, but I like the complete version, too.

island

Rita Dove, always and forever.

Shape the lips to an o, say a.
That's island.

One word of Swedish has changed the whole neighborhood.
When I look up, the yellow house on the corner
is a galleon stranded in flowers. Around it

the wind. Even the high roar of a leaf-mulcher
could be the horn-blast from a ship
as it skirts to the misted shoals.

We don't need much more to keep things going.
Families complete themselves
and refuse to budge from the present,
the present extends its glass forehead to sea
(backyard breezes, scattered cardinals)

and if, one evening, the house on the corner
took off over the marshland,
neither I nor my neighbor
would be amazed. Sometimes

a word is found so right it trembles
at the slightest explanation.
You start out with one thing, end
up with another, and nothing's
like it used to be, not even the future.

—Rita Dove (b. 1952), "Ö" from The Yellow House on the Corner (Carnegie Mellon University Press, Pittsburgh, PA), 1980.

this world's profane loveliness

This is a particularly rough week for my friend K, and she asked if she could make a request. Then she sent me this poem.

Here is a thing about graduate school: it can be miserable, and lonely, and isolating, but when you form a real and lasting friendship in the grad school trenches, it matters. It matters for its rarity, and because you've gone through a particular kind of hell together that also comes with some truly glorious high points; on the one hand, you're crying on the phone at two in the morning because you might need to quit the program, and on the other hand, the next day you spend three hours talking about John Donne. Which is all to say that this is for K, who is, along with John Donne and poems like this one, my light in the darkness of graduate school.

1.

The stars! the stars have fled the sky!—
Scratch that—the stars have skyed the flood, the sea
glimmering in pale beneath a starless black. . .

2.

No, scratch that too. I'm all exotic
metaphor, inkhorn snarls, never content
with the unelaborated thing;

always the forced apotheosis,
every least sparrow a visible sign,
strong-arming water to wine. So tenderly

I love this world's profane loveliness,
its small, scarce loveliness, like a puritan
I batter magnitude out of homespun.

3.

Faithless my zeal, for the puritan's faith
imputes us all with a roughhouse grace, most
lovely in our brokenness, bruised and bent

to glory. Scratch that—to sufficiency.
Start again: The stars are black with storms
blown shoreward; the dinoflagellates

smacked on the shoals leak light from shattered cells;
they phosphoresce the breakers in their roister.
Let me sing, then, the beauty of creatures

microscopic, who make the vastness gleam
in smithereens.

4.

                       See: starlike, after all.

—Kimberly Johnson (b. 1971), "Easter, Looking Westward." Originally published in The Journal, Ohio State University, 2006.

I heard Kimberly Johnson read some of her poetry last year, and—as I think this poem demonstrates very well—she's really extraordinary. She's also a professor of Renaissance literature, which is sort of reassuring to me personally. I think this poem is breathtaking regardless of its references, but that said, John Donne's Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward is certainly worth reading or rereading, especially today.

hard to be uncertain, scared, divided

This is an acquisition from wintercreek productions, like a lot of the poetry I post; in addition to being an extremely awesome person, wintercreek has exquisite taste in poetry. I love this one.

Yes, of course it hurts when buds are bursting.
Why else would springtime hesitate?
Why would all our ardent longing
be bound in what is frozen, bitter-pale?
The scales were the bud all winter.
What is this new thing, tearing, breaking?
Yes, of course it hurts when buds are bursting,
pain for what grows
and what is closed.

Yes, certainly it's hard when drops are falling.
Shivering with dread they hang so heavy,
holding tight to the branch, but swelling, slipping—
the weight pulls them downwards, no matter how they cling.
Hard to be uncertain, scared, divided,
hard to feel the depth call out and beckon,
yet keep still and merely tremble—
hard to want to stay
and want to fall.

Then, when things are worst and nothing's helping,
burst as though in jubilation the buds on the tree.
Then, when fear can no longer hold them,
fall in a glitter the drops from the branch
forget that they were frightened by the newness,
forget that they were anxious about the journey—
feel for a second their greatest safety,
resting in that trust
which makes the world.


Ja visst gör det ont när knoppar brister.
Varför skulle annars våren tveka?
Varför skulle all vår heta längtan
bindas i det frusna bitterbleka?
Höljet var ju knoppen hela vintern.
Vad är det för nytt, som tär och spränger?
Ja visst gör det ont när knoppar brister,
ont för det som växer
och det som stänger.

Ja nog är det svårt när droppar faller.
Skälvande av ängslan tungt de hänger,
klamrar sig vid kvisten, sväller, glider—
tyngden drar dem neråt, hur de klänger.
Svårt att vara oviss, rädd och delad,
svårt att känna djupet dra och kalla,
ändå sitta kvar och bara darra—
svårt att vilja stanna
och vilja falla.

Då, när det är värst och inget hjälper,
brister som i jubel trädets knoppar.
Då, när ingen rädsla längre håller,
faller i ett glitter kvistens droppar
glömmer att de skrämdes av det nya
glömmer att de ängslades för färden—
känner en sekund sin största trygghet,
vilar i den tillit
som skapar världen.

—Karin Boye (1900-1941), "Yes, Of Course It Hurts," or "Ja visst gör det ont" in the original Swedish, from För trädets skull or For The Tree's Sake, 1935. The poem is translated here by Christel Carlsson.

When I went looking for a citation for this translation I found many other translations and no citation, but I still like this translation the best. Poetry in translation is always tricky, and I don't know Swedish well enough (or at all) to tell how this one does, but the meter and movement of the English really work for me—as, obviously, does the poem as a whole. I know that feeling, Karin Boye. (Update: I've been told that this translation is really good!)

this conflagration

HELLO AND WELCOME TO NATIONAL POETRY MONTH.

This year marks the ninth year I have celebrated National Poetry Month by posting (more or less) a poem a day for the month of April. Olivia/National Poetry Month is probably my forever OTP. The rules are fairly straightforward: there will be something approximating a poem a day from today until the end of the month. I am both eclectic and predictable. I try not to repeat poets within the course of the month, and I try not to repeat poems I have posted in previous years, but I definitely do not promise not to break my own rules. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please don't hesitate to ask!

Starting the month with D.H. Lawrence seems like it might be inviting trouble, but the heart wants what it wants.

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.

—D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), "The Enkindled Spring," from Amores, 1916.