anti poetica

there is no poem greater than feeding someone
there is no poem wiser than kindness
there is no poem more important than being good to children
there is no poem outside love's violent potential for cruelty
there is no poem that ends grief but nurses it toward light
there is no poem that isn't jealous of song or murals or wings
there is no poem free from money's ruin
no poem in the capital nor the court
most policy rewords a devil's script
there is no poem in the law
there is no poem in the west
there is no poem in the north
poems only live south of something
meaning beneath & darkened & hot
there is no poem in the winter nor in whiteness
nor are there poems in the landlord's name
no poem to admonish the state
no poem with a key to the locks
no poem to free you

—Danez Smith, "anti poetica" from Bluff (Graywolf Press, 2024). This collection is amazing—no surprise, Danez Smith consistently fucks me up—but I read this poem on its own before reading the collection, and it's even better in context. It's worth knowing, I think, that this is the first of three poems in the collection called "anti poetica" and that there's also an "ars poetica." Other than that, no spoilers. Go read the book.

flowers

Today was a long travel day, and I was going to post something kind of low-key because I am pretty tired. But we're staying with my wonderful friend K, and when I mentioned that it was poetry month and I needed to post something, she sent me this one. Which, you know, well. It sticks with you.

Colonizers write about flowers.
I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks
seconds before becoming daisies.
I want to be like those poets who care about the moon.
Palestinians don’t see the moon from jail cells and prisons.
It’s so beautiful, the moon.
They’re so beautiful, the flowers.
I pick flowers for my dead father when I’m sad.
He watches Al Jazeera all day.
I wish Jessica would stop texting me Happy Ramadan.
I know I’m American because when I walk into a room something dies.
Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound.
When I die, I promise to haunt you forever.
One day, I’ll write about the flowers like we own them.

—Noor Hindi, "Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying," published in Poetry, December 2020.

you can’t plan on the heart

In many, many years (this is the eighteenth, she’s almost old enough to vote) of posting poems for National Poetry Month, I don’t think I’ve ever posted a poem FROM THE AIR. But there’s a first time for everything, I’ve been so busy and stressed that I haven’t been doing the best job of keeping up with my poetry posts, and I bought wifi for this flight. SO, from 30,000 feet or whatever, here’s some Frank O’Hara that I meant to post yesterday! I also cannot figure out how to do a cut tag on my ipad so uh, sorry.

I’m not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don’t prefer one “strain” to another.
I’d have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind, I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar. And if
some aficionado of my mess says “That’s
not like Frank!”, all to the good! I
don’t wear brown and grey suits all the time,
do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,
often. I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart-
you can’t plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

—Frank O’Hara (1926-1966), “My Heart,” in this case from The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara (University of California Press, 1995).

burning light

Every poem in Eavan Boland's The Historians is amazing, but this is the very first one in the collection and I read it and was like, "well, I guess I'm posting this one," and then I put like 15 more flags in the book for the future.

She loved silver, she loved gold,
my mother. She spoke about the influence
of metals, the congruence of atoms,
the art classes where she learned
these things: think of it
she would say as she told me
to gild any surface a master craftsman
had to meld gold with mercury,
had to heat both so one was volatile,
one was not
and to do it right
had to separate them and then
burn, burn, burn mercury
until it fled and left behind
a skin of light. The only thing, she added—
but what came after I forgot.

What she spent a lifetime forgetting
could be my subject:
the fenced-in small towns of Leinster,
the coastal villages where the language
of the sea was handed on,
phrases bruised by storms,
by shipwrecks. But isn't.
My subject is the part wishing plays in
the way villages are made
to vanish, in the way I learned
to separate memory from knowledge,
so one was volatile, one was not
and how I started writing,
burning light,
building heat until all at once
I was the fire glider
ready to lay radiance down,
ready to decorate it happened
with it never did when
all at once I remember what it was
she said: the only thing is
it is extremely dangerous.

—Eavan Boland (1944-2020), "The Fire Glider," poem I. from "The Historians," which is in turn from The Historians, 2020.

some trees make it look so easy

One of the best things about doing National Poetry Month for as long as I have been—which is like, an absurd amount of time at this point—is that I spend the rest of the year collecting poetry. I'm not that organized about it, though, which is how I have ended up with a bunch of random screenshots on my phone that I finally put in a folder, and stacks of poetry books in both ebook and hardcopy (only some of which I have actually read), and a "poetry" bookmarks folder and a "poetry" dropbox folder and, you know, maybe I should stop talking about this before I dig myself any deeper. The point is, I save stuff I like and hope that someday (usually in April) I will find it again. I got this one from the poetryisnotaluxury instagram, which is an absolute gift.

Can we talk about the moon
tonight? Low & full
in the baby-blue sky. A friend
at my door, the sound
of her laugh & well-loved
heart. I want to be held
up like that. I need a poem
about happiness I haven't
written yet, an ode
to the ducks in my neighbours'
pool, another for the pink
magnolias of spring—some trees
make it look so easy: Yes,
I can hold all this beauty up.

—Kyla Jamieson, "I Need a Poem," from Body Count, 2020.

my immortality box

I go whole years of poetry without thinking about Anne Sexton, and then I read any single poem of hers and am instantly overcome by how fucking good she is and how many feelings she gives me. Really I should be posting this poem at 3:15am, but late on a Wednesday evening seems appropriate, too.

So it has come to this –
insomnia at 3:15 A.M.,
the clock tolling its engine

like a frog following
a sundial yet having an electric
seizure at the quarter hour.

The business of words keeps me awake.
I am drinking cocoa,
the warm brown mama.

I would like a simple life
yet all night I am laying
poems away in a long box.

It is my immortality box,
my lay-away plan,
my coffin.

All night dark wings
flopping in my heart.
Each an ambition bird.

The bird wants to be dropped
from a high place like Tallahatchie Bridge.

He wants to light a kitchen match
and immolate himself.

He wants to fly into the hand of Michelangelo
and come out painted on a ceiling.

He wants to pierce the hornet’s nest
and come out with a long godhead.

He wants to take bread and wine
and bring forth a man happily floating in the Caribbean.

He wants to be pressed out like a key
so he can unlock the Magi.

He wants to take leave among strangers
passing out bits of his heart like hors d’oeuvres.

He wants to die changing his clothes
and bolt for the sun like a diamond.

He wants, I want.
Dear God, wouldn’t it be
good enough just to drink cocoa?

I must get a new bird
and a new immortality box.
There is folly enough inside this one.

—Anne Sexton (1928-1974), "The Ambition Bird," in this case from Anne Sexton: The Complete Poems (1981), and read by me at the Poetry Foundation.

in return for one word

I spent most of the day writing to an upcoming deadline, and it felt pretty great to get words on the page for the first time in a while. But I am definitely not as good at words as Zbigniew Herbert.

I would like to describe the simplest emotion
joy or sadness
but not as others do
reaching for shafts of rain or sun

I would like to describe a light
which is being born in me
but I know it does not resemble
any star
for it is not so bright
not so pure
and is uncertain

I would like to describe courage
without dragging behind me a dusty lion
and also anxiety
without shaking a glass full of water

to put it another way
I would give all metaphors
in return for one word
drawn out of my breast like a rib
for one word
contained within the boundaries
of my skin

but apparently this is not possible

and just to say - I love
I run around like mad
picking up handfuls of birds
and my tenderness
which after all is not made of water
asks the water for a face
and anger
different from fire
borrows from it
a loquacious tongue

so is blurred
so is blurred
in me
what white-haired gentlemen
separated once and for all
and said
this is the subject
and this is the object

we fall asleep
with one hand under our head
and with the other in a mound of planets

our feet abandon us
and taste the earth
with their tiny roots
which next morning
we tear out painfully

—Zbigniew Herbert (1956-1998), "I Would Like to Describe," in this case from The Collected Poems 1956-1998, and read by me at poets.org.

here's what poetry can do

Despite planning out exactly which poems I was going to post on which days for the rest of the month, I have been so busy and tired that I have utterly failed to post them. I think years ending in 8 must be bad for poetry, somehow, because 2008 was my most erratic year before this one. Anyway, here is the poem I meant to post yesterday, which I am feeling strongly today.

Relax. This won't last long.
Or if it does, or if the lines
make you sleepy or bored,
give in to sleep, turn on
the T.V., deal the cards.
This poem is built to withstand
such things. Its feelings
cannot be hurt. They exist
somewhere in the poet,
and I am far away.
Pick it up anytime. Start it
in the middle if you wish.
It is as approachable as melodrama,
and can offer you violence
if it is violence you like. Look,
there's a man on a sidewalk;
the way his leg is quivering
he'll never be the same again.
This is your poem
and I know you're busy at the office
or the kids are into your last nerve.
Maybe it's sex you've always wanted.
Well, they lie together
like the party's unbuttoned coats,
slumped on the bed
waiting for drunken arms to move them.
I don't think you want me to go on;
everyone has his expectations, but this
is a poem for the entire family.
Right now, Budweiser
is dripping from a waterfall,
deodorants are hissing into armpits
of people you resemble,
and the two lovers are dressing now,
saying farewell.
I don't know what music this poem
can come up with, but clearly
it's needed. For it's apparent
they will never see each other again
and we need music for this
because there was never music when he or she
left you standing on the corner.
You see, I want this poem to be nicer
than life. I want you to look at it
when anxiety zigzags your stomach
and the last tranquilizer is gone
and you need someone to tell you
I'll be here when you want me
like the sound inside a shell.
The poem is saying that to you now.
But don't give anything for this poem.
It doesn't expect much. It will never say more
than listening can explain.
Just keep it in your attache case
or in your house. And if you're not asleep
by now, or bored beyond sense,
the poem wants you to laugh. Laugh at
yourself, laugh at this poem, at all poetry.
Come on:

Good. Now here's what poetry can do.

Imagine yourself a caterpillar.
There's an awful shrug and, suddenly,
You're beautiful for as long as you live.

—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939), "Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry." I couldn't find a citation for this poem (I am pretty sure I got it from wintercreek many years ago), but oh well; it's a great poem.

a citizen of the city of ideas

For reasons that don't really need exploring at this juncture, I totally failed to post any Cavafy while I was actually in Greece. (Mostly, I couldn't decide what the right poem was, and then I gave up and decided to save him for later.) I want to remedy that now, however, because Cavafy is wonderful.

The young poet Eumenes
complained one day to Theocritus:
“I have been writing for two years now
and I have done only one idyll.
It is my only finished work.
Alas, it is steep, I see it,
the stairway of Poetry is so steep;
and from the first step where now I stand,
poor me, I shall never ascend.”
“These words,” Theocritus said,
“are unbecoming and blasphemous.
And if you are on the first step,
you ought to be proud and pleased.
Coming as far as this is not little;
what you have achieved is great glory.
For even this first step
is far distant from the common herd.
To set your foot upon this step
you must rightfully be a citizen
of the city of ideas.
And in that city it is hard
and rare to be naturalized.
In her market place you find Lawmakers
whom no adventurer can dupe.
Coming as far as this is not little;
what you have achieved is great glory.”

—C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933), written sometime before 1911. In this case translated by Rae Dalven, and from The Complete Poems of Cavafy, expanded edition (San Diego: Harcourt, 1976).

alone in an imaginary room

Billy Collins time!

If this were a novel,
it would begin with a character,
a man alone on a southbound train
or a young girl on a swing by a farmhouse.

And as the pages turned, you would be told
that it was morning or the dead of night,
and I, the narrator, would describe
for you the miscellaneous clouds over the farmhouse

and what the man was wearing on the train
right down to his red tartan scarf,
and the hat he tossed onto the rack above his head,
as well as the cows sliding past his window.

Eventually—one can only read so fast—
you would learn either that the train was bearing
the man back to the place of his birth
or that he was headed into the vast unknown,

and you might just tolerate all of this
as you waited patiently for shots to ring out
in a ravine where the man was hiding
or for a tall, raven-haired woman to appear in a doorway.

But this is a poem, not a novel,
and the only characters here are you and I,
alone in an imaginary room
which will disappear after a few more lines,

leaving us no time to point guns at one another
or toss all our clothes into a roaring fireplace.
I ask you: who needs the man on the train
and who cares what his black valise contains?

We have something better than all this turbulence
lurching toward some ruinous conclusion.
I mean the sound that we will hear
as soon as I stop writing and put down this pen.

I once heard someone compare it
to the sound of crickets in a field of wheat
or, more faintly, just the wind
over that field stirring things that we will never see.

—Billy Collins (b. 1941), "The Great American Poem" from Ballistics (2008).

poetry is the human voice

Poetry, I tell my students,

is idiosyncratic. Poetry

is where we are ourselves

(though Sterling Brown said

"Every 'I' is a dramatic 'I'"),

digging in the clam flats

for the shell that snaps,

emptying the proverbial pocketbook.

Poetry is what you find

in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God

in the details, the only way

to get from here to there.

Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,

and I'm sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)

is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?

—Elizabeth Alexander (b. 1962), "Ars Poetica #100: I Believe" from American Sublime, 2005. 

I taught my last class of the semester, today; as always happens near the end of poetry month, I have started to think about why I do this every year, and what it is about poetry that continues, always, to hook me; also, I really love Elizabeth Alexander. 

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.

slow-burning signals

In keeping with the theme of poets writing about other poets (it really is a theme), I was going to post Derek Walcott's poem to Pablo Neruda, today; but then I needed to post this one, instead. I'll save the Neruda poem for another year.

Joyce was afraid of thunder,
but lions roared at his funeral
from the Zurich zoo.
Was it Zurich or Trieste?
No matter. These are legends, as much
as the death of Joyce is a legend,
or the strong rumour that Conrad
is dead, and that Victory is ironic.
On the edge of the night-horizon
from this beach house on the cliffs
there are now, till dawn,
two glares from the mile-out-
at-sea derricks; they are like
the glow of the cigar
and the glow of the volcano
at Victory's end.
One could abandon writing
for the slow-burning signals
of the great, to be, instead,
their ideal reader, ruminative,
voracious, making the love of masterpieces
superior to attempting
to repeat or outdo them,
and be the greatest reader in the world.
At least it requires awe,
which has been lost to our time;
so many people have seen everything,
so many people can predict,
so many refuse to enter the silence
of victory, the indolence
that burns at the core,
so many are no more than
erect ash, like the cigar,
so many take thunder for granted.
How common is the lightning,
how lost the leviathans
we no longer look for!
There were giants in those days.
In those days they made good cigars.
I must read more carefully.

—Derek Walcott (b. 1930), "Volcano" from Sea Grapes (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971). Sometimes Derek Walcott leaves me kind of speechless with awe -- speaking of thunder.

words came halting forth

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That the dear she might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain:
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain;
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay;
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame study's blows,
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write."

—Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Sonnet 1 from Astrophil and Stella.

This might be my favorite ars poetica, although it's a tough call; this is also probably the most famous poem from Astrophil and Stella, and indeed one of Sidney's most famous in general. I really love it, because every time I read it I am like, "yes, that." Plus, I mean, Invention is the red-headed stepchild of Study! Sidney is pregnant with poetry! Pleasure makes reading makes knowledge makes pity makes grace! I am also obsessed with the fact that this poem -- the first in a sequence that is mostly, but not entirely, in iambic pentameter -- is in hexameters. I should probably be writing the paper I am writing today all about the inexplicable hexameters in Astrophil and Stella, instead of on Mary Wroth's imitations of her uncle; but I backed myself into this Mary Wroth corner, and I am going to make the best of it, even if I turn out not to care very much at all about sonnet sequences as a genre. "Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write."

yesterday's poem

I feel about Milton very much as I feel about Shakespeare, although I came to Milton later. I'd considered posting something out of Paradise Lost, but Paradise Lost is hard to tap for an extract. And so, a sonnet. Heather and I were talking about this one, today, and whether or not we would give up our sight for genius like Milton's. Maybe.

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
'Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?'
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, 'God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.'

~John Milton, Sonnet XIX, around 1655

these spindrift pages

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

~Dylan Thomas, In my craft or sullen art, from Deaths and Entrances, 1946

poetry

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless
wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse
that feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against "business documents and

school-books"; all these phenomena are important. One must make
a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
"literalists of
the imagination"--above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them,"
shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.

~Marianne Moore, Poetry, 1921