the rapture of being alive

This one goes out to loons and Shane Hollander and those middle-of-the-night moments of clarity.

Not quite four a.m., when the rapture of being alive
strikes me from sleep, and I rise
from the comfortable bed and go
to another room, where my books are lined up
in their nest and colorful rows. How

magical they are! I choose one
and open it. Soon
I have wandered in over the waves of the words
to the temple of thought.

                                        And then I hear
outside, over the actual waves, the small,
perfect voice of the loon. He is also awake,
and with his heavy head uplifted he calls out
to the fading moon, to the pink flush
swelling in the east that, soon,
will become the long, reasonable day.

                                                            Inside the house
it is still dark, except for the pool of lamplight
in which I am sitting.

                                    I do not close the book.

Neither, for a long while, do I read on.

—Mary Oliver (1935-2019), "The Loon," from What Do We Know: Poems and Prose Poems (Da Capo Press, 2002) and in my case from Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (Penguin, 2017).

planet trouble

I post a lot of queer poetry, which should really come as no surprise to anyone. I also buy a lot of poetry books, especially in and around the month of April; when we were in New York last year, I bought Stephanie Burt's 2025 anthology Super Gay Poems, which is really fantastic and highly recommended for both the brilliant essays about each poem and the poems themselves. It also gives me a lot of personal joy because it doesn't have a single poem in it that I've already posted (in 19 years!!), which is so cool and exciting—although there are a handful of poems I've read in the anthology, and several poets I've heard of (or posted other work by), I really love the part of doing this each year where I get to learn and discover new-to-me poems and poets.

Since I skipped yesterday, I am going to indulgently post two poems from the anthology which are completely unrelated, except that they both haunt me (and also both have great enjambment).

Having caught me, neither fish nor flesh,
you slip me back into the sea.
But I, with the feel of your hands fresh
on my wet skin, follow you under
water. Slowly, I learn to breathe in
the alien air of your being, to walk
on glass, to swallow my words and sing
unheard. Your kindness is everything.
I am the slave of the lamp you light.
You wish me to stand on my feet.
I forget to swim,
choose, free as the wave that brought me
ashore, to abandon home,
to become foam.

—Ruth Vanita, "Mermaid," from A Play of Light: Selected Poems, first published by Penguin New Delhi (1994) and reprinted in an updated edition by QueerInk (2021), and Stephanie Burt, Super Gay Poems: LGBTQIA+ Poetry after Stonewall (Harvard University Press, 2025). In the essay following this poem, Burt writes, "This sonnet appears here instead, because it belongs among the strongest, most elegant poems ever written in English about mermaids, and mermaids are queer through and through" (86). Abso-fucking-lutely.

*

I don't want to hurt a man, but I like to hear one beg.
Two people touch twice a month in ten hotels, and
We call it long distance. He holds down one coast.
I wander the other like any African American, Africa
With its condition and America with its condition
And black folk born in this nation content to carry
Half of each. I shoulder my share. My man flies
To touch me. Sky on our side. Sky above his world
I wish to write. Which is where I go wrong. Words
Are a sense of sound. I get smart. My mother shakes
Her head. My grandmother sighs: He ain't got no
Sense. My grandmother is dead. She lives with me.
I hear my mother shake her head over the phone.
Somebody cut the cord. We have a long distance
Relationship. I lost half of her to a stroke. God gives
To each a body. God gives every body its pains.
When pain mounts in my body, I try thinking
Of my white forefathers who hurt their black bastards
Quite legally. I hate to say it, but one pain can ease
Another. Doctors rather I take pills. My man wants me
To see a doctor. What are you when you leave your man
Wanting? What am I now that I think so fondly
Of airplanes? What's my name, whose is it, while we
Make love. My lover leaves me with words I wish
To write. Flies from one side of a nation to the outside
Of our world. I don't want the world. I only want
African sense of American sound. Him. Touching.
This body. Aware of its pains. Greetings, Earthlings.
My name is Slow And Stumbling. I come from planet
Trouble. I am here to love you uncomfortable.

—Jericho Brown, "Heart Condition," from The New Testament (Copper Canyon Press, 2014) and, of course, Stephanie Burt, Super Gay Poems: LGBTQIA+ Poetry after Stonewall (Harvard University Press, 2025). I somehow had never read any Jericho Brown before? I am now obsessed.

every ocean is the same ocean

I am not one of nature's collectors, except when it comes to books, and especially when it comes to poetry books in the month of April. Whoops. I'm not mad about it, though! Books are great! Yesterday and today, Lucy and I went to a bunch of different local Houston bookstores and bought more books than we really should have (so many good things, though) in the name of Indie Bookstore Day and the Houston Book Crawl, which is on through the end of the month. They gave us a bingo card and everything! How were we supposed to resist? Anyway, this poem is not from any of the books I bought today, but it is from one of the poetry books we picked up when we were at the Strand in New York last week.

        for the occasion of a dear friends' wedding

Perhaps you've noticed
the way someone yawning
blooms a yawn in your own mouth
as though it were your idea
& not a hand me down,
the way an ocean wave
is not invented out of nothing, but
arrives from somewhere else,
sent from one shoreline of the lopsided planet
to another, so that every ocean
is the same ocean, no matter
what edge of it you are dipping your toes in.
You can stand on a cliff & watch a storm roll towards you,
passed around the globe like wet gossip,
one storm begetting another,
just as my middle school science teacher taught me
that matter cannot be created nor destroyed,
just shifted from one state to the next,
which is comforting on days you miss the dinosaurs
or need to be reminded that many people had to fall in love
with a face at least a little bit like yours
in order for yours to get here.
Maybe God had a good idea one time
& the rest has all been dominoes:
a thunderclap begets a hiccup begets an undertow begets
your certainty that a face was made for you to love it,
but ask the coral reef, who knows we are not good ideas
& definitely not new ones,
more like galactic putty smushed into human form,
who spend so much of our brief time here
losing sight of the storms we came from,
the weather that moves through us,
that we unleash on everyone else.
& who can blame us?
There is no shame in forgetting
that our atoms
once held together some other jellyfish,
when her cheek on your pillow makes your skin
too electric to be called anything but New.
When my grandmother was
nearing the end of her time in the body I knew her in,
she started to lose herself
memory first, but language close behind.
She misused words, mixed up phrases, said things incorrectly.
When she met someone,
instead of saying, it is a pleasure to meet you,
she would say,
it is a pleasure to love you.
She understood
that what feels unknown
is an opportunity for remembering.
In which case, in some future,
when two red-shouldered hawks
see each other for what they think is the first time,
they might suddenly recall
that there was once a day
when we traveled many miles,
some of us whole lifetimes,
so that we could meet you,
here, in love,
& what more evidence will they need
(what more evidence do you need?) to see
that it is
a sincere pleasure to love you
again & again.

—Sarah Kay, "Epithalamion," from A Little Daylight Left (The Dial Press, 2025). Sarah Kay is a slam poet, so I do recommend the video of this poem. For Lucy, obviously.

heartbreaking

My book club's book for March was Maya Deane's Wrath Goddess Sing, a trans and fantasy-ish retelling of the Iliad. As a long-standing irreverent classicist and fan of iddy fanfic, I enjoyed it a lot, although I did have some quibbles (overall, the fantasy and science fiction elements worked less well for me, and at a certain point I did kind of reach my limit on bonkers shit...lol whoops). But I also could not stop thinking about this poem during our book club meeting on Sunday—it's exactly right tonally, even if it's the Odyssey rather than the Iliad.

When I was a child looking
at my parents' lives, you know
what I thought? I thought
heartbreaking. Now I think
heartbreaking, but also
insane. Also
very funny.

—Louise Glück (1943-2023), "Telemachus' Detachment" from Meadowlands (Ecco Press, 1996).

when day is gone and night is come

My quarantine Dorothy Dunnett book club finished reading A Game of Kings yesterday and started Queens' Play today, so here's some good old classic Robbie Burns, in honor of Scotland (and the OT3 I believe in most strongly in the Lymond Chronicles: Francis/Scotland/Naps).

It was a' for our rightful king
       That we left fair Scotland's strand;
It was a' for our rightful king
       We e'er saw Irish land,
              My dear,
       We e'er saw Irish land.

Now a' is done that men can do,
       And a' is done in vain!
My love, and native land, fareweel!
       For I maun cross the main,
              My dear,
       For I maun cross the main.

He turn'd him right and round about,
       Upon the Irish shore,
He gave his bridle-reins a shake,
       With, Adieu for evermore,
              My dear!
       And adieu for evermore!

The soldier frae the war returns,
       And the merchant frae the main.
But I hae parted frae my love,
       Never to meet again,
              My dear,
       Never to meet again.

When day is gone and night is come,
       And a' folk bound to sleep,
I think on him that's far awa
       The lee-lang night, and weep,
              My dear,
       The lee-lang night, and weep.

—Robert Burns (1759–1796), "It was a' for our Rightful King." According to a very small amount of Googling, likely originally published in 1796 anonymously, and "supposed to be spoken by a Jacobite" (I mean, yes). This poem reportedly provides "an interesting example of the use which Burns often made of earlier Scottish songs and ballads and is based on the ballad of Mallie Stewart." I am not a Burns expert in any way, but this seems plausible.

people in exile write so many letters

I had a request for Anne Carson, before I even started the month, but the problem I always have with posting Anne Carson during National Poetry Month is that her stuff is so difficult to excerpt, and I like her long things—Autobiography of Red, the Oresteia translation, the Glass Essay—more than her short things, a lot of the time. I'm also in a weird place with Anne Carson right now because the show we saw last night was...her id on stage? And I love her work, but I'm not sure the stage is the right place for her id. On the other hand, sometimes she does short really well. The line breaks on this poem are pretty arbitrary and (as far as I can tell) somewhat dependent on the printing, but as prose poetry it does work for me, which prose poetry rarely does. Maybe it's the Ovid. 

I see him there on a night like this but cool, the 

moon blowing through black streets. He sups

and walks back to his room. The radio is on the 

floor. Its luminous green dial blares softly. He

sits down at the table; people in exile write so 

many letters. Now Ovid is weeping. Each night

about this time he puts on sadness like a 

garment and goes on writing. In his spare time he 

is teaching himself the local language (Getic) in 

order to compose in it an epic poem no one will 

ever read. 

—Anne Carson, "On Ovid," from Short Talks, 1992.

a deathless, inexhaustible wine

I didn't post a poem yesterday because it has been a hell of a week and I was too exhausted; but yesterday I watched the season finale of The Magicians, and today I went to see Hadestown on Broadway, and you know what that means? That means it's time for Rilke. Here are two sonnets from Sonnets to Orpheus, one for yesterday and one for today; normally I post the German as well as the translation, but I'm tired and I don't want to type it up, so I'm going straight to the excellent Stephen Mitchell translations. (I recommend his editions—they're usually bilingual and very good.) 

A god can do it. But will you tell me how

a man can penetrate through the lyre's strings? 

Our mind is split. And at the shadowed crossing

of heart-roads, there is no temple for Apollo. 

Song, as you have taught it, is not desire, 

not wooing any grace that can be achieved; 

song is reality. Simple, for a god. 

But when can we be real? When does he pour

the earth, the stars, into us? Young man, 

it is not your loving, even if your mouth 

was forced wide open by your own voice—learn

to forget that passionate music. It will end. 

True singing is a different breath, about

nothing. A gust inside the god. A wind. 

*

Praising is what matters! He was summoned for that, 

and came to us like the ore from a stone's 

silence. His mortal heart presses out 

a deathless, inexhaustible wine. 

Whenever he feels the god's paradigm grip

his throat, the voice does not die in his mouth. 

All becomes vineyard, all becomes grape, 

ripened on the hills of his sensuous South. 

Neither decay in the sepulchre of kings

nor any shadow that has fallen from the gods

can ever detract from his glorious praising. 

For he is a herald who is with us always, 

holding far into the doors of the dead

a bowl with ripe fruit worthy of praise. 

—Rainer Maria Rilke, I, 3 and I, 7 from The Sonnets to Orpheus, 1922; translated by Stephen Mitchell.

will it alter my life altogether

Here is a little Auden, late at night on my birthday. I had a good day—caught up on sleep and read a bunch of fic and did laundry and had a very nice dinner with wonderful friends—and here's to a good year.

Some say that love's a little boy,

And some say it's a bird,

Some say it makes the world go round,

And some say that's absurd,

And when I asked the man next-door,

Who looked as if he knew,

His wife got very cross indeed,

And said it wouldn't do.

Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,

Or the ham in a temperance hotel?

Does its odour remind one of llamas,

Or has it a comforting smell?

Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,

Or soft as eiderdown fluff?

Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?

O tell me the truth about love.

Our history books refer to it

In cryptic little notes,

It's quite a common topic on

The Transatlantic boats;

I've found the subject mentioned in

Accounts of suicides,

And even seen it scribbled on

The backs of railway-guides.

Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,

Or boom like a military band?

Could one give a first-rate imitation

On a saw or a Steinway Grand?

Is its singing at parties a riot?

Does it only like Classical stuff?

Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?

O tell me the truth about love.

I looked inside the summer-house;

It wasn't ever there;

I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,

And Brighton's bracing air.

I don't know what the blackbird sang,

Or what the tulip said;

But it wasn't in the chicken-run,

Or underneath the bed.

Can it pull extraordinary faces?

Is it usually sick on a swing?

Does it spend all its time at the races,

or fiddling with pieces of string?

Has it views of its own about money?

Does it think Patriotism enough?

Are its stories vulgar but funny?

O tell me the truth about love.

When it comes, will it come without warning

Just as I'm picking my nose?

Will it knock on my door in the morning,

Or tread in the bus on my toes?

Will it come like a change in the weather?

Will its greeting be courteous or rough?

Will it alter my life altogether?

O tell me the truth about love.

—W. H. Auden (1907-1973), "O Tell Me the Truth About Love" or XII from "Twelve Songs," according to my Collected Poems, January 1938.

but the line goes on

For yuletide this year, I wrote a story based on this poem, which is one of my favorite poems in the world. I thought it was probably time to post it, this year, even though April isn't quite the right season. 

Camelot is served

By a sixteen-track stub terminal done in High Gothick Style,

The tracks covered by a single great barrel-vaulted glass roof framed upon iron,

At once looking back to the Romans and ahead to the Brunels.

Beneath its rotunda, just to the left of the ticket windows,

Is a mosaic floor depicting the Round Table

(Where all knights, regardless of their station of origin

Or class of accommodation, are equal),

And around it murals of knightly deeds in action

(Slaying dragons, righting wrongs, rescuing maidens tied to the tracks).

It is the only terminal, other than Gare d'Avalon in Paris,

To be hung with original tapestries,

And its lavatories rival those at the Great Gate of Kiev Central.

During a peak season such as this, some eighty trains a day pass through,

Five times the frequency at the old Londinium Terminus,

Ten times the number the Druid towermen knew.

(The Official Court Christmas Card this year displays

A crisp black-and-white Charles Clegg photograph from the King's own collection.

Showing a woad-blued hogger at the throttle of "Old XCVII,"

The Fast Mail overnight to Eboracum. Those were the days.)

The first of a line of wagons have arrived,

Spilling footmen and pages in Court livery,

And old thick Kay, stepping down from his Range Rover,

Tricked out in a bush coat from Swaine, Adeney, Brigg,

Leaning on his shooting stick as he marshalls his company,

Instructing the youngest how to behave in the station,

To help mature women that they may encounter,

Report pickpockets, gather up litter,

And of course no true Knight of the Table Round (even in training)

Would do a station porter out of Christmas tips.

He checks his list of arrival times, then his watch

(A moon-phase Breguet, gift from Merlin):

The seneschal is a practical man, who knows trains do run late,

And a stolid one, who sees no reason to be glad about it.

He dispatches pages to posts at the tracks,

Doling out pennies for platform tickets,

Then walks past the station buffet with a dyspeptic snort,

Goes into the bar, checks the time again, orders a pint.

The patrons half turn—it's the fella from Camelot, innit?

And Kay chuckles soft to himself, and the Court buys a round.

He's barely halfway when a page tumbles in,

Seems the knights are arriving, on time after all,

So he tips the glass back (people stare as he guzzles),

Then plonks it down hard with five quid for the barman,

And strides for the doorway (half Falstaff, half Hotspur)

To summon his liveried army of lads.

* * *

Bors arrives behind steam, riding the cab of a heavy Mikado.

He shakes the driver's hand, swings down from the footplate,

And is like a locomotive himself, his breath clouding white,

Dark oil sheen on his black iron mail,

Sword on his hip swinging like siderods at speed.

He stamps back to the baggage car, slams mailed fist on steel door

With a clang like jousters colliding.

The handler opens up and goes to rouse another knight.

Old Pellinore has been dozing with his back against a crate,

A cubical, chain-bound thing with FRAGILE tags and air holes,

BEAST says the label, QUESTING, 1 the bill of lading.

The porters look doubtful but ease the thing down.

It grumbles. It shifts. Someone shouts, and they drop it.

It cracks like an egg. There is nothing within.

Elayne embraces Bors on the platform, a pelican on a rock,

Silently they watch as Pelly shifts the splinters,

Supposing aloud that Gutman and Cairo have swindled him.

A high-drivered engine in Northern Lines green

Draws in with a string of side-corridor coaches,

All honey-toned wood with stained glass on their windows.

Gareth steps down from a compartment, then Gaheris and Aggravaine,

All warmly tucked up in Orkney sweaters;

Gawaine comes after in Shetland tweed.

Their Gladstones and steamers are neatly arranged,

With never a worry—their Mum does the packing.

A redcap brings forth a curious bundle, a rude shape in red paper--

The boys did that one themselves, you see, and how does one wrap a unicorn's head?

They bustle down the platform, past a chap all in green.

He hasn't the look of a trainman, but only Gawaine turns to look at his eyes,

And sees written there Sir, I shall speak with you later.

Over on the first track, surrounded by reporters,

All glossy dark iron and brass-bound mystery,

The Direct-Orient Express, ferried in from Calais and Points East.

Palomides appears. Smelling of patchouli and Russian leather,

Dripping Soubranie ash on his astrakhan collar,

Worry darkening his dark face, though his damascene armor shows no tarnish,

He pushes past the press like a broad-hulled icebreaker.

Flashbulbs pop. Heads turn. There's a woman in Chanel black,

A glint of diamonds, liquid movements, liquid eyes.

The newshawks converge, but suddenly there appears

A sharp young man in a crisp blue suit

From the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits,

That elegant, comfortable, decorous, close-mouthed firm;

He's good at his job, and they get not so much as a snapshot.

Tomorrow's editions will ask who she was, and whom with...

Now here's a silver train, stainless steel, Vista-Domed,

White-lighted grails on the engine (running no extra sections)

The Logres Limited, extra fare, extra fine,

(Stops on signal at Carbonek to receive passengers only).

She glides to a Timkin-borne halt (even her grease is clean),

Galahad already on the steps, flashing that winning smile,

Breeze mussing his golden hair, but not his Armani tailoring,

Just the sort of man you'd want finding your chalice.

He signs an autograph, he strikes a pose.

Someone says, loudly, "Gal! Who serves the Grail?"

He looks—no one he knows—and there's a silence,

A space in which he shifts like sun on water;

Look quick and you may see a different knight,

A knight who knows that meanings can be lies,

That things are done not knowing why they're done,

That bearings fail, and stainless steel corrodes.

A whistle blows. Snow shifts on the glass shed roof. That knight is gone.

This one remaining tosses his briefcase to one of Kay's pages,

And, golden, silken, careless, exits left.

Behind the carsheds, on the business-car track, alongside the private varnish

Of dukes and smallholders, Persian potentates and Cathay princes

(James J. Hill is here, invited to bid on a tunnel through the Pennines),

Waits a sleek car in royal blue, ex-B&O, its trucks and fittings chromed,

A black-gloved hand gripping its silver platform rail;

Mordred and his car are both upholstered in blue velvet and black leather.

He prefers to fly, but the weather was against it.

His DC-9, with its video system and Quotron and waterbed, sits grounded at Gatwick.

The premature lines in his face are a map of a hostile country,

The redness in his eyes a reminder that hollyberries are poison.

He goes inside to put on a look acceptable for Christmas Court;

As he slams the door it rattles like strafing jets.

Outside the Station proper, in the snow,

On a through track that's used for milk and mail,

A wheezing saddle-tanker stops for breath;

A way-freight mixed, eight freight cars and caboose,

Two great ugly men on the back platform, talking with a third on the ballast.

One, the conductor, parcels out the last of the coffee;

They drink. A joke about grails. They laugh.

When it's gone, the trainman pretends to kick the big hobo off,

But the farewell hug spoils the act.

Now two men stand on the dirty snow,

The conductor waves a lantern and the train grinds on.

The ugly men start walking, the new arrival behind,

Singing "Wenceslas" off-key till the other says stop.

There are two horses waiting for them. Rather plain horses,

Considering. The men mount up.

By the roundhouse they pause,

And look at the locos, the water, the sand, and the coal,

The look for a long time at the turntable,

Until the one who is King says "It all seemed so simple, once,"

And the best knight in the world says "It is. We make it hard."

They ride on, toward Camelot by the service road.

The sun is winter-low. Kay's caravan is rolling.

He may not run a railroad, but he runs a tight ship;

By the time they unload in the Camelot courtyard,

The wassail will be hot and the goose will be crackling,

Banners snapping from their towers, fir logs on the fire, drawbridge down,

And all that sackbut and psaltery stuff.

Blanchefleur is taking the children caroling tonight,

Percivale will lose to Merlin at chess,

The young knights will dally and the damsels dally back,

The old knights will play poker at a smaller Table Round.

And at the great glass station, motion goes on,

The extras, the milk trains, the varnish, the limiteds,

The Pindar of Wakefield, the Lady of the Lake,

The Broceliande Local, the Fast Flying Briton,

The nerves of the kingdom, the lines of exchange,

Running to a schedule as the world ought,

Ticking like a hot-fired hand-stoked heart,

The metal expression of the breaking of boundaries,

The boilers that turn raw fire into power,

The driving rods that put the power to use,

The turning wheels that make all places equal,

The knowledge that the train may stop but the line goes on;

The train may stop

But the line goes on.

—John M. Ford (1957-2006), "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station" (1988). The poem is online in a couple of places, and printed in Heat of Fusion and Other Stories (2004).

all those books

And for today, a little bit of Nikki Giovanni:

This is my first memory:

A big room with heavy wooden tables that sat on a creaky

       wood floor

A line of green shades—bankers’ lights—down the center

Heavy oak chairs that were too low or maybe I was simply

       too short

              For me to sit in and read

So my first book was always big

In the foyer up four steps a semi-circle desk presided

To the left side the card catalogue

On the right newspapers draped over what looked like

       a quilt rack

Magazines face out from the wall

The welcoming smile of my librarian

The anticipation in my heart

All those books—another world—just waiting

At my fingertips

—Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943), "My First Memory (of Librarians)" from Acolytes, 2007. It's actually pretty weird that I've never posted this poem before, because it was my introduction to Nikki Giovanni, and I love it very much.

the branch, the iron blade

For April 19—yesterday—in honor of the news that Hadestown is COMING TO BROADWAY IN 2019, after a run at the National in London. I'm so excited? It's so good? Oh my god. Anyway, Rilke:

Rufe mich zu jener deiner Stunden,
die dir unaufhörlich widersteht:
flehend nah wie das Gesicht von Hunden,
aber immer wieder weggedreht,

wenn du meinst, sie endlich zu erfassen.
So Entzognes ist am meisten dein.
Wir sind frei. Wir wurden dort entlassen,
Wo wir meinten, erst begrüßt zu sein.

Bang verlangen wir nach einem Halte,
wir zu Jungen manchmal für das Alte
und zu alt für das, was niemals war.

Wir, gerecht nur, wo wir dennoch preisen,
Weil wir, ach, der Ast sind und das Eisen
Und das Süße reifender Gefahr.


Call me to the one among your moments
that stands against you, ineluctably:
intimate as a dog’s imploring glance
but, again, forever, turned away

when you think you’ve captured it at last.
What seems so far from you is most your own.
We are already free, and were dismissed
where we thought we soon would be at home.

Anxious, we keep longing for a foothold—
We, at times too young for what is old
and too old for what has never been;

doing justice only where we praise,
because we are the branch, the iron blade,
and sweet danger, ripening from within.

—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), II, 23 from The Sonnets to Orpheus, 1923, translated by Stephen Mitchell (New York: Vintage International, 1989).

carve into me with knives of light

I have been saying for years that one day, someday, I would post Anne Carson's "The Glass Essay," which is a truly exceptional and extraordinary poem. I haven't done so before because it's also a very long poem, but I think today is the day. "The Glass Essay" is a poem about loss and heartbreak and recovery, sex and poetry and family and Emily Brontë, and although it's not quite about grief in the way my April 5th grief poems usually are, I am posting it for both yesterday and today. I think it's long enough, and special enough, to count for two days.

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).

the soul's wicked cartridge

The first Rita Dove poem I ever posted, way back in 2009, was "Ludwig Van Beethovens' Return to Vienna" from Sonata Mulattica: A Life in Five Movements and a Short Play (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009). It's still one of my favorites, and although I've posted a whole lot of Rita Dove in the years since, I haven't been back to Sonata Mulattica since 2010. I bought a copy a couple of years ago, though, and it's time. To tell the truth, I really recommend just going and reading the whole book; but nevertheless, here is another one I love, for some of the same reasons:

I kneel, but not in sufferance, 
not in faith. There is a fulcrum
beyond which the bow tip wobbles;

no ardency nor forceful wrist
can make it sing. I am there,
at wit's balancing point. Music

pours through the blackened nave,
hollowing my bones to fit
the space it needs. It needs

so much of me, the soul's
wicked cartridge emptying
as fast as it fills. I kneel

because even the reed bends
before God's laughter
splits it, and the storm

moves on.

—Rita Dove (b. 1952), "Cambridge, Great St. Mary's Church" from Sonata Mulattica, 2009.

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. 

(now again)

Sometime in the last ten years, my copy of Anne Carson's gorgeous translation of Sappho, If Not, Winter (New York: Vintage, 2003)—which, it should probably be noted, I bought for a rather remarkable January-term class on Sappho and Catullus in 2004—disappeared. I don't know if I lost it in one of my many moves since, or loaned it to someone and never got it back, but it took me a long time to admit that it was probably gone for good. I finally replaced it this year, and that means it's time for Carson's Sappho. This is one of my favorite fragments (although it's hard to pick favorites; they're all pretty exceptional. Even fragment 176, lyre lyre lyre).

            ]

            ]work

            ]face

            ]

            ]

            if not, winter

            ]no pain

            ]

]I bid you sing

of Gongyla, Abanthis, taking up

your lyre as (now again) longing

            floats around you, 

you beauty. For her dress when you saw it

stirred you. And I rejoice. 

In fact she herself once blamed me

            Kyprogeneia

because I prayed

this word: 

I want

—Sappho (b. c. 615 BCE), fragment 22, translated by Anne Carson (b. 1950), from If Not, Winter (2003). In her introduction, Carson writes: "In translating I tried to put down all that can be read of each poem in the plainest language I could find, using where possible the same order of words and thoughts as Sappho did. I like to think that, the more I stand out of the way, the more Sappho shows through. This is an amiable fantasy (transparency of self) within which most translators labor" (x), and, later: 

When translating texts read from papyri, I have used a single square bracket to give an impression of missing matter, so that ] or [ indicates destroyed papyrus or the presence of letters not quite legible somewhere in the line. It is not the case that every gap or illegibility is specifically indicated: this would render the page a blizzard of marks and inhibit reading. Brackets are an aesthetic gesture toward the papyrological event rather than an accurate record of it. ... Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp—brackets imply a free sense of imaginal adventure. (xi)

I love a lot of things about Anne Carson, but perhaps my favorite is the poetic grace with which she approaches scholarly practice. It is an adventure.

verbs that move mountains

Courtesy of wintercreek, who (as always) has the best taste in poetry. I posted an Ingrid de Kok poem last year, and I kind of love her. This one gets under my skin.

Some stories don't want to be told.

They walk away, carrying their suitcases

held together with grey string.

Look at their disappearing curved spines.

Hunch-backs. Harmed ones. Hold-alls.

Some stories refuse to be danced or mimed,

drop their scuffed canes

and clattering tap-shoes,

erase their traces in nursery rhymes

or ancient games like blind man's buff.

And at this stained place words

are scraped from resinous tongues,

wrung like washing, hung on the lines

of courtroom and confessional,

transposed into the dialect of record.

Why still believe stories can rise

with wings, on currents, as silver flares,

levitate unweighted by stones,

begin in pain and move towards grace,

aerating history with recovered breath?

Why still imagine whole words, whole worlds:

the flame splutter of consonants,

deep sea-anemone vowels,

birth-cable syntax, rhymes that start in the heart,
and verbs, verbs that move mountains?

—Ingrid de Kok (b. 1951), "Parts of Speech," from Terrestrial Things (Cape Town: Kwela/Snail, 2002). 

shine forth, thou star of poets

Today is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, as well as his alleged birthday. There are a lot of celebrations happening, and I did think about a more creative poetry selection. But the truth is, this is still and always my favorite celebratory Shakespeare poem, however overplayed it might be, and however often I have posted it in years past.

To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor Muse can praise too much.
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For seeliest Ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind Affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty Malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin where it seem'd to raise.
These are as some infamous bawd or whore
Should praise a matron. What could hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them, and, indeed,
Above the ill-fortune of them, or the need.
I, therefore, will begin. Soul of the age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage,
My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room:
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses;
I mean, with great but disproportion'd Muses.
For, if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee, surely, with thy peers.
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence, to honour thee, I would not seek
For names; but call forth thund'ring Aeschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead
To life again, to hear thy buskin tread
And shake a stage; or when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone, for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth; or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain! Thou hast one to show
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or, like a Mercury, to charm.
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joy'd to wear the dressing of his lines,
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of Nature's family.
Yet must I not give Nature all! Thy art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the Poet's matter Nature be
His art doth give the fashion. And that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat
(Such as thine are), and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil, turn the same
(And himself with it), that he thinks to frame;
Or for the laurel he may gain a scorn!
For a good Poet's made as well as born;
And such wert thou! Look how the father’s face
Lives in his issue; even so, the race
Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turned and true-filed lines;
In each of which he seems to shake a lance
As brandish'd at the eyes of Ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our water yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take Eliza, and our James!
But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanc'd, and made a constellation there!
Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage
Or influence, chide, or cheer the drooping stage;
Which since thy flight from hence hath mourn'd like night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.

—Ben Jonson (1572-1637), "To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare: and What He Hath Left Us," prefatory poem to the First Folio of 1623 (and, speaking of the First Folio, check out the Folger Library's First Folio Tour, which includes a digital version).

fainting I follow

I spent today at a pretty great one-day conference sponsored by my department and organized by some of my colleagues. In the last talk, the speaker brought Frank O'Hara (1926-1966)—who, serendipitously, I posted yesterday—into conversation with Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)—who, serendipitously, I have only posted once before. This is not the Wyatt poem that was discussed in the talk, but it's one of the most famous, and up there among my favorites.

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, 

But as for me, hélas, I may no more. 

The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, 

I am of them that farthest cometh behind. 

Yet may I by no means my wearied mind 

Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore 

Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore, 

Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind. 

Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt, 

As well as I may spend his time in vain. 

And graven with diamonds in letters plain 

There is written, her fair neck round about: 

Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am, 

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

—Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542), "Whoso List to Hunt." 

There's a fairly widespread assumption that Wyatt wrote this poem about Anne Boleyn, which may or may not change a person's reading of the poem. Wyatt is widely credited (along with the Earl of Surrey and some others) with bringing the sonnet into English, and this is certainly a sonnet; it's also one of Wyatt's closest imitations of Petrarch, and can arguably be considered a (loose) translation of sonnet 190 from Petrarch's Canzoniere. Like a lot of poetry of the period, this poem appears in many different variant forms, punctuated in a variety of ways; I snagged this version from the good old Poetry Foundation and have preserved their punctuation and style choices, though they do not attribute their version. The poem was first published in Tottel's Miscellany in 1557. 

like those knowing flowers

I am trying to recuperate my sense of wonder and joy in what I do, today, so here is a poem about books and the people who love them. K. posted this poem yesterday, and reminded me how much I love it; plus, I think it's time for something from before 1700.

Bright books! the perspectives to our weak sights,
The clear projections of discerning lights,
Burning and shining thoughts, man’s posthume day,
The track of fled souls, and their milkie way,
The dead alive and busie, the still voice
Of enlarged spirits, kind Heaven’s white decoys!
Who lives with you lives like those knowing flowers,
Which in commerce with light spend all their hours;
Which shut to clouds, and shadows nicely shun,
But with glad haste unveil to kiss the sun.
Beneath you all is dark, and a dead night,
Which whoso lives in wants both health and sight.
     By sucking you, the wise, like bees, do grow
Healing and rich, though this they do most slow,
Because most choicely; for as great a store
Have we of books as bees of herbs, or more:
And the great task to try, then know, the good,
To discern weeds, and judge of wholesome food,
Is a rare scant performance. For man dyes
Oft ere ’tis done, while the bee feeds and flyes.
But you were all choice flowers; all set and dressed
By old sage florists, who well knew the best;
And I amidst you all am turned a weed,
Not wanting knowledge, but for want of heed.
Then thank thyself, wild fool, that wouldst not be
Content to know—what was too much for thee!

—Henry Vaughan (1621-1695), "To His Books."