Author: tgifreytag

Between Prose and Poetry

Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

■

— Howard Nemerov, Sentences (1980)

See also Emily Dickinson’s “They shut me up in Prose – “.

so approximate

Hello Friends,

Today’s poem about the distance between words and what they mean appeared in the May 2013 issue of Poetry magazine and is also included in Rick Barot’s award-winninig 2016 collection Chord.

You can listen to the poet read his poem here.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Tarp

I have seen the black sheets laid out like carpets
under the trees, catching the rain

of olives as they fell. Also the cerulean brightness
of the one covering the bad roof

of a neighbor’s shed, the color the only color
inside the winter’s weeks. Another one

took the shape of the pile of bricks underneath.
Another flew off the back of a truck,

black as a piano if a piano could rise into the air.
I have seen the ones under bridges,

the forms they make of sleep. I could go on
this way until the end of the page, even though

what I have in my mind isn’t the thing
itself, but the category of belief that sees the thing

as a shelter for what is beneath it.
There is no shelter. You cannot put a tarp over

a wave. You cannot put a tarp
over a war. You cannot put a tarp over the broken

oil well miles under the ocean.
There is no tarp for that raging figure in the mind

that sits in a corner and shreds receipts
and newspapers. There is no tarp for dread,

whose only recourse is language
so approximate it hardly means what it means:

He is not here. She is sick. She cannot remember
her name. He is old. He is ashamed.

■

Acquainted with the Night

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in the rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

■

Hello Friends,

It is extremely difficult to write a poem this deceiving simple! Today’s sonnet by Robert Frost is an example of terza rima — written in iambic pentameter and following an interlocking ABA BCB CDC DAD AA rhyme scheme. Much like Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Acquainted with the Night” is typically interpreted to have both literal and metaphorical layers of meaning.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poems by Robert Frost were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 26, 2012, Poem-a-Day April 28, 2010, Poem-a-Day April 30, 2008, and Poem-a-Day April 16, 2007.

Long Finger Poem

Hello Friends,
Since finger length has come up as a topic in our current presidential race, it seemed appropriate to share with you this work by Jin Eun-Young, translated by Peter Campion.
Enjoy.
Ellen

Long Finger Poem

I’m working on my poems and working with

my fingers not my head. Because my fingers

are the farthest stretching things from me.
Look at the tree. Like its longest branch

I touch the evening’s quiet breathing. Sounds

of rain. The crackling heat from other trees.

The tree points everywhere. The branches can’t

reach to their roots though. Growing longer they

grow weaker also. Can’t make use of water.
Rain falls. But I’m working with these farthest stretching

things from me. Along my fingertips bare shoots
of days then years unfurl in the cold air.

■

hurtling towards

The Leash

After the birthing of bombs of forks and fear,
the frantic automatic weapons unleashed,
the spray of bullets into a crowd holding hands,
that brute sky opening in a slate metal maw
that swallows only the unsayable in each of us, what’s
left? Even the hidden nowhere river is poisoned
orange and acidic by a coal mine. How can
you not fear humanity, want to lick the creek
bottom dry to suck the deadly water up into
your own lungs, like venom? Reader, I want to
say, Don’t die. Even when silvery fish after fish
comes back belly up, and the country plummets
into a crepitating crater of hatred, isn’t there still
something singing? The truth is: I don’t know.
But sometimes, I swear I hear it, the wound closing
like a rusted-over garage door, and I can still move
my living limbs into the world without too much
pain, can still marvel at how the dog runs straight
toward the pickup trucks break-necking down
the road, because she thinks she loves them,
because she’s sure, without a doubt, that the loud
roaring things will love her back, her soft small self
alive with desire to share her goddamn enthusiasm,
until I yank the leash back to save her because
I want her to survive forever. Don’t die, I say,
and we decide to walk for a bit longer, starlings
high and fevered above us, winter coming to lay
her cold corpse down upon this little plot of earth.
Perhaps, we are always hurtling our body towards
the thing that will obliterate us, begging for love
from the speeding passage of time, and so maybe
like the dog obedient at my heels, we can walk together
peacefully, at least until the next truck comes.

■

Hello Friends,

Today’s poem by Ada Limón was originally published as the Academy of American Poets poem-a-day on January 1, 2016. For another great dog moment in poetry, see Mark Doty’s “Golden Retrievals” (1998).

I hope you’re enjoying poetry month!
Ellen

put a food stamp on this poem and eat it.

Hello Friends,

I’m going to cheat a little bit today and send you a series of short poems (instead of just one poem) by my favorite street poet, Julia Vinograd. These excerpts are from her collection Berkeley Street Cannibals: Selected Poems, 1969-1976.

Enjoy.
Ellen

SPRING

There’s coke
in the spoon
of June.

■

GRAFFITTI

Bathrooms inspire me.
I write my best poems
with my pants down.

■

BOREDOM

We repeat ourselves
helplessly
like hiccups.

■

WIFE

She hangs his laundry
out to dry
between her thighs.

■

THE F.B.I.

Not even lovers
look so close
and see so little.

■

HITCH-HIKING

Couples don’t stop.
They have their own problems.

■

HARD TIMES

put a food stamp on this poem
and eat it.

■

STREET MORALITY

Everything is permitted,
but nothing is taken seriously.

■

WHAT NOW?

We’ve forgotten the rules
we were trying to break.

■

Poet Julia Vinograd was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 25, 2011, Poem-a-Day April 12, 2009, and Poem-a-Day April 20, 2007.

invincible

Anthem

We were all in love
but didn’t know it.
We were all in love
continually. Bless
our little hearts,
smoking and drinking
and wrecking things.
Bless our shameless shame.
We were loud, invincible.
We were tough as rails.
We stole street signs
and knocked over bins.
Ripped the boards
off boarded-up stuff.
Slept in towers
filled with pigeon shit
and fluff. We kicked
beer bottles down
cobbled lanes.
Tires and chains.
Chains and wheels
and skin. The world
was always ending
and we the inventors
of everything.

■

— Melissa Stein

Thanks

Hello Friends,

Since yesterday’s poem-a-day was about giving, today’s poem-a-day will cover saying thank you. The remarkable poet W.S. Merwin manages to convey his meaning without using punctuation, not just in today’s poem but in nearly his entire 50+ years worth of work.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Thanks

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is

■

Poems by W.S. Merwin were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 16, 2010; Poem-a-Day April 9, 2009; Poem-a-Day April 17, 2008; and Poem-a-Day April 7, 2007.

We give because

Hello Friends,

Below is my favorite fundraising-related poem. Notice that the inaugural state poet laureate of Arizona, Alberto Ríos, uses couplets throughout this piece but ends with a single line — making today’s poem-a-day similar to yesterday’s poem-a-day in terms of form.

Enjoy.
Ellen

When Giving Is All We Have

One river gives
Its journey to the next.

We give because somebody gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

■

Poet Alberto Ríos was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 22, 2014.