April 2010

Poem-a-Day, April 21, 2010

Night Drive

Roadlight licks the night ahead, licks
the white line on night’s new hide, licks
the undulating blacktop flat, sticks its end-
less forking tongue out onward, flicks
itself at culvert, tree, passing truck, a sign
insisting heartbeats equal conscious life
(it may be) of someone’s (maybe my)
forever unborn child. I let the knife
of wind inside and sing A Whiter Shade of Pale,
no earthly reason why, and think of what
won’t be and who, and whether it be
speed, wind, song, or my mind’s roar
that drowns for once time’s slangy whine,
here comes hope to climb clear of before;
stillborn hope with desperate, Moro-reflex,
undead grip climbs right back up my neck,
raising each pointless, residual nape hair
in ancestral salute to an absence, to the air
that won’t question itself, won’t ever check
the moral rearview. I accelerate gamely,
wondering what makes me want to leave
each person, place and thing I learn to love.
What shoves me off again, racing insanely,
as if to the place that will always save
a place for me, a room that will contain
the kind of people who’d embrace the things
I’m still afraid I’m still afraid to face.

— J. Allyn Rosser, Poetry magazine (February 2010)

Poem-a-day, April 20: m&m&m&m

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

Hi Friends,

Did you know that “maggie and milly and molly and may” was initially “milly and molly and maggie and may”?

I memorized this poem so early in life, and have recited it in my head so many times, I think I had forgotten that all its elements were not always as they are. The most recent issue of American Poet arrived in my mailbox with a fascimile of one of Cummings’s drafts of “maggie and milly and molly and may” on the inside back cover — a refreshing reminder that this poem was labored over through countless drafts.

Cummings rewrote the final couplet 24 times — and that’s only the drafts we have on record. The last line remains unchanged, but variations of the second-to-last line in previous drafts include:

“and if laughing’s as crying as losing can be”
“and if losing’s as certain as having can be”
“for the grief of a child is a kite in a tree”
“and as nobody said with a smile to me”
“for as nobody knows but i and he”
“but nobody noticed a rusty key”

Hopefully you’ve caught by now that April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by sending out one poem per day for the duration of the month. You can learn more about National Poetry Month at www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.

Poems by E.E. Cummings were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 12, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 13, 2008; Poem-a-Day April 13, 2009; and Poem-a-Day April 13, 2011.

Poem-a-Day, April 19: ‘Twas brillig

Hi Friends,

It’s that time of year again! As many of you know, I am of the opinion that the poem “Jabberwocky” ought to be read, aloud, at least once a year — you can think of this practice as akin to the Queen’s practice of believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast each morning. And, look! It’s even trendy this year — Johnny Depp is doing it. I was quite delighted to find that Tim Burton had done what I would do if I were to make a movie about Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There (1872) — which is to make the entire movie about the poem “Jabberwocky.”

So, kids, it’s time to channel your inner Mad Hatter: I challenge you to read “Jabberwocky” aloud to someone else today. If you shy away from this challenge because you don’t know what half of the words mean, I refer you to Humpty Dumpty: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” With every poem, a reader in a sense chooses what you mean each of the poet’s words to mean. Reading “Jabberwocky,” especially out loud, simply requires you to make your choices of meaning more conscious acts. You could think of reading aloud as in a sense a minor form of translation — you are translating the written “Jabberwocky” into oral English. (Keith Lim has also compiled a lovely collection of translations of “Jabberwocky” — into languages ranging from Spanish and Japanese to C++ and Klingon.)

And, finally, a bonus poetrivia challenge for you — and there’s a prize! The scene where the Mad Hatter recites “Jabberwocky” in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is cut such that he skips which line(s) of the first two quatrains? First correct answer I receive, judged by email time stamp, will be awarded poetry in a can!, courtesy of Frankenmart.

Best,
Ellen

Jabberwocky

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought —
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One two! One two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 8, 2007.

Poem-a-Yesterday, April 18: a slip between letters

Hi Friends,
My apologies to those of you who spent all day yesterday eagerly awaiting an arrival in your inbox. Here is a “Letter” from Natasha Trethewey to me to you.
Best,
Ellen

LETTER

At the post office, I dash a note to a friend,
tell her I’ve just moved in, gotten settled, that

I’m now rushing off on an errand — except
that I write errant, a slip between letters,

each with an upright backbone anchoring it
to the page. One has with it the fullness

of possibility, a shape almost like the O
my friend’s mouth will make when she sees

my letter in her box; the other, a mark that crosses
like the flatline of your death, the symbol

over the church house door, the ashes on your forehead
some Wednesday I barely remember.

What was I saying? I had to cross the word out,
start again, explain what I know best

because of the way you left me: how suddenly
a simple errand, a letter — everything — can go wrong.

Poet Natasha Trethewey was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 16, 2009.

Poem-a-Day, April 17: Type B

Hi Friends,

I’ve had four nosebleeds in the past 24 hours, so I guess I have blood on the brain. Two of my favorite poems about blood are both by Sherman Alexie — “13/16,” which I’ve sent you before if you’ve been on this list awhile; and today’s poem-a-day, “Giving Blood.” Do you have a favorite blood poem?

April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. To learn more about National Poetry Month, visit www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets, where you can also subscribe to a more official-like poem-a-day list.

Best,
Ellen

Giving Blood

I need money for the taxi cab ride home to the reservation and
I need a taxi
because all the Indians left this city last night while I was sleeping
and forgot to tell me
so I walk on down to the blood bank with a coupon that guarantees
me twenty bucks a pint
and I figure I can stand to lose three or four pints but the
white nurse says no
you can only give up one pint at a time and before you can do that
you have to clear
our extensive screening process which involves a physical examination
and interview
which is a pain in the ass but I need the money so I sit down
at a wooden desk
across from the white nurse holding a pen and paper and she asks me
my name and I tell her
Crazy Horse and she asks my birthdate and I tell her it was probably
June 25 in 1876 and then she asks my ethnic origin and I tell her I’m an
Indian or Native American
depending on your view of historical accuracy and she asks me
my religious preference and I tell her I prefer to keep my
religion entirely independent
of my economic activities
and then she asks me how many sexual partners I’ve had and
I say one or two
depending on your definition of what I did to Custer and then
she puts aside her pen and paper
and gives me the most important question she asks me
if I still have enough heart
and I tell her I don’t know it’s been a long time but I’d like to
give it a try
and then she smiles and turns to her computer punches in my name
and vital information
and we wait together for the results until the computer prints
a sheet of statistics
and the white nurse reads it over a few times and tells me I’m
sorry Mr. Crazy Horse
but we’ve already taken too much of your blood
and you won’t be eligible
to donate for another generation or two.

“Giving Blood” by Sherman Alexie was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 24, 2008.
“13/16” by Sherman Alexie was featured for Poem-a-Day April 27, 2009.

Poem-a-Day, April 16: made of ash

Ash

The church in the forest
was built of wood

the faithful carved their names by the doors
same names as ours

soldiers burned it down

the next church where the first had stood
was built of wood

with charcoal floors
names were written in black by the doors
same names as ours

soldiers burned it down

we have a church where the others stood
it’s made of ash
no roof no doors

nothing on earth
says it’s ours

Hello Friends,

Today’s poem comes from the works of W.S. Merwin, who has been eschewing punctuation quite successfully in his poetry for over 50 years — except to dot his own initials.

“Ash” first appeared in his 1973 collection Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment, and is also included in his Selected Poems (1988). You can listen to Merwin read “Ash” to you himself during a great KQED radio interview from a few years ago. And you remember that website I told you about, the Academy of American Poets? They have some pretty neat videos of poets talking about poetry, including W.S. Merwin here.

In 1971, Merwin famously dedicated his Pulitzer Prize money to opposing the Vietnam War. He moved to Hawai’i in 1976 to study Zen Buddhism and currently lives on Maui, on a former pinapple plantation that he has labored to restore to its original rainforest state. He continues to write poetry, plays, memoirs, short and long prose, and translations and won the Pultizer Prize in Poetry again just last year.

Best,
Ellen

“Ash” by W.S. Merwin was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 7, 2007.
Poems by W.S. Merwin were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 17, 2008 and Poem-a-Day April 9, 2009.

April 14 & 15 poems-a-days: the speed of moonlight

Spring

Mother tried to take her life.
The icicles thawed.
The house, a wet coat
we couldn’t put back on.

Still, the garden quickened,
the fields were firm.
Birds flew from the woods’
fingertips. Among the petals

and sticks and browning fruit,
we sat in the grass and
bickered, chained daisies, prayed.
All that falls is caught. Unless

it doesn’t stop, like moonlight,
which has no pace to speak of,
falling through the cedar limbs,
falling through the rock.

Dress Rehearsal

Branches etch the film of ice
on the studio window. A crow looks in,
hopping and shrieking when I dance
in my black tutu, trimmed with silver.

The ballet master says, you are its mother.
But in a crow’s sky-knowing mind
could I be so misconstrued?
Out of the blackest

cold-wet air, the crow seems molded.
The stars will not wake up to guide it
back to the creek of shadows
where it was formed. Practice, practice.

I am smoke in darkness, climbing away
from a burning hut, in an otherwise empty field
on which the fire is slight and low,
and the rest of it is snow.

Hello Friends,

I love that these two poems by Chloë Honum appear side-by-side in the November 2009 issue of Poetry magazine.

The first line, “Mother tried to take her life,” escapes with the suddeness of a genie that can’t be put back in the bottle, and “Unless” hangs with an awesome sense of vertigo over a stanza break, giving a reader that glimpse into the moment of a child’s terror, staring down a fill-in-the-blank, the abyss of what didn’t happen. It’s the line about daisy chains that perhaps give us the best sense of the age at which the narrator is confronting this terror — that make the narrator small. And yet it’s that same line that sneaks a bit of comforting into this poem with that tiny two-letter subject “we”; this is not an “I” alone.

As for “Dress Rehearsal,” being side-by-side with “Spring” infuses the ballet master’s line “you are its mother” with that extra emphasis on the ignorance of adults who know not what they say — what “mother” might mean to this girl. The title “Dress Rehearsal” gets to take on shades of meaning a girl practicing to become a mother, a mother trying but not succeeding at the performance of an act. Falling, falling, practice, practice.

It amazes me, in the face of a work as widespread and vividly iconic as Poe’s “The Raven,” another poet in English can come along and write an entirely different poem about a crow appearing to her at a window — that is the magic of poetry; I just love that. And don’t even get me started on the perfect rhyme of that final tableau…

Ok, it’s late, and that’s all for now.

Best,
Ellen

Poem-a-Day, April 13: concentric shocks

The Shampoo
By Elizabeth Bishop

The still explosions on the rocks,
the lichens, grow
by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.
They have arranged
to meet the rings around the moon, although
within our memories they have not changed.

And since the heavens will attend
as long on us,
you’ve been, dear friend,
precipitate and pragmatical;
and look what happens. For Time is
nothing if not amenable.

The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where,
so straight, so soon?
—Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,
battered and shiny like the moon.

Poems by Elizabeth Bishop were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 3, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 6, 2008; and Poem-a-Day April 5, 2009.

Poem-a-Day, April 12: self-collecting power

The Snail

To grass, or leaf, or fruit, or wall,
The snail sticks close, nor fears to fall,
As if he grew there, house and all
Together.

Within that house secure he hides,
When danger imminent betides
Of storm, or other harm besides
Of weather.

Give but his horns the slightest touch,
His self-collecting power is such,
He shrinks into his house, with much
Displeasure.

Where’er he dwells, he dwells alone;
Except himself has chattels none,
Well satisfied to be his own
Whole treasure.

Thus, hermit-like, his life he leads,
Nor partner of his banquet needs,
And if he meets one, only feeds
The faster.

Who seeks him must be worse than blind,
(He and his house are so combin’d)
If, finding it, he fails to find
Its master.

Hi Friends,

Today’s poem shows the lighter side of British hymn-writer and poet William Cowper (1731-1800).

While delightful, I must make a note that “The Snail” is not the most scientifically accurate portrayal of the terrestrial gastropod. For example, Mr. Cowper clearly never had the benefit of watching the snail love scene from “Microcosmos” to contradict the popular belief that the solitary snail is satisified to be his own whole treasure.

As a reminder, April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by sending out one poem per day for the duration of the month. You can learn more about National Poetry Month at www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.

Best,
Ellen

Poem-a-Day, April 11: wet black arrow, long pink dangle

Benevolence

When my father dies and comes back as a dog,
I already know what his favorite sound will be:
the soft, almost inaudible gasp
as the rubber lips of the refrigerator door
unstick, followed by that arctic

exhalation of cold air;
then the cracking of the ice-cube tray above the sink
and the quiet ching the cubes make
when dropped into a glass.

Unable to pronounce the name of his favorite drink, or to express
his preference for single malt,
he will utter one sharp bark
and point the wet black arrow of his nose
imperatively up
at the bottle on the shelf,

then seat himself before me,
trembling, expectant, water pouring
down the long pink dangle of his tongue
as the memory of pleasure from his former life
shakes him like a tail.

What I’ll remember as I tower over him,
holding a dripping, whiskey-flavored cube
above his open mouth,
relishing the power rushing through my veins
the way it rushed through his,

what I’ll remember as I stand there
is the hundred clever tricks
I taught myself to please him,
and for how long I mistakenly believed
that it was love he held concealed in his closed hand.

— Tony Hoagland, Donkey Gospel (1998)

“Benevolence” by Tony Hoagland was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 5, 2007.