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The Unknown Citizen

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

---

Hello Friends,

Congrats to those of you who got your taxes finished on time this year — I don’t know about you, but I’d take Auden over an Audit any day.

“The Unknown Citizen” comes from W.H. Auden‘s 1940 collection Another Time, and is also included in his Collected Poems (2007). For more on the poem as Marble Monument, see William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

Best,
Ellen

“The Unknown Citizen” by W.H. Auden was featured again for Poem-a-Day April 1, 2010.

What the Angels Left

At first, the scissors seemed perfectly harmless.
They lay on the kitchen table in the blue light.

Then I began to notice them all over the house,
at night in the pantry, or filling up bowls in the cellar

where there should have been apples. They appeared under rugs,
lumpy places where one would usually settle before the fire,

or suddenly shining in the sink at the bottom of soupy water.
Once, I found a pair in the garden, stuck in turned dirt

among the new bulbs, and one night, under my pillow,
I felt something like a cool long tooth and pulled them out

to lie next to me in the dark. Soon after that I began
to collect them, filling boxes, old shopping bags,

every suitcase I owned. I grew slightly uncomfortable
when company came. What if someone noticed them

when looking for forks or replacing dried dishes? I longed
to throw them out, but how could I get rid of something

that felt oddly like grace? It occurred to me finally
that I was meant to use them, and I resisted a growing compulsion

to cut my hair, although, in moments of great distraction,
I thought it was my eyes they wanted, or my soft belly

—exhausted, in winter, I laid them out on the lawn.
The snow fell quite as usual, without any apparent hesitation

or discomfort. In spring, as I expected, they were gone.
In their place, a slight metallic smell, and the dear muddy earth.

---

Hello Friends,

When compulsion pulls farther and farther away from perfectly harmless, I like to return to what the angels left on page 5 of Marie Howe‘s 1987 collection The Good Thief.

I am celebrating National Poetry Month by emailing out my own selection of one poem per day through April 30. To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

Enjoy.
Ellen

“What The Angels Left” by Marie Howe was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 28, 2007.

Rune of the Finland Woman

She could bind the world’s winds in a single strand.
She could find the world’s words in a singing wind.
She could lend a weird will to a mottled hand.
She could wind a willed word from a muddled mind.

She could wend the wild woods on a saddled hind.
She could sound a wellspring with a rowan wand.
She could bind the wolf’s wounds in a swaddling band.
She could bind a banned book in a silken skin.

She could spend a world war on invaded land.
She could pound the dry roots to a kind of bread.
She could feed a road gang on invented food.
She could find the spare parts of the severed dead.

She could find the stone limbs in a waste of sand.
She could stand the pit cold with a withered lung.
She could handle bad puns in the slang she learned.
She could dandle foundlings in their mother tongue.

She could plait a child’s hair with a fishbone comb.
She could tend a coal fire in the Arctic wind.
She could mend an engine with a sewing pin.
She could warm the dark feet of a dying man.

She could drink the stone soup from a doubtful well.
She could breathe the green stink of a trench latrine.
She could drink a queen’s share of important wine.
She could think a few things she would never tell.

She could learn the hand code of the deaf and blind.
She could earn the iron keys of the frozen queen.
She could wander uphill with a drunken friend.
She could bind the world’s winds in a single strand.

---

Hello Friends,

Marilyn Hacker‘s single strand “She could…” can be found binding “Rune of the Finland Woman” in her 1985 collection Assumptions, and included in her Selected Poems: 1965-1990.

To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

Enjoy.
Ellen

waiting on the mayflower, iii. march 1770 (excerpt)

that night, crispus attucks
dreamed. how he’d attacked

his would-be master and fled
in wild-eyed search of self-

determination. discarded
virginia on the run and ran

out of breath in salt-scented
boston. found there, if not

freedom, fearlessness. a belief
in himself that racked things

with the uncontrolled power
of the muscular atlantic, power

to cradle, to capsize. awoke
angry again at the planter

who’d taken him for a mule
or a machine. had shouldered

a chip the size of concord
by the time the redcoat dared

to dare him. died wishing he’d
amassed such revolutionary

ire in virginia. died dreaming
great britain was the enemy.

---

Hello Friends,

Today’s re-imagining of American Revolutionary War hero Crispus Attucks comes to us courtesy of Evie Shockley in her 2006 collection half-red sea.

To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Hey Friends,

Remember that day when there was no poem-a-day? That was a bummer. In my defense, I was consumed by an entity that can only be described by Lord Alfred Tennyson:

---

The Kraken

Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

---

Tennyson did not invent the kraken — the creature had already been around in folklore for some time — but his poem is regarded as the quintessential description. Only 21 years old at the time “The Kraken” was published, Tennyson enjoyed the rare privilege of living to be an immensely popular and revered poet in his own lifetime.

Bonus points to anyone who finds or writes and sends me another poem that uses the word “polypi.”

To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

Best,
Ellen

The Shirt

The shirt touches his neck
and smoothes over his back.
It slides down his sides.
It even goes down below his belt—
down into his pants.
Lucky shirt.

---

Hello Friends,

Lucky you — Today’s poem is by Jane Kenyon from her 1978 collection From Room to Room. Other shirt poems I’m fond of include “Shirt” by Robert Pinsky and this shirt from Threadless.

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, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

Enjoy.
Ellen

“The Shirt” by Jane Kenyon was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 22, 2007.

Rose Colored City

When Jennifer & I
       near the Ross Island
              Bridge pass the two

young men in matching
       black combat boots
              & white tee-shirts

beneath suspenders
       that blaze an X on
              their backs,

I see them first as partners,
       taking a late evening walk,
              like us, locked arm

to arm, charmed by park
       lamps & floral pathways
              then well-up with pride,

glorying in the picture
       our generation makes,
              & I think what passes

between us, lust holier
       than war & lovelooks tinged
              with righteousness

could fertilize a new & supreme
       race, but then, White Power,
              Sister, & I snap out of

my reverie & remember
       the sound of History & blood,
              & look over my shoulder

& sneer my long, teasing
       black smile & say,
              Yeah right, White Power

to which they spill out
       of each other’s arms &
              stomp, cursing, heads

bald as trophies in gold
       streetlight, & we set off
              to crossing the avenue,

a soft jog that breaks
       to a sprint, far away to
              our separate lives.

---

Hi Friends,

Major Jackson‘s “Rose Colored City” is featured in American Poet Magazine, volume 35 (fall 2008).

Was this poem easier to understand once you knew the narrator’s race, gender and sexual orientation? How far into the poem did it take you to ascertain those perspective traits?

How important are an author’s headshot and bio on the back of a poetry collection or a novel for you as a reader? Is it possible to read a poem without making assumptions about both the writer’s and the narrator’s gender? Is it possible to pass a silhouette in a park late at night without making assumptions about a peron’s gender or race?

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. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.

To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

Enjoy.
Ellen