Meet Me In 811

Poem-A-Day April 28: I love and I love!

Hello Friends,

There are a variety of poetry and prose pieces devoted to imagining what animals think and say. Something I want you to notice about today’s poem from Samuel Taylor Coleridge is that “my Love” has no gender. Coleridge could as easily be writing about a male and female dove or this trio of eagles:

Eagles are not one of the birds poets have traditionally associated with love (perhaps due to their serious faces?), but they are a species that “mate for life” — behavior humans associate with love — returning to the same nest to produce and raise young with the same co-parent(s) year after year.

Not all the birds named in this poem mate for life, so whether he meant to or not, I like to think Coleridge is celebrating a variety of loves here, and not just long-term monogamous love.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Answer to a Child’s Question

Do you ask what the birds say? The Sparrow, the Dove,
The Linnet and Thrush say, “I love and I love!”
In the winter they’re silent—the wind is so strong;
What it says, I don’t know, but it sings a loud song.
But green leaves, and blossoms, and sunny warm weather,
And singing, and loving—all come back together.
But the Lark is so brimful of gladness and love,
The green fields below him, the blue sky above,
That he sings, and he sings; and for ever sings he—
“I love my Love, and my Love loves me!”

■

Poem-A-Day April 27: It is evening in the antiworld

Hello Friends,

Poetry might be most stereotypically associated with topics like Romance or Nature, but poems can also be found in genres like Comedy, Horror, or — in this case — Science Fiction.

A palindrome, as you may recall, is a word or phrase that is spelled the same both forwards and backwards — such as “kayak” or “Was it a car or a cat I saw?” Martin Gardner, the writer cited in the epigraph of today’s poem, also coined the term Semordnilap (palindromes spelled backward) to refer to a word that spells a different word in reverse — as in, stressed is the semordnilap of desserts.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Palindrome

There is less difficulty—indeed, no logical difficulty at all—in imagining two portions of the universe, say two galaxies, in which time goes one way in one galaxy and the opposite way in the other . . . Intelligent beings in each galaxy would regard their own time as “forward” and the time in the other galaxy as “backward.”
—Martin Gardner, in Scientific American

Somewhere now she takes off the dress I am
putting on. It is evening in the antiworld
where she lives. She is forty-five years away
from her death, the hole which spit her out
into pain, impossible at first, later easing,
going, gone. She has unlearned much by now.
Her skin is firming, her memory sharpens,
her hair has grown glossy. She sees without glasses,
she falls in love easily. Her husband has lost his
shuffle, they laugh together. Their money shrinks,
but their ardor increases. Soon her second child
will be young enough to fight its way into her
body and change its life to monkey to frog to
tadpole to cluster of cells to tiny island to
nothing. She is making a list:
Things I will need in the past
lipstick
shampoo
transistor radio
Sergeant Pepper
acne cream
five-year diary with a lock
She is eager, having heard about adolescent love
and the freedom of children. She wants to read
Crime and Punishment and ride on a roller coaster
without getting sick. I think of her as she will
be at fifteen, awkward, too serious. In the
mirror I see she uses her left hand to write,
her other to open a jar. By now our lives should
have crossed. Somewhere sometime we must have
passed one another like going and coming trains,
with both of us looking the other way.

■

“Palindrome” can be found in Alive Together: New and Selected Poems (1996) by Lisa Mueller.

Poem-A-Day April 26: It is I you have been looking for

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

■

Hello Friends,

“Kindness” can be found in Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (1995) by Naomi Shihab Nye — a poet who has been featured several times before, including:

Poem-A-Day April 8, 2017:
“Famous” by Naomi Shihab Nye

Poem-A-Day April 29, 2016:
“Burning the Old Year” by Naomi Shihab Nye

Poem-A-Day April 17, 2015:
“Making a Fist” by Naomi Shihab Nye

Poem-A-Day April 2, 2014:
“Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change” by Naomi Shihab Nye

I won’t say this about every single poem I’ve ever featured, but these four in particular are each very powerful and absolutely worth your time to give a read.

For another take on “you must lose things,” see also Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” — which I maybe didn’t explain that well in this post from 2008 (there’s so much more that could be said about this poem!), but here it is anyway.

Enjoy.
— Ellen

Poem-A-Day April 25: snakeskin

Autobiography of Eve

Wearing nothing but snakeskin
boots, I blazed a footpath, the first
radical road out of that old kingdom
toward a new unknown.
When I came to those great flaming gates
of burning gold,
I stood alone in terror at the threshold
between Paradise and Earth.
There I heard a mysterious echo:
my own voice
singing to me from across the forbidden
side. I shook awake—
at once alive in a blaze of green fire.

Let it be known: I did not fall from grace.

I leapt
to freedom.

■

Hello Friends,

Why has no one given Eve snakeskin boots before?! Thank goodness Ansel Elkins showed up to fix that for us.

I hope you’re enjoying poetry month!

— Ellen

Poem-A-Day April 24: That yellow line

Hello Friends —

You can listen to today’s poem-a-day instead of reading it: Andrea Gibson’s “Your Life” is available here.

Watch Andrea Gibson's Your Life on YouTube

Aside from being spoken word, “Your Life” harkens to another literary tradition: the letter to one’s younger self. This piece, particularly the ending lines, are also arguably a nod to Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day.”

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poem-A-Day April 23: Since it’s his birthday…

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

■

Hello Friends —

Happy Bard Day! April 23 is celebrated as the birthday of William Shakespeare. The Bard was supposedly born on this day in 1564 and also supposedly died on the exact same day 52 years later, April 23, 1616. The monologue above is from Act V, scene 5 of Macbeth, when Macbeth learns of Lady Macbeth’s death.

Ever wonder how Shakespeare was able to stay in perfect iambic pentameter so much of the time? Well, it certainly didn’t hurt that he made up over 1,700 of the words he used — often taking known words and twisting them into new parts of speech; noun into verb, verb into adjective, etc. — so that they fit into his syllabic structure. In addition to individual words, Shakespeare also coined many phrases we still use today.

Other literary works that derive their titles from just this one Shakespeare passage include “Out, Out —” by Robert Frost and The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner.

Whether it’s today’s selection or “Jabberwocky” (those of you who have been on this list a few years!) or another piece that speaks to you, I strongly encourage you to pick a poem to read out loud to someone else, at least once a year, and consider learning it by heart. When you’ve memorized a poem, no one can ever take it away from you. Even locked in a dark cell. Or stranded on a deserted island. Or in the last syllable of recorded time.

Memorization is why we invented rhyme and meter and poetry itself in the first place! So an orator could travel from place to place and recite a piece, or one generation could pass on a story to the text. The first poems were never written down; they were all oral and committed to memory, aided by patterns in rhythm and sound we now call poetry. That memorization skill is a bit of a lost art — but I still think one of the most poetic things you can do is to memorize a poem.

Shakespeare indicates in many places he understands the power of words to outlive their authors. While his character Macbeth says in this passage “and then is heard no more,” it’s possible or even likely Shakespeare dreamed and aspired toward a world in which these very words were heard over and over again, even after his own death. You could argue Shakespeare believed the opposite of what this, one of his most famous passages, actually says. This passage may be more about conveying thoughts and feelings that many people have experienced, about how existence feels sometimes — rather than making fundamental claims about the nature of existence. Did Shakespeare in his wildest dreams ever imagine his words would last 450 years, or that they would be performed every single day, not only in England but around the world? Probably not. But here we are.

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

Poem-A-Earth-Day April 22: a favorite child of the universe

the earth is a living thing

is a black shambling bear
ruffling its wild back and tossing
mountains into the sea

is a black hawk circling
the burying ground circling the bones
picked clean and discarded

is a fish black blind in the belly of water
is a diamond blind in the black belly of coal

is a black and living thing
is a favorite child
of the universe
feel her rolling her hand
in its kinky hair
feel her brushing it clean

■

“the earth is a living thing” can be found in The Book of Light (1993) by Lucille Clifton.

Poem-A-Day April 21: My dog wants a bite of my peanut butter

Theories About the Universe

I am trying to see things in perspective.

My dog wants a bite of my peanut butter
chocolate chip bagel. I know she cannot have this,
because chocolate makes dogs very sick.
Madigan does not understand this.
She pouts and wraps herself around my leg
like a scarf, trying to convince me to give her
just a tiny bit. When I do not give in,
she eventually gives up and lays in the corner
under the piano, drooping and sad.
I hope the universe has my best interest in mind
like I have my dog’s. When I want something
with my whole being, and the universe withholds it
from me, I hope the universe thinks to herself,

Silly girl. She thinks this is what she wants,
but she does not understand how it will hurt.

■

“Theories About the Universe” appears in Blythe Baird’s collection If My Body Could Speak (2019), which you can purchase from Button Poetry here.

Poem-A-Day April 20: Saguaro

Hello Friends,

Today’s poem is especially for my family back in Arizona. The saguaro is not a tree; it’s a cactus. But we’re reading James Wright for his poetry skills, not his plant taxonomy skills. For context: bear in mind while reading this piece that shadows, anything that gives shade, are an especially big deal in a desert.

Enjoy.
Ellen

To the Saguaro Cactus Tree in the Desert Rain

I had no idea the elf owl
Crept into you in the secret
Of night.

I have torn myself out of many bitter places
In America, that seemed

Tall and green-rooted in mid-noon.
I wish I were the spare shadow
Of the roadrunner, I wish I were
The honest lover of the diamondback
And the tear the tarantula weeps.
I had no idea you were so tall
And blond in moonlight.
I got thirsty in the factories,
And I hated the brutal dry suns there,
So I quit.

You were the shadow
Of a hallway
In me.

I have never gone through that door,
But the elf owl’s face
Is inside me.

Saguaro,
You are not one of the gods.
Your green arms lower and gather me.
I am an elf owl’s shadow, a secret
Member of your family.

■

Poem-A-Day April 19: I am pure onion.

Monologue for an Onion

I don’t mean to make you cry.
I mean nothing, but this has not kept you
From peeling away my body, layer by layer,

The tears clouding your eyes as the table fills
With husks, cut flesh, all the debris of pursuit.
Poor deluded human: you seek my heart.

Hunt all you want. Beneath each skin of mine
Lies another skin: I am pure onion—pure union
Of outside and in, surface and secret core.

Look at you, chopping and weeping. Idiot.
Is this the way you go through life, your mind
A stopless knife, driven by your fantasy of truth,

Of lasting union—slashing away skin after skin
From things, ruin and tears your only signs
Of progress? Enough is enough.

You must not grieve that the world is glimpsed
Through veils. How else can it be seen?
How will you rip away the veil of the eye, the veil

That you are, you who want to grasp the heart
Of things, hungry to know where meaning
Lies. Taste what you hold in your hands: onion-juice,

Yellow peels, my stinging shreds. You are the one
In pieces. Whatever you meant to love, in meaning to
You changed yourself: you are not who you are,

Your soul cut moment to moment by a blade
Of fresh desire, the ground sown with abandoned skins.
And at your inmost circle, what? A core that is

Not one. Poor fool, you are divided at the heart,
Lost in its maze of chambers, blood, and love,
A heart that will one day beat you to death.

■

Hello Friends,

“Monologue for an Onion” by Suji Kwock Kim (a former Stegner Fellow! Go Stanford!) is an outstanding example of a persona poem — a dramatic monologue in which the poet takes on the voice of a historical figure, a fictional character, or sometimes even an inanimate object.

I want you to think about this though: Why do we have a special term for “persona poem” in the first place? When you read a novel written in the first person, do you automatically assume that “I” means “I,” and you’re reading about the actual life of the novelist? Probably not, unless the cover claims it’s an autobiography, right? When a fiction writer uses the first person, it’s not typically called a “persona novel” or a “persona short story;” it’s just called a short story or a novel.

But when we read poems, a lot of us do assume “I” means “I” — that we’re reading about the actual experiences of the poet. There’s a whole genre of confessional poetry that reinforces and plays on this notion, using the first person to draw the reader in even closer to deeply personal emotions. A lot of us may also have used “I” to mean “I,” writing about our own experiences during our first attempts to write poetry as a child or a teenager.

I’m here to break it to you that, even when a poem is based on personal experience, “I” doesn’t automatically mean “I” anymore than it means an onion. “I” is typically a narrative device the poet thoughtfully chose, just like a novelist does. There are lots of poems based on personal experiences that are not in the first person, and there are lots of poems written in first person that are not autobiographical.

So: Do you think a persona is one of the “veils” Suji Kwock Kim refers to?: You must not grieve that the world is glimpsed / Through veils. How else can it be seen?

Or is a persona a way of ripping away veils?: How will you rip away the veil of the eye, the veil // That you are, you who want to grasp the heart / Of things, hungry to know where meaning / Lies. Notice the line break at “Lies” — and how even though the sentence starts with “How will” it does not end in a question mark.

Perhaps the persona is both — you are ripping away one set of veils you are used to, but ultimately just swapping them for another set of veils. And that’s the closest we can get to any “fantasy of truth” — comparing veils upon veils upon veils. Is that a “union”? I think of the “you” in this poem as a scientist. What do you think? Should scientists, perhaps particularly people working on algorithms and artificial intelligence, read more poems?

I hope you’re enjoying poetry month so far! Happy Friday.

— Ellen