what’s underneath


Hello Friends,

If when you go caving, you start to wonder what it is like to be a cave, and then you put it into words, then you are probably a poet.

One of the things I love best about today's poem from Ada Limón is that it ends with a beginning that could be the beginning of so many things — a cave, a mountain, a journey, a game, a test, a poetry month.

I hope you enjoy.
Ellen

Notes on the Below

—For Mammoth Cave National Park

Humongous cavern, tell me, wet limestone, sandstone caprock,
          bat-wing, sightless translucent cave shrimp,

this endless plummet into more of the unknown,
                    how one keeps secrets for so long.

All my life, I've lived above the ground,
          car wheels over paved roads, roots breaking through concrete,
and still I've not understood the reel of this life's purpose.

Not so much living, but hovering without sense.

What's it like to be always night? No moon, but a few lit up
          circles at your many openings. Endless dark, still time
must enter you. Like a train, like a green river?

Tell me what it is to be the thing rooted in shadow.
          To be the thing not touched by light (no that's not it)
to not even need the light? I envy; I envy that.

Desire is a tricky thing, the boiling of the body's wants,
          more praise, more hands holding the knives away.

I've been the one who has craved and craved until I could not see
          beyond my own greed. There's a whole nation of us.

To forgive myself, I point to the earth as witness.

To you, your Frozen Niagara, your Fat Man's Misery,
          you with your 400 miles of interlocking caves that lead
only to more of you, tell me,

what it is to be quiet, and yet still breathing.

          Ruler of the Underlying, let me
speak to both the dead and the living as you do. Speak
to the ruined earth, the stalactites, the eastern small-footed bat,

to honor this: the length of days. To speak to the core
          that creates and swallows, to speak not always to what's
shouting, but to what's underneath asking for nothing.

I am at the mouth of the cave. I am willing to crawl.

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Ada Limón's "Notes on the Below" was featured for Poets.org Poem-a-Day series on November 29, 2016. Ada Limón was also featured for Meet Me in 811's Poem-A-Day April 7, 2016.

A Perfect Mess


Hello Friends!

Welcome to National Poetry Month! It's hard to believe it was ten years ago today that I started my own poem-a-day list to celebrate these 30 days with 30 poems by 30 poets. And ten years later, I still can't wait to do it all over again.

No prior poetry experience is required to enjoy this poem-a-day list! So feel free to invite friends and family to join you in this little poetry month celebration. Just send me an email, or sign up through the blog meetmein811.org — where you can also find an archive of the past ten years of poem-a-days.

I didn't plan out this year's poetry month as much as I sometimes do, so in some sense the best I can hope for is a "perfect mess" — which is what today's poem by Mary Karr is about. Karr finds the poetry in everyday items like umbrellas and pianos to paint a beautiful portrait of not just New York City but our collective humanity.

Enjoy.
Ellen

A Perfect Mess

I read somewhere
that if pedestrians didn't break traffic laws to cross
Time Square whenever and by whatever means possible,
          the whole city
would stop, it would stop.
Cars would back up to Rhode Island,
an epic gridlock not even a cat
could thread through. It's not law but the sprawl
of our separate wills that keeps us all flowing. Today I loved
the unprecedented gall
of the piano movers, shoving a roped-up baby grand
up Ninth Avenue before a thunderstorm.
They were a grim and hefty pair, cynical
as any day laborers. They knew what was coming,
the instrument white lacquered, the sky bulging black
as a bad water balloon and in one pinprick instant
it burst. A downpour like a fire hose.
For a few heartbeats, the whole city stalled,
paused, a heart thump, then it all went staccato.
And it was my pleasure to witness a not
insignificant miracle: in one instant every black
umbrella in Hell's Kitchen opened on cue, everyone
still moving. It was a scene from an unwritten opera,
the sails of some vast armada.
And four old ladies interrupted their own slow progress
to accompany the piano movers.
each holding what might have once been
lace parasols over the grunting men. I passed next
the crowd of pastel ballerinas huddled
under the corner awning,
in line for an open call—stork-limbed, ankles
zigzagged with ribbon, a few passing a lit cigarette
around. The city feeds on beauty, starves
for it, breeds it. Coming home after midnight,
to my deserted block with its famously high
subway-rat count, I heard a tenor exhale pure
longing down the brick canyons, the steaming moon
opened its mouth to drink from on high...

■

Mary Karr's "A Perfect Mess" appeared in Poetry Magazine, December 2012.

last poem

Hello Friends,

Well, it’s been quite the month! You’ve read a sonnet, villanelle, pantoum, limerick, terza rima, eulogy, couplets, tercets, quatrains, pocket poems, poems in translation, and plenty of free verse. You’ve read poems from the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s, and 2000s. You’ve read poems by Latina poets, Black poets, Asian poets, Native American poets, and queer poets. Not bad for thirty days!

The last word this month goes to Ken Mikolowski — I will leave you with a poem from his 1991 collection Big Enigmas.

Thank you again for joining me in a celebration of poetry this month.
Ellen

Nothing

can replace
poetry
in my life
and one day
surely
it will

■

So much of any year is flammable

Burning the Old Year

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

■

Today’s poem is by the Palestinian American poet Naomi Shihab Nye. For another take on “things I didn’t do,” see W.S. Merwin’s “Something I’ve not done.”

the sweet, sane calm

Hello Friends,
Today’s poem is a rare case of writing by a 19th-century African American woman that has survived for us to read today. Alice Dunbar-Nelson published her first poetry collection when she was only 20 years old and already a college graduate (but not yet married to her first of three husbands, the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar). Appropriately for today’s poem, Dunbar-Nelson is interred in Delaware very near Carney’s Point, and her papers are collected by the University of Delaware.
Enjoy.
— Ellen

The Lights at Carney’s Point

O white little lights at Carney’s Point,
        You shine so clear o’er the Delaware;
When the moon rides high in the silver sky,
        Then you gleam, white gems on the Delaware.
Diamond circlet on a full white throat,
        You laugh your rays on a questioning boat;
Is it peace you dream in your flashing gleam,
        O’er the quiet flow of the Delaware?

And the lights grew dim at the water’s brim,
        For the smoke of the mills shredded slow between;
And the smoke was red, as is new bloodshed,
        And the lights went lurid ‘neath the livid screen.

O red little lights at Carney’s Point,
        You glower so grim o’er the Delaware;
When the moon hides low sombrous clouds below,
        Then you glow like coals o’er the Delaware.
Blood red rubies on a throat of fire,
        You flash through the dusk of a funeral pyre;
Are there hearth fires red whom you fear and dread
        O’er the turgid flow of the Delaware?

And the lights gleamed gold o’er the river cold,
        For the murk of the furnace shed a copper veil;
And the veil was grim at the great cloud’s brim,
        And the lights went molten, now hot, now pale.

O gold little lights at Carney’s Point,
        You gleam so proud o’ver the Delaware;
When the moon grows wan in the eastering dawn,
        Then you sparkle gold points o’er the Delaware.
Aureate filagree on a Croesus’ brow,
        You hasten the dawn on a gray ship’s prow.
Light you streams of gold in the grim ship’s hold
        O’er the sullen flow of the Delaware?

And the lights went gray in the ash of day,
        For a quiet Aurora brought a halcyon balm;
And the sun laughed high in the infinite sky,
        And the lights were forgot in the sweet, sane calm.

■

Culture and the Universe

Hello Friends,
The poetry of Simon J. Ortiz is rooted in the oral traditions of the Acoma Pueblo Indians — so you may want to read today’s poem out loud. “Culture and the Universe” can be found in Ortiz’s 2002 collection Out There Somewhere.
Enjoy.
— Ellen

Culture and the Universe

Two nights ago
in the canyon darkness,
only the half-moon and stars,
only mere men.
Prayer, faith, love,
existence.

We are measured

by vastness beyond ourselves.
Dark is light.
Stone is rising.

I don’t know
if humankind understands
culture: the act
of being human
is not easy knowledge.

With painted wooden sticks
and feathers, we journey
into the canyon toward stone,
a massive presence
in midwinter.

We stop.

Lean into me.
The universe

sings in quiet meditation.

We are wordless:

I am in you.

Without knowing why
culture needs our knowledge,
we are one self in the canyon.

And the stone wall

I lean upon spins me
wordless and silent
to the reach of stars
and to the heavens within.

It’s not humankind after all
nor is it culture
that limits us.
It is the vastness
we do not enter.
It is the stars
we do not let own us.

■

Miley Cyrus or Manatee?

Hello Friends,
Today I am sharing my favorite poem to encompass both celebrity culture and Sirenia. The poet responsible is James Reidel.
Enjoy.
— Ellen

Miley Cyrus or Manatee?

What is flat and nothing but skin,
What lolls in a shallow world,
What is watched for its surface,
Between long episodes of water the color of a dead screen’s sea-green glass,
What has but a few hairs in the snapshot?
A bit of muzzle,
No more than a pug’s worth for a rented red kayak,
For this sailor swallowed by enormous wax lips,
What is gray and aporial,
Once mistaken for half girl,
Half monster,
Disappointingly naked and slipping under the hull.

— Lido Beach, Fla., November 2013

■

Heart to Heart

Hello Friends,
Sometimes we describe a thing best by saying what it is not. Today’s poem by Rita Dove is one of those cases.
Enjoy.
— Ellen

Heart to Heart

It’s neither red
nor sweet.
It doesn’t melt
or turn over,
break or harden,
so it can’t feel
pain,
yearning,
regret.

It doesn’t have
a tip to spin on,
it isn’t even
shapely—
just a thick clutch
of muscle,
lopsided,
mute. Still,
I feel it inside
its cage sounding
a dull tattoo:
I want, I want—
but I can’t open it:
there’s no key.
I can’t wear it
on my sleeve,
or tell you from
the bottom of it
how I feel. Here,
it’s all yours, now—
but you’ll have
to take me,
too.

■

but a little moment

Hello Friends, and Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare! In honor of the Bard, today’s poem-a-day is Sonnet 15. Read this and then tell me “engraft” isn’t the best word you’ve heard all day. — Ellen

When I consider everything that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheered and check’d even by the selfsame sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory;
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay
To change your day of youth to sullied night;
And all in war with Time for love of you,
As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

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