Meet Me In 811

Hello Friends,

Happy Friday, and I hope you’re enjoying National Poetry Month!

I don’t know that I’ve ever read a poem with just one “hidden” meaning the reader was meant to “unlock.” But I do know one poem you can read with a key — from the Scottish poet Robin Robertson, first printed in a January 2000 issue of The New Yorker.

A very happy birthday to Dara today, who showed me the locks and keys of Kraków this past fall —

Enjoy,
Ellen

 

Wedding the Locksmith’s Daughter

The slow-grained slide to embed the blade
of the key is a sheathing,
a gliding on graphite, pushing inside
to find the ribs of the lock.

Sunk home, the true key slots to its matrix;
geared, tight-fitting, they turn
together, shooting the spring-lock,
throwing the bolt. Dactyls, iambics—

the clinch of words—the hidden couplings
in the cased machine. A chime of sound
on sound: the way the sung note snibs on meaning

and holds. The lines engage and marry now,
their bells are keeping time;
the church doors close and open underground.

Moonlight Night: Carmel

Tonight the waves march
In long ranks
Cutting the darkness
With their silver shanks,
Cutting the darkness
And kissing the moon
And beating the land’s
Edge into a swoon.

Hello Friends,

It gives me shivers to think Langston Hughes once stood exactly where I’ve stood, looking out over the same magic landscape that is the beach after dark in Carmel, California. Today’s poem-a-day is from the 1959 edition of his Selected Poems — though several of his poems were first published in the Carmel Pine Cone.

Do you have a poem like that — one that makes you shiver with recognition of a path you walked or shoes you wore?

— Ellen

Gather

Some springs, apples bloom too soon.
The trees have grown here for a hundred years, and are still quick
to trust that the frost has finished. Some springs,
pink petals turn black. Those summers, the orchards are empty
and quiet. No reason for the bees to come.

Other summers, red apples beat hearty in the trees, golden apples
glow in sheer skin. Their weight breaks branches,
the ground rolls with apples, and you fall in fruit.

You could say, I have been foolish. You could say, I have been fooled.
You could say, Some years, there are apples.

 

Hello Friends,

Happy National Poetry Month!

It’s that time of year again: 30 days, 30 poems, 30 poets, hand-gathered and delivered fresh to your inbox by yours truly for the duration of the month.

No prior poetry experience is required to enjoy this poem-a-day list! So feel free to spread a little poemlove around this April: Pass along an apple, or other fruits you find here, to friends and loved ones.

Have you been April’s fool? Was it worth it?

Poet Rose McLarney has, as she shares in today’s poem-a-day selection “Gather” from her 2012 collection The Always Broken Plates of Mountains. What other poems or poets do you hear gathered between her lines?

Cheers,
Ellen

The Wish

Remember that time you made the wish?

I make a lot of wishes.

The time I lied to you
about the butterfly. I always wondered
what you wished for.

What do you think I wished?

I don’t know. That I’d come back,
that we’d somehow be together in the end.

I wished for what I always wish for.
I wished for another poem.

Hello Friends —

April 2014’s final poem-a-day is by Louise Glück from her collection Meadowlands (1996). A recap of the month in poems can be found here, including sources for each day’s poem — in case you’re interested in reading more from a particular poet or two whose words may have stuck with you this month.

Thank you again for partaking in my own little celebration of National Poetry Month. And if you’re ever looking for a recommendation or advice on a poem or poet during some other the month of the year, you know where to find me…

In 811,
Ellen

“The Wish” was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 30, 2007.
Poet Louise Glück was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 12, 2008.

Hello Friends —

In today’s poem, the Filipino poet Alfred “Krip” Yuson uses humor, juxtaposition, and some brilliant line breaks to celebrate aspects of Pop aesthetics while simultaneously imagining the patronizing that Andy Warhol’s (real-life) Filipina maids endured.

Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, a new generation of “help” continue to serve Warhol and his definitions of “art” to this day.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Andy Warhol Speaks to His Two Filipina Maids

Art, my dears, is not cleaning up
after the act. Neither is it washing off
grime with the soap of fact. In fact
and in truth, my dears, art is dead

center, between meals, amid spices
and spoilage. Fills up the whitebread
sweep of life’s obedient slices.

Art is the letters you send home
about the man you serve. Or the salad
you bring in to my parlor of elites.
While Manhattan stares down at the soup

of our affinities. And we hear talk of coup
in your islands. There they copy love
the way I do, as how I arrive over and over

again at art. Perhaps too it is the time
marked by the sand in your shoes, spilling
softly like rumor. After your hearts I lust.
In our God you trust. And it’s your day off.

Hello Friends,
My hope is that by this point in the month of poetry, not all poems read to you like they were written in another language, some special code. Today’s subject, however, is “code poetry.”
Enjoy.
Ellen

Poem in CSS:
Capsized By Zak Kain

.ocean {
    color: cornflowerblue;
    pitch: high;
    overflow: visible;
}

.boat {
    color: firebrick;
    transform: rotate(94deg);
    float: none;
}

.rescue-team {
    visibility: visible;
}

.crew {
    widows: none;
}

Poem in Python:
A Pythonic Lament By Mike Widner

'''
The circumstances
'''
def bemoan():
        print('Alas!')
our_lives_must = ['end']
the_suffering = [True]        # Read as "the suff'ring"
she = 'loves you'
love = 'a string of memories'
alone = bemoan
alas = alone

'''
The lament
'''
for poetry in the_suffering:
        bemoan()
for variables in our_lives_must:
        pass
if None and 1 or 1 and None:
        alone()
if love.split() or she.replace('you', ''):
        alas()
try:
        the_suffering.escape() and love.admit()
except:
        for one_day in our_lives_must:
                quit()

Poem in Java:
ThatGirl By Ian Holmes

import java.Object.*

public class ThatGirl {
  public SomethingBetter main() {
    return whatYouFound;
  }
}