Meet Me In 811

Hello Friends —

So here’s a nice 40th birthday present: a Pulitzer Prize.

It’s official: At long last, a Pulitzer has been awarded to a poetry collection named after a David Bowie song. One of my favorite lines from Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars: Poems is, “A pair of eyes. The most remarkable lies.” — but I’m not lying to you:

Life on Mars: Poems really is named for a Bowie song.
The collection really was awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
And the announcement really was made on April 16, 2012, the poet’s 40th birthday.

I find this delightfully poetic. So, in celebration, an excerpt for you from sections 2 and 3 of Smith’s “Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?” (a poem titled after a line in a much later Bowie song, “Sound and Vision”).

Happy Birthday, Tracy K. Smith!
Enjoy, everyone.
— Ellen

DON’T YOU WONDER, SOMETIMES?

2.

He leaves no tracks. Slips past, quick as a cat. That’s Bowie
For you: the Pope of Pop, coy as Christ. Like a play
Within a play, he’s trademarked twice. The hours

Plink past like water from a window A/C. We sweat it out,
Teach ourselves to wait. Silently, lazily, collapse happens.
But not for Bowie. He cocks his head, grins that wicked grin.

Time never stops, but does it end? And how many lives
Before take-off, before we find ourselves
Beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?

The future isn’t what it used to be. Even Bowie thirsts
For something good and cold. Jets blink across the sky
Like migratory souls.

3.

Bowie is among us. Right here
In New York City. In a baseball cap
And expensive jeans. Ducking into
A deli. Flashing all those teeth
At the doorman on his way back up.
Or he’s hailing a taxi on Lafayette
As the sky clouds over at dusk.
He’s in no rush. Doesn’t feel
The way you’d think he feels.
Doesn’t strut or gloat. Tells jokes.

I’ve lived here all these years
And never seen him. Like not knowing
A comet from a shooting star.
But I’ll bet he burns bright,
Dragging a tail of white-hot matter
The way some of us track tissue
Back from the toilet stall. He’s got
The whole world under his foot . . .

Hello Friends —
I have very vivid memories from early childhood of flying — not memories of dreaming about flying, just memories of flying, just me and sky. I also love ridge trails deep in Tennessee. So you can see why C. Dale Young’s “The Vista” speaks to me — and, I hope, to some of you.
Enjoy.
Ellen

The Vista

Not tenderness in the eye but the brute need
to see accurately: over the ridge on a trail
deep in Tennessee, the great poet looked out and saw
the vista that confederate soldiers saw
as they rode over the edge rather than surrender.

I saw only the edge of the cliff side itself and then
estimated the distance down to the bottom
of the dirty ravine. This is what someone with wings
does when he knows he cannot fly: he measures
distance. I have spent far too much time

examining my wings in the bathroom mirror
after the shower’s steam has slowly cleared
from the medicine cabinet’s toothpaste-splattered glass:
grey, each feather just slightly bigger than a hawk’s.
The great poet said one might find a vista like this,

perhaps, once in a lifetime, but I didn’t understand
what he meant by this then. The wings, tucked
beneath a t-shirt, beneath my long-sleeve oxford,
the wings folded in along my spine, were irritated
by that humid air, itchy from the collected sweat from the hike.

I wasn’t paying attention, which is a sin I have since learned.
At 14, after the wings first erupted from my back,
I went up to the roof and tried to fly. Some lessons
can only be learned after earnest but beautiful failures.
My individual feathers are just slightly bigger than a hawk’s

feathers. But my wingspan is just about 8 feet. I’m a man,
and like men I measure everything. But vistas
make me nervous. And the great poet made me nervous.
And I knew then what I still know now, that I
was only seconds away from another beautiful failure.

For the curious: The great poet who makes C. Dale Young nervous may be Allen Tate (“Ode to the Confederate Dead”: “We shall say only the leaves / Flying, plunge and expire”). Tate in turn may have been made nervous by Donald Davidson (“The Last Charge”: “the blue waves of hills lap all the distance”), and Davidson in turn may have been made nervous by Lord Alfred Tennyson (“The Charge of the Light Brigade”: “All in the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred”). All of which is to say, every poet walks a delicate balance between the premise that every poem he could possibly think of to write has already been written, and has never been written.

Hi Friends —

Thanks for enduring a sadder poem-a-day yesterday, and here’s a sunnier poem to balance out your poetic intake.

My lovely neighbors Kristin and Jason pointed out to me the other day that April is National Grilled Cheese Month as well as National Poetry Month — and clearly these two celebrations were meant to be brought together.

At my new favorite diner-I’ve-never-been-to, the Pop Shop neighborhood soda foundation in Collingswood, New Jersey, owners Stink Fisher and Connie Correia Fisher serve up a speciality grilled cheese sandwich for each day of National Grilled Cheese Month — that’s 30 days, 30 different kinds of grilled cheese sandwiches — and they also run an accompanying Cheesy Poetry Contest. From my quick review of past year’s winners, I’d say any one of you has a great shot at cheesy poetry gold — so consider penning your own Ode to Grilled Cheese this weekend; I’d be happy to critique a draft for you before the submission deadline of April 26, 2012.

In the grand literary tradition of parody, retired professor Walt Howat offers the following Cheesy Poetry Contest entry, celebrating some of the Pop Shop’s 30 variations on the grilled cheese sandwich.

Lastly, while the selection of “American (cheese) the Beautiful” for a poem-a-day may be considered an endorsement of National Grilled Cheese Month more generally, please note that the opinions and views of American cheese expressed are those of the poet and do not necessarily reflect the views of this poem-a-day curator.

Bon Appétit.
Ellen

American (cheese) the Beautiful

Oh forest of flavors full of taste
I wander through your browned cliffs of bread
watching streams of cheese run without haste
through trees of tomatoes oh so red
past beautiful rocks of avocado
ridges of sweet bacon hard and lean
through the lushness of pesto meadow
and gourmet mustards that lie unseen
toward the lake of mozzarella glow
’round boulders of pickles gray and green
smelling the warm gold Jarlsberg blossoms
climbing o’er the focacia ridges
surrounded by the sharp cheddar mums
crossing juicy chicken slice bridges
past black olives parading like nuns
clouds of mayonnaise ever so dear
and amber waves of carm’lized un’yuns
tis April again grilled cheese is here
a forest of lush tastes for me to find
The Land of the Pop Shop draws me near
rich veins of flavors for me to mine.

Cheese also featured prominently in Poem-a-Day April 1, 2011.
The grilled cheese’s close relative, the peanut-butter sandwich, was celebrated for Poem-a-Day April 18, 2011.

Hello Friends —
When the immortal goddess of the moon falls in love with a mortal man of earth (named Endymion), the forces of light and dark, life and death, hope and despair play themselves out in four thousand lines of iambic couplets. You can think of Endymion as sort of like Star Wars, 1818-style — brought to you by a 23-year-old named John Keats.
Enjoy.
Ellen

I.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
‘Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.

Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us til they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o’ercast,
They always must be with us, or we die.

The Butterfly

those things
which you so laughingly call
hands are in fact two
brown butterflies fluttering
across the pleasure
they give
my body

[21 feb 71]

Hello Friends —

I hope you’re enjoying National Poetry Month so far! Thank you to everyone who has hit reply to a poem; I love hearing from you. For instance, you could write me back about why Nikki Giovanni gave this poem about butterflies (plural) the title “The Butterfly” (singular) in her 1972 collection My House.

As always, you can learn more about National Poetry Month at www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.

Cheers,
Ellen

Hello Friends —
Since a poem is missing, we’re going to catch up with a found poem by Charles Jensen. This form of poetry — deriving a poem from an existing work, like a newspaper article, by crossing out or removing some of the words — has seen a recent trendy resurgence of late, including zines like the Found Poetry Review devoted solely to found poetry.
Enjoy.
Ellen

Poem In Which Words Have Been Left Out

You have the right to remain
anything you can and will be.

An attorney you cannot afford
will be provided to you.

You have silent will.
You can be against law.
You cannot afford one.

You remain silent. Anything you say
will be provided to you.

The rights can and will be
against you. The right provided you.

Have anything you say be
right. Anything you say can be right.

Say you have the right attorney.
The right remain silent.

Be held. Court the one. Be provided.
You cannot be you.

For another poem derived from language in a famous Supreme Court case, see Kevin McFadden’s “It’s Smut.”

Hello Friends —
In his 1963 Fundamentals of Poetry, William Leahy selects Richard Armour’s “Money” to illustrate trochaic dimeter — meaning, four syllables per line with emphasis on the first and third syllables.
Enjoy.
Ellen

MONEY

Workers earn it,
Spendthrifts burn it,
Bankers lend it,
Women spend it,
Forgers fake it,
Taxes take it,
Dying leave it,
Heirs receive it,
Misers crave it,
Robbers seize it,
Rich increase it,
Gamblers lose it . . .
I could use it.

Hello Friends —

Can you believe it? All mine for only $4.50 today: a 1985 first edition of Marilyn Hacker‘s Assumptions, yellowed at the edges just enough to earn your respect for its age, but otherwise prestine, unmarked. It’s the kind of book that makes a point of letting you know with what care it was made — the pages thick and textured, the note about the typography (Garamond) as long as the poet’s biography on the final page. To make it even more special, the “advance praise” note on the back cover is from Adrienne Rich (who you’ll be hearing from later this month).

So, in celebration of this newest addition to my poetry shelves, a poem-a-day from that book that encourages you to unbind your lips, unwind your tongue, and read aloud:

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.

“Rune of the Finland Woman” by Marilyn Hacker was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 11, 2009.