Man of the hour

This week, W.S. Merwin won his second Pulitzer prize in poetry for The Shadow Of Sirius. In general, Merwin is a fascinating creature: a child he wrote hymns (his father was a minister) and along with being a successful and highly prolific poet, he is a well-established translator of pretty much every other Romance language into English. Merwin is now in his 80's and lives in Maui where he is deeply involved in restoration of the tropical forests.














When You Go Away
by W.S. Merwin

When you go away the wind clicks around to the north
The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls
Showing the black walls
The clock goes back to striking the same hour
That has no place in the years

And at night wrapped in the bed of ashes
In one breath I wake
It is the time when the beards of the dead get their growth
I remember that I am falling
That I am the reason
And that my words are the garment of what I shall never be
Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy

Memory problems

Last night my husband quoted a line from one of my favorite e.e. Cummings poems and when I tried to remember more about the poem there was nothing there in my brain. It was like opening up a book you've read a hundred times to find it inexplicably blank. This whole inner monologue of panic came about because the poem has entered my life on more than one occasion, so it seems impossible that I could ever forget it.

Years ago, I'd say when I was in my early teens, I was channel surfing one random Saturday afternoon (a typically short and unrewarding process without cable and only about 10 channels to choose from, 3 of them being PBS) and settled on a random movie where a rather familiar-looking man brought a woman into a bookstore and insisted on buying her a book of poetry. A scene or two later a poem was recited via a voice-over and it just devastated me. But, when I went to a bookstore to find the poem, I couldn't remember the author or the title, just the fact that the words "rain" and "hands" appeared in it - not a lot to go on.

Naturally, I never found it and eventually forgot about both the movie and the poem. About 8 or so years later, my college roommate brought home a copy of Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters to watch for a class. Not only was that THE movie from years before - I recognized it instantly and was amazed to learn it was a Woody Allen movie I'd had such a reaction towards and that the random actor was Michael Caine (!) - but, best of all, there was that poem again. It still ranks among my happiest discoveries and reignited my interest in poetry. Since then the movie has also become a top favorite of mine, among Woody Allen's body of work and movies in general.

A few years later a soon-to-be lover sent me this poem to explain his intentions - the relationship was ultimately unsuccessful, but it was a very effective form of communication. And now, my husband likes to quote the last line to me (and I love hearing it from him) and I feel as though the movie, the poem and I have a long, shared history, much like I have with people.

From time to time it's necessary to explain the function of poetry to people due to its inaccessible qualities. Unlike novels or short stories, there isn't room for explanation - the reader has to trust her own feelings and create personal meaning, as opposed to struggling with what the poet wants to convey. This makes people nervous, understandably. So, I suppose that this example is as good a way as any to demonstrate how a poem can embed itself in a person, connecting the words on the page to experience, freezing a moment beyond rote, empty memorization.

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
by E. E. Cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

The Two-Headed Calf

Back when I didn't share an office this poem hung on my door.

Most people didn't notice it; a few read it and didn't even try to understand it. But a hopeful minority of visitors read it and smiled the same pained, but tickled smile that I always feel creep across my face when I read it.

The Two-Headed Calf by Laura Gilpin

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.

This is Amy at 32

My birthday was Thursday. I’ve always embraced aging – intellectual and emotional growth are important experiences – both fun and terrifying in the same way hallucinogens are. My twenties felt like a long, slow burn – thank fuck that’s over. Personally, I was well-warned, in the strangest of ways, about adolescence: 70’s era instructional videos, much like the pornographic movies of that period, are relatively honest, yet go about displaying this honesty in the most contrived fashion imaginable. I was fully prepared to menstruate, but everyone failed to mention that time between my first legal drink and the end of my third decade, other than the whole one can't rent a car until the age of 25, thing.

I’ve always had plenty of adult advice at my disposal, and often take much of it to heart, so why didn’t anyway pull me aside and say: “Hey, guess what? Your twenties will suck: fear and loathing, and pain. You’ll be at the bottom of the ladder, you’ll be broke, you’ll make questionable decisions, one after the next, after the next, after the next and you will behave this way until you get so sick of yourself that something either implodes or explodes. Once the smoke clears and coals turn grey, you’ll be in a better place.”

It’s not the pain, though, that bothers me, it’s the primal fear I have, we all have, about time and its expiration. Do any of us use our time well? I suppose the only thing to say has already been said by the Faces:

Poor young grandson, there’s nothing I can say
You’ll have to learn, just like me
And that’s the hardest way Ooh la la

Back in the physical world, we have a new couch. This is a fabulous and welcome thing and we even bought it at a fair price, but it also makes me feel settled. And this is, deep down, a little unsettling. There’s always something in me that longs to purge my belongings and move on. I don’t believe in fresh starts, but am energized by the experience of unpacking my life in a new places, the learning process is filled with discoveries and longing. At least, this is what I tell myself, regardless of the fact that my last big move was very difficult. The grass? Yes, it’s always greener over there, thanks fer askin!

April is rapidly come to an end, so I’m long overdue in posting a poem for you to ponder or at least scan and discard, maybe?

A Momentary Longing To Hear Sad Advice from One Long Dead
by Kenneth Koch

Who was my teacher at Harvard. Did not wear overcoat
Saying to me as we walked across the Yard
Cold brittle autumn is you should be wearing overcoat. I said
You are not wearing overcoat. He said,
You should do as I say not do as I do.
Just how American it was and how late Forties it was
Delmore, but not I, was probably aware. He quoted Finnegans Wake to me
In his New York apartment sitting on chair
Table directly in front of him. There did he write? I am wondering.
Look at this photograph said of his mother and father.
Coney Island. Do they look happy? He couldn't figure it out.
Believed Pogo to be at the limits of our culture.
Pogo. Walt Kelly must have read Joyce Delmore said.
Why don't you ask him?
Why don't you ask Walt Kelly if he read Finnegans Wake or not.
Your parents don't look happy but it is just a photograph.
Maybe they felt awkward posing for photographs.
Maybe it is just a bad photograph. Delmore is not listening
I want to hear him tell me something sad but however true.
Delmore in his tomb is sitting. People say yes everyone is dying
But here read this happy book on the subject. Not Delmore. Not that rueful man.



Koch (L) and Ginsburg (R), 1977

Poem, Day Two

Samurai Song by Robert Pinsky

When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.

When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.

When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.

When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.

When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.

When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.

Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.

April is the cruelest month, breeding/Lilacs out of dead land

April is National Poetry Month! In case you're wondering who's idea this was and why the month was so named, consult Academy of American Poets FAQ page for the historical background. Interested in harassing your friends and colleagues for thirty straight days? (I am!) Here's an idea:

Celebrate the second national Poem In Your Pocket Day on Thursday, April 30, 2009!

The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends on April 30, 2009.

Poems from pockets will be unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores.

Wow, right? I will hereby kick-off this momentous occasion by posting one of my favorite, all-time poems.

Steps by Frank O'Hara

How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left

here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days
(I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still
accepts me foolish and free
all I want is a room up there
and you in it
and even the traffic halt so thick is a way
for people to rub up against each other
and when their surgical appliances lock
they stay together
for the rest of the day (what a day)
I go by to check a slide and I say
that painting’s not so blue

where’s Lana Turner
she’s out eating
and Garbo’s backstage at the Met
everyone’s taking their coat off
so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers
and the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoes
in little bags
who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y
why not
the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won
and in a sense we’re all winning
we’re alive

the apartment was vacated by a gay couple
who moved to the country for fun
they moved a day too soon
even the stabbings are helping the population explosion
though in the wrong country
and all those liars have left the UN
the Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interest
not that we need liquor (we just like it)

and the little box is out on the sidewalk
next to the delicatessen
so the old man can sit on it and drink beer
and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day
while the sun is still shining

oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much

Mumblings, a love story

I’ve been living on the left side of the continent for almost 6 years now – having left Brooklyn for Alaska, then south to California’s bay area. At first I hated this state – the car culture, weird non-weather and lack of pizza was off-putting – but that has changed. I’m not interested in settling here, but do enjoy it. Technically hometown is in RI, but I never miss it; when I do it means I’m deeply depressed or agitated. I was eighteen when I moved to New York. As we crossed the Connecticut/New York state line, I looked around and noticed that every driver within view was black. I experienced a spasm of panic, not because I was afraid of black people – real, tangible cultural diversity was overwhelming. New York didn’t just mean more kinds of people, it meant people who didn’t know me and, even better, didn’t care to. Anonymity was a relief and the world cracked open around me; no one was watching. New York is moody and endlessly changing – just walking around made me feel like a small, pointless part of something enormous and beautiful. Feeling insignificant was liberation. The noise and chatter made the silent still moments more palpable and when it rained the city felt honest. I use the past tense, but these are qualities that still exist. The more critical of my formative growing happened there and I’ll always love it, the way we feel affection for former lovers; it became a part of me. Even the ugly things I did there have turned lustrous with time. I left in 2003 with no realistic plan to return. I was very sick. What you must understand about living in New York is balance. Urban life has its difficulties; when the good things cease to outnumber the difficulties, you must move or else everything closes in on you. Now I often find myself very homesick, but am not entirely willing to return – it’s unclear whether there would be anything to gain and there’s still so much space out here to change and different directions to take. Between visits I put myself there; there is music that puts me there, and sometimes it happens with the rain or the smell of urine. I can stand on busy corners, thinking of concrete and bodies, seeing other buildings and meaningful street signs that exist 3,000 miles away; and I remember to be human.