So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

Two poems this week by British poet Stevie Smith (1902-1971), whose work initially struck me as a little slight, but upon further/closer reading, I now quite admire. These poems vary significantly in tone and though neither are in a recognizable, conventional form (like a sonnet), they both employ repetition to great effect. Smith is a perfect example of a poet that often writes with form without necessarily writing in form. (Forgive me for having form on the brain - I just pitched a formal poetry workshop to the Cambridge Center for Adult Education). Anyway, enjoy!

Not Waving But Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.


Valuable
(after reading two paragraphs in a newspaper)

All these illegitimate babies . . .
Oh girls, girls,
Silly little cheap things,
Why do you not put some value on yourselves,
Learn to say, No?
Did nobody teach you?
Nobody teaches anybody to say No nowadays,
People should teach people to say No.

O poor panther,
Oh you poor black animal,
At large for a few moments in a school for young children in Paris,
Now in your cage again,
How your great eyes bulge with bewilderment,
There is something there that accuses us,
In your angry and innocent eyes,
Something that says:
I am too valuable to be kept in a cage.

Oh these illegitimate babies!
Oh girls, girls,
Silly little valuable things,
You should have said, No, I am valuable,
And again, It is because I am valuable
I say, No.

Nobody teaches anybody they are valuable nowadays

Girls, you are valuable,
And you, Panther, you are valuable,
But the girls say: I shall be alone
If I say 'I am valuable' and other people do not say it of me,
I shall be alone, there is no comfort there.
No, it is not comforting but it is valuable,
And if everybody says it in the end
It will be comforting. And for the panther too,
If everybody says he is valuable
It will be comforting for him.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

A good friend of mine (and fellow Emerson poet) recently launched an online poetry journal: Interrupture. The first issue went live in February and contains some excellent poems. This one is by another Emerson graduate, the delightful Mary Kovaleski Brynes. She's been published in a number of places and is currently living in Spain. Anyway, I love how feverish this poem is -- I think the repetitions are well done and well placed, and the piece has a sensual rhythm, not to mention amazing images. Me likey (and hope you do, too).

Maybe This Happens to Everyone

When I woke, Paris was in flames.

I spent the day in bed while a man I loved

kissed my ankles, the white arches

of my feet, asked what made them,

and I told him it was the Sacre Cœur--

when a city is burning like that there’s no time

for lies. At night the flames were in my hair,

the flames were in his mouth and each street

unrolled like a long tongue that gave

us what we couldn’t understand,

only if we’d dance on the cobbles

they’d light up like the disco floors

of les Grands Boulevards, like the smooth-trodden

gravestones of popes inside the cathedral,

the martyrs emblazoned on the Bastille.

I don’t remember the Bastille.

It is impossible to remember the Bastille

when his hand is up my dress on the metro

and Paris is in flames. The trains

brought us in through a tunnel underwater:

the Chunnel was made of glass,

the train like a chain of dolphins linked end to end,

arching silver with the currents,

and we saw Humpbacks, eyes big as our train car,

slow and bovine—it took minutes to pass them.

Their whale eyes were looking at us—

everyone in Paris was looking at us.

We weren’t looking at anyone, and when we did

their faces were like mirrors and I loved

his strange watery reflection but kissed only him.

The trains came. The trains moved out

of the blue-glass station while we ate crepes Nutella

and called them crapes because we were Americans.

The trains came. The trains moved out.

Our train moved out.

We stayed. Paris lit and smoldered.

Maybe this was the beginning of the world again, maybe

it was the end—maybe this happens to everyone

in every city, even in small towns, where corn fields

catch fire at the end of summer

and teenagers tear off their clothes

and run naked through them, tempting

the flames with their flawless skin,

but it won’t brand them, won’t even singe,

no matter how hard they run.

O Muse, where art thou?

I'm officially in panic mode regarding my thesis. I have a ton of revisions to work on, plus new poems to generate in order to hit the magic number (48) required for me to get my degree. Sure, I could churn out some crap, but I'd know it and my thesis adviser would know it and while I might still get the piece of paper that says Master of Fine Arts on it, I'd feel like a schmuck, a charlatan.

So I'm calling on the powers of the blogosphere to help me summon my muse. Problem: I don't know what he/she/it looks like.

Eustache Le Sueur, "Clio, Euterpe and Thalia," ca. 1640

Is that what muses look like? If so, they need to get off their lazy asses and come inspire me.

Seriously though, as anyone who endeavors in the creative arts can attest, there is nothing more difficult than knowing you have to produce something RIGHT NOW. That's just not how the process works for most of us. I work well under pressure generally, but I can't just barf out a poem on command. If I do, it will be just that: barf.

I wish I knew more about my muse. Right now, I'm trying to read a bunch of poetry (as well as essays about poetry). I need to have poetry on the brain 24-7, to live, breathe, eat, sleep poetry. Poetry, poetry, poetry, salmon.

Shit. It's Restaurant Week in Boston, so I've been working a lot at Lineage, serving lots of salmon and explaining over and over again what duck confit rillette is. Unfortunately, the brain energy I use at work is antithetical to poem-writing. I wish I could say I'm scribbling sonnets on the backs of menus and discarded napkins, but in reality I'm probably thinking more about whether the woman at table 34 really has an allergy to garlic or is just a vampire, or if the couple awkwardly chatting at the bar is on a first Match.com date.

See? This post was supposed to be all about poetry and my muse and somehow, it got co-opted by other things. No wonder my muse wants nothing to do with me.

Thirty and Flirty and Thriving (?)

I've been listening to this song a lot lately -- "I Don't Feel Young" by Wye Oak, an indie folk group currently touring with the Decemberists.

As some of you know, I turned 30 on Tuesday. And it's true -- I don't feel young. This felt like a significant birthday. I was nothing but excited about it for the months leading up to it; I'm optimistic about the next decade and what it might hold. And yet, the day before my birthday, I suddenly felt a little panicked and sad. My 20s are over and what do I have to show for them?

Well, I don't have a great answer for that. But I don't think I wasted them entirely. I spent most of them in New York, the last few years in Boston. I've definitely had a lot of....adventures. I'll probably have some in my 30s, too. Also, according to my stepmom, in my 30s I am allowed to wear more outrageous outfits and larger jewelry.

And as for my gift to myself? I am actually doing none of the things I wrote about. Psych! However, the solo trip to Spain received the most votes and I am doing something similar -- I'm (hopefully, pending some scholarship money) going on a service trip to China for two weeks in July. I'll spend one week volunteering in a rural province outside of Shanghai and one week sightseeing in Beijing. I'm super excited about it and feel it's a great thing way to travel and also give something back.

In terms of the birthday itself, the day was largely uneventful. It started with my printer deciding to no longer work and almost making me late for a meeting. After my meeting I got a manicure, a fun new haircut and threw myself a party at Marliave, which was a blast. Friends from Lineage, Emerson, and Funkin' A! all represented. This weekend, I'm headed to New York to celebrate with college and post-college friends.

This blog is 2.5 years old and I'm 30. Hopefully, both are getting better with age. I'll conclude here with a great Kenneth Koch poem, a wistful and funny ode to the decade I just exited.

To My Twenties

How lucky that I ran into you
When everything was possible
For my legs and arms, and with hope in my heart
And so happy to see any woman
O woman! O my twentieth year!
Basking in you, you
Oasis from both growing and decay
Fantastic unheard of nine- or ten-year oasis
A palm tree, hey! And then another
And another (and water!)
I’m still very impressed by you. Whither,
Midst falling decades, have you gone? Oh in what lucky fellow,
Unsure of himself, upset, and unemployable
For the moment in any case, do you live now?
From my window I drop a nickel
By mistake. With
You I race down to get it
But I find there on
The street instead, a good friend,
X—- N——, who says to me
Kenneth do you have a minute?
And I say yes! I am in my twenties!
I have plenty of time! In you I marry,
In you I first go to France; I make my best friends
In you, and a few enemies. I
Write a lot and am living all the time
And thinking about living. I loved to frequent you
After my teens and before my thirties.
You three together in a bar
I always preferred you because you were midmost
Most lustrous apparently strongest
Although now that I look back on you
What part have you played?
You never, ever, were stingy.
What you gave me you gave whole
But as for telling
Me how best to use it
You weren’t a genius at that.
Twenties, my soul
Is yours for the asking
You know that, if you ever come back.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

Leave it to Robert Hass to write a gorgeous, painful lyrical poem about life and art and somehow work in the phrase "fucks in the ass." That's a neat trick. Clearly, the man's got cajones, not to mention mad talent.

Against Botticelli

1

In the life we lead together every paradise is lost.
Nothing could be easier: summer gathers new leaves
to casual darkness. So few things we need to know.
And the old wisdoms shudder in us and grow slack.
Like renunciation. Like the melancholy beauty
of giving it all up. Like walking steadfast
in the rhythms, winter light and summer dark.
And the time for cutting furrows and the dance.
Mad seed. Death waits it out. It waits us out,
the sleek incandescent saints, earthly and prayerful.
In our modesty. In our shamefast and steady attention
to the ceremony, its preparation, the formal hovering
of pleasure which falls like the rain we pray not to get
and are glad for and drown in. Or spray of that sea,
irised: otters in the tide lash, in the kelp-drench,
mammal warmth and the inhuman element. Ah, that is the secret.
That she is an otter, that Botticelli saw her so.
That we are not otters and are not in the painting
by Botticelli. We are not even in the painting by Bosch
where the people are standing around looking at the frame
of the Botticelli painting and when Love arrives, they throw up.
Or the Goya painting of the sad ones, angular and shriven,
who watch the Bosch and feel very compassionate
but hurt each other often and inefficiently. We are not in any
painting.
If we do it at all, we will be like the old Russians.
We’ll walk down through scrub oak to the sea
and where the seals lie preening on the beach
we will look at each other steadily
and butcher them and skin them.

2

The myth they chose was the constant lovers.
The theme was richness over time.
It is a difficult story and the wise never choose it
because it requires a long performance
and because there is nothing, by definition, between the acts.
It is different in kind from a man and the pale woman
he fucks in the ass underneath the stars
because it is summer and they are full of longing
and sick of birth. They burn coolly
like phosphorus, and the thing need be done
only once. Like the sacking of Troy
it survives in imagination,
in the longing brought perfectly to closing,
the woman’s white hands opening, opening,
and the man churning inside her, thrashing there.
And light travels as if all the stars they were under
exploded centuries ago and they are resting now, glowing.
The woman thinks what she is feeling is like the dark
and utterly complete. The man is past sadness,
though his eyes are wet. He is learning about gratitude,
how final it is, as if the grace in Botticelli’s Primavera ,
the one with sad eyes who represents pleasure,
had a canvas to herself, entirely to herself.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry: St. Louis edition!

Hello readers! Today's poem was written by a poet who has largely been forgotten/overlooked: Sara Teasdale. Teasdale was born in St. Louis (!) in 1884 and published her first collection of verse in 1907. At 23, she had already published a book of poems. Bitch.

Just kidding!

Anyway, Teasdale is on my radar because of the book I'm currently reading -- The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker. It's a novel narrated by a poet struggling to write an introduction to an anthology of rhyming poems. And Teasdale is one of his favorite rhyming poets. Like me, she's into forms. And she's from my hometown. We have so much in common, except that I am hoping to not kill myself by overdosing on barbiturates at age 49 like Sara did.

This poem appears first in her 1917 collection Love Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. I think it has a refreshingly positive/hopeful message, one very appropriate for looking ahead to a new year.

Barter

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder in a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

I'm pretty swamped with end-of-semester odds and ends, but wanted to post a poem I was recently introduced to by my workshop instructor, Gail Mazur. This piece originally appeared back in 1999 on Slate, a zine that deserves a shout-out for posting poems and generally acknowledging the existence/cultural relevance of poetry.

I am in awe of this poem. After reading it, I immediately filed it in the "damn, I wish I had written that" file. The final simile, in the last three lines, is especially amazing.

The Round-Up
by Karen Fish

What happened--old as the hills, ancient as the ax,
the horse, water in a clay cup, dirt under the fingernails.
The river forgets the fish and the winter sun slides
beyond the far hills. All of them had mothers, and all
the mothers sang while swimming and as the women sang
the birds left the trees which ringed the water
for the clouds where the distance whispered a different dream
than the dream dreaming this

dark afternoon. The men were boys not that long ago--
delicate, confident paddling alongside their mothers
through the hot afternoons.
The water dark green with splash and shout--
summer just a whistle and gone.
Of course, the night will still hold stars,
the moon's journey, the planet's orbit. There will
always be nests, branches, the swaying and the saying.
They have names and are men exactly like you
lined up in jackets, boots and caps--
cold with the waiting.

It is unbelievable, even some of the soldiers
begin to sob. Trucked out to no-where
are doctors, lawyers, plumbers, builders, bankers.
It is winter, snow rides the collapse of clouds.
There are just shades of brown and grey,
a line of trees--a dark scribble
like markings done by a child.

As each man is shot,
whether he drops backward
or to the side
he forgets us, his own name, this place,
civilization
like the kiss
in the evening at the lit threshold
whose intent was to swear return.

The ghazal: my white whale?

So this week I'm posting an example of a form that I have attempted, but failed miserably at completing: the ghazal, pronounced either "huzzle" or "guzzle," depending on whom you ask. For those of you familiar with my work, you know I love form and don't shy away from a challenge. But the ghazal makes all other forms --pantoums, sonnets, even villanelles-- look like nursery school Dr. Seuss bullshit.

The ghazal is very old, with the earliest examples in Arabic verse dating back to the 6th century. It's also incredibly difficult -- there is a refrain repeated at the end of every other line, as well as internal rhyme. And as if that wasn't hard enough, the poet is also supposed to "name" him or herself in the last couplet. Because of the formal requirements, ghazals rarely are narrative poems; the repetition makes it almost impossible to move any kind of story forward. Many operate associatively through images or rhetorical word play.

This ghazal takes some liberties with the rules -- the internal rhyme is inconsistent -- but it's still, I think, largely successful.

The Ghazal of What Hurt
by Peter Cole

Pain froze you, for years—and fear—leaving scars.
But now, as though miraculously, it seems, here you are

walking easily across the ground, and into town
as though you were floating on air, which in part you are,

or riding a wave of what feels like the world's good will—
though helped along by something foreign and older than you are

and yet much younger too, inside you, and so palpable
an X-ray, you're sure, would show it, within the body you are,

not all that far beneath the skin, and even in
some bones. Making you wonder: Are you what you are—

with all that isn't actually you having flowed
through and settled in you, and made you what you are?

The pain was never replaced, nor was it quite erased.
It's memory now—so you know just how lucky you are.

You didn't always. Were you then? And where's the fear?
Inside your words, like an engine? The car you are?!

Face it, friend, you most exist when you're driven
away, or on—by forms and forces greater than you are. 

Insight into the mind of a poet

Like many writers, I keep a journal. Several, actually. One for banal observations and whiny ramblings expected for the diary genre and then two others that I use for poetry/teaching/whatever else I need to write down when I'm at my desk (directions to restaurants, confirmation numbers). It's sometimes fun to flip through these hodgepodge notebooks and discover random things that I have no memory of writing. I recently came across this, well, list for lack of a better word. I'm guessing it was from a free writing exercise wherein I was trying to jumpstart my creativity. The "list" is as follows, verbatim:

rosebuds touching
a lonely harmonica
a patch of dead grass
unforgiving mailbox
where the wrist meets the hand
the second to last kiss
a church parking lot
flowers with the dirt still on them
zodiac sign language
selling individual balloons
a ballad, oversung
the worst sunset
a cracked pocket mirror
the Sunday newspaper
pewter souvenirs
not enough drum lessons
forgettable family dinners
steering wheel, too hot to touch
Tabasco sauce on everything
crowded aquariums
renting ice skates
one matinee too many


What does any of it mean? No clue. I really like "not enough drum lessons" and "unforgiving mailbox," though. And maybe I'll use "The Worst Sunset" as the title of my memoir. A lot of these would make great memoir titles (tell me you wouldn't buy A Ballad, Oversung: The Life and Times of Katie Vagnino). I don't think I ever wrote a poem or story incorporating anything from this list and the journal supports this: On the opposite page is a recipe for shrimp tacos that I remember copying from Real Simple.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

For this week's selection, I decided to go with two short poems I admire that happen to be very far from what I understand to be my own poetic style. One is by current Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, a woman known for her concise, almost Dickinsonian lyrics; she writes very small, condensed poems that are deceptively simple. The other is by Wendy Cope, whom many liken to Ryan as well as Gertrude Stein. Her poem has a lot of repetition and a risky rhetorical strategy, one that I think pays off.

Blunt
by Kay Ryan

If we could love
the blunt
and not
the point

we would
almost constantly
have what we want.

What is the
blunt of this
I would ask you

our conversation
weeding up
like the Sargasso.

Some More Light Verse
by Wendy Cope

You have to try. You see a shrink.
You learn a lot. You read. You think.
You struggle to improve your looks.
You meet some men. You write some books.
You eat good food. You give up junk.
You do not smoke. You don't get drunk.
You take up yoga, walk, and swim.
You don't know what to do. You cry.
You're running out of things to try.

You blow your nose. You see the shrink.
You walk. You give up food and drink.
You fall in love. You make a plan.
You struggle to improve your man.
And nothing works. The outlook's grim.
You go to yoga, cry, and swim.
You eat and drink. You give up looks.
You struggle to improve your books.
You cannot see the point. You sigh.
You do not smoke. You have to try.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

This poem by Robert Pinsky really needs no introduction and I'd be hard pressed to actually explain what I like about it. I like basically everything about it. It is incredibly simple, yet profound.

Samurai Song

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.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

I wish I had written a great love poem. I wish I had written a great poem, period. So far, I've written some poems that don't totally suck, but a great one? I have yet to write one. That's ok, that's why I'm in school, and I think someday, it might happen. I might write myself accidentally into a great poem.

This poem by Marilyn Hacker is great and about one of my favorite subjects -- love gone wrong. It's well-tread, familiar poetic territory but Hacker, with all her unexpected similes and images, makes it seem new. The first time I read the poem, I didn't pick up on the rhyme scheme -- that's how subtly and brilliantly it's incorporated. I know so many poets who are terrified to rhyme, worried about it sounding too Dr. Seuss or whatnot, but this poem is proof that when you pull it off, it can be incredible.

What I also relate to in this poem is the intensity of the relationship described -- intense, all-consuming love can be disastrous/toxic but for better or worse, I always crave it. When it comes to me and love, it's go big or go home.

But enough about me -- here's the poem.

Nearly a Valediction

You happened to me. I was happened to
like an abandoned building by a bull-
dozer, like the van that missed my skull
happened a two-inch gash across my chin.
You were as deep down as I've ever been.
You were inside me like my pulse. A new-
born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through
the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone,
swaddled in strange air I was that alone
again, inventing life left after you.

I don't want to remember you as that
four o'clock in the morning eight months long
after you happened to me like a wrong
number at midnight that blew up the phone
bill to an astronomical unknown
quantity in a foreign currency.
The U.S. dollar dived since you happened to me.
You've grown into your skin since then; you've grown
into the space you measure with someone
you can love back without a caveat.

While I love somebody I learn to live
with through the downpulled winter days' routine
wakings and sleepings, half-and-half caffeine-
assisted mornings, laundry, stock-pots, dust-
balls in the hallway, lists instead of longing, trust
that what comes next comes after what came first.
She'll never be a story I make up.
You were the one I didn't know where to stop.
If I had blamed you, now I could forgive

you, but what made my cold hand, back in prox-
imity to your hair, your mouth, your mind,
want where it no way ought to be, defined
by where it was, and was and was until
the whole globed swelling liquefied and spilled
through one cheek's nap, a syllable, a tear,
was never blame, whatever I wished it were.
You were the weather in my neighborhood.
You were the epic in the episode.
You were the year poised on the equinox.   

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

My friend and fellow writer Akshay Ahuja (read one of his stories here) lent me a copy of The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees last semester and I have just now gotten around to reading it. Kees is not as well known as perhaps he should be -- in the introduction to his Collected Poems, Donald Justice says that although some may consider him a "minor" poet, he is still a significant one. And hey, if Donald Justice is writing the introduction to your Collected Poems, you must have done something right.

Kees's poetry is pretty bleak -- his most anthologized sonnet, "For My Daughter," puts forth a pretty solid don't-have-kids argument. I thought since we're in the throes of hot, humid summer in Boston, I'd post this one instead; it's also depressing, but I really like the hybrid form (it's close to a villanelle, but decidedly not one). Enjoy and please don't slit your wrists (at least not on my watch).

The Beach in August

The day the fat woman

In the bright blue bathing suit

Walked into the water and died,

I thought about the human

Condition. Pieces of old fruit

Came in and were left by the tide.

What I thought about the human

Condition was this: old fruit

Comes in and is left, and dries

In the sun. Another fat woman

In a dull green bathing suit

Dives into the water and dies.

The pulmotors glisten. It is noon.

We dry and die in the sun

While the seascape arranges old fruit,

Coming in and the tide, glistening

At noon. A woman, moderately stout,

In a nondescript bathing suit,

Swims to a pier. A tall woman

Steps toward the sea. One thinks about the human

Condition. The tide goes in and goes out.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

I thought for this week it would be interesting to post two poems on the same subject: learning. One is by Brendan Constantine; it's called "1981" and was published last year in the journal Luvina. The other is by (gasp!) me. It's called "Learning Curve" and I wrote it last year. It was just published in Waterways.

(Note: For some reason, Blogger is not letting me format this the way I want -- so some of the line breaks are off. To read it correctly formatted, click here)

1981

I learned the word disaster meant against the stars,
learned it did not apply to this world; the sky intended
every cruelty. .....................
I watched the boy with no legs
draw pictures of feet for an hour in Study Hall. .........................................................In the hall
of my uncle’s rest home I heard the paper voice of a man
so old he’d forgotten he was blind. When a nurse passed
his door, he’d ask “Turn the lights on, would you?”

I learned sadness like a way home from school. I got in
later and later. Some nights I didn’t come back at all
but sat up waiting for myself. ..............................................
I passed Geography,
History, & Spanish for the last time. My cat died.
My dog turned grey. My physics teacher was hit
by an ambulance.
But I read a book & understood it.
A woman asked me to touch her body. I did. ......................
I wrote
my first poem. It said people were like moons. I believed
what I wrote, believed I had done all my writing, wouldn’t
do anymore. .....................
Then I believed a book that said the oleanders
behind our house were poison. All summer I dreamed
of meeting someone I could feed one brutal flower.


Learning Curve

I don’t remember learning how to wrap
a gift, who taught me how with steady hands
to tie the string around my fingers, curl
the ends. Tying shoelaces I’ll credit to Dad,
along with telling time and jokes, balancing
a checkbook, chopping onions without crying.
In fifth grade, Val showed me the way to run
a razor over my legs, said Watch out
around the ankles. French kissing: the honor
goes to a wiry boy whose name was James
or John. He slid his timid tongue across
my gums, placed his hand on my hairless knee.
You can break a promise and be forgiven
I learned from my mother, as well as how
to flirt while knotting a necktie around
your lover’s throat. Lying I picked up myself,
first small things like I’ve never felt this way
before, then bigger, hungrier untruths:
This glass will be my last; sex means nothing;
bruises are beautiful; I am not a poet.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Raymond Carver

The answer: alcoholism and short stories. Not poetry.

But Carver did write poetry. And his second wife, who is still alive, is poet Tess Gallagher. His verse, like his short fiction, is very narrative, drawing on colloquial diction and stark, realistic imagery. I find myself more of a fan of his fiction (especially his story "A Small Good Thing"), but I think it's interesting that he wrote and published successfully in both mediums. Anyway, I'll leave it to you to judge. Below is one of his more well-known poems and one that I do like; despite its brutality, I think it taps into something very true about creating art out of ugly or tragic things.

Your Dog Dies

it gets run over by a van.
you find it at the side of the road
and bury it.
you feel bad about it.
you feel bad personally,
but you feel bad for your daughter
because it was her pet,
and she loved it so.
she used to croon to it
and let it sleep in her bed.
you write a poem about it.
you call it a poem for your daughter,
about the dog getting run over by a van
and how you looked after it,
took it out into the woods
and buried it deep, deep,
and that poem turns out so good
you're almost glad the little dog
was run over, or else you'd never
have written that good poem.
then you sit down to write
a poem about writing a poem
about the death of that dog,
but while you're writing you
hear a woman scream
your name, your first name,
both syllables,
and your heart stops.
after a minute, you continue writing.
she screams again.
you wonder how long this can go on.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

Today's special: two poems for the price of one!

It's the last day of April, and glorious outside. Therefore instead of agonizing at my computer over which Dorianne Laux poem to post, I'm going to post two short ones. And then I'm going to get myself the hell outside to enjoy the day.

Dust

Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.
I knew I should make myself get up,
write it down, but it was late
and I was exhausted from working
all day in the garden, moving rocks.
Now, I remember only the flavor--
not like food, sweet or sharp.
More like a fine powder, like dust.
And I wasn't elated or frightened,
but simply rapt, aware.
That's how it is sometimes--
God comes to your window,
all bright light and black wings,
and you're just too tired to open it.


Aphasia
for Honeya

After the stroke all she could say
was Venezuela, pointing to the pitcher
with its bright blue rim, her one word
command. And when she drank the clear
water in and gave the glass back,
it was Venezuela again, gratitude,
maybe, or the word now simply
a sigh, like the sky in the window,
the pillows a cloudy definition
propped beneath her head. Pink roses
dying on the bedside table, each fallen
petal a scrap in the shape of a country
she'd never been to, had never once
expressed interest in, and now
it was everywhere, in the peach
she lifted, dripping, to her lips,
the white tissue in the box, her brooding
children when they came to visit,
baptized with their new name
after each kiss. And at night
she whispered it, dark narcotic
in her husband's ear as he bent
to listen, her hands fumbling
at her buttons, her breasts,
holding them up to the light
like a gift. Venezuela, she said.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

Lost love is a popular theme in poetry; all poets attempt to write about it at some point. Nothing quite sucker-punches you like reading a poem that perfectly captures the mess of emotions that often accompanies seeing an ex. This poem, by Jeffrey McDaniel, delivers said punch-in-the-gut. I'd say "enjoy" but "read it and weep" is more apt.

The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy

Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring that's landed on your finger, a massive insect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end of a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt in your voice under a blanket and said there's two kinds of women—those you write poems about and those you don't. It's true. I never brought you a bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed. My idea of courtship was tapping Jane's Addiction lyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M.,  whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I worked within the confines of my character, cast as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan of your dark side. We don't have a past so much as a bunch of electricity and liquor, power never put to good use. What we had together makes it sound like a virus, as if we caught one another like colds, and desire was merely a symptom that could be treated with soup and lots of sex. Gliding beside you now,  I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy,  as if I invented it, but I'm still not immune to your waterfall scent, still haven't developed antibodies for your smile. I don't know how long regret existed before humans stuck a word on it. I don't know how many paper towels it would take to wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the light of a candle being blown out travels faster than the luminescence of one that's just been lit,  but I do know that all our huffing and puffing into each other's ears—as if the brain was a trick birthday candle—didn't make the silence any easier to navigate. I'm sorry all the kisses I scrawled on your neck were written in disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of you so hard one of your legs would pop out of my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you'd press your face against the porthole of my submarine. I'm sorry this poem has taken thirteen years to reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skidding off the shoulder blade's precipice and joyriding over flesh, we'd put our hands away like chocolate to be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphy of each other's eyelashes, translated a paragraph from the volumes of what couldn't be said.