It's Poem On Your Blog Day, to mark the end of National Poetry Month. The original idea was to post about your favourite poem and link to a bio and/or other work by the same poet. I don't have a favourite poem, and for the rest I'm pressed for time as always so I'll just point to this post about AE Stallings, my favourite contemporary poet.

But I feel bad not posting any verse at all, so here's one I've been meaning to put up:




The Love-Song of Vice-Chancellor Prufrock; or, Prufrock Among The Students

Not the least of T.S. Eliot's
contributions to literature is
the opportunity for gratuitious
parody afforded by 'Prufrock'.
Senza tema d'infamia...

Let us go, then, you and I,
When the campus is spread out beneath the sky
Like a student stupefied by a timetable;
Let us pass by certain half-deserted rooms
Wherein, one just assumes,
Some course on T.S. Eliot drones on;
Pass by the roses, ornaments and ponds,
The fountains, gardens and the sculptured hedges
(Where, along the edges,
Poorer students have been known to make their homes)—
The grounds this time of year are just exquisite;
Let us go and make our visit.

Through the windows student faces peer,
Desperate for passing-grades and beer.

The greasy smog that drips from eaves
And eats away the drains...
The greasy smog that settles down and leaves
My Beemer stained...

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that oozes from the labs,
Etching black streaks down the sandstone walls,
For all the corpses on the med-school slabs
And all the corpses in the Admin. halls;
Time for Law, and Arts, and time
Especially for Engineering
(A million dollar grant this year,
From MIM and Hastings-Deering);
Time to put on gowns and meet the press,
Then let some junior Dean assume the mess—
(Pause here; observe the humble stance
Of department heads who overspent their grants)—
In a minute there is time
For conclusions and exclusions which my secretary signs.

Through the windows student faces peer,
Desperate for passing-grades and beer.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder whence the funds next year will come;
Time yet to rouse the dragon from its slumbers,
To further raise the numbers
Of full-fee-paying students from overseas—
(They will say: "He doesn't care about our own!")
It is impossible to please!
I'd like to do more, Heaven knows,
But how could I let the Staff Club close?

For I have known them all already, known them all,
Known every meeting and the people in it,
I have measured out my life with transcribed Minutes;
I know Departments dying with a quiet moan,
So how can I go on?

And how should I begin?
With wild demands and waving hands,
Like students sitting-in?
Or shall I make requests through all the proper channels?
Approach each Government Department mandarin
With humble mien and careful creases in my flannels?
Do I dare to make a speech?
I shall turn the voice-mail on, and take off for the beach!

I should have been four furry little paws,
Scuttling across the floors of silent refectories.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After all the heads brought in on platters,
After graduations and initiations,
And the gossip, and the post-exam-week chatter?
Would it, after all, have been worth while
To have brought the Student Union to its knees,
Assured each valued colleague of their tenure,
To sit, proud puppet-king, among these
Trophies—and smile as janitors smile?
Is any thing worth while?

I grow old... I grow tired...
How long before the Trustees have me fired?

I have been feathering my own nest all along,
Without regard or pause for right or wrong.
I have heard the students laughing, singing songs;

I suspect what they were laughing at, was me.

We have lingered in our chambers, half-asleep
On pillows made of crumpled formal gowns;
What student's voice would dare to wake us now?

Another week went by without any verse on this blog, and April is National Poetry Month, and my favourite living poet AE Stallings has a new book out -- so without further ado, enjoy:

Variations on an old standard

Come let us kiss. This cannot last—
Too late is on its way too soon—
And we are going nowhere fast.

Already it is after noon,
That momentary palindrome.
The mid-day hours start to swoon—

Around the corner lurks the gloam.
The sun flies at half-mast, and flags.
The color guard of bees heads home,

Whizzing by in zigs and zags,
Weighed down by the dusty gold
They've hoarded in their saddlebags,

All the summer they can hold.
It is too late to be too shy:
The Present tenses, starts to scold—

Tomorrow has no alibi,
And hides its far side like the moon.
The bats inebriate the sky,

And now mosquitoes start to tune
Their tiny violins. I see,
Rising like a grey balloon,

The head that does not look at me,
And in its face, the shadow cast,
The Sea they call Tranquility—

Dry and desolate and vast,
Where all passions flow at last.
Come let us kiss. It's after noon,
And we are going nowhere fast.

Noir

Late at night,
One of us sometimes has said,
Watching a movie in black and white,
Of the vivid figures quick upon the screen,
"Surely by now all of them are dead"—
The yapping, wire-haired terrier, of course—
And the patient horse
Soaked in an illusion of London rain,
The Scotland Yard inspector at the scene,
The extras—faces in the crowd, the sailors;
The bungling blackmailers,
The kidnapped girl's parents, reunited again
With their one and only joy, lisping in tones antique
As that style of pouting Cupid's bow
Or those plucked eyebrows, arched to the height of chic.

Ignorant of so many things we know,
How they seem innocent, and yet they too
Possess a knowledge that they cannot give,
The grainy screen a kind of sieve
That holds some things, but lets some things slip through
With the current's rush and swirl.
We wonder briefly only about the girl—
How old—seven, twelve—it isn't clear—
Perhaps she's still alive
Watching this somewhere at eighty-five,
The only one who knows, though we might guess,
What the kidnapper whispers in her ear,
Or the color of her dress.

Ultrasound

What butterfly—
Brain, soul, or both—
Unfurls here, pallid
As a moth?

(Listen, here's
Another ticker,
Counting under
Mine, and quicker.)

In this cave
What flickers fall,
Adumbrated
On the wall?

Spine like beads
Strung on a wire,
Abacus
Of our desire,

Moon-face where
Two shadows rhyme,
Two moving hands
That tell the time.

I am the room
The future owns,
The darkness where
It grows its bones.

Those are all available online via the poet's own site, and all are from her new book, Hapax, as is the author photograph.

I can't seem to stick to Fridays, but here's a poem for last week anyway. The author was, in his day, one of the most feared critics, influential poets and respected classical scholars in the world; who was he? I'll put the answer in a comment for those who don't know, can't guess and don't like waiting.

Purple William; or, The Liar's Doom

The hideous hue which William is
Was not originally his;
So long as William told the truth,
He was a usual-coloured youth.

He now is purple. One fine day
His tender father chanced to say,
"What colour is a whelp, and why?"
"Purple," was William's false reply.

"Pooh," said his Pa, "You silly elf,
"It's no more purple than yourself."
"Dismiss the notion from your head."
"I, too, am purple," William said.

—And he was purple. With a yell
His mother off the sofa fell,
Exclaiming, "William's purple! Oh!"
William replied, "I told you so."

His parents, who could not support
The pungency of this retort,
Died with a simultaneous groan.
The purple orphan was alone.

I keep forgetting FPB, but today's Poem of the Week email both reminded me and provided me with material.

Kutti Revathi is a Tamil poet who says of her work, "People always ask me why I do not write poems about societal concerns and issues, as though attempts to bring about inner renewal and inner transformation were not acts of social concern. I use my language only to loosen the fetters that have bound and shrunk a woman's body."

The link goes to a brief introduction and links to four poems; my favourite of the four (trans. N. Kalyan Raman) is below, but do read them all.

BREASTS

Breasts are bubbles, rising
In wet marshlands

I watched in awe -- and guarded --
Their gradual swell and blooming
At the edges of my youth's season

Saying nothing to anyone else,
They sing along
With me alone, always:
Of Love,
Rapture,
Heartbreak

To the nurseries of my turning seasons,
They never once forgot or failed
To bring arousal

During penance, they swell, as if straining
To break free; and in the fierce tug of lust,
They soar, recalling the ecstasy of music

From the crush of embrace, they distill
The essence of love; and in the shock
Of childbirth, milk from coursing blood

Like two teardrops from an unfulfilled love
That cannot ever be wiped away,
They well up, as if in grief, and spill over

Rob joins jo(e) and friends (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and no doubt many that I missed) in a new¹ meme-y thing, Friday Poetry Blogging, that I like the look of.

Since his Collected is sitting on the desk in front of me, here's Sir John:

The Cottage Hospital

At the end of a long-walled garden
   in a red provincial town,
A brick path led to a mulberry—
   scanty grass at its feet.
I lay under blackening branches
   where the mulberry leaves hung down
Sheltering ruby fruit globes
   from a Sunday-tea-time heat.
Apple and plum espaliers
   basked upon bricks of brown;
The air was swimming with insects,
   and children played in the street.

Out of this bright intentness
   into the mulberry shade
Musca domestica (housefly)
   swung from the August light
Slap into slithery rigging
   by the waiting spider made
Which spun the lithe elastic
   till the fly was shrouded tight.
Down came the hairy talons
   and horrible poison blade
And none of the garden noticed
   that fizzing, hopeless fight.

Say in what Cottage Hospital
   whose pale green walls resound
With the tap upon polished parquet
   of inflexible nurses' feet
Shall I myself be lying
   when they range the screens around?
And say shall I groan in dying,
   as I twist the sweaty sheet?
Or gasp for breath uncrying,
   as I feel my senses drown'd
While the air is swimming with insects
   and children play in the street?

In a Bath Teashop

“Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another—
      Let us hold hands and look.”
She, such a very ordinary little woman;
      He, such a thumping crook;
But both, for a moment, little lower than the angels
      In the teashop’s ingle-nook.

Mortality

The first-class brains of a senior civil servant
   Shiver and shatter and fall
As the steering column of his comfortable Humber
   Batters in the bony wall.
All those delicate re-adjustments
   "On the one hand, if we proceed
With the ad hoc policy hitherto adapted
   To individual need...
On the other hand, too rigid an arrangement
   Might, of itself, perforce...
I would like to submit for the Minister's concurrence
   The following alternative course,
Subject to revision and reconsideration
   In the light of our experience gains..."
And this had to happen at the corner where the by-pass
   Comes into Egham out of Staines.
That very near miss for an All Souls' Fellowship
   The recent compensation of a 'K'—
The first-class brains of a senior civil servant
   Are sweetbread on the road today.

Slough

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow
     Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs, and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans
     Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town—
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week for half-a-crown
     For twenty years,

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
     In women's tears,

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
     And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
     They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
     To Maidenhead

And talk of sports and makes of cars
In various bogus Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
     But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
     And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
     The earth exhales.

Death in Leamington

She died in the upstairs bedroom
   By the light of the ev'ning star
That shone through the plate glass window
   From over Leamington Spa.

Beside her the lonely crochet
   Lay patiently and unstirred,
But the fingers that would have work'd it
   Were dead as the spoken word.

And Nurse came in with the tea-things
   Breast high 'mid the stands and chairs—
But Nurse was alone with her own little soul,
   And the things were alone with theirs.

She bolted the big round window,
   She let the blinds unroll,
She set a match to the mantle,
   She covered the fire with coal.

And "Tea!" she said in a tiny voice
   "Wake up! It's nearly five."
Oh! Chintzy, chintzy cheeriness,
   Half dead and half alive!

Do you know that the stucco is peeling?
   Do you know that the heart will stop?
From those yellow Italianate arches
   Do you hear the plaster drop?

Nurse looked at the silent bedstead,
   At the gray, decaying face
As the calm of a Leamington ev'ning
   Drifted into the place.

She moved the table of bottles
   Away from the bed to the wall;
And tiptoeing gently over the stairs
   Turned down the gas in the hall.

A while back, I signed up for a poem a week by email from Poetry International Web; it's "Poem of the Week" in my Bloglines account. This week's poem was by Gieve Patel, and was interesting enough that I went and read a few more. I was really taken with this one:

IT MAKES

It makes sense not
to have the body
seamless,
hermetically sealed, a
non-orificial
box of incorruptibles.
Better shot through and through!
Interpenetrated
– with the world. Air
mists my lymph. Ex
cretion, degrading
routine,
gives the world passage.
I am a bead.
Sorted,
thumbed,
threaded,
strung,
fingered (did you say) by
threads of all hues,
riddled through,
happily.

From Headpiece Filled With Straw:

I Contain Multitudes

And some of these fuckers
Have got to go.

I detest Whitman's drivel, but it does make a good target.

It was worth adding delicious/poetry to my rss feeds just to be reminded of Piet Hein's Grooks. Picture swiped from here, where you can read a good brief biography.

ARS BREVIS

There is
one art,
no more,
no less:
to do
all things
with art-
lessness.

WHO IS LEARNED?
A definition

One who, consuming midnight oil
in studies diligent and slow,
teaches himself, with painful toil,
the things that other people know.

THE ROAD TO WISDOM

The road to wisdom? -- Well, it's plain
and simple to express:
           Err
           and err
           and err again
           but less
           and less
           and less.

HINT AND SUGGESTION
Admonitory grook addressed to youth.

The human spirit sublimates
the impulses it thwarts;
a healthy sex life mitigates
the lust for other sports.

ATOMYRIADES

Nature, it seems, is the popular name
for milliards and milliards and milliards
of particles playing their infinite game
of billiards and billiards and billiards.

Pericat has been dreaming, and quite possibly drinking, and writing. Right now, or as soon as you can, whatever you're doing, take a break; sit yourself down all comfy, with cookies and milk or a hot toddy or whatever you feel like, and go read her daydream. You can thank me later. (It made me feel all warm and fuzzy, especially the bit about getting mud all over the man from the gummint and poking at him with a fishing pole.)

Mona Van Duyn is dead at 83. There is some information at Modern American Poets, and the Academy of American Poets has a brief bio and three of her poems, including one of my favourites, which I've pasted below. I nicked the image from the St Louis Walk of Fame. (Via Dumbfoundry, of course.)

Letters from a Father

    I

Ulcerated tooth keeps me awake, there is
such pain, would have to go to the hospital to have
it pulled or would bleed to death from the blood thinners,
but can't leave Mother, she falls and forgets her salve
and her tranquilizers, her ankles swell so and her bowels
are so bad, she almost had a stoppage and sometimes
what she passes is green as grass. There are big holes
in my thigh where my leg brace buckles the size of dimes.
My head pounds from the high pressure. It is awful
not to be able to get out, and I fell in the bathroom
and the girl could hardly get me up at all.
Sure thought my back was broken, it will be next time.
Prostate is bad and heart has given out,
feel bloated after supper. Have made my peace
because am just plain done for and have no doubt
that the Lord will come any day with my release.
You say you enjoy your feeder, I don't see why
you want to spend good money on grain for birds
and you say you have a hundred sparrows, I'd buy
poison and get rid of their diseases and turds.

    II

We enjoyed your visit, it was nice of you to bring
the feeder but a terrible waste of your money
for that big bag of feed since we won't be living
more than a few weeks long. We can see
them good from where we sit, big ones and little ones
but you know when I farmed I used to like to hunt
and we had many a good meal from pigeons
and quail and pheasant but these birds won't
be good for nothing and are dirty to have so near
the house. Mother likes the redbirds though.
My bad knee is so sore and I can't hardly hear
and Mother says she is hoarse from yelling but I know
it's too late for a hearing aid. I belch up all the time
and have a sour mouth and of course with my heart
it's no use to go to a doctor. Mother is the same.
Has a scab she thinks is going to turn to a wart.

    III

The birds are eating and fighting, Ha! Ha! All shapes
and colors and sizes coming out of our woods
but we don't know what they are. Your Mother hopes
you can send us a kind of book that tells about birds.
There is one the folks called snowbirds, they eat on the ground,
we had the girl sprinkle extra there, but say,
they eat something awful. I sent the girl to town
to buy some more feed, she had to go anyway.

    IV

Almost called you on the telephone
but it costs so much to call thought better write.
Say, the funniest thing is happening, one
day we had so many birds and they fight
and get excited at their feed you know
and it's really something to watch and two or three
flew right at us and crashed into our window
and bang, poor little things knocked themselves silly.
They come to after while on the ground and flew away.
And they been doing that. We felt awful
and didn't know what to do but the other day
a lady from our Church drove out to call
and a little bird knocked itself out while she sat
and she brought it in her hands right into the house,
it looked like dead. It had a kind of hat
of feathers sticking up on its head, kind of rose
or pinky color, don't know what it was,
and I petted it and it come to life right there
in her hands and she took it out and it flew. She says
they think the window is the sky on a fair
day, she feeds birds too but hasn't got
so many. She says to hang strips of aluminum foil
in the window so we'll do that. She raved about
our birds. P.S. The book just come in the mail.

    V

Say, that book is sure good, I study
in it every day and enjoy our birds.
Some of them I can't identify
for sure, I guess they're females, the Latin words
I just skip over. Bet you'd never guess
the sparrow I've got here, House Sparrow you wrote,
but I have Fox Sparrows, Song Sparrows, Vesper Sparrows,
Pine Woods and Tree and Chipping and White Throat
and White Crowned Sparrows. I have six Cardinals,
three pairs, they come at early morning and night,
the males at the feeder and on the ground the females.
Juncos, maybe 25, they fight
for the ground, that's what they used to call snowbirds. I miss
the Bluebirds since the weather warmed. Their breast
is the color of a good ripe muskmelon. Tufted Titmouse
is sort of blue with a little tiny crest.
And I have Flicker and Red-Bellied and Red-
Headed Woodpeckers, you would die laughing
to see Red-Bellied, he hangs on with his head
flat on the board, his tail braced up under,
wing out. And Dickcissel and Ruby Crowned Kinglet
and Nuthatch stands on his head and Veery on top
the color of a bird dog and Hermit Thrush with spot
on breast, Blue Jay so funny, he will hop
right on the backs of the other birds to get the grain.
We bought some sunflower seeds just for him.
And Purple Finch I bet you never seen,
color of a watermelon, sits on the rim
of the feeder with his streaky wife, and the squirrels,
you know, they are cute too, they sit tall
and eat with their little hands, they eat bucketfuls.
I pulled my own tooth, it didn't bleed at all.

    VI

It's sure a surprise how well Mother is doing,
she forgets her laxative but bowels move fine.
Now that windows are open she says our birds sing
all day. The girl took a Book of Knowledge on loan
from the library and I am reading up
on the habits of birds, did you know some males have three
wives, some migrate some don't. I am going to keep
feeding all spring, maybe summer, you can see
they expect it. Will need thistle seed for Goldfinch and Pine
Siskin next winter. Some folks are going to come see us
from Church, some bird watchers, pretty soon.
They have birds in town but nothing to equal this.

So the world woos its children back for an evening kiss.

The Vow

In the third month, a sudden flow of blood.
The mirth of tabrets ceaseth, and the joy
Also of the harp. The frail image of God
Lay spilled and formless. Neither girl nor boy,
But yet blood of my blood, nearly my child.
All that long day
Her pale face turned to the window's mild
Featureless grey.

And for some nights she whimpered as she dreamed
The dead thing spoke, saying: "Do not recall
Pleasure at my conception. I am redeemed
From pain and sorrow. Mourn rather for all
Who breathlessly issue from the bone gates,
The gates of horn,
For truly it is best of all the fates
Not to be born.

"Mother, a child lay gasping for bare breath
On Christmas Eve when Santa Claus had set
Death in the stocking, and the lights of death
Flamed in the tree. O, if you can, forget
You were the child, turn to my father's lips
Against the time
When his cold hand puts forth its fingertips
Of jointed lime."

Doctors of Science, what is man that he
Should hope to come to a good end? The best
Is not to have been born. And could it be
That Jewish diligence and Irish jest
The consent of flesh and a midwinter storm
Had reconciled,
Was yet too bold a mixture to inform
A simple child?

Even as gold is tried, Gentile and Jew.
If that ghost was a girl's, I swear to it:
Your mother shall be far more blessed than you.
And if a boy's, I swear: The flames are lit
That shall refine us; they shall not destroy
A living hair.
Your younger brothers shall confirm in joy
That this I swear.

Giant Tortoise

I am related to stones
The slow accretion of moss where dirt is wedged
Long waxy hair that can split boulders.
Events are not important.

I live in my bone
Recalling the hour of my death.
It takes more toughness than most have got.
Or a saintliness.

Strength of a certain kind, anyway.
Bald toothless clumsy perhaps
With all the indignity of old age
But age is not important.

There is nothing worth remembering
But the silver glint in the muck
The thickening of great trees
The hard crust getting harder.

"It Out-Herods Herod. Pray You, Avoid It."

Tonight my children hunch
Toward their Western, and are glad
As, with a Sunday punch,
The Good casts out the Bad.

And in their fairy tales
The warty giant and witch
Get sealed in doorless jails
And the match-girl strikes it rich.

I've made myself a drink.
The giant and witch are set
To bust out of the clink
When my children have gone to bed.

All frequencies are loud
With signals of despair;
In flash and morse they crowd
The rondure of the air.

For the wicked have grown strong,
Their numbers mock at death,
Their cow brings forth its young,
Their bull engendereth.

Their very fund of strength,
Satan, bestrides the Globe;
He stalks its breadth and length
And finds out even Job.

Yet by quite other laws
My children make their case;
Half God, half Santa Claus,
But with my voice and face,

A hero comes to save
The poorman, beggarman, thief,
And make the world behave
And put an end to grief.

And that their sleep be sound
I say this childermas
Who could not, at one time,
Have saved them from the gas.

"More Light! More Light!"
for Heinrich Blücher and Hannah Arendt

Composed in the Tower before his execution
These moving verses, and being brought at that time
Painfully to the stake, submitted, declaring thus:
"I implore my God to witness that I have made no crime."

Nor was he forsaken of courage, but the death was horrible,
The sack of gunpowder failing to ignite.
His legs were blistered sticks on which the black sap
Bubbled and burst as he howled for the Kindly Light.

And that was but one, and by no means one of the worst;
Permitted at least his pitiful dignity;
And such as were by made prayers in the name of Christ
That shall judge all men, for his soul's tranquility.

We move now to outside a German wood.
Three men are there commanded to dig a hole
In which the two Jews are ordered to lie down
And be buried alive by the third, who is a Pole.

Not light from the shrine at Weimar beyond the hill
Nor light from heaven appeared. But he did refuse.
A Lüger settled back deeply in its glove.
He was ordered to change places with the Jews.

Much casual death had drained away their souls.
The thick dirt mounted to the quivering chin.
When only the head was exposed the order came
To dig him out again and get back in.

No light, no light in the blue Polish eye.
When he finished a riding boot packed down the earth.
The Lüger hovered lightly in its glove.
He was shot in the belly and in three hours bled to death.

No prayers or incense rose up in those hours
Which grew to be years, and every day came mute
Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,
And settled upon his eyes in a black soot.

The good news: Pam Ayres has got an MBE. I've been a fan of Pam Ayres' unpretentious light verse since I first heard her reading it in her distinctive West Country burr about twenty years ago. My favourite is still Clamp the Mighty Limpet, which begins

I am Clamp the Mighty Limpet
I am solid, I am stuck
I am welded to the rockface
With my superhuman suck.

When I get home this evening I'll transcribe the rest of it, and a couple of others. (Update: apparently I forgot to steal the Pam Ayres books from my parents last time I visited, so I'll make a separate entry when I've bought myself new copies.) I think Ms Ayres should be Poet Laureate instead of professional boring git Andrew Motion. Seriously, and if I had the time I could make a scholarly argument for the idea on the basis that light verse of a certain kind is the last (and perhaps the first and only) distinctively British mode of poetry. (photo lifted from the jacket cover of her latest book)

The sad news: Anthony Hecht is dead much too soon at 81. Hecht was a formalist whose poetry merited with unusual frequency both of the overused adjectives "beautiful" and "melancholy". He also (with John Hollander) invented the double dactyl, a light form that's considerably harder than it looks. This, for instance, reads like one but isn't:

Higgledy piggledy
Anthony Hecht is dead,
terrible news for all
lovers of verse:

assholes like me will be
doubledactylically
obituarizing him; what
could be worse?

You can read some of his work at the links above, and I'll transcribe some more tonight. (photo swiped from Auburn U Dept of English) (both items from the excellent dumbfoundry)

If you like poetry and related news-y things, you should read Malcolm Davidson's excellent dumbfoundry, where today he excerpts from A Wodehouse Miscellany that worthy's exposition on the alarming spread of poetry. Let me whet your appetite:

In life I was the village smith,
I worked all day
But
I retained the delicacy of my complexion
Because
I worked in the shade of the chestnut tree
Instead of in the sun
Like Nicholas Blodgett, the expressman.
I was large and strong
Because
I went in for physical culture
And deep breathing
And all those stunts.
I had the biggest biceps in Spoon River.

Corner Seat

Suspended in a moving night
The face in the reflected train
Looks at first sight as self-assured
As your own face—But look again:

Windows between you and the world
Keep out the cold, keep out the fright;
Then why does your reflection seem
So lonely in the moving night?

Museums

Museums offer us, running from among the buses,
A centrally heated refuge, parquet floors and sarcophaguses,
Into whose tall fake porches we hurry without a sound
Like a beetle under a brick that lies, useless, on the ground.
Warmed and cajoled by the silence the cowed cypher revives,
Mirrors himself in the cases of pots, paces himself by marble lives,
Makes believe it was he that was the glory that was Rome,
Soft on his cheek the nimbus of other people's martyrdom,
And then returns to the street, his mind an arena where sprawls
Any number of consumptive Keatses and dying Gauls.

Aubade

Having bitten on life like a sharp apple
Or, playing it like a fish, been happy,

Having felt with fingers that the sky is blue,
What have we after that to look forward to?

Not the twilight of the gods but a precise dawn
Of sallow and grey bricks, and newsboys crying war.

The Sunlight On The Garden

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold,
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.

This is a good idea, and spurred me to make this post, which I've had in mind for ages. (And April was National Poetry Month; who knew?)

It's tough to pick just one poem by my favourite contemporary poet AE Stallings, so I'll go with the first of hers that I read, way back when it was featured on Poetry Daily:

The Man Who Wouldn't Plant Willow Trees

Willows are messy trees. Hair in their eyes,
they weep like women after too much wine
and not enough love. They litter a lawn with leaves
Like the butts of regrets smoked down to the filter.

They are always out of kilter. Thirsty as drunks,
They'll sink into a sewer with their roots.
They have no pride. There's never enough sorrow.
A breeze threatens and they shake with sobs.

Willows are slobs, and must be cleaned up after.
They'll bust up pipes just looking for a drink.
Their fingers tremble, but make wicked switches.
They claim they are sorry, but they whisper it.

Ms Stallings' homepage gives links to another two dozen or so poems; I particularly liked this and this and this, but go and read them all, even if you think you don't like poetry. She has a wonderful, distinctive voice, erudite, whimsical and powerful all at once, and manages the delicate balance between profound and trite with enormous skill. There's an interview in the Cortland Review here, where you can hear Stallings reading a couple of her own poems (if you can put up with the wretched Real Audio format). The essay on formal verse mentioned in that interview is well worth reading and can be found here at the Alsop Review, which also hosts Stallings' excellent close reading of The Darkling Thrush. In addition, Stallings moderates a forum called Musing on Mastery at Able Muse's Eratosphere and so is one of the few working poets with whom you can actually "talk shop", in a sense. Finally, her first (and, sadly, so far only) book, Archaic Smile, is available from the publisher (U of Evansville Press), Amazon.com and all good book stores. I cannot recommend it too highly.

Update: below the fold, a list of blogs featuring poems for Poem On Your Blog Day. Not exhaustive by any means, just the ones I found tracking back to Ronn's entry or with a couple of quick searches on Google, Technorati or Bloglines. If I missed your entry and you want on the list, email me.

more...

I thought I'd add some value to the intarweb by posting poems from my personal anthology-in-progress. I have six or seven feet of bookshelf devoted to poetry, and eventually I'd like to have all of my favourite works online. I read somewhere that Welsh bards used to qualify for the position by memorising a thousand poems; I'm not Welsh and I don't want to be a bard, but I quite like the idea of having a thousand poems by heart. This, at least, is a start.

Here's ee cummings, the first poet whose work stuck to me like a burr so that I had to read all of it, and a generous helping of criticism besides. There will be lots more cummings in the final anthology.

if i have made,my lady,intricate

if i have made,my lady,intricate
imperfect various things chiefly which wrong
your eyes(frailer than most deep dreams are frail)
songs less firm than your body's whitest song
upon my mind-if i have failed to snare
the glance too shy-if through my singing slips
the very skillful strangeness of your smile
the keen primeval silence of your hair

-let the world say "his most wise music stole
nothing from death"-
you only will create
(who are so perfectly alive)my shame:
lady through whose profound and fragile lips
the sweet small clumsy feet of April came

into the ragged meadow of my soul.

since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

and death i think is no parenthesis

I attribute my lifelong love of words principally to two things: my parents' willingness to read to me -- and read, and read, and read, and read some more, long after their sanity must have been strained -- and the poetry of Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr Suess. From him, via my longsuffering parents, I learned to love the feel of words in one's ears and mouth, the bounce and swing of rhythm and the "just-so" pleasure of rhyme. Today would have been his hundredth birthday, and the occasion will be marked by the unveiling of a statue, the issue of a postage stamp (I swiped that picture of it from the NYT) and the addition of a star to Hollywood's Walk of Fame. His publisher, Random House, also has a variety of events planned, including an art exhibition which, sadly, does not seem to come anywhere near Portland. Personally, I think it would be better celebrated by reading one of his books aloud to a small child -- or to yourself. Wikipedia has an excellent entry on Dr Suess, much better than the official Random House site (which requires Flash). The Chase Group handles sales of Geisel's art if you fancy a print or even a sculpture.

Acorn is an independent journal of haiku-in-English founded and edited by AC Missias, whose own haiku were among the first "international haiku" (viz., haiku not written in Japanese) I remember reading:

father's kimono
fluttering empty
still protects his yard

spring chill --
rounded sparrows cling
to bare branches

far from land
waiting for sunrise
-- the creaking of ropes

Subscription is less than USD12/year. I'd happily pay that much for just one good poem.

Typing "poetry" into a search engine will get you nowhere; or rather, it will get you everywhere, which is no use at all. Every angsty teenager should write poetry, of course, but only in a vanishingly small number of cases should anyone else ever read it. Herewith a short list of readable poetry on the web.

Dead white men; or, "classical" poetry:

Steve Spanoudis' Poet's Corner offers 7600 poems by 780 poets indexed by author, title and subject. Biographies of about 30 and photographs of about 120 poets (many of them somewhat obscure) are also available. They accept submissions, if you have a favourite poet you'd like to see included (but beware copyright restrictions!). The daily poetry break features a poem a day from the Poet's Corner collection, with commentary by Bob Blair. I frequently disagree with Bob's opinions, but he's interesting.

Representative Poetry Online includes about 2,900 English poems by over 400 poets. It's based on a 1912 textbook but includes hundreds of additional poems and poets as well as biographical data, commentaries and other features.

The estimable Project Bartleby offers a wonderful selection of verse anthologies and volumes. Special mention here to the best anthology of English poetry ever made, the 1919 Oxford Book of English Verse. Quoth Q:

My wish is that the reader should in his own pleasure quite forget the editor’s labour, which too has been pleasant: that, standing aside, I may believe this book has made the Muses’ access easier when, in the right hour, they come to him to uplift or to console.

The venerable Project Gutenberg currently includes 209 volumes of poetry, from Aristotle's Poetics to the selected poems of Oscar Wilde.

The American Verse Project from the U of Michigan contains entire books of poems from about a hundred authors, mostly 19th century.

The Poetry Archive has about 5000 poems by about 150 poets. Lots of advertising though.

Contemporary:

Poetry Daily will email you a contemporary poem every day, or you can read it online. There's an archive but, sadly, poems are only retained for one year.

Web del Sol is "a collaboration on the part of scores of dedicated, volunteer editors, writers, poets, artists, and staff whose job it is to acquire and frame the finest contemporary literary art and culture available in America and abroad, and to array it in such a manner that it speaks for itself."

Various and Sundry:

Verse Libre offers more than 13000 poems by almost 500 authors, both classical and contemporary, searchable/browsable by author and title. The random poem feature is fun (aaaahhhh! I got one by the horrible McGonagall when I went to fetch that link!), and I was suprised by the top 20 list (I expected it to be pure schmaltz, if not worse; I'm a snob and an asshole). Like Poet's Corner, they accept submissions (but not from angsty teens; published work only).

The Atlantic magazine online has a poetry archive which includes numerous essays and, best of all, audio files of poets reading their own and others' work. Unfortunately, they use the malignant and execrable RealAudio format, but as the spousal unit recently noted, there is at least one alternative way to access those streams.

The Academy of American Poets has photographs, biographies and selected works from over 450 poets. Some are living, some not; not all of them are American. Their listening booth has a nice selection of audio (more RealAudio I'm afraid).

If you like poetry audio, Laurable has more than 2500 links to audio covering nearly 500 poets.