Year of poems, sporadically

Well, to any who might begin to read this again, my intention this time is to simply post poems that capture my attention in some way, as that happens. So no regularity probably, but perhaps some sort of frequency. Maybe I'll do a poem a day in April again. I also hope to place my own attempts here. Because that is more likely to happen if I don't edit too much, I expect most of anything I write and post will be pretty rough. And this time, I don't think I'll be doing much to choose poems or write anything I think others will like, so viewing the unexpurgated contents of my poetic gleanings or worse, own productions, could be less than entertaining....read this self-indulgent blog at your own risk. If you read it, it is certainly a gift to me, one I would appreciate deeply. Please comment: hate, confusion, boredom, or that rare sympatico or warmth toward an image all welcome.

William Matthews

Fellow Oddballs


The sodden sleep from which we open like umbrellas,
the way money keeps us in circulation, the scumbled lists
we make of what to do and what, God help us, to undo ---

an oddball knows an oddball at forty or at 40,000
paces. Let's raise our dribble glasses. Here's to us,
morose at dances and giggly in committee,

and here's to us on whose ironic bodies new clothes
pucker that clung like shrink wrap to the manikins.
And here's to the threadbare charm of our self-pity.

For when the waiters, who are really actors between parts,
have crumbed for the last time our wobbly tables,
and we've patted our pockets for keys and cigarettes

enough until tomorrow, for the coat-check token
and for whatever's missing, well then, what next? God knows,
who counts us on God's shapely toes, one and one and one.


-from "Search Party: Collected Poems"

Stanley Kunitz

The Quarrel


The word I spoke in anger
weighs less than a parsley seed,
but a road runs through it
that leads to my grave,
that bought-and-paid-for lot
on a slat-sprayed hill in Truro
where the scrub pines
overlook the bay.
Half-way I'm dead enough,
strayed from my own nature
and my fierce hold on life.
If I could cry, I'd cry,
but I'm too old to be
anybody's child.
Liebchen,
with whom should I quarrel
except in the hiss of love,
that harsh, irregular flame?

-from "The Collected Poems"

Carolyn Kizer

On a Line from Julian


I have a number and my name is dumb.
Living for death, this paradox I take:
Such a barbarian have I become.

Because historians are growing numb,
They will not say we love what we forsake,
To be a number when a name is dumb.

Our leaders urge us further to succumb.
Our privy hearts in unison must ache,
Says a barbarian. Have I become

A vessel that is empty of aplomb
To ornament the century's mistake,
And be a number when my name is dumb?

Subsisting on a drop of blood, a crumb,
When wine is gone, and bread too hard to break,
A small barbarian have I become.

I can be private in delirium,
Indifferent to the noises that I make.
I have a number, and my name is dumb.
Such a barbarian have I become!

Carolyn Kizer

Plain of the Poet in an Ignorant Age


I would I had a flower-boy!
I'd sit in the mid of an untamed wood
Away from tame suburbs beyond the trees.
With my botany-boy to fetch and find,
I'd sit in a rocker by a pot of cold coffee
Noodling in a notebook on my knee,
Calling, "Flower-boy, name me that flower!
Read me the tag on that tree!
But here I sit by an unlit fire
Swizzling three martinis
While a thousand metaphors doze outdoors,
And the no-bird sings in the no-name tree.

I would I had a bug-boy
With a bug-book and a butterfly net,
To bring me Nature in a basket of leaves:
A bug on a leaf by the goldfish bowl;
I'd sit in a rocker, a pocketful of pine-nuts
And a nutcracker knocking my knee,
Cracking nuts, jokes, and crying to my bug-boy,
"Read me the caterpillar on the leaf,
Count the number of nibbled veins
By a tree's light, in fire!"
While I, in my rocker, rolled and called,
A caterpillar crawled on the long-named leaf.

If I had a boy of Latin and Greek
In love with eleven-syllable leaves,
Hanging names like halos on herb and shrub!
A footnote lad, a lexicon boy
Who would run in a wreath around my rocker
To kneel at my chair, at my knee
Saying, "Here is your notebook, here is your pen! -
I have found you a marvelous tree!"
But all I have is a poetry-boy,
A bottle-cap King: he cries,
Thudding from the garden, "What do you call
The no-bird that sings in the no-name tree?"

-from "Cool, Calm & Collected: Poems 1960 - 2000"

Maxine Kumin

Ghazal: On the Table


I was taught to smooth the aura at the end,
said my masseuse, hands hovering at the end.

Inches above my placid pummeled self
did I feel something floating at the end?

Or is my naked body merely prone
to ectoplasmic vapors to no end?

Many other arthritics have lain here
seeking to roll pain's boulder end on end.

Herbal oils, a DC playing soft
loon calls, wave laps, bird trill now must end.

I rise and dress, restored to lift and bend,
my ethereal wisp invisible at the end.

-from The Long Marriage

Comment

Well, if anyone is still checking in for new posts after nearly a week of silence, here come a few more. I will try to post 2 - 3 a day so I catch up before the end of the week, and month. So here are three, one from Kumin, who has pretty words but doesn't read like poetry to me, and 2 from Kizer who I now plan to read extensively. I really like her work a lot so far. The two I have chosen are not necessarily representative, simply those I have picked out from a single night's perusal of a very large volume. These are probably not best examples of her work, or Kumin's, I just liked the use of form.