I was first introduced to Cathryn Cofell’s poetry shortly after joining the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets in 2009. She and Karla Huston had organized the first conference I attended. The featured poet was Denise Duhamel. What an introduction to the WFOP!
Among her many accomplishments, Cofell was instrumental in establishing the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission and served as its first chairperson.
Her 2019 collection, Stick Figure with Skirt, was the winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. I’ve copied the title poem below with her permission. Buy the book!
Cathryn has an unmistakable recitation style. You can read one of her poems over and over, but once you’ve heard her recite it, you’ll never read it in a different way again. You’ll always hear her voice as you read.
An example is below. Read her poem “Tiny Little Crushes”, then listen to her recitation from the 2010 CD, Lip, accompanied by Bruce Dethelefsen and Bill Orth (aka Obvious Dog). Even though the sound quality on the YouTube site is not the best, you’ll see what I mean.
TINY LITTLE CRUSHES
When I was twelve, it was Leif Garrett. How he made me sing,
taught me to dance real tight up against his thrusting head
of blonde hair (that was some hair), up there on my closet door,
his wet lips perfect height to pucker up and kiss my Bonne Bell
cherry-vanilla lips, and kiss, as if he were more than just a life-
sized poster I could never put my arms around.
When I was sixteen, it was the captain of the swim team. I kept time
at the boys’ meets just to watch him wet himself down with his
cupped hands, to bend into that starting block in his taut green Speedo,
to pop up at the gun and spread open into that water like a girl’s waiting
arms, to be the first face he saw when he surfaced. One time he sat
next to me, told me shaving his body would shave a second off his time,
gave me his bare leg and told me to feel it (and boy, did I feel it).
Then he dove in, climbed out, got a wrestling cheerleader pregnant.
In college, it was a guy nicknamed Kermit. At first I didn’t get it,
I was too busy learning how to make him squirm from across a bar,
to make the valleys in my brain line up with the volcano in his,
to let him know just how badly he wanted me, something to do
with the shift of hips and lips at the same time. I was no Bo Derek,
but let me tell you that whatever I did worked because he found out
my name, took me for a ride, introduced me to his bottom bunk.
The next day, I saw that little frog walk another girl to class.
Sometimes it’s just a husky voice on the phone. A man playing
golf. A woman who hands you a tissue on the bus. It’s not only
the man who didn’t get away-- the one who looks away while
I fold my wrinkled clothes because he has seen enough, the one
who loses my voice in a turned page because he is lost in his own
imagination, he is lost idling a tiny crush of memories all his own.
- previously published in Laurel Review and “Tiny Little Crushes” (LockOut Press)
Video version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oji8rmL7478
STICK FIGURE WITH SKIRT
Is the universal sign for the women’s restroom
unless you are in Hawaii or a cowboy bar
Stick figure with skirt is the universal symbol of fashion
aka Allure aka Kate Moss
Stick figure with skirt holding hands with other stick figures
is the universal mini-van mom
making sure we know she is loved
by her stick figure family
see?
they are all stick smiling
Stick figure with skirt is not available on stick-figure-games.com—
no zombie shooter no sniper assassin
no stick girls allowed—
even at girlgames.com the stick chicks are naked or suicidal
Stick figure in pencil skirt and heels
is the universal sign for career woman
but notice she has no mouth no eyes
no opposable thumbs on her two stick hands
Beneath that stick figure skirt is slip
beneath that slip Spanx
beneath Spanx two bare sticks
like scissors forever cutting her flesh
into smaller sticks and smaller still
until she is kindling
toothpick
the universal sign of beauty
-Previously published Switchgrass Review
Favorite Poem #38
It seems like I start every installment of this blog with an apology for the long delay. Today is no exception, I’ve been thinking about this one for weeks now. I’m returning to favorite Wisconsin poets for blog number 38.
I met David Southward several years ago when he joined The Hartford Avenue Poets, a critique group that meets on the UWM campus, when we can meet in person. David teaches in the Honors College.
As a poet, David was mentored by former Wisconsin Poet Laureate, Marilyn Taylor. Marilyn is an award-winning formalist, having garnered many contest wins and book awards. David, not surprisingly, is also an accomplished formal poet, specializing in the sonnet. David is quite skilled at writing in many different rhyme schemes, and I always marvel at the way he does it with such apparent ease. Rhyming, in even a fairly simple rhyme scheme requires a real skill in finding just the right word or words to fit in with the poem you are writing. That skill, plus a very good thesaurus!
David’s first chapbook, Apocrypha, is a book of 33 sonnets retelling some of the stories of the New Testament. His second collection, Bachelor’s Buttons, was published by Kelsay Books.
He has won several awards from the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, as well as The Council for Wisconsin Writers. In 2019 David won the Frost Farm Prize for Metrical Poetry. Metrical poetry follows rhythmic patterns, involving varied numbers of syllables but a fixed number of strong stresses in each line. The judges selected David’s poem “Mary’s Visit” as the winner from among 978 entries.
Below you can read Mary’s Visit, as well as his poem “Joseph” a sonnet from his book Apochrypha.
Until next time:
Mary’s Visit
We watched her car pass slowly by our house
and circle back with purpose. It appeared
she’d spotted us, nestled in our dream
of a stone cottage from an earlier time.
She parked out front and asked to come inside.
Naturally we concluded she was lost
or peddling religion. All she had lost
however, was certainty: could this house
have been her Great Aunt Gertrude’s? “Look inside
if you want,” we told her. Something might appear
to bring back vanished memories of the time
she played here with her siblings. “I’ve had dreams,”
she said, “of finding it again”—one dream
in which the porch was sloped like ours. Half lost
in the wistful currents pulling her through time,
I pictured the aunt living in our house—
and how, whenever relatives appeared
on the doorstep, she’d hold the pain inside
her knotted joints, and smile. Here inside
our damp, shade-darkened rooms, her niece would dream
that Gertrude was a witch, that ghosts appeared
behind the bathtub curtain, and that lost
in the woods out back of the spinster’s house
were her missing children. This stored-up time
had become a burden to our guest, a time
that had no place. It rattled around inside,
where doubts began to creep: although our house
looked like the one she’d come to in her dream,
its lines were off; the floor plan did not match
a pattern that had all but disappeared.
“Maybe”—she tapped her head—“it’s all up here.”
One’s memories grew entangled over time
with longing, hope, regret. The thread’s soon lost
that leads out of the maze we live inside—
bumping against the glass doors of our dreams
in search of some distinct, authentic house.
Her fear appeared to change the mood inside
as time resumed its course. Clutching her dream
of what she’d lost, Mary left our house.
Joseph
When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. (Luke 2:43)
Three days we searched the city—called his name
through market stalls, down alleys, into wells.
I felt the hot fatigue of fear and blame
in Mary’s tears. But how could I foretell
what he would do—this staid, abstracted boy
who memorized the prophets and withdrew
into himself? A childhood filled with joy
was brushed away like sawdust as he grew.
We found him in the Temple: all aglow
with rabbis’ praise. They laughed that one so young
should ask of our concern, “Did you not know
I must be in my Father’s house?” That stung
like nettles’ fire. Anyone could see
the Father he referred to wasn’t me.
Favorite Poem #37
I first saw Anis Mojgani performed his spoken-word poetry at the Dodge Poetry Festival in 2014. Anyone who has ever seen him will ever forget the experience. He is an amazing poet, and he has the ability to recite long poems, not only without referring to notes or text, but also enhancing the performance with his inflections, emphases, gestures, and hand and body movements.
I watch an Anis Mojgani YouTube video at least once a week, and I am always amazed. Here is one of my favorites called “Shake the Dust”. Listen for the occasional, but very effective use of rhyme.
The text follows the link to the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qDtHdloK44
Shake the Dust by Anis Mojgani
This is for the fat girls. This is for the little brothers. This is for the schoolyard wimps. This is for the childhood bullies who tormented them. This is for the former prom queen. This is for the milk crate ball players. This is for the nighttime cereal eaters. This is for the retired elderly Wal-Mart storefront door greeters. Shake the dust.
This is for the benches and the people sitting on them. This is for the bus drivers, driving a million broken hymns. This is for the men who have to hold down three jobs, simply to hold their children up. This is for the night schoolers, and the midnight bike riders who are trying to fly. Shake the dust.
For the two-year-olds who cannot be understood because they speak half English and half God. Shake the dust. For the girls with the brothers that are crazy, shake the dust. For the boys with the beautiful sisters, the gym class wallflowers, the twelve-year-olds afraid of taking public showers, the kid who's late to class because he forgot the combination to his locker, for the girl who loves somebody else, shake the dust.
This is for the hard men, who want love, but know it will never come. For the ones who are told to speak only when spoken to, and then are never spoken to, the ones who the amendments do not stand up for, the ones who are forgotten: Speak every time you stand, so you do not forget yourselves. Do not let a second go by that does not remind you that your heart beats one hundred thousand times a day, and there are enough gallons of blood to make you an ocean.
This is for the police officers. This is for the meter maid. This is for the celibate pedophile who keeps on struggling. This is for the poetry teachers. This is for the people who go on vacations alone, and for the crappy artists and the actors that suck, shake the dust.
This is for the sweat that drips off of Mick Jagger's lips, for the shaking skirt on Tina Turner's shaking hips, for the heavens and the hells through which Tina has lived. This is for the tired and the dreamers, the family that'll never be like the Cleavers with the perfectly-made dinners and the sons like Wally and the Beaver. For the bigots, the sexists, and the killers, the big-house prison sentence cats becoming redeemers, and for the springtime that always comes after the winters.
This is for you.
Make sure that, by the time the fisherman returns, you are gone. Make these blue streams worth it, because, just like the days I'm burning at both ends, and every time I write, every time I bike through the night, every time I open my eyes, I am cutting out a part of myself to give to you.
So shake the dust, and take me with you when you do, for none of this has ever been for me. All that was placed inside me, that continues pushing like waves, pushes for you. So take the world by its clothespins and shake it out again and again, jump on top and take it for a spin, and when you hop off shake it out again, for this is yours.
Make my words worth it. Make this not just another poem that I write. Not just another poem like just another night that sits heavy above us all. Walk into it. Breathe it in. Let it crash through the halls of your arms, like the millions of years and millions of poets that course like blood, pumping and pushing, making you live, making you live, shaking the dust, so when the world knocks at your door, turn the knob and open on up, and run into its big, big hands with open arms.
Favorite Poem Number 36
Once again months have passed since my last blog post. This one is about my love of the poetry of Billy Collins.
The Wall Street Journal has referred to Billy Collins as “America’s favorite poet”. And while if an editor at the WSJ ever lauded my poetry, I might wonder what I was doing wrong, one can’t argue with that assessment of Collins’s popularity. His poems are accessible and he writes for everyone in language that anyone can grasp. There’s no need for an encyclopedia of Greek and Roman mythology to enjoy a Billy Collins poem. And anyone who is not familiar with his poem “The Lanyard” is probably going out of their way to avoid poetry all together.
In his poem “The Trouble With Poetry” Billy writes about walking the halls of his high school with a copy of Ferlinghetti’s “A Coney Island of the Mind” in his pocket. That’s the book that first got me into reading poetry regularly, although I didn’t discover it until I was 20, and didn’t start writing until much later.
Since I am approaching the end of my 72nd trip around the sun, and since I more frequently now enter a room and promptly forget why I went there, the Collins poem below is ringing more true each year.
Enjoy.
Until next time, whenever that will be.
Ed
Forgetfulness -Billy Collins
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title
the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion
the entire novel, which becomes
one you have never read
never even heard of.
It is as if one by one,
the things you are trying to harbor in your memory
have decided to retire to the southern hemisphere
of the brain, to a little fishing village
where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses
goodbye, and you watched the quadratic equation
pack its bags. And even now, as you memorize
the order of the planets, something else is slipping away:
a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle,
the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
nor is it lurking in some remote corner
of your spleen. It has floated away
down some dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L
as far as you can recall.
Well on your own way to oblivion
where you will join those who have even
forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window
seems to have drifted out of a love poem
that you used to know by heart.
Favorite Poem Number 35
Recently, a new member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets wrote to ask me how I cope with rejections.
I was reminded of some advice I was given years ago, that one should expect about 10 rejections for each acceptance. If you receive more than that on average, then you are either submitting your work to the wrong editors, or not revising your poems sufficiently before submitting them. All poets, even the best of them, experience rejections, and many more rejections than acceptances. But it does take a while to come to accept it.
And it helps sometimes to look upon rejections with a sense of humor. Which brings me to the poet featured in this installment of my blog: Francesca Bell.
Francesca Bell was born in Spokane, Washington into a family with deep, hardscrabble roots in the Northwest. Her maternal great-grandfather, the son of a prostitute and her client, was raised in a brothel. He raised his own six children, including Bell’s grandmother, on a 160-acre homestead in Plummer, Idaho. On her father’s side, the Norwegian Wikum family, when traced 700 years back, was already renowned for its spectacularly heavy drinking. The hard living continued in America where the clan was referred to around Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho as “the fighting Wikums.”
Bell was raised in Washington and Idaho and settled as an adult in California. She did not complete middle school, high school, or college and holds no degrees. She has worked as a massage therapist, a cleaning lady, a daycare worker, a nanny, a barista, and a server in the kitchen of a retirement home.
Francesca has written one of my favorite poems on the subject of rejection, turning it around and rejecting the editor who rejected her poem. You might want to try this yourself when you receive a form letter rejection that you know was sent to dozens of other poets. It will help you to not take it so personally. It happens to all of us.
I’m going to follow Francesca’s poem with my own effort on the subject of rejection. Enjoy.
I Long To Hold The Poetry Editor’s Penis In My Hand
and tell him personally,
I’m sorry, but I’m going
to have to pass on this.
Though your piece
held my attention through
the first few screenings,
I don’t feel it is a good fit
for me at this time.
Please know it received
my careful consideration.
I thank you for allowing
me to have a look,
and I wish you
the very best of luck
placing it elsewhere.
Francesca Bell. Rattle #40, Summer 2013
And here’s mine:
Rejection
This is just to say
that I have eaten your submission
which you were hoping to see
in the next issue of our journal.
It was rather bland
and lacked the spice our readers
have come to expect of us.
So much depends on an editor
sitting in his wheeled-chair
at his white desk
his red pen tucked behind his ear
eating his chicken sandwich.
So much depends on choosing
the right publication for your poetry
and ours is not the one for you.
You can find out more about Francesca Bell and read more of her poetry here:
https://www.francescabellpoet.com/
Favorite Poem Number 34
Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) is arguably the most famous of all Spanish poets. As a young writer he became friends with the artist, Salvador Dali, and the filmmaker, Luis Bunuel. They, along with other writers, as well as artists, filmmakers and other creative types became known as the Generation of ‘27. Lorca was drawn to surrealism, and much of his poetry takes on a surrealistic air.
One of Lorca’s most important works is Poeta en Nueva York (Poet in New York), a body of poems composed during a visit to New York City in 1929/1930. While he was there the stock marker crashed and the Great Depression began. His experiences here in America influenced his work (and his political views) tremendously. The Encyclopedia Britannica describes the book as, “a series of poems whose dense, at times hallucinatory images, free-verse lines, and thematic preoccupation with urban decay and social injustice mark an audacious departure from Lorca’s previous work.”
His return to Spain in 1930 coincided with the fall of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic. In 1931, Lorca was appointed director of a student theater company, Teatro Universitario La Barraca (The Shack). It was funded by the Ministry of Education and fhe company began touring Spain's rural areas in order to introduce audiences to classical Spanish theater free of charge. They sought to bring theater to people who had never seen any.
When Francisco Franco launched his fascist coup in 1936, Lorca was at home near Granada which soon became fascist territory in Spain. As a famous ally of the Republic, he was arrested and assassinated just days after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
My first introduction to Lorca’s poetry, many years ago, was through these New York poems. An excerpt from one of the poems, “Dance of Death”, has been posted on the bulletin board above my desk for many years. I often read it to remind myself of the kind of poetry I strive to write, but will never achieve. But it’s the quest that counts, right? I’ve included it below, and I encourage you to read (or reread) Poet in New York soon for your own inspiration.
I will follow the Lorca excerpt, uncharacteristically, with a poem of my own about the effects of war. The poem was first published in the journal Burdock in 2016.
You can find out more about Lorca here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/federico-garcia-lorca
Excerpt from “Dance of Death”:
This isn’t a strange place
for the dance, I tell you.
The mask will dance
among columns of blood and numbers,
between hurricanes of gold
and groans of the unemployed,
who will howl in the dead of the night,
for your dark time.
(from Poet in New York by Federico Lorca and published posthumously in 1940).
Lorca for Beginners
the mask will dance among columns of blood and numbers, among hurricanes of gold and the groans of the unemployed who will howl in the dead of night for your dark time.
-Federico Garcia Lorca, Dance of Death, New York, 1929
The blood and numbers are tallied
on the same sheet of the ledger,
columns on a page titled, Cost benefit analysis.
Worn now by generals, now by politicians
and now by corporate leaders,
the mask delights and dances
as the numbers roll in:
so many wars
so many lives ruined
so many deaths
so much profit.
Politicians practice their pirouettes
as they wait their turn to wear the mask
to take the stage and praise the generals
and shower the CEOs in blood
now turned to gold.
The darkness is ours
and is filled with our howls.
(first published in Burdock#15, February 2016)
Favorite Poem Number 33
For blog #33 I’d like to celebrate the poetry of another of Wisconsin’s Poets Laureate, Margaret (Peggy) Rozga. Peggy was Poet Laureate of Wisconsin for 2019 and 2020. But Peggy was a hero of mine long before I knew that she was a poet, and long before I thought that I might be able to write poetry.
I moved to Milwaukee in 1969. In the years preceding that, there had been a long struggle for fair housing in this segregated city, which has been referred to as the ‘Selma of the North’.
Rozga’s first book of poetry, “200 Nights and one day”, (Benu Press, 2009) chronicles that struggle for fair housing, and specifically, the culminating series of protests, a period of 200 nights of protest which Peggy participated in as a young woman. The marches were led by Father James Groppi, the pastor of a predominantly African American parish, and the NAACP Youth Council.
Vel Phillips, the first African American and first woman to serve on the Milwaukee Common Council had repeatedly introduced a fair housing bill to the Council, and repeatedly she had been the sole supporting vote. It wasn’t until 1968, 12 years after Phillips had first been elected, after 200 consecutive nights of marches, three weeks after the assassination of Martin Luther King, and two weeks after the US government passed the Federal Fair Housing bill, that Milwaukee finally passed a local ordinance. That struggle, fresh in Milwaukee’s memory in 1969, became the first part of Milwaukee’s long history that I learned about, and is why I say that I knew of and respected who Peggy was long before I knew of her poetry. She is and has been a fighter for social justice.
Anyway, that’s a long lead in to two of Peggy’s poems that I will share with you here, with her permission.
The first is a poem from “200 Nights and one day”, which I mentioned above. But both of these poems also can be found in her latest collection, “Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poems”, (Cornerstone Press, 2021).
Five Gestures for Freedom
Friday, September 1, 1967
Arms locked to step into street.
Arms over head, protection against billy clubs.
Hands to face cupped around mouth
doubled over, retching. Tear gas.
Elbows up, angled out, pulled into arrest.
Arms behind back, wrists caught in handcuffs.
Hello, Fear
You’ve become familiar. You remain
strange. I try to see how I can live with you. I live
with you.
You shadow me, but you are not my shadow.
You are negative space, no matter how
you try to be positive shape. If I seem
to address you as positive shape, it is only
as a way to confront you as shadow
and thus to shrink you down.
That may prove impossible. You are
not my invention. History shadows us
whether or not we admit it. Whether or not
we see it. The Constitutional 3/5ths of a person
compromise, the Dred Scott decision, separate and
unequal, gutting voting rights, failure to enforce fair housing.
I questioned God who seemed diffuse.
Those questions disappeared once Fear
showed up in the space of shrinking positives.
When I saw it, I called it out, and even now
in these very words, unfamiliar prayers to a familiar
and ineffable God rise to my throat.
Favorite Poem Number 32
It has been several weeks since my last blog post. But I’ve made a resolution to start up again, and I can’t think of a better way to kick off 2022 than with Cole Porter.
“At words poetic I’m quite pathetic”, is the opening line of “Your the Top”, by Cole Porter. Several blogs ago I wrote about Tom Waits, and I mentioned that there are several lyricists whom I consider to be great poets: Dylan, Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen, and a few others. Among them is Cole Porter. While Porter’s lyrics are not profound, he was a master rhymer. His songs are peppered with lots of internal rhyme as well as the musically required end rhyme. I could listen to his music all day, and often I do.
There are several different versions of “You’re the Top”, and I’m posting the lyrics to one of my favorite versions below. I love all the references to the era in which it was written: the Coolidge Dollar, the Arrow Collar, Pepsodent, Cellophane, etc.
I’d also recommend for excellent listening that you check out “Night and Day”, “Let’s Fall in Love”,
“Be a Clown”, “Anything Goes”, and “Just One of Those Things”, as well as a couple of lesser known tunes: “Let’s Misbehave”, and “Experiment”.
Happy listening until next time.
Here’s the lyrics to “You’re the Top!”
At words poetic, I'm so pathetic
That I always have found it best
Instead of getting 'em off my chest
To let 'em rest unexpressed
I hate parading my serenading
As I'll probably miss a bar
But if this ditty is not so pretty
At least it'll tell you
How great you are
You're the top!
You're the Coliseum
You're the top!
You're the Louver Museum
You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss
You're a Bendel bonnet
A Shakespeare's sonnet
You're Mickey Mouse
You're the Nile
You're the Tower of Pisa
You're the smile on the Mona Lisa
I'm a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
But if, baby, I'm the bottom, you're the top
You're the top
You're Mahatma Gandhi
You're the top
You're Napoleon Brandy
You're the purple light
Of a summer night in Spain
You're the National Gallery
You're Garbo's salary
You're cellophane
You're sublime
You're a turkey dinner
You're the time of a Derby winner
I'm a toy balloon that's fated soon to pop
But if, baby, I'm the bottom
You're the top
You're the top
You're an Arrow collar
You're the top
You're a Coolidge dollar
You're the nimble tread
Of the feet of Fred Astaire
You're an O'Neill drama
You're Whistler's mama
You're camembert
You're a rose
You're Inferno's Dante
You're the nose
On the great Durante
I'm just in the way
As the French would say, "de trop"
But if, baby, I'm the bottom
You're the top
You're the top
You're a Waldorf salad
You're the top
You're a Berlin ballad
You're the baby grand of a lady and a gent
You're an Old Dutch master
You're Mrs. Aster
You're Pepsodent
You're romance
You're the steppes of Russia
You're the pants on a Roxy usher
I'm a lazy lout, who's just about to stop
But if, baby, I'm the bottom
You're the top
Favorite Poem Number 31
I first heard Nickole Brown read her poetry at the Dodge Poetry Festival in 2016. Nickole received her MFA from the Vermont College, studied literature at Oxford University, and was the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson. She is the Editor for the Marie Alexander Poetry Series, teaches periodically at the Sewanee School of Letters MFA Program, the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNCA, and the Hindman Settlement School.
At the Dodge festival, Brown read from her 2015 collection, Fanny Says (BOA Editions) in which she lets the reader get to know her grandmother, Fanny, through poems written in her grandmother’s voice. I highly recommend that book.
Nickole lives near Asheville, NC, and volunteers at three animal sanctuaries near there. She is working on a series of chapbooks about the animals that she has been tending there. The first of these, To Those Who Were Our First Gods, won the 2018 Rattle Chapbook Prize.
Her latest book focuses on the role of donkeys throughout human history. But it is much more than that. “The Donkey Elegies”, an essay in poems, is an ode to an animal Brown has come to love and admire. But it is also a warning about what humans do to themselves in the course of using and abusing animals. The book begins with a description of the ears of the animal. Among the 25 poems that make up this poetic essay are poems about the donkey as a beast of burden for many civilizations, its use during wars, and Christ’s ride on a donkey into Jerusalem before the trial and crucifixion. There is even a poem about Eeyore and other donkeys in popular culture. This book can be seen as a warning to all of us about our role in the natural world. I’ve included two of the poems below.
You can find out more about Nickole here: https://www.nickolebrown.com/about
Excerpts from The Donkey Elegies: An Essay in Poems, by Nickole Brown
(published by Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020)
1.
Ears like sugar scoops. Ears like hands cupped to cradle a cool drink from the creek. Ears like single petals of dahlias—at full bloom, curled, firmly upright but always soft, always open.
Furred periscopes, one pivots to the wheezing scream of a squirrel above,
and I follow, hear as if for the first time that common arboreal cry neither chirp nor growl but something in between, like the caw of a mother blue jay stoked
behind the teeth of an old yard dog.
Your other ear—blessed as I am—rotates towards me.
Sweet apricots, velvet satellites, the twin souls
atop the head of every donkey.
13.
In the Kentucky that made me, long before I was born, coal was the darkness torn from the dark, and donkeys the color of cave fish and moonlight hauled the ore cars, a history told by a few black-and-white photos and those few men not yet dead from black lung. It meant nothing
to me—not the black coal or the white donkeys—not those worked-to-the-bone workers nor the glow of their tractable brutes, those donkeys ghosted deep underground so long they would emerge decades later
completely blind. Angry and young, I was ready to kill off any part of me that smacked of those hillbilly roots, and in a basement reeking of cat piss and strawberry wine, we did our best to blow apart
speakers with heavy metal cranked loud. We let a blindfold do its work before spinning ourselves round and round, swinging a bat until one of us hit what we were aiming for with a satisfactory thud, thrilled to hear all those plastic-wrapped candies hit the concrete floor. Little did we know we were acting out
our own trashy sort of morality play, what was really spilling from the split side of that white piñata, from that cheap paper-mache donkey.
Favorite Poem Number 30
Lisa Vihos is the Poet Laureate of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Since the beginning of the annual 100 Thousand Poets for Change (100TPC) in 2011, Lisa has hosted the event in Sheboygan. This year’s reading takes place on Saturday, September 25 at 11AM, at the Mead Public Library in downtown Sheboyan. It is free and open to the public. Poets who wish to read at the open mike are asked to bring along one or two short poems with the theme of community, peace, justice, etc. The featured reader will be the current Poet Laureate of Wisconsin, Dasha Kelly Hamilton. If you’ve never been to a reading by Dasha, I promise that this will be a reading you will remember. I blogged about Dasha’s poetry and other accomplishments in Favorite Poem post #6.
But the poet featured on this installment of the blog is, Lisa. One thing I really like about Lisa’s poetry is her ability to take the common, the very familiar and turn and turn it on its head, creating inventive and entertaining poems. Two of my favorites are posted below. Find out more about Lisa at https://lisavihos.com/
Advice Dyslexic
Straighten right and up fly.
Tide high in morning
and broke for go.
Lamp the lights
and harvest the gather.
Let no unturned go stone.
Hearth the sweep
and bread the butter.
Be neighbor to your good.
Then, let no island be a man
and avoid making molehills
out of mountains. Beware
the teapot in a tempest
and remember, people living
in glass stones should not throw houses.
Take yourself with a salt of grain,
for there is nothing sun
under the new.
Up wake and give day
for the thanks. Fandango
the dance and go peace in forth.
Tread earth over this good lightly.
Dear X
Dear X,
Let me be your Y
and wherefore.
Let me be before
and after (a subset
of desire).
Let us find the sine
and cosine of our wave,
heading toward infinity.
Measure
yourself inside
my angles,
both acute
and obtuse.
Carry out
the same function
on both sides
of the equals sign.
All theorems
and solutions aside,
there is no lowest
common denominator.
There is only now,
where X and Y
multiply and divide
all night long.
Favorite Poem Number 29
Matt Cook was Milwaukee’s Poet Laureate in 2015 and 2016. Matt makes me laugh more than any other poet. His delivery is unique, and the words he chooses to give emphasis to just add to the humor.
I think he could have been successful at stand-up comedy, as well as poetry. Here’s an example from his book, “Proving Nothing to Anyone”.
The non-sequiturs that are a hallmark of his poetry are quite evident in this poem. But they work for me. I love the line, ‘a submarine crew of poets would be a mistake’. No kidding.
If you ever get a chance to hear Matt read his poetry aloud, don’t miss it.
Until next time.
Ed
An Impossible Question
Every time the gas company sends a worker to my house,
the guy gets here and all he wants to talk about is gas.
Why can't the gas company send someone well rounded to my house?
An impossible question is a nice thing to have around sometimes.
You tell me you pisshead – Is this pencil sharpener ordinary or extraordinary?
Every thirty-six months I have a nervous breakdown,
And then I forget who I am, and then some time passes,
And then I remember who I am, and it keeps me young.
A submarine crew of poets would be a mistake.
The fish in the ocean have no fresh water to drink.
Has anybody ever thought of that before?
From “Proving Nothing to Anyone” (2013, Publishing Genius Press)
Favorite Poem Number 28
Poetry Blog #28 is about Tom Waits. Now, before you get all up in arms and start emailing me about how song lyrics aren’t really poetry, let me remind you that one of the recent Nobel Prize winners for literature was none other than a poet named Dylan. And I’m not talking about Dylan Thomas (whoever he was), little joke for you fans of Simon and Garfunkel. (Check out “A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara'd into Submission) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOvs3rCFI2A
I do know who Dylan Thomas is. Speaking of Paul Simon, he’s not a bad poet himself, Rhymin’ Simon.
And while poetic tastes, like musical tastes, are very subjective, I’d also add Tom Lehrer, Cole Porter, and whoever wrote the lyrics to the ballads “Midnight Sun” and “Everything Happens to Me” among the poets I like.
But I digress.
This is about Tom Waits, who in addition to singer/songwriter, is an accomplished actor. It is difficult to select just one example to post here. I could listen to Tom Waits all day, and sometimes I do. His other songs have such memorable lines like, “you got to get behind the mule/in the morning and plow”, “goodnight to the street sweepers/The night watchman flame keepers and goodnight, Mathilda too”,
and of course, “my piano has been drinking”. But I’ve chosen Invitation to the Blues. Enjoy, and look up his other songs.
I’ll see you next time on this used-to-be-weekly blog.
Ed
Invitation to the Blues
Well she's up against the register with an apron and a spatula,
Yesterday's deliveries, tickets for the bachelors
She's a moving violation from her conk down to her shoes
Well, it's just an invitation to the blues
And you feel just like Cagney, she looks like Rita Hayworth
At the counter of the Schwab's drugstore
You wonder if she might be single, she's a loner and likes to mingle
Got to be patient, try and pick up a clue
She said How you gonna like 'em, over medium or scrambled?
You say 'anyway's the only way', be careful not to gamble
On a guy with a suitcase and a ticket getting out of here
It's a tired bus station and an old pair of shoes
This ain't nothing but an invitation to the blues
But you can't take your eyes off her, get another cup of java
It's just the way she pours it for you, joking with the customers
Mercy mercy, Mr. Percy, there ain't nothing back in Jersey
But a broken-down jalopy of a man I left behind
And the dream that I was chasing, and a battle with booze
And an open invitation to the blues
But she used to have a sugar daddy and a candy-apple Caddy
And a bank account and everything, accustomed to the finer things
He probably left her for a socialite, and he didn't 'cept at night
And then he's drunk and never even told her that her cared
So they took the registration, and the car-keys and her shoes
And left her with an invitation to the blues
Cause there's a Continental Trailways leaving local bus tonight, good evening
You can have my seat, I'm sticking round here for a while
Get me a room at the Squire, the filling station's hiring
And I can eat here every night, what the hell have I got to lose?
Got a crazy sensation, go or stay? now I gotta choose
And I'll accept your invitation to the blues.
Tom Waits (from the album, Small Change)
Favorite Poem Number 27
This week I am featuring another former Wisconsin Poet Laureate, Denise Sweet. Denise was appointed Wisconsin’s second Poet Laureate by then Governor Doyle in January 2005 and served as Poet Laureate until the end of 2008.
Denise is Anishinaabe (Google it if you don’t know), and is a Professor Emeritus of UW-Green Bay. Along the way, she also taught seminars in the Yucatan Peninsula as well Guatemala, where she did field work among the Mayans. Her poetry books have won several awards, among them the Posner Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers, as well as from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas. Her most recent book, published in 2018 is “Palominos Near Tuba City: New and Selected Poems” (Holy Cow! Press). Here is the title poem from that collection. I love the images in this poem:
stars passing into dream song, planets spinning like pinwheels, chasing down poems like ponies and forcing them into corrals, etc. Get ready to stand in the stampede and hold on for dear life.
Palominos Near Tuba City
In the desert of burning dreams, of armadillo and centipede,
I would call this night pitch dark back home
I would watch for any star to pass into dream song
or point of light called planet to whirl and twist like
a tiny pinwheel swallowing me to its vanishing point
Here under pewter sky with words out of breath.
I chase poems down like wild mares into forced corrals
I watch close calls with wisdom rear and kick
against the fences of good judgement.
I used to think the skies brought them home,
thundering hooves and swollen bellies, ready to spark
and fire the dry bony floor, sulphuric aroma real as rain
but now, the horses of white lightning gallop toward me
afraid of nothing, they rush with an eye for hesitation
ready to brush up against my heart with their horse madness.
Here, it is the rider standing in the wavering heat, erect
and indisputable as a lightning rod braced in the open
I stand my ground and wait, ready to hold on for dear life.
Here is a link to her page on the Poet Laureate Commission’s website:
http://www.wisconsinpoetlaureate.org/denise-sweet
Favorite Poem Number 26
I first knew of Ursala LeGuin as a sci-fi author. Her book, “The Left Hand of Darkness”, is considered one of the great works of that genre, and is certainly one of my favorites of that, or any, genre. Then a few years ago around the end of October, I came across a short little poem of hers, “All Saints All Souls”, and being a recovering Catholic as well as a poet, I fell in love with it. There are so many perfectly chosen words in this short poem: “saints all” in line 1, “bare bones” in line 4, “southward-fleeing” in line 6, and the contrast of doomsday and feastday in 7 and 8, all seem well-chosen to me anyway. Here’s the poem:
All Saints All Souls
This is the day when the saints all go
silently to church in France
and over the mountains of Mexico
the bare bones dance.
Ghosts rise up from graveyard sleep
to follow the southward-fleeing sun.
This is the doomsday of the leaf,
the feastday of the skeleton.
Ursala Le Guin
Then last week, a Facebook friend posted her poem “Hymn to Time” which I find equally intriguing:
Hymn to Time
Time says “Let there be”
every moment and instantly
there is space and the radiance
of each bright galaxy.
And eyes beholding radiance.
And the gnats’ flickering dance.
And the seas’ expanse.
And death, and chance.
Time makes room
for going and coming home
and in time’s womb
begins all ending.
Time is being and being
time, it is all one thing,
the shining, the seeing,
the dark abounding.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Notice how the rhyming varies throughout. Line 3 of the first stanza foretells the rhymes throughout stanza 2; and line 4 of stanza 3 serves the same purpose for stanza 4.
LeGuin died in January, 2018, at the age of 89. She authored 21 novels, 11 collections of short stories, 11 volumes of poetry, 13 children’s books, and five collections of essays and criticism. In 2014 she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2016 she joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America.
Her novels, though listed as sci-fi, transcend that genre.
On Tuesday, July 27, the US Postal Service will honor her with the 33rd stamp in their Literary Arts Series.
My advice to you is to read some of Ursala LeGuin’s work.
Until next time,
Ed
Favorite Poem Number 25
Dear friends,
As my 72nd trip around the sun draws to a close, this former math major, as he can’t help doing, is reflecting on the significance of the number. Two Julys ago I celebrated the milestone of concluding my 7th decade, one of those numbers ending in a zero that seem more and more traumatic as we age. And in pondering 72 my first thought was that it is a multiple of 12, and of how important 12 is in our everyday lives. Wikipedia informs us that, “the number twelve carries religious, mythological and magical symbolism, generally representing perfection, entirety, or cosmic order in traditions since antiquity. The product of the first 3 factorials, twelve is a superior, highly composite number divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6..”
It is no accident then that 12, and its multiples, play such an important part in our lives and myths: 12 months in a year, inches in a foot, the packaging of bakery items and eggs, the 12 apostles, 12 signs of the zodiac, the 12 hours on a clock, the 24 hour day and the time zones, 360 degrees in a circle, etc. etc. etc. If it weren’t for the fact that humans are born with ten fingers, we’d be counting in base 12 too.
Anyway, 72 is one of those multiples, 6x12 and factored by 36, 24, 18, 12, 9, 8, 6, 4, 3, and 2. That’s 10 factors of what is after all just a 2 digit number. Anyway, that’s what old math majors think about sometimes. Which brings me to my main point.
I’m taking a tip from Facebook and soliciting donations to my favorite non-profit for my birthday. But being the eternal contrarian, I’m not filling out the suggested Facebook formalities, but have decided to cut out the rich middle man, and run my own show. How does 72 and numbers that end in zero figure into all this rambling, you ask? My goal is to raise $720 for Woodland Pattern, the best bookstore around. Many of you generously sponsor my reading at their annual fund-raising marathon each January, so I thought why not try a mid-year appeal as well. They are hanging in there, and recently re-opened for in person browsing. But like so many small businesses, they were damaged and threatened by the pandemic.
But to finagle my way around Facebook, I’m asking you to go directly to the “support” page on Woodland Pattern’s website and choose one of the several options for helping them out. Thanks.
https://woodlandpattern.org/support
And if you’re in the mood to buy yourself a present on my birthday, go here and order a book, if you didn’t pre-order one. They are now ready for delivery: https://www.watersedgepress.com/product/communique-poems-from-the-headlines/
Finally, since it’s my birthday (“at last!”, I hear you whispering to yourselves), and since this is MY blog, I’m going to post my little haiku written for my 70th birthday two years ago, and published by Cliff Dillhunt in Hummingbird. OK, I know haiku are not supposed to have titles and are supposed to have an element of nature, and that this may not even be a haiku, but it is 17 syllables in a 5-7-5 pattern. And 5, 7, and 17, as the old math major immediately thinks about, are all prime numbers. And as I’m sure you’ll agree, that’s enough for now. See you next time.
On Turning Seventy
fifty years ago:
the impossibility
of reaching thirty
(first published in Hummingbird XXX)
Favorite Poem #24
Wisconsin has an overabundance of wonderful and well-known poets (but can one ever have an overabundance of poets?). On Jayne Jaudon Ferrer’s excellent website, http://www.yourdailypoem.com/ there are 64 Wisconsin poets represented, and over 500 of their poems archived. And those are just the ones that I recognize as Wisconsin poets. Jayne informed me that she receives many more submissions (multiple times more) from Wisconsin than from any other state.
Of the Wisconsin, or Wisconsin-born poets I’ve written about in previous posts are: Todd Boss, Ralph Murre, Dasha Kelly Hamilton, John Koethe, Sylvia Cavanaugh, Antler, and Marilyn Taylor. Check them all out when you can. It’s time for another. Bruce Dethlefsen served as Wisconsin Poet Laureate, 2010-2011 http://www.wisconsinpoetlaureate.org/bruce-dethlefsen
Bruce is not only a great poet, but is a generous supporter of new and emerging poets. He was the first to befriend me, of the many Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets that I now consider close friends. At my first conference he made a point of introducing himself and encouraging my continued writing. Bruce likes to call it “giving the artist permission to be an artist”.
Bruce writes sometimes humorous, sometimes serious (often times both) poems. In the featured poem, “Suicide Aside”, I love the way the lines “you try it/flap your arms for all you’re worth/no way your stuck” affect me in that way. Serious and funny at the same time.
Check out his website here: https://www.brucedethlefsen.com
And read some of the many poems featured there, including some on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac.
“Suicide Aside” is one of my favorites, of the many of his poems that I love. Notice how three of our five senses, (seeing, tasting, and hearing) are integral parts of the poem’s flow. Something I learned in a workshop I once took from Margaret Rozga, and something I’m reminded now, that put I into practice far too seldom.
The final stanza is so heart-wrenching:
“alright don’t tell me
but please me
stick around a while
with me to watch the birds
see how they swirl and turn the world”
Suicide Aside
suicide aside
try watching birds
regard them as they fly like salt to bread
spice up this crusty world
a giant spider web
their lines of flight
tie up and bind the world
they fly
birds jump up in the air and stay
you try it
flap your arms for all you’re worth
no way you’re stuck
they’re free to leave the world
the colors
lemon zest and lime and berry
sugar coffee cream
and all the rest
sublime delicious flavors how
our eyes drink in the world
and listen to them sing
the wind becomes a thing alive
with music whistles squawks and chirps
a melody of world
so tell me why you thought you’d rather die
check out pluck all the feathers
close the lights
alright don’t tell me
but please me
stick around a while
with me to watch the birds
see how they swirl and turn the world
—Bruce Dethlefsen from Breather
Favorite Poem Number 23
I mentioned in the last installment that when I heard Philip Levine read in Chicago, he was appearing with then British Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. Her poem, “Making Money” is a favorite of mine and appears in a book I have that is titled, Red Sky at Night: Socialist Poetry, edited by Andy Croft and Adrian Mitchell (Five Leaves Publications, 2003). In the book signing line that evening, I had her sign that poem in the book. I’d post it here, but can’t find it on line anywhere. Maybe someday I’ll type it out from the book and post it.
That evening Ms. Duffy read the poem, “Mrs. Midas”, which is one of a collection of poems she’s written which look at a story or tale from a different perspective. I like that idea, and have tried it a few times myself with less successful results. I love the tragicomedy of this poem. Because of his granted wish, Midas will no longer be able to touch food without it becoming inedible, but he’ll have no trouble giving up smoking once and for all. And Mrs. Midas now fears his touch on herself and all their furnishings but “the toilet I didn’t mind”.
And I love these lines:
“...Look, we all have wishes; granted.
But who has wishes granted? Him.”
Until next time, enjoy this.
Mrs. Midas by Carol Ann Duffy
It was late September. I’d just poured a glass of wine, begun
to unwind, while the vegetables cooked. The kitchen
filled with the smell of itself, relaxed, its steamy breath
gently blanching the windows. So I opened one,
then with my fingers wiped the other’s glass like a brow.
He was standing under the pear tree snapping a twig.
Now the garden was long and the visibility poor, the way
the dark of the ground seems to drink the light of the sky,
but that twig in his hand was gold. And then he plucked
a pear from a branch. – we grew Fondante d’Automne –
and it sat in his palm, like a lightbulb. On.
I thought to myself, Is he putting fairy lights in the tree?
He came into the house. The doorknobs gleamed.
He drew the blinds. You know the mind; I thought of
the Field of the Cloth of Gold and of Miss Macready.
He sat in that chair like a king on a burnished throne.
The look on his face was strange, wild, vain. I said,
What in the name of God is going on? He started to laugh.
I served up the meal. For starters, corn on the cob.
Within seconds he was spitting out the teeth of the rich.
He toyed with his spoon, then mine, then with the knives, the forks.
He asked where was the wine. I poured with a shaking hand,
a fragrant, bone-dry white from Italy, then watched
as he picked up the glass, goblet, golden chalice, drank.
It was then that I started to scream. He sank to his knees.
After we’d both calmed down, I finished the wine
on my own, hearing him out. I made him sit
on the other side of the room and keep his hands to himself.
I locked the cat in the cellar. I moved the phone.
The toilet I didn’t mind. I couldn’t believe my ears:
how he’d had a wish. Look, we all have wishes; granted.
But who has wishes granted? Him. Do you know about gold?
It feeds no one; aurum, soft, untarnishable; slakes
no thirst. He tried to light a cigarette; I gazed, entranced,
as the blue flame played on its luteous stem. At least,
I said, you’ll be able to give up smoking for good.
Separate beds. in fact, I put a chair against my door,
near petrified. He was below, turning the spare room
into the tomb of Tutankhamun. You see, we were passionate then,
in those halcyon days; unwrapping each other, rapidly,
like presents, fast food. But now I feared his honeyed embrace,
the kiss that would turn my lips to a work of art.
And who, when it comes to the crunch, can live
with a heart of gold? That night, I dreamt I bore
his child, its perfect ore limbs, its little tongue
like a precious latch, its amber eyes
holding their pupils like flies. My dream milk
burned in my breasts. I woke to the streaming sun.
So he had to move out. We’d a caravan
in the wilds, in a glade of its own. I drove him up
under the cover of dark. He sat in the back.
And then I came home, the woman who married the fool
who wished for gold. At first, I visited, odd times,
parking the car a good way off, then walking.
You knew you were getting close. Golden trout
on the grass. One day, a hare hung from a larch,
a beautiful lemon mistake. And then his footprints,
glistening next to the river’s path. He was thin,
delirious; hearing, he said, the music of Pan
from the woods. Listen. That was the last straw.
What gets me now is not the idiocy or greed
but lack of thought for me. Pure selfishness. I sold
the contents of the house and came down here.
I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon,
and once a bowl of apples stopped me dead. I miss most,
even now, his hands, his warm hands on my skin, his touch.
Favorite Poem #22
This week’s featured poet is Philip Levine. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Levine was born in Detroit in 1928. He began working in industrial factories at the age of 14. His working experiences led him to resolve to be a “voice for the voiceless”. He sought to make heroes of the ordinary folks who worked at hopeless jobs simply to stave off poverty.
He told Detroit Magazine, “In terms of the literature of the United States they weren’t being heard. Nobody was speaking for them.”
He attended Wayne State University while working and earned his BA in 1950. Then he started
taking writing workshops at the University of Iowa. He retired from the faculty of UC-Fresno in 1992. He served as US Poet Laureate in 2011-2012.
In 2011, I heard him read in Chicago along with Carol Ann Duffy, then Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom. Two Poets Laureate for the price of one! A memorable evening. In the book signing line Levine and I were both wearing a Detroit Tigers team cap. And when I reached Duffy’s table, she looked at my “Recall Walker” button and said she was following our efforts, and wished Wisconsin rid of him. That didn’t happen soon enough.
Here’s a poem by Levine.
What Work Is
We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.
From What Work Is (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992)
Favorite Poem Number 21
I’ve been remiss in blogging for the last couple of weeks. Life happens sometimes I guess.
I don’t speak Spanish very well at all, despite years of trying, but I read it adequately (with a dictionario nearby) and I can hear the sounds of it in my head, even if I can’t duplicate them very well. I suspect that most translations, no matter how good, don’t sound as beautiful as the poem in its original language. And I know that’s true at least for Spanish poetry (and French).
This week, for the first time in these 21 posts, I’m doubling down on a poet, since I’m enjoying so much the Antonio Machado book that I wrote about last time, “Border of a Dream: Selected Poems” (Copper Canyon Press, 2004)
And for you Spanish speakers, I’m posting a poem in both languages.
Anoche cuando dormia
Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una fontana fluía
dentro de mi corazón.
Dí: ¿por qué acequia escondida,
agua, vienes hasta mí,
manantial de nueva vida
en donde nunca bebí?
Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una colmena tenía
dentro de mi corazón;
y las doradas abejas
iban fabricando en él,
con las amarguras viejas,
blanca cera y dulce miel.
Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que un ardiente sol lucía
dentro de mi corazón.
Era ardiente porque daba
calores de rojo hogar,
y era sol porque alumbraba
y porque hacía llorar.
Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que era Dios lo que tenía
dentro de mi corazón.
Last Night As I Was Sleeping
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.
Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.
by Antonio Machado (translation by Robert Bly)
Favorite Poem Number 20
It was through reading Jim Harrison’s book, “A Really Big Lunch” (see blog post #19), that I decided to get more familiar with the poetry of Antonio Machado. I had read some of his poems of course, mostly in anthologies of poets writing in Spanish. But that was about the extent of it. Harrison, on the other hand was a champion of Machado’s poetry. He even spent some time on his frequent trips to Europe, trekking the route that Machado had walked when fleeing Franco’s fascist persecution of poets and artists in Spain. Legend had it that Machado had hidden a suitcase full of poetry in a cave along the route in the hopes of retrieving it after the civil war ended, That plan died when he did, in France in 1939.
Harrison maybe was looking for the poetry, and maybe just honoring a beloved poet by walking in his shoes.
Anyway, I purchased “Border of a Dream: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado” (Copper Canyon Press, 2004) translated by Willis Barnstone. I’ve been meandering through this collection, a few at a time, for the last few weeks and enjoying it. Here’s one of my favorites so far:
“I dreamt you were guiding me”
I dreamt you were guiding me
down a white footpath
in the middle of the green meadow
toward the blue of the sierras,
toward the blue hills
one serene morning.
I felt your hand in mine,
your companion hand,
your young woman’s voice in my ear
like a new bell,
like a virgin bell
of a spring daybreak.
It was your voice and hand
in dreams that seemed true.
Live, hope. Who knows
what the earth swallows!