Beloved by Luke Hankins

A new year means time for some new poetry. I have noticed that Linebreak hasn't been publishing poetry as fast as they used to. I recall getting poems almost every week and now it seems to be every couple of months. Hmmm.  Well, anyway, here is the poem I would like to talk about.

LUKE HANKINS
Beloved
Drunk and faltering
in my midnight chair,
someone gripped me
by the hair and raised my head.
I saw St. Theresa of Avila,
with St. John of the Cross and Rumi
by her side, arm in arm.
And then through the door behind them
came Rabia Al-Basri and Bashõ,
all with garish, wine-drenched smiles,
blood-purple lips.
They asked me, “What are you doing?”
and I said “No, what are you doing?”
They said, “We are drunk on the wine of the beloved.”
I said, “I am drunk but have no beloved.”
St. Theresa pulled my hair harder
and said, “Oh, yes you do!”–
and smothered me
with her wine-soured mouth.
I want to discuss the poetic turn in this one. Which I believe happens around line 12. The speaker is drunk and sees all of these religious figures as he is stumbling through this scene. But then in line 12 people start to speak and what started as a fairly serious sounding poem becomes one that incorporates some humor. I adore the line "No, what are you doing?" It is perfect in tone and image. I can just picture this person stumbling and with their alcohol soaked voice they lisp out these words. A challenge to these larger than life figures. And then Mother Theresa grabs the speaker and kisses him. An interesting poem.

Semi-Splendid by Tracy K. Smith

Semi-Splendid, by Tracy K. Smith, appears in the Feb. 2017 issue of Poetry Magazine. Sometimes I kick myself for allowing the school's subscription to Poetry lapse. I just simply did not have enough time to read each issue as they were coming out. And the students certainly aren't picking up Poetry Magazine off the shelf in the library. But every once in a while it is nice to come back and check out a poem from this marvelous publication. Like this one...

Semi-Splendid

Related Poem Content Details

BY TRACY K. SMITH

You flinch. Something flickers, not fleeing your face. My

Heart hammers at the ceiling, telling my tongue

To turn it down. Too late. The something climbs, leaps, is

Falling now across us like the prank of an icy, brainy

Lord. I chose the wrong word. I am wrong for not choosing

Merely to smile, to pull you toward me and away from

What you think of as that other me, who wanders lost among ...    

Among whom? The many? The rare? I wish you didn’t care.

I watch you watching her. Her very shadow is a rage

That trashes the rooms of your eyes. Do you claim surprise

At what she wants, the poor girl, pelted with despair,

Who flits from grief to grief? Isn’t it you she seeks? And

If you blame her, know that she blames you for choosing

Not her, but me. Love is never fair. But do we — should we — care?

After I read the poem, I counted the lines. I did! Got to start there don't we. It does indeed have 14 lines, which suggests sonnet, but then the rest of the poem doesn't conform to the sonnet format. Semi-Spendid has some marvelous internal rhyme and not the end rhyme that is typical for a sonnet. 

This poem just falls off the tongue when you read it out loud. Every single word has been painstakingly considered and placed just right so it has the maximum effect on the reader. The alliterative quality of the opening lines draws one into this poems spell, "telling my tongue / To turn it down. Too late. The [...]." Simply wonderful. Because of the rhyme, alliteration, and euphony of this poem it reads very quickly until one gets to the very last line and then the dashes around the appositive phrase slows the reader down. It reads almost like a rant--a quick, full of emotion rant--and then the speaker slows down to make her final point.

Love is complicated, and as the poet states: "Love is never fair." This poem speaks of a love triangle. Perhaps two girls and one guy. One of the girls has the man locked down, in a serious relationship. But the other wishes she was dating the guy. This man seems to be torn as well. He looks at the other girl, watches her; perhaps he is even drawn to her. But his girlfriend won. She has the prize. The speaker doesn't seem to be angry with the man, or the other girl, but she certainly needs to draw this to the man's attention. To make sure he understands that he is going out with her and not the other girl. The last line is telling, "But do we--should we--care?" Well, it certainly seems like you "care." I mean you wrote a poem about the matter and spent enough time to bring attention to it. Love is the most powerful emotion in the world and I think we all care about it.

Abe Vigoda Dies At 94 (Not a Hoax) — Orlando Sentinel

I have been trying to limit how many poems from Linebreak I feature on the 'ol blog, but I just had to for this one.

Abe Vigoda Dies At 94 (Not a Hoax)--Orlando Sentinel

by Dorianne Laux

“Abe Vigoda is no longer not dead.” –Thomas Dean, Facebook

First he was, then he wasn’t, now he is. Always
and forever. None of this Get back up and dust
those wings off, not like in The Godfather
when he’s told, “Can’t do it, Sally,” only to
show up a year later in The Don is Dead
and The Devil’s Daughter. Isn’t this just the way?
Everyone thinks we died when we’ve only
been languishing in a string of forgettable movies.
Tessio’s death was memorable for happening
quietly, off-screen. The horror of it
was the inevitability of it: the pageantry
of the six men surrounding him, pallbearers
shouldering him away in their solemn brown suits.
And isn’t that just the way? The worst
is not what comes, but what we can see coming,
the unfolding of the moment, whole lives
unspooled and slopped in a celluloid pool at our feet.
What kills us is Sal’s stoic desperation, the naked
dignity of his calm plea. We forget
his lack of faith, his weakness and betrayal.
We gaze into his sad Italian eyes, upon his long
Modigliani face, and we pity him the way
we pity Judas, the way we pity our own small
selfish selves, dying a little with each violence
we’ve committed until someone more ruthless
brings our suffering to an end.

I have never seen The Godfather, I probably should one day. And I'm sure that and understanding of that movie would help in interpreting this poem. I like the subject of this poem and especially the poetic turn at the end: "and we pity him the way / we pity Judas, the way we pity out own small / selfish selves, dying a little with each violence / we've committed until someone more ruthless / brings our suffering to an end." The comparison to Judas is marvelous, and then brings the poem back around, helping the reader understand what they are to get out of it.

Dysthymia: Stagnant Traffic

I read this poem when it hit my inbox in Sept. but I needed to save it till now. I am writing this post on 11/1/2016; Halloween was yesterday and we have just launched into the Holiday Season. Fourteen school days till Thanksgiving Break and then just a short three weeks until Winter Break. We have at least four major holidays in our future before we get a break. So, with that in mind, now on to the poem.

Dysthymia: Stagnant Traffic

by Cate Lycurgus

the exit’s not marked    Post-
partum  Seasonal  Psychotic  or the often

merrier  Manic    not half the frolic     
of a holiday party   whole nights

drowning in punch lines   strong 
orchestra of laughter     to keep us from

crying      over the on-ramp’s
stubborn curl    ribbon a red loop 

nuisance to tug     un-loose back 
at home  with the heat left on   

and your scarf like a noose   no one
diagnoses          generic danger

strangling us     on a normal
basis       unwrapping a new numb

not so formal    it won’t         come 
buckle       the small       of your back

a caress     snuck up and     un-
seat belting   out a welcome so     

concrete who      would not soften 
who could not      resist

I love the message of this poem. I don't mean to be harsh, but the holiday season sucks. We try to cram so many things into a short amount of time with the intention of having fun. We want to make memories and enjoy time with our friends and family, but too often we just stress ourselves out and make ourselves miserable in the process. The holidays then become a disappointment rather than the most magical time of the year. Lycurgus uses images and diction to help cement this idea into the reader's mind. Words like psychotic, manic, drowning, crying, stubborn, nuisance, noose, generic, strangling, and numb help in this respect. The merry-makers are drowning in their punch lines, scarves around their necks like nooses. I also really like the formatting in this poem. The extra spaces almost act as line breaks which adds more ways to interpret the poem. Often you can read the word in isolation, but you can also read it in the greater context of the line, or sentence.

Lycurgus doesn't provide the reader with a solution either. The poem brings this problem to our attention, but does nothing to help us overcome it. We are stuck, as we are so often in life, with the problems and asked to solve them for ourselves.

My Son's an All-Star Speller

My Son’s an All-Star Speller

WRITTEN BY MACEO J. WHITAKER
My son’s the baddest lad in Sunnyside, Queens.
My son roughed up not only honors kids but also

the honors teacher. My son still pulled an A.
My son hopped the turnstile to surf on the E-

train to Rego Park to Kew Gardens to Jamaica +
back. My son does not spit sunflower seeds.

My son spits sunflowers. My son spits suns.
My son has a firm secret handshake

named EARTHQUAKE that takes Flushing Creek
waves down the Atlantic to Neptune,

New Jersey. Turning spumes on fumes, my son
hawks fake gold spoons from womb to tomb

then schools his foes on who vs. whom.
At the spelling bee, his adversary Jimmy Roe

(all pomp) nailed psoriasis + sarcophagus
but fumbled a gimme: “sacrilege.” My son

stepped to the mic + spelled vivisepulture.
Vivisepulture (n.): the act of burying alive.

My son put Jimmy Roe in a viselike headlock,
then mock-vivisepulture position before releasing

the runner-up from his clutches. My son won
the spelling bee; he won bullying; he won empathy.

My son can spell awry, rhythm, + ukulele, + —
oh, most definitely — he can spell trouble.

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I know that sometimes I can go a little overboard with praising Linebreak and featuring poetry from that website--it is just so easy because the poems are delivered in my email in-box. If you haven't signed up for Linebreak yet, you really should. My posts about the novels I am reading usually have some substance too. I have more to say.

But I just could not help myself with this poem today.

I wish that more poems were fun like this one. This is a fun poem. It doesn't pretend to be something super serious or deep, it is just a story and I love that. I mean, we could spend quite a bit of time talking about the poem and its structures. Or maybe an hour or two on its theme, but sometimes I like a poem to just be a poem. A fun read and nothing more.

This is a fun read. 

Enjoy.

The Wolf in the Trailer

The Wolf in the Trailer

WRITTEN BY SAARA MYRENE RAAPPANA

The wolf in the trailer,
tired of drinking every meal, licked the last bowl
’til it was dry and fled into the darkened woods
because she couldn’t stand it here
(lamplight like snakes biting her eyes)
but soon returned because forest at daybreak fills
itself with such undimmability.
Panting with the kind of pain that makes
people forget which lie they told themselves,
she moves from chair to chair as if a ray
were chasing her (her feet crack scattered dishes like
they’re chipmunk bones). The paramedics, when
they force the door, will find her curled as if
in sideways prayer, head resting in a spot
of dawn so clear that they’ll mistake her fur
for hair. One man will crouch and touch two fingertips
below her ear to prove no sun beats there.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

I think the obvious thing to start with, in this poem, is the extended metaphor. There isn't a literal wolf in this trailer: "head resting in a spot / of dawn so clear that they'll mistake her fur / for hair." They will mistake her "fur for hair" because it is hair. But really isn't hair and fur the same thing? Anyway...the "wolf" is a woman, one that is hardened by alcohol, abuse, pain, and the darkness of her situation. She keeps returning, coming back to the trailer night after night because...well because she does. That is what is expected of her. In the turn of this poem, the paramedics arrive, but at that point it is too late. I believe that when Raappana states that "One man will crouch and touch two fingertips / below her ear to prove no sun beats there." that the wolf/woman is dead. She should have escaped and run free, but in the end the abuse of this trailer did her in. It is a sad ending. Often we think that these poor people will rise and get out of their current situations, but sometimes people just aren't strong enough to fight against the status quo. 

My absolute favorite line is "lamplight like snakes biting her eyes." The imagery in this line is strange and beautiful, which you know I enjoy.

Elegy: An Email

Elegy: An Email

WRITTEN BY BRIAN SPEARS


Fw: sad news

My son,
A man you knew twenty years ago
has died. His wife has cancer
and cannot travel home
for the funeral. You may remember
he took you camping once, water-skiing
on the Pearl River, far enough
from home to drink beer,
far enough to think I didn’t know.
This is the third time I’ve forwarded
an email like this to you
and I know each time you see
the subject line, you think
“Oh God” (the only time you still pray)
“it’s Dad or Grandma.” I know this.
I do it anyway.
                         Not out of meanness.
What would I change it to? All the news
I get of people you knew when you
were one of us is of their deaths,
or that they’ve left the church,
lost faith after so many years.
Like you. Like the grandson
of the man in this email
who sinned at an inconvenient time,
and will watch this funeral alone
amid the congregation.
Like you will, when you come home.
--------------------------------------------------------------

I love the conversational tone of this poem. It reads like an email and I feel like we don't have enough email poetry. It is strange since email is such a huge thing in our world now. But I have gotten off track. And my absolute favorite line is "I do it anyway / Not out of meanness." I love the line break here, which adds significant levels of meaning to the poem. 

The Fight by Kaveh Akbar

The Fight

by Kaveh Akbar

https://linebreak.org/poems/the-fight/

This should make me more worried than it does—you undressing
soft as a horse’s cheek, steaming like a stomach

filled with hot coals. When I move, I move penitent
as a viper, unbeholden to the laws of tact. I’m not sure

whose bottom lip is more pitiful—mine chewed nearly through
or yours quivering like a wasp. You’ve stepped

into speechlessness, though for so many years you carefully
collected languages. The word for fear in lapsed-Catholic:

Christ-haunted. The word for god in newly-in-love: yes.
How far can a mind wander before it’s simply gone? There’s rain

enough outside to soothe our lizard brains, which know
there are few predators in a storm. Impatience helps itself

to our rage. On the bed we cling to anger like sinking balloons trying
desperately to hold in air. I sigh. You wince. Despite our best efforts, mortality

marches us toward a cease-fire (at any moment, we could end up
crushed by a comet or poisoned alone in a castle). Dutifully

we move through the stations of contrition—your hand my belly,
my nose your scalp—until finally apologies spill

sticky out our mouths. We were both at fault. Our wounds
were superficial. We will work harder. Leaning over, you kiss my ear

and turn off the lamp on the nightstand, not noticing the big vase
where earlier, distracted, I’d dropped in a fistful of poppies petals-first.

I find myself attracted to the sounds in this poem more than anything. The alliteration and the assonance and the diction all work together so wonderfully. The final line "I'd dropped in a fistful of poppies petals-first." is difficult to read, but beautiful to the ear. Enjoy.

Poetry Response: to the fig tree on 9th and christian, by Ross Gay

We have a wonderful librarian at Pomona. She is always looking out for us. Sometimes, I will walk into my classroom and there will be a little stack of books on my chair with a post-it on them. Or I will find a new book tucked into my mailbox at the school. I often don't have time for whatever marvel of book-writing she has placed within my care, but sometimes...sometimes...

That brings me to the poetry of Ross Gay. A few weeks ago I found two new collections of poetry on my chair; one of them was catalog of unabashed gratitude, by Ross Gay. Today I read three poems from the collection and I have to say, I am now a fan. So, I will probably be bringing you several poetry responses over poems in this collection.

to the fig tree on 9th and christian
by Ross Gay

Tumbling through the
city in my
mind without once
looking up
the racket in
the lugwork probably
rehearsing some
stupid thing I
said or did
some crime or
other the city they
say is a lonely
place until yes
the sound of sweeping
and a woman
yes with a 
broom beneath 
which you are now
to the canopy
of a fig its
arms pulling the
September sun to it
and she
has a hose too
and so works hard
rinsing and scrubbing
the walk
lest some poor sod
slip on the
silk of a fig
and break his hip
and not probably
reach over to gobble up
the perpetrator
the light catches
the veins in her hands
when I ask about
the tree they
flutter in the air and
she says take
as much as
you can
help me
so I load my
pockets and mouth
and she points
to the step-ladder against
the wall to
mean more but
I was without a
sack so my meager
plunder would have to
suffice and an old woman
whom gravity
was pulling into
the earth loosed one
from a low slung
branch and its eye
wept like hers
which she dabbed
with a kerchief as she
cleaved the fig with
what remained of her
teeth and soon there were
eight or nine
people gathered beneath
the tree looking into
it like a 
constellation pointing
do you see it
and I am tall and so
good for these things
and a bald man even
told me so
when I grabbed three
or four for
him reaching into the
giddy throngs of
yellow-jackets sugar
stoned which he only
pointed to smiling and
rubbing his stomach
I mean he was really rubbing his stomach
like there was a baby
in there
it was hot his
head shone while he
offered recipes to the
group using words which
I couldn't understand and besides
I was a little
tipsy on the dance
of the velvety heart rolling
in my mouth
pulling me down and
down into the
oldest countries of my
body where I ate my first fig
from the hand of a man who escaped his country
by swimming through the night
and maybe
never said more than
five words to me
at once but gave me 
figs and a man on his way
to work hops twice
to reach at last his
fig which he smiles at and call
baby, c'mere baby,
he says and blows a kiss
to the tree which everyone knows
cannot grow this far north
being Mediterranean
and favoring the rocky, sunbaked soils
of Jordan and Sicily
but no one told the fig tree
or the immigrants
there is a way
the fig tree grows
in groves it wants,
it seems, to hold us,
yes I am anthropomorphizing
goddammit I have twice
in the last thirty seconds
rubbed my sweaty
forearm into someone else's
sweaty shoulder
gleeful eating out of each other's hands
on Christian st.
in Philadelphia a city like most
which has murdered its own
people
this is true
we are feeding each other
from a tree
at the corner of Christian and 9th
strangers maybe
never again.

This! THIS! This huge poem is absolutely beautiful. Gay is trying to express to his readers that simple things, something as simple as a fig, or a fig tree, can be all we need to bring people together. I believe that he accomplishes this wonderfully.

The poem opens with "Tumbling through the / city in my / mind without once / looking up", from my point of view, I believe that Gay is throwing us into this dream world. He knows that this image of people feeding each other from a fig tree in the middle of the city is a fantasy, and I would argue that we as a reader understand that it is a fantasy as well. But, what a fantasy, right? If only things like this happened in real life. Our world would be a better place. Because, like I mentioned earlier, sometimes it just takes something very simple to bring people together. Working together, eating together, sharing in an experience; this is what the people in this poem are doing--sharing in an experience. One that immediately makes every person involved powerful and vulnerable and willing to engage with their fellow man.

Gay's poetic structure and diction is very simplistic, but I think, even that, adds to the overall effect of the poem. He could have summarized this event in a much shorter structure--longer lines, spread out across the page. And he could have chosen larger words--I haven't read much, but I assume he knows and uses a ton of words. But Gay choses to keep it simple, just like his message in the story of the poem. The simplistic nature of this poem is keeping in theme with the story that is happening to the speaker. Gay is hoping that his poem will have an effect on his reader, a very similar effect as the one discussed in the previous paragraph.

I enjoyed this poem thoroughly. The lack of capitalization, punctuation--so you have the read the whole thing in a single breath--it all adds to the enjoyment of a terrific poem.

Whitman's Song of Myself canto 2

Today in AP Lit my students were discussing canto 1 & 2 of Whitman's Song of Myself (one of my favorite poems, by the way), and I wanted to speak more about a couple of lines in canto 2.

"Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor
          feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self."

If only. I mean I teach AP students. They are some of the brightest and best our school has to offer, but I often ask questions and then sit there waiting. Some wait time is appropriate, but I often get the feeling that my students don't want to suss out the meaning of poems for themselves. They want it fed to them in nice, small spoonfuls. They want to know what I think the poem means, because that is obviously the correct answer. And more so this year than in years past it seems. But as Whitman says, these students have practiced so long to learn to read. They know how to read a poem, they know what to look for. The trouble is getting them to do it. And there is something to be proud of in that, like Whitman says. Do it for yourself and it will feel better than if I feed your poetry to you. Be a free thinker and suggest a possible interpretation. We will all be the better for it because we don't want a would populated by automatons. We need you to think for yourself, or else how I am going to get my self-lacing high tops.

Corn Fires, by Kai Carlson-Wee

A new poem to analyze, new poet to discover--Kai Carlson-Wee. I feel like I have been analyzing a lot of poetry recently (diving back into my poetry roots, y'all), but I have been reading some amazing poems, and how simple is it when a poem shows up in my in-box every week from Linebreak.

KAI CARLSON-WEE

Corn Fires

Fields of junked cars. Fields of horses. Fields
of semi-trucks hollowed by time. It looks like
the reason you sailed beyond us, Nik. Riding
whatever was left in your veins. A ripple of heat
running out of the coals in the same way, spilling
the same dank spells on the air. The way smoke
finds your face when there’s no wind to blow it
away. The way bodies find other bodies impossible
not to touch. The way everything gets old, tired
of being what it is. And memory finds us constantly
changing the reasons—light pouring in through
the windows of death’s dark cathedral—infinity,
heroin, driftwood, ash. However you want to
explain it. The night I went back to the ballfields
in Dundas, standing alone in the emptiness there
(the marked yards, vacated bleachers) and took off
my shoes on the roof of your grave, as the flood-
lights went brighter, making that giant design more
complete, more lost in the purpose of duty. And
the reason these lyrics still stand in my mind, however
distorted by grief and time, by not understanding
the words. And the reason I’m wasting this weekend
without you, walking around on these backcountry
roads, going nowhere, watching the corn fires fade
to a heatwave, burn to a black carpet, to shriveled
hairs crushed to a fine nothing, a powdered ash,
a peeling of smoke rising up from my bootsoles.
Doing a little dance, stabbing a stick in the ground.

What an interesting poem. I looked up information about Kai Carlson-Wee and I think we could be friends. He seems like a very cool guy--professional roller-blader, sufer...Very cool!

At the beginning of the poem we are introduced to Nik and I feel like he has passed on because of some drug--maybe addiction, maybe an overdose. But I feel like line 3-4 gives us a lot of evidence for this, "Riding / whatever was left in your veins." and the mention of heroin later on.

"A ripple of heat / running out of the coals in the same way, spilling / the same dank spells on the air. The way smoke / finds your face when there's no wind to blow it / away." These lines have amazing images. I love the "dank spells on the air" and "The way smoke finds your face when there's no wind to blow it." I can see this second one and "dank" just illicits so many smells. It's like when you go camping (not that I go camping that often, but) and the smoke from the dying-down fire follows you around even when the wind isn't blowing. My wife says the smoke follows beauty.

He says that "bodies find other bodies impossible / not to touch." I teach Freshman English and I can confirm this fact. No, but I do believe that it is impossible not to touch the people around you. Or the environment around you for that matter. Because we can think for ourselves we effect everything and everyone around us even if we aren't aware of it.

The poem turns in line 14 and now the speaker of the poem is standing on a grave, I assume that it is Nik's grave--another hint that he died. And the speaker begins this beautiful list: "And the reason I'm wasting this weekend / without you, walking around on these backcountry / roads, going nowhere, watching the corn fires fade / to a heatwave, burn to a black carpet, to shriveled / hairs crushed to a fine nothing, a powdered ash, / a peeling of smoke rising up from my bootsoles. / Doing a little dance, stabbing a stick in the ground." It is like a pan down in a movie. We start with this huge scene, which then pans down to a corn field on fire, then a man walking/dancing, then smoke rising from his boots. This focus leads us to the image of the speaker doing a "little dance" and "stabbing a stick in the ground." These corn fields burning up I believe is symbolic of the speakers friend--wasting his life, burning himself up with drugs, and then the speaker wants to mark his friends passing in a way that makes sense to him. This stick in the ground isn't so much for the friend, it isn't meaningful to the dead, but it helps the speaker make meaning of his friends death.

This poem is an absolute beauty. Very insightful.

Best of Blog Post #25

A new semester means renewed effort in student blogging. I am going to start highlighting some awesome blog posts every once in a while, starting with this blog post. We had a lot of really great blog posts this time, analyzing a poem from the blue book. Check out the following student poetry responses. I believe that you will enjoy them. Good poetry responses make for a happy Mr. Allen.

http://lajefajade.blogspot.com/2016/01/aubade-by-philip-larkin.html

http://mariah98.blogspot.com/2016/01/blog-post-25-poetry-response.html

http://dstoneaplit.blogspot.com/2016/01/blog-post-25-poetry-response-5-daniel.html

http://fanchie16.blogspot.com/2016/01/blog-post-25-poetry-5.html

http://musicandquotesandrain.blogspot.com/2016/01/poetry-response-5.html

http://blogginnbrown.blogspot.com/2016/01/in-blackwater-woods.html

http://klamthelam.blogspot.com/2016/01/blog-post-25-much-madness-is-divinest.html

http://donnybaileysblog.blogspot.com/2016/01/blog-post-25-and-poetry-response-5.html

http://malliemouse.blogspot.com/2016/01/25-prompt-poetry-response-5-sonnet-116.html

http://kataliens.blogspot.com/2016/01/poetry-response-5-to-myself-by-ws-merwin.html

http://satan-prometheus.blogspot.com/2016/01/poetry-response-5.html

Self-Portrait in Needmore, Indiana, by Rochelle Hurt

Linebreak.org consistently puts out wonderful poetry and they have done it once again. Check out the latest poem by Rochelle Hurt.
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ROCHELLE HURT

Self-Portrait in Needmore, Indiana

As expected, after the wedding, the house
became a cough we lived in, trembling
in the throat of that asthmatic spring.

The streets stacked and curved like fingers
on a grease-knuckled hand gripping
the waist of our Midwestern dream.

We went sun-blind inside just looking
at each other.
Death is not working—
but wanting—too hard. My father’s body
was little more than a paper bag by the day
he died and tumbled into a graveyard.

I could have died etching my name
into the glass eye of my cage—a bay
window painted with lace. The skyline
in its expanse was a farce played out each night.

Sometimes my reflection was the star
of the show. Sometimes, it was the child
clapping from her seat, so looking out
and looking in became the same thing.
Sometimes, it just rained for weeks.

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Let's talk about metaphors and similes in this poem.

• "As expected, after the wedding, the house / became a cough we lived in," Comparing the house to a cough and then Hurt goes into more detail helping us visualize this cough. "trembling / in the throat of that asthmatic spring." This is a bad situation. They got married and things just aren't going as expected. A lot of people call that period right after marriage the honeymoon period, and it is supposed to be magical and romantic. But I can identify with the experience here, learning to live with a person you have never lived with before is difficult and takes a long time to get right. Their living together is irritating. They scratch at each other; it is painful.
• "The streets stacked and curved like fingers / on a grease-knuckled hand gripping /  the waist of our Midwestern dream." As if their dream--getting married, settling down, working, having kids--is a girl that is being held by the streets. The "fingers / on a grease-knuckled hand gripping / the waist."
• "My father's body / was little more than a paper bag"
• "I could have died etching my name / into the glass eye of my cage." Ahhh, what an image! Now the speaker feels trapped by the whole situation, this whole marriage. And what is her "cage?" "a bay / window painted with lace." The speaker is trapped by the domesticity of it all. Her situation is a "farce played out each night."
• "Sometimes my reflection was the star / of the show. Sometimes, it was the child / clapping from her seat," Then sometimes she would look out of her situation and sometimes she would look inward--into herself. In both instances this speaker sees the same thing. And sometimes it just rains.

via GIPHY

And don't we all stop at times in our lives and look at ourselves? Sometimes we look and see ourselves as the star on the stage, the lights in our ryes. But sometimes we see ourselves up there, up on the stage and we cannot stop ourselves from clapping. Life is a struggle, it is not easy and no one said it was going to be. But we do need to realize that we can do it. We can be successful when life is tough and "it rains for weeks."

Explain: Wolves by Joe Wilkins

I have to admit it: I am a Joe Wilkins fanboy. My first exposure to Wilkins was in The Sun where his wonderfully beautiful essay, You, All of You, appeared. I've loved his writing since then and whenever I see something published by Wilkins I just have to devour it. So, I knew I would be blogging about this newest poem from Wilkins that just got published today on the Linebreak website. This poem is also interesting from the standpoint of the other things I have been reading. There has been a lot of wolves in my read as of late. Anyway, on to the poem.
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JOE WILKINS

Explain: Wolves

OR-7, also known as Journey, is the first confirmed wolf in western Oregon since 1947, and the first in California since 1924. Since the wolf left his pack in September 2011, he has wandered more than 1,000 miles […] through Oregon and Northern California.
–Wikipedia

The wandering wolf OR-7 appears to have a mate.
–The Oregonian, May 12, 2014

She wanders heavy-bellied, full of milk & knives.

Lowers the barrel of her body like this, forepaws soft & sure as motherwings against the infant earth.

When finally she takes flight, she falls to gnashing the neckmeat of deer, one last upwelling of arterial blood the very blush of certain bodies in the near heavens.

When mountains gather their snap & shatter, when down comes the wind & winterlong, even wolfbones leak their autumn grease, wolfeyes go lonesome & sallow, & for warmth every wolf snouts the yeasting fleshpockets of those they run with & love.

I’m telling you capped & nightgowned like that the story is not the wolf’s but ours, our fear not of being devoured but blinded, lied to, made complicit in our own undoing.

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The images in the poem are strange and beautiful.

• "She wanders heavy-bellied, full of milk & knives." The odd part of this image is the knives. Her belly is full of a wolf pup(s), but metaphorically Wilkins is calling the pups knives. These unborn pups will grow up to become wolves: dangerous animals. Knives helps us to see the wolf pup's potential.
• "When mountains gather their snap & shatter, when down comes the wind & winterlong, even / wolfbones leak their autumn grease." When I was listening to the reading of this poem that phrase, "wolfbones leak their autumn grease," made me stop in shock. What an interesting image. When winter comes even the wolves lose some of themselves, in the struggle to stay alive during those tough months.

Then the poem has it's poetic turn, in the fifth stanza. "I'm telling you capped & nightgowned like that the story is not the wolf's but ours, our fear not of / being devoured but blinded, lied to, made complicit in our own undoing." Yes this poem is about wolves, but it is also about that animalistic nature inside each of us. We are the wolves.

Joe Wilkins does it again people! 

P6: I felt a funeral in my brain CCCR

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P5: Because I could not stop for death CCCR

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Poetic Turns

The newest poem from Linebreak is a great example of poetic turns. Here is the poem:

Against Aristophanes

by Jacques Rancourt

                                                  No e-mails can reach you.
                                                  No texts. Here, a smokestack

                                                  chokes up soot intermittently.
                                                  Cloud-makers, I once called them,

                                    (5)         and what a world if that were true.
                                                  At the window I tap from

                                                  the interior and wait for the ghost
                                                  to write back. Only the willow,

                                                  starved for water, responds
                                    (10)       by clicking a beaded branch

                                                  against the glass. At one end
                                                  of a parking lot, a Target bag

                                                  skims the pavement,
                                                  drifts before a thing whose stillness

                                    (15)        I took to be a truck at rest,
                                                  moonlight on chrome,

                                                  its driver asleep across the seats.
                                                  How his mother, if she lives,

                                                  must worry. I wake and wait
                                    (20)       for you to call at this lavender hour.

                                                  Nothing strange inside
                                                  your heartbeat, irregular as it was,

                                                  nothing but your blood's drum,
                                                  your mysterious body

                                     (25)      more mysterious now,
                                                  more foreign for being

                                                  outside of me. I thought
                                                  we were made of water,

                                                  one soul split into two,
                                     (30)      but we are made of canyon,

                                                  a sky unpolluted by light
                                                  and thus filled with light,

                                                  a moon so full
                                                  if reveals the desert to be

                                      (35)     in motion: a coyote stalking
                                                  a trickle of water,

                                                  a wren skipping nail to nail
                                                  on the arm of a cactus.

I see two distinct turns in this poem. The beginning of the poem has these wonderful images, all of them charged with some imaginal energy. I like the image of the smokestack smoking away. The narrator taps against the glass, watching a Target bag drifting through the parking lot like some wrath--"At one end / of a parking lot, a Target bag / skims the pavement, / drifts before a thing whose stillness /  I took to be a truck at rest, / moonlight on chrome," All very beautiful! The poem is focused on describing all of these images, a very image heavy poem. And then it turns in line 19-- "I wake and wait / for you to call at this lavender hour." Now we are inside the narrators head again and he (I'm assuming it is a male) is dreaming of "your mysterious body" (which I am assuming is a girl).

But it doesn't stop there. In his contemplation he continues to look inward. To examine this relationship and how it effects him and his sense of self. On this inward journey, the narrator turns the poem again in line 27--"I thought / we were made of water, / one soul split into two, / but we are made of canyon," Now we turn into a metaphor. These two people, man and woman, are "made of canyon." They cannot be further from each other; they are different.

Some wonderful final images as well.

• "a coyote stalking / a trickle of water, / a wren skipping nail to nail / on the arm of a cactus."

On the Popularity of Poems

It fascinates me to see what students decide to do when given choice. Of course, you have to stand back and allow them to make those choices...and get the subsequent consequences of those choices. You try to help them to see the best course of action, but it is always better to let these growing people ultimately make those decisions for themselves.

Thus we come to Poetry Response #2, which was just due this last weekend for my AP Lit students. I was very surprised to see so many people choose Margaret Atwood's tiny poem, You Fit Into Me--just four lines of poetry. The jaded teacher in me wants to analyze this and say my students were just being lazy and choosing the shortest poem. Or maybe they chose it because I had told them that it didn't get chosen very often. Or maybe they all got together and decided to do the same poem. Who really knows?

I find very short poems very difficult to analyze though. I hope my students experienced that too, hopefully not to their detriment. When you are analyzing it is better to have more content to work with. I don't know if I would have chosen a four line poem just because of the difficulty inherent in filling an entire page of analysis. I don't know if I would have had enough to discuss. The brevity makes this poem difficult.

The Drowned, by Al Maginnes

Another beautiful poem this week from Linebreak, The Drowned, by Al Maginnes. It also includes a wonderful reading of the poem by Penelope Pelizzon.

The Drowned

by Al Maginnes

                              Already the first of the year has entered
                                        the calm prayer of the lake and become
                              a part of it, his last essential song trapped
                                        forever below the surface, blued syllables
               (5)          slipped from the vessel of his body.
                                        They remain though the rest of him was
                              raised, pale, a creature of half-land, half-water.
                                        Spring and summer claim their share
                              of drunken boaters, careless fishermen.
               (10)                  But rarely this early in the year, this close
                              to shore. I know that bend of water, how shallow
                                        it stands close to the bank. Only
                              the very drunk or unlucky, only one determined
                                        not to rise would slide under and stay.
               (15)        When I was fourteen, a minister who professed
                                        a home-brewed faith of his own sent
                              blurred photos of himself walking on water
                                        to a newspaper. When a covey
                              of reporters came to see the feat repeated,
               (20)                  the minister announced he could not
                              perform miracles in the face of such doubt.
                                        He left the brown river untrod, returned
                              to his congregation whose prayers would
                                        rise like floodwaters, unstopped by doubt.
               (25)         Deep in the gummy mud that is the lake's floor,
                                        the last words of the drowned burrow
                              deeper than any prayers can reach, preserved
                                        in water where no miracles come to pass.

I just want to focus on the first sentence of this poem, which spans several poetic lines. 

"Already the first of the year has entered / the calm prayer of the lake and become / a part of it, his last essential song trapped / forever below the surface, blued syllables / slipped from the vessel of his body."

Maginnes has some interesting language here--interesting use of pronouns. 

In the beginning we have the "first of the year" entering "the calm prayer of the lake." So the actor is the "first of the year," the action is entering. And what is the "first of the year" entering? "[T]he calm prayer of the lake." It isn't entering the lake, it is entering a prayer. 

Then the "first of the year" "become[s] part of it." What is it? The lake? The calm prayer? The calm prayer of the lake? I think the answer is yes. Can you really separate a lake from it's calm prayer?

Then Maginnes uses the male pronoun--"his." As in "his last essential song trapped / forever below the surface." I am assuming that the his refers back to the "first of the year" since that is our character. The first of the year is a he?

Well, regardless, it is a beautiful, interesting line of poetry.