Poems for August 13

Today on LBAO, two poems by one of the Midwest’s finest poets, Teresa J. Scollon. This is her first book, but she’s been writing and publishing for some time. Her book is on the shortlist for the Looking Back at Orpheus Best of 2012!

Friday Nights the Whole Town Goes to the Basketball Game

Nick said, “Listen, Bill,
this is no joke. Chinese
tanks. Chi. Nese. Tanks,

Bill. Were spotted rolling up
I-75. What you think you know
about the United Nations

is lies, lies spread
by an international conspiracy
to take over our homeland.

We’ve got to protect our country,
protect our constitutional right
to bear arms. But I’m ready.

I’m ready. I’ve got guns
and ammunition
buried in my front yard.

I’m warning you —
you’ll regret it
if you don’t do the same.”

Bill said, “Nick,
Nick, whaddaya thinking?
What if the Chinese

show up in February,
Nick? This is Michigan,
for chrissake. How’re you

going to get those guns
out of your front yard
when the ground is frozen?

Whaddaya gonna do then,
Nick?”

~ ~ ~

Death and the Photocopier

My father is on the other side of the river
now. I’m here with his ashes, fluttering
scraps of paper in my hands, an immigrant

among people who never knew him.
I’ve only a clutch of articles to show
he lived, he died — pages of the book

I’m torn from — I’m standing over
the machine in a corner of the office
making copies: light and hum, memory,

the fragile drum, bright hot attention
to each detail, the same hard pull and pause
of the rhythm of oars, of hard sobbing.

This is so contained. What I want is to lie
down full length with my hair spread over
a grave, weeping. I want to be still

floating between life and death, on the river
with its fine filtered mist and its view of both banks,
his body still warm, his breath

lingering over our heads. But he’s left
his cooled ashes behind, and he’s already
trekking deep into the country beyond the bank.

I can’t see him anymore. I’m left here
on the stranger shore, trying to explain my passage.
Making copies under false light, in a place

where paper is seen as merely paper,
and not as the remains of living trees,
not as the breath before ashes.

-Teresa J. Scollon, from To Embroider the Ground with Prayer (Wayne State University Press, 2012)

Poem for August 12

Excerpt from The Bridge of Change

VI

Nearby on this island the gargoyles of Notre Dame
gawk in ancient horror and some
forever gnaw on stone rabbits in the parapets
or wail in winged, formal misery outside the set
limits of the orthodox Church —
all glory happening within the walls where they squat:
so hunched, so beaked, so horrorstruck.

-John Logan, from The Bridge of Change (Boa Editions, 1978)

N.B.: The cover depicted above is of a different edition of The Bridge of Change. I will add the correct cover image in the next day or two.

Poem for August 11

Via Catalani

Of our room
only the room is left
from the door a muted passage
down all of good-bye and vice-versa.
In the mirror for some time the mercury
has surrendered a bluish line
touching the frame at the bottom
from the flowered bed over the marble
the distorted sight of the rift
where pleasure grew and vice-versa.
Only the room is left
of the room we used to be
levelled to the heart starting
from any point whatsoever
far better is the night
that also disappears
and vice-versa.

 

 

-Mia Lecomte, from For the Maintenance of Landscape: Selected Poems (Guernica, 2012 – a bilingual English-Italian edition translated by Johanna Bishop and Brenda Porster)

Poem for August 10

ITINERARY

Voice is a give-away, the manner
in which it determines speech;
in handwriting, the slope of the i‘s and l‘s;
the palm of the hand shows three children,
a long life; the way she walks, stiff from the groin.

Even a cell, they say, homunculus, a ship’s manifest.

Against all this, the windy thoughts, the will
choosing in space — airy parabola, choosing
in time — an hour to meet, choosing in density —

I will study all winter.
According to the papers, swaddling’s back:
a blanket tight around the infant body allows
minimum movement for the arms, hands free, the head
gently constrained but able to rotate forty-five
degrees.

 

-Edith A. Jenkins, from Divisions on a Ground (Lapis Press, 1986)

Poem for August 9

Beached

1. Sun, stroke

What we prized on Lake Ontario shores:
dinosaur jaw, shark teeth, quartz orbs
and goblin ore. Cobalt slivers
of Blue Willow, the crockery smashed
by scullery maids
and washed, washed,
washed to the bone.

Rocks balanced en pointe
by beach-stone technicians.
Couples in jean shorts danced to recorded salsa.
Our stroller did the boardwalk wobble.
Dazed on the sand,
daylight stargazers felt the slow burn.
Rochester obliged as the near horizon.

Waves sent a foaming bottle-message.
Clouds chest-pumped mountain impressions.
The beach walked home in our sandals.

2. After party

Fog appropriate for Day One.
Can we really see you yet, New Year?
Lake Ontario a few yards wide,
the rest is all spaced out.
Champagne cork bobs ashore.
Ice, on the rocks,
takes a boot to the head.
Condom sleeps on sand,
a spent shrivel.
Ducks are bottoms up.

 

-Kateri Lanthier, from Reporting from Night (Iguana Books, 2o11)

Poem for August 8

MOBY DICK SAYS YOU CANNOT HIDE THE SOUL

Under the stars, shining faces. The faces holding on.

1986 was just like this.

The look was completely ethereal.

We came here to understand

a person from another time.

We would later call him

the American Triangle.

A tender soul, he has no telephone.

He laid it all out, like

fabric could be a woman,

like Kate Bush looking for a teapot, big eyes.

A screaming man lying down in a field.

In Cleveland I think he

would have been beautiful

and in 1997 he gave me clouds.

Time like pink minutes, the man

sits down his head in a glass. Says

nice things. Say a river.

Like a beacon, a raincoat,

he danced like the fastest

windshield wipers, sitting

happy for the window’s sense

of self. To feel the telephones

ringing. I am so tired. Can I

say that? Can I say that  I saw

a rainbow and it wasn’t raining,

that there was nothing wet

in the sky? The ocean is a place

and so is the heart, the heart

a place worth living. Don’t

look at me. I’m failing.

Cry, goddamn it, cry.

 

-Amanda Nadelberg, from Bright Brave Phenomena (Coffee House Press, 2012)

Why “Poem of the Day”?

I started Looking Back at Orpheus as an outlet for thoughts on music, literature, occasionally film, that sort of thing. Somehow I got in the habit of posting one poem per day from books in my collection as well as the occasional new book I came across in my job as literary selector for a major Midwestern university library whose name starts with Iowa and ends with University. I told myself it would be good in terms of discipline: making sure I had a poem “up there” every day. There were a few people who really seemed to dig the series, which made me happy even if I was being compared to Garrison Keillor.

I told myself that by typing in the poems, line by line, word by word, it would help me “get into” the poem, and possibly jumpstart my almost-terminally stalled poetry writing. Inasmuch as I’ve gotten a better sense of the mechanics of the poems I love, I can’t say it’s helped me to write my own poems — I’m still where I was.  But, let me be honest: I enjoy doing this. That’s reason enough.

But here’s the reason for the post. Looking Back at Orpheus is going to expand beyond the “poem of the day” series, and so, intermingled with the aforementioned series will be more normal blog posts dealing with my observations and obsessions. Speaking of obsessions, one of the things I’ve been driven to write about lately is the music of Peter Hammill and Van der Graaf Generator,  both from an analytic and decidedly personal standpoint. That topic will be coming up frequently over the next several months, and I apologize if that’s not your cup of tea.

Of course, there will be other things too — writings about the new and newly discovered stuff – with an eye and ear toward the marginalized, the “out,” and the unheard/unread.

Poem for August 7

FUNNY BUT ROADLESS CHARACTERS

smart and coated by a script
flowing on true
pure human feelings.
despite acute control of error
most of all weapons
before marriage bond.
the loneliness transmitted is impressive.
a wealthy producer tombstones
steals a little, a little mess
unreceptive echoes, subdued lights, empty roads.
the festive suit stands alongside the pale white
as well as to remove what wish of the lines
of what they wish in addition, many also.
it seems that in every character’s life
this sad side of christmas will last forever.

-Tom Raworth, published in the journal Lana Turner (#4, 2012).

 

Poem for August 6

from STANZAS IN MEDITATION

PART ONE

STANZA IV

Just when they ask their questions they will always go away
Or by this time with carefulness they must be meant to stay
For which they mind what they will need
Which is where none is left
They may do right for them in time but never with it lost
It is at most what they can mean by not at all for them
Or likeness in excellent ways of feeling that it is
Not only better than they miss for which they ask it more
Nearly what they can like at the best time
For which they need their devotion to be obtained
In liking what they can establish as their influence
All may be as completely added not only by themselves.
For which they do attack not only what they need
They must be always very ready to know.
That they have heard not only all but little.
In their account on their account may they
Why need they be so adequately known as much
For them to think it is in much accord
In no way do they cover that it can matter
That they will clear for them in their plight
Should they sustain outwardly no more than for their own
All like what all have told.
For him and to him to him for me.
It is as much for me that I met which
They can call it a regular following met before.
It will be never their own useless that they call
It is made that they change in once in a while.
While they can think did they all win or ever
Should it be made a pleasant arrangement yet
For them once in a while one two or gather well
For which they could like evening of it all.
Not at all tall not any one is tall
No not any one is tall and very likely
If it is that little less than medium sized is all
Like it or not they win they won they win
It is not only not a misdemeanor
But it is I that put a cloak on him
A cloak is a little coat made grey with black and white
And she likes capes oh very well she does.
She said she knew we were the two who could
Did we who did and were and not a sound
We learned we met we saw we conquered most
After all who makes any other small or tall
They will wish that they must be seen to come.
After at most she needs be kind to some
Just to like that.
Once every day there is a coming where cows are

-Gertrude Stein, from Stanzas in Meditation: The Corrected Edition (Yale University Press, 2012)

2 Poems for August 5

POEMS

“Hexagonal energy from the brain,in
Conventional-hysterical wonder-anguish.”
“I know why you came to the party!”

“I have changed, I am currently creepy-pious.
I got in a wreck in my truck. Me”
“I smoked into my tiny telephone while
I stared at the giant rappers.
I was not wedded to their decisions,
I walked out on the back balcony instead…
& I stood out like a bulb.”

 

.

 

THE MYSTERY OF THE PERSIAN MUMMY

In Persepolis in Southern Iran
Jackie and Jeanine stole into a yard
And found a box that
Tore open like smoke on readout scans.
A long-lost father got old.
Looked down from stone piles, beard in ringlets.
His cave of ossified hoaxes was his chest,
His regret was the relationship in the canoe.
Hooked after his years of lovemaking
With her, it was so intense, stoned on meat, tuna
With the brain cut and running out of the nostrils.

But back to the scans — the oral
Bones, the different light blues /
Views of rice & golden. I love it,
As a last image pattern, Tina.

Of course it was all fake and crap
And we made hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Jackie came down to the store and
Like Xerxes was up and calling me a punk.
He did not appear to me disappointed that I was married…
I suppose the intact mummy made arrangements with you.
Or did father once have the receipts? Not listening?
He should have known I was a fey expert on Eastern art.
And never have rehired the man after his stroke.

 

-Brandon Downing, from Dark Brandon (Faux Press, 2005)