April is National Poetry Month. In 2007, Ellen celebrated by emailing friends & family her own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. The full Poem-a-Day email series for April 2007 is archived below; for a list of the books where these poems are published, see the April 30 posting.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org. To sign up for Ellen's Poem-a-Day email series for April 2008, or to nominate a poem for the series, just send her an email request.
Enjoy.
Ellen
Poem-a-Day, April 1: Is this a joke?
Hello Friends—
April is National Poetry Month! I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
For April Fool's Day, I feel it is only fitting to send you a poem with a sense of humor: "One-Word Poem" comes from David R. Slavitt, in his 2006 book William Henry Harrison and Other Poems. Please note that I did not write the discussion questions; they are supposed to be part of the poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
One-Word Poem
Motherless.
Discussion questions.
1. Is this a joke? And, if so, is it a joke of the poet in which the editor of the magazine (or, later, the book publisher or the textbook writers) has conspired? Or is it a joke on the editors and publishers? Is the reader the audience of the poem?
2. It is regrettable not to have a mother. Is the purpose of the poem to convey an emotion to the reader? Does the poet suppose that this is the saddest word in the language? Do you agree or disagree? Can you suggest a sadder word?
3. The Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary gives an alternate meaning from nineteenth- and twentieth-century Australian slang as an intensifier, as in "stone motherless broke." Can you assume that the poet knew this? Does this make for an ambiguity in the poem? Does this information change your emotional response?
4. If the assertion of the single word as a work of art is not a joke, then what could it mean? Is it a Dada-ist gesture, amusing and cheeky perhaps but with an underlying seriousness that the poet either invites or defies the reader to understand?
5. Even if the poet was merely fooling around, does that necessarily diminish the possible seriousness of the poem?
6. If we acknowledge that this is a work of art, can the author assert ownership? Is it possible to copyright a one-word poem?
7. In writing a one-word poem, the crucial decision must be which word to choose and to posit as a work of art. Do you think the poet spent a great deal of time picking this word? Or did he simply open a dictionary and let his fingers do the walking? Does that diminish the poem's value? Or is it a kind of bibliomancy?
8. Should the word have been in quotes? Or is it quotes even without being in quotes? There is a period at the end of the poem. Would it change the meaning of the poem if there were an exclamation point? Or no punctuation at all? Would that be a different poem? Better or worse? Or would you like it more or less? (Are these different questions?)
9. You can almost certainly write — or "write" — a one-word poem. But it would be difficult for you to get it published — almost certainly more difficult now that this one has been published and staked its claim. Is the publication of a poem a part of the creative act? Had the poet written his poem and put it away in his desk drawer as Emily Dickinson used to do, would this make it a different poem?
10. Some poems we read and some that we particularly like, we memorize. You have already memorized this one. Do you like it better now? Or are the questions part of the poem, so that you have not yet memorized it? Will you, anyway? Do you need to memorize the questions verbatim, or is the idea enough?
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Poem-a-Day, April 2: with veins, without mirth
Weight, In Passing
Because it is still
early, the sky is skimmed
grey, and the three men working here
have little to say to each other.
They drive the truck closer
along the sand, ready the winch
for lifting. This is a solemn
thing, and the day is quiet
as communion.
They open
the whales
with chainsaws — the ribs
enormous crescent moons,
the blubber an awkward
afterthought.
Without mirth
they haul the soft masses
onto the flatbed. It is the hearts
they are after, large
as cars, with veins
a grown man could crawl through.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem comes from the young poet Andrea Haslanger, circa 2002, and is unpublished.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 3: reading in the dark
Hymn to Lota
Close, close all night
the lovers keep.
They turn together,
in their sleep,
close as two pages
in a book
that read each other
in the dark.
Each knows all
the other knows,
learned by heart
from head to toes.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem comes from the published unpublished works of Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979).
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
P.S. Happy Birthday, Dara!
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Poem-a-Day, April 4: each lightbulb chooses a star
The Converted
When those doves come for their evening weep
And the last sun kneels till the lawn is lit
From underneath,
When the tiny bats begin their arcs around the porch
And the older goats remember,
Running for the stable door,
The sky cracks again; the inexhaustible pours in.
Breezes swing down into fields, amulets.
Leaves chatter against the flagstone. Each house steadies
Into night like an airplane, silver propellers of light
Nosing out. The dog stands in front of the TV: Heston
Is Moses and Moses in color. Suddenly all is conspiracy.
Night dark pushes out the cold stone of moon; each lightbulb
Chooses a star to convert, to bring down.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem opens Sophie Cabot Black's first book, The Misunderstanding of Nature (1994).
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 5: wet black arrow, long pink dangle
Benevolence
by Tony Hoagland
When my father dies and comes back as a dog,
I already know what his favorite sound will be:
the soft, almost inaudible gasp
as the rubber lips of the refrigerator door
unstick, followed by that arctic
exhalation of cold air;
then the cracking of the ice-cube tray above the sink
and the quiet ching the cubes make
when dropped into a glass.
Unable to pronounce the name of his favorite drink, or to express
his preference for single malt,
he will utter one sharp bark
and point the wet black arrow of his nose
imperatively up
at the bottle on the shelf,
then seat himself before me,
trembling, expectant, water pouring
down the long pink dangle of his tongue
as the memory of pleasure from his former life
shakes him like a tail.
What I'll remember as I tower over him,
holding a dripping, whiskey-flavored cube
above his open mouth,
relishing the power rushing through my veins
the way it rushed through his,
what I'll remember as I stand there
is the hundred clever tricks
I taught myself to please him,
and for how long I mistakenly believed
that it was love he held concealed in his closed hand.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem comes from Tony Hoagland's second book, Donkey Gospel (1998). Mr. Hoagland would like to thank Al-Anon for enabling his quiet fury.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 6: 1,000 tulips burning in Amsterdam
why things burn
My fire-eating career came to an end
when I could no longer tell
when to spit and when
to swallow.
Last night in Amsterdam,
1,000 tulips burned to death.
I have an alibi. When I walked by
your garden, your hand
grenades were in bloom.
You caught me playing
loves me, loves me
not, metal pins between my teeth.
I forget the difference
between seduction
and arson,
ignition and cognition. I am a girl
with incendiary
vices and you have a filthy never
mind. If you say no, twice,
it's a four-letter word.
You are so dirty, people have planted
flowers on you: heliotropes. sun-
flowers. You'll take
anything. Loves me,
loves me not.
I want to bend you over
and whisper: "potting soil," "fresh
cut." When you made
the urgent fists of peonies
a proposition, I stole a pair of botanists'
hands. Green. Confident. All thumbs.
I look sharp in garden
shears and it rained spring
all night. 1,000 tulips
burned to death
in Amsterdam.
We didn't hear the sirens.
All night, you held my alibis
so softly, like taboos
already broken.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem comes from Daphne Gottlieb's 2001 collection Why Things Burn — because sometimes the title poem really is the one most worth reading.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 7: after things burn
Ash
The church in the forest
was built of wood
the faithful carved their names by the doors
same names as ours
soldiers burned it down
the next church where the first had stood
was built of wood
with charcoal floors
names were written in black by the doors
same names as ours
soldiers burned it down
we have a church where the others stood
it's made of ash
no roof no doors
nothing on earth
says it's ours
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem comes from the punctuation-free works of W.S. Merwin, in his 1973 collection Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 8: Down the rabbit hole
Jabberwocky
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought —
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One two! One two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
***
Hello Friends—
Why would I send you a poem that every last one of you is already familiar with? Because some poems ought to be read, aloud, at least once a year — You can think of this practice as akin to the Queen's practice of believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast each morning. I challenge you to read this poem ALOUD to someone else today.
Have you ever thought about what it would mean to translate "Jabberwocky" into another language? Keith Lim has compiled a wonderful collection of "Jabberwocky" translations online. If you shy away from reading this poem aloud because you don't know how to pronounce half of the words, you can also find Carroll's own pronunciation guide reproduced on Keith's site (under "Explanations"). If you shy away from reading this poem aloud because you don't know what half of the words mean, I refer you to Humpty Dumpty (who can explain all the poems that ever were invented — and a good many that haven't been invented just yet): "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less." In order to read "Jabberwocky" aloud, you simply have to make choosing what you mean each of the poet's words to mean a more conscious act.
Today's poem, "Jabberwocky," from Through the Looking Glass (1872) by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), is dedicated in loving memory to Edgar Lewis (yes, named for Poe and Carroll) — a giant pet white rabbit who hopped freely around on our front lawn for a decade's worth of easters, entertaining countless neighboring children who finally got to meet the real easter bunny.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
P.S. Frabjous Birthday, Jane Nevins!
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Poem-a-Day, April 9: small civilities
Anne
The daughter is mad, and so
I wonder what she will do.
But she holds her saucer softly
And sips, as people do,
From moment to moment making
Comments of rain and sun,
Till I feel my own heart shaking —
Till I am the frightened one.
O Anne, sweet Anne, brave Anne,
What did I think to see?
The rumors of the village
Have painted you savagely.
I thought you would come in anger —
A knife beneath your skirt.
I did not think to see a face
So peaceful, and so hurt.
I know the trouble is there,
Under your little frown;
But when you slowly lift your cup
And when you set it down,
I feel my heart go wild, Anne,
I feel my heart go wild.
I know a hundred children,
But never before a child
Hiding so deep a trouble
Or wanting so much to please,
Or tending so desperately all
The small civilities.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem comes from Mary Oliver (1935 - ). Much like fellow Pulitzer-winner Robert Frost, Oliver is often pigeon-holed as a "nature poet," when in fact some of her most intriguing works (like "Anne") take place within four manmade walls. Some Random Poet Trivia: In her teens, Mary Oliver briefly lived in the former home of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
P.S. Thanks to Molly for introducing me to this poem.
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Poem-a-Day, April 10: Audacity my roof
Samurai Song
When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.
When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.
When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.
When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.
When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.
When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.
Needs is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem comes from tercet master Robert Pinsky, opening his 2000 collection Jersey Rain.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 11: Intestines of an emerald
Death is a beautiful car parked only
to be stolen on a street lined with trees
whose branches are like the intestines
of an emerald.
You hotwire death, get in, and drive away
like a flag made from a thousand burning
funeral parlors.
You have stolen death because you're bored.
There's nothing good playing at the movies
in San Francisco.
You joyride around for a while listening
to the radio, and then abandon death, walk
away, and leave death for the police
to find.
***
Hello Friends—
Disclaimer: The manager of this poem-a-day list shall not be held liable for any carjackings or other illicit actions arising from the reading of this or any other (untitled) poem from Richard Brautigan's The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster (1968).
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 12: mud-luscious & puddle-wonderful
if i have made,my lady,intricate
imperfect various things chiefly which wrong
your eyes(frailer than most deep dreams are frail)
songs less firm than your body's whitest song
upon my mind — if i have failed to snare
the glance too shy — if through my singing slips
the very skilful strangeness of your smile
the keen primeval silence of your hair
— let the world say, "his most wise music stole
nothing from death" —
you only will create
(who are so perfectly alive)my shame:
lady through whose profound and fragile lips
the small clumsy feet of April came
into the ragged meadow of my soul
***
Hello Friends—
Of all the famous occurrences of "April" in poetry (see also Chaucer, Eliot), this untitled e.e. cummings poem is my favorite. Oh, and the jabberwockean words in subject line of this email come from another of cumming's great seasonal works, "in Just- / spring."
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 13: boca innumerable
El viento en la isla
El viento es un caballo:
óyelo cómo corre
por el mar, por el cielo.
Quiere llevarme: escucha
cómo recorre el mundo
para llevarme lejos.
Escóndeme en tus brazos
por esta noche sola,
mientras la lluvia rompe
contra el mar y la tierra
su boca innumerable.
Escucha cómo el viento
me llama galopando
para llevarme lejos.
Con tu frente en mi frente,
con tu boca en mi boca,
atados nuestros cuerpos
al amor que nos quema,
deja que el viento pase
sin que pueda llevarme.
Deja que el viento corra
Coronado de espurra,
que me llame y me busque
galopando en la sombra,
mientras yo, sumergido
baja tus grandes ojos,
por esta noche sola
descansarmé, amor mío.
*
The Wind in the Island
The wind is a stallion:
hear how he runs
over the ocean, the sky.
He wants to take me: listen
how he roves the world
to take me far away.
Conceal me in your arms
for this night only,
while the rain breaks
against the ocean and the rocks
its innumerable mouth.
Listen how the wind
calls me, galloping
to take me far away.
With your forehead to my forehead,
your mouth to my mouth,
our bodies tied
to love that burns,
let the wind pass over
unable to take me.
Let the wind run
crowned by seaspray,
call and search for me,
galloping in shadow,
while I, submerged
beneath your huge eyes
for this night only,
will rest, my love.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem is by Pablo Neruda, from Los Versos del Capitan (1952). Today is Cathy & I's sixth anniversary: Muchas gracias para seis años de noches submergido baja tus grandes ojos, amor mío.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 14: dresses wider than doors
House of Worth
To trim the hat made to match the fifth white dress worn
this year, a feather of the mourning dove left this morning on the windowsill.
Dresses meant to be worn
once and once only and then worn
by servants lifting
the hem to hurry down the hall. Face worn,
dress quite new.
So many of Marie Antoinette's dresses were worn
to Masquerade last night, the hem of one dress
met the next dress
in waltz-time and the mind, time-worn
flung its doors
between compartments like the locomotive doors
in which Margaret Lockwood in The Lady Vanishes goes door
to door to find the truth. The tweed dress worn
to travel; pillbox hat, no veil, two pins; nothing. Margaret Lockwood watches one door
when the train stops and Michael Redgrave, who loves her already, watches the other door.
Remembering the Vanished Lady writing her name in the window-
fog is not a clue. She may have written it herself, the conductor said, and did
indeed suffer a blow to the head outside her hotel door.
The dress was so big,
one's hand is useless to take glass from table;
the skirt approaches while the hand is yet distanced.
At home, the dresses
are wider than doors
and carried one by one into the room she'll wear them, white dresses
are slipped over white dresses-
whole seasons worn
in the stead of one all dressed up
because she who has nowhere to go is most free. Dressed
to listen for the returning hunt; dressed
to see three deer stop by the apple tree near the closest window,
and didn't they come quietly? The window
was open. The wind sought the innermost layer and lifted
the dresses apart.
Lifting
the lid off the box, the Princess of Corinth
saw the gold dress and lifted
it out. She lifted
the dress in the mirror. She shut the door
and lifted
her old dress off. The children lifted
their hands to their eyes. Was there warning?
The room was hot. Was there warning?
The windows
were locked, so when I went to the window
there was nothing to do but bang on the window.
In 1878 hemlines lifted.
The window
would not. The window
sash could be tied to the leg of the dressing-
table and lowered down if the window
would open. The table would drag toward the window
when we climb down the ladder. There are doors
that never open with doors
behind them. On the previous night, she looked from the carriage window
as she passed the Princess's parlor window.
She saw him inside when the curtain lifted.
"What an admirable artist who makes us weep thus, two evenings in succession,
with the same words gives me the sensation that she is a different woman the
second day from the first.
When the dying Marguerite lets the mirror fall, it breaks. The first evening leaning
on the table, without gathering up the pieces, she looked at it with terror and
spoke to it from faraway, leaving this world.
This evening, kneeling down slowly, she goes right up to it, her outstretched hand
trembling, she collects the pieces."
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem is by Robyn Schiff, from her 2002 collection Worth.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 15: slip and sip, fib and rib
Ghazal
Beneath her slip,
the slip of her.
Iron. Lust.
The flint of her.
In dorms and parks, motels
and tents: the din of her.
What I would not have done
for another sip of her.
She swore she'd never love another.
The fib of her.
She kicked off the sheets; I held on,
breathless, through the fit of her.
Good or evil, she was first.
The rib of her.
That she could leave me after all
that I had been to her.
Hands pressed deep
into my mouth. The bit of her.
A lengthy, doe-eyed nuzzle
at the salt lick of her.
Cock sure,
the spit of her.
A week spent curled up on the floor,
gutted, sick for her.
Nights she ground my bones
to dust. The grit of her.
Teeth, nails, my name
whispered low. The grip of her.
***
Hello Friends—
When asked to name a single very favorite poem in the whole wide world, I often answer with today's poem, "Ghazal" by Emily Moore, which appeared in The Yale Review, vol. 90, no. 1 (January 2002).
To learn more about the ancient Persian poetic form of the ghazal and its various rules and restraints, click here — and, if you really want to get into the nitty-gritty, also click here.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
P.S. Many thanks to Rick Barot for introducing me to this poem (among others).
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Poem-a-Day, April 16: Save a day.
Dust of Snow
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem is by Robert Frost (1874-1963), from a collection called You Come Too that I ordered from my third grade class's Scholastic catalog. I'm not sure in which of Frost's books it was originally published (Do any of you know?). Poetry Trivia: Robert Frost was poet laureate from 1958-9 (under Eisenhower), the fist poet to read at a presidential inauguration (for JFK), and won the Pulitzer Prize four times across three decades. He never graduated from college.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 17: The towers are incidental.
Hum
The days are beautiful
The days are beautiful.
I know what days are.
The other is weather.
I know what weather is.
The days are beautiful.
Things are incidental.
Someone is weeping.
I weep for the incidental.
The days are beautiful.
Where is tomorrow?
Everyone will weep.
Tomorrow was yesterday.
The days are beautiful.
Tomorrow was yesterday.
Today is weather.
The sound of the weather
Is everyone weeping.
Everyone is incidental.
Everyone weeps.
The tears of today
Will put out tomorrow.
The rain is ashes.
The days are beautiful.
The rain falls down.
The sound is falling.
The sky is a cloud.
The days are beautiful.
The sky is dust.
The weather is yesterday.
The weather is yesterday.
The sound is weeping.
What is this dust?
The weather is nothing.
The days are beautiful.
The towers are yesterday.
The towers are incidental.
What are these ashes?
Here is the hate
That does not travel.
Here is the robe
That smells of the night
Here are the words
Retired to their books
Here are the stones
Loosed from their settings
Here is the bridge
Over the water
Here is the place
Where the sun came up
Here is a season
Dry in the fireplace.
Here are the ashes.
The days are beautiful.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's is the title poem of Ann Lauterbach's 2005 collection Hum.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 18: pious rape
I will put Chaos into fourteen lines
And keep him there; and let him thence escape
If he be lucky; let him twist, and ape
Flood, fire, and demon — his adroit designs
Will strain to nothing in the strict confines
Of this sweet Order, where, in pious rape,
I hold his essence and amorphous shape,
Till he with Order mingles and combines.
Past are the hours, the years, of our duress,
His arrogance, our awful servitude:
I have him. He is nothing more nor less
Than something simple yet not understood;
I shall not even force him to confess;
Or answer. I will only make him good.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem is by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950). Poet Trivia: Millay's Greenwich Village Bohemian friends called her "Vincent."
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 19: the tender machines of fact
Captivity Narrative
1.
He is running across the ice
fast enough so that it doesn't know it should
be breaking. At some point
you will breathe again. This could be
a movie, will be the movie you play
when you tell the story somewhere,
sometime, else: this boy in the avocado
windbreaker, the sky the white
of pills. In one of the captivity narratives
you have read, the Indians took a woman
on an ice floe big as a room.
You don't know anything yet.
You are on this side still. The ice
is scarred like the moon.
2.
If the eyes were brown, you should
have known this. You thought green.
If there is money in his pockets,
you should know this. Think of licking
the hands clean. You can ask with some
pleasure, Why do you smell like gym?
You want the paradigm of love
you think of all day
to become the tender machines of fact.
Something is like a spigot, another like a toaster.
His thumb flicks on the lighter,
hinges stop things from falling apart.
The planes keep going over cities, intricate below
as the insides of watches.
3.
The streets of your city
are white. But he writes you about the muezzin
calling the heat's changesÑ
heavier, then less. The blue
concentrated day, curved: he wears his headphones
walking in the gold market.
In other words he writes the insect-like script
for lemon and electric,
each a bladed, calligraphic secrecy.
Here, the plastic stapled over your windows keeps
the cold out. In one dream that you wake from,
the bug skitters
into your ear, rapid with fright, eating itself
to the other side.
4.
Still, you are no more certain
for every image you have. His figure
up ahead, the tree stripped, each
warped into something you need.
The chair is peeling outside under a waterlogged
sky. The child is asked,
Why is your face so dirty?
You are no more happy
for having seen them:
a girl rubbing her nose on the boy's
cheek, beyond them the streets in the bus window
passing, moving. It is an industry, love.
The tree's fingers brightening
into your notice one day, the child holding
a coin in his mouth.
5.
When he is five and his father
has not yet lost it, they would climb
to the top floor of the downtown
building and put mail into the chute that fell
all the way down, a straight glass
spine. You see the scrawled North Pole
address, the sepia-colored stamp showing
the Wright Brothers and their plane.
This many years later, just outside
the museum, he says he sees his father, skinny
as a string, dirty Santa beard, garbage clothes.
He would like to kick him
for what he did and didn't do. He would like to
take him with him.
6.
First they laid a round
of flat stones, then smaller rocks and a layer
of sand. Then twigs,
and bunched, dry grass, and larger pieces
of wood. The fire caught quickly where one
of the men had struck one, out
of his hands. From that long interval
now to the home of particular
rooms, what returned to her came
in a colorless stream, things recalling
only themselves. The curiously solid footing
of the ice, the fire
they made on it. And the snow, the sky coming
down to the ground.
7.
You will have to keep traveling.
This far north the light will not sleep.
So there must be other ways of being
held. Can it be that there is only one bird.
only one: Who made the eyes but I?
One barn and its stricken panes:
Where are my window songs? Backyard pools
are blue as his envelopes,
though the leaves have dropped, shadows
clumped at the bottoms. You're walking
not knowing you're walking, just someone
turning in sleep, someone turning
a corner and appearing unannounced
on a storefront's dozen TVs.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem is by Rick Barot, from Five Fingers Review Issue 22 (2005), and will probably also be included in his forthcoming sophomore collection.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 20: shorter than haiku
DOWNHILL
I don't have a home
and I live there
all the time.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem is by Julia Vinograd, from Berkeley Street Cannibals: Selected Poems, 1969-1976.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 21: Remember Sarah Stout
Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout
Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout
Would not take the garbage out.
She'd wash the dishes and scrub the pans
Cook the yams and spice the hams,
And though her parents would scream and shout,
She simply would not take the garbage out.
And so it piled up to the ceiling:
Coffee grounds, potato peelings,
Brown bananas and rotten peas,
Chunks of sour cottage cheese.
It filled the can, it covered the floor,
It cracked the windows and blocked the door,
With bacon rinds and chicken bones,
Drippy ends of ice cream cones,
Prune pits, peach pits, orange peels,
Gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal,
Pizza crusts and withered greens,
Soggy beans, and tangerines,
Crusts of black-burned buttered toast,
Grisly bits of beefy roast.
The garbage rolled on down the halls,
It raised the roof, it broke the walls,
I mean, greasy napkins, cookie crumbs,
Blobs of gooey bubble gum,
Cellophane from old bologna,
Rubbery, blubbery macaroni,
Peanut butter, caked and dry,
Curdled milk, and crusts of pie,
Rotting melons, dried-up mustard,
Eggshells mixed with lemon custard,
Cold French fries and rancid meat,
Yellow lumps of Cream of Wheat.
At last the garbage reached so high
That finally it touched the sky,
And none of her friends would come to play,
And all of her neighbors moved away;
And finally, Sarah Cynthia Stout
Said, "Okay, I'll take the garbage out!"
But then, of course it was too late,
The garbage reached across the state,
From New York to the Golden Gate;
And there in the garbage she did hate
Poor Sarah met an awful fate
That I cannot right now relate
Because the hour is much too late
But children, remember Sarah Stout,
And always take the garbage out.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem is from Where the Sidewalk Ends (1974) by Shel Silverstein (1932-1999, also author of The Giving Tree). Kinda makes you want to start composting, doesn't it?
Today is Earth Day and the perfect excuse to ditch your incandescent bulbs once and for all, bring your own bags to the grocery store, start that compost, or finally get around to whatever it is that you in particular have been putting off. If doing it "for the earth" is a little too abstract to truly motivate you, try doing it for Shel.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 22: 100% cotton
The Shirt
The shirt touches his neck
and smoothes over his back.
It slides down his sides.
It even goes down below his belt—
down into his pants.
Lucky shirt.
***
Hello Friends —
Today's poem is by Jane Kenyon from her 1978 collection From Room to Room. For a different take, also see "Shirt" by Robert Pinsky.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 23: Since it's his birthday...
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
***
Hello Friends—
Happy Bard Day! April 23 is celebrated as the supposed birthday of William Shakespeare. The Bard was born in 1564 and also supposedly died on the exact same day 52 years later, April 23, 1616. The monologue above is from Act V, scene 5 of Macbeth, when Macbeth learns of Lady Macbeth's death. As with "Jabberwocky," I strongly encourage you to read today's selection out loud to someone else, at least once a year.
Ever wonder how Shakespeare was able to stay in perfect iambic pentameter so much of the time? Well, it certainly didn't hurt that he made up many of the words he used — often taking a known word and twisting it into a new part of speech; noun into verb, verb into adjective, etc. — so that they just happen to fit perfectly into his syllabic structure. Here's a fun list of words that have their earliest usage credited to Shakespeare in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Further reading: Of the dozens of literary works deriving their titles from this ironically immortal Macbeth passage, two particularly worth reading are "Out, Out —" by Robert Frost; and The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (but not unless you've read something else by Faulkner first — As I Lay Dying is a good place to start if you're a Faulkner virgin — otherwise, you'll never get past the first sentence of The Sound and the Fury).
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 24: does your house have lions?
what does a liver know of peace
or spleen. kidneys. ribs. be still my soul.
how does a city broker its disease
within the confines of a borough, where control
limps tepid-like carrying a parasol
of hurts, hurting, hurted, hurtful croons
stranded in measured arenas without pulpits or spittoons.
came the summer of nineteen sixty
harlem luxuriating in Malcolm's voice
became Big Red beautiful became a city
of magnificent Black Birds steel eyes moist
as he insinuated his words of sweet choice
while politicians complained about this racist
this alchemist. this strategist. this purist.
came the rallies sponsored by new york core
came Malcolm with speeches spilling exact and compact
became a traveling man who revived the poor
who answered with slow echoes became cataract
and fiesta became future and flashback
filling the selves with an old outrage
piercing the cold corners with a new carriage.
then i began an awakening a flowering inside
the living dead became a wanderer of air
barking at the stars became a bride
bridegroom of change timeless black with hair
moist with kinks and morning dare
then i began to think me alive with form and history
then i made my former life an accessory.
how to erect respect in a country of men
where dollars pump their veins?
how to return from exhile from swollen
tongues crisscrossing my frail domain?
how to learn to love me amid all the pain?
how to look into his eyes and be reborn
without blood and phlegm and thorn?
*
sister tell me about this cough i cough
all of my skin cradled in this cough
my body ancient as this white cough, i cough
all day and night i'm haunted by this cough,
a snake rattles in my throat this cough, i cough
a scream embalms my chest with cough
sister an echo surrounds my lungs with this cough, i cough.
***
Hello Friends—
Sonia Sanchez returns poetry to its oral and dramatic roots in Does Your House Have Lions? (1997), a book-length dialogue between sister, brother, father, mother, and ancestor voices. The excerpts above are both in the voice of the brother, who is dying of AIDS.
Sanchez succeeds in invoking a contemporary spoken word sensibility of language and applying it to a poetic form at least as old as Chaucer, the Rhyme Royal: Does Your House Have Lions? is written entirely in seven line stanzas with an a-b-a-b-b-c-c rhyme scheme.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 25: Hold one bead
Object Tension
Sorry, but in the Mahler I hear approach and retreat
further out even than language. I had to think of the music
entering the cone of a hibiscus at its widest moment,
knowing the flower's movement from most present to most gone
takes one day only, briefest resolution, like a heard note
or notes in any combination, however long. Brief, however deep,
like the buoyant silence after an applause.
In Donatello's figure of the aged Magdalene, the raised hands
are caught, held apart just so, one coming to the other
in the gesture for prayer, not touching, held there arguing
look, the soul is sensate, look how true things feel
when they're held.
Oh my God,
is grief more true than love? My father had a problem
with his hands, growths on the tendons drew his fingers into fists,
in years. God bless
the women passing needles to their girls, and hooks, any word
or flower can be embroidered with the x, anything
can last, sweet home sweet
home. I saw the face of a beaded evening bag,
minutest iridescent beads in rose and deeper rose,
and black. Someone stopped at the fringe,
the most decorative part of the decorative thing. She left
the threaded needle in. What grief
was it, as those hours spent readying the rare occasion stopped,
the bag not done but not undone? One bead
is a beautiful thing. We won't all die at once. Hold one bead
in your hand and keep from thinking of the next one if you can.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem is by Kathleen Peirce in her 1991 collection Mercy.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
P.S. Thanks to Kate Gapinski (wherever you are) for introducing me to this poem.
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Poem-a-Day, April 26: alone too, too alone
28
Snow Line
It was wet & white & swift and where I am
we don't know. It was dark and then
it isn't.
I wish the barker would come. There seems to be to eat
nothing. I am unusually tired.
I'm alone too.
If only the strange one with so few legs would come,
I'd say my prayers out of my mouth, as usual.
Where are his notes I loved?
There may be horribles; it's hard to tell.
The barker nips me but somehow I feel
he too is on my side.
I'm too alone. I see no end. If we could all
run, even that would be better. I am hungry.
The sun is not hot.
It's not a good position I am in.
If I had to do the whole thing over again
I wouldn't.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem is by John Berryman (1914-1972) from his masterwork The Dream Songs (1969).
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 27: some distant trembling warmth
FROM THE ADULT DRIVE-IN
The hill, no the body unbroken
By the strip mall's lights arced
Harp of her pelvic bone a mouth
Falling upon it like corn cut down
In a field I was forbidden
To walk through. There are so many
Kinds of darkness: her arms tied
To the bed, the shadow they cast
On the sheets whose brightness
Illuminates the hushed cars lying below.
Dark mouth surrounding the root
Or pressing against an opening:
A dog furrowing into the mole's home
Following some distant trembling warmth.
*
Having walked here through the darkening pines
The woman finds her lover in the abandoned
House, some hunter's cabin, feathers everywhere.
She's been running, has been pursued, a jealous
Husband who wants her. Is she afraid? Who cares.
We want the fucking to start. The field is so full
Of hunger that when she bends over the cars
Seem to move forward without being turned on.
Two women moving inside each other.
He's coming for them sure as raccoons in grain
Pails. Their pale skin washes the screen
So we're almost snow-blind. They can't see us
Or him for that matter, huge in the doorframe.
He's beginning to unbuckle his pants.
*
O dark barns who will move me now?
I am undone by the flickering screen
By all those girls thrown against the coal black
Night. We, all of us, go back to the field
Scene of a back that went on forever,
The closed eyes, the want that entered us
As we drove by and tried not to look.
How will I ever learn to tell the truth
After the places my hands have been?
It is darker here than other towns, leaves
Burn clear through December. After that
We light beasts of the field to keep ourselves
Warm. Everyone has weathered each other's want,
Familiar as the feed store's smell of grain.
*
Familiar as the feed store's smell of grain
This figure seen from the road where the trees
Break apart. A woman straddling the pasture,
Arms white as birches that surround the body
Of cars idling beneath her. I cannot
Tell her voice from the leaves, just watch her mouth
Move, bare as plucked birds in a hunter's
Hands. It's a short walk to the fairgrounds.
I want to take her there, to the palace
Of the bandstand and have it out, music
Of tailbone, tensed hamstring, unrelenting
Chord of her neck pulled back till our eyes
Fill like a screen awash in headlights
As the hushed crowd pushes into the night.
*
Like snow, feathers, thrush in the virgin's mouth
It appeared, white against the dark sky. How
Did he know we wanted it, that we'd come
In all weather? A drive-in of skin flicks
For farmers, machinists, salesmen who lived
For small towns like ours. So much empty
Land and the mills shut down, our lives like barns
With both doors blown open: you could see straight
Through. O life before the freeway rose, dark
Turnpike passing thin as a shiv through
The backside of town. Nobody looking
For anyone to come home, truckers in
Back, some kids out for a ride, all of us
Expectant as deer in open season.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem is by Gabrielle Calvocoressi. The above version of this sonnet sequence appeared in the journal Ninth Letter. A different (more recent) version of this poem also appears in Calvocoressi's collection The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart (2005) — but I'm sending you the older version because I like it better, and it's my poem-a-day list so I get to choose (so there). I would also like to note that I started writing this email before midnight and have at least some meek argument that I did not spoil my perfect record of having not missed a day all month.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 28: the smell of scissors
WHAT THE ANGELS LEFT
At first, the scissors seemed perfectly harmless.
They lay on the kitchen table in the blue light.
Then I began to notice them all over the house,
at night in the pantry, or filling up bowls in the cellar
where there should have been apples. They appeared under rugs,
lumpy places where one would usually settle before the fire,
or suddenly shining in the sink at the bottom of soupy water.
Once, I found a pair in the garden, stuck in turned dirt
among the new bulbs, and one night, under my pillow,
I felt something like a cool long tooth and pulled them out
to lie next to me in the dark. Soon after that I began
to collect them, filling boxes, old shopping bags,
every suitcase I owned. I grew slightly uncomfortable
when company came. What if someone noticed them
when looking for forks or replacing dried dishes? I longed
to throw them out, but how could I get rid of something
that felt oddly like grace? It occurred to me finally
that I was meant to use them, and I resisted a growing compulsion
to cut my hair, although, in moments of great distraction,
I thought it was my eyes they wanted, or my soft belly
-exhausted, in winter, I laid them out on the lawn.
The snow fell quite as usual, without any apparent hesitation
or discomfort. In spring, as I expected, they were gone.
In their place, a slight metallic smell, and the dear muddy earth.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem is by Marie Howe, from her 1987 collection The Good Thief.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 29: Un-humm-m!
Madam and the Phone Bill
You say I O.K.ed
LONG DISTANCE?
O.K.ed it when?
My goodness, Central
That was then!
I'm mad and disgusted
With that Negro now.
I don't pay no REVERSED
CHARGES nohow.
You say, I will pay it -
Else you'll take out my phone?
You better let
My phone alone.
I didn't ask him
To telephone me.
Roscoe knows darn well
LONG DISTANCE
Ain't free.
If I ever catch him,
Lawd, have pity!
Calling me up
From Kansas City.
Just to say he loves me!
I knowed that was so.
Why didn't he tell me some'n
I don't know?
For instance, what can
Them other girls do
That Alberta K. Johnson
Can't do - and more, too?
What's that, Central?
You say you don't care
Nothing aobut my
Private affair?
Well, even less about your
PHONE BILL, does I care!
Un-humm-m! . . . Yes!
You say I gave my O.K.?
Well, that O.K. you may keep -
But I sure ain't gonna pay!
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem is from Langston Hughes's "Madam poems," a series of dramatic monologues in the voice of Madam Alberta K. Johnson, published in his 1949 collection One-Way Ticket.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
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Poem-a-Day, April 30: what I always wish for
The Wish
Remember that time you made the wish?
I make a lot of wishes.
The time I lied to you
about the butterfly. I always wondered
what you wished for.
What do you think I wished?
I don't know. That I'd come back,
that we'd somehow be together in the end.
I wished for what I always wish for.
I wished for another poem.
***
Hello Friends—
Today's poem is by Louise Glück from her collection Meadowlands (1996).
If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list, you're a little bit late: Today is the last day of April, and the last Poem-a-Day for 2007. Thirty days. Thirty poets. Thirty poems.
Thank you for humoring me in this celebration of National Poetry Month. Remember that you may peruse all of the month's poem-a-days on my blog at http://www.myspace.com/tgifreytag.
If a particular poem or two from this month has really stuck with you, and you're feeling inspired to dive into a whole book of poetry, here are some places to start:
William Henry Harrison and Other Poems (2006) by David R. Slavitt (April 1: "One-Word Poem")
Sorry, but the poet Andrea Haslanger is not (yet) published, so there's no further reading for April 2: "Weight, In Passing"
Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box (2006) by Elizabeth Bishop (April 3: "Hymn for Lota")
The Misunderstanding of Nature (1994) by Sophie Cabot Black (April 4: "The Converted)
Donkey Gospel (1998) by Tony Hoagland (April 5: "Benevolence")
Why Things Burn (2001) by Daphne Gottlieb (April 6: "why things burn")
Selected Poems (1988) by W.S. Merwin (April 7: "Ash")
Through the Looking Glass (1872) by Lewis Carroll (April 8: "Jabberwocky")
New and Selected Poems (1992) by Mary Oliver (April 9: "Anne")
Jersey Rain (2000) by Robert Pinsky (April 10: "Samarai Song")
The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster (1968) by Richard Brautigan (April 11: "Death is a beautiful car...")
Selected Poems (1994) by E. E. Cummings (April 12: "if i have made,my lady,intricate...")
Los Versos del Capitan / Captain's Verses (1952) by Pablo Neruda (April 13: "El viento en la isla")
Worth (2002) by Robyn Schiff (April 14: "House of Worth")
Sorry, but the poet Emily Moore is not (yet) published, so there's no further reading for (April 15: "Ghazal")
The Poetry of Robert Frost: Collected Poems (1969) by Robert Frost (April 16: "Dust of Snow")
Hum (2005) by Ann Lauterbach (April 17: "Hum")
Collected Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay (April 18: "I will put Chaos into fourteen lines...")
The Darker Fall by Rick Barot (April 19: "Captivity Narrative")
Berkeley Street Cannibals: Selected Poems, 1969-1976 by Julia Vinograd (April 20: "Downhill")
Where the Sidewalk Ends (1974) by Shel Silverstein (April 21: "Sarah Cynthia Silvia Stout")
From Room to Room (1978) by Jane Kenyon (April 22: "The Shirt")
Macbeth (1603-6) by William Shakespeare (April 23: "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...")
Does Your House Have Lions? (1997) by Sonia Sanchez (April 24: "what does a liver know of peace...")
Mercy (1991) by Kathleen Peirce (April 25: "Object Tension")
The Dream Songs (1969) by John Berryman (April 26: "28 - Snowline")
The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart (2005) by Gabrielle Calvocoressi (April 27: "From the Adult Drive-In")
The Good Thief (1987) by Marie Howe (April 28: "What the Angels Left")
The Collected Poems (1995) by Langston Hughes (April 29: "Madam and the Phone Bill")
Meadowlands (1996) by Louise Glück (April 30: "The Wish")
You can still learn more about National Poetry Month, and about poetry events in your geographic region all year round, at www.poets.org.
Thank you again for partaking in my own little celebration of National Poety Month.
I hope to run into you in 811...
Ellen
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