april is: a poem a day for national poetry month

Apr 30 2012 ∞

April 30, 2012: from An Atlas of the Difficult World, Adrienne Rich

from An Atlas of the Difficult World
Adrienne Rich

XIII (Dedications)

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains’ enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

==

Adrienne Rich passed away in March of this year. Here she talks a bit about this poem and what it means to read poetry (scroll down for her interview).

Also by Adrienne Rich: Song

On this day in…

2011: Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal, Naomi Shihab Nye
2010: from Pioneers! O Pioneers!, Walt Whitman
2009: from The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot
2008: from Five-Finger Exercises, T.S. Eliot
2007: Journey of the Magi, T.S. Eliot
2006: Preludes, T.S. Eliot
2005: A Song for Simeon, T.S. Eliot

Thank you so much for reading all month! See you next year: same Bat-time, same Bat-channel. In the meantime, you can always keep yourself going by checking out the masterlist of all past poems.

18 notes

Apr 29 2012 ∞

April 29, 2012: All Objects Reveal Something About the Body, Catie Rosemurgy

All Objects Reveal Something About the Body
Catie Rosemurgy

Crisp is to the apple what
flexed is to the body.

Poor apple.

Being bitten is to the crisp apple
what walking is to the ripe body, but it’s more complicated than that:

the apple of the face has been given
to the running juice of the body

and the body, which is often gracious,
makes it shine.

Lucky apple.

Having a core is to the apple
what having a core is to the body, city, method, circumstance, endeavor.

Having a core is flower-shaped and hurts
in the way that having a shape hurts, which is to say

it hurts ironically, because to have limits
is not just to make a declaration upon a mountainside,

it is also to be the mountainside. Having a flowering core
also hurts in the way that being flower-like always hurts,

which is to say sexually, as if the whole self
has exceeded the skin, which it hasn’t, which means

we always seem to be opening but never ever do.
Both these types of suffering color the air

when we pause to have them. The affected atoms
are hard to see amongst the billions

of sofa atoms, newsprint atoms
but, like the illnesses in the crystalline sea, they are there.

Red apple sliced, quartered, salted. Green apple,

alone in the basket.
Anything left on the shelf becomes weak,

suggestible, vulnerable to other shapes, hungry to be refilled
by something other than itself,

a poison apple.
The joining we do with others needs containing.

Apple pie.
Imagine the mess. Imagine a finger touching the sack of the heart.

Imagine being stopped, controlled that powerfully.
Imagine nothing like that being possible. Nothing ever stopping you

at the root of the breath. Huge apple.
The world in reference to you. How you move. Time a backdrop.

Or close the other eye: you in reference to the world.
How it varies and happens simultaneously.

Good morning.
Little apple.

==

April 28, 2012: The Letter, Linda Gregg

The Letter
Linda Gregg

I’m not feeling strong yet, but I am taking
good care of myself. The weather is perfect.
I read and walk all day and then walk to the sea.
I expect to swim soon. For now I am content.
I am not sure what I hope for. I feel I am
doing my best. It reminds me of when I was
sixteen dreaming of Lorca, the gentle trees outside
and the creek. Perhaps poetry replaces something
in me that others receive more naturally.
Perhaps my happiness proves a weakness in my life.
Even my failures in poetry please me.
Time is very different here. It is very good
to be away from public ambition.
I sweep and wash, cook and shop.
Sometimes I go into town in the evening
and have pastry with custard. Sometimes I sit
at a table by the harbor and drink half a beer.

==

More like this:
Asking for Directions, Linda Gregg
Staying After, Linda Gregg
Letter, Franz Wright

On this day in…

2011: Like Kerosene, Olena Kalytiak Davis
2010: Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Koch
2009: from Tag, Anne Carson
2008: The Leaving, Brigit Pegeen Kelly
2007: Theories of Time and Space, Natasha Trethewey
2006: Dream Song 145, John Berryman
2005: Having It Out With Melancholy, Jane Kenyon

30 notes

Apr 27 2012 ∞

April 27, 2012: My Place, Franz Wright

My Place
Franz Wright

for Beth

Rain land, walnut blossoms raining
white
where I walk at sixteen

bright light in the north wind

Still sleeping bees at the grove’s heart
(my heart’s) till the sun
its “wake now”
kiss, the million
friendly gold huddlings
and burrowings of them hearing the shining
wind
I hear, my only
cure for the loneliness I go through:

more.

I believe that one day the distance between myself and God will disappear.

==

Also by Franz Wright: Letter | The Poem | The Only Animal | The Forties | Publication Date

On this day in…

2011: from The Wild Geese, Wendell Berry
2010: Love After Love, Derek Walcott
2009: To This May, W.S. Merwin
2008: Father, Ted Kooser
2007: from Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight, Galway Kinnell
2006: Crusoe in England, Elizabeth Bishop
2005: Dream Song 1, John Berryman

11 notes

Apr 26 2012 ∞

April 26, 2012: About Marriage, Denise Levertov

About Marriage
Denise Levertov

Don’t lock me in wedlock, I want
marriage, an
encounter—-

I told you about the
green light of
May

        (a veil of quiet befallen
        the downtown park,
        late

        Saturday after
        noon, long
        shadows and cool

        air, scent of
        new grass,
        fresh leaves,

        blossom on the threshold of
        abundance—-

        and the birds I met there,
        birds of passage breaking their journey,
        three birds each of a different species:

        the azalea-breasted with round poll, dark,
        the brindled, merry, mousegliding one,
        and the smallest, golden as gorse and wearing
        a black Venetian mask

        and with them the three douce hen-birds
        feathered in tender, lively brown—-

        I stood
        a half-hour under the enchantment,
        no-one passed near,
        the birds saw me and

        let me be
        near them.)

It’s not
irrelevant:
I would be
met

and meet you
so,
in a green

airy space, not
locked in.

==

April 25, 2012: Manet’s Olympia, Margaret Atwood

Manet’s Olympia
Margaret Atwood

(see the painting)

She reclines, more or less,
Try that posture, it’s hardly languor.
Her right arm sharp angles.
With her left she conceals her ambush.
Shoes but not stockings,
how sinister. The flower
behind her ear is naturally
not real, of a piece
with the sofa’s drapery.
The windows (if any) are shut.
This is indoor sin.
Above the head of the (clothed) maid
is an invisible voice balloon: Slut.

But. Consider the body,
unfragile, defiant, the pale nipples
staring you right in the bull’s eye.
Consider also the black ribbon
around the neck. What’s under it?
A fine red threadline, where the head
was taken off and glued back on.
The body’s on offer,
but the neck’s as far as it goes.

This is no morsel.
Put clothes on her and you’d have a schoolteacher,
the kind with the brittle whiphand.

There’s someone else in this room.
You, Monsieur Voyeur.
As for that object of yours
she’s seen those before, and better.

I, the head, am the only subject
of this picture.
You, Sir, are furniture.
Get stuffed.

==

Also by Margaret Atwood: February | A Sad Child

On this day in…

2011: Three Rivers, Alpay Ulku
2010: Ode to Hangover, Dean Young
2009: We become new, Marge Piercy
2008: The Only Animal, Franz Wright
2007: Dream Song 385, John Berryman
2006: The Quiet World, Jeffrey McDaniel
2005: Man and Wife, Robert Lowell

5 notes

Apr 24 2012 ∞

April 24, 2012: from Ask Him, Raymond Carver

from Ask Him
Raymond Carver

The guard would as soon be doing this as something else.
He lights his pipe. Looks at his watch. It’s almost time
for his lunch, and a glass of wine.
“Ask him,” I say, “If he wants to be buried
in this cemetery when he dies.
Ask him where he wants to be buried.”
My son is capable of saying anything.
I recognize the words tombeau and mort
in his mouth. The guard stops.
It’s clear his thoughts have been elsewhere.
Underwater warfare. The music hall, the cinema.
Something to eat and the glass of wine.
Not corruption, no, and the falling away.
Not annihilation. Not his death.

He looks from one to the other of us.
Who are we kidding? Are we making a bad joke?
He salutes and walks away.
Heading for a table at an outdoor café.
Where he can take off his cap, run his fingers
through his hair. Hear laughter and voices.
The heavy clink of silverware. The ringing
of glasses. Sun on the windows.
Sun on the sidewalk and in the leaves.
Sun finding its way onto his table. His glass. His hands.

==

On this day in…

2011: Sweet Star Chisel, Dearest Flaming Crumbs in Your Beard Lord, John Rybicki
2010: Rain Travel, W.S. Merwin
2009: Goodnight, Li-Young Lee
2008: Bearhug, Michael Ondaatje
2007: Meditation at Lagunitas, Robert Hass
2006: Autumn, Rainer Maria Rilke
2005: On Turning Ten, Billy Collins

2 notes

Apr 23 2012 ∞

April 23, 2012: Mermaid Song, Kim Addonizio

Mermaid Song
Kim Addonizio

for Aya at fifteen

Damp-haired from the bath, you drape yourself
upside down across the sofa, reading,
one hand idly sunk into a bowl
of crackers, goldfish with smiles stamped on.
I think they are growing gills, swimming
up the sweet air to reach you. Small girl,
my slim miracle, they multiply.
In the black hours when I lie sleepless,
near drowning, dread-heavy, your face
is the bright lure I look for, love’s hook
piercing me, hauling me cleanly up.

==

More like this:
Bearhug, Michael Ondaatje
from Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight, Galway Kinnell
Goodnight, Li-Young Lee
A Little Tooth, Thomas Lux
On Wanting to Tell [ ] about a Girl Eating Fish Eyes, Mary Szybist

On this day in…

2011: the laughing heart, Charles Bukowski
2010: from Jenny, Genya Turovskaya
2009: A Step Away From Them, Frank O’Hara
2008: Entry, Lisa Sewell
2007: Meanwhile, Richard Siken
2006: Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, Amiri Baraka
2005: Holy Sonnet XIV, John Donne

11 notes

Apr 22 2012 ∞

April 22, 2012: from Mayakovsky, Frank O’Hara

from Mayakovsky
Frank O’Hara

Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

==

Read the whole poem here. Or have Don Draper read this part of it to you.

More by Frank, wonderful Frank: Animals | Anxiety | For Grace, After A Party | Gamin | Now That I Am in Madrid and Can Think | A Step Away From Them | Steps

On this day in…

2011: Northern Pike, James Wright
2010: Humpbacks, Mary Oliver
2009: Alone, Jack Gilbert
2008: From Blossoms, Li-Young Lee
2007: For Grace, After A Party, Frank O’Hara
2006: Wild Geese, Mary Oliver
2005: A Brief for the Defense, Jack Gilbert

29 notes

Apr 21 2012 ∞

April 21, 2012: Untitled [I closed the book and changed my life], Bruce Smith

Untitled [I closed the book and changed my life]
Bruce Smith

I closed the book and changed my life and changed my life and changed my life and one more change and I was back here looking up at a blue sky with russets and the World was hypnotic but it wasn’t great. I wanted more range, maybe, more bliss, I didn’t know about bliss. Is bliss just a rant about the size of the bowl? The trance was the true thing, no, the rant, no, the sky, now, that icy whiteness.

==

More like this:
Open Letter to the Muse, Kristy Bowen
Please Take Back the Sparrows, Suzanne Buffam
Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry, Howard Nemerov

On this day in…

2011: The Forties, Franz Wright
2010: Prayer of the Backhanded, Jericho Brown
2009: A Primer, Bob Hicok
2008: Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry, Howard Nemerov
2007: Open Letter to the Muse, Kristy Bowen
2006: A Sad Child, Margaret Atwood
2005: The Crunch, Charles Bukowski

5 notes

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