Tonight I’d like to recommend some summer reading. I’ve long admired Marianne Boruch as a poet. Her work is beautiful, quirky, wonderful to read aloud, and absolutely her own. Her poem “Still Life,” from Grace, Fallen from, for instance, is one of my favorites. (And what a great book title.) It’s hard to quote from without just giving you the whole poem, because where to stop? But here’s how it begins:
Someone arranged them in 1620. Someone found the rare lemon and paid a lot and neighbored it next to the plain pear, the plain apple of the lost garden, the glass of wine, set down mid-sip— don’t drink it, someone said, it’s for the painting. And the rabbit skull— whose idea was that? There had been a pistol but someone was told, no, put that away, into the box with a key though the key had been misplaced now for a year. …
This gives you a sense of how her work can move very swiftly from thought to thought across the lines. It’s associative, makes leaps—and that “don’t drink it… it’s for / the painting” and the way the people here, their impulses and actions, are a little scattered, a little inappropriate almost, and funny-sad, is all quintessentially her.
If you haven’t read her poems, the Innisfree Poetry Journal will give you a good taste. Then go read Grace, Fallen from, probably my favorite book of hers, or pick up her earlier New and Selected.
But what I also especially want to recommend here is her memoir, The Glimpse Traveler, about a nine-day hitchhiking trip to California in the 1970s. Written in 77 short chapters, each just a page or two, The Glimpse Traveler reads like a series of prose poems, or postcards from a different world (the American counterculture) and a different time (the 1970s, but also that time in life when you’re 20 years old and struggling to find your place in the world).
These many brief chapters add up; they tell the story in flashes of action and emotion, illumination. But this is prose written by a poet. Which is to say, you should read for language—the sounds of her sentences, their rhythms—as much as for plot.
Here’s how the first chapter starts:
No plan that Thursday but a big breakfast—eggs, toast. The classic college boyfriend’s apartment: milling about and underfoot, one or two other boys and their maybe girls. A straggly neighbor born Harold, called Chug, forever turning up to make a point then stopping mid-sentence. Someone’s cousin crashed there for a week. Someone’s half-sister from Cincinnati figuring out her life. Not to mention the dog, the cat, and nothing picked up off the floor, no sink or toilet cleaned in how long. Books read and loved and passed on, dope smoked or on a windowsill….
You can read the first four chapters here. But better yet, go buy the book.
A couple of years ago, after reading some Eliot and watching some Jacques Tati, I thought it would be a smashing idea to write a parodic blend of the two and it started thus:
The Hulot Men
Mistah Hulot—lui mort.
We are the Hulot men
We are the French men
Smoking together
Pipe
bowls filled with straw.
but it didn't get much further, thankfully. But another entanglement of poetry and Tati has come together in this image of Monsieur Hulot's brother-in-law's swanky new car in Mon Oncle:
for the cover of Heather Phillipson's new book is inspired by this vehicle. Regardez-vous:
and this cover has already had an article devoted to it in Art Review (one of the perks of being a practising artist as well as a poet).
The reason I mention all this is that last night was the London launch of Instant-flex 718 (Bloodaxe) at the Art Review Bar just off Old Street ('Silicone Roundabout' as almost nobody calls it) and the great and the good (although I prefer the term 'the out and the about') gathered to start up this gorgeously hued vehicle and drive it away.
The first words I heard out of Heather Phillipson's mouth, back in 2007, were:
The only men it's safe for me to love are dead –
O'Hara, Stevens, Berryman.
when I read with her at The Poetry Café in Covent Garden and I became a fan at that moment. These are the opening two lines from 'Devoted, Hopelessly', which appears in the book. By the way, the title refers to the type of glue used to bind the book. I could talk about how the title and some of the poems inside speak of the materiality of language as used by the poet. But I won't.
What I will say is that this debut collection contains many hilarious, touching, surprising, and intriguing poems with wonderful titles like 'German Phenomenology Makes Me Want to Strip and Run through North London', 'Red Slugs in Every Irrelevant Direction', You're an Architect and I Want to Make Dinner for You' and 'Actually I'm Simply Trying to Find My Dressing Gown Sash'.
I like a launch to be more of a party than a reading and Heather chose to read a single poem, pushing the needle of the 'launchometer' almost as far away from the 'reading' end of the 'party – reading' scale as it is possible to do. But she left us wanting more, which is always a good thing.
Another good thing is that four of us peeled off to eat fish and chips at Kennedy's on Whitecross Street, which is worth a visit if you're ever out East.
So. As Monsieur Hulot departs at the end of Mon Oncle to allow his nephew to bond with his formerly stuffy father, Monsieur Arpel, so must I depart at the end of my week as guest blogger. It's been a pleasure and there were many other things I wanted to write about, like how can we get people to stop saying "x won the Internet"? but perhaps I will continue with these over at Mo' Worse Blues.
Au revoir. I leave you with an apposite poem from Heather Phillipson.
The Distance between England and America
Much could begin like this: a large man,
tie slackened, voice buoyed up by altitude.
My mind's elsewhere –
the air-conditioning. It's cold.
Above the Atlantic he bellows long vowels to me,
and I'm cabined, window-seated, polite.
With my English tone, I'm inadvertantly provocative –
No more salted pretzels for me, thanks Jeff.
At the sound of Charles Darwin's bassoon,
earthworms, apparently, writhed.
Jeff booms: Pittsburgh, golf clubs, his search for a wife.
I twist in my seat – suggest something,
in my movement, of all evolution.
His blanket folds back like an invitation
to navy shadows and polyester.
Heat and anything could happen under there.
Oh, take your loafers off, Jeff –
throw them in the aisle.
Your gusto can conquer my boredom, our bed can be the sky.
It's warming up. We won't be sleeping.
For almost nine hours beneath United Airlines covers
we'll share everything but thought.
In the morning, white bread rolls and Columbus, Ohio.
"Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?" That is the question. Yes, Heidegger, that's a pretty good originary question. I might go further back and ask why is there matter at all? But an originary question one gets asked a lot is "What first got you into poetry?" and variations thereof.
I had two 'big bangs' or inflations, or 'mini-bangs'. One courtesy of Auden when I was about 13 but one much earlier, when I was about seven years old, courtesy of Miss Campbell and Beowulf.
Ah, Miss Campbell, exotic and intoxicating on so many levels: a substitute teacher (a fresh face), an energetically tousled redhead, a lover of poetry, and a Canadian. In Huddersfield, at the start of the 70s – man's footprints freshly planted on the Moon – Miss Campbell was a sign of futurity and opportunity for me.
When the time came for her to leave ahead of our seemingly endless six-week summer holidays, she chose to leave us with two things on that poignant Friday afternoon: proper fresh popcorn and Beowulf.
Having only eaten pre-packaged, sweet soggy cardboard like Butterkist, I'd never seen popcorn made like this. I didn't know you could make it. Actual, neutron star-dense kernels of real corn. Hot oil. A sealed pan. A hail storm within the pan, and then an overflow of bright white and yellow corn-novae. Miraculous. But more so after butter and salt were added. From that day on my tooth became a savoury tooth and has remained so.
And, as we munched, she turned herself into live cinema by reading a modern translation of Beowulf to us. Terrifying. Suspenseful. Gory. Electrifying. I've no idea which translation she read to us. Look at how many there are:
but it made me realise how exciting, troubling, suspenseful and entertaining poetry could be. Not that it always is. And not that is should be or has to be. But it was a great start for a seven-year old.
Years later I relished Seamus Heaney's 1999 version, which translates "Hwæt!" as "So." which is exactly how my Irish aunties begin every new story: "So."
So, I'd like to mention that there is a brand new translation missing from the list above, by Meghan Purvis. It begins, as playfully and colloquially as Heaney, with:
Stop me
if you've heard this one before: the lands up north,
hoar-bent, frost-locked, need deeper plows
to dig them. Here is one.
I haven't ventured much further than this yet but I'm on my way, with my popcorn, and memories of Miss Campbell.
There's only one reason to go to Piccadilly Circus: to visit
Waterstones' magnificent flagship store. Okay, the cocktails at The Criterion
are good also. Plus the ICA is nearby. Oh, and it's not far from Cicchetti's
either. But remember that this part of London recently replaced the Swiss
Centre cinema with M&M's World. I don't really even know what that
is. I know that the vicinity smells of sickly sweet chocolate and the edifice
pummels the retina with primary colours but I tend to scurry on by.
Anyway, I went to Waterstones last night to see Kathryn
Maris, Katha Pollitt and Carol Rumens read from their new and recent books published by Welsh publisher Seren (the editor in chief, Amy Wack, was in town to introduce the three).
It's an odd
thing writing up a reading. You're tempted to switch to 'book review' mode but
then you'd be kind of reviewing people, which, until Google Glass makes it the
norm for us to give each other 'star-ratings' as we walk down the street,
doesn't feel right to me.
Plus, compared to reading poems on the page, a live reading
has so many additional variables. Like tone of voice, length of intros,
particular words that are explained and over which the poet stumbles when they
come around in the text; and perhaps one of the poets might knock over a glass
of water just before reading a poem about a washer woman. I'm not saying these things happened last night, but they
might have.
Anyway, the large and appreciative audience was treated to three readings of great style, wit, emotion and skill. I have all kinds of rules and pet peeves about poetry readings but two halves of ten minutes from each poet worked very well. Certain themes recurred, including ironic, not-entirely-ironic, and rather political takes on Bible stories and experiments with the linguistic style of the King James Bible.
There were poignant reflections on age and youth and the changing relations and attitudes between both, often within the same body. There was also a palpable, creative, tension between American and UK tendencies, especially regarding form. The three poets almost described a smooth spectrum from Rumens's frequent use of form, to Maris's increasing use of form, to Pollitt's occasional use of form.
Some discussion followed about these technical matters in the Q&A but no firm conclusions were drawn. Needless to say, I wrote down many choice lines and phrases in my notebook but I'm not sure they will work that well out of context (a bit like the way lines from poems posted as tweets often don't work) but I can recommend the poets' respective books:
I also learned that 'Seren' means 'star' in Welsh. I should have known that, but it was pleasant to learn. I will leave you with one complete poem, from God Loves You. A domani.
This is a Confessional Poem
I
am guilty of so much destruction it hardly matters
anymore.
There are so many thank-you notes I never wrote
that
sometimes I’m relieved by the deaths of would-be
recipients,
so I can finally let go of the shame.
I
was awful to someone who was attached to the phrase
‘social
polish’, as though she’d acquire it through repetition.
I
took an overdose at a child’s 6th birthday party.
I
was born in a country which some have called
The
Big Satan. I abandoned the country for one
that
is called The Little Satan. I wished ill on a woman
who
has known me for years and yet never remembers
who
I am – and now she’s involved in a public scandal.
I
have been at parties where I was boring.
I
have been at parties where I was deadly boring.
I
have worn the wrong clothes to sacraments, not
for
lack of outfits, but for a temporary failure of taste.
I’m
a terrible, terrible liar, and everything I say is full of
misrepresentation.
I once knew a very sweet girl
who
stabbed herself in the abdomen 7 times.
She
believed she was evil and thought 7 was a holy number.
Besides
that she was sane, and told me her tale
out
of kindness – because guilt recognises guilt,
the
way a mother can identify her own child.
I
met her in a class called ‘Poetry Therapy’
in
which the assignment was to complete this statement:
When one door closes,
another opens.
I
wrote: At the end of my suffering there
was a door,
making
me guilty of both plagiarism and lack of imagination.
I
was the vortex of suffering: present, future and retroactive
suffering. The girl tried to absolve me.
‘Don’t
be Jesus,’ she said. ‘There are enough around here.’
I
know I should thank her if she’s alive,
but I also know it’s unlikely I’ll rise to the
task.
I used to write a blog, five years ago, called Fallout. After a year or so, we fell out.
Comes over one an
absolute necessity to blog (D.H. Lawrence)
I have a new blog called Mo’
Worse Blues but so far has only one entry announcing that more entries will follow
soon. That’s been up for about a month. I will attend to it soon, I will.
For a long time I used
to blog early (Proust)
But it will have to wait till after my vacation here; my
week away in a blog cabin.
Whether I shall turn
out to be the hero of my own blog, or whether that station will be held by
anybody else, these entries must show. (Dickens)
Thinking of cabins and woods, while I neglect my own blog
and set up here I feel a little like a cuckoo – albeit a (so far) welcome and cordially
invited cuckoo – typing its way out of the shell.
Soul, wilt though blog
again? (Dickinson)
I’m already perched quite high (here’s a photo of
yesterday’s sunset, looking over The City)
but the view from the eyrie can seem dismal at times.
Nations disintegrate; those who ‘do not wish to get embroiled in the conflict’ deliberately
embroil themselves in the conflict; our party of power, which I detest, is compelled
to ape a smaller, similarly detestable party in an effort to cling to its pseudo-mandate; buildings are collapsing around our desire for cheap produce; the British 1970s
and 80s are under arrest for unspeakable acts; and poachers have
picked Mozambique clean of its glorious rhinos.
But fretting in public like this makes me feel faintly
absurd, like Proust’s Madame de Guermantes:
“I supposed that, since she was always dabbling in politics,
she intended to show that she was afraid of war, as one day when she had
appeared at the dinner table so pensive, barely replying in monosyllables, upon
somebody's inquiring timidly what was the cause of her anxiety, she had
answered with a grave air: ‘I am anxious about China.’” (The Fugitive)
So instead I will focus on cuckooness for now. First, a
cuckoo that speaks with the voice of Ted Hughes (with perhaps a touch of Al
Pacino doing Shakespeare):
And one of Scottish poet Richard Price’s many wonderful birds,
this one flying in a prose poem pattern:
Cuckoo
It’s an
uplifting call and when you hear it spring is coming, sure enough,
resurrection, promise kept. But I’m not comfortable. That’s no life for her and
it’s no life for anyone else mixed up in the whole business. The parents think
the chick is just like them, and it’s a hero when it gets bigger. Then it’s all
me me me, eating its brothers out of home and house, breaking its
foster-mother’s heart as sure as. I can’t speak to her about it, and she won’t
get help. She says: every one of my children is like a little Jesus, and that
makes me…God.
For the rest of the week I’ll be flitting in and
out of the nest and will bring back some juicy scraps from the London poetry
scene, among other things. But now it’s time to roost.
Thursday the 19th of April was a special
night for The Best American Poetry and
series editor David Lehman. At the New School’s Tishman Auditorium an all-star
cast of poets celebrated the anthology’s 25th
anniversary with the launch of The
Best of the Best American Poetry, guest
edited by distinguished poet and man of letters, Robert Pinsky.
As Mr. Pinsky noted in his
introductory remarks,The Best American Poetry series, which Mr. Lehman started in 1988, has filled
an important cultural place in society. It acts out what Mr. Pinsky described
as a “significant cultural process,” whereby artists confer recognition upon other artists — a
process of discovery and advocacy responsible for the reputations of John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, to name but two poets who were once overlooked.
TheBest of the Best American Poetry is a collection of 100 poems selected from the nearly 2000 already
published in the anthology’s twenty-five-year existence. The LA times called it
an embarrassment
of riches, and the lineup of poets who read on Thursday night was certainly
that. From Richard Howard to Marie Howe to Yusef Komunyakaa, the range and
quality of voices was nothing short of exceptional.
Mark Doty began the evening with
his hypnotic poem “Difference,” which opens with a description of jellyfish
floating in a Massachusetts harbor.
“The jellyfish
float in the bay shallows
like schools of clouds,
a dozen identical — is it right
to call them creatures
these elaborate sacks
of nothing?”
— Mark
Doty, “Difference”
One of the distinctive qualities of all The Best American
Poetry volumes, readily apparent at book launches, is how different one poem is from the next. The poets read in
alphabetical order and there is an unexpected quality to the event. There are, in rapid order,
sonnets and sestinas, rhymed- and free verse, on subjects ranging from Vietnam to New Mexico.
Major Jackson read “Urban Renewal XVI,” his poem selected
for the volume, which is in part a poem of how he came to be named Major.
“What of my fourth grade teacher at Reynolds Elementary,
who weary after failed attempts to set to memory
names strange and meaningless as grains of dirt around
the mouthless, mountain caves at Bahrain Karai:
Tarik, Shanequa, Amari, Aisha, nicknamed the entire class
after French painters whether boy or girl.”
— Major
Jackson, “Urban Renewal XVI”
This was followed shortly afterwards by Sarah Manguso’s
prose poem “Hell.”
“The second-hardest thing I have to do is not be longing's
slave. Hell is that. Hell is that, others, having a job, and not having a job. Hell is thinking
continually of those who were truly great.
Hell is the moment you realize that you were ignorant of the
fact, when it was true, that you were not yet ruined by desire.”
— Sarah
Manguso, “Hell”
And then two poets later there was Paul Muldoon with his
alliterative and rhymed poem “The Loaf,” where the poet experiences sensations
through a hole in the wall of his house, built in 1750.
“When I put my finger to the hole they’ve cut for a dimmer
switch
in a wall of plaster stiffened with horsehair
it seems I’ve scratched a two-hundred-year-old itch
with a pink and a pink and a pinkie-pick.
When I put my ear to the hole I'm suddenly aware
of spades and shovels turning up the gain
all the way from Raritan to the Delaware
with a clink and a clink and a clinkie-click.”
— Paul
Muldoon, “The Loaf”
In the end the evening highlighted the
seminal, twenty-five-year mark that David Lehman has reached with the now
invaluable Best American Poetry
series as well as the strength of American poetry today.
The birth of a book is a blessed day. The day I interviewed Sudeep Sen
in January at his apartment in New Delhi about editing The Harper Collins Book of English Poetry, his latest poetry
book Fractals: New & Selected Poems
| Translations 1978-2013 arrived in boxes from
Gallerie Publishers. Shelves and shelves of poetry books share top billing with
an eclectic collection of visual art, including Sen’s photographs. He took the
photo on the cover of the anthology. Behind his desk is a framed draft of a
poem by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath
Tagore, the prolific Indian writer and later-in-life visual artist.
Birthday cruise for Derek Walcott, 83
Sen, 48, introduced me to his extremely charming mother in the ground floor apartment so I saw Fractals join the shrine on a dining room side table of her son’s more than two dozen poetry books, translations and anthologies. Later in January, Sen was the contemporary poet honored to read at a Nobel Laureate conference in St. Lucia. Coincidentally, Tagore was awarded a literature Nobel exactly 100 years earlier. Derek Walcott, the 1992 literature winner, lead the Q&A after Sen’s reading. “The biggest gig in my life thus far – certainly the most precious, moving and meaningful,” Sen emailed me after.
CW: All 85 poets in the anthology were born after India became a republic in 1950. How does that influence their relationship to English as
a language?
SS: There’s a confidence in the language, an unabashedness. One
or two generations ago English was a post-colonial language. It’s no longer the
case. For me, English is an Indian language. It is one of our 26 official
languages.
CW: So it’s about owning the language not in reaction to a
colonial history of oppression?
SS: No, it’s more than that. English just happens to be one
of the tongues they are using very freely as an everyday thing. Take me for
instance, I have three mother tongues: English, Bengali and Hindi, that’s how I
grew up. It’s very unself-conscious. English is a language I learned from my
parents and grandparents who are Indians.
When I travel abroad, people say “oh you speak English very
well” and I say “and so do you.” The English language is interesting because
there are so many different Englishes. There is Caribbean English, Australian
English, American English, English English, Asian English, Indian English.
CW: What did selecting the poets teach you about those Englishes?
SS: That it is complex. Take David Dabydeen in the book,
whose work is known as part of Caribbean literature. He’s from Guyana and grew
up in the UK, an Indian diaspora poet who writes just fabulous English poetry
of the highest order. His ancestors were Indian laborers. He writes about
cooking dhal and roti and curry. Some of
his poems are very steeped in Western painting, including this fabulous love
poem called “Turner” I excerpt in the book.
The Indian diaspora is very complex too. The older diaspora
is five or six generations as opposed to Indians in America and the U.K. of
just a few generations. Africa, South Africa, Fiji and the Caribbean all have
large Indian populations. Those migrations happened as slave ships. They would
take an entire village, the priest, the barber, the teacher. Their descendants still sing
the songs my great-grandmother sung.
CW: What impact would you like the anthology to have?
SS: I’d like more of these poets to be read in India and
abroad. Literally very few are known beyond small poetry circles. There are so
many young poets writing and it’s so difficult for them to break into the scene.
CW: That said, does it surprise you then the anthology is
getting reviews from mainstream print, radio and television. And that a few
months out, it is slated for a reprint.
SS: It has just baffled me the impact, fabulous reviews in
places that don’t even touch poetry usually.
CW: Why?
SS: I think primarily because 90 percent of the work is unpublished
work, which is rare in anthologies. It’s new work that is difficult to access
all in one place.
CW: I couldn’t find an online source to purchase with
shipping outside of India for either book, including www.harpercollins.co.in. (Readers,
please comment below if you know where online.)
SS: U.S. and U.K. rights are still being negotiated for the
anthology. It
is however available via online portals.
CW: There is a lot of embrace of traditional form among the
poets. Why?
SS: I think this is more a generational thing. The younger
generation is excited about the language and so comfortable with it that they
are actually trying out hard forms like villanelles and sestinas. Many of them
are also bringing in classical Indian verse forms. Ghazel in English is a good
example. Contemporary writers embracing older forms but still making it
contemporary is bound to lead to good things.
If you are going to write free verse, you need to know what
classical verse is. You need to know what you’re breaking. You don’t have to
stick to any of the old rules as long as you know the rules. So much of the bad
name to modern poetry is because you can write a sentence chop it up into five
parts and arrange it in a column and call it a poem. That happens all around us.
CW: Do you see any trends of the poets who are not living in
India and writing from other places or is it simply a reflection of where they
happen to be?
SS: They bring in a certain injection of the local culture.
Indian poetry is being written by so many different kinds of Indians and that’s
certainly making it richer. Take the Americans. They are writing about very
American things that may or may not be understood here. However, many of them
are rediscovering Indian roots.
CW: Are readers in India more open to poetry because of the
many languages here with different rich poetic traditions?
SS: Yes, because poetry in other languages outside of
English has a long, long history. It is very much imbedded in our larger
cultural sphere and very much part of our upbringing. For example poetry is
integral to the music traditions in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, extremely advanced.
CW: And where is English poetry in the scheme of things?
SS: English poetry is in a smallish circle relative to the
bigness of India, a niche audience.
CW: But in a global context, isn’t India the second largest
publisher of English in the world?
SS: And will be the second largest in not very long.
I’ve been a happy renter all of my adult life, relishing the
freedom of a short-term lease. But in the fall, without warning, the unfamiliar
desire for a place of my own crept into my bones.
It might have started at last year’s AWP conference in
Chicago, where a group of poets lectured on the craft of assembling a
manuscript. They said you need a room of your own, a space where you can hang poems
on walls – live with them, listen to them, rearrange them. New Yorkers in the
audience (myself included) laughed out loud as we pictured our studio and one-bedroom
apartments with wall-to-wall furniture.
But, wouldn’t it be
nice?
Pretty soon, I couldn’t stomach the cranky landlady, hang
artwork on other people’s nails, or live with Rental Apartment White on the
walls. Quickly and miraculously, my husband and I found a good deal, closed on
a home and hired contractors to begin renovations last week.
Every other night, we take three trains to Brooklyn to visit
our home. I bring a book and enjoy the anticipation. When we arrive, we swing
open the door, turn on the lights and find our space transformed.
On Day 1, the floors were meticulously covered with paper.
Day 2, a living room wall disappeared and old brick, wood and piping were exposed.
Day 3, brick and wood gave way to gleaming white columns. We order pizza and
sit on the floor of our empty apartment, appreciating all of it.
Tomorrow, a light fixture might show up. A countertop might
come down. We never see the workers – we never see the work – so it feels as if our home is inventing itself day-by-day,
eager to surprise and please. I know it’s the product of sweat and craft, but I
like to pretend there’s some magic involved.
I felt the same way watching my parents’ first house rise
out of the desert. We would visit the dirt lot to take pictures and appreciate
every plank. The stakes with little red flags marking the construction
perimeter seemed to grow straight out of the ground.
Perhaps not coincidentally, I’m rediscovering the joys of
being a reader as I wait for my home to manifest. Usually, periods of reading but
little writing fill me with guilt. I should be making something! I should be
knocking down walls and writing lines! Who am I to enjoy another’s hard work
without doing my own?
But this week, I’m content to admire other people’s creations
– an indulgence we writers sometimes strip from ourselves.
I wonder, when you became a serious writer, did you also
become a serious reader? Did you start studying the workmanship of novels and
poems, breaking them apart to understand how to put yours together? And did
that enhance your appreciation but diminish your ability to get lost in it a little bit? Did
you start measuring how your own writing stacked up against everything you
read, endlessly calculating the balance?
The beauty of the reader is her ability to open a book, be
surprised and imagine that it made itself in an instant, or that it always
existed. She almost can forget the creator, the toil – a literary Big Bang.
It’s fun to forget the work and rediscover the art of
appreciation. Sometimes, there’s pleasure in putting down the hammer.
Prompt: Read something,
anything for fun. If you’re looking for a recommendation, might I suggest The
Paris Wife, a novel about Ernest
Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley? The author, Paula McLain, earned an MFA in
poetry from the University of Michigan and published two poetry collections. It's so enjoyable, I'm actually losing sleep to read it.
I fight the urge to see if Joseph and Rosemary
Ceravolo’d children have Facebook accounts.
I find it strange and kind of sad that potentially they would exist on a
social networking website. I think about
deleting my own Facebook and open my web browser to the page. I feel a sweep of existential angst, the same
as I did when I first moved far enough away from home that I couldn’t return
whenever I pleased, and can’t carry through.
I wonder: if Joseph were still alive, would he have a Facebook
account? Probably yes. But maybe not. I take a sip of my neglected green tea. It’s cold, and I think, green tea still
tastes pretty good cold.
My mind feels tired, and so I go for a run to
clear it.
Returning - reenergized - I forgo a shower, and
power through the remainder of the collected.
It takes me all the way through the night and into the early hours of
the morning. I read, Mad Angels, the bit
of this book I most feared because it’s the bit that contains the previously
unpublished work, and therefore, the work I feel the most pressure to discuss
in my review. Danielle goes to bed
relatively early, and even though she is only in the room next to me, I miss
her desperately.
Nearing the end, I am struck by how overtly
personal Ceravolo’s poems become. My
lack of sleep turns me more emotional than normal and I hold onto his wisdom to
youth in poems like “Legacy” (“O young of this ancient world / we leave you /
in perpetual danger of the galaxy / of which we have no stroke / but like a
tree or an ant / live and die, / and maybe live again”). It is a different tone in “Mad Angels,” of
course. It feels as though the poet no
longer finds the same pleasures in the word play of his earlier writing, and
has now opted for a more direct - often brutally harsh - and honest aesthetic.
It’s early in the morning and I turn on the
television. Nothing is on but
infomercials and local news. I mute the
sound and keep reading. The poems have
become unapologetically contemplative, and it’s increasingly difficult for me
to read material that presumably grapples with the great poet’s oncoming
death.
August 13, 1984
If I left
nothing would happen
to the stars,
flowers would not wither,
sun would not flicker ...
March 1988
...
No one sees me. I am just here,
my foot a decoy for compassion
my sympathies and despairs for
another generation to find.
And if in the dichotomy of a
missing world
a cough awakes the night
you’ll find I’m not asleep.
The sun rises through the windows in my
apartment. It falls across the wooden
floor. I can hear Danielle beginning to
wake in the bedroom just behind me. I am
young. As I read Joseph Ceravolo’s final
published poem of his lifetime, I wonder, if he had any idea that the poem
would be his last. I wonder: how does great art go unnoticed? I don’t know, but it feels wrong. I go to the refrigerator and eat peanut
butter with a spoon and I hope that everyone in the world will read Joseph
Ceravolo’s Collected Poems because if
they did, the world would be a more beautiful place.
March 1988
When a spirit comes to me
and frightens
and the weight on my chest
turns to butterflies into desert lands
and rivers flow through
arms to heart
shepherds and farmers sit to drink
my isolated soul,
but not because I’m away
from you or may never see again
the drunken night
or shaking star’s illusion
that distance is not time
and time not space
but the spirit comes to me
