The Best American Poetry

James Earl Jones (1931-2024) reads "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

For Friday the 13th:

Byron's "Don Juan " and "So, We'll Go No More a-Roving" -- Great Poems of the World, Episode 10, with David Lehman and Mitch Sisskind

     

           George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788–1824

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, we'll go no more a roving

So, we'll go no more a roving
    So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
    And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
    And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
    And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
    And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
    By the light of the moon.

from "Don Juan, Canto I"

I want a hero: an uncommon want,
    When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
    The age discovers he is not the true one;
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
    I’ll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan—
We all have seen him, in the pantomime,
Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.

Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,
    Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,
Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk,
    And fill’d their sign posts then, like Wellesley now;
Each in their turn like Banquo’s monarchs stalk,
    Followers of fame, ‘nine farrow’ of that sow:
France, too, had Buonaparte and Dumourier
Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier.

Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, Mirabeau,
    Petion, Clootz, Danton, Marat, La Fayette,
Were French, and famous people, as we know:
    And there were others, scarce forgotten yet,
Joubert, Hoche, Marceau, Lannes, Desaix, Moreau,
    With many of the military set,
Exceedingly remarkable at times,
But not at all adapted to my rhymes.

Nelson was once Britannia’s god of war,
    And still should be so, but the tide is turn’d;
There’s no more to be said of Trafalgar,
    ’Tis with our hero quietly inurn’d;
Because the army ’s grown more popular,
    At which the naval people are concern’d;
Besides, the prince is all for the land-service,
Forgetting Duncan, Nelson, Howe, and Jervis.

Brave men were living before Agamemnon
    And since, exceeding valorous and sage,
A good deal like him too, though quite the same none;
    But then they shone not on the poet’s page,
And so have been forgotten:—I condemn none,
    But can’t find any in the present age
Fit for my poem (that is, for my new one);
So, as I said, I’ll take my friend Don Juan.

Most epic poets plunge ‘in medias res’
    (Horace makes this the heroic turnpike road),
And then your hero tells, whene’er you please,
    What went before—by way of episode,
While seated after dinner at his ease,
    Beside his mistress in some soft abode,
Palace, or garden, paradise, or cavern,
Which serves the happy couple for a tavern.

That is the usual method, but not mine—
    My way is to begin with the beginning;
The regularity of my design
    Forbids all wandering as the worst of sinning,
And therefore I shall open with a line
    (Although it cost me half an hour in spinning)
Narrating somewhat of Don Juan’s father,
And also of his mother, if you’d rather.

In Seville was he born, a pleasant city,
    Famous for oranges and women—he
Who has not seen it will be much to pity,
    So says the proverb—and I quite agree;
Of all the Spanish towns is none more pretty,
    Cadiz perhaps—but that you soon may see;
Don Juan’s parents lived beside the river,
A noble stream, and call’d the Guadalquivir.

His father’s name was Jose—Don, of course,—
    A true Hidalgo, free from every stain
Of Moor or Hebrew blood, he traced his source
    Through the most Gothic gentlemen of Spain;
A better cavalier ne’er mounted horse,
    Or, being mounted, e’er got down again,
Than Jose, who begot our hero, who
Begot—but that ’s to come—Well, to renew:

His mother was a learned lady, famed
    For every branch of every science known
In every Christian language ever named,
    With virtues equall’d by her wit alone,
She made the cleverest people quite ashamed,
    And even the good with inward envy groan,
Finding themselves so very much exceeded
In their own way by all the things that she did.

Her memory was a mine: she knew by heart
    All Calderon and greater part of Lope,
So that if any actor miss’d his part
    She could have served him for the prompter’s copy;
For her Feinagle’s were an useless art,
    And he himself obliged to shut up shop—he
Could never make a memory so fine as
That which adorn’d the brain of Donna Inez.

Her favourite science was the mathematical,
    Her noblest virtue was her magnanimity,
Her wit (she sometimes tried at wit) was Attic all,
    Her serious sayings darken’d to sublimity;
In short, in all things she was fairly what I call
    A prodigy—her morning dress was dimity,
Her evening silk, or, in the summer, muslin,
And other stuffs, with which I won’t stay puzzling.

"Unforgettable" [by David J. Rothman]

Unforgettable

            --in memoriam Emily Desire Gaynor Rothman, 1964-2020

Let me forget all that reminds me of

You: the shoes, heels worn down the way your gait

Would wear them, the photos, rings pledged with love,

The documents from your dissolved estate,

Our wedding china, sons, notes to yourself,

The boxes, stones and shells that you collected,

The old ski gear, the stylish belts, the shelf

Of jewelry that you carefully selected

With instructions to give it to friends.

And let me soon forget the sound of your

Low voice when you said After my life ends,

I hope you wait a while, but then live your

Life. Find another woman. Live your life.

If I forget all that, will you return, my wife?

-- When young, David J. Rothman had the good fortune to study with Czeslaw Milosz, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, Mark Strand and Robert Fitzgerald. His most recent books are a textbook, Learning the Secrets of English Verse (Springer 2022), co-authored with Susan Spear, and My Brother’s Keeper (Lithic 2019). "Unforgettable" is one of two poems by David J. Rohman in the current issue of The Hudson Review.

WEDNESDAYS WITH DENISE: September 11, 2024

Ayokunle Falomo’s Autobiomythography of was published yesterday by Alice James Books. This powerhouse of a book—with a powerhouse of a title—centers on the stories we tell ourselves and each other, the mythologies of our families, our struggles, our heritage. Falomo begins the first poem in his book “I was a boy once &/ I did not show the world my teeth…”  In the leaps that follow, he is ready to show us now—his grit, his humor, his vulnerabilities, his Nigerian sensibility—in poems that explore colonization and decolonization, the identities thrust upon him and those he chooses. The book is a wild inner-globetrotting which ends with the tender “Thank You Ancestors Who Loved Me.” Interspersed are a series of spectacular “self-portrait” poems like this one:

https://www.usi.edu/sir/ruth-awad-poetry-picks/self-portrait-with-thorn-necklace-and-hummingbird

Congratulations, Ayokunle!

https://www.usi.edu/sir/ruth-awad-poetry-picks/self-portrait-with-thorn-necklace-and-hummingbird

Congratulations, Ayokunle!

"The blue light in the guest bathroom" [by Mitch Sisskind]

In the guest bathroom a faux-marble counter 
Surrounds the sink and a plastic toilet seat
Also has the appearance of black marble.

Each closet in the apartment has a switch 
To ignite a bulb as the closet door opens but
In the guest bathroom the opposite is true.

When the door of the guest bathroom closes
A beguiling blue light above the door reflects
Off glass-covered leopard skin-print wallpaper.

Bathrooms exist as well in the guest bedroom,
The child's bedroom, and adjacent the walk-in
Closet of the so-called master bedroom where

A small safe in the walk-in closet might attract
Someone's brief notice on the way to the
master bedroom’s bathroom while away in the

Long hall a cedar closet becomes shrouded 
In darkness as the door closes to create
An unexpected seclusion space but neither 

The small safe by the master bedroom
Nor the halcyon confine of the cedar closet 
Beguile like the blue light in the guest bathroom.

Advice to Young Poets and a Poem by Kelli Russell Agodon [by Nin Andrews]

Recently I’ve had the honor of being asked to Zoom with several graduate poetry classes. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a classroom by Zoom or otherwise, and I’m less practiced at answering the predictable questions such as—how/when/why do you write and where do you find inspiration, and what is your writing process, and what advice do you have for young writers, and . . . 

In one class, a fellow guest-teacher and poet offered the advice: write from the heart. And don’t wait around. Life is short. Such good advice! I thought.

But I began to wonder, Do I do that? Or do I just write out of habit? Wasn’t it Flaubert who said inspiration comes from sitting at the same desk at the same time of day every day?

Or do I  write from anxiety? Or existential discomfort? Like Anne Sexton, I’m always trying to get rid of the rat inside me. But what about those days when inspiration never happens? And the rat keeps running and running on its little wheel? 

I was reminded of the Amor Towles story, The Ballad of Timothy Touchett, in which Timothy Touchett dreamt of literary fame but discovered he had nothing to write about. He blamed his lack of suffering. “How could one expect to craft a novel of grace and significance when one’s greatest inconveniences had included the mowing of lawns in spring, the raking of leaves in fall, and the shoveling of snow in winter?” “Timothy’s parents hadn’t even bothered to succumb to alcoholism or file for divorce.” So instead of writing, Timothy studied the habits of famous writers.   

Like Timothy Touchett, I enjoy studying other writers' habits. I want to know what kinds of sorcery they employ. As a result, I can tell you that John Updike ate so much when he wrote, he didn’t like to go out to lunch and worried about his figure. He was partial to oatmeal cookies. Joan Didion edited at the end of the day with a drink in hand (Liquor, of course, played an important role for a lot writers—no need to list them all here.) John Ashbery enjoyed a nice cup of tea and classical music when he wrote, which was usually in the late afternoon. Charles Simic enjoyed writing when his wife was cooking. Eudora Welty could write anywhere—even in the car— and at any time, except at night when she was socializing. Flannery O’Connor could only write two hours a day and her drink was Coca Cola mixed with coffee. Simone de Beauvoir wrote from 10AM-1PM and from 5-9PM. Louise Glück found writing on a schedule "an annihilating experience." A. R. Ammons wrote only when inspiration hit—he compared trying to write to trying to force yourself to go the bathroom when you have no urge. Anne Sexton took up writing after therapy sessions. Jack Kerouac had various rituals at different times—one was writing by candlelight, and another was doing “touch downs” which involved standing on his head and touching his toes to the ground. Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf wrote standing up. Wallace Stevens composed poems while walking to work. Gabriel García Márquez listened to the news before writing.  Amy Gerstler sometimes listens to recordings of rain while writing. I tried that once, and the rain put me into a deep and dreamless sleep.

I have only one rule. Never write after dark. If I do, especially if I try to edit, I destroy whatever I’ve written, line by line, word by word, until there is nothing left. It happens quickly. 

I also have a ritual. If I am stuck, I ask the muse for help. Then I read a personal forecast of some kind. Shake an 8-ball. Check out my astrology. Flip open a book of poetry at random and find one line to use as if it were an instruction or a secret message. It’s surprising how much help is available, should one ask for help.

My most recent source of advice/instruction came from this poem:

Surrealist Angel 


        by Kelli Russell Agodon

Be lost.

Be the howling stars of the quiet
coyote. Arrive at the roadway
without a plan, without knowing
where you will go.

Turn left.

Be the firefly. Be the moth.

Be the couple in the car who has fallen
in love for the hundredth time.

Be the clock, their hands.

Be the bell chiming from the church
and the patrons leaving
the bar. Be the drink they keep
in their hands, the holy water
they bathed in.

Turn back. Turn forward.

Be the headlights of the taxi,
the sidewalk, the dark stairs
leading to the bright apartment.

See the glow in the window
and want to be that glow.
See another person reaching for another.

Be the silhouette behind the shade.

 

 

Part 2: Advice on Revision and the Pleasure of Burning Manuscripts with Gaylord Brewer [by Nin Andrews]

In my last post, I talked about Zoom classes, about advice (or lack thereof) that I have offered to MFA students. I decided to add a part 2  because I avoided the topic of revision. It’s my least favorite subject. Of course, students always ask if I revise and how and  . . .

I wish I didn’t have to revise. I am unspeakably envious of poets like Frank O’Hara, who was famous for not revising. Of A. R. Ammons [pictured, left] who could write a poem like “City Limits” in one sitting. Of Max Jacob who composed  in a notebook while walking through Paris and wrote:  “The ideas I found in this way seemed sacred to me and I didn't change a comma. I believe that prose which comes directly from meditation is a prose which has the form of the brain and which it is forbidden to touch.” (From an interview with John Ashbery in the Paris Review)

Alas.  I revise and revise up to the last minute before a poem or book is published, and then I keep on revising. As to advice?

I like George Saunders’ advice: Also found here

And Jane Hirshfield’s list.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar, a brilliant teacher and poet, teaches a systematic approach to revision in which one examines every part of speech in a poem. 

One of my favorite teachers, Sydney Lea,  said “that if he writes 13 drafts of a poem, he often ends up going back to the 11th.”

If only I had just 13 drafts to deal with. I might write 60 drafts and need to go back to the 20^th. Sometimes an entire poem is lost when I can’t find my way back to the moment before I killed it.

Gregory Orr once told me my poems were like flowers that had lost their stems and leaves and sometimes their petals. They were, he remarked, kind of bald.

An early draft is like an overdressed woman. I slowly remove layer after layer of her clothes. By draft 15, she is naked. Then I open her further—it’s sort of like opening a Russian doll. I want the inner woman. The one the others (who are just shells after all) are huddled on top of, protecting her secrets. But there’s always a risk of taking off too many layers and ending up with that little wooden bowling pin at the center—a faceless, colorless, genderless alien.  The bald thing Gregory Orr beheld.

In the end, I agree with Paul Vaery who said, “a poem is never finished, it is only abandoned.”

There comes a time when abandonment of one’s work is a relief.  Even a cause for celebration. A time when Gaylord Brewer’s advice comes in handy.

Advice on Burning Manuscripts
by Gaylord Brewer

A simple charcoal grill for a simple task works best, rickety and self-assembled. Bear in mind a manuscript of even moderate ambition makes a dense sheaf, so an igniting fluid will be necessary. Set beloved pages gently onto the grate, douse liberally, and touch each corner with a struck match. Take your time. No urgency is required, no violence beyond the awaking flame itself. A ritual of release, not revenge. The intimate, irremediable act. Sip your beverage of choice and squint through coruscating fumes as the autumn night descends. (It is of course October, month of regret, reflection, and sorcery.)

As top pages, transmogrified, curl into the twilight like black moths, and a simmering, steady heat caresses the body of work, cover with the lid. Your part is done. Trust fire now to bring the words to their inarguable conclusion.

In my twenties I burned a novel and witnessed its conflagration. The Death of Auguste Rodin. Indeed. Days later, I followed with my entire folder of short stories. Fourteen. No carbons, no files, no discs, no jump drives. Students tend to stare incredulously when I sometimes conjure those sweet moments. No exhilaration, no fervor, certainly no regret. Just a settling calm, the confidence of a right thing, as ragged tissues of ghosts silently rose in the chill of evening. Embers, aglow on their grave, sputtering a few last, spent words.

Leopardi's "The Infinite" [translated by Henry Weinfield]

THE INFINITE
Giacomo Leopardi

Dear to me always was this lonely hill,
This hedgerow also, which to such extent
Keeps the horizon hidden from the view.
But sitting here and gazing brings to mind
Interminable spaces, superhuman
Silences, and the very deepest calm
Beyond what sight perceives, till what I feel
Is on the verge of fear. And when the wind
Is rustling through these branches, I compare
The infinite silence to this voice I hear.
And then eternity returns to me,
And the dead seasons and the present one
Alive with all the sounds it bears. And so,
My thought is shipwrecked in immensity,
And sweet it is to drown in such a sea.

(1819)

The New York School Diaspora (Part 77): David Hernandez [by Angela Ball]

Hello I Must Be Going

Really nice meeting you sorry
I have to hurry off there’s this thing
happening this thing I must do
you too yes dying is the thing
everyone is not talking about it
why ruin karaoke night why discolor
the air between you and the bartender
hello what can I get for you
it’s miraculous we’re here and then
the world is yanked from us and then
time dismantles our bodies to dust
okay um can I help the next customer
see it would be awkward
let’s not bring it up mum’s the word
come on now we’ve still got
some living to do pick up that trumpet
I’ve got mine already never mind
we can’t play any instruments
the point is to make a sound
any sound in this endless parade
shimmering toward silence

                                             - David Hernandez

David Hernandez's most recent collection of poems, Hello I Must Be Going (Pitt Poetry Series, 2022), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books include Dear, Sincerely (Pitt Poetry Series, 2016); Hoodwinked (Sarabande Books, 2011), winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry; Always Danger (SIU Press, 2006), winner of the Crab Orchard Series; and A House Waiting for Music (Tupelo Press, 2003). David has been awarded an NEA Literature Fellowship and two Pushcart Prizes. His poems have appeared in Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry, Ploughshares and Southern Review. He is also the author of two YA novels, No More Us for You and Suckerpunch, both published by HarperCollins. David teaches creative writing at California State University, Long Beach and is married to writer Lisa Glatt.

The New York School Diaspora (Part 77): David Hernandez

David Hernandez’s “I Really Must be Going” is in a terrific hurry but never blurs.  Its title (and that of the book it lives in) originally belongs, of course to Groucho Marx in Animal Crackers, performing what is possibly the funniest comic production number in movie history. Groucho twits the assembly of adoring guests (including the hostess, the redoubtable actress Margaret Dumont) by singing his true desire while performing the role of pith-helmeted “African Explorer” perfectly in every other way, proving that once a gestalt is established, it can withstand almost any amount of silliness, so long as the pretentions of onlookers keep it afloat.

In Hernandez’s poem, a tacit understanding avoids morbidity while it invokes “I,” “you,” and “we” in a way that surrounds us with a universal problem: death, when it comes, breaks off every interaction--even having a drink in a bar (some victims at Pompeii were surely lavaed in a bôite).  It’s a delicate subject, one that must be stumbled into:

     . . .there’s this thing

     happening this thing I must do

     you too yes dying is the thing

     everyone is not talking about it

     why ruin karaoke night why discolor

     the air between you and the bartender

     hello what can I get for you

Just as Groucho’s song accelerates, so does the poem, without sleeping policemen of punctuation. It’s clear that what Philip Larkin calls “unresting death” is everywhere precisely because “everyone is not talking about it”—why “discolor / the air”?  We agree, for the most part, to keep things light, preserve appearances—it’s why we say of someone dead that they’ve “passed.” Kenneth Koch’s brilliant late poem, “Proverb,” literalizes that speedy passing: “Les morts vont vite” while “We living stand at the gate / and life goes on.” Hernandez’ poem, more comic but just as scarifying, x-rays the social. It resembles a jazz funeral’s second line, that aims to replace sadness with celebration—at the same time poking fun at itself, knowing it must fail.

We are reminded of Frank O’Hara’s posthumously discovered (by Kenneth Koch) “Talking to the Sun at Fire Island,” when at the end of the poem the sun says, “. . .go I must, they’re calling / me.” Frank wants to know who “they” are. “Some / day you’ll know,” says the sun. Somehow, the exuberance of O’Hara’s poem survives the darkening at its close—but also depends on it. The exuberance in Hernandez’s, forced by custom, must obey strict rules:

     let’s not bring it up mum’s the word 

     come on now we’ve still got

     some living to do pick up that trumpet

     I’ve got mine already never mind

     we can’t play any instruments

     the point is to make a sound

The sound that “Hello I Must be Going” makes is urgently, supremely dramatic. Simply put, it surrounds us with what matters. Hollis Summers, a fine poet who taught at Ohio University, used to say that any good poem should be worthy of being “carved in stone.” Hernandez’s poem—as colloquial and broken-off as it is—somehow achieves this state. We participate in its monologue, resort to trumped-up gaiety replaced in the end by eloquent despair: “make a sound /any sound in this endless parade/shimmering toward silence”  - Angela Ball

Roger Eagle [by John Harbourne]

from the artist John Harbourne, this missive from Liverpool:

<<<
The drawing was done in 2017. It’s a portrait of Roger Eagle, who was manager of the world famous Eric’s club in Mathew Street, Liverpool in the 1970s. In the 60s, Roger had been DJ at the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, where he played his vast collection of R&B records and eventually promoted his favourite artists, who came over to Britain to play. Bo Diddley, Sonny Boy Williamson, John Lee Hooker and Howling Wolf were just a few of the famous names he promoted over here. 

The jukebox in Eric's club was famously eclectic, full of Roger's favourite music and was an education to many of us back in the day. My drawing shows three of his favourite artists: Bo Diddley, Charlie Parker and King Tubby (on the lapel badge).

>>>

johnharbourneartist.com

Lola Haskins: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

________________________________________________________________

The Discovery

 

On walking, in my seventies, down a leafy street

behind two women in their early forties who

are chatting to each other as companionably

as birds on a limb, and having thought, with

happy anticipation, ah, I'll be their age soon!

it occurs to me that I've lost my mind—but

just then the clouds evanesce and light pours

through the oaks and ash, to form lace on

the pavement lovely enough to be sewn

into dresses, and I see that time is as

random as the patterns the sun makes on

any given day as it filters through leaves,

and as illusory as a baby being born, and

as strange as the years of our lives that

go by without returning, and as equal as

the one friend's auburn hair and the red leaf

she steps over, which the wind has abandoned

for love of her.  And now, having finally

seen that the world is every minute new,

I realize that I'm only a little younger than

those women after all, and I step between

them, and we speak as we walk, and by

the time we part, each of us in her own way

has told the others how lucky she is,

to have been alive in such a beautiful place.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Lola Haskins has published 14 books of poetry and three of nonfiction. Her work has appeared widely in magazines and been broadcast on the BBC and NPR. Her latest collection, Homelight (Charlotte Lit Press 2023), was named Poetry Book of the Year by Southern Literary Review, and was a Hoffer Grand Prize finalist. The one before that, Asylum (University of Pittsburgh, 2019), was featured in the New York Times Magazine and will shortly be featured in The John Clare Journal. Past honors include the Iowa Poetry Prize, two NEAs, two Florida Book Awards, narrative poetry prizes from Southern Poetry Review and New England Poetry Review, a Florida's Eden prize for environmental writing, and the Emily Dickinson prize from Poetry Society of America.  

_______________________________________________________________________________________

                                          Vincent van Gogh, Olive Trees (1889), Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Jack Kerouac, Columbia's football star [by Mitch Sisskind]

I have enjoyed reading on this site about Jack's outstanding work in Mark Van Doren's class at Columbia. However, while it may be true that Jack quit the football team after receiving an 'A' in the class, this is not actually why he quit the team. In 'Vanity of Dulouz,' one of his last books -- it may even have been posthumous -- Jack makes it very clear that he left the team out of frustration at the Columbia Coach. The Coach's real name was Lou Little, and I believe in the book Jack refers to him as Lou Libble. Here he is...

As the book describes it, Little (or Libble) had a tremendous fixation on a reverse play called KF-79. He had won a game with it thousands of years ago, when he was so happy he fell off his dinosaur. Now he kept insisting that Kerouac practice this play over and over, which pissed Jack off. Plus, Jack had broken his leg sometime earlier and Lou had moved him down in the depth chart, very unfairly in Jack's opinion. So Jack left the team. In fact, not long afterward he left Columbia altogether.

Jack was a good player in high school in Massachusetts, and I believe he did a postgraduate year at Horace Mann School where he also played. He was probably the best football playing writer ever, certainly the best since U. of Penn All-American T. Truxton Hare in the early years of the 20th century. 'Vanity of Dulouz' is one of the best books ever about football, although only the opening section actually deals with the game. Jack had the ability (like Homer) to magnify a small incident like a football game into something on the scale of the Normandy invasion. 'Dulouz' is really good, and you feel like you're right next to Jack on the field, or on your barstool.

However, the all time best book on football -- in fact, it's in a completely different league than any other football book -- is Don Delillo's End Zone. Which is wonderful, because unless I am mistaken Delilo did not play the game past the high school level and I'm not sure he even played high school ball. In this sense he's a kind of Stephen Crane, who wrote convincingly about combat without having taken part in it. Well, Tolstoy said if you've seen a street fight you can write about a war. If you've seen Mr. Smee, you can write about Captain Hook. If you've seen a dachshund, you can write about a Shar Pei. Trust me!

from the archive; July 27, 2008

Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes [by Thomas Gray]

Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes

'Twas on a lofty vase’s side,
Where China’s gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.

Her conscious tail her joy declared;
The fair round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,
Her coat, that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,
She saw; and purred applause.

Still had she gazed; but ’midst the tide
Two angel forms were seen to glide
The genii of the stream;
Their scaly armour’s Tyrian hue
Through richest purple to the view
Betrayed a golden gleam.

The hapless nymph with wonder saw;
A whisker first and then a claw,
With many an ardent wish,
She stretched in vain to reach the prize.
What female heart can gold despise?
What cat’s averse to fish?

Presumptuous maid! with looks intent
Again she stretch’d, again she bent,
Nor knew the gulf between.
(Malignant Fate sat by, and smiled)
The slippery verge her feet beguiled,
She tumbled headlong in.

Eight times emerging from the flood
She mewed to every watery god,
Some speedy aid to send.
No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred;
Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard;
A Favourite has no friend!

From hence, ye beauties, undeceived,
Know, one false step is ne’er retrieved,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glisters, gold.

-- Thomas Gray

with thanks to Henri Matisse for the great painting. A critic recently wrote that "One poem like Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' will drag you into anthologies forever, no matter how dull your other poems."  Thomas Gray is anything but dull in such poems as this one, or "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College," about which I wrote this..Here is an excerpt from the piece.  DL

 <<<
I have read Gray’s “Ode” many times and it has never failed to astonish me. It begins conventionally enough with a description of Eton seen from afar. “Happy” are the hills, “pleasing” is the shade. We anticipate an idealized evocation of the life of boys on the playing fields of Eton (where, 70 years later, the Duke of Wellington would say that the battle of Waterloo was won). But even as Gray summons up the image of the boys at their games, we get hints that Eton remembered is what Frost called a “momentary stay against confusion.” The boys “snatch a fearful joy,” we learn in the fourth stanza. The fifth stanza states the enviable condition of youth: “the tear forgot as soon as shed.” But nothing prepares us for the change in intensity signaled by the opening of stanza six: “Alas, regardless of their doom,/ The little victims play.” At the sound of the words doom and victim, the reader is in the position of a batter who had expected a fast ball and looks in amazement and dismay as an off-speed pitch curves over the heart of the plate.
>>>   

https://www.slate.com/articles/arts/classic_poems/2013/01/david_lehman_on_why_thomas_gray_s_ode_on_a_distant_prospect_of_eton_college.html

https://panoply.fm/podcasts/slatepoetry/episodes/yfUbNxo70OwA8us0iCy0K

Tom Hall interviews Mary Jo Salter about BAP 2024

https://www.wypr.org/show/midday/2024-09-03/the-best-american-poetry-of-2024

Midday

The Best American Poetry of 2024

By Tom Hall, 

Teria Rogers

Published September 3, 2024 at 12:40 PM EDT

Courtesy of Simon and Schuster

The Best American Poetry 2024, edited by Mary Jo Salter

Tom's guest is Mary Jo Salter, a Professor Emerita in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. She has published nine volumes of poetry and has written essays, lyrics, and children’s books. This year, she’s been chosen as the guest editor of an anthology of verse called The Best American Poetry 2024. 

Salter will discuss this new anthology this evening[(Setpember 3, 2024: our official pub date]at The Ivy Bookshop.

Courtesy Photo

Mary Jo Salter, poet and former professor at Johns Hopkins University

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Out of the woods and into… a thicket of dance performance creation [By Tracy Danison]

œ-matiere, an immersive choreography by Pierre Pontvianne. Photo © cieparc

Summer’s over. Atelier de Paris just sent me a "Tour d’horizon” of its Fall 2024 dance performance offer: 100% new creation and pretty much a compendium of what’s up in contemporary dance and performance.

The wide play and density of the offer reminds me that the challenge of appreciating dance performance is accepting the premise(s). Accepting premises isn’t suspending disbelief and doesn’t involve so much mindfulness, a skill, as patience, a virtue.

Virtue is better than skill. While virtue holds the inner monkey at bay, skill just polishes the brute’s shines. Mindfulness is directive, acquisitive, good for business and war. Patience resists the impulse to make everything one’s own, assign it a cause, imagine its effects, tag it and put a price on it.

Part of the goodness in dance performance generally is certainly the opportunity it affords to practice virtue. Patience in dance-performance spectating, for instance, in addition to resisting the inner monkey, may often require raking up the courage to resist outer monkeys, too. Remember when the Wicked Witch of the West tosses a ball of fire at Scarecrow, cackling, “Want to play a little ball, Straw Man”? Scarecrow flinches, sure, but they hang on to the end of a tale that says so much more about American life than Scarecrow could have ever learned at school. Attaboy, Scarecrow!

As a fact, Atelier de Paris opens its creative rentrée with a street-lawn party combo that, as well as patience, fêtes community and commitment: the completion of choreographer Joanna Leighton’s Cycle des Veilleurs (“Cycle of Watchers”) #2 in the 12^th arrondissement. As with her other Veilleur events, for each of the 365 days in the year, a local-area resident has volunteered an hour to watch at sundown or sunset from an “object-shelter” (designed by architect Benjamin Tovo) and set up on a high point in the area. That’s it, Veilleurs just watch, not watch out nor watch for, nor watch out for, just watch.

She dreamt of being washed away to the coast, a choreography around a Lithuanian folktale by Lukas Karvelis. Photo © Svelniau

Leighton, who put together the notable People United (which premiered at Atelier de Paris in 2021) has a flair for identifying the essential in an idea and choreographing involvement with it. The Veilleurs party starts with a potential base of 730 fêtards walking in loose parade from Place du Cadran Solaire Papillon to the Atelier at the Cartoucherie in the Bois de Vincennes, where a picnic with post-prandial memory-share is planned.

It seems a good plan to jump from the Veilleurs to the new performances, which begin with a spot light on Lithuania. Lukas Karvelis’ solo piece She dreamt of being washed away to the coast recalls a popular folktale while Vilma Pitrinaitė’s When you’re alone in your forest always remember you’re not alone, a performance around the repercussions of the Ukraine war in the post-colonial Baltic.

Myriam Gourfink does Rêche (“Raw”), a choreography for seven based on yoga breathing techniques. Pierre Pontvianne,about whose Motifs I’ve previously written here, presents Kernel-matières, an introduction to dance performance gesture and part of a seven-part piece called oe matière, meant as an immersive effort to “bring alive the stuff of performance outside the set in order to feel it and share it in a different light”. Motifs is part of the oe septet.

Rêche, choreography integrating yoga breathing techniques by Myriam Gourfink. Photo © Laurent Paillier

With Japan-born performer Yuri Itabashi soloing the title, Maxime Kurvers, who focuses on dance anthropology, has put together an un-NÔ NÔ play au feminin called Okina (“Old Man”). Taken by the same impulse to re-contextualize, Aurélien Dougé’s Aux Lointains (“Distances”), feels out performance textured from observation of routine experience, in this case, New York and the high mountains of Switzerland and Japan.

Ruth Childs, choreographer-performer of Fantasia, an exceptional performance, returns to the Atelier with Fun Times,funnin’ out multiple layers of sense and experience in “fun”. Julie Gouju’s L’InesthétiqueManège (“Ugly Merry-go-round”), uses expressive dance not so much to flesh out meaning but give flesh to a specifically teenage emotion-feeling-reception model.

Current issues find their place, too. Tiran Willemse, Marine Colard, Ikram Benchrif and Paul Girard have come up with what you might call “docu-performance” pieces. Willemse’s blackmilk deconstructs gender, constructs queer and ponders the sadness in the black male heart. Benchrif & Girard’s Nichoir 93 multimedia performance asks How many charitable gestures make a home? And finally, Marine Colard, who wrote and performed Tir sacré, a successful send-off on sports commentary, takes a look at oratory as an art with Bataille Générale.

JA & Paul Auster remembered in "The Forward"

By Daniel Witkin

How Poets And Novelists Are Mourning John Ashbery

September 6, 2017

John Ashbery was among the very greatest poets of the postwar era, one of the most imaginative and accurate chroniclers of what he called “the experience of experience.”

But he might have blanched to hear himself spoken of in such portentous, non-poetic terms. Following Ashbery’s passing on September 3, his friends and acolytes offered reminiscences that shed light on the person behind some of our era’s most challenging and enchanting verse.

David Lehman, a poet and the editor of The Best American Poetry series, included in his remembrance for The American Scholar a mention of sharing an office with Ashbery in the 1970s. He noted that “It was also fun to observe as things JA said in interviews entered the general discourse. For example, ‘Often people don’t listen to you when you speak to them. It’s only when you talk to yourself that they prick up their ears.’ And: ‘I am aware of the pejorative associations of the word ‘escapist,’ but I insist that we need all the escapism we can get and even that isn’t going to be enough.’”

Reflecting on him in the Times, poet Rae Armantrout reflected on how Ashbery’s down-to-earth humor manifested within his poems. “He is one poet who can somehow be simultaneously elegiac and playful, even goofy,” she wrote. “If you could find the impossible space where Franz Kafka overlapped with the Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, John would be sitting there happily, grinning like the Cheshire cat.”

In a piece for The New Yorker, poet and novelist Ben Lerner imagined Ashbery inserting some jokes into his tribute in an august periodical, like Tom Sawyer spying on his pomp and ceremony of his own funeral. “I’m dizzied by my luck at having overlapped with John Ashbery, one of the good things about being born when I was,” Lerner wrote.

"[Regarding] The Pain of Others" by Autumn Royal [Introduced by Thomas Moody]

Autumn Royal’s “[Regarding] The Pain of Others” takes its name from Susan Sontag’s book-length essay discussing the moral hazards involved in the photography of suffering—for both the taker and viewer of the photograph. In Royal’s poem, she makes clear that these same hazards can extend to any artform. Taking the form of a dramatic monologue, a celebrated playwright finds that life is imitating art: he is being visited upon by the themes he has “so realistically & poetically portrayed” within his works. Ironically, however, the playwright is reticent regarding his own suffering: “I’ve experienced a great loss, which I choose not to discuss / at this point in time.” Perhaps this inhibition is influenced by his belief in the necessary distance the artist requires from his or her subject to authentically represent it, but this seems an especially dubious position in the case of the playwright: if the artist has the right to keep private their own suffering, what right do they have to publicly portray someone else’s? Royal’s speaker is in turns fascinating and repulsive—his self-regard is complemented by a complete lack of introspection. When he is questioned at a dinner party regarding the ethics of a script based on a “widely reported and terribly violent incident,” he merely points out his interlocutor has passata sauce not only on the upper region of their lip, “but also the tip of their nose.”

 

Autumn Royal’s second collection The Drama Student (Giramondo, 2023) was last month shortlisted for the 2024 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. The awards are the richest in Australia, and several friends and poets featured in this series were nominated alongside Royal in the poetry category, including Luke Beesely for In the Photograph, Ali Cobby Eckermann for She Is the Earth and Jennifer Maiden for Golden Bridge: New Poems.

 

[Regarding] The Pain of Others

 

Since many of the plotlines explored throughout my plays

have started leaking into my current reality, I’m now publicly

admitting to embracing other people’s anguishes for the sake

of my own creative endeavours. Over the past decade,

I’ve consistently been celebrated as a prophetic & iconic

playwright — a trademark I still justifiably hold.

However, since the themes I’ve so realistically & poetically

portrayed throughout my works have tragically

begun to impact upon my daily routines —

my gratification with such accolades may not fully

be appreciated without such a declaration.

I’ve experienced a great loss, which I choose not to discuss

at this point in time — but I’ll admit that until recently,

I’ve always felt more comfortable writing about

the lives of others — from a distance, but most especially

while my subjects are inhabiting their own homes.

It’s not unfitting to mention that after years of dinner

invitations & appearances — I’ve been praised as not only

being an exceptional conversationalist, but a much-desired guest.

During such dinner parties, I’ve always offered to wash-up

after each course, yet I’ve always been denied this pleasure —

so I end up refilling my glass & observing the performance

of domestic politics. Over the years, I’ve only ever contributed

to one squabble — when an amateur actor, cast in one of my plays

premiering at the time, didn’t recognise me & vehemently

began questioning the ethics of the script — which was based

upon a widely reported & terribly violent incident.

The actor’s naïve soliloquy continued until I politely remarked

that there was not only passata saucing the upper region

of their lip, but also the tip of their nose. After the actor fled

to the bathroom to wipe away now, not only the tomato purée,

but a solid amount of mascara — my fellow comrades reassured

& praised me for my honesty. I was then reminded about all

the positive reviews the show in question had received.

I’ll have to conclude this admission shortly, but do I hope

this announcement will be respected & will allow me to continue

my quest for writing authentic dialogue & descriptions —

something I truly believe is often unattainable for people directly

experiencing the duress which makes for such interesting

material that I possess an ability to curate & represent upon a stage.

As proof of my skills, I can testify that I’ve received numerous

writing grants & government financial support — even patronage,

which, as you’ll reasonably understand, I’ve not been able

to question or reject. My hand-to-mouth existence prior

to my fruitful reputation isn’t unlike the precariousness

of those begging for money while resting against the entrance

to the building where I’ve recently commenced my latest

writer’s residency & like most artistic entrepreneurs — I can

offer nothing, as I believe carrying coins grinds my inspiration

down & closer to the pavers, which I’ve strived brick-hard

to lift myself up & away from for the sake of my creative practice.

Innisfree (eg. Greg McBride): Poems by David Lehman

Dutch Interior

He liked the late afternoon light as it dimmed
In the living room, and wouldn’t switch on
The electric lights until past eight o’clock.
His wife complained, called him cheerless, but
It wasn’t a case of melancholy; he just liked
The way things looked in air growing darker
So gradually and imperceptibly that it seemed
The very element in which we live. Every man
And woman deserves one true moment of greatness
And this was his, this Dutch interior, entered
And possessed, so tranquil and yet so busy
With details: the couple’s shed clothes scattered
On the backs of armchairs, the dog chasing a shoe,
The wide open window, the late afternoon light.

Click here for this special issue of Innisfree, edited by Greg McBride, with a portfolio of poems by David Lehman.

paintings by David Lehman. copyright (c) 2024 by David Lehman

WEDNESDAYS WITH DENISE: September 4, 2024

Michael Chang’s TOY SOLDIERS was just published as winner of the Action, Spectacle poetry prize. Once again, Chang is producing bold, unapologetically sassy poems with a nod to the New York School (“my copy of lunch poems, white orange & blue...”). TOY SOLDIERS contains a delightfully dizzying array of poetic references like “go smoke a doobie norman dubie.” Chang invites the world into their poems where you’ll find Katy Perry, Ron Padgett, H.E.R., Richard Gere, Allen Ginsberg, Janelle Monáe, Liza Minnelli, Sid Vicious, “Cagney & Lacey,” Paul Klee, Chubby Checkers, Chelsea Handler, Olivia Munn, Phil Collins and Meg Ryan. And you’ll be reminded of the flimsy news stories we eat like candy—like Amy Schumer accused of cyberbullying Nicole Kidman.

TOY SOLDIERS is chockful of Chang’s signature text abbreviations and quotes from a diverse variety of artists including Wallace Stevens, Randall Jarrell, Thom Gunn, Ai, Alfred Lord Tennyson, A. Van Jordan, John Wieners, Future, and The Cure to craft poems of sublime political awareness. Legal diction peppers their poems—defendants, plaintiffs, intellectual property, trade secrets, and res judicata. The book is worth its price for the prose poem “THE GLORIOUS GAIN,” a dishy (and frankly terrifying) look by the Supreme Court by an insider who’s clerked for two federal judges.

Chang can also serve up fabulously funky love poems like this:

SALON SONNET

take this into the bedroom

carry us to that boundary

the tabletop

a lazy susan of confusion

as if gnat or soft cheese

a furry wall

get out the knife

clothes & comebacks

r all i have left

plus the easy afterglow

of seeing u

which i now have

the ballet music

ringing ringing ringing

 

Congratulations, Michael!

"The Best American Poetry" 2024": Pub Date Today (Sept 3, 2024)

Mary Jo Salter will be the guest of Tom Hall's renowned  "Midday Show" today probably between 12:40 PM and 1 PM East Coast Time .https://www.wypr.org/show/midday

<<<See https://lithub.com/lit-hub-daily-september-3-2024/ for a sneak peak at Mary Jo's amazing intro as published in Literary Hub:

We Are All Nobody: Mary Jo Salter on Finding Beauty and Community in Poetry

“Let’s try to put our own vanities aside when we write poems, and let’s read the poems by other people that make us feel most alive.”

By Mary Jo Salter

“I’m Nobody! Who are you?” asked Emily Dickinson. It’s clear to many of us who she was and is—one of the greatest poets ever—and certain poems of hers suggest she knew it herself. Still, she had a sense of humor about swelled heads, and we love the zinger that concludes her eight-line Nobody poem:

How dreary—to be—Somebody!
How public—like a Frog—
To tell one’s name—the livelong June—
To an admiring Bog!

Readers delight in these lines because we recognize the empty pomposity that too often afflicts people (that is, other people). We also suspect that the hermetic Dickinson (who eschewed publication, dismissing it as “the Auction / Of the Mind of Man”) seems specifically to be skewering that subset of people called writers: the people who may have little to tell us other than their bylines, but who look to the admiring “bog” to confirm their brilliance. And among the general class of writers, which includes bestselling novelists and blockbuster screenwriters, we poets risk being the most deluded about our prospect of fame in that bog, now or ever.

The greatest poems may even, in exemplifying beauty, just marginally re-define it.

The business of poets, I would argue, includes at least some of these aspirations: to witness the world, including the layered, shifting moods of their own minds’ interiors; to feel deeply and also to think through their feelings; to experience life with all of the senses, which sometimes get profitably jumbled; to express some aspect of the human comedy and the human tragedy by exploiting the unique resources of a particular language or languages; to suggest with figures like simile or metaphor the surprising congruity of seemingly unlike things; to speak to their contemporaries about contemporary matters; to place themselves also within the history of humankind, including the history of literature, and to add something to it; to channel our universal musical instincts, our childlike but never merely childish love of song; to dare to remain uncertain and paradoxical and inconclusive as life itself, while also making a finished “thing,” a poem, of beauty. The greatest poems may even, in exemplifying beauty, just marginally re-define it, sometimes without the awareness of the reader.

>>>

and furthermore, https://www.theivybookshop.com/event/the-best-american-poetry-2024-with-guest-editor-mary-jo-salter/