The Best American Poetry

Richard Rodgers in 1925

Richard Rodgers had been writing music, with Lorenz Hart's lyrics, since the two collaborated on the Columbia varsity show in 1920. Following that happy experience, the pair continued to write musicals but without commercial success, and Dick got so discouraged that he thought very seriously of giving up composition and taking a job. A man named Mr. Marvin (first name unknown), a wholesaler in the baby-clothes business, offered to hire him. But Rodgers felt that his luck was about to change and he decided not to go into the apparel field. It was 1925. He turned twenty-three that year. And he and Hart had their first smash hit: "(We'll have) Manhattan." So things worked out for the best.

-- DL

Dear Fellow Introverts

<< All Americans are introverts. >>

-- W. H. Auden, late in 1939. He had arrived on these shores in January of that year.

-- DL

Freud Quiz # 4

Freud came up with great titles, which poets like to steal, and the best of these is

(a) The Interpretation of Dreams

(b) Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious

(c) Civilization and Its Discontents

(d) The Problem of Anxiety

(e) Totem and Taboo

For extra credit, identify the names of two poets who have written "The Problem of Anxiety."

-- DL

Freud says. . .

A definitive example of the spontaneous aphorism:

"One is irresistibly reminded of an incident in the French Chamber when capital punishment was being debated. A member had been passionately supporting its abolition and his speech was being received with tumultuous applause, when a voice from the hall called out: 'Que messieurs les assassins commencent!' [Let the murderers make the first move.]"

--Freud. Civilization and Its Discontents

OK, everyone. What do you suppose has "irresistibly reminded" Freud of this incident?

-- DL

I Slept On The Couch Last Night [by Michael Quattrone]

Not to worry—my wife slept on the couch, too. We both sleep on the couch every night, because the two bedrooms in our converted one bedroom apartment are full of children. Our three-year-old daughter has her own room, and our twin boys, almost eight months old, took over our bedroom in short order with their crib and exersaucers, playmats, changing table, nursing chair, diapers, etc. . . .

So the evidence of Eros is hard to miss, but also hard to appreciate as such. There’s my recent back pain from the flimsy pull out mattress, there’s my wife’s chronic fatigue and what she describes as her search for a recognizable body (by the end of the boys’ pregnancy, she was carrying a total of fifteen pounds of baby!). And did I mention that we’ve only been married for four years? I never imagined that I’d be a father of three at thirty. We are both adjusting to lives radically different from what we imagined, and doing it on little sleep. If we’d known, we would have taken a longer honeymoon.

But here’s the whole point: honeymoons and Valentine’s days can be over-burdened with expectation. They must be, we are told, extra special, extra romantic, extra erotic (and extra expensive, to boot). For that reason, don’t feel bad if your date last night didn’t go exactly according to plan. Instead, join me in striving for . . .

The everyday erotic. The erotic in the middle of dirty diapers and a cluttered living room and children who outnumber us, and no privacy, and careers, and running the dishwasher twice a day, and making bottles and bottles and bottles of baby formula, and feeding the cat, and recycling, and trying to give everyone enough love and (perhaps especially for a husband?) wondering where all that attention that used to be focused on you went.

That can be a difficult erotic to achieve. It’s hard. It’s so hard. The good news is: when it happens, it’s good. It’s very, very good.

--MQ

Second of two posts: the political one. by Sarah Manguso

Within our lifetime, sex education curricula other than abstinence, birth control methods other than pulling and praying, coital arrangements other than vaginal penetration of a white Christian wife by a white Christian husband, and freedom of speech including but not limited to erotic poetry might be felonies in the United States of America.

For Valentine's Day, why not send BAEP to the government offices of United States legislators who have ever voted in favor of legislation to outlaw sex and/or the free intercourse of ideas? Write it off as a charitable contribution.

Skip the candy and flowers this year if George Bush took all your money to fund illegal wars. Sex is still free.

Happy Valentine's Day, America.

—Sarah Manguso

First of two posts: the literary one. by Sarah Manguso

In the bathroom (relatively clean; thank you, Jenny) of this week's house-sit: a recent anthology of love poems "from the sixteenth century to the present day."

The book contains my third-favorite Keats poem, "Bright Star," clearly a love poem because its speaker longs to be "pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast / to feel for ever its soft swell and fall." The book also contains "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," in which death comes for the speaker by his having loved a beautiful but merciless lady—and that's it for Keats.

So where's "Ode on a Grecian Urn"? Isn't that poem all about the long-dead (yet deathless) lovers depicted on the clay? Or "This Living Hand," the most flesh-insistent of any of Keats's poems, in the last line of which the poet (yes, I assume it is Keats) actually holds his hand toward you?

The book's intent, per its front-flap copy, was to collect "the classics and favorites" as well as other things: "blues lyrics, Broadway songs and a full range of poetic styles from the aristocratic to the popular." (NB: Yes, it is a British edition; if an American edition of this book ever appears, which is unlikely, the word aristocratic will be replaced with academic).

I appreciate the editorial goal of including a full range of poetic styles. But may we imagine, for a moment, a fuller range of poetic subjects? What about poems less explicitly about love?

Shakespeare sonnets are great—and the two Cole Porter songs may have seemed exceptionally daring to someone—but I can't help thinking there’s been much more to love poetry over the last four hundred years than the regular capital-L love stuff.

The BAEP takes the risk of including comparatively clean poems in an anthology of the erotic. My own contribution has nothing to do with explicit sex, yet I admit the poem turned out a little filthy.

Thank you, dear editor, for noticing.

—Sarah Manguso

Good Night, Good Night--! Parting is Such Sweet . . . by Jenny Factor

[wait for it]...[there's a dramatic pause in here somewhere] Sorrow. But don't
worry! Sarah Manguso will visit you tomorrow!

If you are interested in
My Annotated List of Alternative Sexualities in The Best American Erotic Poems
you can find it in a different hotel room.

Sarah: I've changed the sheets....There are fresh towels in the closet. Have fun on your Day!

--Jenny Factor

Must You Change Your Life?— Sapphic Soliloquies by Jenny Factor

On Sunday, Jill Alexander Essbaum brought us to the brink of Biblical bliss in a smart, sinuous sermon. On Monday, a day of the week not generally favored in the Biblical sense*, a college friend phoned up to tell me she has decided to leave her marriage in recognition of her growing lesbian identity. I’d last seen her at her April wedding. She’d worn snakeskin boots under her white dress. For what it’s worth, I’ve broken bread with her soulful, milk-gentle husband.

"Poetry books, including one of yours from a few years ago, kept me company," she told me.

Oh no, I thought, feeling instantly light-headed. I don't want to have anything to do with this. Poetry unmakes another life!

More aggravated than supportive, I headed out for a lecture at Antioch University. Eloise Klein Healy (poet and editor of Arktoi Books) was visiting Alistair McCartney’s An Introduction to and Exploration of Queer Literature class. On Monday, the topic was Sappho (6th century songster poet of Lesvos). In recent weeks, this class has covered Walt Whitman, James Baldwin, Elizabeth Bishop…

These are my peeps: the women, the queers, the genderqueers. Many of them are also rock-stars featured in the Best American Erotic Poems. (Read my list of favorites here.)

Me? I've long been a fan of Sappho’s. I believe, in fact, that Sappho is our very first (…and possibly only…) non-transgressive lesbian erotic poet!

Transgressive, you ask? Isn't that one of those slippery terms social scientists insist that we define? Okay, let's do that!

When Joe, say, writes an amorous invitation to Sally, and both are unmarried, single, and over the age of 18, this epistle is not transgressive. There is neither a trans (crossing over) nor a gress (regress, egress, congress, aggression nor any other implication of destructively-forceful erotic approach). But add in alcohol (to impair the judgment), a boyfriend on the side (for either Joe or Sally), a prominent fetish (big toe, anyone?), or simply—ahem—a decision that Joe is really Jane, and you've got at least 3500 years of moral and theological constrictive dualistic religion to knock over before that love can thrive.

Transgressive love has to unmake the world a little before it gets on with loving.

All other love only has to knock over the Self.

So Sappho (who existed in the day when Hera could still order Zeus around) was the first non-transgressive lesbian erotic poet because there's not an iota of shame in her. Take a look at this fragmentary sample (quoted from a Mary Barnard translation of Sappho which lends the Bardess a bit of sparse butch bravura, like a pre-Christian Robert Browning):

42 Thank you, my dear

You came, and you did
Well to come: I needed
You. You have made

love blaze up in
my breast—!

By 6PM, Eloise Klein Healy had read "The Singing School" from her book, The Islands Project, and had lifted and descanted the queer lot of us into a merlot-red LA sunset.

Heading to my car, key in hand, I thought of my friend. Is she unmaking a life, or is she making one?

Whatever comes—whatever passion, whatever regret, whatever divine moments of transgression and forgiveness—I wish things for her: strength, agency, courage, dizzy freefall and the footing underneath. But mostly, I wish her love. Real, abiding, creative partnership. I hope she finds that. I hope we all do.

Happy Valentine's Day!

-Jenny Factor

* According to contemporary Jewish theologians, on the Biblical first Monday of the World, God failed to utter the decree “and it was good” while on Wednesday (i.e., today!), God uttered it twice—leading to a universal pleasure in “hump” day, and numerous Kabbalistic Wednesday weddings.

Good Morning! How about a Quickie Before Work? by Jenny Factor

A poem is—by its nature—an unconsummated sex act. The poet follows a kind of arousal, the desire to create a sensory moment in the reader and in him/herself that will exist, hovering in its enacted and enacting state, whenever he/she revisits the poem. And this sensory moment is designed—is defined—to remain always on the cusp of, at the brim of, just shy of any completion, satiety, and (resulting) tristesse. One can always dive back into the moment before completion just by sending the eyes back up the page, reforming the words with the tongue, beginning again.

Isn't that amazing?

Fellow Bloggers—JC, DD, LW, JAE, CB, RM, SM, SH, and DL—thanks for the invitation to this party! (This is raucus, and a bit surreal. I've never known a book, an anthology, to come to life before...).

Readers, All: Welcome to that in-media-res, that penultima, the Day before Valentine's Day blog!

-Jenny Factor

Photo Not Included by Ross Martin

People thank David Lehman all the time.  It's got to annoy the guy, after all these years.  He'd probably prefer you just buy him a drink.  Or tell him you think that he's hot.

We should all buy David Lehman a drink: "The Best American Erotic Poems" hits bookstores around the same time as the 2008 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.  And it's kinda better.

The poets in this book especially owe David Lehman a debt of gratitude for making us look good... by not including our photos.

It's important to note, though, that he chose to print our names above the titles of our poems, and that they appear so prominently on the book's back cover. 

For some readers, names like Star Black, Jenny Factor and Kenneth Koch trigger unbridled sexual fantasy.

Some inform our thinking on nether regions -- your Bishop, your Peacock, your secret Komunyakaa.

Some inspire a call to action -- to Bukowski, to Duhamel, to Cronk your lover.

Some poets' names are so unsexy, they sabotage the eroticism of their own work. 

And some, even though they're not even in this book, still draw throngs of horny students just because they're named Mary Jo Bang and Paisley Rekdal.

If you're not sure if your name is sexy and you want to find out, click here.

If you want to look at a picture of Paisley Rekdal, click here.

If you would like to make love to a poet who is 6'1", 275 lbs and 98% body fat, click here.

If you'd like to purchase a "Sexy Poet" nightie, click here.

If you live in Brooklyn or want to have sex with someone who does, click here.

If you are hot and live anywhere near Chicago, click here.

If you need to look at photos of Jessica Simpson while you read poems from this anthology, click here.

If sexy names for cosmetics turn you on, click here.

If you kinda want to have sex with David Lehman, click here.

To unsubscribe, change your name.

-- Ross Martin

The How To [by Catherine Bowman]

Instructions. 

Audre Lorde in her 1978 essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” writes “This is one reason why the erotic is so feared, and so often relegated to the bedroom alone, when it is recognized at all.  For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with the joy in which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate, those aspects in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventional expected, nor the merely safe.”  She goes on to say “recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama.” So how do we steer clear of the erotic ghetto?  How can the erotic infuse the rest of our lives—our actions? How refuse to “settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventional expected, nor the merely safe?”

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We seek instruction for the things most our own.  How to breath, walk, fuck. The sex or erotic instruction book sells technique and proposes to tell you secrets that are actually open and available to all. A quick tour through a nearby chain bookstore: 269 Amazing Sex Tips for Men; Striptease Kit: Everything You Need to Take It Off; The Lowdown on Going Down; Lube Job, A Winners Guide to Great Maintenance Sex; Miss Finishing School for Boys Who Want to be Girls; How to get Beautiful Women into Bed, Ride ‘em Cowgirl: Sex Position Secrets for Better Bucking.

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Instruction books, while entertaining and pleasurable, tend more toward a narrowing of the imagination and possibility—back to the erotic ghetto. Erotic books and sex manuals offer rules and instructions. Movies instruct on the screen. In Don Patterson’s collection of reflections and aphorisms The Book of Shadows he says: “Anal Sex has one serious advantage: there are few cinematic precedents that instruct either party how they should look.”

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But perhaps the poet, using the very exacting forms of instruction or advice, can pursue a highly pleasurable and erotic undertaking. In his great poem “Directive” Robert Frost writes:

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The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you/Who only has at heart your getting lost.

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These two lines seem a great piece of erotic instruction, yet most instruction is not about getting lost but its reverse. The erotic is both: being lost and being found. Instruction poems can be very erotic and playful.  Octavio Paz tells us “The agent that provokes both the erotic act and the poetic act is imagination. “  I think now of the famous instruction:  Am returning in three days. Don’t wash.

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The poet can subvert a form that feels overly proscriptive by taking the literal and instructive and making it suggestive, reconfiguring rules into realms of possibilities, using the highly erotic modes of instruction: recipe, precise attention to language, ritual, and mastery toward opening not closure.

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Do you have a favorite instruction or advice poem?

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OVIDICE

How do I satisfy my partner?  With hands palms up—to heaven, begging pardon

How do I maintain an erection? When savage Frenzy dries her tears again.

How can I tell if my partner is faking? By a huge boar, that served Diana’s ends--

What and where is the G-spot? Is in the grip of chance, of sudden shifts:

Is it OK to watch porn? Magpies the mocking dwellers in the woods.

--Catherine Bowman

 

Two Kinds of Erotics: by Catherine Bowman

Rod Stewart. Rod Stewart’s borrowing of the Brazilian musician Jorge Ben’s hit “Taj Mahal” for his 1978 hit “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” gives us a glimpse into a kind of erotic metamorphoses or an erotic mutation as Ben’s “Taj Mahal’s” gives us the story of a magnificent gift to a beloved, many years in the making. Stewart steals the tune and it becomes “if you want my body and you think I'm sexy/ Come on, sugar, let me know/ If you really need me just reach out and touch me /Come on, honey, tell me so.” That is, the Taj Mahal becomes “Do Ya Wanna Do Me?”

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Jorge Ben performs “Taj Mahal” on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M-bZ1tbHw8

Rod Stewart performs “DoYa Think I’m Sexy?” on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On3rfstwJUQ

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--Catherine Bowman

My Body, Take and Eat. Or: Sermon on Her Mound [by Jill Alexander Essbaum]

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Genesis 2: 17

(A disclaimer: The following opinions, words, indulgences are mine and mine alone.—jae.)

Let today’s appropriately Lenten Old Testament lectionary reading—that mess about the serpent and the fruit of that goddamed (quite literally) tree—serve as my prologue. Or, if not that, then in the words of Waylon Payne as “The Killer” himself, Jerry Lee Lewis in 2005’s Walk the Line:

God gave us a great big apple, see, and He said. "Don't touch it." He didn't say touch it once in a while. He didn't say take a nibble when you're hungry. He said, "Don't touch it. Don't think about touching it. Don't sing about touching it. Don't think about singing about touching it.”

Me, I’ve touched and nibbled that apple. I’ve stolen it from orchards aplenty (oh, Augustine!), baked it into pies, stewed from it ciders of bouquets both voluptuous and vinegar, set it atop heads and shot arrows straight through (and what exactly did William Tell, hmmm?). I have dared to eat the peach, I’ve rubbed the banana, fondled the melon, pear-treed the partridge, and bitten the berry until the juices veritably gushed.

But this is not a confession. I’m repentant only in theory.

This, Brothers and Sisters, is a sermon.

I’m looking at a picture of Jesus as I compose this. Unfairly blue-eyed and ridiculously rosy-cheeked, his right hand is raised in a gesture of benediction, and his beard is, a bit hilariously, curled in ringlets. It’s certainly not my favorite picture of the Lord, but it’s not his face that concerns me here. It’s what lies in this print’s geographic middle: Jesus’ ripe, red-as-a-valentine heart. A cross blossoms from its upper cleft. A tangle of thorny vines (which, unfortunately evokes Pamela Anderson’s tattooed upper arm à la “Barb Wire”) strangles it to near infarction. And: It’s on fire.

Behold the Sacred Heart of God.

I’m occasionally asked how I reconcile both the erotic and the religious impulse in my work. My answer is—with greater confidence and ease than I do in my day-to-day life, sadly. Even so, there are lusts and longings that I’ve celebrated in various poems (some of which I’ve also and alas celebrated in various beds) that are not just sternly frowned upon by Scripture, but outright verboten. In fact—and this troubles me greatly—these are deeds for which, in some eras hence and in some contemporary regimes, the price of their doing is death. It is with gutting ambivalence that I always come back to the Gospel story of the woman taken in adultery. Yes, Jesus stepped in on her behalf and told the stone-throwing hypocrites to take a hike. But he was also vodka-clear in his command to the woman: Go and sin no more.

Well… crap.

Martin Luther was of the opinion that as people of faith, when we sin, we ought sin boldly, trusting in Christ alone for our salvation. (Reason number 8 why I’m a Lutheran.)

But sin, unlike sex, isn’t precisely an act. It’s a condition. A terminal disease.

“The day thou eatest therof, thou shalt surely die.”

So whatever The Erotic is (argue amongst yourselves), it damn sure ain’t safe.

But then again, neither is a God whose thorn-pocked, fiery heart is splintered by a cross. A God who so loved the world that he let himself be ripped to fleshy shreds on Skull Hill some two millennia ago. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t clean, it wasn’t safe.

Christ, however, is more than his crucifixion. He’s the very embodiment of God’s grace, forgiveness, joy, humility, and absolute concern for the well-being of every soul in every body that has or ever will have lived upon this twirling solar satellite we call Earth.

But: Christ is also his crucifixion.

Likewise, The Erotic is more than just cock and pussy. It’s a state of sensual fuck-it-all-ness. It’s knowing full well that the apple you’re eating bloody will kill you, but swallowing it anyway, fearing neither death nor bedevilment in the gulp-down. It’s the awareness that even though you’re eating it, it’s not this apple precisely that you’re hungry for. It’s the hunger that precedes the apple. The thirst that can only be quenched by more thirsting.

But—and make no mistake—The Erotic is also and indeed cock and pussy (configure as you will).

It’s no secret that poets are notoriously horny—or, if you will, notorious in the telling of horny tales. Moreso than the average Jack or (ahem) Jill? Oh, I think not. Sinning on paper is the safest of all. You can’t catch anything, there's no need for birth control, and if you don’t want to overtly cop to a particular kink, you can write it off as ‘poetic license’ with a mere wink and lick of the lips.

And I like to think that God has a heart for poets. King David—that sinning psalmster—was utterly, unapologetically beloved by the Lord. But David suffered greatly at the hands of his own urges. As have I. As have we all.

So already-broken hearts have the tendency to get busted up even more. And hands a body craved so desperately upon it, when gone, leave the ghost-scars of longing. And nevermind with what fervor you whetted its blade upon your skin: Desire's knife, left unused, rusts in its sheath. Night flees from daylight, and lovers’ arms turn cold.

No. There is nothing safe in this world, or, perhaps, the next.

But looking up at the Sacred Heart of Christ, and thinking of every love I’ve blundered, every lust I’ve suffered, every apple I’ve ever been the I of, I’m resigned to an altogether un-contrite gladness.

In a Day of Pentecost sermon preached last year at Martin Luther Church, Zürich, the pastor (whose name is lost to my memory) proclaimed: Gott kommt mit Feuer—God comes with fire.

Well. So do I, Brothers and Sisters. So do I.

--Jil Alexander Essbaum

(This was not written as a response to Lisa's post which in turn was not written as a response to Denise’s—I wrote it before I read Lisa’s—but Glory Be!, lookie the collective unconscious at work! I find this to be a fine, fine serendipity. -jae)

The True Test

"The true test of a love poem's merit is whether it woos the beloved successfully into bed."

-- The Marquise of Flanders

Harry, Hoagy, and Harold

Two nights ago the NY Festival of Song under the spirited direction of Steve Blier performed songs of Harold Arlen, Hoagy Carmichael, and Harry Warren. Some of the tunes (Arlen's "Evelina" and "Dancing Partner," Warren's "Shoes With Wings On") were new to many ears at the Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall. "Don't think of these songs as obscure," Blier counseled. "Think of them as friends you're about to make." I think Steve is right about what attracted Judy Garland to Arlen's dark, complicated, beautiful blend of blues and Hebrew melodies. "Putting a good face on the pain is what both of them were about."

Two of my favorite Hoagy Carmichael songs were sung: "Skylark" and "How Little We Know." You may have heard the latter sung by Lauren Bacall in the 1944 movie "To Have and Have Not." Like an object lesson in the delights of syncopation, the song has an eight-beat "Latin" rhythm, with a sublime Johnny Mercer lyric, full of doubts and maybes. "Maybe you're meant to be mine; / Maybe I'm only supposed to stay / In your arms awhile, / As others have done. / Is this what I've waited for? / Am I the one? / Oh, I hope in my heart that it's so / In spite of how little we know."

-- DL

Will this be the week that was?

Our thanks to Jim Cummins and Denise Duhamel, the first two of the eight guest bloggers we've lined up for the week leading to Valentine's Day. All eight are represented in the new collection, THE BEST AMERICAN EROTIC POEMS. Coming next are Lisa Williams, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Catherine Bowman, Ross Martin, Jenny Factor, and Sarah Manguso. The subject is Eros. The freedom is total.

On Monday night February 11th at the Museum of Sex (27th Street; entrance east of Fifth Avenue), Sarah Arvio, Star Black, Laura Cronk, Michael Quattrone, Paul Violi and Maggie Wells will read their contributions to THE BEST AMERICAN EROTIC POEMS. At 7 pm. Come!

What kind of place is the Museum of Sex? A few of us attended an opening there last week. Exhibits of dildos in bright pastel colors, toys, masks, dungeon paraphernalia, observers furtively checking out other observers while attempting to stay focused on "Venus in Furs" or the life of Casanova -- just what you'd expect to find, though you wouldn't have expected anything as recently as fifteen years ago. Two women handing out leaflets for an alternative drawing school wore ostentatious collars. One had her private parts covered with furniture tape rather than clothing. "My master will untape me when i get home," she said. The hors d'oeuvres and the sparkling wine were excellent. "We did have," as Ted Berrigan would have said, "a very nice time."

On TV as I type is "Voyage of the Damned" about the ship full of Jewish passengers that was denied entry into Cuba and was forced to return to Europe. The voyage turned out to have been a propaganda stunt perpetrated by the Nazis. A very 1970s movie: lavish costumes and make-up, a soundtrack modulating from Strauss waltzes to "Deutschland Uber Alles," with stops along the way for "Frenesi," "Amapola," and "Blue Moon." Oskar Werner, Faye Dunaway, Lee Grant, Wendy Hiller, et al., are as glamorous a group of refugees as was ever doomed to suffer in the limbo of an ocean liner crossing and recrossing the choppy North Atlantic under the sign of the swastika.

-- DL

This N That

On Tuesday February 5, Katha Pollitt took part in a New School poetry forum (at which the poet reads for a half hour, then fields questions from the moderator and audience for an equal length of time). The first eight poems Katha read were inspired by passages or stories in the Bible, four from the Torah and four from the New Testament. She led off with "The Expulsion" about the disastrous events described in Genesis 3. The poems are from a new collection entitled "The Mind / Body Problem," slated for publication in March 2009. To the inevitable question of why she read no political or anti-war poems, Pollitt replied that she observes a distinction between poems and essays -- they they differ in kind, purpose, and structure; that poems are not the most efficient means of persuasion; and that, sad to say, most anti-war poems seem more intent on advertising the author's moral superiority than anything else.

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Word has it that the poet Bill Zavatsky, who devoted an issue of his literary magazine Roy Rogers to one-line poems way back when, is editing the definitive anthology of the form. Bill, are one-line novels eligible? Check out Bill's fine "Ode to the Maker of odes" (i.e. Pablo Neruda) in the current Hanging Loose.

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Couplet of the day: from Love Me Tonight with Maurice Chevalier (music Richard Rodgers, lyrics Lorenz Hart). The name Cohen is pronounced in two syllables:

"Bonjour, Monsieur Cohen. / How are things go-en?"

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True or false: "Pronouns in poetry function as unknowns do in algebra."

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A little known fact is that Samuel Taylor Coleridge, upon leaving Cambridge, signed up for the cavalry under the name Silas Tomkyn Comberback, but didn't last, because of a tendency to fall off his horse. One reason he remained popular with his comrades in arms is that he wrote their love letters for them.

-- DL

Eight Days a Week - Guest Bloggers

Bookmark this page to follow the brilliant insights of these poets:

Today, February 7th:  James Cummins
February 8th:  Denise Duhamel
February 9th:  Lisa Williams
February 10th: Jill Alexander Essbaum
February 11th: Catherine Bowman
February 12th: Ross Martin
February 13th: Jenny Factor
February 14th: Sarah Manguso

"Komposition X" by Amy Allara

After she correctly translated "Hit the Lump of Rich Seal" into "The Triumph of Achilles" and identified Louise Gluck as that book's author, Amy Allara wrote this flowing acrostic poem that (to paraphrase Stevens) approaches prose but turns back into verse at the last possible second, the end of each line. The challenge called for a two-stanza poem; Allara makes the unconventional choice of breaking the lines into asymmetrical units of eleven and two.   -- DL

“Komposition X”

Left only with a motley assortment of objects

or with a series of flimsy hypotheses to explain what might be an

underpinning of what had just been there,

it doesn’t seem at all proper that one should just take leave

so unceremoniously without notification, without so much as an

exit that made sense or even a sound or with a

going that could invite an easy rationale.

Latching onto these inert items seems hazardous and certainly his copy of

Über Psychoanalyse cannot transmit much warmth to the wrecked bed

        linens —

Can a return to collect be counted on or is that stark and enigmatic

Kandinsky now hooked onto my wall for good.

-- Amy Allara