The Best American Poetry

Daniel Nester and Star Black at KGB Monday Night

DANIEL NESTER, author of the some of the cleverest poems and wittiest blog entries of our era, will be reading Monday night at KGB Bar. You thrilled to his cybernet sauvignon interviews a week ago. Now catch him in person: Monday, December 1, 2008, at 7:30 PM, at 85 East 4th Street, near where Fourth Street and Second Avenue intersect.

DON'T TRY SO HARD

I've been this cramped before. No one actually tiptoes where they stare at
people who tiptoe. Where Great Adventure is practically day care. The
vinyl cartops the chimps attacked were our fathers' vinyl cartops. Let's
fight those chimps together.

And when I cry, when I say stop, don't stop. You know what's best. Your
hold on me is for life, no matter how much I straighten my vowels out. I
will find my fifth exit someday, I will stop crying about you, and you will
just keep on kicking my ass.

When you speak of me, speak of me sitting here under this tree.

– Daniel Nester
from Jubilat #9

Star Black and Daniel Nester at KGB Bar Monday Night

Down Under Rising [Catharine R. Stimpson]

    How dare Baz Luhrmann dare me as much as he does in Australia, the epic film that swept into the United States over Thanksgiving? Dare me to feel as much as I did? Dare me to abandon irony for that pre-ironic innocence that compels belief? And dare me to believe in wonder again, in a magic that has nothing to do with David Copperfield and everything to do with spirits and the genius of a land and the heart's territories?

    There I sat in the Regal Union Square Stadium Theater on Broadway and 13th Street. I wept as love triumphed and hated the hard-of-feeling who snickered when the movie ended with an announcement that Australia had formally apologized for its racist past. For love and social justice were feeding on each other.

    Australia is about both, but Luhrmann lavishly spreads the food of love before us. Two gorgeous people are romantically in love: Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman), and the eponymous Drover (Hugh Jackman). She is the gorgeous aristocrat whom Australia transforms from a woman of hauteur to one of steel will and sensuality. He is the gorgeous man of the Aussie land who learns to love again, even  if she is a Lady landowner and a Brit. Romantic love roils with family love: grandfathers for grandsons, mothers for children, brothers for brothers, and a half-caste child, the irresistible Nullah (Brandon Walters), for his dual families and their traditions. 

    Luhrmann demands that his audience love art and seduces us into doing so. He gives us awesome physical beauty, violent action (those stampedes), suspense, and for the cinematically knowing, metamorphic chains of visual images and generic references. Australia borrows from the romantic comedies in which lovers who hate each other suddenly realize that their snarls are the flip side of sexual passion. It samples the Western and its landscapes and horses as totemic animals.

    Above all, Australia is a national epic. This is not the Australia of convicts disembarking on a fatal shore. This is the Northern Territories from 1939 to 1941, its deserts and mountains, its rains that pour down like a miracle, its competitive agricultural industries, its rough multicutural city of Darwin that the Japanese bomb, and its great Aboriginial arts and crafts of survival. Luhrmann's nation is viciously racist. Half-caste children, the members of the Stolen Generations, are snatched from their full-blood mothers and stashed in missionary schools, where they are trained to become servants for their white rulers.

    Luhrmann dares us to imagine that a national epic can dramatize the eventual bringing together of colonizers and the colonized first settlers. His film score brilliantly weaves together the English tradition (a swelling Elgar's Enigma Variations that summoned my tears), the Australian "Waltzing Matilda," a Sir Elton John arrangement of "The Drover's Song," and Aboriginal mourning songs, spells, and incantations.  The bad white guys, here a murderous cattle baron who has fathered the half-caste Nullah whom he would kill, will die. Lady Sarah must give up Nullah to his Aboriginal heritage, but he promises to sing his life to her, and she promises to hear him. As a national epic about race, Australia reverses D.W. Griffith's cruelly racist Birth of a Nation (1915)---a cinematic act parallel in  its way to Obama's undoing of the bloody segregationist politics of the United States.

    Like all romantics, Luhrmann also dares us to go to the edge of the probable and then leap over into the abyss of dreams. The overarching musical theme of Australia is "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Lady Sarah first sings it, hesitantly and then forcefully, as she comforts a Nullah grieving for his blood mother. Then an entranced Nullah hears it in a sweaty movie theater in Darwin. He next plays it on the harmonica of a dead white man, to be joined by an angelic chorus of mission school boys, rescued  by boat from the Japanese by the Drover's aboriginal brother-in-law and a hotel keeper and Nullah's aboriginal uncle. He wll die sacrificially in this effort. Hearing these wisps of song over the waters, Lady Sarah races to the dock to be re-united amidst the carnage of battle with Nullah and the Drover.

    Lurhmann's promise is that if we make the leap into the abyss of dreams, if we dare to wonder, we will land on a Yellow Brick Road or on a road whose composition we have yet to discover.  Yes, the Wizard of Oz is a fraud, but Nullah's Aboriginal grandfather, warrior and guide to the land and a dancer among the spirits, practices an authentic magic.

    In the Regal Ladies Room , my partner of several decades, an Australian who lived there until she was in her mid-thirties, pointed to the changing table for babies. Its name? Koala Kare. A national symbol of Australia, this cuddly koala grins out from a piece of metal. Kitsch and commercialism meet amidst the mirrors, sinks, and stalls. Luhrmann, I like to believe, would laugh. For the great arc of the rainbow---be it in Aboriginal myth, the Old Testament,or a Judy Garland performance---radiates over us all in this rash and beautiful storm of a movie.

    Corny? Of course, as corny as Kansas in August.

Catharine R. Stimpson
New York City

Scandal and Scenery: Make your Poetry Video! (by Jenny Factor)

Last Wednesday. Overcast. A day so drippy, so bit-dreary that I didn't intend to go far from home...until the sagey smell of a sunny Mulholland Drive morning came winging right into my living-room. California poet, Kim Dower, sent me a link to Guerrilla Reads, a great new poetry e-Zine, in which writers read their work in the environment where it was created.

The submission guidelines include:

1. The video must show the author reading his or her own fiction or poetry.
2. The reading should take place in a real-world setting and should not be formally staged.
3. Videos should be no more than eight minutes long.

The creators of Guerrilla Reads are Bronwyn Mauldin (a writer, blogger, podcaster and radio host) and Cheryl Klein (director of the California office of Poets & Writers). There's a smudged, street-theater genius to this project. Check it out!

-J.F.

Film Still Series #97 (by Bill Hayward)

From the forthcoming film by Bill Hayward, Asphalt, Muscle and Bone, about a man at risk, the persistence of imagination and the impossibility of love. Produced by Bill Hayward and Anna Elman.

See more of Bill Hayward's photos here and here.

--sdh

Poetry and Shamanism [by Sharon Mesmer]

From Mircea Eliade: Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy ....

"It is ... probable that the pre-ecstatic euphoria [of shamans] constituted one of the universal sources of lyric poetry.  Poetic  creation still remains an act of perfect spiritual freedom.  Poetry remakes and prolongs language; every poetic language begins by being a secret language, that is, the creation of a personal universe, of a completely closed world.  The purest poetic act seems to re-create language from an inner experience that, like the ecstasy of the religious inspiration of 'primitives,' reveals the essence of things.  It is from such linguistic creations, made possible by pre-ecstatic 'inspiration,' that the 'secret languages' of the mystics and the traditional allegorical languages later crystallize . . . What a magnificent book remains to be written on the ecstatic 'sources' of epic and lyric poetry, on the prehistory of dramatic spectacles, and, in general, on the fabulous worlds discovered, explored and described by the ancient shamans . . . "

Penguin Arkana, 1989 /copyright Bollingen Foundation

New "Coconut"

See the new issue of Bruce Covey's Coconut for fascinating new work by Nin Andrews, Stephanie Berger, Graeme Bezanson, Jackie Clark, Denise Duhamel, Sam Pink, Chad Sweeney, Eileen Tabios, many others.

"The Men We Marry, The Men We Fuck" [by Jill Alexander Essbaum]

The Men We Marry, the Men We Fuck

This one kissed me beneath the stars.
That one fondled me up the stairs.

This one confessed his sins but to God.
That one demanded his pity aloud.

This one drove me to the store.
That one drove me like a car.

This one gave me violets and asters.
That one brought me violence and disaster.

This one wed me in the chapel.
That one ate me like an apple,

And he was as handsome as he was doomed.
Lovely as lust, but fickle as the moon.\

This one built a house to live in.
That one fed me glass and poison.

This one tended a kindled hearth.
That one threw me to the dirt

And by the greenbrier patch we tangled,
Hand to thigh and lip to nipple.

The men we marry, the men we fuck:
This one doubly filled my cup,

That one used me up.

-- Jill Alexander Essbaum

(originally published in The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel: Second Floor)

Judith Hall presents a poem by James Cummins

Tiresias

You learn how to be a man from your father.
Your mother teaches you how to be a woman.
You have to fear becoming an old man
before you’ll take on the wiles of the mother—
her movements, gestures, the way her face
suddenly, at odd moments, becomes your face

Turns out that old adage about saving face
was really about saving the face of the father.
His was the look you wanted on your face
whenever you’d realize you were a woman.
Those moments shocked you—and your mother,
who’d assumed you’d turn out to be a man

But it’s not that you haven’t ended up a man:
mornings you shave, staring into a man’s face;
you have the proper attitude toward your mother.
You just don’t want to be a man like your father,
and the best way to do that is to be a woman.
The first time you saw this happen in your face,

it scared you; your hand flew up to your face.
Not only did you have the cunning of a man,
now you also had the guile of a woman.
You look into the mirror at your new face,
one begun the night it surprised your father,
humping a blanket that turned into your mother.

How could the bastard do that to your mother?
And why had you never seen this in her face?
What was it you saw next day in your father?,
A look that told you he was the better man?
And what do you think he saw in your face?
Did he know then that you were a woman?

You repressed that morning in the way a woman
might repress an impractical love for a man.
When he’s around, you can see it in her face—
her Don’t-trust-him-but-still-love-him face.
Your father never thought of you as a man.
It was natural you’d try to seduce your father.

First you showed your father your “mother” face;
but then you showed him your other face,
the sly face a man wears when he’s a woman.

-- James Cummins

from the Antioch Review, Summer 2004, v. 62, no. 3, and Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man (Soft Skull, 2006), a collaboration with David Lehman.

-------
Note by Judith Hall:

Some poems benefit from silence, from being read alone, and Cummins’s sestina is an example.  Alone, Tiresias’ desires, his dilemmas, amuse, yes, but also resonate, nauseate, and recollect the value of a life examined.

Some readers claim that character matters little in a culture enamored of fate or, in our case, entertainment.  Alone, reading such a claim – a desire? – a reader could marvel at this latest “reality” desire mars.

Is a blog too cacophonous a context to remember silence in and solitude? Or “soliturd”, as originally typed . . . Why not print out Cummins’ sestina, turn off your computer, and read “Tiresias” among Thanksgiving memories?

Bavarian Gentians, by D. H. Lawrence

Not every man has gentians in his house
in soft September, at slow, sad Michaelmas.

Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark
darkening the daytime, torch-like, with the smoking blueness of Pluto's
    gloom,
ribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness spread blue
down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day
torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto's dark-blue daze,
black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue,
giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale lamps give off
    light,
lead me then, lead the way.

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!
let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness
even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September
to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark
and Persephone herself is but a voice
or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom,
among the splendor of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on
the lost bride and her groom.

Complete Poems
Penguin 20th Century Classics
-- Originally published (posthumously) in Last Poems, 1932

Dear Poets and Bleaders — A Request [by Sharon Mesmer]

This summer at the New School I'll be teaching a literature/poetry course I've been wanting to teach for a long time:  "The Muse Singing: Myth in Poetry from Classical Times to Now."  Dear poets and bleaders, I would love and be eternally grateful for suggestions regarding non-Western poetic responses to the Greek myths, from any era, any country.  I'll post the course description below and the texts I'm already using.  If you have any ideas, post them in the comments field.  Many thanks in advance!

THE MUSE SINGING: MYTH IN POETRY FROM CLASSICAL TIMES TO NOW
Sharon Mesmer, Instructor / Humanities Division

The artful, emotive tellings of timeless myth-stories by poets of the classical world continue to enthrall us today.  What is it about these mysterious and beautiful tales that has so captured the poetic imagination for so long?  How, to paraphrase Walter Pater, have poets “become the depositaries of the instinctive products of the imagination, fixing its outlines and developing its situations”?  To gain a new appreciation of four of the most central and familiar Greek myths (Demeter and Persephone; Cupid and Psyche; Daedalus and Icarus; Orpheus and Eurydice) we’ll first examine their oldest known literary sources (The Homeric Hymn to Demeter; Apuleius; Ovid) and read short interpretations by well-known scholars such as Edith Hamilton, Walter Pater, Jane Harrison, Guy Davenport and Joseph Campbell.  Finally, we’ll do close readings of modern and contemporary poetic retellings of each tale and discuss connections/ disconnections with the original sources.  Access to the films “La Belle et Le Bête/Beauty and the Beast” (as a modern interpretation of the Cupid and Psyche story) by Jean Cocteau and “Orfeu Negro/Black Orpheus” by Marcel Camus will also be provided through Blackboard.  

TEXTS:
MYTHOLOGY: TIMELESS TALES OF GODS AND HEROES
Edith Hamilton

METAMORPHOSIS
Ovid, translation by David Raeburn

THE HOMERIC HYMN TO DEMETER
Helen Foley, editor

CUPID AND PSYCHE
Apuleius

ORPHEUS AND COMPANY
Deborah de Nicola, editor

GODS AND MORTALS
Nina Kossman, editor

From Google Books:
GREEK STUDIES
Walter Pater (short excerpt)

PROLEGOMENA TO THE STUDY OF GREEK RELIGION
Jane Harrison (short excerpt)

               

J. K. Stephen's Parody of Wordsworth

A Sonnet

Two voices are there: one is of the deep;

It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody,

Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,

Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep:

And one is of an old half-witted sheep

Which bleats articulate monotony,

And indicates that two and one are three,

That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep:

And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times   

Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes,

The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst:

At other times--good Lord! I'd rather be

Quite unacquainted with the ABC

Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst.

-- J. K. Stephen (1859-1892)

(Not so) Live Blogging, 10:54 pm [by Sharon Mesmer]

I should've figured that I couldn't keep up this live blogging thing while actually having fun.  My failure reminds me of the bowling-birthday-Halloween party that Tracey McTague had a few years ago at Melody Lanes in Brooklyn: the poets kept missing their turns bowling because they were always at the bar getting beer.  Still, it was fun to see Brendan Lorber dressed as a gorilla in a doctor's uniform trying to bowl with big, furry paws. 

Here are three photos from tonight's poets' Thanksgiving ...

I'm still drunk from the gluehwein (hot, mulled wine with spices -- very potent) that Brendan made.  Plus I learned what sweet breads are: pituitary glands.  I always thought they were testicles.  Go figure.

Happy T-Day from Bogliasco [by Moira Egan]

[Morning view. Turn down that sun!]

Several people have asked if we're having a Thanksgiving dinner here this evening; I still don't know. Though most (not all) of the fellows and folks are Americans, the cook is Italian all right; either way, I'm sure we'll all be giving thanks for the meal.  We do know that we'll be having poetry for dessert. 

Live Thanksgiving blogging, 12:26 pm [by Sharon Mesmer]

My husband the cartoonist made me do this (see previous post):

Grow Some Balls and Submit (a flarf poem)

You were looking for naked Bea Arthur?
I guess they grow ‘em stupid in Venezuela.
Hey, Congressional Democrats —
remember the Destructoid Panel’s
(Norwegian Basket) Balls?
I personally did some no-voting
and then some yes-voting
and my not-helpful-voting went from 75 to 203
on the Grow Up, Ugly Children Proposition.
All these guys are either gay uncles
or virgins — me, I'm here for the beer
and the ball bustin'.
Let’s grow some chair balls,
being the Dutch design aficionados that we are.
In order to save Sri Lanka
we must grow some balls on our
flippin’ small fudge accounts.
My cat just told me to grow some balls.
I’m with my cat
and Ann Coulter: throw down the gauntlet,
submit to hypocrisy,
tick-tock, shut up, play dirty
or get out of the way.

-- Sharon Mesmer

Live poetry blogging on Thanksgiving [by Sharon Mesmer]

I was just reading Kim Severson's NYTimes live blog for today, and decided to steal her idea for here.  Good poets steal, ya know.  

11:08 — Kim Severson writes "Nothing says Thanksgiving morning more than the smell of celery cooking in butter."  Not for me.  For me it's the smell of scrambled eggs and hot dogs, because that's what Dad would cook for us because Ma had stormed downstairs to Grandma's after a fight.  But I guess that wasn't in the morning.  In the morning it was cigarettes and tension.

11:18 — The plan for today is to make cranberry-jalapeno salsa and head over to the beautiful home of poets and Lungfull! editors Brendan Lorber and Tracey McTague, across from Brooklyn's historic and beautiful Greenwood Cemetery.  We (my husband David and I) do this pretty much every year.  The gathering consists of poets, painters, comic book artists, creative types of various stripe, Tracey's relatives and, for the first time this year, B & T's baby girl, Aurora Morrigan.  No cigarettes and tension there.  Right now, tho, besides blogging, I'm just finishing an article about Elizabeth Smart's neglected prose poem masterpiece, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, for Rain Taxi (read it here in case RT hates it: http://virginformica.blogspot.com/), and David is putting together a new New Yorker cartoon submission.  They've run, I think, nine of his cartoons so far, and I'd post a link to the New Yorker site for you all but I already tried that and the link is, like, four lines long.  Just Google "David Borchart + New Yorker."  I wish submitting poetry to the New Yorker was as fun as submitting cartoons.  Once you get your foot in the door, you go up to Robert Mankoff's office and actually present a portfolio of work to him -- in person.  Then you go out to lunch with all the other cartoonists.  Imagine doing that with Paul Muldoon!  One day I'll grow some balls and submit.  (Now there's a flarfy title: "Grow Some Balls and Submit".)

Happy Spanksgiving, from the flarflist [by Sharon Mesmer]

(Spank). Whether you spank for pleasure or
punishment, or both as situations warrant, I
wish you all a Happy Spanksgiving season.

Spank hard...spank safe!

Too many carbohydrates in Italy . . . Jamaica it is!
I'm thankful for big spoons and floors!
HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY ROCKSTAR!

Spank hard...spank safe!

What better place to spend an Autumn weekend
but in a lingeree drawer. Happy Spanksgiving.
You are repressed but you're remarkably dressed is it real?

Spank hard...spank safe!

Typical. I do all the work and the "King" gets
the credit. Happy Spanksgiving! Two In the
Moonlight, Ack! Antelope! I could use a breath mint.

Spank hard...spank safe!

Personality and I are finally getting along.
Happy belated Spanksgiving to all by the way!
I had a nice time in michigan...sunny ...

Spank hard...spank safe!

Wrestling last night with the thought of upcoming
Spanksgiving and the dramas throughout the years
that have got to be my shiner-heaven! hoo-Ray!

Spank hard...spank safe!

Strokers! Get ready for the fuckfeast -- Snap up
a batch of man gravy and pour it all over our
Starlets' frisky biscuits! Have I found the other side???

Spank hard...spank safe!

Now Ride! By now a lot of people are showing
up for their holiday weekend in the desert. A large
contingent at the retail store for "Leather Happy Hour."

Spank hard...spank safe!

The only Turkeys I'll be seeing this Spanksgiving are my dear
friends Brook, Katie and Baby Richy.  I was very happy
to help them mark this moment in their family's growth.

Spank hard...spank safe!

We got lots more smut in store for you all month long!
(And on a school night, nonetheless!) I had to kill
them to make them happy or some shit.

Spank hard...spank safe!

A ball, peeking out from behind rows and rows
of empty happy meal boxes ... know what the hell
they are doing :) Oh and everyone have a SpanksGiving!!!!!

Spank hard...spank safe!

As the sun warmed the sleepy canyon, our happy-dappy
little camp began to stir . Something that'll make a cat
happy? A wonderful day of spanking and sucking!

Spank hard...spank safe!

Lists make me happy. ... my vietnam [Nov 21,
12.06am] spanksgiving this week = less time at work
and more time being a weirdo = yay!

Spank hard...spank safe!

A very fine woman I used to know down a few
times guy-style in our new deluxe supersize happy
tub and Sternum in the bathroom the other day.

Spank hard...spank safe!

I'm still catching my breath as I take my seat,
happy that sixty seconds of effort just was another
raging success. So tomorrow's the yankee spanksgiving.

Spank hard...spank safe!

And have a Happy Spanksgiving y'all!!!!

"Having Been Turned Down (The World's Leaders Don't Want to Come to Dinner)" [by Laura Cronk]

Having Been Turned Down
(The World's Leaders Don't Want To Come To Dinner)

It's true that I used to be in a much worse mood.  It's true that the lighting has improved.
Here's to that.

Star-lit parties are mine to throw. They're mine, no matter who's coming. I have
my own ruling class, my own personal celebrity.

I've tried the other way.  But wearing a kerchief wasn't doing any good. Taking recipes
from the people for chicken with cream of chicken soup -

I don't want to make that kind of thing. I don't want to address it.

Better to stop the war by doing my hair. Coaxing out amazing lift, peaceful waves,
light-catching waft.

Going to the War Resisters' League tonight wouldn't have done any good, anyway. 
Their protest song calendar didn't get one arrow through he armored beast. Lest we
forget, the thing is covered in armor, and is a beast.

Instead, we'll have roast tarragon chicken and the freshest best asparagus and pastes
on toasts. I'm dreaming. There is no We.

Just They. I see them all in a flash out commiserating in the yard in the dark. The troops
I call them when they betray me like this. You tell the troops to do things and when
they do them, you punish them.

But not now. Now is the time for dinner. I pull the dead chicken out of the plastic.

The chicken's been through hell and back. Or better put, though it was living,
it's not organic.

Out of timelessness and into this.

Not Defeatist. More Artist.

Not Leftist. More Painless. More hidden, more lawless. By that I mean
I have no law degree. I'm a woman cooking.  Not hopeless. Well, now that I look at it. 

– Laura Cronk

Originally published in Lyric.

The Mondegreening of America [by Sharon Mesmer]

My first poetry teacher, Paul Hoover, once said to us (quoting Eliot — or was it Pound?  I think it was Eliot): "All mishearings are poetry."  Probably half of every poem I write consists of mishearings — I've trained my brain to rearrange what I hear.  So just now I almost burned the pierogies when I heard on the radio (on John Schafer's WNYC show "Soundcheck") that there's actually a word for these mishearings, and it's been around for a while, too: mondegreens.  I won't explain why "mondegreen," since I'm sure it's only me who doesn't know this.  Anyway, on the show, listeners called in to share their fave mondegreens from pop and rock songs.  Here are some, excluding the totally obvious ones by Hendrix and CCR:

" ... is it just a debt to be a debt to me" (from the Knack's "My Sharona" — the song I hate most in this world, btw)

" ... a fake Chinese Robert Plant" (from Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees")

"Jeez, a slushy Mormon you may know" (from S&G's "Mrs. Robinson")

" ... stepped on her Pop-Tart" (from Warren Buffett's brother's "Margaritaville")

"Call the Coast Guard!" (from the Ohio Players' "Love Roller Coaster")

Now THIS may be the best mondegreening of any song: Joe Cocker doing "With A Little Help From My Friends" at Woodstock, with subtitles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4_MsrsKzMM

Please feel free to post your poetic mondegreens in the comments field, knowing that I will probably use them in a poem if you haven't.   Or even if you have!

Thanksgiving and Black Friday [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

So in September of 2006 I got an email from an editor at the New York Times saying they wanted to publish a poem of mine.  Huzzah, right?  Right.  Except, they wanted it to be a poem for Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving that has become a holiday because so many people start their holiday shopping that day.  One's first thought is, Do I already have such a poem?  One's second thought, in my case at least, was no, no, nope.  Nothing of the sort.  The Times editor had said that this would be a full op ed page of poetry, he was inviting a few other poets, all to write specifically about Black Friday -- lots of good subject choice he said: the bloat, or guilt from eating so much the day before, the shopping, the coming of xmass and the new year.  Would he tell me who the other poets were?  Nope.  He said that one year the poets, knowing who the other poets were, almost ruined the whole thing: two of them showed up at the same bar and apparently got in a fist fight about it.  Say what?  Yes, some kind of jealous brouhaha erupted.  I am at a loss to imagine the dialog that led up to this, but I suppose it could have been as simple as, "When everyone sees our poems together, then we'll know who is the baddest New York Times Op-Ed special occasion poet in these United States."

Of course, when a poem you have not written is going to be in the New York Times, you feel a little pressure.  I had other things going on at the time.  It was my first semester teaching at the New School (in the Graduate Writing Program, which I adore, after having taught at Nassau Community College for over a decade, I was a tenured member of the History Dept.).  Aside from a new job (and a new subject matter), I had a two year old boy and a 6 month old girl.  And I was doing promotional stuff for my book The Happiness Myth which had just come out with HarperCollins -- radio and running around the country, too.   Still, a part of my brain cleaved off at the moment I learned of the assignment and got to work on the poem.  I gave it a lot of full attention too.  Oh and there was birthday matters to think of too, my husband's and mine are near each other in late November -- that year mine was on Thanksgiving, this year, 2008, his is.

There were times that I had versions of the poem laid out all over the living room rug and I stood over them, babe in arms, and made decisions.  My husband took pictures, but who knows where, and were I to find them, who knows what I was wearing?  So, we'll let that go.  Anyways, when the day came the other poets turned out to be Billy Collins, Philip Levine, Mary Ruefle, and James McMichael.  Pretty great company to be in.  I was a tiny bit disappointed that the other poems weren't really about Black Friday, in fact, I'm looking them over now and none of them is even about Thanksgiving.  The are all just poems that took place in fall, and had some family-gathering feel to them, mostly with a melancholy feel.  I have never had an opportunity to ask them, but I would love to know if the other poets had tried to stick to the assignment, or if they had always known they'd use a prewritten poem. Just curious.

Anyway, bleaders, here, for your entertainment, is mine.  I post on Wednesdays here at BAP, so if you want, you read this now, and maybe think of it on Friday.  I'll drink a toast to you all tomorrow, as I baste my bird.  Hurrah for the beasts and the feasts.

xox jmh

Black Friday Reverie                                               

Thanksgiving was my birthday this year
and I find two holidays in one is not
efficient.  In fact, barely anything gets
done; neither the bird nor the passage
of the year is digested.  Luckily, Black
Friday offers new pleasures while remaining
a stolen day; a day after.  There is shopping,
the streets, or the hilarious malls, but I will
stay home with the leftovers and use

the time to rethink, turkey leg in hand like
a king.  Pumpkin pie, solid soup of
pummeled end-of-summer. Chestnuts and
sausage chunks from stuffing plucked
regally, like an ape leisurely denuding
a blueberry bush of its fruit.  Maybe I mean
Cleopatra’s teeth accepting red grapes from
a solicitous lunk of nubility.  Same image.
The hand feeds, the mouth gets fed.  You

too?  Mother ate turkey in the maternity?
Imagine, you not-born in late Novembers,
if every few years a bird adjoined your
candles. Think, too, who comes to eat
that bird.  Those whose faces look like
yours; those nearly-yous and knew you
whens; those have your same ill eases. 
How’s the sciatica?  Fine, how’s yours?
The world is old.  Cleopatra might

have liked Black Friday.  It’s as engaging
as a barge with a fast gold sofa.  She also
might have liked aging. At least preferred
it to the asp.  Yellow leaf patterned
sunlight dazzles the wall with its dapple.
It’s all happening now, as I write. This is
journalism.  No part of the memoir
is untrue.  Though I probably will
go to the mall, if everyone else goes.