Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery…
W. B. Yeats, “No Second Troy”
Why should I blame him that he filled his days
With mistresses, or that he came home late
To meet most ignorant trust with smiling ways,
Such thoughtful gifts, and claims that I looked great—
Whatever that meant, though clearly not desire?
What help if I’d been wiser, with a mind
Simply to hurl his laundry in the fire,
Rather than buy his tall tales with a kind
Solicitude and a deluded kiss,
Having cleaned his house from stem to stern?
Why, who else could he use, a guy like this?
Was there another wife for him to spurn?
From Nothing by Design by Mary Jo Salter (Knopf, 2013)
Mary Jo Salter's work has appeared in seven volumes in the Best American Poetry series. (The selectors were Richard Howard, Paul Muldoon, Billy Collins, Kevin Young, Mark Doty, and Dana Gioia.) She writes with a respect for form and meter, for the shape of a poem and its music, that is most unusual these days, and most precious when the poet has as good an ear as Mary Jo Salter. She sees or hears the poetry in a misprint or mishearing; and when the insight sparks a poem, the writing sparkles. "We'll Always Have Parents," is the title of her poem in the 2018 Best American Poetry.
As befits a student of Elizabeth Bishop, Mary Jo balances the exigencies of sincerity and wit, candor and tact. In her recent poems she has written wonderfully about the condition of growing old -- something that none of us thought he or she was doing to do. She is also a skillful parodist and satirist, as "No Second Try" and "Edna St. Vincent, M.F.A.", two of the poems we are highlighting this week, demonstrate. (Compare "No Second Try" to William Butler Yeats's "No Second Troy.") Thank you, Mary Jo, for giving us this opportunity to showcase your poetry. -- DL
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