Ron Padgett: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ron Padgett by Siobhán Padgett, 2020

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Morning

 

Who is here with me?

My mother and an Indian man.

(I am writing this in the past.)

The Indian man is not a man,

but a wooden statue just outside

the limits of wood. My mother

is made of mother. She touches

the wood with her eyes and the eyes

of the statue turn to hers, that is,

become hers. (I am not dreaming.

I haven’t even been born yet.)

There is a cloud in the sky.

My father is inside the cloud,

asleep. When he wakes up, he

will want coffee and a smoke.

My mother will set fire

to the Indian and from deep inside

her body I will tell her

to start the coffee, for even now

I hear my father’s breathing change.

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Ron Padgett’s How Long was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry and his Collected Poems won the LA Times Prize for the best poetry book of 2014 and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. His translations include Zone: Selected Poems of Guillaume Apollinaire and Blaise Cendrars’ Complete Poems. Padgett has collaborated with artists Joe Brainard, Jim Dine, Alex Katz, George Schneeman, and Trevor Winkfield. Seven of his poems were used in Jim Jarmusch’s film, Paterson. His most recent collection is Big Cabin (Coffee House Press). ["Morning," from Collected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2013), is used by permission; © 2013 by Ron Padgett.]

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 (L-R) Jim Jarmusch, Ron Padgett, and Adam Driver attend the New York Special Screening of Amazon Studios and Bleecker Street's "Paterson" at Landmark Sunshine Theater on December 15, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Paul Bruinooge/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

 

Comments

[Doug Pell]

Another great poem. Well done, Terence.

[Terence Winch]

Thank you, mo chara

[Terence Winch]

Good man, Casey!

[Greg Masters]

Whoa, the man's got it. What "it" is I've never been able to resolve. And, as he might say – in fact, has – I hope I never will.

[Bernard Welt]

This is just so beautiful. To do something that smart and clever and formally playful that still packs a big emotional hit--it's pretty inspiring to me, writing my little poems here--heh heh. In my imaginary lit class, I would say, Ron Padgett in this poem found a way to traverse centuries and miles by arranging words in unexpected ways that make you stop and start again, and then start again and stop again, so that you get so much closer to how a person experiences the past in the present than most writers can do, with their conventional formal arrangements. And then I'd say, For next week, please compare the method to that of Walt Whitman's "The Sleepers," because, you know, he was also a whiz at that kind of thing. (I still think like a teacher, even when I'm still in the emotional thrall of a poem.)

[Terence Winch]

Great comment. Thanks, Bernard.

[Simon schuchat]

Ron Padgett has always been a hero in my heart.

[Bob Holman]

On, Spot, on!

[Greg Masters]

I love the whackiness of this poem. It makes total sense in a world I wish to inhabit.