Olena Kalytiak Davis: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hello Poem

 

Aren’t you supposed to be all alive and tell me what is going on? What is

A-happening?

Poem, why so nonplussed? So hors-rendu? So hasard? So misérable?

Poem, you are supposed to be for me

Not against me.

Do not tell me that part of the problem is I know I am hot!

It’s spring, Poem, take us outside.

Poem, why did I come home from France without any idée and an Italian

Vogue?

Poem—so silent so—handsome, Poem.

So Mediterranean.

Poem, you have a nice face,

A good form, but

Poem—you are wrongheaded.

Poem—I want to be left alone.

Such a dabbler you are, Poem—a dilettante

And a renaissance man.

So hard to tell, Poem, till you take off your clothes.

Poem, I think you are straight.

Poem, I know Hemingway baise-ed you in the derrière.

Poem, I know you are freer from history than prose fiction or drama!

Poem—do you want to be translated into French?

Poem—avez-vous ce que vous voulez?

French poem, you are very sexy.

Poem—did you depart for Marseille?

Poem—votre train is retarded! Quelle voie? Quelle garde?

Dream poem, you have shaved genitals!

Poem you are a plump pretty girl with feather earrings and a quick thick

Unread book.

Poem, eat my poussez!

Poem, Kay Ryan doesn’t like you!

Not at all!

Poem, you have a engraved stone for a heart!

(No, I will not tell you with what.)

A sheep for a lover.

Poem, you farted in your sleep.

Poem, you only have to do it once. . .

Poem, you get so sad at all the right/wrong places.

Poem, I’m afraid your strangeness is still not that true.

O Poem, we could have been so good together!

Poem, you think you are working, but

Poem—get a job.

Poem—get a life.

(Then, of course,

You of all people

Poem, must

Change it.)

 

Poem—you say too little.

Poem—you are so not enough.

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Olena Kalytiak Davis is the author of four full-length collections, including Late Summer Ode, out this fall from Copper Canyon Press. (See also this link.)

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    Hannah Hoch, Modenschau (Fashion Show),detail, 1925.

 

Comments

[Ernest Hemingway]

Another outstanding "pick of the week." Olena Kalytiak Davis is wonderfully alive, funny, engaging. And what terrific art: how on earth did you discover Hannah Hoch's "Modenschau (Fashion Show),"1925? I'll remember it and her. Sincerely, Ernest Hemingway.

[Terence Winch]

Thank you, Senor Hemingway. Pick of the Week's large & well-funded Art Research Dept. is responsible for all the weekly imagery.

[lally]

damn, damn, damn, what an exhilarating ride! the joy of poem making, the wonder of originality and unique wit. just what the poetry doctor ordered...thanks to the poet and the post-er!

[Clarinda]

Wow!! Author must be dating MY poem!

[Terence Winch]

Thanks for the comment, Michael.

[Michael Whelan]

Poor dear Poem . . . She’s teased and tickled and tampered with you spinning you round and down and up and over and under. So knocked the wind out of you that she turned you deliciously alive. (And a right-on choice of art to match it, Terence.)

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

I suspect every poet apostrophizes, perhaps even hectors a poem into creation. The “thing being made” comes with expectations, frustrations, and cruel cul-de-sacs as well as those hard-fought-for moments of élan. No one is more demanding of a poem than an accomplished poet. The poetasters take care of themselves. That’s why Olena Kalytiak Davis’s “Hello Poem” rings especially true. She nimbly addresses that age-old query: why don’t you just say what you mean? She also lays out the myriad choices the uncreated poem presents to the writer. A false or faulty step can trip a landmine from which a poem might not recover. “O Poem, we could have been so good together!” she writes, ending less with a sigh than with a hard slap of an exclamation point. Olena Kalytiak Davis is wrong in only one instance: “Poem, Kay Ryan does not like you! / Not at all!” I think Ryan would admire the veneer-stripping ars poetica of "Hello Poem." I’ll finish with my own exclamation point: brava, Olena, for your bravura!

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Michael. Good to see a comment from you.

[Eileen]

Very unique and funny poem. I love the accompanying art.

[Peter Kearney]

It is quite a challenge to write a poem about not being able to write a poem. Perhaps it's best to do so, quite successfully in this case, by letting the poem have it face-to-face.