The Best American Poetry

On George Gershwin's Birthday [by David Lehman]

On George Gershwin’s birthday
I keep expecting them to play
Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris,
the Cuban Overture,  the Concerto in F,
Porgy and Bess as played by Miles Davis,
but no, all day it’s been Dvorak, Grieg,
Rimsky-Korsakov, and other worthies
not born today, Elgar for heaven’s sake;
at least they could give us some Debussy,
as didn’t "they" (such a useful pronoun)
criticize him for imitating Debussy,
or Ravel, who declined to give George lessons
saying, “Why become a second-rate Ravel
when you’re already a first-rate Gershwin?”

-- DL

Froim the archive; posted by The Best American Poetry on September 26, 2020 at 03:59 AM 

On George Gershwin’s birthday
I keep expecting them to play
Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris,
the Cuban Overture,  the Concerto in F,
Porgy and Bess as played by Miles Davis,
but no, all day it’s been Dvorak, Grieg,
Rimsky-Korsakov, and other worthies
not born today, Elgar for heaven’s sake;
at least they could give us some Debussy,
as didn’t "they" (such a useful pronoun)
criticize him for imitating Debussy,
or Ravel, who declined to give George lessons
saying, “Why become a second-rate Ravel
when you’re already a first-rate Gershwin?”

-- DL

"Flesh 78" [by Herbert Engelhardt, 1925-2021]

Brancusi hinted it
Giacometti stinted it

Miró laughed at it
Degas choreographed it

Bosch hated it
Bruegel skated it

Watteau crêpe de chine covered it
Manet gape to dine uncovered it

Botticelli virgin Spring emerged
Titian love-in fling resurged

Kandinsky ignored it
Gaugin adored it

Renoir bathed his coquette in pink
Bellows slathed hot sweat in stink

Ingres slipped in two vertebrae
Maillol worshipped her in clay

Seurat biked it to the park
Tintoretto liked it for St Mark

Gorky mangled it
Pollock tangled it

Picasso pranced in Avignon
Matisse danced in primary tone

Michelangelo mixed genders
Fragonard transfixed splendors

Cézanne preferred yellow lemons
Van Gogh preferred star-glow demons

Lachaise inflated it
Schiele conflated it

Beckmann painted bloody stumps
Hals sainted ruddy rumps

Warhol silk-screened it
Chagall flute-dreamed it

Giotto enrobed it in gesso
Géricault unrobed it al fresco

Daumier mocked it
Wood defrocked it

Rodin raptured eroticized it
Braque fractured analyzed it

De Chirico enigmatically stylized it
El Greco astigmatically exorcized it

Velásquez grew a mischievous chin
Da Vinci drew a mysterious grin

Rothko dazzled with colors bold
Klimt razzled with showers gold

Lautrec wrapped Braunt’s neck in red
Stieglitz snapped O’Keeffe’s pec in bed

Duchamp sighted it descending
Caravaggio whited it offending

Rubens sketched it out
Modigliani stretched it out

Artists obsess on flesh
From Marrakesh to Uttar Pradesh

Published in HARVARD REVIEW ONLINE on February 25, 2016 with this contributor's note:

Herbert Engelhardt was born in New Jersey in 1925. He served in the Pacific Theater of World War II from 1943 to 1946 and was awarded the Purple Heart in the Battle of Okinawa in April 1945. He received his BA and MBA from Harvard in 1949 and 1951, respectively. In his late seventies, he began to write poems. He has lived in New York City since the early 1950s.

Ed. note: Herb, whom I met twelve or thirteen years ago, had a passion for poetry and a zest for life that continually inspired me. We met sixteen years ago, when he was eighty, and worked together on his poems. His book, Ordinary Soldiers, which he published under the title World War II Poetry: Memories of an Ordinary Soldier, deserves to be far better known and celebrated. One reader commented that the book is "Intimate. Visceral. Honest. First rate. Fine poetry and also a valuable as a historic record of a soldier's life, much of it in Okinawa and the Philippines, during WW II."  Herb and I lunched together often and talked about all manner of thing -- his travels, his years in the service, his time at Harvard (where he housed with Henry Kissinger), and his own successful business career. For years he taught a course at NYU's Business School, with a reading list that included Julius Caesar and other works in which management made costly decisions to their detriment. Herb is quoted in my book One Hundred Autobiographies. We were comparing medical experiences and he said with his customary salty wit, “No matter what the longhaired Buddhist full of shit poets write about flowers and rocks and clouds, you don’t really understand life until you’ve had a Foley catheter stuck in you for six days." He was right about that and so much else. We miss you and honor you, Herb, and we mark your 98th birthday with this post! -- DL

On Apollinaire's Birthday [by David Lehman]

In the heady days leading up to and including the catastrophe of World War I, when Paris was the capital of modern art, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) stood at the vital center of a gang of writers and artists who embraced the future with such tremendous energy that avant-garde became an adjective of glamour and prestige. Apollinaire—whose circle included painters (Picasso, Derain, Vlaminck) and composers (Satie, Poulenc) as well as poets (Blaise Cendrars, Max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy)—was a superb activist and agitator. He championed Cubism and gave Surrealism its name. In 1917, his edition of Charles Baudelaire’s poems linked the two men as kindred spirits, city poets who doubled as art critics; Baudelaire prefigured Apollinaire as the latter prefigures Frank O’Hara. Also in 1917, Apollinaire issued his manifesto, “The New Spirit and the Poets,” making the case for innovation as a transcendent value. Poetry had to keep up with the technological advances of the day—the cinema, the radio, the motorcar, the flying machine. Driving with a friend from Deauville to Paris in “La Petite Auto,” Apollinaire writes that “the little car had driven us into a New epoch / and though both of us were grown men / it was as if we had just been born.”

Apollinaire experimented with audacious techniques for generating verse. On occasion he would sit in a café and weave overheard phrases into the composition. For his book Calligrammes, he made shaped poems—poems that looked like a mirror, a heart, the rainfall, a pocket-watch. In his most ambitious discursive poems, he wins over the reader by modifying his self-pity with his wit and ebullience. There is a rare combination of enthusiasm and melancholy in Apollinaire’s self-presentation. A line from his poem “Les Collines” (“The Hills”) is etched into his tombstone at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris: “Je peux mourir en souriant”—“I can die with a smile on my face.” 

“Zone,” the central poem in Apollinaire’s career, prefaces his collection Alcools, the title of which translates literally as “Spirits” in the alcoholic sense though I would argue for “Cocktails.” Alcools is in any case an apt title for one who likes to boast that he has “drunk the universe” and chanted “songs of universal drunkenness.” Published in 1913, the year Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring had its Paris premiere, “Zone” is chronologically the last poem in the collection to have been written. The poet was thirty-three years old, the age of Dante embarking on his tour of the afterlife. The poem doesn’t so much praise its objects of futurist desire—the Eiffel Tower, airplanes, a railway terminal—as treat them like pastoral motifs. The heart of the poem is not in the future at all but in a past recollected in anxiety and sadness.

“Zone” heralds a striking new direction in Apollinaire’s work. He discards punctuation to good effect. He refers to himself sometimes as I, sometimes as you (both tu and vous in French), a habit that held a special appeal for O’Hara and other New York poets. The poem’s title embraces (or blends) the meanings of neighborhood, frontier, slum (and slumming), and the female erogenous zone, all of which come into play. (“And I smoke ZONE tobacco,” Apollinaire wrote in a later poem.) Organized around a walk in Paris from one sunrise to another—and from one time zone to another—“Zone” is in loosely rhymed couplets, which presents a difficulty that translators tend to evade. A notable exception is Samuel Beckett in perhaps the most impressive parts of his translation. For example, Beckett renders “C’est le beau lys que tous nous cultivons / C’est la torch aux cheveux roux que n’eteint pas le vent” as “It is the fair lily that we all revere / It is the torch burning in the wind its auburn hair.” In addition to the near-rhyme, Beckett gives us the echo of “burn” in “auburn,” a move that Apollinaire would have appreciated. Kenneth Koch appropriates Apollinaire’s rambling couplets in a nostalgic poem whose title is itself a nod to his influence: “A Time Zone.”

“Zone” has been translated many times, a testament to how well-loved it is among Anglo-Saxon Francophiles. It begins, “A la fin tu es las de ce monde ancien.” Roger Shattuck translates the line as “You are tired at last of this old world”; Ron Padgett improves on this with “You’re tired of this old world at last.” I cast my vote with Beckett, Charlotte Mandell, and William Meredith, in opting for “In the end” as the poem’s first words, not only because this is the literal sense of the French “A la fin,” but because it lays proper stress on Apollinaire’s audacity in starting with “the end.” It also gives a hint of the poem’s ultimate circularity. Given the iterations of ancien that immediately follow—antiquité, anciennes, and antique all appear in the next six lines—I felt that “the ancient world” came nearer to Apollinaire’s meaning than “this old world.”

A line about refugee families gathered at a train station can stand for many others in the challenge they present to the translator. For “Ils espèrent gagner de l’argent dans l’Argentine,” Oliver Bernard offers the prosaic “They hope to make money in the Argentine.” Anne Hyde Greet goes for the more idiomatic “Hoping to strike it rich in Argentina.” But I wanted to preserve the repeated sound of argent (the French word for money rooted in the word for silver), so I chose the alliterative “They’re hoping to gain some argent in the Argentine.”

The celebrated last line of “Zone,” “soleil cou coupé,” contains a brilliant piece of wordplay that resists the translator’s craft. It’s as if cou (meaning “neck”) is an abbreviated form of coupé (meaning “cut”). The relation between the two words can be said to suggest the action of the sun rising at dawn and appearing as if beheaded by the horizon. The verse has been variously translated as “Decapitated sun—” (William Meredith), “The sun a severed neck” (Roger Shattuck), “Sun corseless head” (Samuel Beckett), “Sun     slit throat” (Anne Hyde Greet), “Sun neck cut” (Charlotte Mandell). Ron Padgett’s “Sun cut throat” cleverly divides the word cutthroat in two. I have opted for “Let the sun beheaded be,” mainly because of the repetition of sounds in the last words. I felt that the relation of “be” to “beheaded” approximated the action in “côu coupé.” 

I discovered “Zone” in my junior year of college and studied it closely when, as a graduate student at Cambridge University, I attended Douglas Parmée’s lectures on French literature and spent a few seasons in Paris. This was in 1971 and 1972. In Paris I lived with this peripatetic poem on such intimate terms that I felt I could hear it in my own voice as I walked from Notre Dame to the Luxembourg Gardens and from there to the cafés of Montparnasse. I made a special trip to the Gare St. Lazare with Apollinaire’s stanza about “ces pauvres émigrants” in my brain. Nevertheless I did not type up a complete draft of my translation until January 1978 when I taught a course at Hamilton College that called for it. After presenting it at a public reading, I let it lie fallow. I worked on the poem often and carefully, if at long intervals, until three years ago when, as a professor at the New School’s graduate writing program, I supervised MFA candidate Ashleigh Allen’s thesis, which focused on Apollinaire and “Zone.” This happy task spurred me to revise my translation yet again. Encouraged by friends, I worked on it some more in summer 2011 and fall 2012. These things take time. The love of the work sustains the effort. 

Apollinaire had too little time. Within a few years of publishing “Zone,” he suffered head wounds at the front in World War I and died of Spanish flu on November 9, 1918, two days before the armistice that ended the war. 

Click here for David Lehman's translation of "Zone" in Virginia Quarterly Review.

Theme Music: The Candide Overture [by Leonard Bernstein, on LB's birthday]

from "A Good Week for a Birthday" (in The Morning Line by David Lehman)

What would I choose as my theme music
if I were the classical music disc jockey
maybe Bernstein’s overture to Candide
or Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s “Cakewalk”
or Schubert’s overture to “Rosamunde”
in honor of John Scheuer
I have my Tolstoy to look forward to
and if music can stand for peace (the food of love)
today’s poem is a little tribute to the novel
summarized TV-Guide style:
Pierre loves Natasha and Napoleon invades Russia.

 

Happy birthday, Dorothy Parker (and Stacey Lehman! -- on August 18)

Happy Birthday, Dorothy Parker & Your "quondam dreams"

Symptom Recital

I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I pond on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men . . .
I'm due to fall in love again.

--Dorothy Parker

 

Poem in the Manner of Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker,
who wrote witty stories,
did not foresee
that spectacles would be-
come fashion accessories.
“Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.”

Today, for a lark,
I sat in Washington Square Park
I thought of Miss Parker,
and what she might say
assessing the spectacles of our day:
“Even the nicest lasses
Have tattoos on their asses.”

-- David Lehman

Bukowski's "Laughing Heart" (with commentary from various hands) on Buk's birthday

Your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

-- by Charles Bukowski

Read more about Charles Bukowski here.

Posted by The Best American Poetry on November 06, 2008 at 11:14 AM in Poems | Permalink

Comments

This is one of my favorite poems and it doesn't seem like Bukowski to me. Thanks.
Posted by: Noah Burke | November 06, 2008 at 04:04 PM

I agree - Bukowski usually isn't this hopeful. A lovely poem.
Posted by: Laura Orem | November 07, 2008 at 07:41 PM

One of my favorite poems. Very provocative and inspiring.
Posted by: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000058706234 | September 19, 2009 at 02:09 PM

Love this poem, but you've got one of the lines wrong (every site I look at does, though). I have the original printing of this. The line "there is a light somewhere," should be "there is light somewhere."
Posted by: Tonymoore99 | October 08, 2012 at 09:25 AM

I have a friend who’s really good in writing a poem, too. She writes inspiring poem just like you and I admire you both.
Posted by: Ruggieri Sharkey | January 27, 2013 at 12:34 PM

Good poem. However, I would have cut the last three lines, making it a perfect poem.
Posted by: HDRBodegaPhoto | January 05, 2018 at 06:04 PM

Life is LIFE
Posted by: Obélix | June 19, 2019 at 07:38 PM

Said like a true alcoholic; I know, I am.
Posted by: Michael | October 21, 2019 at 03:33 AM

Light means hope, then we need to do meaningful things in our life, before death coming.
Posted by: Eric | April 14, 2020 at 09:06 PM

Always has a way of making the misery escapable as long as the mind and heart are set on the horizon of a fading light.
Posted by: Joaquin Nava | October 10, 2020 at 08:02 PM

I cant find this poem on https://bukowski.net/manuscripts/
Is this really Bukowski?
Posted by: The Wandering Earth | November 12, 2020 at 05:30 AM

When I first heard this recited, I thought it was one of the lectures by Joseph Campbell, whom I love. Was surprised it was Bukowski. The last three lines are absolutely the best. Without them, the poem would be just good. With them, it’s great! Here’s to the Old Gods!❤️
Posted by: Teuta Ilyriana | April 13, 2021 at 01:05 AM

The numb nut who said he would have cut the last 3 lines therefore making it a perfect poem... Well yes indeed I suppose it would be. You know the perfect poem. Poetry that is...Perfect. 99.9 percent of all poetry is written by people trying to write the perfect poem. And guess what? Most of them succeed at writing poetry, perfectly. And that's why hardly anyone will ever read it. Except maybe there mother , themselves and the person there sleeping with. Thank God for Bukowski. He wasn't aiming at perfection but as he said" getting down the word the line." Poetry books are sadly full of the perfect poem and or poems. That's why you can line your bird cage with most of it's pages.
Posted by: Steve Hammek | November 15, 2021 at 10:16 PM

Perhaps the most powerful words I've ever heard. Coming from Charles Bukowski, maybe the biggest nihilist to ever live. I am still in awe of its beauty.
P.S THE LAST THREE LINES ARE THE BEST PART OF THIS POEM
Posted by: Alex | March 16, 2022 at 06:27 PM

alchoholism is "dank"
Posted by: john smith | April 25, 2022 at 11:46 AM

I am in the camp that the last three lines are the best part of the poem. Why does this one person hate the last three lines? It is possible that they are just trolling, but I usually take people at face value so let's assume that they really do hate the last three lines. Why? My very first thought was that maybe they hate the idea of gods, but I don't think that is their problem since then they would just hate the last two lines. What the last three lines all have in common is an assurance that the reader is at a fundamental level very good and valuable. The person who complained may see this as unsupported hope. They may say that you can't just assert that a person is valuable. Why should we just say that a person is marvelous, maybe people are really all garbage. Why should we assume that the gods would ever delight in us, maybe they are completely disgusted by us. The debate is whether the gods fundamentally see humanity as worthy or worthless. The idea of the gods waiting is the much debated concept of free will. We have the innate capacity for being marvelous and delightful, but we must choose whether we are going to express that or not. But what if we don't know how to do that? If we sincerely look, we can find people who will teach us how to be marvelous and delightful.
Posted by: Westman Thalergard | July 06, 2022 at 10:07 AM

Parts of this poem were set to music and posted to Youtube. It's worth checking out (22 million views). This link really will take you to the song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhRXn2NRiWI

Posted by: Westman Thalergard | July 06, 2022 at 10:29 AM

Life has its ups &downs 4 sure.when da persona is in a rosy mood,da world seems 2 be his/her oyster,if in a lousy mood,demons seem 2 be swarming on da horizon.life has never been a bowl o strawberries w cream&sugar on top,not has death deprived da planet o a priceless jewel by taking us.live&let live.
Posted by: halfeyed bro | October 21, 2022 at 07:07 AM

My two cents ...
Whenever I read poetry, I view it two ways: 1) What the author intended; 2) What it means to me. Sometimes, they are in alignment. Sometimes, they aren't. Take T.S. Eliot's "Hollow Men". I view it differently than T.S. Eliot intended.

Here are how I take Bukowski's poem.

Every individual deserves his/her life. It's a gift. Live it as you will. However, we have built a society that demands that you conform. Some people struggle with that conformity more than others. Those that struggle, really..Really...REALLY struggle.

Bukowski is speaking to them. He's saying "Be you. You are marvelous." If you do choose to be you, the Gods will delight in you. In fact, they are waiting patiently so they can delight in you.

Again, this is how I read the poem. Right or wrong.
Posted by: Michael Felli | October 22, 2022 at 07:51 PM

The gods will delight but yoy will not be happy or successgul in the world's term,at least most. Don't tirn the Buk into new age pap.
Posted by: Chuck Taylor | May 31, 2023 at 08:18 AM

I think the chap that talked of cutting the last 3 lines.. you're all wondering why he hated those 3 lines. And maybe he did. But if you don't wonder about the 3 lines he asked to cut, and instead look at the line where the poem would have ended with said lines cut.. I think it would make more sense.

The poem begins with the line... Your life is your life. and if the last 3 were cut.. it would end with the line... Your life is your life.
Posted by: Zack | July 08, 2023 at 04:45 AM

Response to the consideration of the poem’s value with or without the last three lines:
One way I thought about it is this:

Without the last three lines, the tone of the message feels confrontational, empowering the reader to push back, to push against in order to pursue being true to one’s self.
And poetically/structurally, this provides no resolve.

Including the last three lines, the tone shifts to hopeful, and suggests an exchange of one kind of submission (against the expected cultural norms) for a different kind of submission (being delighted in)
And poetically/structurally, this provides a satisfying resolve

Either way, Bukowski invites the reader to personalize the message.

Posted by: Virginia | July 24, 2023 at 12:04 PM

Your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

-- by Charles Bukowski

Read more about Charles Bukowski here.

Your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

-- by Charles Bukowski

Read more about Charles Bukowski here.

"Video Blues" [by Mary Jo Salter]

Video Blues

My husband has a crush on Myrna Loy,
and likes to rent her movies, for a treat.
It makes some evenings harder to enjoy.

The list of actresses who might employ
him as their slave is too long to repeat.
(My husband has a crush on Myrna Loy,

Carole Lombard, Paulette Goddard, coy
Jean Arthur with that voice as dry as wheat ...)
It makes some evenings harder to enjoy.

Does he confess all this just to annoy
a loyal spouse? I know I can't compete.
My husband has a crush on Myrna Loy.

And can't a woman have her dreamboats? Boy,
I wouldn't say my life is incomplete,
but some evening I could certainly enjoy

two hours with Cary Grant as my own toy.
I guess, though, we were destined not to meet.
My husband has a crush on Myrna Loy,
which makes some evenings harder to enjoy.

Mary Jo Salter

"It's a Wonderful Life" [by Paul Violi]

It's a Wonderful Life

          After the national fanfare died down, the quintuplets grew up protected from further exploitation in the safety and privacy that state funds and public donations ensured.  But, inevitably, they had to enter the real world.  On their eighteenth birthday they went to work as tellers in the same bank, my bank, the National Bank of Westchester. The first time I walked in and saw them behind the counter my heart skipped a beat:  Veronica, Vanessa, Vivian, Next Teller Please, Valerie, Vicki.  With their dark complexions, ruffled white blouses and full red lips -- like petals from a mythical flower, like the tens they plucked from their tills, they were identical down to the last curlicue.  All I could think was that it would take a lifetime to explain this moment, an eternity to explain a lifetime.  All I could say was, "Marvelous, incombustibly marvelous!"  Words that echoed down the line as people from all walks of life couldn't help but agree.  Behind his desk smiled B. Yourgrau, Manager, assured that another customer had found the answer to all his banking needs.

-- Paul Violi [photographed above with Star Black at KGB Bar 1998]
Happy birthday, Paul.

Happy Brthday to Jane Russell

Happy birthday to the sensational Jane Russell, who was born on June 21, 1921 and passed away in 2011.

She caused a stir in 1954 when she sang "Lookin' for Trouble" while wearing a bodysuit with three strategic cutouts in The French Line. Producer Howard Hughes reportedly designed the film's outrageous costumes himself. -- Stephanie Paterik

froim the archive; first posted June 21, 2012 by Stephanie Paterik.

"Rhode Island is Famous for You": On Denise Duhamel's Birthday [by David Lehman]

June 13

Rhode Island is Famous for You

The blue forest, chilled and blue, like the lips of the dead,
show life when brought to the public eye in June,
the month of twins who divide their lives in two
or spend hours pursuing the ghost of a lover. Stacey
and I drive to the swimming pool and Blossom Dearie
sings "Rhode Island is Famous For You," which always
makes Stacey think of Denise Duhamel, born this day
in Woonsocket, R. I.  Other children of June 13 include
Yeats, Pessoa, and Tony Towle, each of whom is a cousin
of yours, Denise, pursuing the arrow of greatness, but of none
of whom is it true that Rhode Island, smallest
and possibly most underrated state, is famous for you.
And the lips that were cold and blue when this poem
began have the warmth of June and the charm of a kiss.

-- David Lehman

"Birthdays" [by Tony Towle]

Birthdays

                       

I wonder if Fernando Pessoa

when he wrote to W.B. Yeats for advice

about establishing a national poetry for Portugal

realized that they had the same birthday —

and if he had known, would that have

encouraged him to actually send the letter?

Forty-odd Junes ago I wonder about other things,

walking down West 18^th Street, about to pass

the Chelsea post office, through whose door

steps John Ashbery, directly in front of me.

After a mutual startled instant, he inquires mildly

in his celebrated nasal intonation:  “What

are you doing on my turf?” — a reasonable question

since he knew I lived many blocks to the south.

Embarrassed, I answer, “You may not believe this,

but I’m going to see an astrologer” (a visit that Jean

my girlfriend, had arranged as a birthday present).

Instead of acerbic admonishment on the imbecility

or worse of astrology, he inquires: “It wouldn’t be

Eleanor Bach, would it?” Stunned, I reply: “Yes,

as a matter of fact it would.” While I settle into

relief, John informs me: “She does a lot of poets,”

and he mentions several who were well-known

(though not by me personally), and then of course

he himself; and he relates how she really impressed him

by persisting in a feeling that there was something

 off in his chart, something that didn’t add up. Finally

he revealed a personal fact that had been withheld

and she said, “Oh, yes, it all makes sense now; why

didn’t you tell me before?!” So now I was assured

by an esteemed literary source that my personal incarnation

of the stellar and planetary intricacies would be rendered

with astute professional insight. Confidentially , though —

and I never told John — I thought that Ms. Bach

seemed much too concerned with my “rising” sign

to the neglect of my “sun” sign next door, regarding

which, and doubtless by the merest coincidence of genetic

and sociological meanders of fate, I am a first-rate example.

- Tony Towle  11/22—5/23

Tony Towle neglects to mention that June 13th is his birthday (as it is that of both Pessoa and Yeats). Ashbery's astrological profile has baffled many professional astrophels, because Leo is his rising sign but there's a lot of Virgo in his chart.

Happy birthday, Cole Porter (June 9)

I get a kick out of you, Cole Porter.
It's de-lovely. . .to hear your songs sung.
Your lyrics remain as young and "easy to love" as ever.
So here's "looking at you," chum.

Furthermore, you know how to "do it"
(Some Argentines without means do it)
And you do something to me.
I've got you deep in the heart of me.

In the chill still of the night
This torment won't be through
The east west north and the south of you.
The world has gone mad today,

And good's bad today, but
Oysters down in oyster bay
Do it as do goldfish in the privacy of bowls, so
Let's do it, let's fall in love

Happy birthday, Dean Martin (June 7)

 

Happy birthday, Dino. Ain't that a kick in the head?

 

"Doubting the Doubts" [by David Shapiro]

David Shapiro wishes Jasper Johns a happy birthday (May 15)!

Doubting the Doubts

A map dropped from my hands
And a voice cried, From now on
You will proceed in darkness.
Alas, he laughed, that is true.

Was it a black map?
I do not remember.

We all love clarity.
But you love darkness.
But darkness is clear.

We do not know now and we will never know.
White night, perilous night.

– David Shapiro (May 15, 2008)

"Permanently" [by Kenneth Koch, born today]

Permanently, by Kenneth Koch

One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.

Each Sentence says one thing—for example, “Although it was a dark rainy day when
        the Adjective walked by, I shall remember the pure and sweet expression on her face
        until the day I perish from the green, effective earth."
Or, “Will you please close the window, Andrew?”
Or, for example, “Thank you, the pink pot of flowers on the window sill has changed color
        recently to a light yellow, due to the heat from the boiler factory which exists nearby.”

In the springtime the Sentences and the Nouns lay silently on the grass.
A lonely Conjunction here and there would call, “And! But!”
But the Adjective did not emerge.

As the Adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat—
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone
Until the destruction of language.

Happy birthday, W H. Auden

Their Lonely Betters

As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade
To all the noises that my garden made,
It seemed to me only proper that words
Should be withheld from vegetables and birds.

A robin with no Christian name ran through
The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew,
And rustling flowers for some third party waited
To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.

Not one of them was capable of lying,
There was not one which knew that it was dying
Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme
Assumed responsibility for time.

Let them leave language to their lonely betters
Who count some days and long for certain letters;
We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:
Words are for those with promises to keep.

-- W. H. Auden

Happy birthday, Mozart -- and Jerry Kern [by DL]

Spring 68 at Columbia was the season of the strike,
the occupation of the buildings (Low, Hamilton, Avery
Mathematics, and Fayerwether where a righteous
mininster married a young couple), and Mitch and I
went to the West End Bar to talk tactics because
we knew the "tactical patrol force" (TPF) was
going to come and hit hard. The days went by
and the arm bands worn by angry students
went from green (amnesty for protesters)
to black (mourning for Alma Mater). But I still
had my Music Humanities final to face and I
was so ignorant I did the only thing I could do:
bought Bach's "Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott,"
Mozart's Jupiter, Beethoven's 3rd, 5th, and 7th,
and Brahms's 4th. On the final the professor
played something we had not heard in class.
It was the slow movement of the 7th.
And that summer in Oxford
I heard the opening of the last movement
of the Jupiter every hour
on the hour. Years later I learned
Mozart's birthday, the 26th of January,
was also that of Kern, Jerry Kern
of Show Boat and Swing Time,
"The Way You Look Tonight"
and "Long Ago And Far Away." So I will just say
to both of these great composers: happy birthday!

Spring 68 at Columbia was the season of the strike,
the occupation of the buildings (Low, Hamilton, Avery
Mathematics, and Fayerwether where a righteous
mininster married a young couple), and Mitch and I
went to the West End Bar to talk tactics because
we knew the "tactical patrol force" (TPF) was
going to come and hit hard. The days went by
and the arm bands worn by angry students
went from green (amnesty for protesters)
to black (mourning for Alma Mater). But I still
had my Music Humanities final to face and I
was so ignorant I did the only thing I could do:
bought Bach's "Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott,"
Mozart's Jupiter, Beethoven's 3rd, 5th, and 7th,
and Brahms's 4th. On the final the professor
played something we had not heard in class.
It was the slow movement of the 7th.
And that summer in Oxford
I heard the opening of the last movement
of the Jupiter every hour
on the hour. Years later I learned
Mozart's birthday, the 26th of January,
was also that of Kern, Jerry Kern
of Show Boat and Swing Time,
"The Way You Look Tonight"
and "Long Ago And Far Away." So I will just say
to both of these great composers: happy birthday!

Happy birthday, David Shapiro, author of "January"

David Shapiro wrote:

at 8:42pm

David, please take the test I left out in the rain.
Freud's the name, theory's the game, lying on the couch seems inane,
free association is the main, transference too is the cane,
Oedipus walks in the rain.

Take it, I'm an easy marker, for Freudian reasons and some Adlerian.
What is a test but a little joke to make the taker mad? Name the allusion.
Where was the cancer of late Freud? Where did Freud say sex was all and
every squeaking hand could make us say the wished-for words?

Love and work -- where do Freud and Reich say these are big
Responsibilities? Was Delmore Schwartz in analysis by age 23 when he said
Dreams begin Responsibilities with its lip of blue snow? Which Columbia
professor could we assume never went through analysis?
Whom did Lacan call the classically unanalysed writer (here I give in--James Joyce. O)

What was the speciality du jour of the great Lou Andreas Salome?
How long has David Shapiro been in analysis, and why?
How many of his poems are dreams?

(2009)

"New Year's Day" [by Billy Collins]

New Year’s Day

Everyone has two birthdays
according to the English essayist Charles Lamb,
the day you were born and New Year’s Day—

a droll observation to mull over
as I wait for the tea water to boil in a kitchen,

which is being transformed by the morning light
into one of those brilliant rooms of Matisse.
“No one ever regarded the First of January
with indifference,” writes Lamb,

for unlike Groundhog Day
or the feast of the Annunciation,
this one marks nothing but the passage of time,
I realized, as I lowered a tin diving bell
of tea leaves into a little body of roiling water.

I admit to regarding my own birthday
as the joyous anniversary of my existence
probably because I was, and remain
to this cold day in late December, an only child.

And as an only child--
a tea-sipping, toast-nibbling only child
in a colorful room this morning--
I would welcome an extra birthday,
one more opportunity to stop what we are doing
for a moment and reflect on my being here on earth.

And one more birthday might be a consolation
to us all for having to face a death-day, too,
an X in a square
in some kitchen calendar of the future,

the day when each of us is thrown off the train of time
by a burly, heartless conductor
as it roars through the months and years,

party hats, candles, confetti, and horoscopes
billowing up in the turbulent storm of its wake.

frirst published in Ballistics

"An Irish Halloween Blessing": On Terence Winch's Birthday

 

On Terence Winch's Birthday

 

Isn't it beautiful? Johann Zoffany's painting

of a production of Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, 1770,

and Terence sent me the image to accompany

the note he writes each Sunday to introduce

his pick of the week to a select circle of smart

and sophisticated readers, a different note 

each Sunday with a different image, each

as compelling as this one, so I start with it

in anticipation of November 1st, his birthday,

(and that of Glen Terence Hartley, agent of Astrophil and Stella).

 

Anticipation can blend celebration and collaboration

so I ask the man himself for ideas such as Samhain,

which, he explains, is pronounced "sow [rhymes with "now"]

 

OK, Terence. Take it away.  -- DL

 

What is Samhain?
The ancient Celts believed the year was divided into two parts, the lighter half in the summer and the darker half in the winter. Samhain was the division between these halves – the end of the Harvest, and the time when the veil between our world of the living and the world of the dead was at its thinnest.

Oíche Shamhna (October 31) is Halloween and Lá na Marbh (November 1) is the Day of the Dead, or All Saints Day when those who have passed away are remembered.

An Irish Halloween Blessing

At All Hallow's Tide, may God keep you safe
From goblin and pooka and black-hearted stranger,
From harm of the water and hurt of the fire,
From thorns of the bramble, from all other danger,
From Will O' The Wisp haunting the mire;
From stumbles and tumbles and tricksters to vex you,
May God in His mercy, this week protect you.

 

For Annie Finch's 1997 poem "Samhain," which she defines as "the Celtic Halloween," click here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53066/samhain

 

John Donne's Holy Sonnets #10 & #14: On Glen Hartley's Birthday

10.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

 

14.

 

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp'd town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,

But am betroth'd unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

 

-- John Donne (1571-1631)

Comments

This is one of my favorite poems and it doesn't seem like Bukowski to me. Thanks.
Posted by: Noah Burke | November 06, 2008 at 04:04 PM

I agree - Bukowski usually isn't this hopeful. A lovely poem.
Posted by: Laura Orem | November 07, 2008 at 07:41 PM

One of my favorite poems. Very provocative and inspiring.
Posted by: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000058706234 | September 19, 2009 at 02:09 PM

Love this poem, but you've got one of the lines wrong (every site I look at does, though). I have the original printing of this. The line "there is a light somewhere," should be "there is light somewhere."
Posted by: Tonymoore99 | October 08, 2012 at 09:25 AM

I have a friend who’s really good in writing a poem, too. She writes inspiring poem just like you and I admire you both.
Posted by: Ruggieri Sharkey | January 27, 2013 at 12:34 PM

Good poem. However, I would have cut the last three lines, making it a perfect poem.
Posted by: HDRBodegaPhoto | January 05, 2018 at 06:04 PM

Life is LIFE
Posted by: Obélix | June 19, 2019 at 07:38 PM

Said like a true alcoholic; I know, I am.
Posted by: Michael | October 21, 2019 at 03:33 AM

Light means hope, then we need to do meaningful things in our life, before death coming.
Posted by: Eric | April 14, 2020 at 09:06 PM

Always has a way of making the misery escapable as long as the mind and heart are set on the horizon of a fading light.
Posted by: Joaquin Nava | October 10, 2020 at 08:02 PM

I cant find this poem on https://bukowski.net/manuscripts/
Is this really Bukowski?
Posted by: The Wandering Earth | November 12, 2020 at 05:30 AM

When I first heard this recited, I thought it was one of the lectures by Joseph Campbell, whom I love. Was surprised it was Bukowski. The last three lines are absolutely the best. Without them, the poem would be just good. With them, it’s great! Here’s to the Old Gods!❤️
Posted by: Teuta Ilyriana | April 13, 2021 at 01:05 AM

The numb nut who said he would have cut the last 3 lines therefore making it a perfect poem... Well yes indeed I suppose it would be. You know the perfect poem. Poetry that is...Perfect. 99.9 percent of all poetry is written by people trying to write the perfect poem. And guess what? Most of them succeed at writing poetry, perfectly. And that's why hardly anyone will ever read it. Except maybe there mother , themselves and the person there sleeping with. Thank God for Bukowski. He wasn't aiming at perfection but as he said" getting down the word the line." Poetry books are sadly full of the perfect poem and or poems. That's why you can line your bird cage with most of it's pages.
Posted by: Steve Hammek | November 15, 2021 at 10:16 PM

Perhaps the most powerful words I've ever heard. Coming from Charles Bukowski, maybe the biggest nihilist to ever live. I am still in awe of its beauty.
P.S THE LAST THREE LINES ARE THE BEST PART OF THIS POEM
Posted by: Alex | March 16, 2022 at 06:27 PM

alchoholism is "dank"
Posted by: john smith | April 25, 2022 at 11:46 AM

I am in the camp that the last three lines are the best part of the poem. Why does this one person hate the last three lines? It is possible that they are just trolling, but I usually take people at face value so let's assume that they really do hate the last three lines. Why? My very first thought was that maybe they hate the idea of gods, but I don't think that is their problem since then they would just hate the last two lines. What the last three lines all have in common is an assurance that the reader is at a fundamental level very good and valuable. The person who complained may see this as unsupported hope. They may say that you can't just assert that a person is valuable. Why should we just say that a person is marvelous, maybe people are really all garbage. Why should we assume that the gods would ever delight in us, maybe they are completely disgusted by us. The debate is whether the gods fundamentally see humanity as worthy or worthless. The idea of the gods waiting is the much debated concept of free will. We have the innate capacity for being marvelous and delightful, but we must choose whether we are going to express that or not. But what if we don't know how to do that? If we sincerely look, we can find people who will teach us how to be marvelous and delightful.
Posted by: Westman Thalergard | July 06, 2022 at 10:07 AM

Parts of this poem were set to music and posted to Youtube. It's worth checking out (22 million views). This link really will take you to the song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhRXn2NRiWI

Posted by: Westman Thalergard | July 06, 2022 at 10:29 AM

Life has its ups &downs 4 sure.when da persona is in a rosy mood,da world seems 2 be his/her oyster,if in a lousy mood,demons seem 2 be swarming on da horizon.life has never been a bowl o strawberries w cream&sugar on top,not has death deprived da planet o a priceless jewel by taking us.live&let live.
Posted by: halfeyed bro | October 21, 2022 at 07:07 AM

My two cents ...
Whenever I read poetry, I view it two ways: 1) What the author intended; 2) What it means to me. Sometimes, they are in alignment. Sometimes, they aren't. Take T.S. Eliot's "Hollow Men". I view it differently than T.S. Eliot intended.

Here are how I take Bukowski's poem.

Every individual deserves his/her life. It's a gift. Live it as you will. However, we have built a society that demands that you conform. Some people struggle with that conformity more than others. Those that struggle, really..Really...REALLY struggle.

Bukowski is speaking to them. He's saying "Be you. You are marvelous." If you do choose to be you, the Gods will delight in you. In fact, they are waiting patiently so they can delight in you.

Again, this is how I read the poem. Right or wrong.
Posted by: Michael Felli | October 22, 2022 at 07:51 PM

The gods will delight but yoy will not be happy or successgul in the world's term,at least most. Don't tirn the Buk into new age pap.
Posted by: Chuck Taylor | May 31, 2023 at 08:18 AM

I think the chap that talked of cutting the last 3 lines.. you're all wondering why he hated those 3 lines. And maybe he did. But if you don't wonder about the 3 lines he asked to cut, and instead look at the line where the poem would have ended with said lines cut.. I think it would make more sense.

The poem begins with the line... Your life is your life. and if the last 3 were cut.. it would end with the line... Your life is your life.
Posted by: Zack | July 08, 2023 at 04:45 AM

Response to the consideration of the poem’s value with or without the last three lines:
One way I thought about it is this:

Without the last three lines, the tone of the message feels confrontational, empowering the reader to push back, to push against in order to pursue being true to one’s self.
And poetically/structurally, this provides no resolve.

Including the last three lines, the tone shifts to hopeful, and suggests an exchange of one kind of submission (against the expected cultural norms) for a different kind of submission (being delighted in)
And poetically/structurally, this provides a satisfying resolve

Either way, Bukowski invites the reader to personalize the message.

Posted by: Virginia | July 24, 2023 at 12:04 PM