The Best American Poetry

Dislocated in Time [by Lera Auerbach]

Photo by Lera Auerbach

 

(1)

The problem with the future is that it is unforeseeable –
the great unknown is full of opportunities for dreadful disasters.

Their multitudes are inexhaustible.

The stars are the pores of our reality.
They shine because that’s how we see the light of another world. 

The Arctic fox dances its foxy dance, pretending to be a woman,
pretending to be a nurse. 

The seal waits underwater. It knows it is being hunted. 

The stars are not the pores; they are pills,
round white pills the woman-fox is giving me.

Pills for pain, pills for sleep, pills for blood pressure,
pills for muscle aches, pills for adrenal gland function,
pills for inflammation or rather against inflammation,
pills for/against nausea. And steroids.

And more pills for pain. Killers of pain. 

(How many universes did I swallow today?)

 

(2)

Everyone is very kind to me. So kind, it breaks my heart.

Everyone is doing their best. Or his or her best. 

I feel generous with the pronouns. I think pronouns are so yesterday. 

So are all nationalities, religions, sexes, and any other boxes of definitions, including self-definitions.

If everyone were so kind, there would be no need for any of these limiting concepts. 

I understand how beautiful it would be, how connective, how whole and wholesome,
and it breaks my heart that it is not yet universally so.

I cry from the unbearable weight of my love that I cannot express. 

My husband, concerned, asks if I’m in pain. 

“No, on the contrary,” I try to explain what I feel. “I understand what it means to be ‘we.’ 

I am the seal; I am the fish it ate; I’m the polar bear waiting for the seal to breathe; 

I’m the polar bear hunter, waiting for the polar bear to strike the seal. 

I’m the polar bear hunter’s mother, wishing to feed the polar bear 
so that the bear could feed her son one day; I am the polar bear hunter’s girlfriend,
enjoying the safety of the aroma of the Lancôme perfume.

I am the surgeon searching for the patient who has his initials drawn on her belly. 

I am the patient praying to be her surgeon’s masterpiece.”

(“You are on drugs. It’s the painkillers,” says my husband.)

 

(3)

Where do all lost things go? 

Perhaps, lost things are dislocated not in space but in time.

It is why something may disappear and then later appear right in front of your eyes –
where you have already looked for it and more than once.

Instead of moving in space, they fall into the holes in the fabric of time.

Because time is made of porous material and things may fall through. 

Sometimes things reappear, moved back by some internal tides; 

at other times, they disappear without a trace, 

and new strange things appear instead. 

It is hard to hold on to your belongings when they keep falling 
through the porous realities of time and space.

It’s quite difficult, especially lately, to hold on to myself 
with all these electrons, protons, and neutrons misbehaving as particles 
and waves the moment you try to observe what they’re doing. 

Just think of all the effort my poor self needs to put together 
in order to hold some kind of a recognizable shape of a body 
instead of just becoming a soundwave or melting into a puddle. 

(No wonder I feel exhausted all the time.) 

 

(4)

Yesterday I learned there is such a thing as repulsive gravity.

By repulsive, I don’t mean ugly or unpleasant. 

Apparently, gravity can be not only attractive, 

thus attracting things ever closer the way earth 

doesn’t let us float away and fall into space, 

but also repulsive, meaning always repelling things 

further and further away. 

In all likelihood, this universe was made by such repulsive impulse, 

resulting in the Big Bang and all its consequences. 

It is why we are still expanding, universally speaking. 

(Just think of it: all we are is a hiccup of some repulsive shudder.)

 

(5)

Time in the hospital – sleepless nights, leg compressors, IV drips, 

blood-pressure measurements, vital signs checks every hour, medications. 

You wish to sleep, but your sleep is continuously interrupted by machines, nurses, 

and your own body. You melt one drop at a time and float restlessly in the night. 

And you still need to repeat your name and date of birth 

each time you are given the meds. You swallow a bunch of stars 

and start feeling that the repulsive gravity which made the Big Bang 

is just around the corner, and the reversal could happen at any moment.

You are internally running extremely fast while not moving at all. 

(And you’re still naked under the hospital robe.)

 

 

A protective blanket of words [by Lera Auerbach]

 

Arctic Dreams - Photo Credit: Lera Auerbach

(1)

I learned that a friend of mine was going through a tough time. His mother died, and he had debilitating neck pain. He needed to write the obituary and arrange for the funeral. His mother had dementia. Was he able to say goodbye? I did not ask. 

I don't know which scale would measure grief. Such a scale doesn't exist. 

Physical pain is easier to manage. If it is yours. Because at some point, the pain stops defining you. 
Grief buried deeper, so deep it can't be torn away, it becomes you.

In the Arctic, old babushkas, when they become unable to take care of themselves, hope to be killed by a polar bear. When they become too ill and weak, they look for the bear to eat them. I asked why. Being devoured by a wild animal didn't seem to me like an attractive way to finish life. 

"The bear will be nourished by eating me," explained an old Inuit woman. "The bear will become strong and fat. Then one day, my son will kill that bear. My son and his family will eat the bear's meat, make healing mixes from its fat, and make trousers from its fur. Thus, through the polar bear, I will nourish my son and keep him warm, even past my life, even past my death."

Post mortem motherly care.

(2)

A few years ago, I travelled to Greenland and stayed in Nuuk in the apartment of a polar bear hunter. A polar bear hunter's home looked like an IKEA house made by children constructors of adult sizing. Everything was modern, functional and perfectly unremarkable. 

A photograph on the wall showed a polar bear (or rather its fur) covered in blood, soaking in a bathtub. I realized it was the same bathtub in which I had showered that morning. It had rubber ducklings as lucky ornaments. Perfectly, chillingly, unremarkable bathtub.

(3)

"I wish I could make a blanket of protective words to shield you," I wrote to my friend, whose mother died after suffering dementia for several years. 

“A protective blanket of words” could be a definition of poetry. 
“Could be” because, like everything else, it rejects any definitions. 

Poetry is no different than spell-making or alchemy.

As if words could make a difference. 
As if anything could still make any difference.

In the world gone mad with apocalyptic craziness and fear, can words remain protective talismans? 

(4)

Bears in the Arctic are suffering from global warming. They're skinny and weak; they couldn't kill even old babushkas on their suicide mission. 

If I could stitch a protective blanket of words, I would make one for the polar bears, another one for the suicidal babushkas on their mission to feed the polar bears, and the third one for the polar bear hunters. I would then make a gigantic frozen quilt for the Arctic to protect it from climate change and even a bigger blanket for the entire world to save it from madness. 

Every stitch would be a word of love, a talisman against impending disaster. 

But I never learned how to make blankets or quilts. I can mend sounds and strings but not threads. The thoughts made of words are unravelling, and I can't weave them together. 

 

Born today: Paul Violi (1944-2011)

Look for Remus in the index of a book
And you are bound to get “See Romulus”
Which is perfectly logical but makes me wonder
About indexes, or indices, and why I prefer the former
As the plural except in a financial context, and how
An index to a book that may not exist may imply
A whole biography, as my friend Paul Violi
Showed in his poem “Index.” My late friend
Paul Violi, whom I still see in the street
Sometimes, walking along at an unhurried pace
So if I walk fast I will catch up to him at the corner
Before the light turns green.

-- David Lehman (2013

An avid student of history, Paul was born on 20 July 1944, an historic day; the day the plot to take Hitler's life failed.

From an interview (with Martin Stannard, May 2004):
"I was quite happy to get the award but it was that 'lifetime' modifier -- 'Lifetime Bereavement' is what I also heard. Sounded more like a gong than a bell. A 'Hey, don't rush me!' reaction. The check hasn't arrived yet. Now that always has a rejuvenating effect."
"The main thing about the NY School was the openness, the adventurousness, the links with artists and painting."
"There are poems I've been reading for decades and they're still giving me reasons to read them again. Keats' 'On First Looking at Chapman's Homer' -- That's magnificence! Images of vast silence used to describe astonishment at a "loud and bold" voice. Not bad for a 21-year old."

Michael Quattrone's profile of Paul Violi appeared in Jacket.  A brief excerpt: "Sixty-six West Twelfth Street. Paul Violi wears a Harris Tweed jacket over a pale blue Oxford shirt, a pair of chinos and practical leather shoes. He looks decidedly sheveled, although he has been shuttling between uptown and downtown campuses all day. He has just had another espresso and a smoke. He has made some last minute photocopies for this evening’s workshop, which will begin at eight. His sheaf of papers includes the student work that caught his fancy this week, as well as sample poems by Gregory Corso, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Philip Sidney, and Stephen Dunn. On a different day it might be Mayakovsky, Robert Herrick, Rilke and Verlaine."

"The critic Terence Diggory, whose readings Violi admires, was the first to posit that Violi acts the part of Renaissance Fool. That characterization of the poems is appealing because it accounts for their humor without neglecting the more serious concerns of craft or depth. In a review of Breakers, Diggory writes, ‘The spirit of spoof is so prevalent in Violi’s work that it is easy to mistake it for mere game playing.’ He adds that the work ‘reveals serious aesthetic, cultural, even metaphysical implications.’"

"A partial inventory of the mundane forms Violi has poetically adapted includes: a page of errata, a glossary, a multiple choice exam, and a survival guide; the notes of a naturalist, an elevator notice, mock histories, mock translations, and a product testimonial; one catalogue of fireworks, one of used books, and a third of damaged antiquities; a motivational flier, the advertisement of a sponsor, a radio pledge drive, and a police blotter; clues to a crossword puzzle (whose numbers follow the Fibonacci sequence), a cover letter, a television listing, an acknowledgements page, and a personality survey." -- Michael Quattrone

William Grimes's obituary appeared in the New York Times on April 15, 2011.

For poems by Paul Violi, including "Index," click here.
For Paul's comment on his poem "Index," click here.

And here's a link to Coldfront's ten-part celebration of Paul's life and work (scroll down for links to the 9 previous parts): http://coldfrontmag.com/celebrate-the-life-and-work-of-paul-violi-by-robert-hershon-and-paul-violi-part-10/

An Invitation for Wednesday Evening: Pen & Brush hosts poets Elaine Equi, Jen Huh, and Crystal Curry-Vassilakis [by Kate Angus]

 Wednesday (2/1) at Pen and Brush, 29 East 22nd Street between Broadway and Park Avenue. 7:00 pm. Free

 

Two falls ago, on the second round of drinks at the late lamented Puck Fair, a friend and I found ourselves talking—as often happens when two women writers sit down at a bar—about VIDA’s yearly count that tallies up the gender ratio in publishing and book reviews and the dismal numbers it often reveals. As my friend is the director of a nonprofit for poetry and I’m an editor at an independent press, the conversation eventually meandered into discussing the many amazing women we know in publishing. When we realized that no one had yet compiled a comprehensive list of the organizations, presses, and journals run by women, we began scrawling out our own. I spent a few more weeks crowdsourcing to find more names and eventually gave the list to VIDA to be published as a ever-updating community resource. 

Around the same time that I was researching this list, I finished up a stint guest editing for Pen and Brush, the 122-year-old nonprofit for women in the literary and visual arts, who had just launched their publishing wing and moved to a new space, a beautiful art gallery in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. With the VIDA list in hand, I began Pen and Brush Presents, a monthly reading series that features women, non-binary, and genderqueer writers who read work in honor of the female editors who have nurtured and supported their work by publishing them in the past. 

This Wednesday, Feb. 1st, we will be honoring the important work done for the literary community by Stacey Harwood, our gracious host here at the Best American Poetry blog, as well as Laura Cronk’s editing work for the wonderful literary food journal The Inquisitive Eater and Melinda Wilson’s work for the invaluable poetry resource Coldfront. Our readers will be the brilliant Elaine Equi (reading for BAP), Jen Huh (The Inquisitive Eater) and Crystal Curry-Vassilakis (Coldfront).

I would like to invite those of you who are in or near New York, to come join us this Wednesday (2/1) at Pen and Brush, located at 29 East 22nd Street between Broadway and Park Avenue. We'll lift a glass (or two or three!) to the talented poets who'll be reading and the amazing editors who have published them. The evening begins at 7 and extends as long as poetry and wine allows. All are welcome. 

Celebrate the Life and Work of Paul Violi (part 2) by Michael Quattrone

(Ed note: This month, Coldfront will publish a wide range of writing in an attempt to capture the spirit of Paul Violi and his writing. Here is part 2.)

Commedia Violi

by Michael Quattrone

 

Tuesday morning in Putnam Valley, New York:

Population: 9,500
Elevation: Infrequent

Paul Violi is standing at his desk in a navy blue, flannel bathrobe and brown, Ecco walking shoes. He has just returned from a driveway jaunt to retrieve the Times, which his wife, Ann, had run over on her way to work. He tosses the paper aside, removes a deerstalker cap and unwinds a wool scarf from his neck.

“It’s windy out,” he reports. He reaches for his coffee, but the mug has vanished. “By the time I find it, it’ll be cold.” Violi has the stoic squint of a movie star. The corners of his mouth draw in when he smirks, or laughs, or grimaces. Disappointed but not flummoxed—or perhaps flummoxed but not truly disappointed—Violi surveys the familiar territory of his workspace.

The poet’s desk is long and narrow, more sideboard than escritoire. Its antique varnished oak bows beneath the weight of books stacked high on either side of Violi’s circa-1985 Wizard™ word processor. Histories on the left side, everything else on the right. Atop a moldering volume of Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria sits a bouquet of cigarette butts in a restaurant-style, glass ashtray, and a red plastic lighter on a half-empty soft-pack of Tareyton cigarettes. He proffers one to his guest before lighting up himself, and then leans over the precarious stacks to peer outside. The second-story window reveals a trapezoid of lawn below, badly in need of raking. Violi has decided to wait for all the maple leaves to fall before addressing them, at which point they will likely be covered in snow, and he will have to chop firewood instead. In the distance, a dog barks at the passing of a neighbor’s invisible car; Violi sits.

Continue reading here.