The Best American Poetry

"Fragment for John Ashbery" [by Jim Cummins]

I wake, and a fragment, a wisp,
entices, then disappears into the forest
of an earlier time, and I am left
in a clearing where the sun is stale,
or the moon is not a pretty wafer,
and the day long ago when colors
were sounds, and sounds a masterpiece
of color and form, recedes again
into dream forests, crosshatchings.

You lifted the dish with melted cheese
for the soufflé you never touched,
being three martinis to the good already
at a lunch that comes clear again
in the forest, briefly — radiant eyes trapped
in the woods of your three companions,
who just want to laugh and love you
too young to have these dreams yet.
You say again, in this memory-forest,
"I hope you won't tell R—," then lift
the enormous ladle, using it like a spoon,
and that is your lunch, three martinis
and a bowl of lukewarm melted cheese.

Your eyes sparkle like a four-year-old's,
who sees something he wants, and takes it.
And I love you for this gesture, though
I'm old enough to see the forest I will enter
soon, the one you will be leaving, knowing
so much more than I of its bewilderment.
The gesture — willful, cold as it is warm —
admits the friendship of us three, even
as it stands beyond, untouched, looked at
by those who love you, who aren't privy yet
to the nightmare of too many fragments,
pieces of dreams left ragged on branches,
when the muse abducts you, carries you,
through word-forests, forests of words.

– James Cummins

Is This Thing On? Can You Hear Me Now? [by James Cummins]

I have no clue whether I'm actually posting or not.  I've never blogged before, even read a blog.  I wondered what to do until I saw DL's description of what we guest bloggers would produce: "brilliant insights."  Okay, now that's clear; I'm with the program.  What brilliant insight of mine would anyone care about?  Well, I just got back from lunch, which time I spent cleaning my dog's backside of the clumps of shit the poor constipated baby got glued into her hair and orifices.  My insight might be that it was remarkably not gross, since I love her so much; which gives me yet another glimpse into love. 

I was thinking all week about love, since Valentine's Day is at the end of this guest-blogger week, and something in me is celebrating this new "Best American Erotic" volume, too.  It's probably unwise to admit this, but it's the first book of poems that's made me read compulsively in a long time.  So many books have a sheen of coolness about them that puts me off; but this one is like playing doctor when you're a kid.  (In fact, it reminded me that I DID "play doctor" when I was a kid, with Susie and Jimmy Vecchio, another piece of the puzzle.)  My gold standard for erotic poem anthologies is the Faber Book of Blue Poetry, a pretty traditional, and English, and effective, compendium.  This (Best American Erotic) is so much more like an intimate sexy book.  I'm loving lines, images, whole poems, I'm eagerly loving and licking it up.  "Like a seltzer in my crotch"--that's so American, what can I say?  Deborah Landau's poem is like a combo of Whitman's woman watching the bathing young men and an Edward Hopper painting.  "Suck and tongue you till my touch is much"; Strand's and Dobyns's poems; Richard Howard's edgy photo of something the word "pedophilia" just doesn't capture--these are some of the highlights for me.  Tony H.'s gleeful misogyny; "A man is masturbating his heart out"--the anxious, the dreamy, the sublime that we are, is here. 

When my younger daughter was a baby she and I would often go for a ride at night, so she could calm down and maybe fall asleep.  We'd have these great talks some nights.  When she was three she had her tonsils out and it was a bit more traumatic than she supposed it would be; in fact, she was mad at me afterward for not warning her sufficiently.  But here's a transcription from a notebook of our first ride after the operation, starting as we pull out of the driveway:

"Daddy, I'm going to marry Gabriel and have six dogs, and four babies, and two cats."

"That's wonderful.  Do you love Gabriel?"

"Yes, I wuv him and he wuvs me."

"That's really neat."

"Daddy, Gabriel has a penis."

"Yes, he does."

"That's because he's a boy.  Steve and you and Gabriel have a penis."

"Yes, we do."

"And I have a vagina."

"Yes."

"It would be bad if boys had vaginas and girls had penises, wouldn't it?"

"Well, I guess it's better that boys have penises and girls have vaginas."

"Daddy, why would it be bad if boys had vaginas and girls had penises?"

"Well, I mean, it's good whatever a person has, don't you think?  Whether it's a penis or a vagina?"

"So it wouldn't be bad if a boy had a vagina?"

"No, honey, if he has a vagina, it's fine."

"And people shouldn't make fun of other people, and be mean to them and call them names, should they?"

"Oh, no, they shouldn't do that."

"They shouldn't call them names like--like--'Smudgy Face' or 'Tree Tree', should they?"

"No, sweetie, they shouldn't."

"And people shouldn't say to other people, 'Boy, you're really stupid!' should they?  They shouldn't say that, should they, Daddy?"

"No, honey, they shouldn't."

Then she fell asleep. 

Ah, American anxiety.  No brilliant insights about it, just the observation that after being the father of two daughters--the older one, at age two, once turned to me and said, her face beaming, "My bagina is so soft and fweet!"--it's impossible not to hear the longing in our sex poems, and nervousness, and because of that they seem so truly sexy to me.

I wonder if this is too much blog or not enough.  (Anxiously)  (Am I in?)

From the archives; originally published February 7, 2008

"Hick and Willie Get a Catalog from the 'Atheist Collective' Gallery" [by Jim Cummins]

Hick:

"Got the mail.  Here's a list of 'Easter Fun Facts,' straight from Jesus.
Did you know He suffered from 'Dysfunction, Resurrectile,'
until His Father threw a thunderbolt projectile?
It broke the stone to pieces--"


Willie:

"--'and scared all the feces
out of Magdalen, Peter, and John the Reptile'?
No, I didn't know that.  Let me open their 'Dreck File'--
maybe there's a paparazzi shot where Mary 'V's us."


Hick:

"You're disgusting.  Did you know if you have a Resurrection
lasting longer than 'Eternity'
by Calvin Klein, you should consult an attorney?
Or that John Calvin was saved in a run-off election?"


Willie:

"Well, he had a lot of followers.  He was a Twitterer,
after all.  Is that from the 'Atheist Collective'?  Do they want money?
Okay, I'll lighten up and try to be funny--
although the guy who wrote 'Snowbound' was Whittier."

[from the archives; originally posted May 2013]

"Good Bad Titles" [by David Lehman]

On May 30, 2008, in this space, Dan Nester posted about an afternoon he and Jonah Winter spent sending up the titles that adorn poetry books. The titles that occurred to them "all seemed so aggressively portentous, imbued with such fawning obsequiousness," Nester wrote. "To exorcise ourselves of the real-life titles we were mentioning, titles that shall not be mentioned here, we played a word association game wherein either Jonah or myself would think of the second word of a two-word poetry book title, which would “after after” whatever the other participant named as the first." The "after after" in that sentence is hard to parse, perhaps deliberately, but the list of titles that follows clarifies the idea and gives us a window into the lads' minds that day: "Technical Vulva," "Variegated Cock," "Airport Beaver," "Stiff Flowering," "Tremulous Beaver."

The best of the list formed a category of their own: "good bad titles." Such was the thought of Corey Zeller, who approached a bunch of other poets to see whether they would produce self-parodying titles on order. Zeller's objective: "to write a book of serious prose poems" borrowing the deliberately bad titles. That She Could Remember Something Other Than _________, a Nester / Winter nominee, is the working title for Zeller's collection. 

Among those who have responded to the summons thus far are  Dean Young ("Tears of My Shadow"), Major Jackson ("The Shoeshine Chronicles"), Nin Andrews ("Beta Male Ballads"), Kim Addonizio "What Color is Your Vagina," "What Do Assholes Want?" "My Despair"), Arielle Greenberg ("Four Thousand Short Notes on Heidegger") as well as Joe Wenderoth, Dana Levin, Tim Seibles, Matthew Zapruder, and Joyelle McSweeney. A few conclusions can be drawn. Heidegger, who figures in several titles, handily beats out Descartes as the bad philosopher of choice. Sex, body parts, and bodily function retain their ancient popularity, with Dean Young's "My Mother's Thong" rivaling Dorothy Lasky's "Sitting by Your Mom's Bush in Broad Sunlight" but topped in tastelessness by the simplicity of Peter Markus's "On the Rag."

Here are some of the titles Jim Cummins has punfully proposed:

NOSTROMOSEXUAL
THE INTERPRETATION OF JEANS
PRIMO LEVI'S
THE LIVES OF A CELLO
ALL THE PRESIDENT'S PERSONS

Jim also suggests some plausible pseudonyms, chosen from the imaginary "tablet of contents" that he has been tinkering with for years. W S Merlot pours well. With Kenneth Joch you wonders how to pronounce the surname: Jock? Joke? Josh?

 Not one to shirk a challenge, I came up with titles for books, not necessarily poetry books, that might appear in a publisher's catalog:

Useful Canadian Revenue-Sharing Plans
The Woodrow Wilson Story
Do It Yourself Dentistry vol. 1)
When the Manure Hits the Ventilator
Dead Money: Prizer, Cisco, and Other Value Traps
How to Get Rich While Saving the Planet
Shakespeare’s Happiest Couple: The MacBeths

The last on this list was prompted by the proposition that the Macbeths may be Shakespeare's happiest husband and wife -- in the tragedies at least. 

Speaking of Shakespeare, I thought of another such title during a phone conversation with John Ashbery. We were discussing a decision he had made and I called it shrewd. He couldn't hear what I said and asked me to repeat the adjective. Shrewd, I said, "as in 'The Taming of the Shrewd'."

Oh, the photo illustrating this post is -- Hmmm. Why don't I invite commentary from the blogosphere? 

DL [from the archives; posted August 7, 2011

"Lunch Noir" [by Jim Cummins]

He painted an apartment for her once,
just to get her off his hands;
then he was sayonara, gone. 
He never heard about the drugs,
the nude frolic in a public fountain,
the ward.  When she escaped,
naked under a stolen lab coat,
he was asleep in another city. 

She stuffed the coat in a mailbox;
she knew her ecstasy would be brief,
& she wanted all of it.
A black bus driver called the cops.

Now she wears a box on her hip,
electrodes stimulating what and where
he’d prefer not to know, at lunch.
She fluffs up her vegan salad,
and he lifts his glass of water,
to have something to do.
Both of them are counting on lunch
to somehow say they’re sorry.

But watching his cleverness,
she thinks he’s the same old dickhead
he always was, denying her; 
and he can’t believe he once pulled
toilet paper out of this woman’s
asshole, before licking same. 
He feigns delight in a cheeseburger
she declares revolting, even
as she hopes she’s not gulping
too much wine. Carefully,
they check out their reflections
in the mirror next to their booth,
each of them idly considering
what it might be like this time.

Batter Up! Poems Inspired by Baseball, Thanks to Jim Cummins [by Stacey Lehman]

Johnny Podres, 1955 World Series Game 3

We have our friend Jim Cummins to thank for this podcast of baseball-inspired poems that comes to us from University of Cincinnati Elliston Project. Jim is the innovator who curated the Elliston Poetry Collection for over three decades, beginning in the mid-1970s. He was inspired to record visiting poets and writers and compile the archive during an especially beautiful reading on a spring afternoon by Lucien Stryk. Alas the Elliston Project as it was shaped and steered by Jim Cummins no longer exists. But thanks to his vision, we have a rich and deep archive (800 hours!) filled with the voices of some of our most celebrated poets. Click on the links to hear these great poems: 

All tracks   Podcast [complete]
Track 01   Introduction
Track 02   Jim Hall reading Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat" (1985)
Track 03   Jim Cummins reading Grantland Rice's "Casey's Revenge" (1985)
Track 04   John Drury, "Stadium" (2003)
Track 05   John Drury, "Ghazal of Baseball" (2003)
Track 06   Wyatt Prunty, "Baseball" (1999)
Track 07   Wyatt Prunty, "A Baseball Team of Unknown Navy Pilots, Pacific Theater, 1944" (1999)
Track 08   Robert Pinsky, "Night Game" (1991)
Track 09   Ada Limón, "The Good Wave" (2017)
Track 10   Alan Feldman, "Monday Evening Softball" (1979)
Track 11   David Lehman, "Ninth Inning" (1995)
Track 12   Arthur Smith, "Extra Innings" (1986)

Read Jim Cummin's posts about the Elliston Project here, here, and here, 

-- sdl

[First posted on the BAP blog April 14, 2017.]

"I just don't want to write the instruction manual . . . "

(Editor's Note: The first time I read John Ashbery's The Instruction Manual I was working for a large government bureaucracy. My desk, in a tiny cubicle, had no windows. Anyone who finds themselves in such a situation should read this poem and know that escape is possible. As John is quoted in David's The Last Avant-Garde:  "I'm aware of the pejorative associations of 'escapism' but I believe we need all the escapism we can get, and even that isn't going to be enough." I treasure this custom cartoon, a gift from the poet (and Ashbery aficionado) Jim Cummins.)

-- Stacey Harwood Lehman

Hemingway Reassures Fitzgerald on His Penis Size [by Jim Cummins]

Jim Cummins initially filed this report in 2009. It has become a classic. -- DL

<<<
Everybody my age knows about Hemingway's story about measuring F. Scott Fitzgerald's penis in A Moveable Feast, but maybe it's a good way to introduce a younger generation to Big Papa's work.  I've always wanted to write a poem about it, but nothing I ever came up with came close to matching Hemingway's account.  The story is this.  F. Scott Fitzgerald asked Hemingway to advise him about an important problem that had come up between Scott and Zelda.  (So to speak.)  So Scott and Papa go to Michaud's ("on the corner of the rue Jacob and the rue des Saints-Peres") for lunch and consultation.  Fitzgerald swore Hemingway to tell "the absolute truth" when answering.  Hemingway says, "He drank wine at the lunch but it did not affect him and he had not prepared for the lunch by drinking before it."  (This doesn't have a lot to do with the story, but the sentence knocks me out; I think it's the "did not" and "had not" constructions.)  Anyway, Zelda had told Scott his penis was too small.  Here's the Hemingway:

'Finally when we were eating the cherry tart and had a last carafe of wine he said, "You know I never slept with anyone except Zelda."

'No, I didn't.'

'I thought I'd told you.'

'No.  You told me a lot of things but not that.'

'That is what I want to ask you about.'

'Good.  Go on.'

'Zelda said that the way I was built I could never make any woman happy and that was what upset her originally.  [Ed. note: This conversation was held somewhat after what Hemingway describes as "what was then called her first nervous breakdown."]  She said it was a matter of measurements.  I have never felt the same since she said that and I have to know truly.'

'Come out to the office,' I said.

'Where is the office?'

'Le water" [the "WC," i.e. the men's room], I said.

We came back into the room and sat down at the table.

'You're perfectly fine,' I said.  'You are O.K.  There's nothing wrong with you.  You look at yourself from above and you look foreshortened.  Go over to the Louvre and look at the people in the statues and then go home and look at yourself in the mirror in profile.'

'Those statues may not be accurate.'

'They are pretty good.  Most people would settle for them.'

'But why would she say it?'

'To put you out of business.  That's the oldest way in the world of putting people out of business.  Scott, you asked me to tell you the truth and I can tell you a lot more but this is the absolute truth and all you need.  You could have gone to a doctor.'

'I didn't want to.  I wanted you to tell me truly.'

'Now do you believe me?'

'I don't know,' he said.

'Come on over to the Louvre,' I said.  'It's just down the street and across the river.'

We went over to the Louvre and he looked at the statues but still he was doubtful about himself.

'It is not basically a question of the size in repose,' I said.  'It is the size that it becomes.  It is also a question of angle.'

I explained to him about using a pillow and a few other things that might be useful for him to know.

'There is one girl,' he said, 'who has been very nice to me.  But after what Zelda said--'

'Forget what Zelda said,' I told him.  'Zelda is crazy.  There's nothing wrong with you.  Just have confidence and do what the girl wants.  Zelda just wants to destroy you.'

'You don't know anything about Zelda.'

'All right,' I said.  'Let it go at that.  But you came to lunch to ask me a question and I've tried to give you an honest answer.'

But he was still doubtful.

'Should we go and see some pictures?' I asked.  'Have you ever seen anything in here except the Mona Lisa?'

'I'm not in the mood for looking at pictures,' he said.  'I promised to meet some people at the Ritz bar.'"

****

I love so many things about this.  I love how throughout AMF Hemingway gives exact locations of the bars and cafes he frequents; I love how Scott hasn't drunk any whiskey to prepare himself for this manly lunch among manly men; I love how H. inspects Scott's, er, "junk" in the bathroom; and I really really love that they go to the Louvre to compare Scott's penis with the penises of sculptures and paintings.  Can't you just see Hemingway with a laser pointer?  And the "question of the angle" is a hoot.  So why have I been unable to write a poem about this?  Maybe from the point of view of old man Michaud, who has to take a leak and pushes open the door to the toilet, just as Hemingway is squatting down on his haunches to look at Scott's package in profile, saying, "Pull it a little, see if it does anything."

"Poem for D. L." [by James Cummins]

POEM FOR D. L. ("Then Ingmar Bergman shows up ...")

The answer to every riddle lay inside our bodies:
Life, the continuation of life ...
I wake at three a.m. with the guilt of it,
the guilt of life.  I haven't asked my body the question.

Exactly my age, but a month; and you lie
in a different city, asking yourself over and over,
Why?  The question for all of us is always When?
but instead we ask our bodies Why?

because we are afraid, and afraid to be afraid.
Why? keeps a part of us in the equation,
a part of what we are, in the face of the howling,
that we call "the wind" to frame it;

like a door to a cabin in winter in a play:
the characters take turns opening the door--
to get firewood, to check on the animals,
whatever of myriad reasons they can invent,

some Necessity they're obliged to bow to,
just to check it out, the howling, their bodies strong,
no matter their fear--the check it out, endure it,
then to stomp their way back into the warmth.

Life is a succession of rehearsals
for the closing we call "Opening Night."
We lay all evening in different cities, questioning;
then Ingmar Bergman shows up with a six-pack.

-- James Cummins

HAIKU FOR DL [by Jim Cummins]

Illness borne with grace

shames the chronic complainer.

Moon over bare trees.

"Ides of March Madness" [by James Cummins]

I help you store the “Number One”
foam fingers in their box;
and clean the grease of hot dog stands;
and check the many locks;

and help you stack the bleachers up,
douse house lights in the gym,                                                                                                                         while listening to your baleful cries,
your curses thrown at him

who turned the spheroid over,
or flubbed the easy pass,
or watched the orb go unretriev’d,
as it bounced off the glass.

You weren’t the only one to boast
his team would be the king,
only to hear instead the taunt
cheerleaders love to sing,

the lonesome sound of dreams denied
that makes the true fan cry:
“Na na nana, na na nana,
hey hey hey, good-bye …”

-- James Cummins

Ed. note: The poem, though it may or may not have been written on March 15, marks the end of March Madness this evening and subtly welcomes the baseball season, which annually proves the wisdom of Alexander Pope: "Hope springs eternal in he human breast."

Monday Comic by Nin Andrews

"Shorthand" [by Jim Cummins]

At funerals you get a sense of 'team':
"He bore his burden well"--stifling a yawn;
"She wasn't someone you'd enjoy tea with,
exactly, but--"; "They kept on keeping on."

Each mask that hides a life receives tribute:
"He was adored by dogs"; "She set a tone";
"Behind her drinking lay a golden heart"--
old age become a village of its own.

I was too young; I couldn't comprehend
how deficits increase over the years--
I shunned their ledger-faces for my books,
determined not to end up in arrears.

What will they say of me?  "His load was light."
"And for all that he didn't seem too bright."

-- James Cummins

"On Experimental Poets" [by Jim Cummins]

They think they're wags,
but they're really tails.

The Wags of Fear: fantasizing
they carry nitro, but it's

really 'Nite-So' ('night soil,'
a green product developed

by the Self-Importance Movement).
Scorpions--not sorcerers or

'Scorpios'--but actual scorpions.
They're all looking for a Frog

to carry them across the river.
You can find them posing

at poetry readings, whispering,
'Monsieur?  Monsieur?'

-- James Cummins

Note: See The Wages of Fear by Henri-Georges Clouzot (with Yves Montand) and the remake, Sorcerer, by William Friedkin

"Two Bottles of Glenlivet" [by James Cummins]

To dinner you bring the Scotch matching
the beautiful friends who are hatching
this glorious meal
and the glorious feel
of the moments from Time you are snatching.

There once was a man come to dinner
whose outer life stood in for his inner;
he ate with great gusto,
till his waistline did thrust-o,
and he left most decidedly not thinner.

There once were two gents from Glenlivet
who agreed great Scotch could greatly rivet
your attention and command
to the great task at hand:
life, and the friends who help you live it!

    for David

-- James Cummins

More on de Man on Demand [by Jim Cummins]

Brooks Hits the Canvas

(Ed note: Here is one of many responses to Peter Brooks' review of Evelyn Barish's The Strange Case of Paul de Man. You can find David Lehman's letter to the NYRB here.)

If you read Brooks' reply you see immediately the man's intellectual dishonesty and bad faith.  His first sentence launches an ad hominem attack: since Lehman is "already on record as a vehement detractor" of de Man, this naturally discredits all Lehman's opinions about de Man.  This obvious ploy conveniently allows Brooks to avoid addressing any of the documented evidence that led Lehman to his (supposed) vehemence in the first place.  (By the way, is calling de Man a "scoundrel" really vehemence, or just a simple statement of fact?)  In this manner, Brooks is able to occlude and dismiss the real issue(s) at hand!  Incredible.

But this is in keeping with what Brooks does to Barish: he substitutes his own trope--in her case, "Mr. Ripley"--then attacks the trope as if it were her argument.  Again, as with Lehman, he conveniently allows himself the freedom to smear Barish with a trope that has nothing to do with Barish, Paul de Man, or the facts at issue, thereby relieving himself of the responsibility for answering any of her actual arguments.  A few flaws in her book somehow dismiss the overwhelming case she makes against de Man?  I don't think so.

There's some poison in the Charles River that has been seeping into the soil and air there since 1620 at least.  I did a study a few years ago in which I researched three books of essays on Mark Twain.  These books were from a series called generally the "Twentieth Century Views" series--each volume was a collection on one major writer--that were published in the 1960's and sold widely to undergraduate populations as basic critical support of the pantheon.  I forget the precise figures, but the essays had something like almost an 80% correlation to Harvard; that is, nearly 80% of the authors of the essays had been educated at Harvard, or taught there, or both.  One of the authors, Leo Marx, is primarily responsible for the negative reading of the last third of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that obtains even to this day for most readers.  From our perspective, Marx's reading can now be seen as a whitewashing, unconscious or not, of the smug racist (and anti-Semitic) "liberalism" that permeated the genteel WASP boys'-club culture at Harvard (not to mention the other Ivies)--a culture that Twain sought to razz and expose and demolish in HF.

Peter Brooks took his B.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard.  Throw in the disgraceful actions by Harry Levin, et al, and the entire American side of the de Man saga ends up being a Columbo episode, where the whole Harvard muck out of which Brooks surfaces becomes apparent to the viewer, if not to the villain(s).  With this tasty addition: the irony of deconstructionists and their apologists pulling in an authority-system from "outside" the "language game" is rich, very rich, indeed.

"A Dream of Archie Ammons" (whose birthday this is) [by Jim Cummins]

                        Last night I read “Part Ten”

of Archie Ammons’s Garbage

out loud, twice, in an empty room.

Then listened in embarrassment

to hear if anyone was listening.

 

I’d bought the book so many years ago

and carried it with me to New York

the only time I’d ever meet him.

I’m not one for book signings, autographs;

I always figured if what I had left

 

at the end of life is a bunch

of signatures I’d be very sad;

so rely on my imperfect memory,

that rarely jogs or kicks in

to recover what is lost;

 

like what is lost from that evening,

me, standing, sweating coldly, empty,

waiting to read, the fixed rictus grin

what those around me fled from,

including Archie; and then he couldn’t

stay after because his wife was ill,

 

so was gone before I could get up

enough nerve to ask him

to sign my Garbage.  At the late

dinner, I sat between two women

who were interested in me

up to a point, and then that point

was reached; and I sat for a while longer,

listening to some lunatic who later

became a professional poker player,

or perhaps already was one;

and then it was time to go.

 

I went back to the hotel alone—

I always do, the rictus, you know—

thinking death is an interesting display,

and maybe I’m caught in the grip

of a final illusion—that the light

reaching me on a given day is truly

the light of that day—and maybe

I still exist for now in an infinity

that will be revealed as an illusion,

when the countdown to death begins,

when hope is replaced by a number,

 

the number of days.  So I walk out

each morning under many different suns,

some causing my shirt to stick

to my skin, some covering the park

in an antebellum light I sometimes feel

in certain parts of Kentucky.  First,

Archie died, then that good man's love,

Phyllis, and I was never known

to him, nor he to me, except in “Part Ten”

of Garbage; and in his face as he stood

on the stage and introduced me,

 

and I got up and pretended my poems

were a reality as real as morning light,

or the willfulness of dinner-speak,

or the light a true poet’s face can have

as he stands in a spotlight looking

at his watch, wondering at the illusion

he has set in motion, but only

with a sidelong glance, as it were,

while he gazes beyond it, helpless,

to the numbered days, and feels

the need to get home quickly, quickly.

 

-- Jim Cummins

Jim Cummins soooo wishes he could come (to Dan Nester's poetry forum. . .)

The Incredible Ubiquitous Sestina 

“Our first poetry forum of the season
is scheduled for Tuesday.  The guest
is Dan Nester, editor of The Incredible
Sestina Anthology, and the program
will be devoted to this exotic and appealing
form, the sestina.  Please come.”

Did you know a sestina can make you come?
It’s true.  Try one of mine.  The silly season
is upon us; over there, that appealing
blonde woman  looks like a hot guest
on “My Favorite Dames,” a program
I always turn on after watching The Incredible

Mr. Limpet, with Don Knotts.  He’s incredible
himself: Sheriff Andy always waiting for him to come
around?  I could see him trying to program
a computer, if the series had lasted, oh, forty seasons
longer.  They say a TV show is like a guest:
the longer it hangs around the less appealing

are the same traits you used to find so appealing
in its heyday.  Floyd the Barber was incredible,
too, but in reruns he looks like an unwanted guest.
Forget about waiting for your turn to come—
get a better head job down the street!  Like seasons
of shows, we come and go; it’s God’s program.

(Or Boy George’s?  I never got with any program,
so what do I know?)  I’m appealing
to you, Reader!  I’m an old vet—season-
ed, ripe.  Overripe.  Have you seen The Incredibles?
Funnier than Limpet.  You’re incredulous—“Oh come
on!”—but it’s true!  Aarrgh.  Back on topic: The Guest;

Or, The Sestina.  A sestina can be an unwanted guest,
too—it drops out of its step program,
knowing it can always come
over to your house—drunk, high, appealing
to your better nature.  “You’re incredible,”
you grumble crossly.  “There is a season …”

it comes out with, trying to be appealing. “Just incredible!
… Ma!”  Your mother’s watching her programs—
Breaking Bad, fifth season.  “Ma, an unwonted guest!”

-- James Cummins

When Jim Cummins gets invited to a sestina hoe-down and can't show up, what does he do?

He sends his regrets in the form of a sestina. . .

Silly Sestina for Dan and the Sestina Masters at Poets House

"This Saturday we will have the launch reading
for The Incredible Sestina Anthology!  Spread
the word and please come if you can.
There will be lots of incredible sestinas
read and sestina masters in the house.
Would love to see you there."

Ah, it would be so great to be there --
"where all the barrel hoops are knit" -- a reading
after my own heart.  And in the House
of Poetry itself!  Some places you can spread
yourself too thin, but not there, where sestinas
flaunt their ankles like the French Can-Can.

You remember whispering, "I think I can ..."
back then, opening your notebook.  "They're
the toughest poems to write, sestinas ..."
You needed models, eagerly reading
as farm implements and rutabagas spread
like a prairie fire through your little house,

warmed by a Marvel Stove.  Like Poets House
itself--where you can sit your can
down in a comfy chair all day, spread
your mind out wide--they love it there,
the sight of anybody reading--
eating sestinas

as Mark Strand ate poetry: sestinas
running from your mouth!  You are the House
now, you've become its Reading
Monster, poking out of a garbage can
on a 'Sesame Street' by Denise Duhamel--& there
is Morgan Freeman intoning the point spread

for the Super Bowl--& Ma Barker's bedspread--
& Newt Gingrich--all inhabiting sestinas
you wish--oh how you wish!--you could be there
for.  Alas, we play by the rules of the opposite 'house'
and as Larry Joseph says, you do what you can.
So I won't be able to make the reading,

but my heart spreads wide, thinking of friends reading
their 'can-do' poems that I love, in Poets House!
I'll be there in spirit.  Go now, you silly sestina!

-- Jim Cummins

The event that Jim can't attend is at Poets House at 3 PM on Saturday February 1. Moderated by Daniel Nester, editor of the Incredible Sestina Anthology, with contributors David Lehman, Sharon Mesmer, Iam Sparrow, Jade Sylvan, Victor Infante, Marilyn Nelson, Patricia Carlin, Sharon Dolin, Scott Edward Anderson, Michael Costello, Jason Schneiderman, Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Jenna Cardinale, Brendan Lorber, Ned Rust, and others TBA! Poets House is at Ten River Terrace (at Murray Street), New York, NY 10282. Subway: 1, 2, 3, A or C lines to Chambers Street Station.

November 22, 1963 [by Jim Cummins]

1

I sat in Miss Reynolds’s biology class
the day we all remember what we were doing.
I seem to recollect dissecting a fetal pig;
but perhaps, like Vardaman, I only conflated
physical and metaphysical horror
in one obliterating flash. More likely,
recalling myself as student and young man,
I sat there quietly, watching the others
poke, carve, discover. But at 1:30,
when the intercom coughed without preamble,
and we listened in growing fear to what
resembled a phone conversation broken into
by mistake (ellipses of questioning; sobs;
once, a loud shout) turn slowly into
the focused statement that went through
each of us like a bullet—that he had, in fact,
been murdered—we all sat up and still
then, the radiant pigs forgotten forever.

2

Who can explain the oracular impulse?
That day, they told us to “vacate the premises”;
no shoulder to cry on in those spare times; no counsel.
The Phys Ed teachers and the coaches, who would pull boys
from the hallway scrum, and slam their backs against
the walls to make a point, stood there sullen, sour,
as we filed past, silent, not even allowed
to use the phones—but then, who would we have called?
There was a strip mall off the high school lot;
we’d meet there at the bakery before class,
the rich kids in a restaurant nearby.
That day we wandered aimlessly along the storefronts;
what I remember most is our stunned silence.
In a television store I saw
a woman clerk who looked the way
I felt. I blurted out, “We’ll never get past this”—
I could feel the fear distort my voice,
as if I knew. She stared at me, as if I knew.

3

Miss Reynolds had good bones, as the connoisseurs
of beauty say, but wore so much make-up she seemed
a mannequin or doll. Or Lady Elaine Fairchilde,
on Fred Rogers’ TV show, or Punch’s wife, Judy—
an alabaster reach of flesh in which soft
eyes seemed trapped. I’ve often wondered since
if she were the first transsexual I’d known,
her perfect over-lipsticked lips a truth some
lonely man pined for in his own mirror.
I was fifteen: desire needed no abyss.
Even wrinkled old Mrs. Benedict—
even hoary old Mrs. B.—would writhe beneath me
in my bed at night, while I sucked her ancient
leathery nipples, and groaned aloud.
I wasn’t rich or president;
the Beatles had yet to play on Ed Sullivan;
RFK was still alive, like me.
And everywhere I looked desire fused with death.

---