The Best American Poetry

"Dancer and Dance" [by Jim Cummins]

Dancer and Dance

When he was young, he thought his narcissism
was anguish; but it was just narcissism.
Everyone’s in some kind of anguish or other—
or do the Protestants merely suffer?
Protestants buy things; it helps the pain.
Catholics buy things, too, but it doesn’t help—

Protestants don’t get how things “accrue.”
They gain their purchase on the earth
by purchasing it. No vestments, incense,
mumbling over wafers, in the economical church—
no folderol, no magic tricks, no ghosts.
And certainly no “Stations of the Cross,”

reminding you every Sunday of anguish
you couldn’t conceive of. Not to mention
the shit you had to go through to be a saint—
a woman carrying her eyeballs on a plate?
Most of all, that body on the cross,
writhing in agony if you looked more closely.

Back then, when they crucified you,
they drove the nails into your wrists & ankles—
otherwise, your flesh ripped away
& the heap of you ended up on the ground.
They wanted you to die, but in agony,
on rough wood, not on a breast of dirt.

Of course, if they wanted you to die faster,
they broke your legs at the knee—that way,
you’d be lucky if you lasted half an hour.
But suffering is different from anguish—
anyone familiar with both knows that.
Suffering touches the body, but anguish

torches the soul. When they crucified Peter,
they turned the old man upside-down.
They said they wanted him to reconsider;
but really, they just wanted to kill somebody
that morning. A bright cheerful morning,
the pictures say, if you didn’t mind seeing

a gray-haired man, somebody’s dad or grandpa,
getting nailed upside-down to some wood.
I suppose, at the end, the old fisherman
got what he desired. You could even say
he saw it coming, spreading his arms out wide,
knowing he was the one that got away.

from Everday Knowledge by James Cummins (Dos Madres, 2025)

"Stick" [by James Cummins]

It was intra-squad, not a real game,
But teenage boys don’t know the difference;
And to the pitcher who’d just thrown
An adrenaline-powered fastball at my head,
I was a pretender he could intimidate.
When the next pitch nearly took off
The top of my left knee, I knew,
With all the force of a mystical vision,
This talented boy, this ace of the staff,
A senior expected to bloom after showing
Such promise last year, such grit, such
Competitive fire, would fail.  I saw it
In his eyes when I got back up; I saw
The momentary hesitation, the confusion.
I knew the next pitch would be right
Down the middle of the plate, and as fast
As all the pride in his body could muster.
And he knew I knew; that was the key.
He didn’t know how, but he knew;
And it scared him, this giant of a boy,
That a stick of a kid he could break
In half in study hall, or a parking lot,
Would stare back at him as I stared back.
You never know who’ll relish the arena;
Who won’t care what he looks like,
As he approaches the game from his side,
Watching you watching him as he steps up.
The pitch was pretty, a beauty of a pitch,
But it depended on my believing what
Had transpired between us the last two.
His arrogance became my coldness;
I’d done this before, and he hadn’t.
The pitch was pretty, a beauty of a pitch,
And a few seconds later it hit a limb
Of a sycamore behind the left field fence.
“You’re going to have a bad year,” I yelled
As I trotted down the first base line,
Even then disliking myself for shouting it;
But something will rip out of you
In those moments, both you and not you;
It's not just triumph.  Bullies, sociopaths,
Narcissists—you have to demarcate—
You have to spell out a moment’s meaning
For them, in words they can’t mistake,
Because to them others have no outlines—
Other people are just blurry shapes
At the edges of their self-absorption.
And facts aren’t facts; you have to replace
The voice in their heads with a new voice:
I glued that home run to a voice
That jeered like the voice of his father,
Perhaps, or his mother, or a brother;
A voice that said this is your stupid soul
Flying over the fence after being struck
By the oldest weapon in the world,
A wooden stick.

From Recalcitrant Actors (2021, Dos Madres Press) by James Cummins,

The Winning Entry: "When Charles Bukowski Met Bob Dylan" [by Angela Ball] with judge Jim Cummins's comments & runners up

Charles Bukowski in One Corner; in the Other, Bob Dylan

If anyone should take eighteen-shot Dylan Thomas’s name,
it’s me. I challenge you to a duel
with two bottles of Four Roses.

--Chuck, that may be you, but
me, I crossed the green mountain
I slept by the sea.
you’re walkin’ in dreams
where black is the color
and nothing the number.

Bob, I got to tell you
I’m sorry for my wife
I’m sorry for anyone’s wife.
If you want me, find me clinging to a freight car,
Find me underground.
But you’ll never find me
vagrant in the rain, nabbed by a rookie cop,
a skirt, no less,
in Long Branch, New Jersey.

-- Angela Ball

James Cummins writes:

As with most of David's prompts, this one resulted in some terrific entries.  I went with Angela Ball's poem for the first prize, but there was a good pool to pick from (I counted eight entries as possibles).  It came down to some great lines.  Angela wrote (in Buk's voice) "I'm sorry for my wife / I'm sorry for anyone's wife" which seemed to me to combine the compassion B. tried to keep hidden with the world-weariness we love about the guy.  And the ending, referring to Dylan's run-in with the police in 2009, who thought he was a homeless vagrant, was perfect; the word "skirt" was inspired.  George Schaefer's prose-poem "scene" takes second; it combines the grittiness of many of the entries with a lyric grace I love.  "The bluebird in him allows him to order a round for the idealistic young troubadour" and "Poetry only happens when nothing else can" are two examples.  And again, the ending is perfect.  Finally, Adam Baron's poem gets honorable mention for the use of the word "dumb," the moon sitting on Bukowski's solipsistic rim, and the friendly atmosphere of two schmucks having a moment together.  The difference between these three and at least four or five other entries is as thin as the bill Buk slides into his favorite pinball machine.  Thanks to all.  

George Schafer's prose poem (second place):

When Charles Bukowski Met Bob Dylan

A jaded old bard pounds a shot of J.D. and mocks an idealistic young troubadour. “So just how many beers must one man drink before he’s allowed to pass out?” The bartender chuckles at the joke. The young troubadour debates if Jesus will ever forgive these sins. Loose leaf papers holding his poems gets blown away in the wind. With a soul deader than a dead Christmas tree, the jaded old bard orders another beer and another shot. The bluebird in him allows him to order a round for the idealistic young troubadour. After all, poetry only happens when nothing else can. The sooner this kid learns the ways of the world the better. The young troubadour claims everyone gets stoned so he can abide. He pulls up a stool and throws down the shot. Old poet says “Don’t try.”

Adam Baron's poem (third place)

When Charles Bukowski Met Bob Dylan

Night fell, broke.
One day they'll reward you old man.
Chuck laughed. Me? Not me, but I'll tell you
this: if I knew guitar I'd strum the
moon out of the dumb sky. I'd make it sit on
the edge of my glass - and stare
at me for a change.
But you don't, Bob said
and Chuck laughed. Then I'll leave it
where it is, which he did, and
though Bob tries now and then, he
can't shift it.

"Modernist Lament" [by James Cummins]

Modernist Lament

When his gods are fragments, man’s of a piece;
But once he put his Higher Self in charge,
Man languished in a dualistic grief,
Always seeking a demon he could purge.
The desert was empty, so Self learned late
It didn’t have to bellow like a Fool—
Dark rants about its destiny and fate,
Prostrate before a statue of a bull.
Then ‘new man’ rose—hypocrite lecturer—
And the Obsequious found they could sway
Whole empires, built on fault-lines of the Slave.
Now artists are agents-provocateur,
Returning home to Ithaca’s blue bay,
Lashed to the mast against the song and wave.

 

From Recalcitrant Actors (2021, Dos Madres Press) by James Cummins, who judged this year's BAP poetry challenge. Tomorrow we will post his pick for the best submitted poem titled "When Charles Bukowski Met Bob Dylan." 

Poems on Dylan & Bukowski: only two days left to get your entries in

On September 02, 2021 we accounced

"When Charles Bukowski Met Bob Dylan": A Contest

As we head into Labor Day weekend, we announce a new contest:

"When Charles Bukowski Met Bob Dylan" 

With this as your title, write a maximum of 14 lines (verse) or 140 words (prose).

Post your entry in the comments field.

Entries will be judged on the criteria of excellence, lucidity, wit, and brevity. Prizes, including a copy of The Best American Poetry 2021, will be given to the best and to the briefest coherent piece of writing. 

Judge: Jim Cummins 

Contest end date Sept 30

Previous BAP contests were judged by Mark Strand, Paul Violi, and Mark Bibbins.

http://www.bestamericanpoetry.com/pages/contest1winner.html
http://www.bestamericanpoetry.com/pages/contest2winner.html

http://www.bestamericanpoetry.com/pages/contest3winner.html

See the winners for 2007 and 2009.

To see the entries, check the comments field here -- and click here for a couple of others:

https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2021/09/when-charles-bukowski-met-bob-dylan-terence-winch.html 

"When Charles Bukowski Met Bob Dylan": A Contest

As we head into Labor Day weekend, we announce a new contest:

"When Charles Bukowski Met Bob Dylan" 

 

With this as your title, write a maximum of 14 lines (verse) or 140 words (prose).

 

Post your entry in the comments field.

 

Entries will be judged on the criteria of excellence, lucidity, wit, and brevity. Prizes, including a copy of The Best American Poetry 2021, will be given to the best and to the briefest coherent piece of writing. 

 

Judge: Jim Cummins (pictured left with a poet friend, circa 2009; photo credit Stacey Lehman/ One Fifth)

 

Contest end date Sept 30

 

Previous BAP contests were judged by Mark Strand, Paul Violi, and Mark Bibbins.

http://www.bestamericanpoetry.com/pages/contest1winner.html
http://www.bestamericanpoetry.com/pages/contest2winner.html

http://www.bestamericanpoetry.com/pages/contest3winner.html

See the winners for 2007 and 2009.

 

To see the entries, check the comments field below -- and click here for a couple of others:

https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2021/09/when-charles-bukowski-met-bob-dylan-terence-winch.html  

Good luck!

Do you know who composed the theme of Perry Mason?

It was Fred Steiner, who died at age 88, at his home in the town of Ajijic in the Mexican state of Jalisco.

but let's not overlook, Jerry Goldsmith, who wrote the music for Patton and did some of the incidental music for many episodes of Perry Mason,

and while we're at it, let's saluter another Jerry, Jerry Fielding, who wrote the music of The Wild Bunch.

"Cats" [by James Cummins]

When Eliot wrote his thesis at Harvard,
He said philosophers doing philosophy was “ridiculous”—
That two thousand years of this insanity had gone on
Because they tried to explain existence
From the point-of-view of a platform outside it,
Which didn’t, and couldn’t, exist.  One has only
One's sightlines; and wherever you find yourself,
You're in the middle; and your sightlines
Are better or worse depending on the intelligence
You bring to whatever it is you’re looking at.
Avuncular language-riddles infuriated him,
And he made his disgust quite clear in his thesis.
Harvard offered him a chair on the basis of these ruminations;
And after he said no, Bertrand Russell screwed his wife.

From Recalcitrant Actors by James Cummins (2021). Published by Dos Madres (www.dosmadres.com). Cummins is pictured with John Ashbery, circa 2009.

Between the Lines [by James Cummins]

                     after A Moveable Feast

We only have Papa’s account of this,
That Scott Fitzgerald asked him to weigh in
With ‘absolute honesty’ on the question
That filled Fitzgerald’s heart with fear and dread:
Was he big enough?  Was he man enough
To please a woman?  “Zelda?” his friend asked.
Scott nodded.  “Yes, Zelda.  Who else?”

It’s clear Hemingway wants to reassure
Fitzgerald with a comforting response.
He fumes at women.  “They’re all alike. 
They want to destroy a man—it’s true!
Crazy Zelda’s trying to kill you.”
Scott looks up from his cherry tart:
“You don’t know anything about Zelda!”
Hemingway backs off that one like hot
Potato soup dropped in his lap by one
Of old Michaud’s careless waiters. 
He dips a spoon in his own cherry tart;
Outside he hears the racket of a car.

“Have you tried a pillow?” he asks quietly.
“You’ve got to get some purchase on that slope.
A pillow can facilitate your mount.”
Scott stares at his wine glass.  “I never know
Whether I’m in or not,” he says.
“When I ask, she gets disgusted.  Cries.”

At this Ernest almost upsets his wine.
He can’t abide a woman’s tears—he can’t!
They’ve tried their tricks on him and found
He’s what a man should be: a stone. 
They’ve tried the “too small” line before;
And sure, he’d spent some sleepless night
Reviewing his performance in the sack;
But if a woman can’t be satisfied,
He wasn’t going to take that on himself.

“What if she’s right?  What if I’m just too small?
Scott’s question broke through his friend’s reverie,
Who then slammed his hand down on the table:
“Let’s check it out!  Let’s go to le water.”
Scott suddenly looked blank.  “Well, I don’t know,”
He said.  “I mean, they do that in Pigalle—”
“For Christ’s sake, Scottie, I don’t want your balls!
You asked for my ‘absolute honesty.’
Let’s get some sort of assessment in hand.
So to speak.”  “So to speak,” Scottie sighed.

“Michaud!”  Now Hemingway was all business.
“Michaud, come help us out?  And bring Pierre.”
Scott looked alarmed.  “Ernie, old man—old sport—”
But Hemingway brushed all dissent aside.
“Don’t ‘old sport’ me!  Save it for your prose.
Come on, we’ll have a good old show-and-tell—
You show, the rest of us will tell.”  But Scott
Held firm, and only he and Hemingway
Repaired to le water, the dank men’s room,
Where Scott undid his belt and dropped his trou.

Now Hemingway’s a bit unclear about
What happens next: we’re given to believe
He checks Scott out, and then they reappear,
Attabler, with their cherry tarts and wine.
But old Michaud fills in the blanks for us.
One of his waiters, Francois, had the runs
That day, and so was seated in a stall
Reading Le Monde when Scott pulled down his pants
Francois’ account is somewhat vague because
He had to stare through a narrow crack;
But evidently Hemingway squatted,
Then got down on all fours so he could find
The ‘angle of the dangle’ as he called it.|
And Francois swears he heard him say,
“Pull it a couple times, see if it moves.”
But Francois’ English wasn’t, say, the King’s.

Now they’re sitting above their lunch again,
And Ernest is expansive.  This might mean
What Scott showed his friend in le water
Wouldn’t keep Hemingway awake at night.
“It’s not the size that counts; it’s the motion—”
His pal was one big friendly smile.
“Let’s hit the Louvre and size the statues up.
You’ll see—their scale is pretty much the truth.” 
A frightening image flared in Scottie’s mind:
Ernie measuring statues with a tape.

The Louvre was just a short walk from Michaud’s.
Scott stammered out, “I really should get back”—
Ernie seemed more obsessed with … that ... than he.
“Zelda can't make you any more a man
Than some whore you could pick up in Pigalle.
A pal can boost your confidence, that’s all.”
But Scott was adamant outside the bar.
They let the tarts settle and had a smoke;
Ernie studied his friend as they stood there.
Was that the problem then?  Scott was a poof?
He’d never judge a friend.  Then he thought
Maybe he’d pushed him too far for one day.
“I guess you’re right,” he said, “it’s getting late.
The Louvre’s a project for another day.”

Except they did go to the Louvre that day;|
And Hemingway explained to Fitzgerald,
“The proper measurement of man is man.”
Scott still had his theories about finance,
How these abstractions can suck out your soul;
And Ernest still thought life a game
Between whose lines a man’s soul finds its measure.
They stopped at Dingo’s on the way back home
To drink apéritifs and watch the sun
Slip through the pink clouds of the Paris dusk.
Ernie held up his glass to catch the light,
And then intoned, without cracking a smile:
“A rosé is a rosé is a rosé.”

Poetic License [by Jim Cummins]

I booked a four-way once.  I was sitting in a bar when War & Peace sidled up and sat down on the stool next to me.  "Gotta light?" she asked in a heavy Moscow accent.  "I don't burn books," I replied; she laughed a long, low, melodious Russian laugh.  "Actually," she said, "I only smoke afterwards," and winked, as she gently dragged a long blood-red fingernail across my cheek.  "Have you met my friend, Naked Lunch?"  I'd been so transfixed by the Russian beauty--there was so much of her!--that I hadn't seen the thin, waif-ish tart slipping up behind me.  She looked like a walking STD--tattoos, piercings, nose & navel rings, wearing a black leather jacket that couldn't conceal the fact she had nothing on underneath.  She must've seen the involuntary look of revulsion that passed over my face before I could readjust my bar mask.  She looked hurt.  "I know," she whispered, "but I bring a lot of coke to the table."  I hadn't thought of that; this could be my lucky night!  We continued to drink until W&P suggested we go over to her apartment and "sort things out."  I agreed, but Naked Lunch said, "First we need a little spice."  We pretended we didn't know what she meant but she knew we did.  So we looked around the room.  I saw Beloved sitting at a table with The Bluest Eye, but NL pointed out that Beloved was too old and TBE a little too young.  War & Peace agreed.  She said, "I met The Intuitionist at a signing once," motioning with her chin toward a table in the corner where TI sat, drinking alone.  "Whoa," I said.  "That's too spicy for me!" and we all laughed.  "How about a poet?" Naked Lunch asked.  "Don't turn around but Thomas & Beulah is sitting a few tables over."  T&B was writing assiduously in a notebook, next to a half-empy (or half-full, depending on how you looked at it!) glass of wine.  "I'm in," I grinned, and W&P and NL flipped a coin to see which one would make the approach.  As it turned out, T&B was more than eager to join us--and in fact, showed us all what "poetic license" really

meant, "all night long," as the song goes.  Damn, I love curling up with a good book!

"What Men Want" [by James Cummins]

What Men Want

A man wants to move

with cat-like grace

through his life, spill his seed

occasionally, but never

bear responsibility for it;

win the love of his peers

and the veneration

of the older men while

commanding the respect

of the young Turks, too;

then, finally, at the end,

lean a still-powerful forearm

on the frame of a window,

gaze out over the sea

one last time and flick

a glowing cigarette butt

into the garden.

-- James Cummins

Drinking With Grad Students [by James Cummins]

You have to let these poets, half your age,
have every way with you they hanker for--
like stuff you in a bamboo tiger cage,
or stomp your eyeballs on the barroom floor.
The beer helps them imagine grinding "smokes"
out on your hands--they'd slide stilettos in
between your ribs and thread bicycle spokes
through both your balls like shish kabobs; and grin.
It's just their fantasies they've trapped you in;
tomorrow all this stuff will be forgot--
they'll get back to the rhythm of the days.
You'll all agree this is the "Age of Tin,"
and all of us are wise when we adopt
the cool, protective-coloring of praise.

Jim Cummins Takes a Noir Detour

We date the “classic” noir period from 1941's The Maltese Falcon (or even Orson Welles' 1940 Citizen Kane, itself a mystery about Fate) to the 1959 Welles tour-de-force Touch of Evil.  But noir wasn't noir until the French got hold of America's backlog of films after 1945.  Hollywood had to flush its war film stockpile through the pipeline before it could release its noirs on the Continent; and when it did the French, the beautiful French, went crazy.  Partly as a result, Detour is often regarded as the Ur-noir though it was made in 1945 on a very un-Hollywoodian shoestring. 

I can think of at least two reasons why this is so.  One is that films like Falcon and Murder My Sweet, the latter from 1943, were still “Hollywood” movies.  Despite the noir fixtures such as the private detective, the hard-boiled language, the femme fatale, and the sleazy subject matter (all elements that poets love!), Falcon still has elements of the filmed play, especially the last third, as well as “comic” moments such as Spade's anger ploy in Gutman's suite, followed by Sam laughing at himself in the hallway, looking at his hand shaking with adrenaline.  And Murder has the unlikely romance between Philip Marlowe and Ann. 

Detour has the requisite noir elements: good girl/bad girl contrast, downward spiral of events, an emotionally vicious femme fatale. It also has a voiceover narrator, a la Murder My Sweet, but in this movie the narrator is hugely unreliable; we don't identify with Al as we do with Phil. We aren't sure he didn't kill the guy, steal his money, clothes and car, and go whistling down the road.  And the “accidental” strangulation behind a locked door strains credulity. We don't even know whether Al is in fact a talented musician, or that Vera might just have wanted to get away from this loser. After Vera emotionally eviscerates him, it turns out she's dying of TB and wants him to have sex with her? The whole story might be a pack of lies, and Al merely a self-pitying narcissist.

The second reason Detour is often thought of as the first noir is its great noir subject: Fate.  Now if you believe, as I do, that “character is fate,” then you have a shortcut into understanding noir.  I wonder if poets secretly appreciate this even if, to be politically correct, they must blame social and cultural processes as the reason for everyone's unhappiness. And if you believe in great cosmic manipulations of a supernatural sort, then good luck to you.  Detour is about “fate” only in the sense that in 1945 the word still held a factor of fear and malevolence shrouded in thousands of years of human superstition.  As a word, it still had, even has, poetic resonance. In Detour Al is merely a sniveling, whiney, wretch-in-denial loser who blames his shortcomings on others.  He's the personification of self-pity. And at least in one case, probably two, a murderer.

No one could deny, of course, that social and cultural processes carry great weight and power in influencing one's external “destiny.”  But noir is about the inner life, and this is one of the main reasons any writer loves these movies.  “Fate” informs all noir because human beings are weak, yet they must act against the background of social norms which we the audience provide.  We're the Greek chorus, except that we deliciously slip the bonds of “normal” behavior and partake with gusto of noir's shady deals, viciousness, pathological sex, and black-and-white photography.  What's not to like?

"Feeling A Snack Coming On" [by Jim Cummins]

Maybe the best thing to compare it to
Would be the old cowboy-and-Indian movies
We used to endure on Friday night TV
Or Saturday matinees, before Psycho hit.
Indians whooping and chasing stagecoaches;
A strong-but-vulnerable woman holding a rifle,
Her face streaked with dirt, a white sleeve torn;
Or a lone half-naked buck sneaking up
Behind a blue-clad soldier to slit his throat—
Until the soldier proves the better athlete,
Wrestling the knife away and giving the Injun
What-for, before bayonetting the poor bastard
And rolling his painted body into the canyon.
A 16-ounce Pepsi could last a double feature.

So you’re riding through a desert, a third-rate
Monument Valley—this is no A-lister—
And the silence is starting to surround you.
Forty miles to the next pony-express station,
Where there’s water and human interaction
(Though you’re very appreciative of your horse!);
And the vast emptiness of endless desert
Is beginning to seem a metaphor for your life.
That’s the first sign your blood sugar levels
Are starting to fall.  Maybe it was the coffee
After dinner—never a good idea, that, but
You wanted to be alert crossing this terrain;
Now you’re starting to feel a little hollowed out.
That’s when the first cookie shows up.

It stands on a ridge, a sentinel silhouetted
Against sun.  You try to make out its markings.
Chocolate chip?  Member of the Oatmeals?
There’s icing, but what does the icing mean?
Then, to the left, two or three more cookies
Appear, their frosting glinting in the sun.
This is getting serious.  It’s as if they can see
The gnawing in the pit of your stomach.
Suddenly, up ahead, many cookies, a whole tribe
Of cookies, as if they’ve been waiting in ambush:
Butterscotch cookies, pecan candies, cookies
With chocolate swirls across their faces, jellies.
You eat until your throat is dry as the desert,
Hoping you’ll soon hear the bugles of milk.

4/12 /20

from the archives; first published April 14, 2020.

Poetic License [by Jim Cummins]

 

I booked a four-way once.  I was sitting in a bar when War & Peace sidled up and sat down on the stool next to me.  "Gotta light?" she asked in a heavy Moscow accent.  "I don't burn books," I replied; she laughed a long, low, melodious Russian laugh.  "Actually," she said, "I only smoke afterwards," and winked, as she gently dragged a long blood-red fingernail across my cheek.  "Have you met my friend, Naked Lunch?"  I'd been so transfixed by the Russian beauty--there was so much of her!--that I hadn't seen the thin, waif-ish tart slipping up behind me.  She looked like a walking STD--tattoos, piercings, nose & navel rings, wearing a black leather jacket that couldn't conceal the fact she had nothing on underneath.  She must've seen the involuntary look of revulsion that passed over my face before I could readjust my bar mask.  She looked hurt.  "I know," she whispered, "but I bring a lot of coke to the table."  I hadn't thought of that; this could be my lucky night!  We continued to drink until W&P suggested we go over to her apartment and "sort things out."  I agreed, but Naked Lunch said, "First we need a little spice."  We pretended we didn't know what she meant but she knew we did.  So we looked around the room.  I saw Beloved sitting at a table with The Bluest Eye, but NL pointed out that Beloved was too old and TBE a little too young.  War & Peace agreed.  She said, "I met The Intuitionist at a signing once," motioning with her chin toward a table in the corner where TI sat, drinking alone.  "Whoa," I said.  "That's too spicy for me!" and we all laughed.  "How about a poet?" Naked Lunch asked.  "Don't turn around but Thomas & Beulah is sitting a few tables over."  T&B was writing assiduously in a notebook, next to a half-empy (or half-full, depending on how you looked at it!) glass of wine.  "I'm in," I grinned, and W&P and NL flipped a coin to see which one would make the approach.  As it turned out, T&B was more than eager to join us--and in fact, showed us all what "poetic license" really

meant, "all night long," as the song goes.  Damn, I love curling up with a good book!

Drinking With Grad Students [by James Cummins]

You have to let these poets, half your age,

have every way with you they hanker for--

like stuff you in a bamboo tiger cage,

or stomp your eyeballs on the barroom floor.

The beer helps them imagine grinding "smokes"

out on your hands--they'd slide stilettos in

between your ribs and thread bicycle spokes

through both your balls like shish kabobs; and grin.

It's just their fantasies they've trapped you in;

tomorrow all this stuff will be forgot--

they'll get back to the rhythm of the days.

You'll all agree this is the "Age of Tin,"

and all of us are wise when we adopt

the cool, protective-coloring of praise.

"A Snail is What It Was" [by James Cummins]

Donovan thought Bob was jokin’
About the old San Remo—
How back then shit they were smokin’
Would put to shame D.’s “primo.”

All this was well before the laughs
At Max’s Kansas City:
Bob still carried a photograph
Of Joan Baez’s titty.

It seemed all Dylan cared about
Was conquering some snatch.
They smoked some more; then Bob was out;
He had a plane to catch.

We’re all failed stars, too, by this time;
Though some have way more loot.
D. figured Dylan for a mime,
While Bob thought D. a fruit.

Christ, let the purple rain rain down,
And let the winds go howling!
Don’t send me down to Hell to pound
Reruns of Father Dowling.

The Perry Mason Screen Tests [for Jim Cummins]

"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]