The Best American Poetry

Catullus #25 [translated by Molly Arden]

Catullus # 25

Thallus, you faggot: softer than the fur on a rabbit,

or down of pillow, or flap of ear, or phallus

dangling from your old man crotch, festooned with cobwebs,

are you, and still as greedy a thief as a gonif gale [?]

[line missing here]

Give me back the things you stole from me: my coat,

the handkerchief from Spain, my etchings from Bythinia,

things you claim your parents passed down to you.

Get your sticky hands off my stuff, and send them back

or else I swear I’ll take my rod and kick your ass

and leave my marks on your pathetic body

and make you twist like a toy battleship

in the bathtub of the sea when a hurricane hits.

-- translated by Molly Arden

My Back Story [by Molly Arden]

 Molly enjoys writing poems while walking. She has led a peripatetic life -- at various times she has lived in each of the New England states plus Florida and Arizona. At 19 she was a junior finalist for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. As a sophomore in college she and three friends developed a brand of "Bircher muesli" cereal that blended the Swiss (Familia) type with American hippie granola. The scheme proved a success. And when she and her friends sold their shares to Kellogg's, she was able to live on the proceeds for five years in Cleveland where she learned Latin and began writing poetry.  She went to graduate school at Cornell for one year and translated Catullus. She has worked as a research librarian at two universities. In 2002 she served as associate editor on the "F-U" anthology David Lehman edited for Slope Editions. With Reb Livingston she founded No Tell Motel. She used to blog over at molly arden says so but that was before three children appeared on the scene. She plans to continue her "free translations" of Catullus thinking of them as the kind of mask Yeats liked to put on. She has had a kindergarten crush on Jim Cummins since reading his poem about violins and violence. There are days when looking out the window is enough for her. There's a sculpture of snow in the shape of trees, branches, bushes, boughs, and the floor of the earth is whiter than fresh laundered sheets.  

Sexy Poets Quiz [by Molly Arden]

Match the poet with the quote from his or her poem:

1.  "I groped for him before I knew"

2.  "you slip/ half-a-foot deep into someone you like"

3.  "new memory like a seltzer in my crotch"

4.  "he kissed her Anne Sexton/ and she returned the favor, caressing

            his Ted Berrigan"

5.  "that slippery ingress ... its complicated fragrance"

6.  "Gently, with my lips/ loosen the button./ Have them slip into my hands/

            Like two freshly poured beer mugs"

7.  "she wanted him hung up on her breasts, not on her feet"

8.  "The clam shell opens./ The oyster is eaten."

9.  "At each beat of his heart it threw/ An odd little nod my way.  From the

            slot of the spout/ Extended a drop of transparent viscous goo"

10. "nude ghosts seeking each other out in the silence"

Charles Simic                Marge Piercy                    Albert Goldbarth

Emily Dickinson             David Lehman                  Allen Ginsberg

Elizabeth Alexander       Michael Ryan                    Jim Cummins

                                    W. H. Auden

If you know the right match-ups, please let me know -- in a comment.  I need to know because I lost the sheet on which I wrote the identifyuing names. It's not easy being a mother. Also, if you have a good sexy line thaty belongs in a poem that has not yet been written, go right ahead and let us know. It will enter the public domain of ouir collective consciousness. Immature poets imitate. Mature poets steal. --Molly

Professor Frake [by Molly Arden]

Professor Frake

Is a hard-ass; takes pride
in the low grades he gives; 
publishes essays; gives offense;
carries the lamp of a seeker of truth
in a benighted age of compulsory bullshit;
but, hell, this guy’s a fake, and it’s irritating
that he’s so goddamn calculating. 
I don't believe a word he says.
The more he insults the more praise
he covets and seems to get
from the poetry-hating propeller set.

(adapted from Catullus by Molly Arden)

I Like Moll Flanders [by Molly Arden]

 

I like the book by DeFoe.
The movie is only so so.
But I should put that more positively.
The movie is not ungood. It's lively!
My favorite left-handed compliment
is what this guy I dated
said when he saw me naked.
He said my tits were underrated.

-- Molly Arden

PS. Nearly from the day I was born,
I loved the voice of Lena Horne.

 

I like the book by DeFoe.
The movie is only so so.
But I should put that more positively.
The movie is not ungood. It's lively!
My favorite left-handed compliment
is what this guy I dated
said when he saw me naked.
He said my tits were underrated.

-- Molly Arden

PS. Nearly from the day I was born,
I loved the voice of Lena Horne.

"The Professionals" [by Laura Cronk]

 

Who decorates movie sets, sitcom stages,
the kitchens used to advertise paper towels?
Who decorates doctor’s offices, the suite
of offices of a university president, of
a Wall Street accounting firm? Who chose
the paint color for the steel doors at
the bus terminal, the window casements
of the post office, who picked out the awning
at the hospital entrance? All of the patients
in the ER waiting room are held in an embrace
of turquoise and beige that was someone’s
decision fifteen years ago. The spy in the new
series has art on the walls of her D.C. house.
When did she hang it? A set designer wonders this
while hammering the nails. In the evenings
and on weekends, I make the decisions one by one.
Mid-century with a Victorian nod, Farmhouse
Minimalism, Scavenger Maximalism
with a sense of humor and on a budget.
It’s never quite right and never done.
The Shakers hung their chairs on walls.
They shook together but never touched.
Is that how they could do it? Make a home
and live in it, all at once?

from Lit Hub (February 5, 2021), a feature of four poems from Laura Cronk's new book Ghost Hour (Persea Books).
The ghost hour is "when middle age suddenly crashes into what one thought was merely the end of the middle of youth." -- Craig Morgan Teicher. 
https://lithub.com/four-poems-by-laura-cronk/

Molly Arden writes a poem [by Molly Arden]

I started writing this poem some years ago when I spent a semester at Magdalen College in Oxford. It turned up today when I took out my Magdalen College folder and remembered having lunch with David and Stacey when they visited Oxford that November. It was the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of the new century and there was a convention of poets and critics from different countries discussing the influence of Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, and other so-called World War I poets. (David gave a paper on "Prufrock" as an anti-war poem.) I came across the poem today, which had nothing to do with the conference but with a tendency in literary criticism. Although I like what I wrote, it sems incomplete. My working title is "The Critic," but I'm not wedded to it. I invite readers of the BAP blog to submit possible 6-line endings. My thanks to David Lehman for being such a dapper sport and for pointing out that the poem needs six more lines. -- MA, 15  May 2021

<<<
The Critic

Gives offense; is seen as a truthteller
is an age of compulsory bullshit; but, hell,
this guy’s a fake, and it’s irritating
that he is so goddamn calculating. 
I don't believe a word he says.
The more he insults the more praise
he covets and seems to get
from the poetry-hating propeller set.
>>>

My (Old) Bio [by Molly Arden]

 Molly enjoys writing poems while walking. She has led a peripatetic life -- at various times she has lived in each of the New England states plus Florida and Arizona. At 19 she was a junior finalist for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. As a sophomore in college she and three friends developed a brand of "Bircher muesli" cereal that blended the Swiss (Familia) type with American hippie granola. The scheme proved a success. And when she and her friends sold their shares to Kellogg's, she was able to live on the proceeds for five years in Cleveland where she learned Latin and began writing poetry.  She went to graduate school at Cornell for one year and translated Catullus. She has worked as a research librarian at two universities. In 2002 she served as associate editor on the "F-U" anthology David Lehman edited for Slope Editions. With Reb Livingston she founded No Tell Motel. She used to blog over at molly arden says so but that was before three children appeared on the scene. She plans to continue her "free translations" of Catullus thinking of them as the kind of mask Yeats liked to put on. She has had a kindergarten crush on Jim Cummins since reading his poem about violins and violence. There are days when looking out the window is enough for her. There's a sculpture of snow in the shape of trees, branches, bushes, boughs, and the floor of the earth is whiter than fresh laundered sheets.

"So I said like why so he said like maybe" [by Molly Arden]

So I said like why so he said like maybe my place?

So he said I'm on the job around the cock
So I said that's hard
So he said what
So I said around the clock
So he said yes
that's what i meant 
like it was like he looked straight
at you when he spoke
of guns versus flowers
or Walt Disney versus Picasso
as the century's greatest artist
everyone will chill
so I said typo
so he said type-A
so then we unambiguously
did the thing that has no name,
the secret everyone knows
so no one ever spills it.

Lovely to be the queen of the wards!

-- Molly Arden

Ed note: From the archive; first posted August 13, 2008. Molly asks me to mention the symposium she is organizing on the question raised in the poem: namely, whether Walt Disney or Pablo Picasso may be said to have been the greatest artist of the 20th century. DL

"Estelle" [by Molly Arden]

Mom was somewhere north
of the kitchen watching the new girl, Estelle,
sashaying in her crisp apron with a dust-mop.
The bed posts trembled when her poof
passed over them as if they were living men.

Molly read a romance that first winter night
after Estelle put away the dishes fed the dogs 
and hung the wet laundry on the lines outside.
While she read the wind dried the garments 
in the cold February wind, on the verge of flying.

Both girls watched from their windows
as shivering sky creatures wore and inflated 
the pants and shorts of the daytime household.
Molly shivered thinking of her maid, Estelle,
who lived among the camisoles and slippers.

She lived among the camisoles and slippers
of the household like a fox in a nest of feathers.
Molly saw Estelle after her Saturday bath
when everyone else slept and kissed her own
breasts thinking of Estelle’s rounder ones.

"I Took a Creative Writing Class" [by Molly Arden]

 

Everybody wanted to sleep with
On one side
Each line had to

And embrace

For example a cup
Equals
A pearl necklace means

Where can I go when
Why did you think I didn’t

Toys

If you left on the last

Three straight times
He didn’t love
He loved
Her
Me

 

art by Nelina Trubach-Moshnikova

 

"Do I Have Opinions?" [by Molly Arden]

 Yes!

I believe in Romeo, as Juliet said

when she lay in the coffin pretending to be dead.

That Tonto is no good, said the ambush chief

and I, guzzling gas, can get no relief.

The father figure who looked like Charlie Chan

walked like Charlie Chaplin when he kicked the can.

 

Lindsay Lohan is an also-ran, 

not an alloy but a metal impure,

and the disease will have no cure

when my reasoning, sound but obsolete as bonnets,

has gone the way of Sir Thomas Wyatt's sonnets.

 

Because you can't strut your stuff

when you're old and gray

and there isn't time enough,

there'll be some changes made

beside the hemlock tree today

in the sweetness of the shade.

 

So I say yes, and I pray

for a change of heart or in the weather

or the bread and butter eaten by Werther

who has to decide whether

or not or not or not or not or not

nobody wants you when you're doubt and out

and this I know without a doubt

let the luck that was once a blaze remain an ember

I swear to be true to you come December

as long as we're together.

 

-- Molly Arden

"In 1976, When She Was Born" [a sonnet by Molly Arden]

Life was dull in 1976.
Dad had to read "Ivanhoe" and write a report.
Sex was not yet Mom’s favorite sport.
The only rhyme that came to mind was "dicks."

Mom was somewhere north
of the Mass / NH border.
She was just following an order,
not calculating its moral worth.

She was on vacation
feeling unclever
and not happily after ever.

He promised to wait
for her return to the state
of eternal temptation.

See also http://www.coconutpoetry.org/arden1.html

"My Husband is a Left Wing Snob" [by Molly Arden]

My husband is a left wing snob and I love him anyway 
because the road to salvation leads through the tunnel
of sexual intercourse. I have read de Sade
as well as the Story of O, My Secret Life,
and the Song of Songs and I know because

My husband has all the resentments of a lifelong protester
instead of accepting reality as it is, and I have to listen
when he’s in the driver’s seat and I’m in the death seat,

though the very words death seat bring me back
to bed, to being in the death seat when we’re in bed,

and orgasm is a distinct possibility, because
he’s not a selfish lover, and that to me is more important
than his hateful leftwing snobbery.

"Operation Smart Blonde" [by Molly Arden]

I have never told anyone about this--that for years I worked for the Secret Service. I was part of an elite force consisting solely of blonde women. Once, I had to travel to the Middle East as a spy, or rather, a kind of special envoy for the U.S government. In preparation I dyed my hair platinum and bought several slinky outfits.  I complained to my supervisor of clothing that I was too smart to be marketed in this way to which he responded, au contraire.  My job, to seduce a militant religious leader, whose name I can never confide. He was influential in politics, a renowned scholar of poetry and philosophy who had spent some time in jail, and Uncle Sam wanted access to his inner lair, his secret thoughts and habits. Wherever he went, men with ski hats and masks followed.  I can’t tell too many details, of course, this being a top-secret thing, but I imagined myself impressing him with my own knowledge of philosophy. I was very nervous. I felt as if my hair glowed like a light bulb in the limo in which the scholar and I were driving to an unknown destination. When I asked, where are we going, he answered, in his heavy accent, all destinations are unknown, and then poured me a glass of wine.  He wanted to know if I knew the truth—why I was there. Before I had taken a sip, I admitted that I had studied poetry and philosophy, and had once believed truth existed. It was the wrong thing to say because he immediately began asking questions. All I could recall of philosophy were details of how certain philosophers related to women or the bedroom. How Aristotle thought women were less interesting than shellfish, for example. I drank quickly in hopes it would give me inspiration. Before I knew it I was babbling hopelessly about Montaigne’s theory of sexual impotence, Kierkegaard’s fear and trembling, his wish never to get hitched.  My head was spinning. The last thing I remember, I was talking about Descartes, laughing, “I don’t think like a blonde, even though I am one, so forgive me.” That’s when he began to recite poetry, or I think it was poetry, and I compared poems to men—how just when the going gets good, there’s this blank space coming up the page. I felt like an airplane being swallowed by a cloud. Or was I the cloud swallowing the plane?

"Editing Sex Tips" [by Molly Arden]

Just the other day, I was editing my forthcoming book, The Handbook of Sex Tips, rereading the questionnaire:

Who can say which is best? The beauty of suggestion. The moment of bliss. Or the memory afterward?   

“What do think, Mr. Penis?” I asked. Mr. Penis, for those who don’t know, is a character from Catullus. He is not known for his insights. Not surprisingly, he said nothing.

Gaze wistfully into one another’s eyes. Tell me. What do you see? Mr. Penis remained unresponsive. Like Thallus, he has gone soft in the head and often drifts off to sleep when reading in bed.

Which of these terms best describes your wife?

She’s on you like white on rice. 

She butters your biscuits.

She’s the smoke and the fire. And lit at both ends.

She can tend to her own knitting.

Which best describes your husband?

He’s all that and a bag of chips.

He’s stuck to you like a hair in a biscuit. 

He’s a pig in a poke.

He has his bird in too many bushes. 

I began to wonder what kind of woman I was.  "Mr. Penis?" I asked. That's when I noticed he had slipped out into the night and left me alone without a word. Or backward glance. I continued reading the questions:

Do you do secret chores for your spouse? Does he notice? What are you wearing tonight?  I went to the closet and pulled out my silk peach camisole. “Now aren’t you precious?” I thought to myself as I sashayed across the carpeted bedroom.  I considered writing the next chapter of my life—about the return of Mr. Penis. 

"Of Self and Shadow" [by Molly Arden]

1.

Molly is the only woman 
she knows who talks about herself
in the third person. She used to like
people but now she's a misanthrope
who has read Moliere.
O, to be a famous recluse!

2.

Molly surprised a shadow
flitting in the mirror behind her this morning.
Every morning Molly’s beauty deepens.
This shadow, Molly tells herself,
is the future. The corpus of your beliefs
shaped by your gaze to be the state

of the art of melancholia modified by
a sublime narcissism – that’s what
she wants as she celebrates herself.
But the shadow wanders in the woods
and gazes at her face in the stream
where outgrown beliefs gather and flow.

3.

And yet among them is a long dismissed city
under the earth, inhabited by potters making 
rows and rows of likenesses of Molly accurate
to the mole on her inner thigh, an army of her 
waiting like Emperor Qinshihuang soldiers
to surface after an earthquake to possess all men.
There are no outgrown beliefs, Molly, look again. 

4. 

“Look again at this city of angels, this time
with the sound of a trumpet solo in your ears,”
she tells herself. The advice is easy to pass along,

but she only has eyes for the “you” of the song,
the you who took advantage of “me,” someone
exactly like you, and you get happy, 

and Molly has the right to sing the blues.

5.

The Nr.3 train wagon has fallen silent. The plague
is taking her elders. How old are you anyway, dear,
she asks herself. She’s never sure if she’s thirty
or seventy. They say the elders’ harvest has begun.
Are you leaving? Will she remain?  
She hears the rain outside and not a word is heard.

This must be the place I will forever report from.

Note: “Paul Violi, whose birthday was July 20, was my workshop teacher when I was starting out. I know this is his birthday because I wrote a poem about the failed attempt to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944, and Paul told me he was born on that very day. So I want to dedicate this poem to him and post it only on July 20." -- MA

Ed. note: The picture above is of Emperor Qin Shihuang.

The Handbook of Sex Tips [by Molly Arden]

 I was on the S bus, staring out the window, wishing I didn’t have to write The Handbook of Sex Tips for Women of a Certain Age, a book which was to just another one of those awful instruction manuals one follows, promising a title, a plot, a heartbreaking conclusion. So far I had only written several entries I knew I could never print:

Dear Reader, let’s face the facts. Not all sex is created equal. Many orgasms are as forgettable as the faces passing by the bus window, each offering just another opportunity to forget a name, an address, a city, perhaps a marriage, that first one to your high school sweet heart who possessed neither sweetness nor heart but he did have a Rottweiller named Ludwig you adored and missed for years after, phoning once or twice a week to ask, May I speak to Ludwig?

Dear Reader, let’s face the facts. Catullus is right. A good Thallus is hard to find. 

Dear Reader, 

 Do you really believe this shit? 

Dear Reader,

I used to think the southern term, rode hard and put away wet, was kind of erotic. Turns out it means, it looks like you've had enough sex for one lifetime.  

Ed. note: The painting "Frenzy of Exultations" (1890) is by the Polish painter Władysław Podkowiński 

Give Me Back My Bloomers! (Catullus 420) [translated by Molly Arden]

 

Thallus, you lump,
Lift your sorry carcass! I want 
no more of your clichés —your
Good things come to those who wait—
I who have waited till the cows come home
and never come—
you of the spontaneous overflow
of what you call—powerful feelings,
words worth nothing.

You who love to brag
You’re a big fish in my small pond . . .

Give me back my underpants
and cigarettes
The ones you say you quit smoking—
I am going back to Paris . . .

Molly's Dream #2 [by Molly Arden]

Molly Arden dreamt that she was living in a city she didn't recognize, it was either Morgentown in West Virginia, or Reno, Nevada. A fast, cold river ran through it. From a stone bridge she saw men in yellow rain slickers working on a dam. The Spanish poets she was staying with were a lively bunch led by someone like his friend Victor Cruz, but not Victor. They were looking forward to performing an oratorio for two voices that she had written about the river. The Victor who was not Victor had already arranged for a young poet to perform one voice, while Molly performed the other. They were going to stand up to their waist in the river and perform for the men on the dam and the audience on the bridge. The day before, a friend of hers had flown in from San Francisco. She was a well-known poet and a powerful performer who wanted to do the part. She spent a great deal of her time since arriving to town on her cell phone, while studying the river, the men, and talking about her troubled life in San Francisco. Molly was conflicted: she had promised the part to Victor's friend, and now she had someone else for the part. The cell phone saved her. "I have to go back to San Francisco tomorrow," her poet friend said, "but I would like to go for a swim in the river." Despite Molly's warnings, the poet went in below the bridge and swam against the roaring water. She came out wet and happy and Molly drove her to the airport. The oratorio was going to be performed as originally intended, all that remained was writing it. She woke up to do just that.

"Arden of Faversham (after a dream I had close to Christmas 2019)" [by Molly Arden]

This year on her Saint's Day, Molly, whose name came from Mary, decided to be Mary Magdalene. She let her hair down, put on her chaste dress, which resembled a burlap sack, grabbed her grandfathe's stick with the carved snakes on it and went to the bar. On Sunday "The Silk Stocking," an establishment owned by two of her friends, opened at 11 for brunch. It had a black board in front that said, "Madonnas and Whores Happy Hour." Crespo, one of the owner was sleepy.

Molly what are you doing in that outfit?

Here to see the play.

What play ?

Andrew of Faversham.

Crespo opened her eyes wide. She was wearing a careless orange sarong.

Molly, that play was performed here in 1968! Our cafe didn't even exist then!

I was born in 1983, Molly said.

You couldn't have seen it then. I heard that this was a small theatre in the Sixities, a place for avantgarde plays.

"Arden of Faversham" is an Elizabethan play, directed by a young Romanian director.

That's possible, but you and I weren't even born when this play was perfomed.

Maybe it's a dream, said Molly. Maybe I'm dreaming I'm Mary Magdalene.

Would you like a coffee?

Yes, please, a grande skim latte with three shots.

I had the coffee and I woke up.

I wrote this in the third person but it happened to me.