The Best American Poetry

Poetry Comic [by Nin Andrews]

 

I went out to eat this week with several friends, and I couldn't believe how complicated it was to complete our order. One friend has celiac; another is lactose intolerant; another is on a low fiber diet; yet another is allergic to peanuts. And then I have a friend with alpha gal syndrome. In these parts, someone always has alpha gal. 

But ordering was the easy part. We had all promised not discuss politics. So we decided to talk about food instead--the foods we love and can eat. They asked me what my favorite food poem was.  Of course, there are too many delicious food poems to choose from, but my first thought was of this one by Diane Ackerman. 

THE CONSOLATION OF APRICOTS
by Diane Ackerman

Especially in early spring,
when the sun offers a thin treacle of warmth,
I love to sit outdoors
and eat sense-ravishing apricots.

Born on sun-drenched trees in Morocco,
the apricots have flown the Atlantic
like small comets, and I can taste
broiling North Africa in their flesh.

Somewhere between a peach and a prayer,
they taste of well water
and butterscotch and dried apples
and desert simooms and lust.

Sweet with a twang of spice,
a ripe apricot is small enough to devour
as two hemispheres.
Ambiguity is its hallmark.

How to eat an apricot:
first warm its continuous curve
in cupped hands, holding it
as you might a brandy snifter,

then caress the velvety sheen
with one thumb, and run your fingertips
over its nap, which is shorter
than peach fuzz, closer to chamois.

Tawny gold with a blush on its cheeks,
an apricot is the color of shame and dawn.
One should not expect to drink wine
at mid-winter, Boethius warned.

What could be more thrilling
than ripe apricots out of season,
a gush of taboo sweetness
to offset the savage wistfulness of early spring?

Always eat apricots at twilight,
preferably while sitting in a sunset park,
with valley lights starting to flicker on
and the lake spangled like a shield.

Then, while a trail of bright ink tattoos the sky,
notice how the sun washes the earth
like a woman pouring her gaze
along her lover’s naked body,

each cell receiving the tattoo of her glance.
Wait for that moment
of arousal and revelation,
then sink your teeth into the flesh of an apricot.

Poetry Comic [by Nin Andrews]

I wouldn't call this a comic exactly, but I've been thinking about revisions a lot lately. In the last month, two friends sent me their manuscripts that had already been accepted for publication and announced, "I want to change everything! What do I do?" I would call this a poet's problem, but then I remember reading that Hemingway rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms 39 times. Dorothy Parker said it took her months to write a single story because if she wrote five words, she edited seven. Amor Towles submitted his most recent book, Table for Two, and then took the book back to work on it some more. He also edits his books between the hardback and paperback editions. 

 

Writing Comic (by Nin Andrews)

 

 

I am always fascinated by the questions poets and writers are asked in interviews and at readings about how they write--as if it's a mystery, or as if there's a recipe. At the same time, I love some of the answers poets and writers give to the question. I like to imagine a student going home and doing whatever these famous writers were said to have done.

Poetry Comic after Jack Myers (by Nin Andrews)

I was thinking of doing a series of comics on the things poets think but don't say. But then, I was reminded of this conversation that took place on an airplane between a surgeon and the much-loved, late poet Jack Myers.  I love that Jack actually SAID that.

Poetry Comic [by Nin Andrews]

I drew this after talking with Tim Seibles about the questions and comments people make at readings or in interviews, or when they just find out you're a poet, and the answers you think---but never say.

Monday Cartoon [by Nin Andrews]

"Suggested by post-game broadcasts.” Radio as the source of action, the white ball "speeding towards its treetop nest, / one-handing the souvenir-to-be / meant to be caught by you or me.”

For more of Nin's cartoons go here.

For more of Nin's cartoons go here.

Monday Comic [by Nin Andrews]

from the archive; first posted January 28, 2013

The Freedom to Write [by Nin Andrews]

I've been worrying a lot lately. On a global scale, I've been worrying about . . . well, just about everything. On a personal scale, I've been worrying about my forthcoming memoir, Son of a Bird. I feel I might have spoken too freely in it  . . .  

My father used to say, “Only the artists are free.” It was his answer to Rousseau’s “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” A wannabe artist himself, he gave my siblings and me drawing pencils and pads as children, as well as drawing books—the kind that taught you how to draw a horse or a cow or a cat by starting with a circle. Yes, everything can start with a circle—or series of circles.

At night the family would sit by the fire, drawing. Sometimes he would give a prize for the best picture. Two sisters were extremely talented. One could draw horses that leapt off the page. Another, an ocean that lapped at my feet. Whatever they drew, my father would correct. I watched as his pen come down on their pictures, and the horses froze. The ocean, too. One mark, and the pictures died. The marks were technically correct, but they were also disturbing. They drained the pictures of magic.  “Do not touch my picture,” I said when he checked on my work. “Okay,” he said with a shrug, adding, “You could use some help. But it doesn’t matter—you aren’t exactly gifted.”

I agreed with his assessments. My father was a man who told the truth, even the cruel truth.  Later, when I began writing, and I first published a poem in The Paris Review, he called to tell me my poem was embarrassing. Women, he said, shouldn't write like that.  If I chose to continue, I should think about whether or not I wanted to publish. I saw his point. I did think about it. I decided yes, I did want to publish poems like that.  

After our conversation, I leaned into embarrassment. This was back in the early 1990’s, and I didn’t know other women poets who were writing about sex. The Vagina Monologues had not been published.  I didn’t have an MFA. I hadn’t read Kim Addonizio or Denise Duhamel or Molly Peacock or Sharon Olds. But I did feel a certain creative energy and power in leaning into my own discomfort.

People ask me now if I ever winced  at my work. Yes, I did. If I received creepy calls from men. Yes, I did. If I lost friends. Yes, I did. If women responded to me oddly, too. Yes. (I had one woman ask me after a reading to tell her how to have an orgasm.) If I have any shame about my body of work. Sometimes. I still have poems I’ve held back, poems with titles like “Don’t Look Now” and “The Magic Pussy.” But they would not be startling by today’s standards.    

I have always admired poets who feel free to speak their minds, who toss aside the criticisms of men and culture and tradition and expectations. I love boldness in writers, especially women writers. It’s refreshing in a world that wants to keep us small, cramped, easily defined. 

That said, I also wonder about the role our parents play in who we become, what we do, say, write . . . 

The Sisters of Sexual Treasure by Sharon Olds

As soon as my sister and I got out of our
mother’s house, all we wanted to
do was fuck, obliterate
her tiny sparrow body and narrow
grasshopper legs. The men’s bodies
were like our father’s body! The massive
hocks, flanks, thighs, elegant
knees, long tapered calves—
we could have him there, the steep forbidden
buttocks, backs of the knees, the cock
in our mouth, ah the cock in our mouth.
                           Like explorers who have
discovered a lost city, we went
nuts with joy, undressed the men
slowly and carefully, as if
uncovering buried artifacts which
proved our theory of the lost culture:
that if Mother said it wasn’t there,
it was there.

Nouns, a Monday Comic [by Nin Andrews}

Today's comic was once again inspired by a Chapter 2011 in David Lehman's State of the Art (Pittsburgh, 2015) in which David quotes famous poets' definitions of poetry. He includes this wonderful quote from Gertrude Stein:  "Poetry is nothing but using losing refusing and pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns." -- NA

Failing at Love 2.0 [by Nin Andrews]

I love this Sappho poem of pure jealousy. I love the “kindled the flesh along my arms/ and smothered me in its smoke-blind rush.” I’m just realizing that many of my favorite poems celebrate the worst parts of our beings: jealousy, lust, rage.

I am thinking about this because I have been reading this book, Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection, a book recommended by my meditation instructor. The basic premise of the book is that love is not something you simply emanate like a yogi from a cave. Rather, you have to practice it in both small and big ways. The book suggests that you create micro-moments of love by engaging with people wherever you go—the drug store, the post office, the hairdresser, the sidewalk. Just imagine all the opportunities for micro-moments of love. After many such moments, you can develop something called positive resonance. I picture it like a halo around me.

Yeah, right.

But the other day, I thought, what the hell. I might as well try it out. Supposedly, if you do this practice, you develop a well-toned vagal nerve.  And who doesn’t want a toned vagal nerve? So I gave it a shot. I went to the Y for a workout and started gabbing with everyone in sight. I don’t like to chat when I work out, and people who talk too much give me hives. But I figured this was just an experiment. And besides hives, what’s the worst thing that could happen?

First, I talked to a man who was recently divorced and was trying to sweat out his rage at his ex. (He reminded me of that George Bilgere poem, “What I Want”). I didn’t really want to pursue that topic. So then I talked to a woman who hates her ass—okay, that was a little more interesting, and made me think of Lucille Clifton’s “Homage to My Hips.”  Next, I spoke to a lady who thinks the Y is some kind of preview of hell. She did have a few good points to make, especially about the sweaty deposits on the equipment (and yes, there’s a poem for that, too.) Then, in the swimming pool, a man started telling me how to improve my swimming form. He said he could coach me a bit. Really?

So what is it with men? I mean, what woman would tell a man she would like to coach him. Seriously!

(Afterwards, in the shower, I kept thinking of that wonderful poem, “Shooter,” by Jan Beatty.)

Needless to say, I was failing at micro-moments of love. Or at least I wasn’t feeling it.

And to make matters worse, the next day there were all these people trying to talk to me. 

I put my headphones on and looked into the distance. I didn’t even have anything to listen to, but headphones are useful. I think of them now as a protection against micro-moments of love. 

I thought of all my failed attempts at becoming a better human. I am literally a disaster. Then I thought of all the poets I love and how they celebrate their disastrous selves. Consider this poem by Julie Bruck from her book, How to Avoid Huge Ships.

To Janet in Jersey

        Dear Abby: Is it OK to put a paper towel holder in the bathroom?

                                                                —Janet in Jersey

Don’t ever hide your Bounty under the sink. Nor
your conflicted feelings about family members.
Remember the midwife who handed fawning new parents
their wet, perfect baby? In six months, she said,
when you want to drop this child from a window, call me.
Drink, Janet. Smoke, if it calms you. Take secret joy
in the failings of those who judge you. Judge them back,
if it gives you ballast. When you argue with your dead,
slap anyone who uses the word closure.  Rail, Janet,
rage against the body’s small betrayals. You know
they’re only practice for the big one to come. If others
are steeped in denial, that’s their problem. Pass gas.
Should someone instruct you in the art of breathing,
cut that person off for good. Chew your nails. Cheat at cards.
If you want a roll of paper towels in the bathroom,
Janet in Jersey, you get no argument from me. Fuck, yes!

And this poem from Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems always makes me laugh.

Poem

Wouldn’t it be funny
if the Finger had designed us
to shit just once a week?

        all week long we’d get fatter
        and fatter and then on Sunday morning
        while everyone’s in church
 
                        ploop !

from the archive; first posted April 2, 2019.

Love Comics [by Nin Andrews]

The other day I was talking to a friend about literary influences when I confessed one of my dark secrets: love comics were a major influence on my early poetry. Yep. Love comics. My friend looked at me blankly. "What the hell are love comics?"  I tried to describe them, but I didn't know where to begin. So I began asking other friends if they knew what love comics are. Turned out no one did. How could anyone not know what a love comic is? Did they ever wonder what Lichtenstein's paintings Drowning Girl, Hopeless, and Oh, Jeff . . . I Love You, Too . . . But were based on? 

I grew up pedaling my fat-tired bike on summer days to a corner service station in Maine where I could buy penny candy and old second-hand love comics for a nickel each. On rainy days, my sisters and I read stacks of love comics, giggling over the best ones. Our mother was appalled. "What a dreadful waste of time!" she would say. Here's a quote from one called Swamp Flame:

What was the mystery of Mara King's strange life? Why had her father buried her alive in the depths of the Cypress Swamps, forbidding her even a glimpse of the world beyond the curtain of Spanish Moss? Mara never knew . . . until the day the rich and handsome Bob Westly wandered into the lost bayou and found her! Then, for the first time, she tasted the forbidden wine of Life and Love!!

Seriously! How could you resist?

 

 

Monday Comics [by Nin Andrews]

from the archive; first posted October 21, 2103.

Monday Comics [by Nin Andrews]

from the archive; first posted January 13, 2013.

Monday Cartoon [by Nin Andrews]

For more of Nin's cartoons go here.

From the archive; first posted August 13, 2023.

"The Variable Foot" [by Nin Andrews]

This comic is based on a few lines from the introduction to William Carlos Williams in The Oxford Anthology of American Poetry that made me laugh:

“I write in the American idiom, “ Williams noted, “and for many years I have been using what I call the variable foot.” One of the secrets of American poetry is that no one knows what “the variable foot” really is.

from the archive; first posted December 7, 2016

"Poem with Horse and RB" [by Daniel Lawless]

This is the poem where no one drowns in summer
Or propranolol, gyves or sluices or falls in love with Sister Wendy.
No one pisses off a dock, no one is pixilated
Or doll-like, no one gets high and sticks up a bodega;
No one wakes this morning believing his or her life is like
The reassembled pieces of a torn up letter, nothing clots or tethers.
This is the poem where no one fingers
A violet scar on the back of a cowboy’s neck, no one pleasures
Herself in the rank nest of her father’s deer stand.
Nothing is pale, nothing shattered, nothing crevé or pálida.
This is the poem that does not collage, appropriate, ventriloquize
Frank O’Hara or holla,  that does not try to squeeze
Into the skinny jeans of erasures or pantoums.
This is the poem from which the ornate nomenclature of ornithology,
Minerology, cytomorphology and all the other ologies is absent
Together with the word “absent”; in which nothing scuds.  There are no tufts 
And the tin cans of romance remain undented.
This is the poem in which there are no apparently endless permutations
Of light and darkness, where constellations do not wheel
And sex is not like anything except perhaps a brief shriek down a forever
Recycling water slide.
This is the poem that does not invoke abstruse principles
Of particle physics to delineate certain properties of fifties hairdo’s,
Does not pretend to tap the phone lines of the dead
Or ingenuously indulge in the fantasy of the soul.
This is you’ll be glad to know the poem bereft of sun-spunk.
That does not keen the passing of passenger trains
Or Mr. Furman my fifth grade teacher.
This is the poem without scent, without footsteps.
In other words this is the poem that closes the door
And locks itself in behind it.
No castanets, no pie, no drones or luminescent,
No hickies  or Sweet Jesus, no animals whatsoever.
Well, maybe one. Because how strange, how cynical and impoverished
Would a poem have to be to refuse admittance to a horse,
And while we’re at it while he’s still around, say,
Good old Robert Bly to see it with such clear eyes,
The white flake of snow that that has just fallen on its mane?

from The American Journal of Poetry  Drawing of Daniel Lawless by Nin Andrews.

A Monday Morning Cartoon [by Nin Andrews]https://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00e54fe4158b883300e54ff804ab8834/post/compose

from the archive; first posted March 25, 2013

Emily's Escape [by Nin Andrews]

(c) Nin Andrews 2014

The Orange King (by Nin Andrews)

It's her party and she'll laugh if she wants to [Happy birthday to you, Nin Andrews!]

(c) Nin Andrews. Inspired by Chapter "2000" in The State of the Art: A Chronicle of American Poetry 1988-2014 by David Lehman

 originally posted on April 20, 2015.