The Best American Poetry

"That Ship Has Sailed" by Terence Winch [by Stacey Harwood Lehman]

Terence Winch's That Ship Has Sailed (University of Pittsburgh Press) arrived last week, and reading it has given me many pleasurable hours. Here is "Father," a favorite poem that in a few brief lines conjures an entire life:

Father

I have your cuff links and tie clips.
I have a box with your IDs in them.
Your steamfitters union card from
the middle of the war. I have the toolbox
you and I made together when I was a kid.

I have the bookcase you brought home
when the Monsignor bought new furniture
for the rectory and threw it out. It's right
upstairs in my living room. I have your banjo,
which still sounds great. All I'm missing is you.

        by Terence Winch from That Ship Has Sailed 

You can read Anne Harding Woodworth's fine review in the Innisfree Poetry Journal, along with new poems by Terence Winch here.

Ed Ochester Presents a Poem by Toi Derricotte

“I first heard Toi read some years ago at Old Dominion University, and knew right away that I wanted to do her next books . . . She founded, with Cornelius Eady,  the first workshop and retreat for African American poets: Cave Canem, which has been spectacularly successful in mentoring younger writers and bringing their work to publication.”

—Ed Ochester

 

In an Urban School

The guard picks dead leaves from plants.
The sign over the table reads:
"Do not take or touch anything on this table!"
In the lunchroom the cook picks up in her dishcloth
what she refers to as “a little friend,”
shakes it out,
and puts the dishcloth back on the drain.
The teacher says she needs stronger tranquilizers.
Sweat rises on the bone of her nose,
on the plates of her skull under unpressed hair.
“First graders, put your heads down. I’m taking names
so I can tell your parents
which children do not obey their teacher.”
Raheim’s father was stabbed last week.
Germaine’s mother, a junkie,
was found dead in an empty lot.

“In an Urban School” from American Poetry Now 
$27.95 • 408 pp. © 2007 University of Pittsburgh Press Press

Also by Toi Derricotte from the Pitt Poetry Series:
Captivity
Tender

American Poetry Now (ed. Ed Ochester) features poems by Toi Derricotte and many others from the Pitt Poetry Series. 

Ed Ochester Presents a Poem by Bob Hicok

“Few writers have a stronger word-of-mouth among poetry fans than Bob Hicok, and his poems are everywhere. Why? Well, perhaps because his quasi-meditative poems sound like colloquial, idiosyncratic speech, but hone in on larger truths like heat-seeking missles.”

—Ed Ochester

Team Effort

Everyone at the same time if everyone at the same time
looked up from coffee looked up from crotch looked up
if everyone at night at dawn at lunch looked up
at the black at the blue morsel sky at the congress
of clouds of stars looked up from needle from packets
of buzzing from the wedding of dollars if everyone
in Queens in Wembley if everyone in my head if everyone
looked up from electroshock from drift if everyone
threw back the appetite of the eyes threw back the village
of the head the persistence of the skull if everyone thought
I am the vanishing point I am the frontal lobe of wind
if everyone stood and raised their wings and tuned
their orchestra if the census stood the tens of
stood the billions of stood the Earth would move
the circle would move the spinning would move if everyone
at the same time opened their mouth let the wolf
of their uvula go the rivers would stare at us
again would return to our faces the expressions
they carried away to the ocean to bury in the ocean
to save in case we ever came back.

“Team Effort” from American Poetry Now (edited by Ed Ochester)
$27.95 • 408 pp.
© 2007 University of Pittsburgh Press

American Poetry Now features poems by Bob Hicok and many others from the Pitt Poetry Series.

Ed Ochester Presents a Poem by Malena Morling

"MALENA MÖRLING's poems are low-key, minimalist, utterly unpretentious and yet—how does she do it?—they speak about the central conditions of our lives as few poems do.”

—Ed Ochester

Happiness

How far away is your happiness?
            How many inches?
How many yards?
            How many bus rides to work
and back?
            How many doorways
and stairwells?
            How many hours
awake in the dark
            belly of the night
which contains
            all the world’s bedrooms,
all dollhouse-sized?
            How far away is your happiness?
How many words?
            How many thoughts?
How much pavement?
            How much thread
in the enormous sewing machine
            of the present moment?

“Happiness” from American Poetry Now (edited by Ed Ochester)
$27.95 • 408 pp.
© 2007 University of Pittsburgh Press

American Poetry Now features poems by Malena Mörling and many others from the Pitt Poetry Series.

Ed Ochester Presents a Poem by Barbara Hamby

"Barbara Hamby is to the English language as a dolphin is to the sea; her exuberant playfulness counters the world’s weight and is usually worldly wise.”
—Ed Ochester

Excerpt from “Ode on Dictionaries”:

                                                                                                                     . . . I’m building
             my own book as a mason makes a wall or a gelding
runs round the track—brick by brick, step by step, word by word,
            jonquil by gerrymander, syllabub by greensward,
swordplay by snapdragon, a never-ending parade
            with clowns and funambulists in my own mouth, homemade
treasure chest of tongue and teeth, the brain’s roustabout, rough
            unfurler of tents and trapezes, off-the-cuff
unruly troublemaker in the high church museum
            of the world. O mouth—boondoggle, auditorium,
viper, gulag, gumbo pot on a steamy August
            afternoon—what have you not given me? How I must
wear on you, my Samuel Johnson in a frock coat,
            lexicographer of silly thoughts, billy goat,
X-rated pornographic smut factory, scarfer
            of snacks, prissy smirker, late-night barfly,
you are the megaphone by which I bewitch the world
            or don't as the case may be. O chittering squirrel,
ziplock sandwich bag, sound off, shut up, gather your words
into bouquets, folios, flocks of black and flaming birds.

“Ode on Dictionaries” from All-Night Lingo Tango
$14.95 • 88 pp.
© 2009 University of Pittsburgh Press

Also by Barbara Hamby from the Pitt Poetry Series:
Babel ($12.95)

American Poetry Now (ed. Ed Ochester) features poems by Barbara Hamby and many others from the Pitt Poetry Series.

Ed Ochester Presents a Poem by Afaa Michael Weaver

“The first Elder of Cave Canem, the remarkably successful academy for young African-American poets, Afaa Michael Weaver is a poet, playwright, and student of Chinese. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., refers to his poems as ‘life studies,’ and indeed they reflect the variety of subjects and tones of an adventurous life.”

—Ed Ochester

Solitude

Alone I meditate on the invisible,
the potentially beautiful and minute chasms
of meaning that divide me and God,
the trailing words from his mouth
whose echoes taunt me with suggestions
of the Oral Torah, the grand perfection
before the first droplet of water,
or the setting of the first grain of sand.
Inside I listen for him to enter me,
to flow into this infinite cavern of my heart
and help me know this quiet village
behind me and the solitary angel above,
as other sanctities beg in my shadow,
offering foreign altars and hymns.

“Solitude” from The Plum Flower Dance: Poems 1985–2005 

$14.00 • 136 pp. © 2007 University of Pittsburgh Press

American Poetry Now (ed. Ed Ochester) features poems by Afaa Michael Weaver and many others from the Pitt Poetry Series.

Ed Ochester Presents a Poem by Dean Young

“Surrealism is one of the dominant modes of contemporary American poetry, and no one has more consistent hits in this mode than Dean Young. The American Academy of Arts and Letters calls him ’one of the most inventive and satisfying poets writing today.’"
—Ed Ochester




Ash Ode

When I saw you ahead I ran two blocks
shouting your name then realizing it wasn’t
you but some alarmed pretender, I went on
running, shouting now into the sky,
continuing your fame and luster. Since I’ve
been incinerated, I’ve oft returned to this thought,
that all things loved are pursued and never caught,
even as you slept beside me you were flying off.
At least what’s never had can’t be lost, the sieve
of self stuck with just some larger chunks, jawbone,
wedding ring, a single repeated dream,
a lullaby in every elegy, descriptions
of the sea written in the desert, your broken
umbrella, me claiming I could fix it.

-- Dean Young

“Ash Ode” from Primitive Mentor
$14.00 • 104 pp. © 2008 University of Pittsburgh Press

Also by Dean Young from the Pitt Poetry Series:
Elegy on Toy Piano            $14.00
First Course in Turbulence               $14.00
Skid  $14.00

American Poetry Now (ed. Ed Ochester) features poems by Dean Young, and many others from the Pitt Poetry Series.

Ed Ochester Presents a Poem by Jan Beatty

“Nobody has a better sense of the colloquial American idiom. Nobody among her contemporaries writes better poems about urban working-class life. And she can surprise you, too, as in the following poem.”

—Ed Ochester





after sex on a train

canadian rockies fill
my window I am naked
eating blueberry muffins
sipping coke and smelling sperm
lakes and pines no birds fly past
I think of wild blueberries
bleeding juice through pale yellow
the yellow that’s almost white
my calves bruised from holding on
rivers moving swollen white
rail ties lie in piles and I
sniff the musk that we all want
telephone poles bending toward
water the white birch the pines

-- Jan Beatty

“after sex on a train” from Mad River
$14.00 • 64 pp. © 1996 University of Pittsburgh Press

Also by Jan Beatty from the Pitt Poetry Series:
Boneshaker          $12.95
Red Sugar             $14.00

American Poetry Now, ed. Ed Ochester, features poems by Jan Beatty and many others from the Pitt Poetry Series.

Ed Ochester Presents a Poem by Russell Edson

“Russell Edson is the dean of American prose poets, the irrepressible and irresistible author of surreal fables, an American Aesop.”
—Ed Ochester

The Alfresco Moment

            A butler asks, will Madam be having her morning coffee alfresco?
            If you would be so kind as to lift me out of my bed to the veranda would be more than willing to imbibe coffee alfresco.
            Shall I ask the Master to join the Madam for coffee alfresco?
            But my nightgown’s so sheer he might see my pubic delta alfresco. And being a woman of wealth I have the loins of a goddess. While you, being but a lowly servant, have the loins of a child’s teddy bear. Yes, have the Master join the alfresco moment. He might just as well be informed of my pubic delta,it’s not a state secret. Besides, he carries an organ worthy of a bull. While you,being but a lowly servant, have the loins of a caterpillar.

             Very good, Madam . . .

-- Russell Edson

“The Alfresco Moment” from The Tormented Mirror
$12.95 • 96 pp. © 2001 University of Pittsburgh Press

Forthcoming (March 2009) by Russell Edson from the Pitt Poetry Series: See Jack 

American Poetry Now, edited by Ed Ochester, features poems by Russell Edson, and many others from the Pitt Poetry Series.

Ed Ochester Presents a Poem by Denise Duhamel

“Chatty, pop-cultural, comic, incisive — Denise Duhamel’s poems have their own unique stamp, but she’s the poetic granddaughter of Frank O’Hara.”
—Ed Ochester




Healing Pies

After my parents’ accident, the pies kept coming: chicken pot pies (sized for one person), blueberry pies, ice cream pies, peach cobblers, lemon meringues, pecan pies, pies that were still warm in their tins, apple pies, another chicken pot pie (a big square one), pies with chocolate pudding inside, rhubarb pies, cherry pies, pies with crisscross slats of crust on top. Pies from the church, pies from my mother’s quilting group, pies from the neighbors, pies from the aunts. Pies lined the kitchen counter, pies packed the freezer. Holy pies, pies with painkiller filling, herbal pies, prayer pies, pies that kept vigil, pies brimming with novenas, pies full of secrets that even doctors don’t know, magic spell pies, smooth soothing pies overflowing with the music of rainforests, pies made from circles of light, pies with halos.

-- Denise Duhamel

“Healing Pies” from Ka-Ching!
$14.95 • 96 pp. © 2009 University of Pittsburgh Press

Also by Denise Duhamel from the Pitt Poetry Series:
Queen for a Day   $14.00
Two and Two        $14.00

American Poetry Now (ed. Ed Ochester) features poems by Denise Duhamel, and many others from the Pitt Poetry Series.

Ed Ochester Presents Jeffrey McDaniel

Jeffrey McDaniel's (left) recent book with Pitt is THE ENDARKENMENT. I've known him and his work since he was a graduate student at George Mason and have admired his wild sense of humor since then.  It's still news to a lot of poetry fans, but we're in the midst of a comic poetry renaissance, and the
best of the makers in this area don't just tell gags, they tap into the deeper absurdity of our time, mindful also – as George W. Bush has said (1 / 14 / 05)--that "in no way, shape, or form should a human being play God."

-– Ed Ochester

Wildlife on the 4

I was on the subway today,
and a guy showed me
his ostrich.  I'm serious,
I looked over and he had this
checkered smile and his ostrich
by the neck, squeezing
the throat so tight
the ostrich's head was purple.  HEY,
YOU CAN'T DO THAT, I wanted to say,
YOU CAN'T BRING OSTRICHES ON THE SUBWAY,
but this was New York, we don't
talk to strangers, so I looked
down at my newspaper
and thought about the plight
of a flightless bird, able
to run faster than most horses,
yet so hard to saddle.

--Jeffrey McDaniel

Ed Ochester & The Pitt Poetry Series

 

We have asked Ed Ochester (above) to edit our Sunday poetry pages for the next few months. Here is one of Ed's poems:

March of the Penguins

       The editor of National Review urged [Young Republicans]
       to see the movie because it promoted monogamy.  A widely
       circulated Christian magazine said it made a strong case for
       intelligent design --The New York Times, 9/13/05

What the hell are they going to do now
with the libidinous bluebird, who lines up
a couple of extra girlfriends every summer,
not to mention the evil house wrens--
don¹t be fooled by their cheery little calls,
they have up to five mates at a time!
I won¹t even mention the gay rabbits
we had once, in love with one another’s ears,
etc., and even now my old friend Walter may be
declaiming how God planted dinosaur bones
to test the faith of Christians with the appearance
of evolution, thereby demonstrating once again
we are the first country to pass from barbarism
to decadence without an interlude, and as for
“intelligent design,” even Britney Spears
wouldn’t drop her eggs
at 70 below.

from UNRECONSTRUCTED: POEMS SELECTED AND NEW
(Autumn House Press, 2007)

Under Ed Ochester's leadership, the Pitt Poetry Series has maintained a reputation for feisty independence -- so much so that "the pit bull poetry series" is an inevitable pun. He writes:

<< I've been the editor of the Pitt Poetry Series for thirty years. Some of our best-known poets are Billy Collins, Denise Duhamel, Russell Edson, Bob Hicok, Etheridge Knight, Ted Kooser, Larry Levis, Malena Morling, Sharon Olds, Alicia Ostriker, Afaa Weaver, David Wojahn and Dean Young.  Most of these were not very well known when they started to publish with Pitt, and many of our younger poets who aren't well known yet are terrific and deserve (and will get) wider readership.  That's one of the pleasures of the business –- to "discover" new poets and watch their reputations grow.  Another pleasure, for me, is making eclectic choices.  American poetry is bigger than one or two schools, one or two ways of doing things.  I like to think I irritate or, even better, outrage certain academic critics and poetry gangs with the eclecticism of the Pitt list. I do think we've helped increase the readership for poetry: many of our books have sold more than 10,000 copies, and a couple have even reached 100,000. We're also one of the few poetry publishers – maybe the only one? – that doesn't require subsidies. For the next few months on this site I've chosen poems from recent books of ours, mainly.  I hope that you enjoy them, of course, and that the enjoyment will motivate you to buy some. We need to remember Kenneth Patchen's gentle observation: "People who say they love poetry and never buy any are a bunch of cheap sons-of-bitches. >>

Ed Ochester's most recent books are  UNRECONSTRUCTED: POEMS SELECTED AND NEW (Autumn House Press,  2007), THE REPUBLIC OF LIES (chapbook, Adastra Press, 2007), THE LAND OF COCKAIGNE (Story Line Press, 2001), and AMERICAN POETRY NOW (University of Pittsburgh Press,  2007), an anthology of contemporary American poetry. In addition to editing the Pitt Poetry Series, he is the general editor of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize for short fiction (University of Pittsburgh Press). From 1978 to 1998 he was director of the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh, and was twice elected president of Associated Writing Programs. He is co-editor of the poetry magazine 5 AM and is a core faculty member of the Bennington College MFA program.

A Week of Poems by Stephanie Brown

Each morning this week we will be posting new poems by Stephanie Brown, whose new book, Domestic Interior, was published this fall in the Pitt Poetry Series edited by Ed Ochester. Friday's poem is from that new book, which you can order here.

-- DL

You Get Comfortable and Relax

Yesterday at work,
Pam said, I think it’s like slipping off really tight clothes, you get
comfortable and relax; there are all these
things to do. I said,
I think there’s real estate. No, I said,
I always imagined my Dad went first so he could find
A nice place for my mom. That’s the way he is;
This is a joke but not, you understand, and made her laugh.

She said, I would like to be wearing a great looking Armani coat
And lie down and choose to die
Like Indians. You know, “good day to die?”

I said, I think that’s what they said before battle, not suicide.
I might not be right about that but I know what you mean.
I said, But you can’t do that. What if

It really is a sin to commit suicide? I said, All those
Near-death people who tried, they came back
To report the mistake, the grave mistake, I emphasized,
Trying to make it funny again. I love that we have
Conversations like this! she said. Me too,
And then we turned our backs to each other, back
To the computer screen, back to work. 

-- Stephanie Brown