The Best American Poetry

Perfection Wasted [by John Updike]

Perfection Wasted [by John Updike]

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market —
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

from the archives; first posted January 27, 2009. The originaal post continues to provoke many comments: 

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market —
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

from the archives; first posted January 27, 2009. The originaal post continues to provoke many comments: 

Shelley's Music

Music, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory—

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken.

 

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;

And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,

Love itself shall slumber on.

 

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

Matthew Arnold's judgment:  Shelley was "a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain."

If you love parodies. . .

The lover of parodies, convinced that an expert aping of someone else's distinctive style conveys not only a chortle or belly laugh at that poet's expense but a deep respect for that writer as well, may cite J. K. Stephen's sonnet on Wordsworth [left] as exhibit A. -- DL

A Sonnet

Two voices are there: one is of the deep;
It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody,
Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,
Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep:
And one is of an old half-witted sheep
Which bleats articulate monotony,
And indicates that two and one are three,
That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep:
And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times                                       
Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes,
The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst:
At other times--good Lord! I'd rather be
Quite unacquainted with the ABC
Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst.

-- J. K. Stephen (1859-1892)

A Sonnet

Two voices are there: one is of the deep;
It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody,
Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,
Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep:
And one is of an old half-witted sheep
Which bleats articulate monotony,
And indicates that two and one are three,
That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep:
And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times                                       
Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes,
The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst:
At other times--good Lord! I'd rather be
Quite unacquainted with the ABC
Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst.

-- J. K. Stephen (1859-1892)

"A Voice in the Studio of Peter Paul Rubens" [by John Yau]

A Voice in the Studio of Peter Paul Rubens

Are these bloated corpses or pink sunlit clouds–no one can decide
Whether outfitted in smart attire, traditional outfits, or athletic gear

When will you draw the bitterness inflaming our upturned faces
Tell us which chariot will measure the daily turmoil

Whether outfitted in smart attire, traditional outfits, or athletic gear
We will lean on past arguments, whose expiration date has come and gone

Tell us which chariot will measure the daily turmoil
Who among us can respond patiently to the litany of anonymous complaints

We will lean on past arguments, whose expiration date has come and gone
While a texture of devastation shuttles its multicolored threads throughout the day

Who among us can respond patiently to the litany of anonymous complaints
The distribution of wealth is not about delivering buckets of money

While a texture of devastation shuttles its multicolored threads throughout the day
I decide to wear a tuxedo complete with glossy pompadour and fly into the sun

The distribution of wealth is not about delivering buckets of money
Our ugliness preceded us like a mirror held up to the assembling wind

Are these bloated corpses or pink sunlit clouds–no one can decide
I decide to wear a tuxedo complete with glossy pompadour and fly into the sun

Our ugliness preceded us like a mirror held up to the assembling wind
When will you draw the bitterness inflaming our upturned faces

-- John Yau

"Resolution" [by Boris Dralyuk]

Resolution

i.m. J.C.

That night you chose to open and to close
your long anticipated show of shows—
a solo act, for no one at that stage
could match you in your sorrow, your cold rage.
Or so I think, old love. I can’t be sure.
You made no playbill, mailed out no brochure,
wanting no fanfare and no audience.
You knew that nothing could be left to chance.
All the rehearsals I myself attended,
year after year, had always, always ended
before the dénouement. Your hapless plot
had lingered, tangled, tense, a tender knot
lodged in the throat—not only yours, but mine.
It takes my breath to feel that knot undone.

-- Boris Dralyuk

from the current issue of Poetry London.

Born in Odesa, Ukraine, in 1982, Boris Dralyuk  is the author of My Hollywood and Other Poems (Paul Dry Books, 2022), editor of 1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution (Pushkin Press, 2016), co-editor (with Robert Chandler and Irina Mashinski) of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (2015), and translator of volumes by Isaac Babel, Andrey Kurkov, Maxim Osipov, Leo Tolstoy, Mikhail Zoshchenko, and other authors. 

"Solitude" [by Adrienne Su]

Solitude

I had had my fill,
but I kept devoting more
days, then weeks to it,

buying books, making
no plans, as if empty slots
would well up with rain,

pushing anyone
who might edge into my space
away as if by

natural forces.
I never pledged anything
permanent to it,

but habit carves rock.
Why did I think a movie,
a concert, a game

would drown something out?
I have come to my senses.
I believe in books,

but they have their place.
The flowers in them lack scent.
Books cannot feed you;

they are at their worst
when imitating romance,
not because they don’t

get it but because
they do: romance is mental.
That’s why, looking back

on real-life failures,
you ask, What was I thinking?
You already know

what you were doing.
Even at the time, you knew
what you were doing.

From The Common, October 2024

"Aftermath" [by Star Black]

Aftermath

I wish I knew what I could say.
I offered money. She said no.
I wonder where she is today.

I told her she should let it go,
to plan a child another way.
She has a job and lives alone.

It seems unfair that women pay.
I offered money. She said no.
I wish I knew what I could say.
I wonder where she is today.

-- Star Black (2007)

Star Black is pictured above with Paul Violi. Photo by David Lehman, copyright (c) 1998 by David Lehman.

"D. O. A." [by Tim Dlugos, 1950-1990]

D. O. A.

“You knew who I was

when I walked in the door.

You thought that I was dead.

Well, I am dead. A man

can walk and talk and even

breathe and still be dead.”

Edmond O’Brien is perspiring

and chewing up the scenery

in my favorite film noir,

D.O.A. I can’t stop watching,

can’t stop relating. When I walked down

Columbus to Endicott last night

to pick up Tor’s new novel,

I felt the eyes of every

Puerto Rican teen, crackhead,

yuppie couple focus on my cane

and makeup. “You’re dead,”

they seemed to say in chorus.

Somewhere in a dark bar

years ago, I picked up “luminous

poisoning.” My eyes glowed

as I sipped my drink. After that,

there was no cure, no turning back.

I had to find out what was gnawing

at my gut. The hardest part’s

not even the physical effects:

stumbling like a drunk (Edmond

O’Brien was one of Hollywood’s

most active lushes) through

Forties sets, alternating sweats

and fevers, reptilian spots

on face and scalp. It’s having

to say goodbye like the scene

where soundtrack violins go crazy

as O’Brien gives his last embrace

to his girlfriend-cum-Girl

Friday, Paula, played by Pamela

Britton. They’re filmdom’s least

likely lovers—the squat and jowly

alkie and the homely fundamentally

talentless actress who would hit

the height of her fame as the pillhead-

acting landlady on My Favorite Martian

fifteen years in the future. I don’t have

fifteen years, and neither does Edmond

O’Brien. He has just enough time to tell

Paula how much he loves her, then

to drive off in a convertible

for the showdown with his killer.

I’d like to have a showdown too, if I

could figure out which pistol-packing

brilliantined and ruthless villain

in a hound’s-tooth overcoat took

my life. Lust, addiction, being

in the wrong place at the wrong

time? That’s not the whole

story. Absolute fidelity

to the truth of what I felt, open

to the moment, and in every case

a kind of love: all of the above

brought me to this tottering

self-conscious state—pneumonia,

emaciation, grisly cancer,

no future, heart of gold,

passionate engagement with a great

B film, a glorious summer

afternoon in which to pick up

the ripest plum tomatoes of the year

and prosciutto for the feast I’ll cook

tonight for the man I love,

phone calls from my friends

and a walk to the park, ignoring

stares, to clear my head. A day

like any, like no other. Not so bad

for the dead.

"At the Gate" [by Indran Amirthanayagam]

At the Gate

My mother lies down in her bed to wait,
in a white robe, hair spread on the pillow.
Tomorrow an angel will arrive at her gate.

My mother said she couldn’t rise, even late.
She says take her to a nursing home tomorrow.
My mother lies down in her bed to wait.

She speaks to her aunt, to mater and pater.
She wants to fly to Ceylon to a bungalow.
Tomorrow an angel will arrive at her gate.

Try to move your fingers, feet, shift your gait.
Try to straighten your legs, temple unfurrow.
My mother lies down in her bed to wait.

Try, try, fall, try again. This is not fate.
This is obstinacy and wisdom not sorrow.
Tomorrow an angel will arrive at her gate.

I will wait by the gate, Mummy, and tell fate,
that angel, to give us ‘til tomorrow.
My mother lies down in her bed to wait.
Tomorrow an angel will arrive at her gate

Of Ithe author of this villanelle,  Terence Winch has noted, 'Indran Amirthanayagam is one of the most remarkable figures roaming the contemporary poetic landscape. Like some of the poets he most admires—Cavafy, Neruda, Hikmet (all mentioned in the poem below)—he is a citizen of the world. Born into the Catholic Tamil community (a minority within a minority) of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in 1960, he left with his family for England when he was eight, seeking refuge from his native land’s ongoing strife as well as care for an autistic brother. He lived in the U.K. for six years, attending grammar and primary school there. When he was fourteen, the family moved again, this time to Honolulu, where his father, also a poet, had been offered a job. In Hawaii, Indran was one year ahead of Barry Obama, whom he knew slightly, at Punahou School.  In 1978, he left Hawaii for Haverford College in Pennsylvania. After getting his B.A. there, he moved to New York to become, like Lorca, “a poet in New York.” He picked up a master's at the Columbia School of Journalism and remained in New York until 1993, when he got a job with the U.S. Foreign Service, having  become a U.S. citizen in the late ‘80s. >>> For more, click here. The poet was also the "pick of the week" in September 2021.

RJG BD [on Dick Gallup; by Ron Padgett]

RJG BD

Richard John Gallup, wake up,
it’s your birthday, or maybe you’re
already awake and the spotlight
of the day is following you around
the stage and you can’t get away,
you are shining and special all
this very day you came sliding out
and your mother said Oy vey
though she was not Jewish
and in fact had never even heard
that expression before you taught it to her,
but let me explain that she said it
because having a child can hurt
and plenty, and being a child can hurt too,
which is why we never grow up or if we do
we’re awful, so it’s great that you never did
and I never did and probably won’t,
for even though we might totter and drool
we can always say Oy vey!

—Ron Padgett
2003 (previously unpublished)

Here's the cover of Ron Padgett's forthcoming book, a memoir of Dick Gallup, which Cuneiform Books will publish.

James Earl Jones (1931-2024) reads "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

For Friday the 13th:

"Unforgettable" [by David J. Rothman]

Unforgettable

            --in memoriam Emily Desire Gaynor Rothman, 1964-2020

Let me forget all that reminds me of

You: the shoes, heels worn down the way your gait

Would wear them, the photos, rings pledged with love,

The documents from your dissolved estate,

Our wedding china, sons, notes to yourself,

The boxes, stones and shells that you collected,

The old ski gear, the stylish belts, the shelf

Of jewelry that you carefully selected

With instructions to give it to friends.

And let me soon forget the sound of your

Low voice when you said After my life ends,

I hope you wait a while, but then live your

Life. Find another woman. Live your life.

If I forget all that, will you return, my wife?

-- When young, David J. Rothman had the good fortune to study with Czeslaw Milosz, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, Mark Strand and Robert Fitzgerald. His most recent books are a textbook, Learning the Secrets of English Verse (Springer 2022), co-authored with Susan Spear, and My Brother’s Keeper (Lithic 2019). "Unforgettable" is one of two poems by David J. Rohman in the current issue of The Hudson Review.

"Havana Birth" [by Susan Mitchell]

Havana Birth 

Off Havana, the ocean is green this morning
of my birth. The conchers clean their knives on leather
straps and watch the sky while three couples
who have been dancing on the deck of a ship
in the harbor, the old harbor of the fifties, kiss
each other's cheeks and call it a night.

On a green sofa five dresses wait
to be fitted. The seamstress kneeling at Mother's feet
has no idea I am about to be born. Mother
pats her stomach which is flat
as the lace mats on the dressmaker's table. She thinks
I'm playing in my room. But as usual, she's wrong.

I'm about to be born in a park in Havana. Oh,
this is important, everything in the dressmaker's house
is furred like a cat. And Havana leans right up
against the windows. In the park, the air
is chocolate, the sweet breath of a man
smoking an expensive cigar. The grass

is drinkable, dazzling, white. In a moment
I'll get up from a bench, lured
by a flock of pigeons, lazily sipping
the same syrupy music through a straw.
Mother is so ignorant, she thinks
I'm rolled like a ball of yarn under the bed. What

does she know of how I got trapped in my life?
She thinks it's all behind her, the bloody
sheets, the mirror in the ceiling
where I opened such a sudden furious blue, her eyes
bruised shut like mine. The pigeon's eyes
are orange, unblinking, a doll's. Mother always said

I wanted to touch everything because
I was a child. But I was younger than that.
I was so young I thought whatever I
wanted, the world wanted too. Workers
in the fields wanted the glint of sun on their machetes.

Sugarcane came naturally sweet, you
had only to lick the earth where it grew.
The music I heard each night outside
my window lived in the mouth of a bird. I was so young
I thought it was easy as walking
into the ocean which always had room
for my body. So when I held out my hands

I expected the pigeon to float between them
like a blossom, dusting my fingers with the manna
of its wings. But the world is wily, and doesn't want
to be held for long, which is why
as my hands reached out, workers lay down
their machetes and left the fields, which is why

a prostitute in a little calle of Havana dreamed
the world was a peach and flicked
open a knife. And Mother, startled, shook
out a dress with big peonies splashed like dirt
across the front, as if she had fallen
chasing after me in the rain. But what could I do?

I was about to be born, I was about to have
my hair combed into the new music
everyone was singing. The dressmaker sang it, her mouth
filled with pins. The butcher sang it and wiped
blood on his apron. Mother sang it and thought her body
was leaving her body. And when I tried

I was so young the music beat right
through me, which is how the pigeon got away.
The song the world sings day after day
isn't made of feathers, and the song a bird pours
itself into is tough as a branch
growing with the singer and the singer's delight.

“Havana Birth” from Rapture by Susan Mitchell. Copyright © 1992 by Susan Mitchell.  The poem was selected by Jorie Graham for The Best American Poetry 1990 and by Harold Bloom for The Best of the Best American Poetry, 1988-1997.

See also this post by Susan Mitchell.

Report on “Song of Self” and “Black Nail - Exorcism of Vladimir Putin” performance, Kyiv [By Tracy Danison]

Looking east across the summer theater stage, Syretsky Park, Kyiv, Ukraine, 15 August 2024, 5:54 a.m. Photo © Tracy Danison

The morning of 15 August, the feast of the Assumption (of the mother to the father and son), at dawn, in the summer theater of Syretsky Park in Kyiv, Ukraine, I performed my Song of Self and Black Nail - Exorcism of Vladimir Putin.

The video is on my YouTube channel @TracyDanison beginning 24 August but you can also find it now on Instagram or Facebook. The written version of the poems figures below. Thanks for sharing Song and the Exorcism. Thanks for doing a Song of Self yourself. As for an exorcism, I can think of more than one – How does Sting put it? – “priest, poet or politician” that might benefit from an exorcism, can’t you?

The video recording is only a memento to an act of Real Presence, an artefact of a moment or place created in space and time by my performance and recorded by an imperfect technology. 

In an effort to get as much self into the words as possible, I used rapidity and hoped for spontaneity, hoped to give a glimpse of my a-temporal, a-spatial, existence-making, entanglement with Other, ideas and things: I wrote the poems, printed them and put them in my pocket.

Many tropes and words from poets and writers and thinkers I love fell into place as I tried to put my intentions on paper, so I put them in, just like that. For Black Nail, the poem that initiates the (1975) movie Seven Beauties by Lina Wertmüller, summed up for me pretty well that truth is irony. I was then quite distressed to learn of it:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

And, in those days, reading Germinal excited me so, I had to jump up and pace around every couple pages. I’ve realized since that nothing signifies something beyond words.

Oh, yeah.

Mirror field audio visual installation with television tower just behind. Babi Yar memorial site, Kyiv, Ukraine, 15 August 2024. Photo © Tracy Danison

The evening I was writing Song of Self and Black Nail, the evening before I was to begin my train trip to Kyiv, my son, now partnered and a father himself, told me he’s been diagnosed with the same psychic disorder I had to put up with until recently.

He’s getting medicine for it, though.

And with that, I am consoled – thanks to time and the experience and the well-marinated thoughts and ideas contributed to me by Lina Wertmüller, Adrienne Rich, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Allen Ginsberg, Wallace Stevens and Shakespeare, among others too numerous to thank.

He told me just last night that he was going through a whole day feeling well: “Dad, I think it’s working”, he said.

Reading what are essentially drafts from printouts, I performed Song and recited Black Nail once, without rehearsal or revisions.

In the evening after my performance, there was a drone and missile attack on Kyiv.

There is a very big and important television tower in among the woods not too far off where I was staying. I saw a drone or some drones get shot out of the air, as it seemed, just outside the window. Maybe that tower was the target; there was, I am told, a hard fight for it during the battle for Kyiv. From what I saw, I think the defenders used some sort of Gatling gun against the drone/s. The building trembled when it/they exploded.

I conclude from this experience that, given that I got the proportion of toad’s tongue to virgin’s first menstrual blood correct, my Exorcism does not take immediate effect. 

I picked Syretsky Park at random, pointing a green space on the map when I got to Kyiv. Madame Google indicated it was within walking distance of where I was. The evening before I walked to the park to check it was open in early morning. The next day, I arrived at the park just before the break of day.

The Black Nail inside Moloch’s brain: Contemporary colorized photograph of a killing trench lodged in a shard of granite near the child memorial at the Babi Yar site, Kyiv, Ukraine, 15 August 2024. Photo © Tracy Danison

I noticed the summer theater where I performed when I walked through the park gate.

Before going there for my performance, I did not know that Syretsky Park was just across the street from the Babi Yar memorial or that the park was the site of a camp for various captives from 1942 until the end of German occupation or even that the place is part of the physical and moral topography of what we call “Babi Yar”.

I chose Kyiv for the Song of Self and Black Nail because the war against Ukraine has been made into a war against those who believe, as I do, that each person is a person, equal in fact to all other persons, no conditions, no exceptions.

The world begins where self begins, I believe.

It was coincidence that I found myself at the Babi Yar site. The television tower that might have been the target of the coming evening’s drone attack is located there. Off the paths, there are signs of deadly fracas and firing positions. 

The Babi Yar memorial is made up of reminders that the thousands murdered there were, in the locution of the poet and Fugs’ co-founder Ed Sanders, a human being, individuals, persons. Their voices whisper on the wind, rustle and sigh in the bushes and boughs of the trees. Literally. Never forget, never forgotten.

Stanczyk, court jester, broods on the victory of Moscow, by Jan Matejko (1838-93), Warsaw Museum of Art. Photo © Tracy Danison

As I was walking up through the park, avoiding a crowd of oblivious joggers and dog walkers, I had a vision. I don’t remember if I had read the description somewhere before or how the vision came to me.

It is of a guy standing over a little pile of not-quite-dead-enough human being and, with a submachine gun, shooting into the pile, an idiot spattering himself with flesh and bone, spreading superfluous terror and suffering. As he goes a-murdering from pile to pile, in his mind, this guy is obsessively scrolling “I am a German. I am a German. I am a German”.

This awful vision reminded me that Black Nail, murder-love, begins with how a person believes they exist.

These days, wherever you go, there is much encouragement for this sad guy’s belief that being part of some group or movement lets him exist. In some form or another, I’ll be trying to take Real Presence on the road and do some counter-encouraging, including in Ukraine, a lot of whose people are, thanks to the anguish of cultural discontinuity and war and the efforts of Putin and his allies to conjure Black Nail, teetering on the edge of “ethno-national” hysteria.

By the way. “Firstest with the mostest” and fastest to the rightest place, Ukraine is set to win, and soon, the war that the neither the Germans, nor Swedes, nor Turks could do, confining Russia to the north and bringing down its empire for keeps. Russia’s defeat will almost certainly generate Babi-Yar-shaped moral and practical consequences. Dread them.

________________________________

Song of Self

Waking as like from a fretful dream,

Here I am!

There are You!

Here I am!

I celebrate myself.

Still air, wind, cool, heat, light, dark.

I celebrate a blade of grass, the head of a dandelion

I celebrate a sharp green blade of grass,

I mourn the frowsy fragile head of a dandelion

Up down this that, heart side, mind side, before, behind, yonder

And soon. Past and Present. Future Perfect.

And what I assume, You assume too.
For every atom belonging to Me, the same belongs to You.

And not quite.

Mud shapes according to its water.

In light dust may beguile different. Yet.

Be, the finale of me,

You, the disciple of me!

Me, the disciple of you!

We, the apostle of You.

Smile or Spit. Up to you.

We want is finale of seem

We be Imperators of ice cream

Call the roller of big cigars,

Girls that dawdle in such dress.

Boys that whip, those muscular ones.

And who remains take that bedsheet

And spread it so as to cover the mouth that is dumb.

I celebrate Me.

There. There is there.

That is. There.

A swell in a wave and a speck in the dust.

Plus B + I + [ ~≠U/speck and wave]   

Makes here, where I and You are.

Thus, plus I + [ ~≠U], a place, a door.

Before the door we are there.

Gone through the door, we are here after.

To maintain attitudes, hold your position
To die bravely on yonder hill

And much should blind you,
Much must evade you.

All. At the cost of a bedsheet

And You left behind.

Breathe in. Breathe out

What a song to sing!

Birds and flight. Fish and swim,

Look and sky.

See and horizon.

A fine song!

Sing this song and never go home

Sing this song and everywhere is home

Sing this song and there’s no home

Take note before we sing

We cannot know where we’ll go

Only that I will wind up here with You.

Celebrate me.

• Tracy Danison/13 August 2024

 

Black nail

You. Minds of my generation.

Those who believe Jesus Christ is Santa Claus as a young man!

Russia. Listen. Vladimir. Listen.

Banqueted on sweet, sticky lies

Raise your eyes. Fine omens. Firefly signs.

Crackling Portents.

Curlicues of alchemical anatomy Nobody understands.

And Nobody was the fiction of a blind man. Now dead.

Those who believe Jesus Christ is Santa Claus as a young man!

Your bright eyes fixed everywhere but on the Other

You knot stories babbled by babies in blindfolds

Truth is plain to see but too hard to say.

So say something, anything.

Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, Saint Nick! A young man!

Lord, Christ Christmas, Beejesus! A young man!

Say it again! Say it again! And again.

To win is to succeed.

And to lose?

An inspiring late night movie

 

Jesus Christ is Santa Claus as a young man! Listen.

Vladimir.  Listen Russia.

Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.

When will we end the human war?

 

Listen! You have it all!

The power of the kingdoms. Like Binyamin says.

The murder, the pain, the stink of the dead.

All the bewildered motherless bitches with the thousand yard stare.

Fast-firing cannons, rocket bombs

And jellied gasoline and rattling guns

Tiny drones like dragonflies hurling potato mashers.

Thrilling. Exciting. Powerful. Emotional

Jesus Christ is Santa Claus as a young man!

 

But. To succeed is not to win.

You have to win to win. Listen. Russia.

I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.

I still haven’t told you what you must to win winning.

I’m addressing you.

Those who believe.

Santa Claus is Jesus Christ as an old fella!

 

To win, you’ve got to love it.

The Murder, the pain, the horror, I mean

The Moloch stink in Vlad’s nostril.

Santa Claus is Jesus Christ as an old fella!

 

Fill your libraries full of tears.

Look at yourself through the grave

You’ve got to love the stink, I mean.

Santa Claus is Jesus as an old fella!

 

Those who want to believe. Listen

Russia. Those who want to take off your clothes.

Listen. There is a narrow sliver of steel, a black nail

Just here, at heart’s gate.

 

Embossed along the barbed rim:

“who love murder in their heart

Die.”

Russia when will you be an angel?

Vladimir wants to touch it,

Press on it a bit

As if you really were a prisoner

And it were only your limp prick.

 

Jesus Christ is Santa Claus as young man

Kris Kringle is Beejesus as an older guy

Christ Christmas is Saint Nick in drag

Thursday falls next Tuesday

Russia. How can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?

 

Russia, Vladimir is quite serious.

This is the impression I get from looking in the television set.   

Russia is this correct? Are you naked?

Is your prick limp ?

Quick. Reach out. Take my hand

Or die.

 

You have been told.

• Tracy Danison/13 August 2024

"The Shampoo" [by Elizabeth Bishop]

"The Shampoo" 

The still explosions on the rocks,

the lichens, grow

by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.

They have arranged

to meet the rings around the moon, although

within our memories they have not changed.

And since the heavens will attend

as long on us,

you’ve been, dear friend,

precipitate and pragmatical;

and look what happens. For Time is

nothing if not amenable.

 

The shooting stars in your black hair

in bright formation

are flocking where,

so straight, so soon?

–Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,

battered and shiny like the moon.

RIP Stanley Moss (1925-2024)

On his 97th birthday, I wrote "97 Reasons to Celebrate Stanley Moss on June 21, 2022"

Because you stand still long enough to gather the finest moss.
Because you stand.
​Because you roll.
Because you rolled 197 topping​ all competitors at Neptune Lanes.
Because you're Stan the Man.
Because we had lunch at Lupa on Thompson just off Houston.
Because you know Irwin Shaw and forgot to tell him.
Because you are a bronze satyr.
Because of Wystan.
Because of César Vallejo
Because one Stanley deserves another
Because if you're Stanley I'm a living stone
Because of Kunitz and Moss
Because the angel was wrong but angelic
Because it's better to be angelic than right
Because when you were 82 it was fifteen years ago. Just think of it.
Because of European painting.
Because of Rome and Barcelona.
Because there are ninety-seven bottles of beer on the wall.
Because I'm just getting started.
Because God breaketh not all men's hearts alike.
Because I believe in God.
Because 81% of Americans believe in god.
Because of what happens if you put "only" before "81%" in that sentence.
Because I capitalize the God I believe in.
Because of the history of color.
Because of the intelligence of clouds.
Because you speaketh the truth.
Because of your stance, Stan.
Because of Yale and the Navy.
Because very few poets were born during the summer solstice.
Because your ideal age is 32.
Because I could devote 65 more lines to celebrate your birthday.

The Maid's Lament [by Walter Savage Landor]

The Maid's Lament

 

I loved him not; and yet, now he is gone,

         I feel I am alone.

I check’d him while he spoke; yet, could he speak,

         Alas! I would not check.

For reasons not to love him once I sought,

         And wearied all my thought

To vex myself and him: I now would give

         My love could he but live

Who lately lived for me, and, when he found

         ’Twas vain, in holy ground

He hid his face amid the shades of death.

         I waste for him my breath

Who wasted his for me! but mine returns,

         And this lorn bosom burns

With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep,

         And waking me to weep

Tears that had melted his soft heart: for years

         Wept he as bitter tears.

Merciful God! such was his latest prayer,

         These may she never share.

Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold,

         Than daisies in the mould,

Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate,

         His name and life’s brief date.

Pray for him, gentle souls, whoe’er you be,

         And oh! pray too for me!

"Lana Turner has collapsed!" [by Frank O'Hara]

Poem

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

-- Frank O'Hara

Autobiographia Literaria [by Frank O'Hara]

Autobiographia Literaria 

When I was a child
I played by myself in a
corner of the schoolyard
all alone.

I hated dolls and I
hated games, animals were
not friendly and birds
flew away.

If anyone was looking
for me I hid behind a
tree and cried out "I am
an orphan."

And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!

"Quick, Now, Here, Now, Always --" [by Miranda Beeson]

"Quick, Now, Here, Now, Always --"

                                                            for Nora                                                                                                

Think of it as a long slow bank & descent,
a plane curling light as air through cumulus.
The slide & jive of jetting through ice crystals.
(They say that’s what clouds are made of.)
There, there’s the earth as seen from up above
a bright mosaic giving way from time to time
to glittering clusters of cities
& water, always water.
Its embrace of land so clear from up here,
how one fits hand in glove with the other.
(Remember how we used to swim & swim?)
Swaths of houses sit trim & undistressed.
Byways course like veins through the body
of the country, a cantata of light & speed.
Vehicles the size of childhood toys zip along
shining paths towards their destinations.
The living world moving in unison...complete.
I say this to you. Look!  Look down.
It is so beautiful. You have lived here.
It is waiting for you. Land.

--Miranda Beeson

<< 
Dear David,

Of course the title is from Eliot's Four Quartets.
The epigraph is for my mother, Nora.
I wrote this poem for her towards the end of her time with Alzheimer's.
I was trying to find some way to encourage her—to let go.
& she finally did.

The poem is on p.79 of my recent book Wildlife (Spuyten Duyvil).

I'm doing readings for the book all over this summer—some kind
of post-pandemic blossoming.

With thanks for your kind invitation to appear in the BAP blog.

Miranda
>>

Miranda Beeson is a poet, teacher & editor. Her most recent collection of poems is Wildlife (Spuyten Duyvil). She has been teaching creative writing and literature at Stony Brook University, where she completed her MFA. As an editor, she works with poets on the creative arc of their manuscripts. Look for sonnets from her forthcoming book FIELD in the current issue of Hole In The Head Review.

"Aubade" [by Jill Hoffman]

Aubade

Say I was in the camps
And my friends were all gone
And walking around me
as memories
In their grey striped pyjamas

Not lying in the Bay of Skeletons
anymore, naked

And my dog was licking my cunt

And Felix Nussbaum was painting
barbed wire
Like a necklace of lace
With a few prisoners penned in,
one shitting on a tall can

And I was in love with him
But couldn't show it because he
was dead

And I was saved by reciting poetry
in my head
But only until morning
When the trees would relinquish
darkness, barefoot

And you said I was trivializing
the Holocaust
As you scrubbed on hands and
knees
In your striped seersucker robe

-- Jill Hoffman

from Kimono with Young Girl Sleeves by Jill Hoffman (Mudfish, 2024)