Author: tgifreytag

A LIST, A LOVE LETTER, A POSTCARD TO MYSELF — SEPTEMBER 2012

The poetry section at Powell’s Books is more expansive than the 811 aisle of many a library. Upon landing at PDX, I hopped on the MAX and proceeded directly to W. Burnside & 10th — my #1 destination whenever in Portland, OR. That first afternoon, I made it from A through F. Two days later, I made it through to Z. Just in the poetry section.

If I had a million dollars and any empty shelf room, I’d’ve given some of these beautiful creatures a loving home… Alas I didn’t even have the nerve to take photos in the aisles, but what I do have is this list.

DROOL-WORTHY / IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND / NEVER SEEN BEFORE:

• #1 Hymn to the Gentle Sun by Sister Mary Norbert Korte (1967 1st edition of the poet’s first book, published in Berkeley CA, good condition… you’d probably have to track down the “Redwood Mama Activist” herself to find another copy like this one)
• #2 Dorothy Q Together With a Ballad of the Boston Tea Party & Grandmother’s Story of Bunker Hill Battle by Oliver Wendell Holmes (late 1800s, 1st edition, identified by pg. 50 ‘flashed’ instead of ‘clashed’)
• #3 Slick But Not Streamlined by John Betjeman with an introduction by W.H. Auden (1947, gorgeous 1st edition with dust jacket)
• #4 Come In by Robert Frost (1943, 1st edition with dust jacket, full of illustrations, gorgeous)
• #5 Tabret & Harp by Marion Armstrong (1967 — I think 1st & only edition) …you can find other Marion Armstrong, but not this one. Page 11 particularly caught my ear:

Brightly, oddly,
Greedy as a shark,
The teeth of the ungodly
Glitter in the dark.

• #6 Richard Aldridge, Fantasy Poets series pamphlet (opens four ways), marked for one shilling — (1956, published in Britain — Aldridge was a Fulbright scholar studying at Worcester College, Oxford, at the time this was printed. This is so rare I’d wonder if Aldridge himself might not have a copy and want this one.)
• #7 Rootabaga Pigeons by Carl Sandburg (kids’ book by the poet, lovely gilded hardback edition, good shape)
• #8 History of Prostitution by William W. Sanger, Eugenics Publishing Co. (worn but not bad for mid-1800s printing) I want this partly for fascination/curiosity’s sake, and partly because I don’t want anyone else to have it who might try to falsely associate it with Margaret Sanger

… AND THAT’S MOSTLY JUST IN THE POETRY SECTION. I DIDN’T EVEN MAKE IT INTO THE RARE BOOK ROOM.

OTHER TEMPTATIONS LEFT BEHIND:

• Shelf Life, the Powell’s documentary DVD
• To Herland & Beyond by Ann J. Lane (I have a Herland obsession — 1912 Charlotte Perkins Gilman all-female dis/utopia novella)
• Word on the Street by Richard Nagler (2010, photos of a single word in urban scenes, as graffiti, sign, etc.)
• Going Postal by Martha Cooper (2009, photos of mailing label street art)
• Destroy This Memory by Richard Misrach (2010, photos of graffiti messages on post-Katrina abandoned buildings)
• How To Avoid Huge Ships and Other Implausibly Titled Books (2008 — what can I say? I am that sucker who is attracted to books comprised mainly of photos of the covers of other books)
• Complete Nonsense by Edward Lear (1996 reprinting in a hand-colored edition I’d never seen before)
• Field Work by Seamus Heaney (1979, 1st edition — not rare, but still a really nice copy)
• Instructions to the Double by Tess Gallagher (1994, known poet and known press, so you’d think it wouldn’t be that hard to find, but it is)
• Pursuit by Erica Funkhouser (2002, Houghton Mifflin imprint, so not hard to find)
• John Kinsella — someone gave Powell’s a copy of almost every book this Australian nature poet has ever written
• The Important Thing by Margaret Wise Brown (Goodnight Moon author, this title recently reintroduced into circulation)
• Here by Wislawa Szymborska (you know, that Polish poet who won the Nobel Prize who’s not Czeslaw Milosz)
• All of Us by Raymond Carver
• Tongue and Thunder by David Cloutier (1980, Copper Beach — not Canyon — Press)
• A Moon Over Wings by Tom Aslin (2008, Clark City Press)

Did I mention I love Powell’s? Go buy some books — you know you love them.
http://www.powells.com

Hello Friends —
“I dreamed ________” or “and then I woke up” are about as cliché premises in poetry and fiction as you can get, like a bad pick-up line. And yet there’s something endearing about a certain kind of pick-up line so absurd it would only ever occur to a poet to even attempt to pull it off — and fail/succeed beautifully at it.
Enjoy.
Ellen

Dear Tiara

I dreamed I was a mannequin in the pawnshop window
of your conjectures.

I dreamed I was a chant in the mouth of a monk, saffron-robed
syllables in the religion of You.

I dreamed I was a lament to hear the deep sorrow places
of your lungs.

I dreamed I was your bad instincts.

I dreamed I was a hummingbird sipping from the tulip of your ear.

I dreamed I was your ex-boyfriend stored in the basement
with your old baggage.

I dreamed I was a jukebox where every song sang your name.

I dreamed I was in an elevator, rising in the air shaft
of your misgivings.

I dreamed I was a library fine, I’ve checked you out
too long so many times.

I dreamed you were a lake and I was a little fish leaping
through the thin reeds of your throaty humming.

I must’ve dreamed I was a nail, because I woke beside you still
hammered.

I dreamed I was a tooth to fill the absences of your old age.

I dreamed I was a Christmas cactus, blooming in the desert
of my stupidity.

I dreamed I was a saint’s hair shirt, sewn with the thread
of your saliva.

I dreamed I was an All Night Movie Theater, showing the
flickering black reel of my nights before I met you.

I must’ve dreamed I was gravity, I’ve fallen for you so damn hard.

---

By Sean Thomas Dougherty from Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line (2010)

Hello Friends —
Today’s heroic couplets are brought to you by Julia Alvarez. First published in Helicon Nine magazine (1985), this poem is also included in her collection Homecoming (1996).
Enjoy.
Ellen

---

How I Learned To Sweep

My mother never taught me sweeping.
One afternoon she found me watching
t.v. She eyed the dusty floor
boldly, and put a broom before
me, and said she’d like to be able
to eat her dinner off that table,
and nodded at my feet, then left.
I knew right off what she expected
and went at it. I stepped and swept;
the t.v. blared the news; I kept
my mind on what I had to do,
until in minutes, I was through.
Her floor was as immaculate
as a just-washed dinner plate.
I waited for her return
and turned to watch the President,
live from the White House, talk of war:
in the Far East our soldiers were
landing in their helicopters
into jungles their propellers
swept like weeds seen underwater
while perplexing shots were fired
from those beautiful green gardens
into which these dragonflies
filled with little men descended.
I got up and swept again
as they fell out of the sky.
I swept all the harder when
I watched a dozen of them die.
as if their dust fell through the screen
upon the floor I had just cleaned.
She came back and turned the dial;
the screen went dark. That’s beautiful,
she said, and ran her clean hand through
my hair, and on, over the window-
sill, coffee table, rocker, desk,
and held it up—I held my breath—
That’s beautiful, she said, impressed,
she hadn’t found a speck of death.

---

“How I Learned To Sweep” by Julia Alvarez was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 24, 2009.
Poet Julia Alvarez was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 10, 2010.

The Mirror in Which Two Are Seen as One

1.

She is the one you call sister.
Her simplest act has glamour
as when she scales a fish the knife
flashes in her long fingers
no motion wasted or when
rapidly talking of love
she steel-wool burnishes
the battered kettle

Love apples cramp you sideways
with sudden emptiness
the cereals gutting you, the grains
ripe clusters picked by hand
Love: the refrigerator
with open door
the ripe steaks bleeding
their hearts out in plastic film
the whipped butter, the apricots
the sour leftovers

A crate is waiting in the orchard
For you to fill it
Your hands are raw with scraping
The sharp bark, the thorns
Of this succulent tree
Pick, pick, pick
this harvest is a failure
the juice runs down your cheekbones
like sweat or tears

2.

She is the one you call sister
you blaze like lightning about the room
flicker around her like fire
dazzle yourself in her wide eyes
listing her unfelt needs
thrusting the tenets of your life
into her hands

She moves through a world of India print
her body dappled
with softness, the paisley swells at her hip

walking the streets in her cotton shift

buying fresh figs because you love them
photographing the ghetto because you took her there

Why are you crying dry up your tears
we are sisters
words fail you in the stare of her hunger
you hand her another book
scored by your pencil
you hand her a record
of two flutes in India reciting

3.

Late summer nights the insects
fry in the yellowed lightglobe
your skin burns gold in its light
In this mirror, who are you? Dreams of the nunnery
with its discipline, the nursery
with its nurse, the hospital
where all the powerful ones are masked
the graveyard where you sit on the graves
of women who died in childbirth
and women who died at birth
Dream of your sister’s birth
your mother dying in childbirth over and over
not knowing how to stop
bearing you over and over

your mother dead and you unborn
your two hands grasping your head
drawing it down against the blade of life
your nerves the nerves of a midwife
learning her trade

———————————————

Hello Friends —

The poet Adrienne Rich had a younger sister, and also considered her feminist and civil rights activist colleagues sisters — famously refusing to accept the National Book Award in 1974 alone, instead bringing fellow nominees Audre Lorde and Alice Walker on stage with her to accept the award “on behalf of all women.” In 1997, she also famously turned down the White House’s National Medal of Arts, in protest of efforts to defund the National Endowment for the Arts, stating, “Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage.” Rich passed away one month ago, on March 27, 2012, so it’s up to those that continue after her now to ensure art serves as a tool of justice and not just decoration.

Hear Alice Walker discuss Rich and the 1974 National Book Award, and hear Adrienne Rich read her 1997 National Medal of Arts refusal letter in the Democracy Now video embedded below:

And from Alison Bechdel:

Enjoy.
Ellen

P.S. Thank you to Bonnie for choosing this poem to send out in Rich’s honor.

Poet Adrienne Rich was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 25, 2008.