Author: tgifreytag

Poem-a-Day, April 2: On Cooking a Symbol at 400 Degrees

Dear Friends,

Due to travel delays and internet connection challenges beyond the anticipated scope, your Good Friday poem-a-day is arriving 24 hours late. My apologies. Cathy and I were supposed to be in San Antonio this weekend to watch the Stanford women’s basketball team compete in the Final Four. Unfortunately, Cathy’s uncle passed away, and we are now in Honolulu instead to spend time with family and attend his funeral.

Whether your plans for this weekend include a religious service, Final Four fever, bunnies and dyed eggs, drag queen nuns competing for best bonnet, or whether you’re simply trying to ignore all of the above, it’s certainly an apt occasion to reflect on the capacity of human languages, cultures, and religions to layer so many meanings on a single signifier — like an egg, an X, or a baby sheep.

Bon Appétit.
— Ellen

On Cooking a Symbol at 400 Degrees

I butterflied Australian rack of lamb
with shallots, garlic, parsley, butter, wine
(some in the pan, some for the palate).
Although the livestock loved in nursery rhyme
avoided clumps of mint, it served my family
nonetheless. I am no PETA zealot
(leather jacket, handbag, wallet, shoes)
but wonder if the deeds we do pursue
us in the afterlife. Does the fleecy
creature have a tenderable claim?
My lambent mind considers our short lease
on life, the oven hot. Am I to blame?
Who gave thee such a tender voice? asked Blake.
Myself am Hell. I watch the mutton bake.

By Patty Seyburn, as printed in the February 2010 issue of Poetry magazine.

For the Blake reference, see “The Lamb” (and “The Tyger”) by the illuminated 18th-century British poet William Blake. Seyburn’s train of thought then transitions to Satan’s famous line from John Milton’s Paradise Lost — a work that greatly influenced Blake.

Poem-a-Day Series | April 2010

Dear Friends,

It’s that time of year again! April is National Poetry Month. For the past several years, I’ve enjoyed sending out one poem per day for the duration of the month and reading your responses to the different poems.

If you would like to have poems emailed to you, I would love for you to join my poem-a-day list here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/poemaday_tgifreytag/
Each poem-a-day will also be posted right here at meetmein811.blogspot.com.

No prior poetry experience required! Enthusiasm, ability to read, and access to email are the only main prerequisites. Do you have friends or family who would like to be added to a poem-a-day email list? They can sign up here, too.

Once in a decade, April 1 is not only the start of National Poetry Month but also National Census Day. So, today, a poem for the counted, and a reminder that a census may be defined as much by the questions it doesn’t ask as by the ones it does.

Love,
Ellen

The Unknown Citizen

(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)


He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

“The Unknown Citizen” appears in W.H. Auden‘s collection Another Time, published in 1940 — a year after Auden moved from Britain to the United States and became an American citizen. This poem is also included in his Collected Poems (2007).

To learn more about National Poetry Month, visit www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.

“The Unknown Citizen” by W.H. Auden was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 15, 2009.

POEM-A-DAY APRIL 2009

Where It Ends [Poem-a-Day, April 30]

Where the Sidewalk Ends

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.


— Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends (1974)

Hello Friends,

Like the sidewalk, this too must end. Thirty days. Thirty poets. Thirty poems.

Thank you for humoring me in this celebration of National Poetry Month. If a particular poem or two from this month stuck with you, and you feel inspired to dive deeper, here are some places to start. You can also find all of my poem-a-days at meetmein811.blogspot.com.

— Ellen

Poems by Shel Silverstein were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 21, 2007 and Poem-a-Day April 18, 2011.

Poem-a-Day, April 29: Do I dare disturb the universe?

http://www.flickr.com/pool-freeverse

Hello Friends,

The line pictured above comes from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot, which can be read in full here.

One of the Academy of American Poets projects for National Poetry Month 2009 has been compiling photos of poetry out and about in our daily lives. View today’s and more poem photos at http://www.flickr.com/groups/freeverse/pool/.

Also, tomorrow, April 30, 2009, is Poem in Your Pocket Day! Poets and poetry enthusiasts will be handing out thousands of poems near subway stops in New York City, and on the streets and in schools and offices in other cities across the U.S. (which is pretty awesome if you ask me). More on poems ideal for pockets here.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poem-a-Day, April 28: The J Church Line

The J Car

Last year I used to ride the J Church Line,
Climbing between small yards recessed with vine
— Their ordered privacy, their plots of flowers
Like blameless lives we might imagine ours.
Most trees were cut back, but some brushed the car
Before it swung round to the street once more
On which I rolled out almost to the end,
To 29th Street, calling for my friend.
       He’d be there at the door, smiling but gaunt,
To set out for the German restaurant.
There, since his sight was tattered now, I would
First read the menu out. He liked the food
In which a sourness and dark richness meet
For conflict without taste of a defeat,
As in the Sauerbraten. What he ate
I hoped would help him to put on some weight,
But though the crusted pancakes might attract
They did so more as concept than in fact,
And I’d eat his dessert before we both
Rose from the neat arrangement of the cloth,
Where the connection between life and food
Had briefly seemed so obvious if so crude.
Our conversation circumspectly cheerful,
We had sat here like children good but fearful
Who think if they behave everything might
Still against likelihood come out all right.
       But it would not, and we could not stay here:
Finishing up the Optimator beer
I walked him home through the suburban cool
By dimming shape of church and Catholic school,
Only a few white teenagers about.
After the four blocks he would be tired out.
I’d leave him to the feverish sleep ahead,
Myself to ride through darkened yards instead
Back to my health. Of course I simplify.
Of course. It tears me still that he should die
As only an apprentice to his trade,
The ultimate engagements not yet made.
His gifts had been withdrawing one by one
Even before their usefulness was done:
This optic nerve would never be relit;
The other flickered, soon to be with it.
Unready, disappointed, unachieved,
He knew he would not write the much-conceived
Much-hoped-for work now, nor yet help create
A love he might in full reciprocate.

Hello Friends,

I had the immense privilege of studying with a number of master poets as an undergrad, among them Thom Gunn — who was usually at the center of the room, leaning back with his legs crossed, black jeans and black boots propped up on a desk, his sleeve rolled up to reveal the panther tattoo roaring down his forearm, scattered with white hairs. I picture him, and this poem, almost every time I ride the J Church Line through the section of backyards from 19th through 30th Streets.

“The J Car” comes from Gunn’s 1992 collection The Man with Night Sweats — night sweats being a common symptom for men living with HIV, and especially severe in the later stages of AIDS. Gunn is British but lived in the Haight-Ashbery district of San Francisco for decades. He often writes in rhyme, and in “The J Car,” I find it particularly telling that he chose heroic couplets with almost all full or perfect rhymes — as if each line, each rhyme, fully reciprocates its partner.

To learn more about men living with HIV and AIDS in San Francisco, visit http://www.stopaids.org. And to help my dear friend Hunter stop AIDS this Thursday, April 30, 2009, participate in Dining Out for Life: At some San Francisco locations, 25% or more of Thursday’s lunch and dinner proceeds will go to The Stop AIDS Project, and there are some damn tasty restaurants participating. So check it out, grab some friends, and have a nice night out for a good cause.

Cheers,
Ellen

Poet Thom Gunn was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 5, 2008.

Poem-a-Day, April 27: Made in Increments

13/16

1.
I cut myself into sixteen equal pieces
keep thirteen and feed the other three
to the dogs, who have also grown

tired of U.S. Commodities, white cans
black letters translated into Spanish.
“Does this mean I have to learn

the language to eat?” Lester FallsApart asks
but directions for preparation are simple:
a. WASH CAN; b. OPEN CAN; c. EXAMINE CONTENTS

OF CAN FOR SPOILAGE; d. EMPTY CONTENTS
OF CAN INTO SAUCE PAN; e. COOK CONTENTS
OVER HIGH HEAT; f. SERVE AND EAT.

2.
It is done by blood, reservation mathematics, fractions:
father (full-blood) + mother (5/8) = son (13/16).

It is done by enrollment number, last name first, first name last:
Spokane Tribal Enrollment Number 1569; Victor, Chief.

It is done by identification card, photograph, lamination:
IF FOUND, PLEASE RETURN TO SPOKANE TRIBE OF INDIANS, WELLPINIT, WA.

3.
The compromise is always made
in increments. On this reservation
we play football on real grass
dream of deserts, three inches of rain

in a year. What we have lost:
uranium mine, Little Falls Dam
salmon. Our excuses are trapped
within museums, roadside attractions

totem poles in Riverfront Park.
I was there, watching the Spokane River
changing. A ten-year-old white boy asked
if I was a real Indian. He did not wait

for an answer, instead carving his initials
into the totem with a pocketknife: J.N.
We are what we take, carving my name
my enrollment number, thirteen hash marks

into the wood. A story is remembered
as evidence, the Indian man they found dead
shot in the alley behind the Mayfair.
Authorities reported a rumor he had relatives

in Minnesota. A member of some tribe or another
his photograph on the 11 o’clock news. Eyes, hair
all dark, his shovel-shaped incisor, each the same
ordinary indentification of the anonymous.

4.
When my father disappeared, we found him
years later, in a strange kitchen searching
for footprints in the dust: still

untouched on the shelves all the commodity
cans without labels—my father opened them
one by one, finding a story in each.

Hi Friends,

Today’s poem is by Sherman Alexie, from his first collection of poems and vignettes This Business of Fancydancing (1992).

April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

—Ellen

Poems by Sherman Alexie were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 24, 2008 and Poem-a-Day April 17, 2010.

Poem-a-Day, April 26: alone too, too alone

28
Snow Line

It was wet & white & swift and where I am
we don’t know. It was dark and then
it isn’t.
I wish the barker would come. There seems to be to eat
nothing. I am unusually tired.
I’m alone too.

If only the strange one with so few legs would come,
I’d say my prayers out of my mouth, as usual.
Where are his notes I loved?
There may be horribles; it’s hard to tell.
The barker nips me but somehow I feel
he too is on my side.

I’m too alone. I see no end. If we could all
run, even that would be better. I am hungry.
The sun is not hot.
It’s not a good position I am in.
If I had to do the whole thing over again
I wouldn’t.

Hello Friends,

Today’s poem is by John Berryman (1914-1972) from his masterwork The Dream Songs (1969).

April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

Sweet Dreams,
Ellen

Dream Song #28 “Snow Line” by John Berryman was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 26, 2007.

Poem-a-Day, April 25: Or every man be blind

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise

As lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

The work above is known simply as #1129 — a constant reminder of how heavily those who collected and edited Emily Dickinson‘s manuscripts posthumously influence how we experience the sequencing, punctuation, and other attributes of her poems today.

I sometimes experience the poem above in conversation with Robert Frost, who decades later asks Tellers of Truths to “Choose Something Like A Star.”

MC Emmie D is also well known for her Slant in #258, “There’s a certain Slant of light,” and for her frequent use of slant rhyme and dashes of various slants and lengths. (There’s a brilliant article by Saskia Hamilton in the most recent issue of American Poet magazine on Dickinson’s use of slant rhyme and breath that I wish I could link you to, but unfortunately it does not yet exist on the internets.)

April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

— Ellen

Poems by Emily Dickinson were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 29, 2008 and Poem-a-Day April 25, 2010.

Dust [Poem-a-Day, April 24]

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.

— By Julia Alvarez; first published in Helicon Nine magazine (1985), and also included in her collection Homecoming (1996).

Poet Julia Alvarez was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 10, 2010.