In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
***
Hi Friends,
Today’s poem is from Personae (1926) by Ezra Pound.
Enjoy.
Ellen
This poem is not actually “shorter than haiku” by syllable count. But I’m going to count it amongst other strongly haiku-influenced works featured in my poem-a-day series: see also Poem-a-Day April 20, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 14, 2008; and Poem-a-Day April 2, 2009.
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other:then
laugh,leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
***
Hi Friends,
Today’s E.E. Cummings poem (note the capital E.E.) is for Cathy’s eyelids, and for seven years wonder-full of 13ths.
Love,
Ellen
Poems by E.E. Cummings were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 12, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 13, 2009; Poem-a-Day April 20, 2010; and Poem-a-Day April 13, 2011.
WITCHGRASS
Something
comes into the world unwelcome
calling disorder, disorder—
If you hate me so much
don’t bother to give me
a name: do you need
one more slur
in your language, another
way to blame
one tribe for everything—
as we both know,
if you worship
one god, you only need
one enemy—
I’m not the enemy.
Only a ruse to ignore
what you see happening
right here in this bed,
a little paradigm
of failure. One of your precious flowers
dies here almost every day
and you can’t rest until
you attack the cause, meaning
whatever is left, whatever
happens to be sturdier
than your personal passion—
It was not meant
to last forever in the real world.
But why admit that, when you can go on
doing what you always do,
mourning and laying blame,
always the two together.
I don’t need your praise
to survive. I was here first,
before you were here, before
you ever planted a garden.
And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon
are left, and the sea, and the wide field.
I will constitute the field.
***
Hello Friends,
Today’s poem is from Louise Glück‘s (say “Glick”) Pulitzer Prize-winning collection The Wild Iris (1992). The collection is a series of persona poems, each written from the point of view of a different flower or plant, and often touching on the relationship between people, the natural world, and a god.
If the witchgrass of this poem is “I”, who does that make the poet? Would you say that the poet is also the “I”?
Or is the poet the gardener? Is the page a field? Are the words the flowers or weeds? Does that leave the reader somewhere between the poet and a god?
Or is a god the gardener? If a god is the gardener, is Eden in play here? If so, would Adam and Eve be part of the same tribe, or different tribes? Would you read the persona voice differently if The Wild Iris were written by Louis Glück instead of Louise? Is the voice of any flower feminized by virtue of being a flower?
Who is included in “you”? Does “your language” mean that, if you can read this poem (in English), you are part of “you”? Or if you can read this poem in any written language, human language, are you part of “you”? Is the poet a part of the “you”? If the poet’s you, who does that make you?
One last note: If you were to print this poem out on a single long sheet of paper and fold it in half, the line at the crease would be “a little paradigm.” The line left alone at the end would be “I will constitute the field.”
Ellen
Poet Louise Glück was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 30, 2007.
***
Hello Friends,
Today’s poem is by Atsuro Riley, who grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, and lives in Menlo Park, California. “Hutch” was printed in the December 2007 issue of Poetry magazine.
Best,
Ellen
This is not a love poem, 1895
Angels were not
coursing through us.
It wasn’t as though
I couldn’t think for days.
We touched hands
quite by accident.
Quite.
Too much to do
in those missionary meetings
to let my mind
linger on
imagining the bend
of a man’s neck
as he bowed in prayer,
to wonder
if it would bend
just that way
to find my lips.
***
Hello Friends,
Today’s poem is an unpublished (yet? to my knowledge) work of Maia McAleavey, written in 2001.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. You can always learn more about National Poetry Month or sign up for a more official-like poem-a-day list at www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.
Enjoy.
Ellen
Hello friends,
Today is a day for reading aloud! You can listen to today’s poem at the following link:
http://bit.ly/basilrathbone
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. You can always learn more about National Poetry Month or sign up for a more official-like poem-a-day list at www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.
Enjoy!
Ellen
The Look
Strephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.
Strephon’s kiss was lost in jest,
Robin’s lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin’s eyes
Haunts me night and day.
***
Hello Friends,
Yesterday’s poem-a-day is “The Look” by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933).
Some Teasdale trivia tidbits: Her middle name was “Trevor.” She hung with the Harriet Monroe crowd (whose sizable fortune makes Poetry magazine the most financially well-off poetry organization in the U.S. to this day).
Teasdale is also among the (many) suicide sisters of our poetic heritage; for some interesting reading on the connection between mental illness, suicidality, and artistic genius, I highly recommend Kay Redfield Jamison’s Touched with Fire.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. You can always learn more about National Poetry Month or sign up for a more official-like poem-a-day list at www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.
Enjoy.
Ellen
P.S. You will have to wait til later today for today’s poem. I apologize for falling a bit behind.
“The Look” by Sara Teasdale was featured again for Poem-a-Day April 27, 2011.
The Horses
The primary red striped onto the black, the dye
spotting the mirror and sink with
a kind of gore, a sulfur that is in the air for days:
you are twenty-two and this means
even folly has its own exacting nature. The hair
turned red, as easily as last month’s
blue; the puggish, miniature barbell pierced into
a nipple. At the club I watch you on top
of the speaker, tearing the shirt your brother gave
you, the music a murderous brightness
in the black room. Now you want it all off, down
to clear scalp. Your head in foam,
you ask me to do the places you can’t properly
reach: the neck’s mossy hairs, the back’s
escarpment, an edge of bone the razor nicks
to small blood, tasting like peppermint
and metal on my tongue. In the used-bookstore
this afternoon, in the master’s book of
drawings, pencil sketches of the heads of horses,
whose long nostrils had been slit open
as custom demanded. The Icelanders, Mongols,
and Italians finding a measurable
efficiency in what they could see: the horses, even
in their speed, as though not breathing.
***
Hi Friends,
Today’s poem is from Rick Barot‘s new collection Want (2008).
The drawing referenced in the last two stanzas is probably “The Slashed Nostrils of Horses” by the Italian artist Antonio Pisanello, part of the Louvre collection. In the Early Reniassance period, horse racing was big business, and in some cultures horse racers believed that slitting the nostrils allowed a horse to take in more air, making it faster.
A visually memorable tidbit of history. But then again, “The Horses” isn’t really about the horses. Why do you think Barot chose this title?
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. You can always learn more about National Poetry Month or sign up for a more official-like poem-a-day list at www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.
Best,
Ellen
Poet Rick Barot was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 19, 2007.
One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
***
Hello Friends,
Elizabeth Bishop‘s “One Art” is an example of a villanelle, a difficult poetic form to master. You can read more about the villanelle form here. There’s also an excellent analysis of this poem in Chapter 2 of Edward Hirsch’s How To Read A Poem.
Today’s poem is dedicated to Nishat and to my grandmother.
Love,
Ellen
Poems by Elizabeth Bishop were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 3, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 5, 2009; and Poem-a-Day April 13, 2010.
Jamesian
Their relationship consisted
In discussing if it existed.
***
Dear Friends,
I had the privilege of being one of Thom Gunn‘s last students before he passed away. A couple of British journalists called from overseas when it happened, eager to ask me about what that was like.
My vision is of Thom Gunn walking into the classroom, taking the chair in the center of the room, propping his well-worn black leather boots up on the table, crossing his legs, leaning back, unbuttoning and rolling up just one of his sleeves so we could all see the black panther of tattoo roaring beneath the white hairs and loosening skin of his forearm, and waiting for the bunch of ignorant undergraduate students milling about to realize that Thom Gunn was in the room. Sadly, most of them never did.
Towards the end of the quarter, Thom told me I was by far the most “adventurous” writer in his class. Given how he lived and wrote his own life, I am fairly certain that was a compliment — one that I carry with me and aspire to some day live up to.
“Jamesian” is from Gunn’s 1992 collection The Man with Night Sweats.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. You can always learn more about National Poetry Month or sign up for a more official-like poem-a-day list at www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.
Enjoy.
Ellen
Poet Thom Gunn was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 28, 2009.
Poems shorter than haiku were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 20, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 14, 2008; and Poem-a-Day April 2, 2009.