Category: April 2008

POEM-A-DAY APRIL 2008

Poem-a-day, April 30: So.

“Out, Out —”

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them “Supper.” At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap —
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. The boy saw all —
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart —
He saw all spoiled. “Don’t let him cut my hand off —
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!”
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then — the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little — less — nothing! — and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

***

Hello Friends,

Today’s poem is by Robert Frost, in his collection Mountain Interval (1916). The poem’s title is a reference to one of the greatest monologues ever written, in Shakespeare’s Macbeth (see Poem-a-Day April 23, 2007).

And with that, I am Out. Thirty days. Thirty poets. Thirty poems. Today is the last day of April, and the last poem-a-day for 2008.

If a particular poem or two from this month has really stuck with you, I am so glad! And if you’re feeling inspired to continue reading some poetry beyond the month of April, here are some places to start.

Thank you for humoring me in this celebration of National Poetry Month. You may now return to your affairs.

– Ellen

P.S. If you missed a poem-a-day from earlier, or just want to revisit one, visit meetmein811.blogspot.com or http://groups.yahoo.com/group/poemaday_tgifreytag/.

Poem-a-day, April 29: dark chivalries

By Chivalries as tiny,
A Blossom, or a Book,
The seeds of smiles are planted —
Which blossom in the dark.

***

Hello friends,

Here’s something they probably neglected to mention in grade school: Many of Emily Dickinson‘s poems, like the above (circa 1858), doubled as notes or letters to her next door neighbor and sister-in-law Susan Huntington Dickinson. Emily and Susan shared a deep emotional, intellectual, and some would argue undeniably erotic connection — beginning several years before Susan married Emily’s brother Austin. For decades, the two exchanged favorite reading materials, small gifts, goods, and notes almost daily.

See also:
Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (1998) by Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith and “Hymn for Lota” by Elizabeth Bishop.

— Ellen

Poems by Emily Dickinson were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 25, 2009 and Poem-a-Day April 25, 2010.

Poem-a-day, April 28: kempt

Early in the Morning

While the long grain is softening
in the water, gurgling
over a low stove flame, before
the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced
for breakfast, before the birds,
my mother glides an ivory comb
through her hair, heavy
and black as calligrapher’s ink.

She sits at the foot of the bed.
My father watches, listens for
the music of comb
against hair.

My mother combs,
pulls her hair back
tight, rolls it
around two fingers, pins it
in a bun to the back of her head.
For half a hundred years she has done this.
My father likes to see it like this.
He says it is kempt.

But I know
it is because of the way
my mother’s hair falls
when he pulls the pins out.
Easily, like the curtains
when they untie them in the evening.

***

By Li-Young Lee, from his 1986 collection Rose.

Poet Li-Young Lee was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 14, 2011.

Poem-a-yesterday, April 27: lovely, dark and deep

She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.

***

Hello friends,

Yesterday’s much belated poem-a-day is an untitled work of Robert Graves, about which Ellen is known to have irreverently remarked: “It’s like ‘Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening’, if the narrator were in love with the horse.”

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poem-a-day, April 26: The kind you see

He watched me, still as a stone,
Speaking no more than an animal,
And I thought perhaps he had
No brain to speak with, nor a tongue.
So I got up my courage and I said:
     “You, tell me, what are you,
Good, or evil, or what?”
     And he answered: “I am a man.”
“What kind of man?” “The kind
You see. I’m nothing but myself.”
“And what are you doing?” “I’m here,
Guarding this herd near this wood.”
“Guarding them? By Saint Peter in Rome!
No one commands these beasts.
And how could you guard such savage
Creatures in an open field
Or a wood or anywhere else
If they’re neither tied nor shut in?”
“I guard them so carefully, and so well,
That they’d never leave this place.”
“Ridiculous! Tell me the truth!”
“Not one of them would move an inch
If he saw me coming …
But no one else could do this,
Just me. Anyone approaching
That herd would be killed at once.
And so I am the lord of my animals.”

***

When the storm had completely vanished
I saw so many birds
In that pine tree (could anyone believe me?)
That it looked as if every branch,
Every twig, was hidden by birds.
And the tree was even lovelier,
For the birds all sang at once,
In marvelous harmony, though each
Was singing its proper song
And not a note that belonged
To one was sung by another.
And I gloried in their happiness,
Listening as they sang their service
Through, unhurried: I’d never
Heard joy so complete,
And no one else will hear it,
I think, unless he goes there
And can hear what filled me with joy
And rapture so deep that I was carried
Away—

***

Hi Friends,

Today’s poem-a-day is a sampling from the first two sections of Yvain: The Knight of the Lion by the twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes, as translated by the twentieth-century poet and professor Burton Raffel. The original is in Old French, octosyllabic rhyming couplets, and 6,818 lines long.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poem-a-day, April 25: dragged down deeper

Twenty-One Love Poems

XX

That conversation we were always on the edge
of having, runs on in my head,
at night the Hudson trembles in New Jersey light
polluted water yet reflecting even
Sometimes the moon
and I discern a woman
I loved, drowning in secrets, fear wound round her throat
and choking her like hair. And this is she
with whom I tried to speak, whose hurt, expressive head
turning aside from pain, is dragged down deeper
where it cannot hear me,
and soon I shall know I was talking to my own soul.

***

Hi Friends,

Yesterday’s poem-a-day is section XX of Adrienne Rich‘s “Twenty-One Love Poems” from her 1978 collection The Dream of A Common Language.

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

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poem-a-day, April 24: vital information

Giving Blood

I need money for the taxi cab ride home to the reservation
    and I need a taxi
because all the Indians left this city last night while I was sleeping
and forgot to tell me
so I walk on down to the blood bank with a coupon that guarantees
me twenty bucks a pint
and I figure I can stand to lose three or four pints but the
white nurse says no
you can only give up one pint at a time and before you can do that
you have to clear
our extensive screening process which involves a physical examination
and interview
which is a pain in the ass but I need the money so I sit down
at a wooden desk
across from the white nurse holding a pen and paper and she asks me
my name and I tell her
Crazy Horse and she asks my birthdate and I tell her it was probably
June 25 in 1876 and then she asks my ethnic origin and I tell her I’m an
Indian or Native American
depending on your view of historical accuracy and she asks me
my religious preference and I tell her I prefer to keep my
     religion entirely independent
of my economic activities
and then she asks me how many sexual partners I’ve had and
I say one or two
depending on your definition of what I did to Custer and then
she puts aside her pen and paper
and gives me the most important question she asks me
if I still have enough heart
and I tell her I don’t know it’s been a long time but I’d like to
give it a try
and then she smiles and turns to her computer punches in my name
and vital information
and we wait together for the results until the computer prints
a sheet of statistics
and the white nurse reads it over a few times and tells me I’m
sorry Mr. Crazy Horse
but we’ve already taken too much of your blood
     and you won’t be eligible
to donate for another generation or two.

***

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 eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. You can learn more about National Poetry Month at www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.

Enjoy.
Ellen

“Giving Blood” by Sherman Alexie was featured again for Poem-a-Day April 17, 2010.
Poet Sherman Alexie was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 27, 2009.

Poem-a-day, April 23: sweet thief

35

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense—
Thy adverse party is thy advocate—
And ‘gainst myself a lawful plea commence.
Such civil war is in my love and hate
     That I an accessory needs must be
     To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

***

Happy birth, and death, William Shakespeare.
April 23, 1564 – April 23, 1616 (approximate and up for debate)

Poems by William Shakespeare were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 23, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 23, 2009; and Poem-a-Day April 23, 2011.

Poem-a-(earth)day, April 22: footholds, foothills, swollen feet

Eagle Rock

This is the place where darkness gathers like a swarm,
as thick as hide, as soft.
This is where the dead lean like tallgrass,
eyelashes bleached and fluttering,
where the breast-high grass leans into the night.
This is where the skin of Buffalo Berries in the evening,
eveningyellow,
is not so sweet.

It is a place of burnt leaves, of quarrymint, of watercress.
It is a place of narrow footholds, and foothills, of swollen feet,
a place of cattails, gutted white and open.
It is a place of rattlesnake sheddings, like crisp honeycomb,
of ankledeep streams, and cold tongues.
A place where muscle-red pipestone teeth thrust from the earth,
gleam from centuries of Bison fur-rubbings,
and rain.

I am born here, was born here, will always be born here,
and here my hazel opals will ever shut,
and screaming like a wind, my bodyslick will slide, again
into the world.

And here, the moss will suck my cheekbones dry,
and they will flake and fall like lichen,
and I will die here, too.

This is where all my candles have been gathered, lit,
and in the dark are rocking, rock with me
in their arabesque of light.
This is the place where all I have stolen or hidden, I have gathered here.
This is where all of me is gathered.

***

Hi Friends,

“Eagle Rock” was written by Bly Pope and first published anonymously in the spring 2002 issue of my beloved Masque magazine. You can read more from Bly (and check out paintings from both Bly and his twin Rowan) at popebrothersart.com.

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

Poems in honor of Earth Day were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 21, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2009; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2010; and Poem-a-Day April 22, 2011.