Category: April 2018

POEM-A-DAY APRIL 2018


No clocks

End

There are
No clocks on the wall,
And no time,
No shadows that move
From dawn to dusk
Across the floor.

There is neither light
Nor dark
Outside the door.

There is no door!

■

Hello Friends,

"End" by Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967) concludes this April's poem-a-day series. One of my favorite things about living in DC so far is that we have a series of restaurant bookstores named after Langston Hughes — Busboys and Poets. (Langston Hughes was a busboy when he was "discovered" as a poet.)

It's been quite a month! You've read poems from the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s, and 2000s. You've read poems by Black poets, Latinx poets, API poets, Native poets, mixed race poets, and white poets. You've read poems by women, men, genderqueer poets, gay poets, lesbian poets, and bisexual poets. You've digested pantoum, ode, haiku, spoken word, sonnets, quatrains, quintets, and sestets. Somehow I didn't really send you any tercets this year; I guess you'll just have to come back next year!

A recap of the month in poems can be found here, including sources for each day’s poem — in case you're interested in reading more from a particular poet or two whose words may have stuck with you this month (I hope).

Thank you again for partaking in my own little celebration of National Poetry Month. And if you're ever looking for a recommendation or advice on a poem or poet during some other the month of the year, you know where to find me...

In 811,
Ellen

Bent to the Earth

Bent to the Earth

They had hit Ruben
with the high beams, had blinded
him so that the van
he was driving, full of Mexicans
going to pick tomatoes,
would have to stop. Ruben spun

the van into an irrigation ditch,
spun the five-year-old me awake
to immigration officers,
their batons already out,
already looking for the soft spots on the body,
to my mother being handcuffed
and dragged to a van, to my father
trying to show them our green cards.

They let us go. But Alvaro
was going back.
So was his brother Fernando.
So was their sister Sonia. Their mother
did not escape,
and so was going back. Their father
was somewhere in the field,
and was free. There were no great truths

revealed to me then. No wisdom
given to me by anyone. I was a child
who has seen what a piece of polished wood
could do to a face, who had seen his father
about to lose the one he loved, who had lost
some friends who would never return,
who, later that morning, bent
to the earth and went to work.

■

— Blas Manuel De Luna, Bent to the Earth (2006)

not an elegy

not an elegy for Mike Brown

I am sick of writing this poem
but bring the boy. his new name

his same old body. ordinary, black
dead thing. bring him & we will mourn
until we forget what we are mourning

& isn't that what being black is about?
not the joy of it, but the feeling

you get when you are looking
at your child, turn your head,
then, poof, no more child.

that feeling. that's black.

\\

think: once, a white girl

was kidnapped & that's the Trojan war.

later, up the block, Troy got shot
& that was Tuesday. are we not worthy

of a city of ash? of 1000 ships
launched because we are missed?

always, something deserves to be burned.
it's never the right thing now a days.

I demand a war to bring the dead boy back
no matter what his name is this time.

I at least demand a song. a song will do just fine.

\\

look at what the lord has made.
above Missouri, sweet smoke.

■

Danez Smith is a Black, queer, poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN. Some favorite lines from Danez's interview with the Rumpus:

"I think every poem is for a somebody and the worst poems are for everybody."

"It's uncomfortable as shit, but I think that's exactly what poetry is supposed to do. Things I'd never tell my mom are now sitting on her bookshelf."

Speaking of moms, Michael Brown's mother, Lezley McSpadden, may be running for Ferguson City Council. Read more here.

"not an elegy for Mike Brown" can be found in The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database, maintained by the DC-based poetry org Split This Rock.

an appointment with my anguish


Hello Friends,

Gabrielle Calvocoressi was a very special poetry professor of mine, and it is always a treat to have a new poem of hers to share with you. Today's selection is from Rocket Fantastic (September 2017). If you like women in bowties, or bandleaders who represent "a confluence of genders in varying degrees, not either/or nor necessarily both in equal measure," then this is the poetry collection for you! The poem below is not actually about the bandleader, though; it's about grief.

Enjoy.
Ellen

The Sun Got All Over Everything

Over the boys and girls by the pool,
over the bougainvillea, which got so hot
my palms stayed warm for minutes after.
It made a mess of a day
that was supposed to be the worst
and lured me outside so I forgot her death entirely.
And also the polar bears scrambling
on the ice chips. And also that there was no water
in the Golden State. The pool was full
and the sun poured across the women's bodies
so you had to shade your eyes. Or I did. I had to
put my hand up to see what they were saying.
I know it's no excuse. And I had made a plan
to cry all day

and into the evening. I marked in my book,
which seems like something I'd make up in a poem
except this time I actually did it.
I wrote: Grieve. Because we're all so busy
aren't we? And so broke. I needed to make
an appointment with my anguish, so I could
take my mind off buying groceries
that I really couldn't afford. Anyway.
I didn't mean to go outside except there
the sky was, just ridiculously blue,
taunting me with pigment that I felt
the need to name. And from somewhere
close by a voice I couldn't see because the sun
was like a yolk cracked over it said,

What are you drinking? And I said,
I'm grieving. I'm very busy remembering.
I made an appointment because last year
I forgot and then felt awful. The sun opened
its mouth and made a gong of the canyons.

I poured across the girls and slicked across
their Dior lenses. I put my tongue on it
exactly when I should have been tearing
at my clothes and lighting candles.
I got on top and let it find the tightness
in my back and open where my wings would
be. Somewhere my mother was dying
and someone was skinning a giraffe.
And I let it go. I just let it go.

■

Poems by Gabrielle Calvocoressi were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 23, 2010 and Poem-a-Day April 27, 2007.

Is that a poem in your pocket?


Hello Friends,

April 26 is officially Poem in Your Pocket Day, brought to you by the Academy of American Poets — the same folks who bring you National Poetry Month.

Those of you who have been on this list for nine years or more may have seen today's poem before, but I hope it lends itself to re-reading as one of my very favorite pocket-sized (or any-sized) poems of all time.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Hymn for Lota

Close, close all night
the lovers keep.
They turn together,
in their sleep,

close as two pages
in a book
that read each other
in the dark.

Each knows all
the other knows,
learned by heart
from head to toes.

■

"Hymn for Lota" comes from the unpublished works of Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) — published in the 2006 collection Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments by Elizabeth Bishop, edited by Alice Quinn. This poem is also featured in Marta Góes’s one-woman play A Safe Harbor for Elizabeth Bishop.

"Hymn to Lota" by Elizabeth Bishop was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 5, 2009 and Poem-a-Day April 3, 2007.
Poems by Elizabeth Bishop were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 6, 2008 and Poem-a-Day April 13, 2010.

nothing really happened

Incident

We tell the story every year—
how we peered from the windows, shades drawn—
though nothing really happened,
the charred grass now green again.

We peered from the windows, shades drawn,
at the cross trussed like a Christmas tree,
the charred grass still green. Then
we darkened our rooms, lit the hurricane lamps.

At the cross trussed like a Christmas tree,
a few men gathered, white as angels in their gowns.
We darkened our rooms and lit hurricane lamps,
the wicks trembling in their fonts of oil.

It seemed the angels had gathered, white men in their gowns.
When they were done, they left quietly. No one came.
The wicks trembled all night in their fonts of oil;
by morning the flames had all dimmed.

When they were done, the men left quietly. No one came.
Nothing really happened.
By morning all the flames had dimmed.
We tell the story every year.

■

Hello Friends,

The former U.S. poet laureate Natasha Trethewey is a master at picking the perfect poetic form for her subject matter. The form above, wherein the 2nd and 4th lines of the preceding stanza become the 1st and 3rd lines of the next stanza, is called a pantoum — and it is absolutely perfect for conveying a haunting incident that gets told over and over again.

Sometimes the incidents that haunt us the most are those where "nothing really happened" — If this has happened to you, consider trying to write a pantoum about it.

Enjoy.
Ellen

P.S. Natasha Trethewey has also been featured for Meet Me in 811's Poem-A-Day April 29, 2014, Poem-A-Day April 18, 2010, and Poem-A-Day April 16, 2009.

5-7-5

The morning breeze
ripples the fur
of the caterpillar

■

Hello Friends,

Today's haiku comes from the celebrated Japanese poet Yosa Buson (1716 - 1784). This English translation is by Stephen Addiss. In the original Japanese, this haiku follows the format you are probably familiar with: 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables. But often to capture the essence of a haiku in translation, it does not make sense to preserve the syllable count.

Do you have a favorite haiku? Send it my way.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Since it’s his birthday…

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall time's best jewel from time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

■

Hello Friends,

The desire to make something beautiful immortal has motivated many a poet, perhaps none more than Shakespeare (who we believe was born on this day in 1564). Before you is a Shakespearean sonnet that "in black ink" has indeed allowed Shakespeare's love to "still shine bright" centuries later.

— Ellen

Behold this compost!


Hello Friends,

Today's Earth Day poem is both piercing in its innocence — written before plastics and cars, when the worst thing Whitman could imagine we were putting in the ground was dead bodies — and at the same time eerily prescient in its predictions of humans' attitude toward the Earth, anticipating that Earth "grows such sweet things out of such corruptions" and "gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last."

In terms of the focus on dead bodies, I thought this was a post-Civil War poem but it turns out that an earlier draft called "Poem of Wonder at The Resurrection of the Wheat" pre-dates the Civil War. Whitman was just very interested in chemistry, the endless recycling of material, every atom belonging to you as good belonging to me. When he re-titled this piece "This Compost" it may be a nod to "composition" — in the sense that all poems are also an endless recycling of words, used by other poets in other poems, etc. Whitman himself would recycle the image "the lilacs bloom in the dooryards" from this poem in his later famous elegy to Abraham Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd."

Enjoy.
Ellen

This Compost

1

Something startles me where I thought I was safest,
I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea,
I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me.

O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?
How can you be alive you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper’d corpses within you?
Is not every continent work’d over and over with sour dead?

Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv’d,
I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through
the sod and turn it up underneath,
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.

2

Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has one form’d part of a sick person—yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch’d eggs,
The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rises the potato’s dark green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in the dooryards,
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead.

What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is not cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which is so amorous after me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues,
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever,
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums will
none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease.

Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas’d corpses,
It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.

■

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was also featured for Meet Me in 811's Poem-A-Day April 12, 2017 as subject matter and as poet in Poem-A-Day April 11, 2017 and Poem-A-Day April 21, 2014.