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Hello Friends —
I have very vivid memories from early childhood of flying — not memories of dreaming about flying, just memories of flying, just me and sky. I also love ridge trails deep in Tennessee. So you can see why C. Dale Young’s “The Vista” speaks to me — and, I hope, to some of you.
Enjoy.
Ellen

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The Vista

Not tenderness in the eye but the brute need
to see accurately: over the ridge on a trail
deep in Tennessee, the great poet looked out and saw
the vista that confederate soldiers saw
as they rode over the edge rather than surrender.

I saw only the edge of the cliff side itself and then
estimated the distance down to the bottom
of the dirty ravine. This is what someone with wings
does when he knows he cannot fly: he measures
distance. I have spent far too much time

examining my wings in the bathroom mirror
after the shower’s steam has slowly cleared
from the medicine cabinet’s toothpaste-splattered glass:
grey, each feather just slightly bigger than a hawk’s.
The great poet said one might find a vista like this,

perhaps, once in a lifetime, but I didn’t understand
what he meant by this then. The wings, tucked
beneath a t-shirt, beneath my long-sleeve oxford,
the wings folded in along my spine, were irritated
by that humid air, itchy from the collected sweat from the hike.

I wasn’t paying attention, which is a sin I have since learned.
At 14, after the wings first erupted from my back,
I went up to the roof and tried to fly. Some lessons
can only be learned after earnest but beautiful failures.
My individual feathers are just slightly bigger than a hawk’s

feathers. But my wingspan is just about 8 feet. I’m a man,
and like men I measure everything. But vistas
make me nervous. And the great poet made me nervous.
And I knew then what I still know now, that I
was only seconds away from another beautiful failure.

---

For the curious: The great poet who makes C. Dale Young nervous may be Allen Tate (“Ode to the Confederate Dead”: “We shall say only the leaves / Flying, plunge and expire”). Tate in turn may have been made nervous by Donald Davidson (“The Last Charge”: “the blue waves of hills lap all the distance”), and Davidson in turn may have been made nervous by Lord Alfred Tennyson (“The Charge of the Light Brigade”: “All in the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred”). All of which is to say, every poet walks a delicate balance between the premise that every poem he could possibly think of to write has already been written, and has never been written.

Hi Friends —

Thanks for enduring a sadder poem-a-day yesterday, and here’s a sunnier poem to balance out your poetic intake.

My lovely neighbors Kristin and Jason pointed out to me the other day that April is National Grilled Cheese Month as well as National Poetry Month — and clearly these two celebrations were meant to be brought together.

At my new favorite diner-I’ve-never-been-to, the Pop Shop neighborhood soda foundation in Collingswood, New Jersey, owners Stink Fisher and Connie Correia Fisher serve up a speciality grilled cheese sandwich for each day of National Grilled Cheese Month — that’s 30 days, 30 different kinds of grilled cheese sandwiches — and they also run an accompanying Cheesy Poetry Contest. From my quick review of past year’s winners, I’d say any one of you has a great shot at cheesy poetry gold — so consider penning your own Ode to Grilled Cheese this weekend; I’d be happy to critique a draft for you before the submission deadline of April 26, 2012.

In the grand literary tradition of parody, retired professor Walt Howat offers the following Cheesy Poetry Contest entry, celebrating some of the Pop Shop’s 30 variations on the grilled cheese sandwich.

Lastly, while the selection of “American (cheese) the Beautiful” for a poem-a-day may be considered an endorsement of National Grilled Cheese Month more generally, please note that the opinions and views of American cheese expressed are those of the poet and do not necessarily reflect the views of this poem-a-day curator.

Bon Appétit.
Ellen

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American (cheese) the Beautiful

Oh forest of flavors full of taste
I wander through your browned cliffs of bread
watching streams of cheese run without haste
through trees of tomatoes oh so red
past beautiful rocks of avocado
ridges of sweet bacon hard and lean
through the lushness of pesto meadow
and gourmet mustards that lie unseen
toward the lake of mozzarella glow
’round boulders of pickles gray and green
smelling the warm gold Jarlsberg blossoms
climbing o’er the focacia ridges
surrounded by the sharp cheddar mums
crossing juicy chicken slice bridges
past black olives parading like nuns
clouds of mayonnaise ever so dear
and amber waves of carm’lized un’yuns
tis April again grilled cheese is here
a forest of lush tastes for me to find
The Land of the Pop Shop draws me near
rich veins of flavors for me to mine.

---

Cheese also featured prominently in Poem-a-Day April 1, 2011.
The grilled cheese’s close relative, the peanut-butter sandwich, was celebrated for Poem-a-Day April 18, 2011.

Hello Friends —
When the immortal goddess of the moon falls in love with a mortal man of earth (named Endymion), the forces of light and dark, life and death, hope and despair play themselves out in four thousand lines of iambic couplets. You can think of Endymion as sort of like Star Wars, 1818-style — brought to you by a 23-year-old named John Keats.
Enjoy.
Ellen

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I.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
‘Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.

Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us til they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o’ercast,
They always must be with us, or we die.

The Butterfly

those things
which you so laughingly call
hands are in fact two
brown butterflies fluttering
across the pleasure
they give
my body

[21 feb 71]

---

Hello Friends —

I hope you’re enjoying National Poetry Month so far! Thank you to everyone who has hit reply to a poem; I love hearing from you. For instance, you could write me back about why Nikki Giovanni gave this poem about butterflies (plural) the title “The Butterfly” (singular) in her 1972 collection My House.

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

Cheers,
Ellen

Hello Friends —
Since a poem is missing, we’re going to catch up with a found poem by Charles Jensen. This form of poetry — deriving a poem from an existing work, like a newspaper article, by crossing out or removing some of the words — has seen a recent trendy resurgence of late, including zines like the Found Poetry Review devoted solely to found poetry.
Enjoy.
Ellen

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Poem In Which Words Have Been Left Out

You have the right to remain
anything you can and will be.

An attorney you cannot afford
will be provided to you.

You have silent will.
You can be against law.
You cannot afford one.

You remain silent. Anything you say
will be provided to you.

The rights can and will be
against you. The right provided you.

Have anything you say be
right. Anything you say can be right.

Say you have the right attorney.
The right remain silent.

Be held. Court the one. Be provided.
You cannot be you.

---

For another poem derived from language in a famous Supreme Court case, see Kevin McFadden’s “It’s Smut.”

Hello Friends —
In his 1963 Fundamentals of Poetry, William Leahy selects Richard Armour’s “Money” to illustrate trochaic dimeter — meaning, four syllables per line with emphasis on the first and third syllables.
Enjoy.
Ellen

MONEY

Workers earn it,
Spendthrifts burn it,
Bankers lend it,
Women spend it,
Forgers fake it,
Taxes take it,
Dying leave it,
Heirs receive it,
Misers crave it,
Robbers seize it,
Rich increase it,
Gamblers lose it . . .
I could use it.

Hello Friends —

Can you believe it? All mine for only $4.50 today: a 1985 first edition of Marilyn Hacker‘s Assumptions, yellowed at the edges just enough to earn your respect for its age, but otherwise prestine, unmarked. It’s the kind of book that makes a point of letting you know with what care it was made — the pages thick and textured, the note about the typography (Garamond) as long as the poet’s biography on the final page. To make it even more special, the “advance praise” note on the back cover is from Adrienne Rich (who you’ll be hearing from later this month).

So, in celebration of this newest addition to my poetry shelves, a poem-a-day from that book that encourages you to unbind your lips, unwind your tongue, and read aloud:

Rune of the Finland Woman

She could bind the world’s winds in a single strand.
She could find the world’s words in a singing wind.
She could lend a weird will to a mottled hand.
She could wind a willed word from a muddled mind.

She could wend the wild woods on a saddled hind.
She could sound a wellspring with a rowan wand.
She could bind the wolf’s wounds in a swaddling band.
She could bind a banned book in a silken skin.

She could spend a world war on invaded land.
She could pound the dry roots to a kind of bread.
She could feed a road gang on invented food.
She could find the spare parts of the severed dead.

She could find the stone limbs in a waste of sand.
She could stand the pit cold with a withered lung.
She could handle bad puns in the slang she learned.
She could dandle foundlings in their mother tongue.

She could plait a child’s hair with a fishbone comb.
She could tend a coal fire in the Arctic wind.
She could mend an engine with a sewing pin.
She could warm the dark feet of a dying man.

She could drink the stone soup from a doubtful well.
She could breathe the green stink of a trench latrine.
She could drink a queen’s share of important wine.
She could think a few things she would never tell.

She could learn the hand code of the deaf and blind.
She could earn the iron keys of the frozen queen.
She could wander uphill with a drunken friend.
She could bind the world’s winds in a single strand.

---

“Rune of the Finland Woman” by Marilyn Hacker was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 11, 2009.

Hello Friends —

In the spring of my freshman year at Stanford, Cathy and I went to a live reading with Dorothy Allison AND Jewelle Gomez AND Alice Walker at the Women’s Community Center in San Francisco. Our seats were so front and center, we could see the beads of sweat roll down Allison’s face, the saliva gather in the caesura of Gomez’s front teeth, and the dark specs spark in Walker’s purple irises. The dynamic amongst those three writers, and between the writers and an overflowing audience, was incredible — it was by far the best reading I’ve ever been to, one of the best nights of my entire life.

That was over a decade ago, and I haven’t seen Dorothy Allison since. But I’m nonetheless convinced that tonight’s live reading by Dorothy Allison and Sister Spit in Long Beach is going to be its own kind of sweat-beading magical. Appropriately, the event is free — since experiencing Dorothy Allison live is priceless.

As communities and as individuals, we often to turn to poetry to survive traumas we have experienced. In today’s poem, Robert McDonald embodies clinging to writers and poets who have come before us, as well as clinging to the form and structure poetry provides, in order to process his trauma. I like that McDonald titles this piece “The Dorothy Allison Poem” — the phrase that his audience would use to request or refer to this piece no matter what he titled it, suggesting that added layer of his writing in turn providing something for others to cling to as he has clung.

Enjoy.
Ellen

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The Dorothy Allison Poem

For I shall praise Dorothy Allison

For Dorothy Allison is fearless and angry, the pull of that anger, the pull and the fire

For I do not like to be angry and I am most often afraid

For while Dorothy Allison’s anger could plow down a mountain, Dorothy Allison’s jokes could make the Pope laugh so hard that communion wine sprayed out of his nose

For Dorothy Allison had once had a contest with a gay male poet to see which of them could shove the most buttered baby carrots up the ass

For Dorothy Allison’s story did not tell us who won, for Dorothy Allison is modest in her triumph

For Dorothy Allison is in truth immodest but seeks to write herself beyond shame,
for Dorothy Allison, the discomfort and rage and rocking triumph of hard sex, and laughter

For my dead sister who comes to me sometimes not a ghost but a thought

And my sister big and loud, an angry dyke who shot herself in the head

For yea though I have met a lot of big angry dykes Dorothy Allison is bigger and badder, more hilarious and brave

For my sister and her upbringing, if she spoke to you on your ouija board she might tell you how it killed her

For white trash and drunken fathers, an uncle named Speedy an uncle named Buddy, an aunt named Red an aunt named Dot, baby sister it was my upbringing, too

For let us not compare our childhood to anyone else’s pot-holed road,
for buckle up your seatbelts it’s going to be a bumpy night

For the heat and howl of Dorothy Allison, for whiskey shots, the fluids of sex, the yes goddamnit yes oh mama baby daddy”’girl, nobody ever came so goddamn hard on the page

For I shall mourn my sister, she told me in the last year of her life
that she didn’t think she’d ever had an orgasm

For something broken and something sad, stupid ass world, it would not fix her

And I would tell her and tell her that yea all of us are broken

And Dorothy Allison with a limp and Dorothy Allison with a drawl rolls up her sleeves, pushes her hair up off her face, says fuck it, and commences to make herself some biscuits and gravy

For we must love one another, and oh if my sister like Dorothy Allison could live, and oh if my sister like Dorothy Allison might live, and how am I broken let me count the ways

For our father is not the villain in this story

And our childhood was not as remarkable as all that

For Dorothy Allison shakes the truth in her mouth
like a dog shakes a toy

For Dorothy Allison takes the truth out of the dog’s mouth and sets it on the ground not a toy but a rabbit and rejoice oh ye watchers as that sweet wounded bunny shakes itself sober and sweet jesus runs free

For read Bastard Out of Carolina and then sit down with me and let’s talk about childhood and what is remembered

For the fragility of our mother as she walked up the front porch to get into the car, for the sudden whiteness of her thin hair, for the sound in my throat when I saw her stooped and aged like that, we were leaving for your funeral
sister oh sister I do not forgive you

Yet still I wish and lo I wish

Yet Dorothy Allison is brave enough to brave her stories; for Dorothy Allison the laughter and the howl and the fire

For tell your little sisters do not die, for tell your little sisters: dismantle your guns

For I shall praise Dorothy Allison for the glorious rock, and the pull, the rock and pull and sweat of her language, for the force and butter and hard liquor of her words

For she lives, and she lives, and I heard the awesome growl of sex in her words

And my sister is dead, her name was Kathleen, she called herself Mick.

For how long did she drive around with the gun in her pocket

Her name was Mick and she was once a little girl, we called her Kathleen.

The crime oh my sister and my shame oh my sister and why will you not speak to me even in my dreams

And lo we fail and we fail and we fail those we love

For Dorothy, and Oz, and there is no place like home, and where is the home in Homosexual, and never oh never was there ever such a place

Oh my sister with her heart and my sister with her brains and her lion’s roar, yet my sister that final cowardly act

For I wish she’d been the baddest dyke I wish she been the bitch unconquered I wish she’d seduced one hundred loose and eager girls

For she did not know the power of an anger tinged with joy

For she did not let her muscles thrum with electric rage and then stretch and square her shoulders, and put herself to work

For I think that Dorothy Allison knows

For the daunting, for the sacred task of saying the unsaid

For saying the unsayable for this our daily bread

And mother fuck it, six tears in a bucket

For Dorothy Allison could kick my ass from here to California

Oh Dorothy Allison I will not let you go unless thou bless me

For I will tell the world and tell the world that all of us are broken

For Dorothy Allison shall make me brave

For I am alive god damn it, alive and triumphant and failing and broken

And I shall not go by my own hand, you can bet your buck-toothed Aunt Hazel on that

For I am alive and angry and failed and shaken.

And the joy, and the fire, a fire that burns under the crust of the world, and sister, believe me, the world will always find a way to break your heart

For my sister on the gurney in that terrible room

For my dead sister on the gurney in that terrible cold room

For I saw her face and I can still see her face and my sister looked angry and yes I said yes I said yes that is her

Sister, sister, the word a caress

For Dorothy Allison, I saw her read what she had written and raise the crowd to its feet

For Dorothy Allison says we have to tell our stories.

For I can’t go on. For I will go on.

For my sister is dead, her name was Kathleen, she called herself Mick.

For some stories weigh one hundred pounds

Forgive me. The world will always find a way
to break the heart. Forgive me, then

forgive yourself. I will lift up this story, I will tie it to my back.

Like a pack mule descending down in

the Grand Canyon (I have a photo of you, happy on the lip
of that break in the earth.)

I will lift up your torn story: I will carry it, carry it.

---

“The Dorothy Allison Poem” by Robert McDonald appeared in the October 2010 issue of [PANK] magazine.