Category: Blogspot

Posts migrated from meetmein811.blogspot.com

Poem-a-Day, April 3, 2011: narrow aisles

CHECKING OUT

I turn off the Xerox machine and the fax and the other fax
and the PC tower and the fluorescents,
put the check register in the desk, lock the desk,
and take the elevator eleven floors down
to the narrow front of East 21st Street.

When I come out, the space between the buildings
is so thin it’s an upside-down skyscraper of sky,
narrower at the street. There will be no sky at all
for the next two hours of trains back to Brooklyn.
Someone once told me I should come to New York, so I did.

Two trains and three stations later—and a walk
past a housing project like a cliff made of bricks—
I am back in my windowless basement room
with the tile floor, staring at the square grate
in the middle, wondering what the drain was for.

I eat the same sandwich I eat every night.
A car alarm punctuates the seconds of the dark,
as if to say how few hours of single-malt sleep
stand between me and tomorrow’s trains.
Someone once told me I should come to New York,

so I did. Tomorrow I will try to buy food
for a different kind of sandwich and it will not go well—
I will see the word California on a bag of mandarin oranges
and start crying in the narrow aisles of the supermarket—
and a man with a cart full of cat food will ask me to move, please,

he is trying to get to the checkout. Where I come from,
I want to tell him, they make the grocery stores
big enough for someone to cry in the produce section
and someone else to move around them.
And when you get to the parking lot

you put your oranges in a car, not a backpack,
and you drive the car home, and you park the car
in a driveway above ground, never under,
and you eat the whole bag of mandarin oranges
at a kitchen table bigger than Brooklyn.

Hello Friends —

Alright, it’s Dara Weinberg‘s birthday. And she has her first poem in print in fancypants academic literary journal thing (you can find “Checking Out” on pages 7-8 of The Hopkins Review winter 2011 issue). So if you enjoy today’s selection, hop over to www.daraweinberg.com and leave a comment on her blog.

It’s National Poetry Month all month! If a poem a day just isn’t enough, you can always find more at the website of the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org.

Go Cardinal,
Ellen

Poem-a-Day, April 2, 2011: windflowers

love is a deep and a dark and a lonely
and you take it deep take it dark
and take it with a lonely winding
and when the winding gets too lonely
then may come the windflowers
and the breath of wind over many flowers
winding its way out of many lonely flowers
waiting in rainleaf whispers
waiting in dry stalks of noon
wanting in a music of windbreaths
so you can take love as it comes keening
as it comes with a voice and a face
and you make a talk of it
talking to yourself a talk worth keeping
and you put it away for a keen keeping
and you find it to be a hoarding
and you give it away and yet it stays hoarded

like a book read over and over again
like one book being a long row of books
like leaves of windflowers bending low
and bending to be never broken

Hello Friends —

“Love Is a Deep and a Dark and a Lonely” from Carl Sandburg‘s 1953 collection Honey and Salt begs to be read out loud. Here’s a little experiment for you: read this poem out loud to yourself. Then find someone else and ask them to read it out loud. Notice if the two of you made the same choices about where to put punctuation, or when to ‘wind’ and when to ‘wind.’

It’s National Poetry Month all month! If a poem a day just isn’t enough, you can always find more at the website of the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org.

Cheers,
Ellen

Poem-a-Day, April 1, 2011: Mammoth Cheese

Hello Friends —

Welcome to National Poetry Month! For the past several years, I’ve enjoyed sending out one poem per day for the duration of the month and hearing your thoughts and responses to the different poems. All are welcome; no prior poetry experience is required — just send me an email if there’s someone who’d like to be added to the list.

Today’s poem comes from the 19th century Canadian poet James McIntyre:

Ode on the Mammoth Cheese

    Weighing over 7,000 pounds

We have seen thee, queen of cheese,
Lying quietly at your ease,
Gently fanned by evening breeze,
Thy fair form no flies dare seize.

All gaily dressed soon you’ll go
To the great Provincial show,
To be admired by many a beau
In the city of Toronto.

Cows numerous as a swarm of bees,
Or as leaves upon the trees,
It did require to make thee please,
And stand unrivalled, queen of cheese.

May you not receive a scar as
We have heard that Mr. Harris
Intends to send you off as far as
The great world’s show at Paris.

Of the youth beware of these,
For some of them might rudely squeeze
And bite your cheek, then songs or glees
We could not sing, oh! queen of cheese.

We’rt thou suspended from balloon,
You’d cast a shade even at noon,
Folks would think it was the moon
About to fall and crush them soon.

Ok, so this poem is pretty funny. But it also raises some serious questions:

I came across this poem in a collection called Very Bad Poetry (1997), which begs the question, what makes a poem bad? or Bad? or Very Bad? Try to describe bad poetry without just using other adjectives (like ‘cheesy’). If there were no such thing as bad poetry, could there still be such a thing as good poetry?

When is a poem so bad that it becomes good? What evidence tells you this poem is or is not bad on purpose? Does the author’s intent matter in the ultimate determination of Badness or Goodness? what about a century from now?

What does producing a collection of Very Bad Poetry say about the relationship between readers/audience, writers, and the publishing industry?

Also, what does a gaily dressed cheese look like? Does anyone have a picture of one?
What kind of cheese repels insect life but attracts small children?
How far back in literature has there been in a mythical connection between cheese and the moon?

These and other pressing questions we will address as Poetry Month unfolds.

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

Cheers,
Ellen

Poem-a-Day, March 25, 2011: Triangle Fire

Dear Friends,

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City, a horrific illustration of the conditions immigrant workers endured — and continue to endure — in garment industry sweatshops.

It’s a piece of news that I first learned from a poem, many years ago. Robert Pinsky weaves this bit of history into his ode to the shirt, from his 1990 collection The Want Bone.

It’s nearly that time of year again — National Poetry Month is just around the corner — so I thought I’d send you this little appetizer, because today is the anniversary, and also so that you can let me know before next week if you’d like to be on the poem-a-day list this year. And if you have any friends or family who would like to be added (or removed), please send them my way!

I will send out one poem each day from April 1-30. No prior poetry experience is necessary to participate! Enthusiasm, ability to read (mostly English), and access to email are the main prerequisites.

So, if you have a minute, take in “Shirt.” And then take a minute to take in your own shirt, whatever you happen to be wearing right now — try to figure out how many cuts of fabric were sewed together to make it, how many buttons, how many stitches; if you don’t already know what it says, take a minute to read your shirt’s tag, the whole tag; think of words you’d use to describe its color, texture, size or fit. Put yourself in Pinsky’s sleaves for a minute, and imagine the moment you realized you were wearing a poem.

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

You can also read more about the Triangle Factory Fire here.

Shirt

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes—

The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
Up to the windowsill, then held her out

Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

A third before he dropped her put her arms
Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers—

Like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning.”
Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly
Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked

Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
Or a major chord.  Prints, plaids, checks,
Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,
To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
To wear among the dusty clattering looms.
Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter
Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton
As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit

And feel and its clean smell have satisfied
Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality
Down to the buttons of simulated bone,

The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters
Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.

Poet Robert Pinsky was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 10, 2007 and Poem-a-Day April 3, 2009.

POEM-A-DAY APRIL 2010

Poem-a-Day, April 29: cool.

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

Forgive me, Gwendolyn Brooks. I know you get annoyed that this is the poem a disproportiate number of textbook and anthology editors have chosen to represent your entire body of work, but I just really like this one. Plus it fits nicely in the pockets of strangers on the street.

You can find this and other pocket-prone poems for your own Poem in Your Pocket Day celebration in print-your-own-at-home PDF format here. I am also very excited about a project Citizen Hope is doing in San Francisco on April 30 — organizing volunteers to read poems to elementary school students in San Francisco: Check it out here.

Poem in Your Pocket Day is brought to you by the Academy of American Poets, the same folks who bring you National Poetry Month and www.poets.org.

Poem-a-Day, April 28: What can I say? Another crow.

Dust of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

— Robert Frost, New Hampshire (1923),
also included in Collected Poems (1969)

Hi Friends —

April 29 was Poem in Your Pocket Day, and I had intentions of sending y’all a batch of pocket poems on the 28th so you could print and hand them out on 29th. But, here’s the thing: no one really knows, nor does it particularly matter, which day is actually Poem in Your Pocket Day. So I see no problem whatsoever with handing out pocket poems on the 30th. “Dust of Snow” is, in my opinion, a perfect poem for handing out to random strangers on the street outside the subway exit — which is where you’ll find me tomorrow morning before work. If you are so inspired or inclined, please feel free to make any day Poem in Your Pocket Day — for yourself, for others. More pocket-sized poems from this and past years’ poem-a-day series in print-your-own-at-home PDF format here.

I am also very excited about a project Citizen Hope is doing in San Francisco tomorrow — organizing volunteers to read poems to elementary school students in San Francisco. Check it out here.

“Dust of Snow” by Robert Frost was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 16, 2007.
Poet Robert Frost was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 30, 2008.

Poem-a-Day, April 27: TOP-EST SECRET-EST BRAIN NEST

Hi Friends,

I in fact, I’m not even kidding you, almost got into a fight with Cathy last night about buttering bread. You may recognize this poem-a-day as the work of Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. Seuss dedicates The Butter Battle Book (1984) to his wife Audrey, but I would like to dedicate it as a cautionary tale to anyone out there who fears they may be or become one of the Boys in someone’s Back Room (whose sign on the door reads “TOP-EST SECRET-EST BRAIN NEST”).

I decided to present this work to you in its entirety, and I won’t hold it against you if you end up skimming through parts and scrolling to the bottom to remember or find out how it ends. However, if you have the time to take it all in, Seuss gradually escalates this conflict from weapons that shoot berries and goo, to bigger and badder machines that actually kill, and then finally to a weapon the size of a berry or a gumball, but capable of blowing an entire town to “small smithereens.” But more than the substantive plot, it’s the perspective that Seuss masterfully shifts round by round, word choice by word choice. While the illustrations remain consistently vibrant throughout, even the marching band song girls slip from cheery to sour, and I would argue who is the most revered hero figure and who is the greatest villain have different, more sinister answers by the end of this poem than they did at the beginning.

Although we generally think of children’s literature as a genre of happily ever afters, there are quite a few celebrated children’s books that leave elements of their conclusions up to the imagination — sometimes small details, sometimes larger; almost always confined to a universe of two or three possible outcomes. And then there’s The Butter Battle Book, which ends simply, “We’ll see. We will see…” — a colloquial casualness of language beautifully juxtaposed against the existential ambitions of its meaning. Seuss does pose two possible outcomes — “Who’s going to drop it? Will you…? Or will he…?” (drop the civilization-obliterating gumball) — but in this case, neither of those is a satisfying or even conceivable reality for most of his readers, and it’s the unstated possibility of what a neither outcome means that lingers. Perhaps no cliffhanger has exacerbated as many parents and librarians, who are left to answer children’s questions after the final page is turned.

— Ellen

P.S. Due to extremely frustrating technical difficulties with home internet connections, my attempts to send poem-a-day emails the past couple evenings have been thwarted. My apologies for falling behind again.

The Butter Battle Book

On the last day of summer,
ten hours before fall…

…my grandfather took me
out to the Wall.

For a while he stood silent.
Then he finally said,
with a very sad shake
of his very old head,
“As you know, on this side of the Wall
we are Yooks.
On the far other side of this Wall
live the Zooks.”

Then my grandfather said,
“It’s high time that you knew
of the terribly horrible thing that Zooks do.
In every Zook house and in every Zook town
every Zook eats his bread
with the butter side down!

“But we Yooks, as you know,
when we breakfast or sup,
spread our bread,” Grandpa said,
“with the butter side up.
That’s the right, honest way!”
Grandpa gritted his teeth.
“So you can’t trust a Zook who spreads bread underneath!
Every Zook must be watched!
He has kinks in his soul!
That’s why, as a youth, I made watching my goal,
watching the Zooks for the Zook-Watching Border Patrol!

In those days, of course,
the Wall wasn’t so high
and I could look any Zook
square in the eye.

If he dared to come close
I could give him a twitch
with my tough-tufted
prickely Snick-Berry Switch.

For a while that worked fine.
All the Zooks stayed away
and our country was safe.
Then one terrible day
a very rude Zook by the name of VanItch
snuck up and slingshotted my Snick-Berry Switch!

With my broken-off switch, with my head hung in shame,
to the Chief Yookeroo in great sorrow I came.
But our leader just smiled. He said, “You’re not to blame.
And those Zooks will be sorry they started this game.

“We’ll dress you right up in a fancier suit!
We’ll give you a fancier slingshot to shoot!”
And he ordered the Boys in the Back Room to figger
how to build me some sort of a triple-sling jigger.

With my Triple-Sling Jigger
I sure felt much bigger.

I marched to the Wall with great vim and great vigor,
right up to VanItch with my hand on the trigger.
“I’ll have no more nonsense,” I said with a frown,
“from Zooks who eat bread with the butter side down!”

VanItch looked quite sickly.
He ran off quite quickly.

I’m unhappy to say
he came back the next day
in a spiffy new suit with a big new machine,
and he snarled as he said, looking frightfully mean,
“You may fling those hard rocks with your Triple-Sling Jigger.
But I, also, now have my hand on a trigger!

“My wonderful weapon, the Jigger-Rock Snatchem,
will fling ’em right back just as quick as we catch ’em.
We’ll have no more nonsense.
We’ll take no more gupp
from you Yooks who eat bread with the butter side up!”

“I have failed, sir,” I sobbed as I made my report
to the Chief Yookeroo in the headquarters fort.
He just laughed. “You’ve done nothing at all of the sort.
Our slingshots have failed.
That was old-fashioned stuff.
Slingshots, dear boy,
are not modern enough.

“All we need is some newfangled kind of a gun.
My Boys in the Back Room have already begun
to think up a walloping whizz-zinger one!
My Bright Boys are thinking.
They’re on the right track.
They’ll think one up quick
and we’ll send you right back!”

They thought up a great one!
They certainly did.
They thought up a gun called the Kick-a-Poo Kid
which they loaded with powerful Poo-a-Doo Powder
and ants’ eggs and bees’ legs
and dried-fried clam chowder.
And they carefully trained a real smart dog named Daniel
to serve as our country’s first gun-toting spaniel.

Then Daniel, the Kick-a-Poo Spaniel, and I
marched back toward the Wall
with our heads held up high
while everyone cheered and their cheers filled the sky:
“Fight! Fight for the Butter Side Up! Do or die!”

Well…
We didn’t do.
And we didn’t quite die.
But we sure did get worsted, poor Daniel and I.
VanItch was there too! And he said, the old pig,
“The Boys in my Back Room invented this rig
called the Eight-Nozzled, Elephant-Toted Boom-Blitz.
It shoots high-explosive sour cherry stone pits
and will put your dumb Kick-a-Poo Kid on the fritz!”
     Poor Daniel and I
     were scared out of our witz!

Once more, by VanItch I was bested and beat.
Once again I limped home from the Wall in defeat.
I dragged and I sagged
and my spirits were low,
as low as I thought that I ever could go,
when I heard a Boom-Bah!
And a Diddle-dee-Dill!
And our Butter-Up Band
marched up over the hill!

The Chief Yookeroo had sent them to meet me
along with the Right-Side-Up Song Girls to greet me.
They sang:
          “Oh, be faithful!
          Believe in thy butter!”
And they lifted my spirits right out of the gutter!

“My boy,” smiled the Chief Yookeroo, “we’ve just voted
and made you a general! You’ve been promoted.
Your pretty new uniform’s ready. Get in it!
The Big War is coming. You’re going to begin it!
And what’s more, this time you are certain to win it.

“My Boys in the Back Room have finally found how.
Just wait till you see what they’ve puttered up now!
In their great new machine you’ll fly over that Wall
and clobber those Butter-Down Zooks one and all!”

Those Boys in the Back Room sure knew how to putter!
They made me a thing called the Utterly Sputter
and I jumped aboard with my heart all aflutter
and steered toward the land
of the Upside-Down Butter.

This machine was so modern, so frightfully new,
no one knew quite exactly just what it would do!

But it had several faucets that sprinkled Blue Goo
which, somehow, would sprinkle the Zooks as I flew
and gum up that upside-down butter they chew.

I was racing pell-mell
when I heard a voice yell,
“If you sprinkle us Zooks,
you’ll get sprinkled as well!”

VanItch had a Sputter exactly like mine!
And he yelled, “My Blue-Gooer is working just fine!
And I’m here to say that if Yooks can goo Zooks,
you’d better forget it. ‘Cause Zooks can goo Yooks!”

I flew right back home
and, as you may have guessed,
I was downright despondent,
               disturbed,
                    and depressed.
And I saw, just as soon as I stepped back on land,
so were all of the girls of the Butter-Up Band.

The Chief Drum Majorette, Miz Yookie-Ann Sue,
said, “That was a pretty sour flight that you flew.
And the Chief Yookeroo has been looking for you!”

I raced to his office. The place was a sight.
“Have no fears,” said the Chief. “Everything is all right.
My Bright Back Room Boys have been brighter than bright.
They’ve thought up a gadget that’s Newer than New.
It’s filled with mysterious Moo-Lacka-Moo
and can blow all those Zooks clear to Sala-ma-goo.
THEY’VE INVENTED
               THE BITSY
                    BIG-BOY BOOMEROO!

“You just run to the wall like a nice little man.
Drop this bomb on the Zooks just as fast as you can.
I have ordered all Yooks to stay safe underground
while the Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo is around.”

As I raced for that Wall, with the bomb in my hand,
I noticed that every last Yook in our land
was obeying our Chief Yookeroo’s grim command.

They were all bravely marching,
with banners aflutter,
down a hole! For their country!
And Right-Side-Up Butter!

That’s when Grandfather found me!
He grabbed me. He said,
     “You should be down that hole!
     And you’re up here instead!
     But perhaps this is all for the better, somehow.
     You will see me make history!
     RIGHT HERE! AND RIGHT NOW!”

Grandpa leapt up that Wall with a lopulous leap
and he cleared his hoarse throat
with a bopulous beep.
He screamed, “Here’s the end of that terrible town
full of Zooks who eat bread with the butter side down!”

And at that very instant we heard a klupp-klupp
of the feet on the Wall and old VanItch klupped up!
The Boys in HIS Back Room had made him one too!
In his fist was another Big-Boy Boomeroo!
“I’ll blow you,” he yelled, “into pork and wee beans!
I’ll butter-side-up you to small smithereens!”

“Grandpa!” I shouted. “Be careful. Oh, gee!”
Who’s going to drop it?
Will you…? Or will he…?”
“Be patient,” said Grandpa. “We’ll see.
We will see…”

Poem-a-Day, April 26: Smut.

It’s Smut

Sweet. Thin. I know, i.e., I
knew. Twenties. I—oh I—I
stew. I hint ewe. I oink-
oink: “Hi, sweetie.” Twin
Teens II. Wowie. Kith ‘n
Kin. To wet his wienie,
teenie with no kiwis,
we (I-we) tie hot skin in.
I knot, we tie. I win, she
whinnies, to wit. I eke:
“I won’t.” I seethe, I wink.
Two swine. I eek? I hint,
sweetie, I know I hint.
I know it when I see it.

Hi Friends,

Each line of Kevin McFadden’s sonnet “It’s Smut” is a perfect anagram of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous 1964 definition of pornography, “I know it when I see it” — meaning, McFadden uses all the letters and only the letters in that phrase to craft each line.

In celebration of National Poetry Month, I am sending out one poem per day for the duration of the month. To learn more about National Poetry Month, visit www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.

Best,
Ellen