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Poem-a-Day, April 25: Or every man be blind

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise

As lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

The work above is known simply as #1129 — a constant reminder of how heavily those who collected and edited Emily Dickinson‘s manuscripts posthumously influence how we experience the sequencing, punctuation, and other attributes of her poems today.

I sometimes experience the poem above in conversation with Robert Frost, who decades later asks Tellers of Truths to “Choose Something Like A Star.”

MC Emmie D is also well known for her Slant in #258, “There’s a certain Slant of light,” and for her frequent use of slant rhyme and dashes of various slants and lengths. (There’s a brilliant article by Saskia Hamilton in the most recent issue of American Poet magazine on Dickinson’s use of slant rhyme and breath that I wish I could link you to, but unfortunately it does not yet exist on the internets.)

April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

— Ellen

Poems by Emily Dickinson were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 29, 2008 and Poem-a-Day April 25, 2010.

Dust [Poem-a-Day, April 24]

How I Learned To Sweep

My mother never taught me sweeping.
One afternoon she found me watching
t.v. She eyed the dusty floor
boldly, and put a broom before
me, and said she’d like to be able
to eat her dinner off that table,
and nodded at my feet, then left.
I knew right off what she expected
and went at it. I stepped and swept;
the t.v. blared the news; I kept
my mind on what I had to do,
until in minutes, I was through.
Her floor was as immaculate
as a just-washed dinner plate.
I waited for her return
and turned to watch the President,
live from the White House, talk of war:
in the Far East our soldiers were
landing in their helicopters
into jungles their propellers
swept like weeds seen underwater
while perplexing shots were fired
from those beautiful green gardens
into which these dragonflies
filled with little men descended.
I got up and swept again
as they fell out of the sky.
I swept all the harder when
I watched a dozen of them die.
as if their dust fell through the screen
upon the floor I had just cleaned.
She came back and turned the dial;
the screen went dark. That’s beautiful,
she said, and ran her clean hand through
my hair, and on, over the window-
sill, coffee table, rocker, desk,
and held it up—I held my breath—
That’s beautiful, she said, impressed,
she hadn’t found a speck of death.

— By Julia Alvarez; first published in Helicon Nine magazine (1985), and also included in her collection Homecoming (1996).

Poet Julia Alvarez was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 10, 2010.

Poem-a-Day, April 23: Since it’s his birthday…

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

— Macbeth, Act V, scene v by William Shakespeare,
disputedly born April 23, 1564 and died April 23, 1616

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” by William Shakespeare was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 23, 2007.
Poems by William Shakespeare were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 23, 2008 and Poem-a-Day April 23, 2011.

Poem-a-Earth-Day, April 22: Long live the weeds

Inversnaid

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frownin,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew,
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Hello Friends,

Apologies for my neglect to honor the Earth with a poem-a-day yesterday.

Gerard Manley Hopkins would very much appreciate your taking the time to hear “Inversaid” read aloud, and to read it aloud to a friend. For “Long live the weeds,” see also Louise Glück’s “Witchgrass.”

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poems in honor of Earth Day were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 21, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2008; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2010; and Poem-a-Day April 22, 2011.

Poem-a-Day, April 21: Today is weather.

Hum

The days are beautiful
The days are beautiful.

I know what days are.
The other is weather.

I know what weather is.
The days are beautiful.

Things are incidental.
Someone is weeping.

I weep for the incidental.
The days are beautiful.

Where is tomorrow?
Everyone will weep.

Tomorrow was yesterday.
The days are beautiful.

Tomorrow was yesterday.
Today is weather.

The sound of the weather
Is everyone weeping.

Everyone is incidental.
Everyone weeps.

The tears of today
Will put out tomorrow.

The rain is ashes.
The days are beautiful.

The rain falls down.
The sound is falling.

The sky is a cloud.
The days are beautiful.

The sky is dust.
The weather is yesterday.

The weather is yesterday.
The sound is weeping.

What is this dust?
The weather is nothing.

The days are beautiful.
The towers are yesterday.

The towers are incidental.
What are these ashes?

Here is the hate
That does not travel.

Here is the robe
That smells of the night

Here are the words
Retired to their books

Here are the stones
Loosed from their settings

Here is the bridge
Over the water

Here is the place
Where the sun came up

Here is a season
Dry in the fireplace.

Here are the ashes.
The days are beautiful.

— Ann Lauterbach, Hum (2005)

“Hum” by Ann Lauterbach was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 17, 2007.

Poem-a-Day, April 20: this midnight moment’s forest

The Thought-Fox

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

These fox prints were printed by Ted Hughes in his first collection Hawk in the Rain (1957).

— Ellen

Poem-a-Day, April 19: Sonnet = dresser.

Nothing in That Drawer

Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.

— Ron Padgett, Great Balls of Fire (1990)

Poem-a-Day, April 18: Un-humm-m! . . . Yes!

Madam and the Phone Bill

You say I O.K.ed
LONG DISTANCE?
O.K.ed it when?
My goodness, Central
That was then!

I’m mad and disgusted
With that Negro now.
I don’t pay no REVERSED
CHARGES nohow.

You say, I will pay it —
Else you’ll take out my phone?
You better let
My phone alone.

I didn’t ask him
To telephone me.
Roscoe knows darn well
LONG DISTANCE
Ain’t free.

If I ever catch him,
Lawd, have pity!
Calling me up
From Kansas City.

Just to say he loves me!
I knowed that was so.
Why didn’t he tell me some’n
I don’t know?

For instance, what can
Them other girls do
That Alberta K. Johnson
Can’t do — and more, too?

What’s that, Central?
You say you don’t care
Nothing about my
Private affair?

Well, even less about your
PHONE BILL, does I care!

Un-humm-m! . . . Yes!
You say I gave my O.K.?
Well, that O.K. you may keep —

But I sure ain’t gonna pay!

Hello Friends,

Today’s public service announcement on accidential overages and crappy ex-boyfriends comes from Madam Alberta K. Johnson to you courtesy of Langston Hughes in his 1949 collection One-Way Ticket. This poem is also included in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (1995).

O.K., Bye!
Ellen

“Madam and the Phone Bill” by Langston Hughes was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 29, 2007.
Poet Langston Hughes was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 10, 2011.

Poema-del-Dia, 17 de Abril: Corazon malherido

La Guitarra

Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.
Se rompen las copas
de la madrugada.
Empieza el llanto
de la guitarra.
Es inútil
callarla.
Es imposible
callarla.
Llora monótona
como llora el agua,
como llora el viento
sobre la nevada.
Es imposible
callarla.
Llora por cosas
lejanas.
Arena del Sur caliente
que pide camelias blancas.
Llora flecha sin blanco,
la tarde sin mañana,
y el primer pájaro muerto
sobre la rama.
¡Oh guitarra!
Corazón malherido
por cinco espadas.

The Guitar

The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of the dawn
are smashed.
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
It is useless
to silence it.
It is impossible
to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
As water weeps,
As wind weeps
over snowfields.
It is impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for things
far away.
Sand of the hot South
that begs for white camellias.
It weeps, arrow without a target,
Evening without a morning,
And the first bird dead
On the branch.
Oh, guitar!
A heart stabbed to death
by five swords.

Hello Friends,

This English version of Federico García Lorca‘s “La Guitarra,” from his collection El poema del cante jondo (1921), combines pieces of translations by Cola Franzen, Curt Hopkins, and Harper’s Magazine (July 2008). This poem can also be found in the 2007 bilingual edition of Lorca’s Selected Poems.

“La Guitarra” begs to be set to flamenco guitar, and several musicians over the years have answered that cry — here’s one interpretation by Cuban singer-songwriter Vicente Feliu, performing in Buenos Aires in September 2007.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poem-a-Day, April 16: Some rift between

MYTH

I was asleep while you were dying.
It’s as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow
I make between my slumber and my waking,

the Erebus I keep you in, still trying
not to let go. You’ll be dead again tomorrow,
but in dreams you live. So I try taking

you back into morning. Sleep-heavy, turning,
my eyes open, I find you do not follow.
Again and again, this constant forsaking.

Again and again, this constant forsaking:
my eyes open, I find you do not follow.
You back into morning, sleep-heavy, turning.

But in dreams you live. So I try taking,
not to let go. You’ll be dead again tomorrow.
The Erebus I keep you in — still, trying —

I make between my slumber and my waking.
It’s as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow.
I was asleep while you were dying.

Hello Friends,

Much like Elizabeth Bishop’s villanelle “One Art,” Natasha Trethewey’s “Myth” conveys the impossible enormity of loss through the tightness of the form employed to contain it — as strict or stricter than any villanelle or pantoum. The structure of “Myth” evokes ancient myths of reflection — Narcissus, Echo — and also gestures toward the perfect symmetry and circularity of 11th-14th century courtly love epics (wherein moral outcomes are determined by simple formulas, codes… the good guy always wins, and nobody dies in his sleep).

I had a hard time choosing which poem from Natasha Trethewey‘s 2006 collection Native Guard to send to you; if you like this one, you won’t be disappointed by checking out the whole book.

To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.

Best,
Ellen

Poet Natasha Trethewey was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 18, 2010.