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Poem-a-day, April 16: slow heat

Warming Her Pearls

Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress
bids me wear them, warm them, until evening
when I’ll brush her hair. At six, I place them
round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her,

resting in the Yellow Room, contemplating silk
or taffeta, which gown tonight? She fans herself
whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering
each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope.

She’s beautiful. I dream about her
in my attic bed; picture her dancing
with tall men, puzzled by my faint, persistent scent
beneath her French perfume, her milky stones.

I dust her shoulders with a rabbit’s foot,
watch the soft blush seep through her skin
like an indolent sigh. In her looking-glass
my red lips part as though I want to speak.

Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see
her every movement in my head…Undressing,
taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching
for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way

she always does…And I lie here awake,
knowing the pearls are cooling even now
in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night
I feel their absence and I burn.

***

Hi Friends,

Today’s (hot) poem is from the UK’s Carol Ann Duffy, in her 1987 collection Selling Manhattan.

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. As always, you can 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

Poem-a-day, April 15: Because I could not stop (for death)

Belarusian I

even our mothers have no idea how we were born
how we parted their legs and crawled out into the world
the way you crawl from the ruins after a bombing
we couldn’t tell which of us was a girl or a boy
we gorged on dirt thinking it was bread
and our future
a gymnast on a thin thread of the horizon
was performing there
at the highest pitch
bitch

we grew up in a country where
first your door is stroked with chalk
then at dark a chariot arrives
and no one sees you anymore
but riding in those cars were neither
armed men nor
a wanderer with a scythe
this is how love loved to visit us
and snatch us veiled

completely free only in public toilets
where for a little change nobody cared what we were doing
we fought the summer heat the winter snow
when we discovered we ourselves were the language
and our tongues were removed we started talking with our eyes
when our eyes were poked out we talked with our hands
when our hands were cut off we conversed with our toes
when we were shot in the legs we nodded our heads for yes
and shook our heads for no and when they ate our heads alive
we crawled back into the bellies of our sleeping mothers
as if into bomb shelters
to be born again

and there on the horizon the gymnast of our future
was leaping through the fiery hoop
of the sun

***

Hi Friends,

I was so blown away by today’s poem from the official poem-a-day email of the Academy of American Poets that I just couldn’t stop myself from sharing it with you right away (even if it does throw off my poem-a-day schedule for the month).

“Belarusian I” is written by Valzhyna Mort, a 26-year-old poet of the anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe. Born and raised in Minsk, Belarus, Valzhyna Mort writes in traditional Belarusian (a backlash to Soviet attempts to extinguish the language and replace it with Russian). Although I’ve never had the privilege of hearing her myself, she is known for her extraordinary performance readings of her work in both Belarusian and English.

In her most recent translation project, Mort collaborated with the wife-husband pair Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright (accomplished German translator) and Franz Wright (Pulitzer Prize-winning poet). Just released by Copper Canyon Press, Factory of Tears (2008) is the first bilingual Belarusian-English book of poetry ever published in the United States.

Adding to list of things to do before I die: meet Valzhyna Mort.

As always, enjoy.
Ellen

Poet Valzhyna Mort was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 8, 2011.

Poem-a-day, April 14: apparition

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

***

Hi Friends,

Today’s poem is from Personae (1926) by Ezra Pound.

Enjoy.
Ellen

This poem is not actually “shorter than haiku” by syllable count. But I’m going to count it amongst other strongly haiku-influenced works featured in my poem-a-day series: see also Poem-a-Day April 20, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 14, 2008; and Poem-a-Day April 2, 2009.

Poem-a-day, April 13: lady i swear by all flowers

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other:then
laugh,leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

***

Hi Friends,

Today’s E.E. Cummings poem (note the capital E.E.) is for Cathy’s eyelids, and for seven years wonder-full of 13ths.

Love,
Ellen

Poems by E.E. Cummings were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 12, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 13, 2009; Poem-a-Day April 20, 2010; and Poem-a-Day April 13, 2011.

Poem-a-day, April 12: a little paradigm

WITCHGRASS

Something
comes into the world unwelcome
calling disorder, disorder—

If you hate me so much
don’t bother to give me
a name: do you need
one more slur
in your language, another
way to blame
one tribe for everything—

as we both know,
if you worship
one god, you only need
one enemy—

I’m not the enemy.
Only a ruse to ignore
what you see happening
right here in this bed,
a little paradigm
of failure. One of your precious flowers
dies here almost every day
and you can’t rest until
you attack the cause, meaning
whatever is left, whatever
happens to be sturdier
than your personal passion—

It was not meant
to last forever in the real world.
But why admit that, when you can go on
doing what you always do,
mourning and laying blame,
always the two together.

I don’t need your praise
to survive. I was here first,
before you were here, before
you ever planted a garden.
And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon
are left, and the sea, and the wide field.

I will constitute the field.

***

Hello Friends,

Today’s poem is from Louise Glück‘s (say “Glick”) Pulitzer Prize-winning collection The Wild Iris (1992). The collection is a series of persona poems, each written from the point of view of a different flower or plant, and often touching on the relationship between people, the natural world, and a god.

If the witchgrass of this poem is “I”, who does that make the poet? Would you say that the poet is also the “I”?

Or is the poet the gardener? Is the page a field? Are the words the flowers or weeds? Does that leave the reader somewhere between the poet and a god?

Or is a god the gardener? If a god is the gardener, is Eden in play here? If so, would Adam and Eve be part of the same tribe, or different tribes? Would you read the persona voice differently if The Wild Iris were written by Louis Glück instead of Louise? Is the voice of any flower feminized by virtue of being a flower?

Who is included in “you”? Does “your language” mean that, if you can read this poem (in English), you are part of “you”? Or if you can read this poem in any written language, human language, are you part of “you”? Is the poet a part of the “you”? If the poet’s you, who does that make you?

One last note: If you were to print this poem out on a single long sheet of paper and fold it in half, the line at the crease would be “a little paradigm.” The line left alone at the end would be “I will constitute the field.”

Ellen

Poet Louise Glück was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 30, 2007.

Poem-a-day, April 11: belly-scuttling

Hutch

—by way of what they say

From back when it was Nam time I tell you what.

Them days men boys gone dark groves rose like Vietnam bamboo.

Aftergrowth something awful.

Green have mercy souls here seen camouflage everlasting.

Nary a one of the brung-homes brung home whole.

Mongst tar-pines come upon this box-thing worked from scrapwood.

Puts me much myself in mind of a rabbit-crouch.

Is it more a meat-safe.

Set there hid bedded there looking all the world like a coffin.

Somebody cares to tend to it like a spring gets tendered clears the leaves!

Whosoever built it set wire window-screen down the sides.

Long about five foot or thereabouts close kin to a dog-crate.

A human would have to hunch.

Closes over heavy this hingey-type lid on it like a casket.

Swearing to Jesus wadn’t it eye-of-pine laid down for the floor.

Remembering the Garner twins Carl and Charlie come home mute.

Cherry-bombs 4th of July them both belly-scuttling under the house.

Their crave of pent-places ditchpipes.

Mongst tar-pines come upon this box-thing worked from scrapwood.

From back when it was Nam time I tell you what.

***

Hello Friends,
Today’s poem is by Atsuro Riley, who grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, and lives in Menlo Park, California. “Hutch” was printed in the December 2007 issue of Poetry magazine.
Best,
Ellen

Poem-a-day, April 10: Angels were not

This is not a love poem, 1895

Angels were not
coursing through us.
It wasn’t as though

I couldn’t think for days.
We touched hands
quite by accident.

Quite.
Too much to do
in those missionary meetings

to let my mind
linger on
imagining the bend

of a man’s neck
as he bowed in prayer,
to wonder

if it would bend
just that way
to find my lips.

***

Hello Friends,

Today’s poem is an unpublished (yet? to my knowledge) work of Maia McAleavey, written in 2001.

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

Poem-a-day, April 9: Quoth the raven

Hello friends,

Today is a day for reading aloud! You can listen to today’s poem at the following link:
http://bit.ly/basilrathbone

Enjoy!
Ellen

Poem-a-day, April 8: the look

The Look

Strephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.

Strephon’s kiss was lost in jest,
Robin’s lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin’s eyes
Haunts me night and day.

***

Hello Friends,

Yesterday’s poem-a-day is “The Look” by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933).

Some Teasdale trivia tidbits: Her middle name was “Trevor.” She hung with the Harriet Monroe crowd (whose sizable fortune makes Poetry magazine the most financially well-off poetry organization in the U.S. to this day).

Teasdale is also among the (many) suicide sisters of our poetic heritage; for some interesting reading on the connection between mental illness, suicidality, and artistic genius, I highly recommend Kay Redfield Jamison’s Touched with Fire.

Enjoy.
Ellen

P.S. You will have to wait til later today for today’s poem. I apologize for falling a bit behind.

“The Look” by Sara Teasdale was featured again for Poem-a-Day April 27, 2011.

Poem-a-day, April 7: a kind of gore

The Horses

The primary red striped onto the black, the dye
spotting the mirror and sink with
a kind of gore, a sulfur that is in the air for days:
you are twenty-two and this means

even folly has its own exacting nature. The hair
turned red, as easily as last month’s
blue; the puggish, miniature barbell pierced into
a nipple. At the club I watch you on top

of the speaker, tearing the shirt your brother gave
you, the music a murderous brightness
in the black room. Now you want it all off, down
to clear scalp. Your head in foam,

you ask me to do the places you can’t properly
reach: the neck’s mossy hairs, the back’s
escarpment, an edge of bone the razor nicks
to small blood, tasting like peppermint

and metal on my tongue. In the used-bookstore
this afternoon, in the master’s book of
drawings, pencil sketches of the heads of horses,
whose long nostrils had been slit open

as custom demanded. The Icelanders, Mongols,
and Italians finding a measurable
efficiency in what they could see: the horses, even
in their speed, as though not breathing.

***

Hi Friends,

Today’s poem is from Rick Barot‘s new collection Want (2008).

The drawing referenced in the last two stanzas is probably “The Slashed Nostrils of Horses” by the Italian artist Antonio Pisanello, part of the Louvre collection. In the Early Reniassance period, horse racing was big business, and in some cultures horse racers believed that slitting the nostrils allowed a horse to take in more air, making it faster.

A visually memorable tidbit of history. But then again, “The Horses” isn’t really about the horses. Why do you think Barot chose this title?

Best,
Ellen

Poet Rick Barot was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 19, 2007.