To Be a Poet Is a Condition, Not a Profession
APRIL GIFTS 2008
1.Villanelle For A Cool AprilRobyn Sarah
2.He Attempts To Love His NeighborsAlden Nowlan
3.What I Learned From My MotherJuia Kasdorf
4.TiesMichael Chitwood
5.There Are DelicaciesEarle Birney
6.This MorningJane Kenyon
7.Slam. Dunk, & HookYusef Komunyakaa
8.To Things CursorySusanna Childress
9.Twisting VinesDebra Nystrom
10.How To See DeerPhilip Booth
11.Pikuni Free SchoolArt Homer
12.Looking At Them AsleepSharon Olds
13.Cathleen SweepingGeorge Johnston
14.You Heard The Man You LoveMargaret Atwood
15,At The Un-National MonumentWilliam Stafford
16.The Problem WasJoyce Sutphen
17.Learning Our Place in
The Heirarchy of AngelsHayden Carruth
18.Aftereffects of Bell’s PalsySusan Blackwell Ramsey
19.A Blind WomanTed Kooser
20.Bass BassSharon Bryan
21.Depressed By A Book Of Bad PoetryJames Wright
22.Looking Back In My Eighty-First YearMaxine Kumin
23.Amber Necklace From GdanskLinda Nemec Foster
24.I Could Give All To TimeRobert Frost
25.1959Arlene Weiner
26.What Is Our Deepest Desire?Miriam Pederson
27.Cutting GlassJared Carter
28.ApplesGrace Schulman
29.HeartGregory Orr
30.The RoundStanley Kunitz.
Compiled by Susan F. Glassmeyer
Cincinnati, Ohio
April Gift #1 —2008 Villanelle For A Cool April
On the first day of April, I send you a villanelle (definied below) by poet, essayist and musician Robyn Sarah who was born in New York City in 1949 to Canadian parents, and has lived for most of her life in Montreal. She is known for her interest in form and experiment in poetry and her work has appeared in many journals on both sides of the border.
In an interview through Literary Magazine Review, Robyn Sarah says—
For me, inspiration takes two possible forms. Sometimes words come into my head— fragmentary phrases that I like the sound of— I call them “tinder words” because they're like fire-starters for poems. Or sometimes it's a sudden feeling I get, that the thing I'm looking at is infused with mysterious significance-— that it is both itself and more than itself. It's like the world jumps into a different kind of focus. I can't make it happen, I don't have control over it, but I try to arrange my life to keep myself open to it.
What is a Villanelle? A villanelle is a poem consisting typically of five tercets (3 lines) and a quatrain (4 lines) in which the first and third lines of the opening tercet recur alternately at the end of the other tercets and together as the last two lines of the quatrain. The villanelle uses only two rhymes throughout the whole form.
Villanelle for a Cool April
by Robyn Sarah
I like a leafing-out by increments,
--not bolting bloom, in sudden heat begun.
Life's sweetest savoured in the present tense.
I like to watch the shadows pack their tents
before the creep of the advancing sun.
I like a leafing-out by increments:
to watch the tendrils inch along the fence,
to take my pleasures slow and one by one.
Life's sweetest savoured in the present tense.
Oh, leave tomorrow's fruit to providence
and dote upon the bud--from which is spun
a leafing-out to love in increments,
a greening in the cool of swooning sense,
a feathered touch, a button just undone.
Life's sweetest savoured in the present tense,
as love when it withholds and then relents,
as a cool April lets each moment stun.
I like a leafing-out by increments;
life's sweetest savoured in the present tense.
April Gift #2 —2008 He Attempts to Love His Neighbours
Alden Nowlan (1933-1983) was born (Windsor, Novia Scotia) in poverty to a 15 year-old mother and an alcoholic father. Nowlan left school in grade 5 and during his adolescent years worked at a variety of jobs, all of them menial, manual, or both. He was a pulp cutter, a farmhand, a sawmill worker, a night watchman, a ditch digger and a logger. Primarily self-educated, he later went on to work as a newspaperman, and published poetry, plays, short stories, and novels.
Out of a childhood of anguished loneliness he says: I had three choices: madness, death or verse.....It's hellish what the sicknesses of our culture have done to us all. So that love sometimes becomes simply protection against loneliness when it should be an exchange of gifts.
Diagnosed at the age of 33 with thyroid cancer, Nolan’s illness marked a major turning point in his maturity as a poet. From one of his letters during the early years of his illness:
Ever since I got sick I've become less and less hypocritical and more and more honest. Since we're all of us going to be out of the world so soon it seems silly not to tell one another what we really think and feel.
He Attempts to Love His Neighboursby Alden Nowlan
My neighbors do not wish to be loved.
They have made it clear that they prefer to go peacefully
about their business and want me to do the same.
This ought not to surprise me as it does;
I ought to know by now that most people have a hundred things
they would rather do than have me love them.
There is television, for instance; the truth is that almost everybody,
given the choice between being loved and watching TV,
would choose the latter. Love interrupts dinner,
interferes with mowing the lawn, washing the car,
or walking the dog. Love is a telephone ringing or a doorbell
waking you moments after you've finally succeeded in getting to sleep.
So we must be careful, those of us who were born with
the wrong number of fingers or the gift
of loving; we must do our best to behave
like normal members of society and not make nuisances
of ourselves; otherwise it could go hard with us.
It is better to bite back your tears, swallow your laughter,
and learn to fake the mildly self-deprecating titter
favored by the bourgeoisie
than to be left entirely alone, as you will be,
if your disconformity embarrasses
your neighbours; I wish I didn't keep forgetting that.
April Gift #3 —2008 What I Learned From My Mother
The tensions and conflicts from living in New York after a Mennonite childhood in rural Pennsylvania are the focus of Julia Spicher Kasdorf's poetry. A student of poet Sharon Olds, her collection of poems in the book “Sleeping Preacher”, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. An excerpt from the poem "Mennonites" explains her culture in her own words: "We keep our quilts in closets and do not dance. /We hoe thistles along fence rows for fear/we may not be perfect as our Heavenly Father. /We clean up his disasters. No one has to call;/we just show up in the wake of tornadoes/with hammers, after floods with buckets."
Kasdorf's poetry brings a voice to a faith and culture historically silent in America. Her work has been published in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and Poetry. Currently, she teaches at the Pennsylvania State University where she is an associate professor of English and director of the Master of Fine Arts Program.
What I Learned From My Mother
by Julia Spicher Kasdorf
I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand
in case you have to rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants
still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole
grieving household, to cube home-canned pears
and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins
and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.
I learned to attend viewing even if I didn't know
the deceased, to press the moist hands
of the living, to look in their eyes and offer
sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.
I learned that whatever we say means nothing,
what anyone will remember is that we came.
I learned to believe I had the power to ease
awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another's suffering my own usefulness, and once
you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself.
April Gift #4 —2008 Ties
"I read poetry aloud and I read my own aloud when I'm working on it. It's important to me what it sounds like on the tongue." Born in the foothills of the Virginia Blue Ridge in a small town named Rocky Mount, poet Michael Chitwood, grew up there, attending the county’s only high school. He worked as a science writer at the University of Virginia Medical Center and became a student in the MFA program while there, receiving his degree in 1980. He is now a freelance writer living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and is a regular commentator for the local affiliate of National Public Radio.
Chitwood has been called an Appalachian poet who has been influenced by the work of Charles Wright and Seamus Heaney. Chitwood hopes his poetry is recognizable by its “music” -- a music, he says that you hear in everyday language— Where I grew up, which was rural, people, it seemed to me, were more connected to the landscape, the natural world, that even in their regular conversation, they were more metaphorical, more attuned to images. They were more attentive to what something looked like, what it smelled like. To me that is poetic language.
Ties
Uncles worked pocket knives
to rake the grease of work
from beneath their nails,
but yours, in the Sunday mirror
and quick at my throat,
were always clean.
Over, under, down through.
“The print or stripe should match the blue."
Sundays only
Granddad wore one.
Saturdays only
you did not.
Over, under, down through.
“You can judge a man by the shine on his shoes."
Granddad's hung
on the back of the bedroom door,
knotted all week.
Before services,
he'd cinch it and grin,
proud his boy felt this pinch
every working day.
My back against your chest,
you talked me into the knot,
over, under, down through.
Then you'd snug it
just short of choking
and call me "Mr. Chitwood,"
the name you dressed in
every morning to leave the house.
by Michael Chitwood —from The Weave Room
April Gift #5 —2008 There Are Delicacies
There Are Delicacies
there are delicacies in you
like the hearts of watches
there are wheels that turn
on the tips of rubies
& tiny intricate locks
i need your help
to contrive keys
there is so little time
even for the finest
of watches
by Earle Birney
Earle Birney (1904-1995) was born in a log cabin on the banks of the Bow River in Calgary, Canada where he lived a rural isolated (only-child) childhood. His parents gave up their hard-scrabble farm life and moved to help Earle get proper schooling. Enrolled at the University of British Columbia, Birney set out to become a chemical engineer but graduated from the English program instead.
Earle Birney was not your average scholarly bookworm, and often caused controversy wherever he went. He was removed from his position as editor-in chief at UBC by the university administration for not compromising his views. Rather than simply reading and theorizing about the world, he took a very active stance, a stance which is reflected in much of his writing. In the early 1930s, he was in England working as a Trotskyite. Later, while in Germany, he was arrested for not saluting a Nazi parade. Many of his longer works call for change on both national and international levels.
Today’s little poem seems incongruent with the above history, which is one reason, among others, why I like it so much.
April Gift #6 —2008This Morning
This Morning
The barn bears the weight
of the first heavy snow
without complaint.
White breath of cows
rises in the tie-up, a man
wearing a frayed winter jacket
reaches for his milking stool
in the dark.
The cows have gone into the ground,
and the man,
his wife beside him now.
A nuthatch drops
to the ground, feeding
on sunflower seed and bits of bread
I scattered on the snow.
The cats doze near the stove.
They lift their heads
as the plow goes down the road,
making the house
tremble as it passes.
by Jane Kenyon
from her first book, From Room To Room (published in 1978)
Well, I sat here for a long while not knowing where to begin when it comes to saying something about the poetry of Jane Kenyon. Her poems have a way of stopping me in my tracks, interrupting the yakety-yak mind, grounding me. So I began by responding this way:
Her poems bear a weight
without complaining.
Her poems breathe a little light
into the darkness.
Animals and people have their jobs to do.
Small flourishes occur.
Words slow down,
they too drop to the ground.
What is it that trembles
whenever I read them?
Jane Kenyon was a good-hearted, smart woman from Michigan who wrote simple words that carry a significant, even mystical, weight. She married a famous writer (Donald Hall) and they lived together on his ancestral farm in New Hampshire where Jane seemed at home; not what you would call “happy”, but content, and sufferingly shy. Plagued by terrible bouts of depression, Jane wrote every day along with her husband, and spent time in her beloved farmhouse gardens, was a member of the village church, tended to her cats and walked the hills with her dog.
She thought her husband would be the first to die, aging and living with cancer as he was, but the weight came down first on Jane and she died of leukemia in 1995 at the young age of 48.
April Gift #7 —2008 Slam, Dunk, & Hook
Yusef Komunyakaa's poetry is noted for its short lines, its simple vernacular, its jazzy feel, and its rootedness in the poet's experience as a black of the American South, and as a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War. Born in 1947 and raised in Bogalusa, Louisiana, Komunyakaa graduated from the University of Colorado, and also received master's degrees from the University of California, Irvine, and Colorado State University. Komunyakaa was a professor at Indiana University for over ten years, and in 1997 began teaching at Princeton University.
Yusef Komunyakaa's poems have been described as "razor-sharp pieces that tell us more about our culture than any news broadcast." Consider reading Dien Cai Dau, his stunning poetry grappling with the Vietnam War. Author of eleven poetry volumes, Komunyakaa claims that "language is what can liberate or imprison the human psyche" and that "we are responsible for our lives and the words we use”.
Read this poem out loud. You can almost hear the pounding of feet on the court!
Slam, Dunk, & Hook
by Yusef Komunyakaa
Fast breaks. Lay ups. With Mercury's
Insignia on our sneakers,
We outmaneuvered to footwork
Of bad angels. Nothing but a hot
Swish of strings like silk
Ten feet out. In the roundhouse
Labyrinth our bodies
Created, we could almost
Last forever, poised in midair
Like storybook sea monsters.
A high note hung there
A long second. Off
The rim. We'd corkscrew
Up & dunk balls that exploded
The skullcap of hope & good
Intention. Lanky, all hands
& feet...sprung rhythm.
We were metaphysical when girls
Cheered on the sidelines.
Tangled up in a falling,
Muscles were a bright motor
Double-flashing to the metal hoop
Nailed to our oak.
When Sonny Boy's mama died
He played nonstop all day, so hard
Our backboard splintered.
Glistening with sweat,
We rolled the ball off
Our fingertips. Trouble
Was there slapping a blackjack
Against an open palm.
Dribble, drive to the inside,
& glide like a sparrow hawk.
Lay ups. Fast breaks.
we had moves we didn't know
We had. Our bodies spun
On swivels of bone & faith,
Through a lyric slipknot
Of joy, & we knew we were
Beautiful & dangerous.
April Gift #8— 2008To Things Cursory
Today’s featured poet is Susanna Childress who is a Ph.D. student in English at Florida State University.
In 2007, former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins selected Susanna Childress’ manuscript Jagged With Love from among 930 others as the winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, an annual award given by the University of Wisconsin Press which offers a monetary award and publication of the winning manuscript. He commented that Childress writes “at the cutting edge of the long tradition of love poetry….she unfailingly delivers rhythmic and linguistic pleasures to her lucky readers as they follow the course of these inquisitive, unpredictable poems.”
Childress’ poetry addresses difficult subject matter with care, inviting the reader to consider complex aspects of human love: how selfishness, fear, lust and even brutality might coincide with tenderness and loyalty.
I discovered today’s poem, To Things Cursory, accidentally couple of years ago during a Google search for something else. This particular poem won the annual Foley Poetry Award sponsored by America/The National Catholic Weekly (a Jesuit publication) in 2003. This poem is not included in Childress’ new book, Jagged With Love.