PoemPROSE of the Week

The Widow

From Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

No colours except green and black the walls are green the sky is black (there is no roof) the stars are green the Widow is green but her hair is black as black. The Widow sits on a high high chair the chair is green the seat is black the Widow’s hair has a centre-parting it is green on the left and on the right black. High as the sky the chair is green the seat is black the Widow’s arm is long as death its skin is green the fingernails are long and sharp and black. Between the walls the children green the walls are green the Widow’s arm comes snaking down the snake is green the children scream the fingernails are black they scratch the Widow’s arm is hunting see the children run and scream the Widow’s hand curls round them green and black. Now one by one the children mmff are stifled quiet the Widow’s hand is lifting one by one the children green their blood is black unloosed by cutting fingernails it splashes black on walls (of green) as one by one the curling hand lifts children high as sky the sky is black there are no stars the Widow laughs her tongue is green but see her teeth are black. And children torn in two in Widow hands which rolling rolling halves of children roll them into little balls the balls are green the night is black. And little balls fly into night between the walls the children shriek as one by one the Widow’s hand. And in a corner the Monkey and I (the walls are green the shadows black) cowering crawling wide high walls green fading into black there is no roof and Widow’s hand comes onebyone the children scream and mmff and little balls and hand and scream and mmff and splashing stains of black. Now only she and I and no more screams the Widow’s hand comes hunting hunting the skin is green the nails are black towards the corner hunting hunting while we shrink closer into the corner our skin is green our fear is black and now the Hand comes reaching reaching and she my sister pushes me out of the corner while she stays cowering staring the hand the nails are curling scream and mmff and splash of black and up into the high as sky and laughing Widow tearing I am rolling into little balls the balls are green and out into the night the night is black…

***

Not a poem. I get that. But I just read this passage in the Rushdie book I've been working on since... January, O think, and it creeped me right the heck out. Also, it was just plain awesome. One of the best things I've read in recent weeks, and I just had to share.

Poem of the Week

A Girl's Garden

By Robert Frost

A neighbor of mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.

One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, "Why not?"

In casting about for a corner
He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, "Just it."

And he said, "That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm."

It was not enough of a garden
Her father said, to plow;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don't mind now.

She wheeled the dung in a wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load,

And hid from anyone passing.
And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
Of all things but weed.

A hill each of potatoes,
Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
And even fruit trees.

And yes, she has long mistrusted
That a cider-apple
In bearing there today is hers,
Or at least may be.

Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
A great deal of none.

Now when she sees in the village
How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
She says, "I know!

"It's as when I was a farmer..."
Oh never by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the tale
To the same person twice.

***

Two weeks in a row now I've posted a poem brought to mind by a song... although this week's song is actually just the poem set to music. I think we've all known someone like this - well-read on a subject, maybe, but completely ineffectual when it comes to practical application, yet still completely full of themselves...

Why are y'all looking at me like that?

Poem of the Week

Girl-Watching

By Dan Brown

In the years I’ve been at this

(Lots, not to be precise)

You’d think that once or twice

At least I would have seen

Some anomalies. I mean

Some major ones. As in

Not feet but little wheels,

Or crests like cockatiels’.

Where are they keeping the girls

With a chrome exterior,

Or an extra derriere?

Apparently nowhere.

Assuming my sample’s valid,

The pool is limited

To the standard types I’ve tallied;

Such variance as there is

In the usual congeries

Of   physiognomies —

And yet enough of   it

To be worth the looking at.

The walking by, for that,

Of   the same girl over and over

Would be no cross to bear

If   it were that one there.

***

Found this poem a little while on my poetry spinner app. Read it, then listen to this. Then you can thank me for having the rest of a good day, cuz I guarantee you will.

Although whether that will be due to the great song or the absolutely epic white-people-dancing, I can't tell.

Poem of the Week

Dulce et Decorum Est

By Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

***

Chances of you having read this poem in high school are pretty good. What impresses me most about Pwen's poem is the way he decries the supposed "glory" of war without vilifying the soldier. After all, the soldier is just doing what he sees as his duty, and is far more likely to suffer the ill-effects of war than the civilian poet who protests the war or the politician who sends him out to die. Sadly for Owen, he was both a poet and a soldier, and he lost his life in the war.

Poem of the Week

[in Just-]

By E.E. Cummings

in Just- 
spring          when the world is mud- 
luscious the little 
lame balloonman 


whistles          far          and wee 


and eddieandbill come 
running from marbles and
piracies and it's 
spring


when the world is puddle-wonderful


the queer 
old balloonman whistles 
far          and             wee 
and bettyandisbel come dancing 


from hop-scotch and jump-rope and 


it's 
spring 
and 

         the 


                  goat-footed 


balloonMan          whistles 
far 
and 
wee

***

Hey, it's that thing! That thing that I used to do every Friday!

With the days of spring officially upon us, it seemed a good time to return to the Cummings well. Always one of my favorites, E.E. Cummings' best springtime poem touches on everything significant about this season. There's both a sense of revelry and one of dread in this poem, which features a wonderfully damp and rejuvinated world now inhabited by boys and girls at play... and an almost-predatory toy vendor. Creepy.

Poem of the Week

Heir to All

By Li-Young Lee

What I spill in a dream
runs under my door,
ahead of my arrival
and the year’s wide round,

to meet me in the color of hills
at dawn, or else collected
in a flower’s name
I trace with my finger
in a book. Proving

only this: Listening is the ground
below my sleep,
where decision is born, and

whoever’s heard the title
autumn knows him by
is heir to all those
unfurnished rooms inside the roses.

***

Sometimes I just like my poetry incomprehensible, you know? Seriously, I don't know that I'm smart enough for poetry like this, but I enjoy it anyway. I can grasp at the meaning of this poem: I imagine it has something to do with nighttime inspiration. However, I find at times that it is far more important to FEEL a poem. Li-Young Lee's poems are full of feeling - lots of fear, unease, and apprehension, sure, but also, like here, there are moments of profound serenity.

Poem of the Week

"If no one ever marries me"

By Laurence Alma-Tadema

If no one ever marries me,—
And I don't see why they should,
For nurse says I'm not pretty,
And I'm seldom very good—

If no one ever marries me
I shan't mind very much;
I shall buy a squirrel in a cage,
And a little rabbit-hutch:

I shall have a cottage near a wood,
And a pony all my own,
And a little lamb quite clean and tame,
That I can take to town:

And when I'm getting really old,—
At twenty-eight or nine—
I shall buy a little orphan-girl
And bring her up as mine.

***

Happy Post-Valentine's Day, I guess.

Really old? At twenty-eight or nine? Brother.

Poem of the Week

Dirty Face

By Shel Silverstein

Where did you get such a dirty face,
My darling dirty-faced child?

I got it from crawling along in the dirt
And biting two buttons off Jeremy’s shirt.
I got it from chewing the roots of a rose
And digging for clams in the yard with my nose.
I got it from peeking into a dark cave
And painting myself like a Navajo brave.
I got it from playing with coal in the bin
And signing my name in cement with my chin.
I got if from rolling around on the rug
And giving the horrible dog a big hug.
I got it from finding a lost silver mine
And eating sweet blackberries right off the vine.
I got it from ice cream and wrestling and tears
And from having more fun than you’ve had in years.

***

Poems about children aren't for children, I don't think. I mean, yeah, kids like to see reflections of themselves in the media they consume, I'm sure. I mean, who doesn't? Except for those filled with incredible self-loathing, I mean.

But there's always that obligatory dig at grown-ups at the end of these poems, which makes me think that they're really meant to be read by adults. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this. But yeah, I can't help but think that adults, for some reason, LIKE getting the piss taken out of them.

Poem of the Week

We Wear the Mask

By Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

***

Another poem I found in the poetry spinner. I may have to get the book for this guy, though - he strikes me as a sort of ur-Langston Hughes, who, in case you haven't noticed from the number of times I've posted his poetry here, I kinda like.

Mainly, I love how the poet is able to set up rhyme and metric expectations, which he then shatters with his "We wear the mask" line. It's far more effectively done than most emo poetry on the same subject could ever hope to do.

Poem of the Week

Benny Said, Ruby Said

By J. Patrick Lewis

Benny said
To Ruby Lee,
“M-A-R-R-Y M-E!”
Ruby said,
To Benny,
“Ben, wouldn't
That be F-U-N?”

Benny said,
“My Ruby Lee,
We will W-E-D
Only if you let me K-
I-S-S you
Every day!”

***

This isn't my usual thing in poetry, but I kinda like it. Rhyming poetry, in my head, has a cutesy, childish connotation that it probably doesn't deserve. The best rhymes, in my opinion, are the cleverest, and this poem has clever rhymes in spades.

The spelling game between these two sweethearts serves two purposes. First, it enhances the playful attitude of the poem. Second, it makes room for some really clever rhymes, like the "hidden" rhyme in the first stanza between "Ben" and the "N" in FUN.

Poem of the Week

Early To Bed

By Mary Mapes Dodge

Early to bed and early to rise:
If that would make me wealthy and wise
I’d rise at daybreak, cold or hot,
And go back to bed at once. Why not?

***

I'll admit that I've been having a lot more fun with the iPad than maybe I should be. I do most of my drawing, writing, blogging, and reading on the device. I've even taken to watching numerous episodes of My Little Pony Titans of Testosterone with my spare time. Now, I can even cede most of the legwork for my "Poem of the Week" feature to the iPad.

There's a neat little app put out by The Poetry Foundation simply called "POETRY." It has a randomizer function that brings up, not individual poems, but a random SUBJECT of poetry. I've been using it quite a bit recently, and I'm finding a lot of fun poetry. For example, the verse above seems a little silly (and it is), but go read the bio on poet Mary Mapes Dodge and you'll find she kept some pretty prestigious company.

See? Education!

Poem of the Week

Harlem (Dream Deferred)

By Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.


Or does it explode?

***

Second Langston Hughes poem I've posted. Seriously, guys, he's GOOD.

So 2013 is coming up next week. Anybody got any dreams they've been deferring? Well, STOP IT!

Poem of the Week

Nativity

By Li-Young Lee

In the dark, a child might ask, What is the world?
just to hear his sister
promise, An unfinished wing of heaven,
just to hear his brother say,
A house inside a house,
but most of all to hear his mother answer,
One more song, then you go to sleep.

How could anyone in that bed guess
the question finds its beginning
in the answer long growing
inside the one who asked, that restless boy,
the night's darling?

Later, a man lying awake,
he might ask it again,
just to hear the silence
charge him, This night
arching over your sleepless wondering,

this night, the near ground
every reaching-out-to overreaches,

just to remind himself
out of what little earth and duration,
out of what immense good-bye,

each must make a safe place of his heart,
before so strange and wild a guest
as God approaches.

***

Squint and it's sort of about Christmas.

Actually, as dense as this poem is, I find it really beautiful. The image of the child in the darkness is truly striking. And the description of God as a guest both "strange and wild" carris a certain beauty with it, as well.

Poem of the Week

To A Small Boy Standing On My Shoes While I Am Wearing Them

By Ogden Nash

Let's straighten this out, my little man,
And reach an agreement if we can.
I entered your door as an honored guest.
My shoes are shined and my trousers are pressed,
And I won't stretch out and read you the funnies
And I won't pretend that we're Easter bunnies.
If you must get somebody down on the floor,
What in the hell are your parents for?
I do not like the things that you say
And I hate the games that you want to play.
No matter how frightfully hard you try,
We've little in common, you and I.
The interest I take in my neighbor's nursery
Would have to grow, to be even cursory,
And I would that performing sons and nephews
Were carted away with the daily refuse,
And I hold that frolicsome daughters and nieces
Are ample excuse for breaking leases.
You may take a sock at your daddy's tummy
Or climb all over your doting mummy,
But keep your attentions to me in check,
Or, sonny boy, I will wring your neck.
A happier man today I'd be
Had someone wrung it ahead of me.

***

Bet you didn't know I'm not a parent.

On a whim, I did a Google search for "To A Small Boy Standing On My Shoes." This was the first result.

Poem of the Week

Father

By Ted Kooser

May 19, 1999

Today you would be ninety-seven
if you had lived, and we would all be
miserable, you and your children,
driving from clinic to clinic,
an ancient fearful hypochondriac
and his fretful son and daughter,
asking directions, trying to read
the complicated, fading map of cures.
But with your dignity intact
you have been gone for twenty years,
and I am glad for all of us, although
I miss you every day—the heartbeat
under your necktie, the hand cupped
on the back of my neck, Old Spice
in the air, your voice delighted with stories.
On this day each year you loved to relate
that the moment of your birth
your mother glanced out the window
and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today
lilacs are blooming in side yards
all over Iowa, still welcoming you.

***

Conversations with my parents have, from time to time, taken on these darker overtones. There've been talks of funeral plots and other things. Thankfully, I'm not yet so near those inevitable futures as to relate to this poem.

Poem of the Week

Otherwise

By Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

***

Okay, so I'm not going to be here on Friday, cuz, you know, holiday or whatever. So I thought I'd share a Thanksgiving poem. You know, about gratitude.

The sad part, though, is that it eventually was otherwise. Jane Kenyon passed away in 1995 at 47.

Poem of the Week

John & Mary

By Stephen Dunn

John & Mary had never met. They were like
two hummingbirds who also had never met.
-from a freshman’s short story

They were like gazelles who occupied different
grassy plains, running in opposite directions
from different lions. They were like postal clerks
in different zip codes, with different vacation time,
their bosses adamant and clock-driven.
How could they get together?
They were like two people who couldn’t get together.
John was a Sufi with a love of the dervish,
Mary of course a Christian with a curfew.
They were like two dolphins in the immensity
of the Atlantic, one playful,
the other stuck in a tuna net –
two absolutely different childhoods!
There was simply no hope for them.
They would never speak in person.
When they ran across that windswept field
toward each other, they were like two freight trains,
one having left Seattle at 6:36 P.M.
at an unknown speed, the other delayed
in Topeka for repairs.
The math indicated that they’d embrace
in another world, if at all, like parallel lines.
Or merely appear kindred and close, like stars.

***

I stumbled across this poem recently, and... well, I don't know. Maybe it's just because I was in the middle of NaNoWriMo, but I found the whole idea that a stereotypically BAD bit of writing could be turned into something beautiful and meaningful.

Poem of the Week

The Cinnamon Peeler's Wife

By Michael Ondaatje

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler’s wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
– your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers…

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grasscutter’s wife, the lime burner’s daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume.
and knew
what good is it
to be the lime burner’s daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in an act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler’s wife. Smell me.

***

I've posted a lot of fairly erotic poetry. I guess poets are really good about writing sex - which seems completely counter to my experience. Every time I told a girl I wrote poetry, they kinda zoned out.

What makes "The Cinnamon Peeler" so effective for me is the constant reference to the smell of cinnamon, the way it marks, not just the woman in the poem, but the speaker. He is a tradesman, a worker in cinnamon, and his trade follows him everywhere, marks everything he touches. At last, when he marries his love, he finds the smell transfers to her, and she's glad to have it.

This may be the only successful usage of the phrase "Smell me" in a sexy context.

Poem of the Week

Where Does The Temple Begin, Where Does It End?

By Mary Oliver

There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.

The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.

And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing
from the unreachable top of the tree.

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
as though with your arms open.

And thinking: maybe something will come, some
shining coil of wind,
or a few leaves from any old tree–
they are all in this too.

And now I will tell you the truth.
Everything in the world
comes.

At least, closer.

And, cordially.

Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.
Like goldfinches, little dolls of goldfluttering around the corner of the sky

of God, the blue air.

***

The formatting of this poem is actually a bit different than I'm able to manage in HTML. It's worth it to look up the print version.

Several years ago, just after I graduated from college, I got into a discussion with a friend about the "right" way to write religious poetry. Most poems on religious subjects I find a bit too saccharine and sappy. Mary Oliver's "Where Does The Temple Begin, Where Does It End?" gets it right - it communicates a strong sense of wonder at both the natural world and the hand that crafted it.

Poem of the Week

Little Lyric (Of Great Importance)

By Langston Hughes

I wish the rent
Was heaven sent.

***

Langston Hughes is one of the great poets of the 20th century. He's got some incredible lyricism to his verses - no surprise, as there's a strong vein of the blues running through his writing. While I generally prefer "Harlem" ("What happens to a dream deferred?"), I find his little verse (of great importance) tends to speak more to my current situation than just about any other poem I've read.