Overheard Through The Walls Of The Invisible City

by Frank Bidart

. . . telling those who swarm around him his desire
is that an appendage from each of them
fill, invade each of his orifices,—

repeating, chanting,
Oh yeah Oh yeah Oh yeah Oh yeah Oh yeah

until, as if in darkness he craved the sun, at last he reached
consummation.

—Until telling those who swarm around him begins again

(we are the wheel to which we are bound).



from Desire (FSG 1997)



*Note the perfect iambic pentameter of the fifth line. Yummy.

Toccata & Fugue, by Timothy Kelly.
Read about it here, or order online at the Floating Bridge website.

Having fun in Hawaii a couple years ago, when I had a beard.  

Welcome Jeff Walt: Poetic Life

Everybody welcome Jeff Walt to the blog world. He's a wonderful poet living in Tacoma, who I met last month at Centrum. We have the distiction of having been "between the covers" several years ago (along with Rafael Campo, Reginald Shepard, and others) in the anthology Gents, Bad Boys, and Barbarians.

Blog Anagrams 2

Just playing around this morning before work:

Poetry Hut: Pert Youth
Posey Galore: Gooey Pearls
Lorcaloca: Coal Carol
Ivy is Here: Irish Evey
Gila Monster: Angel So Trim
Dumbfoundry: Buddy From UN
Relieable Signs: Seeing Liberals
On Your Nerve: Nureyev: or no?
Notes From Qatar: Name Sq Ft Orator
The Wendy House: Honey-Sweet Duh
Geneva Convention: Give None Covenant
Of Looking at a Blackbird: Kicking Football Abroad
Sturgeon’s Law: Lust Rages Now
The World According to Ess: Disgrace to Red-Hot Clowns
Pamela's Musings: Amusing Samples.

And for those of you who missed the first set of blog anagrams (including "Asleep Inside an Old Guitar's" Odd Pleasures in Genitalia) check 'em out here.

Tremor — JAMA

My good friend Ted McMahon brought the latest issue of JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) to our poetry group last night, and I was so delighted to see my poem "Tremor" appearing there. Charlene Breedlove had accepted it a while back, and I had forgotten it was due out this month.

The poem arises from my work with Cambodian refugees, and is really well-placed, as this issue contains research articles about Cambodian refugees, refugee mental health, PTSD, somatization disorder, etc. Here are the first few lines (I'll try not to scoop JAMA by posting the whole poem):

Tremor

Because she took an extra scoop of rice
the soldiers made her watch
while one of them held a machete
swung it into her uncle's neck.
Don't close your eyes or we'll shoot you!
they said. She remembers how his face
grimaced, his eyes still blinking
as his head tumbled toward her . . .


Read the rest at a doctor's office near you! (Or at JAMA's website).

Oh Rafael, say it isn't so! 

Doty: School of the Arts

I've been reading Mark Doty's new book of poems, School of the Arts. Though it is not as strong as Atlantis, or Source, two of my faves, there is much to admire here. For instance, the series of five "Heaven" poems, which give a subtle structure to the book. Each is written as an empathic look at what "heaven" might be to a special someone in his life: three of them are written for human friends ("Heaven to Helen," "Heaven to Stanley" (as in Stanley Kunitz), and "Heaven to Paul"); and two of them are written, I believe, for his dogs ("Heaven to Beau," and "Heaven to Arden").

There are, in fact, many poems about Doty's dogs in this book, and though I am not a fan of dogs, or any pets for that matter, I felt that these were perhaps some of the strongest poems in the book. Particularly "Ultrasound" which dramatizes a visit to the vet for his ailing pooch, and which has all the caring and affection one would expect to see for an ill child, partner, or parent. Also "The Stairs," about Doty's aging dog Arden — who is unable to climb the stairs and sleep at the foot of the bed any longer, and is now sleeping outside in the garden, under the stars — is wonderfully understated and arresting.

There is an intriguing long poem, "The Vault," which explores S/M and B/D attraction, and opens with the lines: "What can be said of this happiness?/The bootblack boy on his knees/in the dim of the bar gives himself/completely to the work of polishing." Of course, the boy is polishing, with his tongue, the boots (and body?) of his master.

One of my favorite poems is "Heaven for Paul," about Doty and his partner being aboard a plane that must make an emergency landing. Doty is in terror, afraid of loss of control, of life in the face of death; while Paul becomes "increasingly radiant" and calm.

The title of the book is ironic, I believe, meaning that we are, in the end, "schooled" by the arts rather than master of them. The poem "The Art Auction" is about being at a community art sale/fundraiser, and gazing at the ghastly dated offerings, and wondering "Who'll by this stuff?" And coming to the conclusion: "Art's all bad, isn't it; what doesn't fail?/And thus there's something noble about the crap, too,//and hopeful and misguided, as much a part/of this town's soul as any achievement is. We live/by our intentions, after all."

And Doty's intentions, here, are admirable.

The Artichoke's Heart

Oh to unknot and unknow myself
like the deep threads of the artichoke's heart
opening into purple flower.

Crocosmia Lucifer in the side yard. Ah, summer . . . . 

Dry Lightning

I love voile more
than I love olive.
But violet, I love it
more than I love
voile.

O evil! O
vile! Violence
springs from love ‘n’ ice,
from nice love,
a lone vice.

But how does complaint
become compliant?
Precious beget
precarious?

Oh my — such
limitation in-
imitably ends in
imitation.

Eternity’s an entirety.
A word’s a sword.

And I’ve forgot
is
to forgive.

Happy Birthday!

Hey Everybody: Make sure to stop by the divine Rebecca Loudon's place, and wish her a big Happy Birthday. July 29th, 195x: do you remember where you were that day?

My Centrum workshop group: Bob, Larry, Jerry, Virginia, and Julie. I miss you already. 

What Robert Frost Poem are You?

A Peck of Gold

Dust always blowing about the town,
Except when sea-fog laid it down,
And I was one of the children told
Some of the blowing dust was gold.

All the dust the wind blew high
Appeared like gold in the sunset sky,
But I was one of the children told
Some of the dust was really gold.

Such was life in the Golden Gate:
Gold dusted all we drank and ate,
And I was one of the children told,
'We all must eat our peck of gold'.

*
You're rather innocent, and every cloud has a silver lining for you. Even if things are going really badly right now, they'll get better. Believe it in your heart, and it'll come true! (Q: Who writes this stuff?)


What Robert Frost poem are you?
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Doppelganger

Your picture that day on every front page
by the story that was written about you.
Then your face gleaming from the window
of the car stopped next to mine at the light.
How I smiled and you followed me home,
stayed after to watch Our Beautiful Launderette.

Stopped by the light on our front picture
window, to watch your face next to mine.
Gleaming then from the story about how you
and I stayed after at that launderette,
the day your beautiful car smiled me home.
Every page that followed was written of you.