~ Kabayan, Benguet
We hold on as long as we can
until the mountain trail swims
like a river of mist before our eyes,
and we know it's time.
Before we close our eyes and leave
the village forever, the shaman brings a drink
in a shell dipper to seal and drain
the body from inside.
Nothing of beeswax or honey must touch
our skin, but salt and stringent herb---
We want to be as parchment that light
can read through and through, high
among limestone rocks. When the last
breath exhales, we step outside and watch them
seat our corpses at our homestead's threshold,
over a low smoldering fire.
A gong's bronze notes weave
a month-long tent as slowly,
we dry and lengthen, limbs folded
and tucked in. Suspended
like this between sky and earth, we sit
like sculptures nested in sweet
pine boxes, waiting for the flower
that blooms only one night a year.
Natural piety
Up, and met by 6 o’clock in my chamber Mr. Povy (from White Hall) about evening reckonings between him and me, on our Tangier business, and at it hard till toward eight o’clock, and he then carried me in his chariot to White Hall, where by and by my fellow officers met me, and we had a meeting before the Duke. Thence with my Lord Bruncker towards London, and in our way called in Covent Garden, and took in Sir John (formerly Dr.) Baber; who hath this humour that he will not enter into discourse while any stranger is in company, till he be told who he is that seems a stranger to him. This he did declare openly to me, and asked my Lord who I was, giving this reason, that he has been inconvenienced by being too free in discourse till he knew who all the company were. Thence to Guildhall (in our way taking in Dr. Wilkins), and there my Lord and I had full and large discourse with Sir Thomas Player, the Chamberlain of the City (a man I have much heard of for his credit and punctuality in the City, and on that score I had a desire to be made known to him), about the credit of our tallys, which are lodged there for security to such as should lend money thereon to the use of the Navy. And I had great satisfaction therein: and the truth is, I find all our matters of credit to be in an ill condition. Thence, I being in a little haste walked before and to the ‘Change a little and then home, and presently to Trinity house to dinner, where Captain Cox made his Elder Brother’s dinner. But it seemed to me a very poor sorry dinner. I having many things in my head rose, when my belly was full, though the dinner not half done, and home and there to do some business, and by and by out of doors and met Mr. Povy coming to me by appointment, but it being a little too late, I took a little pride in the streete not to go back with him, but prayed him to come another time, and I away to Kate Joyce’s, thinking to have spoke to her husband about Pall’s business, but a stranger, the Welsh Dr. Powell, being there I forebore and went away and so to Hales’s, to see my wife’s picture, which I like mighty well, and there had the pleasure to see how suddenly he draws the Heavens, laying a darke ground and then lightening it when and where he will. Thence to walk all alone in the fields behind Grayes Inne, making an end of reading over my dear “Faber fortunae,” of my Lord Bacon’s, and thence, it growing dark, took two or three wanton turns about the idle places and lanes about Drury Lane, but to no satisfaction, but a great fear of the plague among them, and so anon I walked by invitation to Mrs. Pierces, where I find much good company, that is to say, Mrs. Pierce, my wife, Mrs. Worshipp and her daughter, and Harris the player, and Knipp, and Mercer, and Mrs. Barbary Sheldon, who is come this day to spend a weeke with my wife; and here with musique we danced, and sung and supped, and then to sing and dance till past one in the morning; and much mirthe with Sir Anthony Apsley and one Colonell Sidney, who lodge in the house; and above all, they are mightily taken with Mrs. Knipp. Hence weary and sleepy we broke up, and I and my company homeward by coach and to bed.
who was I being too free
in the city of desire
before having anything in my head
when my belly was it
like the raw ground in fields
wanton with sun and sleep
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 14 March 1666.
Museums of contemporary suffering
On one side, the endless travails
of telenovela or pale, wispy-haired
K-drama characters. On the other,
saints and their ladders,
lanced breasts and
severed heads. The anguish
of families separated
at a border; documentation
of the number of times migrant
girls bled or did not bleed
each month. Cells echoing
with the distinct sound
made by children crying.
Shoes and pink
plastic toothbrushes scattered through
the desert. Far away,
marble balconies where
little gods fuck
each other and eat expensive sushi
after closing
some new deal in China.
Warning: don’t watch
the video of the most recent mass
shooting; but if you did,
here is what to do about it.
In response to Via Negativa: Contemplative.
Pliable
Up betimes, and to the office, where busy sitting all the morning, and I begin to find a little convenience by holding up my head to Sir W. Pen, for he is come to be more supple. At noon to dinner, and then to the office again, where mighty business, doing a great deale till midnight and then home to supper and to bed. The plague encreased this week 29 from 28, though the total fallen from 238 to 207, which do never a whit please me.
times I find my head
I come to be more supple
at noon doing midnight
and the bed as fallen as me
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 13 March 1666.
Manifest Destiny (Infinite Loop)
~ erasure poem based on The First Voyage Round the World;
Antonio Pigafetta, 1874
4.
on the
day of the Eleven Thousand Virgins we found
the peaceful sea surrounded by
mountains covered with snow
within the Bay
where in the night we had a great storm
went further on and found a bay
Amongst
us we thought we saw two ships under
all sail, with ensigns spread Afterwards
inside this strait we found two mouths
one of the two
whom we had taken died
the captain-general sent the ship named Victory
the people
were to place an ensign on the summit
with a letter inside a pot
: and he caused a cross to be set upon a small island
in it we found
a good port good waters, wood all of cedar, fish
there is not in the world a more beautiful country
when we wounded this people
immediately afterwards they died
women cried out and tore their hair
for the love of those we had killed
These people
adore nothing, and
go naked
Salty
Up betimes, and called on by abundance of people about business, and then away by water to Westminster, and there to the Exchequer about some business, and thence by coach calling at several places, to the Old Exchange, and there did much business, and so homeward and bought a silver salt for my ordinary table to use, and so home to dinner, and after dinner comes my uncle and aunt Wight, the latter I have not seen since the plague; a silly, froward, ugly woman she is. We made mighty much of them, and she talks mightily of her fear of the sicknesse, and so a deale of tittle tattle and I left them and to my office where late, and so home to supper and to bed.
This day I hear my Uncle Talbot Pepys died the last week, and was buried. All the news now is, that Sir Jeremy Smith is at Cales with his fleete, and Mings in the Elve.
The King is come this noon to towne from Audly End, with the Duke of Yorke and a fine train of gentlemen.
an abundance of salt
for my ordinary table
ugly talk fear and tittle tattle
is all the news now
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 12 March 1666.
Poetry Blog Digest 2019: Week 11
A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts.
This week: aging, mortality, ambition, procrastination, and books; preparing for the AWP; preparing for spring.
I don’t remember the first time I read W. S. Merwin’s work. I feel as if his words and spirit have always been with me. I do remember the first time I met him in person. Another student poet I knew, Andie, from Pamela Alexander’s weekly poetry class (held in Pam’s living room outside Central Square) had heard that Merwin would be at Harvard for a reading and reception. This very quiet poet and total rule follower asked me if I would attend the reading with her — and then crash the reception.
Susan Rich, Remembering W.S. Merwin (1927-2019)
My friend and I (young, awkward, and brave) sidled up to the very small group where Merwin was chatting and joined in. Was it a Harvard Review event? The fancy pants people (dresses and heels and perfect make-up) stared at us. We did not fit in. My friend addressed Merwin telling him in a flash flood of words how important his poems had been to her, how they allowed her to believe she had permission to write her own. Andie went on for awhile. I had never heard her talk so much. And when she was finished, perhaps believing that we were both about to be ejected from the premises, she stepped back. And then I remember — as if it was not 34 years ago though it was — Merwin smiled broadly and said, “Thank you. That makes me feel useful.”
And there was no doubt that he meant this. Andie’s effusiveness, her awkward praise, visibly filled him with a humble gratitude. There were so many ways the conversation could have gone but this gentle thanks from Merwin altered the universe of poetry for me. This poetry god had just ambled down the mountain and spoke to us as if we were his trusted friends. He was the only one in that stuffy room who welcomed us in and made us feel as if we had a right to inhabit the poetry world. Or at least try.
At 76, I’ve lived longer than anyone on the male side of my Dad’s family (and all his sisters, too). Sometimes I’ll do the maths, and think something like, “well, with a following wind I could probably have five or six or seven years left. Four would be good. Every day’s a bonus. You’re a lucky man.” It’s not for a moment depressing, but it’s made me notice that I’m reading poems I might not have taken much notice of before. Life enhancing poems that didn’t seem that relevant or interesting at one time. Your stories will be similar, I imagine. When I was in my 30s and my Dad was dying I found myself reading and re-reading Tony Harrison’s sequence of sonnets from The school of eloquence… Book ends(especially), Continuous, Marked with D.They gave me a vocabulary, a language to shape my grief. In the break-up of my first marriage, and in finding a new love, it was A kumquat for John Keats, that midlife thankyou for coming through, for love, for survival. I remember him reading it when it had just come out, the relish with which he read the lines
I burst the whole fruit chilled by morning dew
against my palate. Fine, for 42I loved the way it came after:
Then it’s the kumquat fruit expresses best
how days have darkness round them like a rind,
life has a skin of death that keeps its zest.I saw him reading last summer, still going strong at 80. And I wondered how those lines sound to him now. I think he might give them a wry smile. It’s the same kind of wry smile I reserve for young men’s poems about their imagined end. Rupert Brooke, for instance
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England……….
a pulse in the eternal mind, no lessI don’t imagine for a moment that he had any intention of ending up like that; he just thought he did. Since he never got to the Front he never got to rethink it, unlike Sassoon, or Rosenberg, or Owen and the rest. But I’m pretty sure it spoke to me differently when I was 16, when I believed sincerely (because of the H Bomb) that I’d not see 21. We read who and where we are. We change and the poems change with us.
John Foggin, Staying Alive: me and Mr MacCaig
In 62 years this body has become worn;
James Lee Jobe, ‘In 62 years this body has become worn’
Lumps and bumps and bald spots. Aches.
Places that hurt and I’m not sure why.
Other things have changed with age, too;
I spend more time thinking about the sun and moon,
The trees and watersheds.
Much less thought goes to the curve of a shapely thigh.
I have been reading Hayden Carruth’s poems, admiring the breadth of his experiments in styles from sonnets to jazzy free verse to prose poems and extremely short poems–even haiku. One thing becomes clear after awhile: his appreciation of song, of the poem as song, of the need to create song as an expression of life and against the things one wishes to resist, even when (especially when) it is impossible to resist.
His poem “Mother” says all of the things I wanted to write about my mother-in-law’s death, and more. It is achingly honest and achingly sad and deeply loving.
After reading it, I thought to myself, “You do not need to write those poems; Carruth has achieved what you are trying to accomplish.” But we compose poems under individual circumstances and for personal reasons, and I suspect that reading “Mother” will help me to revise my own poems in probing ways.
This is why we read other poets’ work. One reason why, anyway.
Ann E. Michael, Come let us sing
It’s only as “swift” sank in, and I felt the distance of “landscape” that I “got it.” The paved path is a road; I’m on that Interstate, if it is one, not beside it.
Because she doesn’t name it as road, and because she delays the fact that the pines are gone and doesn’t spell out why or how (removed for farming? cut down to build the road?) I have wandered inside her poem and so find myself complicit at the end in all that taking the fast road ignores or denies.
Thank you, Carol Barrett, for this reading experience. Carol has two books, Pansies, just out, and Calling in the Bones. I’m looking forward to reading both.
Ellen Roberts Young, Reading a Poem: Barrett’s “The American Dream”
This morning I was feeling like a dried out husk, with no ideas for writing, a poet who would never write a poem again. I thought about approaches that often work: taking a real or fictional character and writing a poem from a different angle or taking a minor character and giving the character a voice. Nothing.
Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Of Poem Composing and Travel Fretting
I scrolled through my blog posts that get an “inspiration” tag so that I can find them when I need inspiration. I went back several years and again, nothing.
Then a line drifted across my brain: I keep this garlic press although it only has one purpose. I thought of my juicer, which also only has one purpose but takes up more room in the cabinet. I was off–and I finally wrote a poem.
I happened upon this great piece from Susan Minot this weekend and it got me thinking about not so much how we write, but how the world, in fact, opens itself up to us in possibility every day. I’ll be sitting on a bus, or pushing a cart of books through the library, and there it is, that shimmering idea. Or in that weird morning space between waking up enough to look at my phone to check the time and the alarm actually going off. Admittedly, so much is lost because I didn’t write it down. Didn’t force myself to commit it to memory for later when I had time to consider it as creative impulse. This week, one night, I was up in the stacks and heard strange inexplicable noises a few rows away and got to thinking about the plot of a horror movie or novel where a woman is haunted by the ghost of herself from the future. She would then have to solve her own death like a puzzle. Or a title for a poem, or a concept for a book will come to me. Friday, I was tweaking the dgp website and for a second “&nsbp” or “non breaking space” seemed like a great title for a book of poems written in html code style.
Kristy Bowen, sometimes the world writes itself
In a desert zoo, a jaguar slashes a stupid tourist who felt entitled: all I can think of is her cage, her pacing, her desperate desire to kill something. I nightwalk on ice, in dark, on thickly beaten-down snow. It’s exhausting, how fast it slips out of our hands, claws, teeth. How hungry we are. To be ourselves. All things are happening at once, they say, as though this is news. All the endings. All the beginnings. Vitality and decay, simultaneous.
JJS, March 10, 2019: jaguar stars
If we’re to be nothing after death
Magda Kapa, Like Nothing On
let it be nothing like nothing on,
like a dress you take off
on a very hot night
to feel the slightest breeze,
a dim light that gives you goosebumps.
I took the train from Paris to Chartres. It was a Friday in Lent, and on those Fridays, they take the chairs off the Labyrinth, which is designed right into the cathedral floor.
Not too many other people there. I walked it.
Later, I wrote this poem:Thin Place
Anne Higgins, On this day last year
I walk the labyrinth at Chartres.
The subtle knife can cut the veil.
I hear the whisper on the other side.
I stretch my hand and touch the air.
The subtle knife can cut the veil
where walls are thin as plastic wrap.
I stretch my hand and touch the air.
Heaven and earth just feet apart
where walls are thin as plastic wrap. […]
The picture of my cats contemplating the excellent Joanna Russ’s How To Suppress Women’s Writing is here to inspire some pre-AWP reading – of course you’ll come home with a bunch of new reading material, but I’m trying to warm up – trying to place a review of a new book, Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic, (excellent!) and I’ve been trying to mix up my feminist reading material – sometimes being outside of academia I feel I miss out of some books that are familiar talking material in the academic world, and this book is one of them. (It was mentioned heavily in Sophie Collins’ Who is Mary Sue?) It’s a fascinating, fairly easy read, sharp and funny in places. Joanna is a science fiction writer as well as a critic, so I’m going to look for more of her work.
Jeannine Hall Gailey, Getting Ready for AWP, Part I: Schedule, Packing Tips, And How Not to Panic
Speaking of the bookfair– The bookfair has become SO LARGE, you actually need to spend A LOT of time there… AND it’s worth it.
Kelli Russell Agodon, AWP 2019: Tips from an Introvert #AWP2019 #AWPTips
Here’s why–while sitting in on a panel, may feel like “wow, I am learning important things,” walking around a bookfair actually connects you with people and publishers and poets and presses. You will make connections, you will learn about the presses you want to publish you, and you will meet the editors behind the scenes.
This is SO important as a poet or writer. You will have the opportunity to hold the books they publish, look at the covers, read the words and decide if this is a press you’d want to have publish your work.
So take the time. Buy books. Support presses and poets. Look at the books and educate yourself in what kind work presses publish. Ask questions. Present your best self. Be professional. Learn about all the presses and what they do.
Looking awkward is one of my natural gifts. I probably look awkward in photos because I am awkward in real life. Like the time I was attacked by vegetation. Or the time I threw myself into a cute boy’s locker while trying to play hard-to-get.
But now, to my horror, I’m told I need an author photo to promote my new book. Although I successfully eluded requests to put my picture on the back cover, I’m told I need such a photo for publicity materials. Whaaa? This is my third book (or fourth, or fifth, depending on how you count) and I’ve never had to assemble anything resembling publicity. But book reviewers, apparently, want to check the flesh-covered skull I smile from before they consider cracking open a copy.
In an effort to put this off longer, I have procrastinated by looking up what sort of photos truly laudable writers have gotten away with over the years. [Click through to view examples.]
Laura Grace Weldon, Author Photo Angst
I’ve been making a lot of stuff lately, not just found poems but collages to compliment them, even a found poem in a box (see below). I loosely term all this stuff ‘composite fictions’ and last week I started to realise I’d got quite a number of these pieces. So, I’ve created a gallery page on this blog where you can view them under that heading.
Sometimes, the cutting and sticking has felt like it’s taking over from the poetry all together, but I’ve kept at it, in the belief that that you learn through doing, and completing, things. That’s not to say I’m happy with every finished piece, but completing is a stage in the process. Unfinished work makes me feel uncomfortable. What would it have been if I’d got round to finishing it? Good or bad, I’ll never know – unless I complete it. And it’s reassuring to be able to put one project aside in order to concentrate on something else, then go back to the first one later.
Julie Mellor, Side projects and procrastination
Not really a blog post but an ageing woman cycling on a static bicycle half crying, half laughing listening to an old George Michael song and thinking that she used to imagine George was singing to her about
oh there was so much unrequited love in those days! and she never imagined anyone wasn’t straight, she was very young
now Paul McCartney is duetting with George, she didn’t know about this version, the wonder of spotify, looking sideways through the windows she could almost be cycling down a country lane
it would be a good idea
Josephine Corcoran, Not really a blog post
What’s it all about? The tendency of “life” to want to live in the now and onward. The meaning of life? Well, I don’t think there is intrinsic meaning to this random fallout. You want meaning? Make it yourself. We just flail around, a bunch of bacteria and dividing cells, and then it’s over. Well, except for the bacteria.
Which brings a certain amount of perspective on the idea of success, something else about which I’ve been thinking.
I’ve tried a number of pursuits in my life. Had a number of ambitions, both realistic and outlandish. Numerous fancies. Many dreams. One by one, all these things fall away. Pursuit falters; ambition lapses or faces the grim reality of oh-just-forget-it; dreams, well, dreams are forgotten, tossed aside with regret, relief, bitterness, or remain clutched in the hand like a magician’s coin, invisible but caught in the fingers.
I thought I’d be this thing, do that thing, or be that kind of person. With each passing life phase I’ve tried to get clearer who I am, what I’m here for, and how I define success. It’s an ongoing project.
Marilyn McCabe, Pass Go; collect $200; or, On Success…or Successishness
I am always smoldering
Bekah Steimel, Lit
like a stubborn campfire
or a pair of new lovers
two months into their affair
I am not a flickering candle
fearful of the wind
or even a strong set of lungs
I cannot be snuffed out
blown out
Look, Mom, he’s taking up
needle and thread to be like me, and I’m
taking them up to be like you, to finish
the canvas you started. Isn’t that whatwe all do, in the end: add clumsy stitches
to the unfinished tapestry of generations?
He’s trying to make something beautifulfrom hard work and yarn. I told him
Rachel Barenblat, First letter
I’m proud of him. I told him
wherever you are, you’re proud of him too.
This morning I dawdled more than usual and was a half-an-hour late to hit the trail. But it is spring now, and the sun is catching up with us. For now, a half-an-hour is the difference between running in the dark, and running in predawn’s pink and blue watercolors. Next month the sun will beat me to the trailhead every morning.
The lake is still edged with ice and roughly textured in the soft light.
The ducks’ calls can sound like mocking laughter, but I no longer mind.
They are a promise (and a reminder) for the day to come.
Let it come, and go – and keep it easy.For now, there are sunrises.
Ren Powell, March 11, 2019
There will be sunsets in the autumn
when it comes.
Lowered expectations
(Lord’s day). Up, and by water to White Hall, there met Mr. Coventry coming out, going along with the Commissioners of the Ordnance to the water side to take barge, they being to go down to the Hope. I returned with them as far as the Tower in their barge speaking with Sir W. Coventry and so home and to church, and at noon dined and then to my chamber, where with great pleasure about one business or other till late, and so to supper and to bed.
I miss the ordnance in hope
turn as far as the peak
and so home to church
and a ham supper
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 11 March 1666.
Manifest Destiny (Infinite Loop)
~ erasure poem based on The First Voyage Round the World;
Antonio Pigafetta, 1874
3.
arose this custom in this place of eating
the enemies of each other
; they eat him bi by bit,
they cut him up into pieces,
and eat it
in memory of their enemies.
These kind of people are not
very black, but rather brown
and there are an infinite number of parrots
. There are also pigs
which have their navel on the back
but their
wives they would not give up for anything in the world.
It is to be known it had not rained for two months
before we came , and the day we arrived it began to rain, on
which account the people said we came from
heaven
Manifest Destiny (Infinite Loop)
~ erasure poem based on The First Voyage Round the World;
Antonio Pigafetta, 1874
2.
he who kept first watch, on the
following day
the end of a river
many little villages
from which to enter a port
Near the cape
days where we sojourned
once a day at the hour of
midday, there descends a cloud
a great abundance of water distils
the animals, both domestic and wild,
drink of it
Nevertheless