Barbara's Random Thoughts

I came across this poem today, one I'd come across before and liked enough to copy out. Reading it tonight reminded me of the New Year's Eve just past and the feeling I had as I watched the last seconds of 2007 count down and disappear. I was sad to see 2007 go--it was an amazing year. I'm given to nostalgia anyway, but these last lines resonate: "...while something else / wonderful dies."

I'm usually unsettled when the calendar pages are blank, when the future is uncertain, when "No plans come to mind." I usually have far too many plans: many sets of options and contingencies, Plan A and Plan B and plenty of other letters after that. Lately I've been learning to "stand there with my hands out," open to receive what's next instead of grasping for it. I'm trying some things on, seeing how they fit. And I'll let you know.

NEW YEAR
Naomi Shihab Nye

Over our heads the words hung down
with giant sparkling margins.
I was try-trying again
every day of my life.
That's why I've been followed
by stacks of blank notebooks, why
any calendar page with nothing written on it
strikes me full of ravenous joy.

When a year changes,
the little stuffed man
pitches into the flames,
his paper-bag body fattened by
ragged lists, crumpled mail.
Between 8 P.M. when I scrawl
the vanishing year on his chest
and midnight, we fall in love.

His rueful grin, his crooked hat!

He burns fast in the backyard pit.
Then a deep quiet plucked by firecrackers
under a weirdly lit city sky.

No plans come to mind.
I just stand there with my hands out
in smoke while something else
wonderful dies.

Labels: poetry

When I go away from you
The world beats dead
Like a slackened drum.
I call out for you against the jutted stars
And shout into the ridges of the wind.
Streets coming fast,
One after the other,
Wedge you away from me,
And the lamps of the city prick my eyes
So that I can no longer see your face.
Why should I leave you,
To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?

-Amy Lowell


The last two lines of this poem came to mind on Monday night as I drove home beneath a full moon with sharp, sharp edges. I tracked down the poem today and thought I'd share.

Labels: poetry

I keep meaning to post about this, but good intentions alone don't do much, do they? April is National Poetry Month--and that deserves celebrating!

I'm greatly enjoying reading The Wild Iris, by Louise Gluck--a very timely birthday gift. I'm intrigued by Gluck's use of the second person and the natural imagery that's threaded through the entire volume. I feel like it's very much a book of poetry--a thematic whole, rather than just a collection of poems. Definitely recommended.

I've also been receiving daily poems emailed from Knopf. (There's another poem-a-day feature on poets.org, if you're interested in checking it out.) I keep getting behind in reading these daily poems--poetry needs more than a cursory glance and since I usually do just that in the mornings, I've been saving these for later. Below is one of the Knopf poems from last week, followed by a poem from one of my favorite poets. Enjoy.


Permanently
Kenneth Koch

One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.

Each Sentence says one thing—for example, "Although it was a dark rainy
day when the Adjective walked by, I shall remember the pure and sweet
expression on her face until the day I perish from the green, effective
earth."
Or, "Will you please close the window, Andrew?"
Or, for example, "Thank you, the pink pot of flowers on the window sill
has changed color recently to a light yellow, due to the heat from the
boiler factory which exists nearby."

In the springtime the Sentences and the Nouns lay silently on the grass.
A lonely Conjunction here and there would call, "And! But!"
But the Adjective did not emerge.

As the Adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat—
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone
Until the destruction of language.


Eye Test
Naomi Shihab Nye

The D is desperate.
The B wants to take a vacation,
live on a billboard, be broad and brave.
The E is mad at the R for upstaging him.
The little c wants to be a big C if possible,
and the P pauses long between thoughts.

How much better to be a story, story.
Can you read me?

We have to live on this white board
together like a neighborhood.
We would rather be the tail of a cloud,
one letter becoming another,
or lost in a boy’s pocket
shapeless as lint,
the same boy who squints to read us
believing we convey a secret message.
Be his friend.
We are so tired of meaning nothing.

Labels: poetry

I came across this little tidbit today on Writer's Almanac:

On this day in 1327, one of the most important events in the history of poetry took place: The Italian poet Petrarch saw the woman he called Laura for the first time at a Good Friday service in the church of Sainte-Claire. He would go on to write dozens of sonnets to Laura, providing a model for generations of sonnet-writers, including Shakespeare. But he didn't publish those sonnets until 1374, almost fifty years after Petrarch saw Laura for the first time. Most historians now think Petrarch's Laura was Laura de Noves, the wife of a nobleman named Hugues de Sade. She died on April 6, 1348, twenty-one years after Petrarch had first seen her.

I discovered Petrarch's sonnets in a World Lit class while I was studying in Florence (rather appropriately). This is one of my favorites:

I go my way regretting those past times
I spent in loving something which was mortal
instead of soaring high, since I had wings
that might have taken me to higher levels.

You who see all my shameful, wicked errors,
King of all Heaven, invisible, immortal,
help this frail soul of mine for she has strayed,
and all her emptiness fill up with grace,

so that, having once lived in storms, at war,
I may now die in peace, in port; and if my stay
was in vain, at least let my departure count.

Over that little life that still remains to me,
and at my death, deign that your hand be present:
You know you are the only hope I have.

Labels: poetry

Vote for America's Favorite Poem. Prufrock is currently in the lead. I would have preferred a larger selection, but oh well.

And because Prufrock has been frequently mentioned around these parts recently...you might want to check out this frat-boy version of the poem. It's a bit crass. But come on:

"I'm gettin' old, man...I'm gettin' old...
Gonna wear my pleated khakis rolled."

That's good stuff right there.

Labels: poetry