An Experiment in Brevity

Two haikus:

Everyone is asleep
There is nothing to come between
the moon and me.

—Seifu-jo


The willow
stands anywhere
and stays calm

—Chiyo-ni

Purchased: Carl Sandburg "Honey and Salt"

Tell me this cover is irresistible and I'll say "I know." Because I know. This cover is a beautiful example of 1960s style. What a gem.

It's an artifact of a time period and I'm in love. The bookstore owner asked me why I didn't get the collected works because it was right there on the shelf next to it and I said because I like this one better. I like the little paperbacks that say things on them like "50¢ slightly higher in Canada." And that feature cutting edge graphic art. Can you see the butterfly in that line drawing? It's too good to be true.

This collection has a poem that goes like this:

"Love is a door we shall open together."
So they told each other under the moon
One evening when the smell of leaf mould
And the beginnings of roses and potatoes
Came on a wind.

Late in the hours of that evening
They looked long at the moon and called it
A silver button, a copper coin, a bronze wafer,
A plaque of gold, a vanished diadem,
A brass hat dripping from deep waters.

"People like us,
us two,
We own the moon."

That poem is called "Moon Rondeau" and it was the first one I read when I found the book on the shelf. I bought it for the poem, which I really enjoyed, but also because the cover is so great. I paid four dollars for it. Can you believe that? I could have saved three-fifty if I'd been alive in the sixties and bought it then. THAT'S why they'll never invent time machines. Because then you can get around inflation and the government won't have anything to do with that.

One more thing. This collection features a poem with these line that I'm sure are famous, somehow:

Love is a deep and a dark and a lonely
and you take it deep take it dark
and take it with a lonely winding.

From the poem "Love Is a Deep and a Dark and a Lonely." Beautiful. For some reason, I think it's true. Love IS a deep and dark and lonely. But not just dark and lonely, A dark and A lonely. They're things that deserve articles because they're not just adjectives here. They're nouns.

Sometimes language baffles me and so I'm not entirely sure that adjectives can't take articles. Usually they don't. Usually articles only go with nouns. I think. Don't quote me on that. This isn't a grammar blog, this is more or less a bull shit blog. As in full of b.s.

So anyway. I really like buying books.



p.s. Not all poems in this collection are love poems. I just happened to find both of them first off because I'm a love magnet.

p.p.s. HEY! When did they take the cents symbol OFF the keyboard? Oh, right, when anything less than a dollar became an artifact of inflation. Or maybe it's never been around on keyboards? I don't remember.

Wright, Oliver, Dunn, and Hirsch

Today I'm reading poetry. I brought a few books from home and every few minutes, I'll pick up a book and read at random. Here are some particularly good lines from some of the poems I've read today*:

"This is the earnest work. Each of us is given
only so many mornings to do it--
to look around and love

the oily fur of our lives,
the hoof and the grass-stained muzzle."

Mary Oliver, from "The Deer"


"Snub end of a dismal year,
deep in the dwarf orchard,
The sky with its undercoat of blackwash and point stars,
I stand in the dark and answer to
My life, this shirt I want to take off,
which is on fire . . ."

Charles Wright, from "Reading Lao Tzu Again in the New Year"



"I can't remember
ever saying the exact word, tenderness,

though she did. It's a word I see now
you must be older to use,
you must have experienced the absence of it

often enough to know what silk and deep balm
it is
when at last it comes."

Stephen Dunn, from "Tenderness"


And there's this one I read again today, by the poet Edward Hirsch (from a book Shannon the Great gave to me), about his cat that I'd love to put on here. But I can't. It's too long. It's about his cat and how much he loves him. As with any great poet, he doesn't come right out and say, "I love my cat. This is a poem about my cat and how much I love my cat." He illustrates a moment. And it's pretty damn beautiful.

Of course, I'm always tempted to write poems about my cats. Who isn't? But I haven't. Not yet anyway. I'm waiting for the perfect image to happen. Hirsch's poem is called "Wild Gratitude" and it's found in the collection of that same name, which I find particularly telling.

Here. I give in. Here are a few lines from it, just to give you a hint of the beauty that awaits you: "And only then did I understand / It is Jeoffry -- and every creature like him -- / Who can teach us how to praise -- purring / In their own language, / Wreathing themselves in the living fire."

It just so happens that I've given you the last stanza. Which is sort of cheating. But as with any good poem, you've got to read the whole thing to really appreciate the carefulness of it. To appreciate its precision.


*I have tried to keep the orginal formats of the poems, line breaks and all, but the publishing feature erases them as soon as I hit "publish post." I'm not savvy enough to figure out a way around this. For original format, see the original poem in a book.

Crushworthy

A poem, by Big Poppa E -- I found him about 5 years ago. Tried to have my stupid Arts and Lectures people bring him in. But they were stupid and not cultured enough to realize the cutting edge culture of Poetry Slamming. It never happened. Something I read today made me think of this great poem. Thanks to Big Poppa E for sending me a copy of this. I tried to keep the original formatting, but some of it may have been lost through emailing. Sorry about that.

CRUSHWORTHY (for Jen)

I want someone
to have a crush on me
for a change

to notice
when I don’t come to class
and wonder if I’m okay

to get nervous
when I enter the cafe,
to fumble
with her papers
and books,
to pick at her clothing
and check her reflection
in salt shakers and napkin holders

to catch her breath
when she sees me from across campus,
tug on her best friend’s collar
and point with her eyes
and whisper loudly,
"There he is...
Big Poppa E!"

to run around the block
as quickly
and nonchalantly
as she can
just to walk past me
make eye contact
and smile

to look into my big brown eyes
(such long lashes!)

from across the room
and think, "Yes..."
to look at my full kissing lips
and think, "Oh yes..."

to hear my voice
and imagine
how her name
would sound
if I said it
if I whispered it
if I...

"Oh yes..."

I want someone
to make up nicknames for me
to talk about me in code
"I saw Backpack Boy today
in the library
in the Romantic Lit. section...
I saw Steel-Toed Boots Boy
talking to some girl (some girl!)
in the bookstore today..."

I want someone
to go straight home
every night
and check her answering machine
just in case
just in case
and check the phone cord
and check the battery
and check the tape
and make sure the goddamned blinking light
isn’t burned out
just in case

I want someone to say,
"You’re wrong about him
because you don’t know him
the way I know him,"
because she can just tell
that I’m a good person
must be
a good person
gotta be
a good person
because I write poetry about my mom and my cats
and because she likes me so much
for some reason
some unexplainable psychic supernatural reaction
to me

me.

I want someone
to mark her calendar
"He talked to me today"

to wonder
what I would smell like
after a long warm sleep
under a down comforter

to close her eyes
and picture
what our kids would look like
to write silly wretched wonderful
poetry
about me
for a change

*****

Big Poppa E