Poetry bowl Henri Cole http://manybooks.

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Tell the Truth Until They Bleed:

Henri Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan, in 1956 and raised in Virginia. He received his B.A. from the College of William and Mary in 1978, his M.A. from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee in 1980, and his M.F.A. from Columbia University in 1982. His volumes of poetry include: Blackbird and Wolf (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007), the 2008 recipient of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Middle Earth (2003), which received the 2004 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; The Visible Man (1998); The Look of Things (1995); The Zoo Wheel of Knowledge (1989); and The Marble Queen (1986). About his own work, Cole writes: "In my own poems, I have grown accustomed to astringency; there is no longer any compulsion to hide or temper the truth, as there was when I was setting out twenty years ago. I do not want to relive what I have felt or seen or hoped along the way, but I do want to extract some illustrative figures, as I do from the parables in the Bible, to help me persevere each day at my writing table, where I must confront myself, overcome any fear of what I might find there, and begin assembling language into poetry." Cole's awards and honors include the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin, the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. From 1982 until 1988 Cole was executive director of The Academy of American Poets. Since then he has held many teaching positions and been the artist-in-residence at various institutions, including Smith College, Reed College, Brandeis, Columbia, Harvard, and Yale Universities. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Scarecrow Matthew Zapruder Remember her strapped to the air, her grey dress flapping a little? The field mice ran beneath her feet learning new technologies. I don't scare anybody, she complained, smiling, a nest on her head. Which was how much I loved her, all through the harvest and dismantling. I am the morning dove who nests in the gutter. I am singing sadly to the barn. Along the Hard Crest of the Snowdrift Anna Akhmatova

Along the hard crest of the snowdrift to my white, mysterious house, both of us quiet now, keeping silent as we walk. And sweeter than any song this dream we now complete the trembling of branches we brush against, the soft ringing of your spurs. Beach Walk by Henri Cole I found a baby shark on the beach. Seagulls had eaten his eyes. His throat was bleeding. Lying on shell and sand, he looked smaller than he was. The ocean had scraped his insides clean. When I poked his stomach, darkness rose up in him, like black water. Later, I saw a boy, aroused and elated, beckoning from a dune. Like me, he was alone. Something tumbled between us not quite emotion. I could see the pink interior flesh of his eyes. "I got lost. Where am I?" he asked, like a debt owed to death. I was pressing my face to its spear-hafts. We fall, we fell, we are falling. Nothing mitigates it. The dark embryo bares its teeth and we move on. Do we owe any debt to death? Or anyone who are born and Cherry Blossom Storm by Henri Cole A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive. Coleridge, "The Three Graves" "Draping my body in the usual sterile manner, they placed me in a supine position and adequate general anesthesia was obtained. Then a collar incision was made at the base of my neck and the strap muscles incised, the dissection continuing sharply over both my lobes as inferior vessels and veins were isolated, litigated, and divided, the cut surfaces

like a cherry blossom storm, except for a small amount of beefy red identified at the pole. Awakening later, I heard a voice muttering: Don't worry about adultery (he sleeps in a different room). Don't go down after midnight. Don't take tranquillizers. Don't love. Don't hate. Sometimes, the paralysis of a soul awakens it. Sometimes, awful things have their own kind of beauty." Gravity and Center by Henri Cole Im sorry I cannot say I love you when you say you love me. The words, like moist fingers, appear before me full of promise but then run away to a narrow black room that is always dark, where they are silent, elegant, like antique gold, devouring the thing I feel. I want the force of attraction to crush the force of repulsion and my inner and outer worlds to pierce one another, like a horse whipped by a man. I dont want words to sever me from reality. I dont want to need them. I want nothing to reveal feeling but feelingas in freedom, or the knowledge of peace in a realm beyond, or the sound of water poured into a bowl. Green Shade by Henri Cole [Nara Deer Park] With my head on his spotted back and his head on the grassa little bored with the quiet motion of life and a cluster of mosquitoes making hot black dunes in the airwe slept with the smell of his fur engulfing us. It was as if my dominant functions were gazing

and dreaming in a field of semiwild deer. It was as if I could dream what I wanted, and what I wanted was to long for nothing no facts, no reasonsnever to say again, "I want to be like him," and to lie instead in the hollow deep grasswithout esteem or riches gazing into the big, lacquer black eyes of a deer. Homosexuality by Henri Cole First I saw the round bill, like a bud; then the sooty crested head, with avernal eyes flickering, distressed, then the peculiar long neck wrapping and unwrapping itself, like pity or love, when I removed the stovepipe cover of the bedroom chimney to free what was there and a duck crashed into the room (I am here in this fallen state), hitting her face, bending her throat back (my love, my inborn turbid wanting, at large all night), backing away, gnawing at her own wing linings (the poison of my life, the beast, the wolf), leaping out the window, which I held open (now clear, sane, serene), before climbing back naked into bed with you. Olympia by Henri Cole Tired, hungry, hot, I climbed the steep slope to town, a sultry, watery place, crawling with insects and birds. In the semidarkness of the mountain, small things loomed large: a donkey urinating on a palm; a salt-and-saliva-stained boy riding on his mother's back; a shy roaming black Adam. I was walking on an edge. The moments fused into one crystalline rock, like ice in a champagne bucket. Time was plunging forward, like dolphins scissoring open water or like me, following Jenny's flippers down to see the coral reef, where the color of sand, sea and sky merged, and it was as if that was all God wanted: not a wife, a house or a position, but a self, like a needle, pushing in a vein. Poppies by Henri Cole Waking from coma like sleep, I saw the poppies,

with their limp necks and unregimented beauty. Pause, I thought, say something true: It was night, I wanted to kiss your lips, which remained supple, but all the water in them had been replaced with embalming compound. So I was angry. I loved the poppies, with their wide-open faces, how they carried themselves, beckoning to me instead of pushing away. The way in and the way out are the same, essentially: emotions disrupting thought, proximity to God, the pain of separation. I loved the poppies, with their effortless existence, like grief and fate, but tempered and formalized. Your hair was black and curly; I combed it To Sleep by Henri Cole Then out of the darkness leapt a bare hand that stroked my brow, "Come along, child; stretch out your feet under the blanket. Darkness will give you back, unremembering. Do not be afraid." So I put down my book and pushed like a finger through sheer silk, the autobiographical part of me, the am, snatched up to a different place, where I was no longer my body but something more the compulsive, disorderly parts of me in a state of equalization, everything sliding off: war, love, suicide, povertyas the rebellious, mortal, I, I, I lay, like a beetle irrigating a rose, my red thoughts in a red shade all I was. Say Something about Childs Play THE SOLDIER ASKS the boy: Choose which do I cleave? Your right arm or left? The boy, ten, maybe nine, says: Neither, or when I play, like a bird with a broken wing I will smudge the line of the hopscotch square, let the darkness in. The soldier asks again: Choose which do I cleave? Your right leg or left? Older in this moment than his dead father, the boy says: Neither, or when I dance the spirit dance, I will stumble, kick sand in the face of light. This boy says: Take my right eye, it has seen too much, but leave me the left, I will need it to see God

Letter I F YOU HAD any sense you would be making love. Your hands would be sloppy with it. Your hands would be like your mouth and your mouth like an eye. All your parts would be getting confused in the half-lit darkness. Your minds sensing the same things and different things. We should be thankful, I tell you. We should enter into the house of gratitude and help cook dinner. Nursing I T HAS become clear the woman in the warehouse is being beaten. I think of Illinois, its endless horizon, and how, evenings when I couldnt sleep, I would hear Four Poems BYCARLADAMSHICK 2 Dissection WE WANTED to save the dead animals. We took a skinned cat being refrigerated in a clear bag. Outside dark and shadow talked on the kept grass. We could think of nothing. We tore a hole in the thick plastic, raised the glistening creature up the fl agpole. The Emptiness I D IDNT WANT to give my body to war. I saw news footage of a fly in a dead mans mouth. I saw a man made to kneel and then told,

in a language he couldnt comprehend, to lie fl at on his stomach. The camera caught the bullets entering his spine, the base of his skull 3 N A R R AT I V EMA G A Z I N E . C O M and then the men walked away from the emptiness. The camera too turned and ran through leaves, green and lashing. If it had stayed, we would have seen rain pelt the soldiers back, wash his fatigues. We would have seen his body as insects lived on the continent of his fl esh, lived until he was bone, until he was dirt, until his emptiness sang. I was afraid of the men walking, of seeing the sky, lightly clouded, as blood fl owed out of my body. I dreamt of a helmet with a butchered foot beside it and knew it was my brothers, but couldnt remember his name. I left the green grass of high school, walked under the tall oaks to the post office I filled in the little boxes with the letters of my name, looked out the plate-glass window at a four-way stop, a flag limp in the heat, in the bright air. I signed, telling them where I lived, that I was willing, that when they sent the card Id wear the uniform. But I lied. I couldnt 4 N A R R AT I V EMA G A Z I N E . C O M have been fitted for the infantry garb, the sanguinary rank. In the weeks that followed I felt occupied, silenced like a clean, smooth conch echoing the sea, an open urn. The emptiness of my mouth began. I wanted to say Id seen the tree of night, its crown holding the great stars,

the beginning recorded in the center ring of its bole, but said nothing. I saw that we were the ancient text, the blood, the next inscription on the unending trunk, and said nothing. I stood there and in seeing its splendor was injured by the senselessness of my nights and days. The forked branch of my existence was lit like a crack of lightning. My breath, my tongue, the broken font of my voice had wanted to praise. And when I didnt speak I became a secret, a testimony against my own body. I lived and lived 5 N A R R AT I V EMA G A Z I N E . C O M with the fact that I watched others struggle and pray. I watched them lie on the shore with their heads adrift in a shine of stars and wanted their hunger to fi nally consume their sad, hurting bodies. I watched, hoping when the tide came and lifted them away I could live without shame. The emptiness. The tongue bound to the betrayal held in the mouth, to the apology held in the mouth, to the brutal remains held in the socket of the mouth. And still, under it all, I feel an orchid, the cold river fl ow around my feet. I see the stars as the shimmering bones of migratory birds and swallow the humiliating taste of beauty. I am the dirt, the worm-dirge, the lament and procession winding through a garden burning with fl owers. I am not the body that dies naked, swollen and torn,

infested with beetles. I am not the body that lacks its funeral and its offering of plums. I am not the body, the empty midnight station. I am not the bombed-out factory, its machinery covered in snow. I am veins and breath, the entrance and exit the world passes through. I see a quickening end in a blue, twisted cord and know I am its habitation. I see the severed hands of a war and feel it escape into me like a tired lover I comfort into the dark hours, where my body, swathed with heat and sorrow, listens to air pass through the gate of its teeth. The wonderment of being in the hive, in the astonishment of days, when light around the fi eld is spilt moon and memory is a nest of mud and grass hidden in the bright summer branches, when emptiness is an open door, the well-black pupil of an iris. I am lost in the living, in the acceptance of rain fi lling a bucket, in the belief that the chemical burn was a washing for the exodus and the smoke rising through the chimneys into the pale-blue morning was a love song. There are days when I wake and fi nd my face is a hole and I have nowhere to hang my mask. 1 N A R R AT I V EMA G A Z I N E . C O M Coyote Past Sunset F INAL LY, A F TE R A DAY of tailing trucks, the highways loud with tire whine and bumper glare, he got onto a blacktop running south to Mexico, just him in the pickup, and off in the desert, dust devils swirling through greasewood, ruffl ing vultures squatting on fence posts, wings spread, sunning their black capes as dust skipped past them whipping up grit around the

odd horse or pronghorns grazing with cattle, as he sped on past hundreds of miles of barbed-wire fences. After dusk, when he was nearly there, the moon was in the cottonwoods as he crossed a dry arroyo and his tires scraped the cattle grid at the town limits. Everything felt good, he thought. It was good to be alone. Thats when he saw the coyote trotting the berm, turning its head to give him a haggard look, licking the air, then padding out toward the high desert, past a house with its TV fl ickering, the family at its meal. El Mercado YOU SOR T O F KNOW . . . on walking in seeing the big display of fl yswatters next to the dusty ketchup bottles, Four Poems BYJOHNBALABAN CAROLLA CLIFT 2 N A R R AT I V EMA G A Z I N E . C O M the aisle of chips and salsa, the corn dogs, the radishes aging in their bins, the rotting avocados, know that few pass through here, that few stop in this high-desert town by the border, and that whatever youve come looking for you probably wont fi nd. El Cementerio de la Merced SOME PRONGHORN ANTE LOPE have gotten through the barbed-wire fence and into the graveyard, looking for shade in the cedars and pines, or perhaps just fooled by the plastic fl owers, and now are grazing among the Spanish headstones and pointed, wooden crosses, lifting and dropping their horned heads, their parched white faces, as they amble by a gravelly plot for three women, buried together: Elizabeth, Dolores, and Addie, the last to go, at eighty, in 2002. Why do they share a gravesite, their stones inscribed in English? Why arent they in the Anglo graveyard across the fence? Back in town, I asked some older women but no one knew them. I looked for their names in the local phone book, and found none. Nor on the graves nearby, here in the ghostly Texan despoblado. Looking for the Lights AROUND M IDNI G HT, sitting in his pickup, engine still ticking, parked off a road running through ancient lava fl ows he heard, then smelled off in the creosote shadows the stink of a javelina pack snuffl ing around a dry wash

3 N A R R AT I V EMA G A Z I N E . C O M in the cool dry night air pulling up from Pinto Canyon, from the Chinati Mountains just above the border, not a ranch house light for miles, just Orion stalking a full moon. He leaned against his dusty tailgate looking for the Lights, that is, the Marfa Lights that wink above the desert brush, the lights that local Indians said were star people visiting earth, and early ranchers tried to ride down, thinking them campfi res of Comancheros rustling cattle from across the Rio Grande. When he fi rst heard it barreling down the blacktop, roof lights fl ashing, he fi gured it for an ambulance speeding to rescue some rancher but after it skidded to a halt and wheeled its headlights on him, roof rack fl ickering blue and red around the road, and a voice called from behind the drivers opened door, and then the spotlight snapped on, blinding him, he knew it was the Border Patrol and, most likely, there was a gun on him as well. He explained he was an American and that he was here looking for the Lights. The what? The Marfa Lights, he said. They had a nice talk after that, but across the roadway in the night. So he never actually saw the Agent who said he had never seen the Lights himself but knew people who had, before driving off, leaving him to desert silence and streams of stars. N 1 N A R R AT I V EMA G A Z I N E . C O M I BITE MY EYE S shut between these songs. They are the sounds of blackened insect husks folded over elk teeth in a tin can, they are gull wings fattening on cold air fl apping in a paper sack on the chlorinestained fl oor. They curl in corners, spiked and black thatched, stomp across the living room ceiling, pull our hair one strand at a time from electric sockets and paint our stems with sand in the kitchen sink. They speak a double helix, zigzag a tree trunk, bark the tips of its leaves with cracked amber they plant whispers where shouts incinerate into hisses. S TE PPING THROUGH the drums vibration, I hear gasoline trickle alongside the fenced-in panorama of the reed we climb in from and slide my hands into shoes of ocean water. Four Poems

BYSHERWINBITSUI Sherwin Bitsui is the author of two poetry collections, Shapeshift and Flood Song, and is anthologized in Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. A recipient of the 2006 Whiting Writers Award, Bitsui was born on the Navajo Reservation in White Cone, Arizona, and is Din of the Todicheenii people. He lives in Tucson. 2 N A R R AT I V EMA G A Z I N E . C O M I step onto the gravel path of swans paved across lake scent, wrap this blank page around the exclamation point slammed between us. The storm lying outside its fetal shell folds back its antelope ears and hears its heart pounding through powdery earth underneath dancers fl ecking dust from their ankles to thunder into rain. I AM UNAB L E to pry my fi ngers from the ax unable to utter a word without grandfathers accent rippling around the stone fl ung into his thinning mattress. Years before, he would have named this season by fl attening a fi eld where grasshoppers jumped into black smoke. A CROW SNAP S beak over and over again: the past is a blurry splotch of red crosshatched with neon light; on the drive south, windows pushed down, you scoop pellets of canned air and ocean across sand dunes, across the waning lick of moonlight on the dashboard to crease the horizon between petals of carved snow. From Flood Song (Copper Canyon Press, October 2009) N Two Poems by Michael Bazzett The Dead Girls Speak in Unison by Danielle Pafunda Do not pretend that you don't like it when we threaten you.

We see you getting pheromone stink under the collar, moaning, baldly. Motionless, picturing decay. When we creak your step, when we crack your glass, when we tap tap tap, that is a bone that is all we have though we are very shiny, and filled with beetles. We are made entirely of bone. Like an idol. Like the tusk of some wonderful past. When you cleave to us, your skin will fuse, hot calcium meth, and in the myth, you will be named for us.

Decide to enjoy Even the most difficult work feels easy when you let it flow from your heart. You can take on the most complicated and challenging tasks with effortless ease when you let go of your resistance to them. Do you feel resentment about what you must do? If so, you're only making it more difficult and unpleasant. Can you choose instead to feel sincere gratitude for the opportunity to get it done? Of course you can, and by so doing you dramatically improve your performance. If the effort feels disagreeable, that's only because you want it to feel disagreeable. And why exactly would you want that? Resentment and resistance will only bring you down, and cause you to work longer at doing what you don't want to do. Yet it is always within your power to make a positive change.

Decide to enjoy what you're doing, and just like magic you'll suddenly be doing what you enjoy. Not only that, you'll be doing a much better job of it. -- Ralph Marston The Side of the Road I was sitting on a stone wall beneath a gently warming sun. It was still early enough that the rock felt cool and small birds were flitting in and out of mesquite shadow I wondered what kind of bird they were. While this was occurring I also happened to be imprisoned within a cage of my own desires. I was waiting for a possible bus. I wasnt certain of its arrival, but the stone wall and the small birds seemed enough for now. So I paid heed to the shrinking shadows and heard the profound silence of the road stretching out in either direction, wondering only occasionally if a bus did happen to happen this way whether there would be room for me as well as my cage. Its unwieldy and constructed in a somewhat haphazard fashion. What Im telling you the road, the sun, the birds all happened under a sky that was blue enough that I cant possibly describe it here but there is one thing I will nonetheless try to relate, and it is unnerving: when I stood and started walking down the empty road in one of the two possible directions, I caught a peripheral flickering and looked down at my shadow: it was nothing but the lean profile of a man arms swinging loose at his sides there was no outline of a cage at all. he Bear Revolution As we are graced now with the distance of history is it really any wonder they came streaming out of the hills that day? We all agree the riots were brutal, and stealing trucks and demanding jobs is not exactly an innovative tactic, but even critics took note of the visceral power of their media campaign and if we honestly wish to understand ourselves, as we so often claim, why wouldnt we contemplate what they broadcast from that television station in Helena in the opening days of the conflict: remember the grainy images of mounded trash, the grubs and the blueberries, their own snouts smeared so obscenely thick with honey? It was urgent work, arresting, a compelling commentary on the appetite demanded by a state of nearly constant consumption, and yet we mocked it. The montage aesthetic employed was beyond us, we questioned their intelligence, made jokes:

What do you do if a bear throws a grenade at you? Pull the pin and throw it back. Yes, I wince in recollection, and wonder how often you, too, stood in the back of the elevator and laughed uncomfortably with the crowd. But were not here for self-abuse. We are called here today to resist the seduction of believing theyve retreated like shadows into the wild. This charade is what they would have you believe, but I happen to have it from a well-connected source, someone in uniform that theyre simply lying low, that comparisons to hibernation would not be completely inappropriate, that theyve worked hard to blend in, camouflaging themselves as rugs and coats, with a few motivated martyrs even choosing the indignity of riding the undersized bicycles they so despise. Yes, theyre attaining positions of influence, masking their accents, going to night school. Can you not see your own face reflected in such ambition? Who is it that you resemble if it is not the dark and wild eyes of such an enemy? < 12 Translation by Luci Shaw Oil and Ash by Michael Bazzett, July 2010 Whats organic emits carbon when burned so animal dung or dried seaweed picked from rocks or a child left too long in the sun will all eventually rise toward the place we used to think god lived: among the clouds on a big chair. So apparently its come to this: the way to save the sky is sell the sky to those who would release ash into it, through pipes. I understand this economically, and Id rather not mention the resemblance to prostitution, but when I open my mouth it also fills with something called sky, each inhalation drags sky across the fine hairs of my nostrils stirring them in patterns resembling the locomotion of centipedes. The inverted trees of my lungs filter sky into blood a shade darker than a cardinal, blood so red it seems it should sing. The seashell whorls of my ears hold barely two-thimblesworth of sky but without those twin pockets of stratosphere thrumming my drums the world would fall as silent as a world

where they had inexplicably fed their own kind into steel machines. Later, visiting archaeologists might ponder what had driven them to do such a thing? There might be conjecture about belief systems or native religions but for the first thousands of years there would be nothing but the sound of ash sifting through dried leaves, a sound that is in some ways similarbut also differentfrom the sound of falling snow. New Girls and Room of Surprises by Grzegorz Wrblewski translated from the Polish by Adam Zdrodowski, June 2010 New Girls They care about their make-up for the first few days. Then, all aprons, hairy legs and uneven teeth, fingers yellowed by nicotine. The night warden plays with a doll. He never did that before, I hear the worried lightbulb supplier. Men suddenly become meek. Damn, we all needed it badly. Damn, we all needed it badly. Room of Surprises I can hold my breath for a dozen minutes. How old do I look? asked the guru. 65, I answered. Wrong, Im 70. Can you do anything of interest? I can talk with dogs, I said, remembering Ares. The guru looked at me with apprehension, uttered a mysterious spell and quickly left the room. A woman from Perth scorched a white doily. In Angangueo by Sarah Lindsay, June 2010 She was in Mexico for some paper chain of reasons, same way she landed anywhere in her days of plenty so many languages to pick up, countries to travel through, mouths to consider kissing, and she could

walk all day, eat anything, add hot sauce, ask for money from home without reckoning, wake at noon and stretch without pain. Then after one ridiculously cold night Its never like this, the guide said she stood knee-deep in monarch butterflies and shivered, once. Not from cold; maybe from acres of crepe wings stiff in a low breeze, antennae against her shins. Little boys in drifts of dulling orange were trying to pack balls of wings to throw at each other; she thought perhaps she wouldnt have children. Or guides, like this one who soothingly repeated, The monarchs are sleeping. Beautiful Funeral by Monica Ferrell, May 2010 Tonight, you are thinking of heroin, Of the boy who pulled you to his lips In a blue room and whispered heroin So close you could feel it on your face like a cloudburst. He makes you think of furs and Russia, Midnight sun and Petersburg canals, a sullen gun Where one bullets lodged like something in the craw Of a drowned boy fished from beneath docks. His limbs were white with blue veins Spidered beneath the light shell of his skin Open to the littlest bark, the tiniest trireme, His veins were vulnerable as a bruise-black mare Just as the barn begins to spark. And once In the night that held its candle closer to see His needled flesh heaved beneath the sink Of a city bathroom, aching to vomit up its ore... You would have dusted off those peacock rings Below his eyes with your sandpaper tongue, Lapped his form in camphor-drenched gauze Then washed him in waves of organ music. You would have pressed down that black key By his spines base to hear the deepest of tones A body can moan. Ah, invalid. We would have made a beautiful funeral. Longing by Andrew Slattery, May 2010 Large numbers of Tasmanian Devils are being wiped out by the unyielding virus devil facial tumour disease (DFTD).

Numbers have reduced by 72% in the state of Tasmania. In the headquarters of the immune system there are men in suits hunched asleep at the control desk, with hands holding empty polystyrene cups. Hasty lesions like buttons take root in her mouth; they spike the tongue with tumour nodes and push her teeth out. With four unweaned young in the pouch, she rocks at a loping gait and drives her scuffy head through the grass like a rugby player pushing into the scrum. The mammoth and the dodo never saw it coming in the end, there is only the idea of species, like a chair left swinging when the kids go in for lunch. Sleep, and Ill tell you stories of wallaby and wombat carrion. Unwind the yearn in your stocky frames, tomorrow Ill pluck linseeds from the grass and flick them into my purse of children. Now, in the lavish feign of dreams, well gorge on injured roos, or consume an entire horse carcass; eating skin, bones and flesh, and leaving behind only the metal U of shoes. At the Rahba Souk by Doog T. Wood, April 2010 I buy some hair of two women, quarter-kilo fasoukh, some honey, a lizardif a flock of partridges fly into a short row of palms, better handful your dates, monsieurdrunk two cups coffee and smoked, while a man climbed onto a bench and blew his hornnot enough I believe has ever been studied about the way animals imitate other animals the way a donkey that has been braying, finally makes gurgling noises. Mississippi by Aim Csaire translated from the French by A. James Arnold and Clayton Eshleman, April 2010 Too bad for you men who dont notice that my eyes remember

slings and black flags which murder with each blink of my Mississipi lashes Too bad for you men who do not see who do not see anything not even the gorgeous railway signals formed under my eyelids by the black and red discs of the coral snake that my munificence coils in my Mississipi tears Too bad for you men who do not see that in the depth of the reticule where chance has deposited our Mississipi eyes there waits a buffalo sunk to the very hilt of the swamps eyes Too bad for you men who do not see that you cannot stop me from building to his fill egg-headed islands of flagrant sky under the calm ferocity of the immense geranium of our sun. Three Tales by Jessica Bozek, March 2010

Chemotherapy by Meghan ORourke, March 2010 The decomposing squirrel in the yard, a plump sack. That night I bled for hours, like a dumb animal. The evening news: Mothers doing fine today. By Wednesday, I could smell the body from the porch. I couldnt make myself not look. First the flies on its brown eyes, then the mice in its tapering ribs. Soon it looked like the remains of a fish, a furry scalp, a plush dead thing. I drank lemonade and gin in the shade

as the neighbors cat stalked the bossy blue jays. (Mothers, in this case.) They kept up the noise for hours. Last night it was just a skeleton, light enough to be lifted by the wind. The other part of truth by Tadeusz Dbrowski translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, February 2010 Grandma runs a shop selling religious souvenirs and yesterday, for nothing at all, she gave me a Saint Francis, fully aware that I have a little Jesus and a Blessed Sister Faustina from the very same set. This morning there was a Saint George, but hes gone now, he should be here soon after Sunday again (and not just him...)says Grandma to people, and people often listen to her and respect her. Around Friday heaven arrives; they no longer supply hell (it stays on the shelf too long), but Ive got hell at home, as well as heaven and the saints. And, when I get bored or sad, opposite I set out heaven and hell. In heaven I place the ones from Grandma. In hell a little pig, a sapper, and a diver. Tadeusz Dbrowski Hanging Garden by Colin Cheney, January 2010 1. In anniversary, I took a box cutter & slit the jute mats web of hay & smoke & thrust a handful of manure into the wound with a bulb of horsemint. Under the windows of recovering men in rooms quieted, the desiderata of their blood slowing, we plant goldenrod & butterfly bush on this ledge of the converted convent. The nuns of 182nd & Valentine hollowed out these rooms as Saint Simon lived years in a broken, living tree waiting for the Virgin, who he called by her other name: little rain

cloud. I knock the spade against the copper, wipe clean the blade on my jeans, the dung of camel, gorilla, & ostrich bright in my nose, a night soil we carted from the zoo to be mixed with compost & ground-down liter bottles. Yesterday, the elephants were on hunger strike after a new cow was placed in their pen. They huddled under the turning maplesalmost as if they were asking to be tried for something they knew they must have done while the lone elephant lowered her trunk into a drum of water & it began to rain. 2. Wasps in the date-bearing palm, Herodotus believed, kept the fruit from dropping before harvest, withered. Likely he meant the fruit flies who carry pollen inside the warm guts of the male fruit to impregnate the trees lining the canals through Babylon. Though Herodotus doesnt tell us this, Amytis brought from the mountains to have the hanging gardens built around herkept a hive of bees by her window for the same reason I keep a jar of apple blossom honey given to me by a friend I dont speak to anymore. Eating rock shrimp & black edamame last night, Gabi said legalizing prostitution might create a new species of rights. And negative freedoms, she said, lifting a piece of raw mackerel, are what cannot be done to you. Meaning that my friends sister

cannot be held by the neck, made to scream in a forgotten room at a party. Or how, like the other women in the city, Amytis was made, once in her life, to wait in the goddess temple for a stranger, as was his right, to give her a single coin, to be taken by him outside on the steps in daylight, the coin on a cord around her throat. Or how the difference between liberty & freedom might be what Herodotus measured between the river & the green interior of the city: fifty cubits of river brick & asphalted reed mats strong enough to bear this much earth & falling water, date palms & bitter Persian limes the bees were left only a useless memory of when Amytis husband, as was his right, kept moving the hive so they could never find their way home & each morning when she checked the honeycomb she found it empty save for a silver coin. 3. Control yourself, give, be compassionate. Come up into the garden where the bald ibis has lulled his migration. Tomorrow, radar will follow him over the sea, hoping the wintering groundsthought destroyedwill be revealed. No, you say, the thunder repeats its praises, & so do the angels, with awe. Try to set the lands in order, the marshes

even, though no one will live here now, the water birds gone, fish swallowed by the cracked earth. A pride of lions roams the white streets, starving, half-mad with the murmuring hive the bombs left in their ears. If there were water but there is no water. Ask people what they want done with the tyrant, & they will say to hang a cage at the assassins gate so he can live out his daysso they can taunt him through the bars, poke at his withering. Heres a prophecy then: tonight well send a patrol to find the great cats trying to find the zoo now as cratered as the moon, as dim in their memory as the singing grass of savannah. The bird in his roof-tree, a damp gust in the limp leaves bringing the taunt of rain, has a name for itself that is not another word for peace, not what wed have chosen. Not a kingfisher, an ibis where is your book of the birds of Babylon? Of course there are dead sea swallows they are common in summertime. And barn swallows will erupt from the trees when machine guns begin to open the beasts honey skin, their bodies seeming almost to explode from within, from a fire almost purealmost wanting to be the something else they become just then. What is that sound high above? Can radar follow the birds wintering migration this far from the roof garden, over broken cisterns, the bells & small boats on the waves in faint moonlight to this prison at nightfall? What do you want? you want to ask the man swaying above the shouts of hell, hell, hell. Your camera what did you hope to catch, right then, waiting for a door in the roof of the sky

to fall open? Awe? The feeble peace of angels? Just then, was that thunderjust then? Two Poems by Adonis, translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa, January 2010 A Mirror for the Twentieth Century A coffin that wears the face of a child, a book written inside the guts of a crow, a beast trudging forward, holding a flower, a stone breathing inside the lungs of a madman. This is it. This is the twentieth century. A Prophecy To the country dug into our lives like a grave, to the country etherized, and killed, a sun rises from our paralyzed history into our millennial sleep. A sun without a prayer that kills the sands longevity, and the locusts and time bursting out of the hills, and time drying out on the hills like fungus. A sun that loves maiming and murder, that rises from there, behind that bridge... Albania by Yang Li translated from the Chinese by Steve Bradbury, December 2009 Back in our day there wasnt anyone who didnt know Albania who didnt know it was the bright light of European Socialism or that the other bright light was us. Back then from Beijing to Tirana, we could all sing A bosom friend afar brings distance near... It wasnt till much later that I learned these words were by Wang Bo of the Tang. He died a long time ago and was never in Tirana. I doubt hed ever heard of the place, much less that it was very, very small. A pal of ours named Wei Guo once said to us rather cryptically: all Albania is just like the little upstart kingdom of Yelang. I remember, I swear: it was the summer of 74. We had just turned 12 and thought what hed said outrageously reactionary. The Corset by Joanna Grant, December 2009 Roswell, Georgia, 1955 I am the one who knows What needs to be done, I

Knew from the start that this day Would come and find me climbing The ladder to the attic where the brass-bound trunk With its rivets, its hasps Its mothballs, its sachets keep away The yellowing, the stains and the tears Of long, long wear. When I held it up She cried. Little fool, as if she Did not know herself. What she needs Is bone, pounds of pressure to the inch, Tight lacing, a knee in the back, White knuckles on the bedrail. Girls, I tell her, should only seem soft, Should only look like they bend. This is what you will not understand, I tell this jelly, this fat crybaby girl. Love, the real kind, is always a squeezing A choking off all that offends. Loving Cyrus by R. Dwayne Betts, November 2009 Youve learned it 34 years too late and it wrestles with the story of Cyrus, the first man youve known with a womans curved breast. Its heft quiets Nation of Islam rhetoric. A cocktail of hormones slopes the thousands of push-ups collected inside the tissues of his chest into the weight that gathers in your palms. Want leaves you with the fat salty nipples of this young man in your mouth. Prison full with his flesh offers sanctuary, a dank cell where your hands echo against his skin. You tremble; his moans, soft and sincere, add the rolling thump of a jhembe to your strut. You shudder, because you say that you are God, but your hand on his back moist with fear, says you are a man. And the throbbing in your pants craving the salt of the earth says you will mute the lessons in your head and let the tender buds swell into stones. from Fugue of the New Year by Richard Garcia, October 2009 January

A sonnet for the first day of the year. Perhaps an ode, a suburban pastoral, an elegy or curse for the old year. It being morning, Im still somewhat plural. The paper tries for an uplifting tone: the murder rate is down. At the party when did the new songs become the old songs? Tupelo Honey. Girl from the North Country. Not the way she sang, but how she danced and smiled, and the smiles of her old friends. This morning the scent of tea olive entrances. Next door in the neighbors carport, children laugh, jumping on bubble-wrap, like the far, perpetual small arms fire in the distance. Asking for Everything by Lilah Hegnauer, October 2009 Nothing of this world will sound outside of me, low-toned and holding, wringing your strings and your scythes. Not one vent will blow. No self-righteous mothers will fill their sturdy shoes and you were never full enough. Basil and spinach washed, draining in the wire colander, chatty as the sunburned throats of deadheaded roses. If I put one leg around you in the night, if I press your hands above your head: have you ever seen such want? You thought I literally drained every boys canteen and every last quarter and washer was mine. My bee balm, my soft spoken, unsayable why look at the want you carved out in me? Organize the chaste and manic soil. It turns and turns like static in your skirts, birds for your waist. Talk it back into quietude. he sentence by Sbastien Smirou translated from the French by Andrew Zawacki, October 2009

Monarch & Mulberry by Nickole Brown, September 2009 Listenthose two Msmulberry tree, crawling with monarchs, that birdshit beautiful mess, staining bare feet and slopping cars, and under the leaves web of light all of us squatting, pushing tiny free toys finger-deep into the soft, purple loam, all of us plucking those live yellow petals wing by wing, all of us ignorant of the butterflys migration to Mexico. Who knew then they traveled so far? Who knew there was anywhere to go, or how years later there would be so little left that tract of land razed flat and vinyled up in every shade of beige, every clean drive ending with a rubbermaid mailbox and a bradford pear popping its popcorn styrofoam of blooms? Who can remember the brambles and the rusted fence, the darkwater paths of brittle-limbed weed trees, and the butterflies, who remembers so many, those milkweed-nursed sunbursts of the cricketing world now for sale in double-panes of glass on Bleecker, a junk table of blue morphos and blue-winged cicadas, some even shellacked into pendants, shrinky-dink art debris bought and locked in a box of gum and plastic beads and a puffed-up sand dollar rattling its five tiny dove bones, a bleached legend of goodwill and peace? Oh, monarch. Not you. You don't remember. And no wonder we feel this way now, the world less of a thing to love. For us, we barely remember that humid summer, the fan oscillating, the kitchen, always the fly-speck kitchen. We were watching you, all of you, flit in the mulberry out back, and after, because we were children, we tracked that crushed fruit across the linoleum. After that, the sound of hammers and crows through the open window, then somebody needs to cut down that goddamn tree. He was the one said that,

and she agreed. And while we were busy not caring anything our parents said, there you were, all of you, no more able to steer yourself than plastic grocery bags or receipts or anything littered to the wind, but you knew something we didntexactly where to go. Monarch & Mulberry by Nickole Brown, September 2009 Listenthose two Msmulberry tree, crawling with monarchs, that birdshit beautiful mess, staining bare feet and slopping cars, and under the leaves web of light all of us squatting, pushing tiny free toys finger-deep into the soft, purple loam, all of us plucking those live yellow petals wing by wing, all of us ignorant of the butterflys migration to Mexico. Who knew then they traveled so far? Who knew there was anywhere to go, or how years later there would be so little left that tract of land razed flat and vinyled up in every shade of beige, every clean drive ending with a rubbermaid mailbox and a bradford pear popping its popcorn styrofoam of blooms? Who can remember the brambles and the rusted fence, the darkwater paths of brittle-limbed weed trees, and the butterflies, who remembers so many, those milkweed-nursed sunbursts of the cricketing world now for sale in double-panes of glass on Bleecker, a junk table of blue morphos and blue-winged cicadas, some even shellacked into pendants, shrinky-dink art debris bought and locked in a box of gum and plastic beads and a puffed-up sand dollar rattling its five tiny dove bones, a bleached legend of goodwill and peace? Oh, monarch. Not you. You don't remember. And no wonder we feel this way now, the world less of a thing to love. For us, we barely remember that humid summer, the fan oscillating, the kitchen, always the fly-speck kitchen. We were watching you, all of you, flit in the mulberry out back, and after, because

we were children, we tracked that crushed fruit across the linoleum. After that, the sound of hammers and crows through the open window, then somebody needs to cut down that goddamn tree. He was the one said that, and she agreed. And while we were busy not caring anything our parents said, there you were, all of you, no more able to steer yourself than plastic grocery bags or receipts or anything littered to the wind, but you knew something we didntexactly where to go. III Forecast calls for purpose: Today theres a difference Between patriotism and racism. One puts a varnish on Barbarism, and the other Lets barbarians Varnish the hardwood floors. Facts first: Jesus was A gay, black man. Just say it aloud And see how nice It sounds. One reader Replaces another Like one leader defeats One thousand brothers. Ultimately people are Meant to be killed. You can go To the bookstore And move all the bibles To the fiction section. But whats that Going to get you? A backache and your wifes Mock admiration. Its far better to ask Christ To forgive us These Christians.

View image VII Forget some call love Bedside grammar: The body rules And its a trick Of the mind Not to think so. Youll never See your own Corpse and nobody Will ever know Your mind. God exists to give Your daughter Someone to believe in When youre gone. On the other Hand, one day She will ask You a question You dont know The answer to, Because the answer is The question. Dont act Nonplussed. Whats the meaning of Life, For example, Is simply a claim To intelligence

And a pledge That no other Hand exists beyond This one in hers.

View large image Three Poems by Brad Richard, Guest-edited by Pia Ehrhardt, September 2009 Motion Studies 0. The worst part about driving in a storm is trusting the taillights of the bagasse truck crawling ten feet from your fender, and when he exits and the clouds almost clear, is the next squall line hitting full on, its frantic body like a river undone and when you reach the skinny bridge over the bayou swollen to the embankments lip, your leg aches, on the accelerator, trembling, no railing, tires troubling old wood. and through the wipers feeble sweep no other side 1. [1929/2005] Well never make it in time: youre twelve, riding west to see a corpse in a flood, Im your grandson at forty-two, riding east to see my citys flooded remains. Gueydan to Port Arthur, Austin to New Orleans, you in a pickup with your daddy and one brother, another brother waiting in a funeral home, laid out in somebodys suit on a cooling board, you trying to imagine that body past this rain,

me in a rental car with the music cranked, trying not to think about stories that got snagged in stories that failed to hold up, to hold water A haze hangs and shifts around the border, starts around Orange, fades near Sulphur, not smoke, not mist, pale acrid miles like the landscapes risen ghost hovering over snapped trees and houses smashed on their foundations, all broken from the same direction: where Im going while you ride listening to your daddy muttering had to die in a goddam flood, the truck grinding slow against mud and crushed shell, slurry slipping down the soft bank of the swollen ditch Like that, the rain stops, the windshield clears and you can see youve gotten nowhere in all that time. Another squall line 2. You came back from the war to your job at Texaco and bought a journal where you wrote down the only story you ever did write, the only one that mattered: your brother died there was a flood you were too late to see him buried. You wrote it down and you told it to my father when he was a boy and my grandmother told it to me, the telling a bridge back to that crossing, and after you died my father found the journal in your bedroom and kept it for me in his studio: nine feet of lake water took it. Somewhere in a landfill Im writing this for you is what I thought when I started this, now I cant tell my way out 3. [notes for a ghost claim] November 2005: The Pontchartrain Blvd. neutral ground, heaped half a mile some days with dead trees uprooted, stacked two stories high, other days whats been gutted from houses

siding drywall pink insulation clothes stuffed animals swing sets every day shredded compacted hauled to the landfill and the next day January 2006: Walking through the lower 9th ward: no other side silence heavy as yes as a drowned city I add nothing telling what I saw: it was there at my feet, something shiny stuck in dried mud only the shock of robbing anyones grave stops my hand in time Somewhere out there, your journal 4. [2008] Knowing better, I go back to the newspapers website and watch the animated story of the flood. Blue arrows flash, red bursts blasttoo much like dynamite at each fresh breach in the levees, and blue pours in over gray, just following the timeline. According to Zeno, Achilles never wins. Thats me every time I click START and the wind makes its simulated howl and the storm never stops undoing 5. The undertaker is very sorry. It was too hot. The ice wouldnt keep him. We buried him this morning, yonder. Yall been driving these whole two days? This sure has been some flood. Had to wear hip boots to dig that grave. Your father fidgets as he listens, twisting his hat in his hands. Smaller than youve ever seen him. Already somebody elses body laid out where your brothers had been. You walk up to the cooling board

and crouch to look under the drape at a block of ice as big as you. It looks cold enough. Gray-white like his feet out there somewhere. Standing up, you watch your daddy give the undertaker cash and turn away, the mans grasping hand unshaken. 6. The worst part of someone asking whats it like there now is they dont know what theyre asking has too many broken answers: Something shiny stuck in dried mud. Somebody elses body. A tortoise nosing out a grub. Smear of paint, rice powder, words Knowing better, I came home. My Fathers Studio, 2005 As if browsing in a gallery, I flip through canvases leaning against the wall behind my fathers studio. A clear October day, the air breezeless, birdless. Silence still cloys like oily mud, two months since the flood. The studios siding sags; the back door wont close. I look in: heaps of clothes rotting, shelves of LPs, their jackets fused, some swollen books, and, further back in muck and shadow, forty years of work my father made, and catalogues, and slides, and reviews. I step back into the sunlight, look through the canvases again, remember my father working on them, and time unravels and I see myself doing the things a ghost does, shuffling inside the narrow frame of a world of ruined images. Yes, I remember these paintings. They were good. And I remind myself: hes already repainting them. Theyre still good. Stop acting like a ghost.

The Halloween Poem When smoke still hovered around the skeletons of buildings. When we were still sifting through debris for identifiable body parts. When our president was still sticking pins in the map and saying Here is my enemy, and here, and here. You and I were out walking the dog, one evening just before Halloween. The traffic on the street was sparse and nervous: no one knew what safe meant anymore. Yet the weather was gorgeous, crisp and clear, and the dog was happy wed brought him out, sniffing excitedly at every bush and dropped paper bag. No one else was out walking, no one was sitting on the porches, yet we found evidence of other people trying to live normally: yards had been raked, leaves had been bagged and set out on the curb, and, for the silly holiday, houses were decorated: strings of plastic jack-o-lanterns strung in the trees, witches and ghosts hung from eaves, real carved pumpkins set out on stoops. All ready for ghoul-children in a day or two. The dog stopped to piss on an azalea, and you said Look, pointing to a porch. Someone had set flags in the crown of their jack-o-lantern. Next door, a flag waved from a witchs broom. There, flags strung with a streamer of skulls. Flags flicking under the moon, pinned deep in our spines. Snapshot by Andy Young, Guest-edited by Pia Ehrhardt, September 2009 El Salvador, 2008 A poet in a busload of poets, I write the name of the town the tour guide offers: Aguacayo. Travel books give it brief mention, alongside Guazapa, the sleeping volcano we drive up to get here, past holes in its side guerillas gouged to shoot from, past a bookshop guarded by a man with a machine gun, small shacks of cinderblocks, shells of buildings grown through with weeds. The army never gained control of it, the guide grins. There is the talk of friends, uncles disappeared, impossible to translate because in English one disappears, is not disappeared. This morning we climbed a pyramid, a heap of stone and scrub, dedicated to the Great Flayed One, where enemies skins were worn inside out after sacrifice. We take turns snapping photos of each other at the top, then on to Sochitoto,

where we find a postcard heart, huge and veined, jutting up as a church spire. In the park I shoot a shrine: the tail of a helicopter brought down by snipers, its missile fixed below it, prey in a taloned claw, always about to, but still not dropping it over this pristine, colonial town, where kids giggle at dogs fucking, locked together as they strain to come unstuck, while a thin girl swings a Kermit the Frog doll. Here in Aguacayo, no town, no tourists, just a few men leaning in thresholds and us poets, scribbling notes. Ivy outside of what was a church refuses to root inside, three decades after a bomb flattened all who took shelter. Only the floor, bits of wall, remain, the elevation of what must have been the altar. A camera flashes in the ash of twilight. The men look up from their card game, the deck thick with dust. I turn away to stop them from watching me watch them, framed by debris, and look back at my daughter who tries to walk through the ruins, but wobbles, plopsnot quite grown enough to balance. She bends forward, pats the ground with her palms, taps her dirtcovered fingers to her tongue. Meena Magazine Omen by Joseph Campana, August 2009 Outside, and without warning, the inexplicable raised its ugly head. The temperature went, again, and the sun went too: all south. And wouldnt you know a single dark crow was sitting on a gravestone like

a vicious monument to patience, mocking sleep, as if the world needed more cheap significance. All night through the woods rain made the same sullen song because the world had drunk and drunk and drunk it in. All the bottles are empty: all the storm clouds have given up. You are not yourself a form of truth. You are drowning but knowing so will not help you. The Witchs Burning by Emma Bolden, July 2009 Each flick of his tongue against my foot a smoothness I didnt expect fire so sudden logs high stacked by lovers how bright the first tongue licked malleolus traced tibia knee I could not look at the sky all was a gray through eyes blanked as smoke stroked his lips in the dark dog-warm against the flat of my foot became pain became not became flame melting to inside of thigh his teeth pierced to possess and I gave over possession gave up body gone of flesh the color flashed upwards of its own accord until I of him had tasted my mouth an open gulped smoke as sweet water my ears remembered the river hymn singing O glory the sweet sharp taste of feast seared meat on his tongue holding deep the history of char a new self the old unfleshed of flesh flayed thighs O I took him inside implored O God on the cross that thief who You saved my breath my breath was his breath and each breath a gift given taken each

smooth flicker licked the lids off my eyes under skys blue skin stretched by the river frozen to mirror the syrup sharp stench of foot unfooting itself black blossoms the char taste of feast when I licked he rose high as my chin the fire stroked sure as a skill as a hand stroked and softly we were our own melting fire a stillness I watched and the sun in its separate burning the ice threw off its blanket below the hinge of my knee bent the memory kneeling down to him his teeth a secret I held in the town square shadows cast flame like flame wild my breasts bit bleeding I held his child hidden child daughter a wail inside my wail behind the peel beneath my flesh a hope opened of mine own peeling thigh to not thigh not foot he held in his right hand slipped itself through my skirts to find not knotted rope not run not body no the small pink bundled beneath red inside not mouth not wanted not water not again giving not any more mirror the rivers of water not again giving up throat dissolve resolve terminus wanted giving up became not snow the waters he washed calendula candlewax

child daughter wail hymn my disappear hope of water to vanish my scent off his body his hand held the twig its starting flame Requiem for the Orchard by Oliver de la Paz, July 2009 1. The hours there, the spindled limbs and husks of dead insects. The powders and the unguent smells. Whats left, now, of the orchards? What shape and hammer? What clang of apples? What crease of brown paper sacks with greasy sandwiches? What salt burned into the brim of my cap? What spines? What limb-aches from paintbrush handles? What white acrylics spattered on green and dense humidity of dew from grass? Where lies the fruit trees and the hardy stock? Where lies the open acre where we broke bottles with pellet guns during break? Where we shot feral cats and rabbits? Where no animal was safe from the ferocity of boy? 2. Whats left now? The dumb hours of early risings, the laying down of metal irrigation pipe. Hush-a-bye of sprinkler heads. Wed cinch the joints up, thread to thread and wed take dabs of stolen chewing tobacco. Wed tamp it down into the pink edges of our cheeks as wed launch dirt clods at each other and hum to the prop-planes low pass over tree line. Bell-sounds, the thwack of aluminum on rock kept time. And so did the horizon, browning from pesticides. So did our skins, browning in the bare acres. We were keeping pace with a dying river, the water pressure, weak with each new fitting. We were keeping pace with our shit job, how we each knew we were getting ripped off and how the filthy dollars wed wad into our pockets couldnt buy us a fuller river, time, or the deep meaning of zinc powder on chapped hands. 3. What shape and what hammer held our breaths in the storehouse where the migrant workers hid their liquor? Where holsters hung from coat hooks on the landowners door and where we moped, still shining despite our growing declension. Vapor-bloom of apples crushed against the forklifts tire cooked our senses and wed dare each other to steal the pistols for quick target practice. Wed stack mealy cores on top of each other squint and pull the trigger

back and laugh as arms jerked from recoil. Wed pick off rabbits and birds, and though the owner knew what we had done hed drink black coffee with bourbon, laugh, and shake off the radio static with a wave. Later in our houses, our hands would arc to the tender and luminous memory of firing a round and the twitch of a bodys last kick. 4. What crease of brown paper sacks? What amplitudes, our hunger to be men? What cheese sandwiches and noon times sick from soda and too hard running? Our hands were the real language and we hit each other with closed fists just to unhinge the details. This was a nowhere place. Miserable lunches and shit pay left us scuffling between rows playing the tripping game or slapping down hard on each others backs, leaving red palm-shaped welts. We were fuses, amped on caffeine and the urgency of youth and the orchard was hallowed ground. Like everything we did was righteous and holy. Where the void was nowhere and everywhere and where our brown skins, dappled with paint and insect bites were as pastoral as the understory which held all things in its cold radiance. 5. And what salt? What hard cake on the hat brims? Our sweat gummed up the works, made us thick and slow-witted in the early summer haze as we moped and stooped, painting row upon row of spindly trees, from the full-leafed to the saplings. Our arms were heavy and our hands ached from carrying the gallon paint cans. Wed spill a little here and there to lighten our steps. Moving was such theater. Acres blazed in the late afternoon. Chemicals dusted our caps and mixed with our body mineral white crystals and yellow film. Wed cough into our sleeves and drink well water from our thermoses. And wed pour the rest of it into our caps, letting it run down our lengths, letting it mix with the mud, oil, and dust of ourselves, cold, decisive, and purely from the earth. 6. What spines and what handles? The thin stripes of paint dried to bone on the boughs. The arc of our backs curved. We were fingers bent on triggersgiddy and the trees would break beneath our savagery. What we didnt kill, wed break. Whole afternoons of breaking left us breathless and wet. The sweet tang of chewing tobacco curled into our lips and wed press the stuff and spit

brown gobs at each other, until we were sick from the chase. The bee boxes at the edge of the orchard were home to our dares and wed bet tins of chew on whod do the most damage with baseball bat to a bee box while suffering the fewest stings. It was stupid and we knew it. And despite all discretion, we charged, our lips stinging from cinnamon while the open air hummed, impossible and kinetic. 7. Where lies the open acre and all limns? Where the shade and what edges? What serrated blades and what cuts? Where are we, leather-skinned, a spindle of nerves and frayed edges? What spare parts are we now who have gone to the orchard and outlasted the sun and the good boots? The once tongued salt from a tooth-cut wound scars now. The scars the deep-ruts of tree root where the earths worn away. And now, what? Salt? The memory of youth? The long hours of hands holding trembling hands? And what of the hard breaths and the crack of a bullet against a trunk. Leave it to memory and memorys unmaking. Leave it to the suns hot sear and the haze-induced recollections. Leave it to the hours and the hours and the hours. 8. What then of the orchards? What then of the tree limbs, dark and heavy with fruit? What of the stolen pistol and the animal deaths suffered in the heavy sun? And what of our masks, the resonant pitch of our throats as wed cry fair or foul with each blow from a fist? What of the orchards where we grew long as the bramble and just as jagged? Where our hearts kept pace with the sprinkler heads chk chk chk? Where the gauzy horizon was like a belt cinched around our waists, keeping us together despite our youth? What of our youth? What then, of our youth? Of the cheap indiscretions with a stolen flask, and a glance at skin magazines? Where we earned quick dollars doing nothing except being boys, learning without comprehension, the difficult industry of men? Romania. A Post-history Hysteria by Chris Tanasescu translated from the Romanian by David Baker and the author, June 2009 How long have we been so utterly alone together? Weve been speaking the same shifting language for twenty centuries, yet its as if weve always needed translation: trading traditions with others yet foreigners to ourselves. Ill take you home, feed you

to my land. Well meet there in the earth and talkmy Daco-Roman words for hospitality and hostile army are nearly the same. You can be my brother in the mountains, the two of us the only anti-Soviet partisans in the bloodthirsty gorges, putting out moons in our comrades eyes, naming once more each moss, each dense trail. Youll grow up in the new Byzantine empire, the wooden heartfelt prayer of day and nightjust like me, a solitary fir on a barren rock-sharp wall, the kind the shepherds around here talk and sing to before felling when someone young and single dies. The Bleating of Copper by Amjad Nasser translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa, June 2009 Fathers told us about raids and deaths avenged, but they never told us about martyrs. The bells of the flock were everything; the bleating of copper that never ceased its ringing. And the rivers and oases that slipped from under the hooves of their horses at night! Night and horses is this what history is all about? Acknowledgment, 1964 by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, May 2009 Could have gone west. Could have packed your things, who cares that you werent old enough to drive. Could have sold yourself to truckers and highwaymen. Could have gone down the dark road between home and somewhere better, the whole world watching tv and not one thinking of you. Couldve got lost. Could have said, I dont know when the waitress asked, Where you live at? You could have lied and said, New Jersey or Mobile. Of course, that assumes youd get past Mason Dixon. You could have seen battlefields: Gettysburg, Fredericksburg even Chicago if you waded deep enough into summer. Could have slept with your head on the ground like your sister,

her ear to the transistor, listening, listening to I Want to Hold Your Hand. You could have said, Fuck the Beatles and left them behind, shooting the lights out of every stadium, every coliseum. You could have made girls scream because you were the stranger under the bleachers, that ember of the cigarette burning in the darkness just outside their porch lights glow. You could have named them; Helen, Rachelle, Ida May, and in Texas Irene Rosenberg a girl just as lonely as you. Imagine, your leaving before it ever got started. Wheres that girl you married? You dont know. You were half way to Billings or Provo or Bend. You watched the cities of the Midwest burn. You threw bottles and never cut your hair. Remember the drum kit in Schlessingers Instruments? How you crawled through the broken window and banged away in the shards of that city. If they could have seen you then! All muscle and heart, sweating, sweating no more stupid melody holding you back. Just the bass line, just the gas line hissing and your foot on the pedal. You could have gotten away. The country was different. A boy could walk without getting beaten beyond an inch of his life, without getting lashed to a fence in God forsaken Wyoming. Why, God hadnt forsaken Wyoming or Birmingham yet. Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner safe in their beds. Perhaps you passed by them. You could have passed me by and saved yourself the whole mess. My mother doesnt know you yet. Shes on her back in the grass with some other mans son. Geomancy by F. Daniel Rzicznek , May 2009 The feathered saints of evening flit down through the wooded hills to construe salads of hailstones and leaf-wreckage, the thunder having sped east-northeast toward open water after leaving nothing altered in the major features below. The angle of river can always guide a dumb soul or two to welcoming fields where struggling plantlings yearn for breath to sweep their leaves, enter a rough, black portal at the thin roots. A young crop of beans: stationary ferry to a strange, coppery existence.

A good dog can scout this scent for miles over mountain fog and village cookfires. The wind is a color she can deduce a million intimations from, unflinchingly. The same wind comes to the saints, as if they were abandoned boats on a wide bay when the clouds pass and the chop slows to a pulse, the shore a long mouth that hasnt shifted expression in years. All things that find a death there take an invisible token of that freshwater pout: a bone is dragged into pines and oak, an organ ends up sailing around in the rain, the rest is dissected there on the sands. High song in high branchesa sane nothing that will happen until it ends. Canada by Henrietta Goodman, April 2009 When he rows out to collect the geese, they see him floating like an unexpected god, oval hull weathered gray, oars treading the dark water. They see him coming, a boy barely more than retriever of wing-shot bodies, see how he snatches them from the scum of ice and wrings them like hes turning the crank of a machine, so hard sometimes the neck snaps, then winds to a thread, then severs, body flung back into the water, head and black beak dripping in his hand. When he rows out to collect the geese, he thinks, like any god, this is just what you do. They see him coming and dive if they can, and swim, stroking in slow motion, water rolling over their wings and him in the boat, and them knowing hell catch them and him knowing they know Two Poems by Rafael Acevedo translated from the Spanish by Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, April 2009 Of Cannibals With these five bones, human bones, Doctor Chanca makes me a cannibal by arranging feathers from the hand of another cannibal

I lick the doctors bones and the shredded meat of Pedro Mrtir, which I had saved in the kitchen They are well-dressed, sadly, among the words like spices words like spices from a crudely discovered continent Typology which refers to eating a member of ones group; which denotes the consumption of strangers; which means swallowing parts of ones own body at the most. human flesh for its flavor and nutritional import; to absorb the spiritual essence of the deceased; to resolve a state of crisis; to determine what Im missing, what youve left presenting the evidence, presenting witnesses. Decorum: A Study by Alison Powell, March 2009 A person could be at a loss. The width, spools and yardage, meringue airs, impossible long fingers, of decorum. Its army sashay of the sidewalk. Iguana-eyed, left on stoop, no knock or ring. The small blue bruises from wearing these hard tasteful heels. Like molasses in a dress going down the stairs to answer. Because to lift the unbashful marble, ah its lit differently, the arm would straighten. Door and doorbell taking on a low religious typewriter drone. Stomach rot of rose milk and rubbing alcohol. A person makes a habit of not knowing what to make of it, as fact is, most days no door or invitation wants opening. The table crowded with its nestled chairs. Eyes close at a glance. Dumb Show by Suzanne Wise, March 2009 The spine does its turtle charade and the fingers can be counted on to dance the spider dance or perform the hummingbird and the tongue lolls like a bear on sedatives long past hibernation season, like a bear that wants to kill something and eat it and would, regardless of our loving anthropomorphizing,

if it wasnt so narcotized. If this wasnt so familiar, if they werent so like us!, we might ignore the bear sprawled in our backyard, the spider spinning out of control, the turtle nibbling dog food, the hummingbird in a flap, smacking at the window, aiming at the nest of hair drifting by on its stalk and bulb of flesh. If it wasnt so inhumanly unmoved, the tongue lying dormant inside that bulbous human head would rise up from the back row of the dumb show of the body miming some parable about paralysis of vocal chords, which cannot be proven and so must be an excuse for shyness or self-censorship or crisis of faith or traumatic memories or extreme fear or some other technical difficulty. This is not the first time the sound has cut out. These are not the only symptoms. Not enough animals remain in our purview to serve description. A human face opening and closing minus the sound of words begins to effect a kind of rigor mortis, according to Mr. Merleau-Ponty. Try not to say the tongue plays dead or sleeps like a tired simile with apnea. Try not to accuse the technician above your neck. Try to listen to the not-you calling from the edge of you. Try to cross over. n The Kingdom of the Subjunctive , Three Poems by Novica Tadic translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic, February 2009 Conversation (1) A two-legged bag stops me on the street and asks me what Im carrying in bags under my arm carrying carrying carrying Nothing

Nothing Nothing Dead Nightingale Dead Hen Night Passes 1. Poor us, we are all kings when we gaze at the starry sky. 2. The noise of the crowd grows faint on the town square and in our blood. 3. The voice will re-enter the angels trumpet. Once again hell will rise on its feet. Knives, Dreams I dream how on a flat surface I set down knives of various shapes and sizes. Already there are so many of them I cant count them, or see them all. Someones being done in by one of those knives. Two Poems by Cynthia Cruz, February 2009 Cheyenne Beautiful, finally, inside the quiet Latrine of my Mexican Confessional: Rode a pony, drove A tractor, and never Finished the first grade. Its always hardest for the top Angel, and he Dropped down to me.

Brave, nurse From the Otherworld. Crowned me White, burned me Free. Ward of the court, orphan Of seven foster homes, no one knows So dont ever Tell them. Inheritance or Amber Schloss Your sisters are witches. I race the staircase as they chase me With their knives. They hide The money in the mouths of car seats. In the backyard, the fresh cut graves Wait, greedy and gaping. In the Black Forest, the largest known earthworm Slides along the rocky floor. And the woolly mammoths tusks Shine off the wind of the moon. A fishhook, memory drags Its cold ankle Through the black marsh. I dont sleep. I hold your body like a giant Babys, blink When the moon spits Its dreams into our window. And God does not keep The demons back. He sets the Rook and the Queen Behind the meadow, Lets me open the window To look. At Bodensee, the mansions tower In winter with their ghost lights. The past is a curse, a darling Death moving inside me. This dollhouse is an asylum With its river of trauma Running through it Like red wine. Our home has become frozen.

A museum of curiosities, a means of holding The shores of the mind back. And the voices of children live on Inside us. But there are no children here. Earring by Ales Steger translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry, January 2009 The whole time he tells you what to do. His voice is chocolate candy filled with hysteria. He is a loving blackmailer. An owl blind in one eye. It is enough that he sees half the world to command the other half. He gladly inspects himself in the mirror, but goes crazy if you praise him Before another. He is not your property. He is not your adornment. Only when you dance and when you make love with him, he coos. Then cages open. Then he is the white message bearer of the gods. Gradually you detach him more often, hide him in a box, misplace him. But his bite at the lobe still whispers to you. As if Eros holds you with invisible filigree pliers And solders words of guilt and the silence of betrayal into your ear. A copy of a stone from Sisyphuss mountain is set inside it. You roll hope uphill. And you roll downhill drunk, despondent and alone. Two Poems by Umberto Saba translated from the Italian by George Hochfield and Leonard Nathan, January 2009 Winter Its night, a bitter winter. You raise the drapes a little and peer out. Your hair blows wildly; joy suddenly opens wide your black eyes, and what you sawit was an image of the worlds endcomforts your inmost heart, warms and eases it. A man ventures out on a lake of ice, under a crooked streetlamp. Poetry Its as if for a man battered by the wind, blinded by snowall around him an arctic inferno pummels the city a door opens along a wall. He goes in. He finds again a living kindness, the sweetness of a warm corner. A forgotten name places a kiss on cheerful faces that he has not seen except obscurely in menacing dreams.

He returns to the street, and the street, too, is not the same. Fine weather has come back, busy hands break up the ice, the blue reappears in the sky and in his heart. And he thinks that every extreme of evil foretells a good. Eugenio Montale and Giuseppe Ungaretti Flocks of Never by Drew Blanchard, December 2008 We had to throw things away to sell our house, make it seem like we lived sparinglya minimalist life. As if anyone lives with only one blue shirt in the closet, one pair of shoes illuminated by a single light bulb swinging 40 watts and a string to pull, frayed twine and a soundless plastic bell, to turn it on, to turn it off. For years, I watched ivy spread over my neighbors house. Each year the leaves turned from green to red to gone. When the leaves fell, flocks of never migrating starlings ate the purple berries, tugged off the stems. For years, from my kitchen window, I watched Siberian snow geese winter along the Columbia river. Each day theyd rise like heavy rain clouds blown by wind white plumage like morning sky, black wings like shadows, like rain. Sometimes, so early, the sky still the color of ashy smoke, thousands of geese would disappear into a whorl of sudden snow. In these moments, Id imagine, though I never saw anything like it, the spray of twelve gauge buckshot entering the body

of a goose in mid-air, and its mate, its mate for life, would honk, drop down, honk, follow the limp body to the ground. And because this is a love story, the falling goose, the following goose, the strange replaying of this scene, the replaying of something that did not happen, never disturbed me, the way it does now, as I stand in my new house, in my new closet with no string to pull. Instead a switch, like all the other modern rooms, easier I suppose, to turn the light on, to turn it off. And strangely, with no geese at my new kitchen window, I have traded scenes: the repeated falling goose for the last moment in my old closet. Standing in the dark, even my blue shirt gone, I pull the string a final time. I turn the light on to dust in the corner, turn it off to the empty dark, thinking, how the severity of nothing can fill up a room. And because I cannot resist I turn it on and turn it off again and again, like I did when I was five, maybe four, when the simplicity of light and dark was enough to stay an afternoon. Cat Posing for a Portrait of a Dog, Hollywood, California by Elizabeth Gold, December 2008 My agents not returning phone calls so I cant tell him this is not the role Ive spent my life preparing for: a little Egyptian picture where Im worshipped as a god, thats

what I had in mind, and Hedda Hopper is dead, so I cant crawl in her window and confess Im too sensitive for this basement, this small man and smaller paintbrush, I cant tell her Roger Corman should keep an eye on my dreams, where I reclaim my Inner Sabertooth, and revenge On this rainy afternoon in Hollywood California, Im practicing philosophy, watching him sip Napa Red while he remakes me into a dog-slut, her clowns tilt of the head, shameless way she begs for tidbit or walks, Im telling myself in the autobiography yet to be written theres a lesson in here somewhere, how the familiar skin slips off like a starlets gown, and youre staring at the canvas, at someone impossible to recognize, who everyone insists is you Ode to Nitrous Oxide by Sharon Dolin, November 2008 Coleridge said that nitrous oxidelaughing gas provided the most unmingled pleasure he ever knew. Edward Rothstein, The New York Times Is it only the memory of being ten and being driven to Manhattan to see the dintist, as the elevator man called himthe only time I can recall being in a building with an elevatorthat invokes you? Or is it the pain I feared then or the pain I flee from now tooth pain, the whirring drill, or the agonizing ache of hearing my husband just having had a housewarming party with another woman in another apartmentthe one I dont have the keys to? Is it about laughing over the pain or about Gonna take you higher, as Sly said in the Sixties when I thought I was too young to smoke yet there I was snorting that sweet stuff up in the dentists chair on what must have been the Upper East Sidethis Brooklyn girl from East Flatbushand loving it. It felt like soft rubber wrapping around my face around as the dentist drilled around & around drilled wiggled his nose & whiskers like a human bunny rabbit. bunny rabbit. Here I am now,

forty years later, asking for it in another East Side building where my name is announced. Asking to be put out of my painto feel the numbness flower down my arms into my pelvis. Isnt it funny how good numb can feel? Is that the experience? Or is it waking up afterlucid but no longer asking (or caring) where it throbsor whenor whyor because of whom. The Body or its Not by Keetje Kuipers, November 2008 I have plans to kill a creature. The best I can explain it is: Im afraid. Of what will be lefta hoof, the jaw, one sun-driedsoft-as-oats ear. That walking through the woods next year Ill find these easy relics and be reminded that winter trees are not skeletons, that every metaphor for death deals in blood and bone and our stunned approximation of their sudden absence. Whats the difference between a body we love and the trappings that make it? My soldier who returns home without his hands, the fingers somewhere else still doing their slow work of pulling a trigger. I Think of Pilgrims by Terese Svoboda, October 2008 Not Cameroonians curled in the landing gear, bound slaves of isms, to be picked off year after year, homeland-torn and penniless for reasons of machete, too many or too few. Everyone dreams of lolling under fruit trees, Pilgrim breeches drying, but such dreams mean money, highrise -sized, where once the sun wouldnt rise. Cellphoned to their continents, Pilgrims from whatever persecution, kill those turkeys in want, want, want, and the landing gear drops. Plague by Robert Thomas, October 2008 Fold back your sleeve, cara, so I can see the lining and the wrist bones alp. A girl in Castello grew white fur on her tongue when I was fifteen. All but the pink tip, like a tiny monks head, a tonsured pate. Then the fur blackened, and the monk

grew horribly young. The tongue that I had jealously watched accept the Host on Easter. The hands that had peeled a mandarin after Mass in the piazza turned black as bread stumps forsaken in the oven by a stewed baker. Plague burned through town leaping from flesh to flesh through breath, as quick as fire in a library licks Revelations to Genesis. Ive dreamed I watch my own fingers melt as I paint the suns reflection on a chalice. Wondered if my final strokesgold gobs, welts of yellowmight surpass the best work Ive done, a moths red underwing I captured flashing as it fled from Jesus clumsy toddlers grasp, the gurgling Child who roasts men and women from within until their skin splits. Wondered if a god could become God only by becoming human, losing control of the chariot. Think of it. Not just a young womans groin bursting out of its smock with black buboes, but her child starving in silence because the wheat fields are harvestmens graves. One after another mashes his face into earth to escape the light that has become excruciating, and then lies writhing by his scythe. Dont move, cara, thats the look I want: a man who looks now in your eyes may think you gaze at him with desireno, with interest, interest he collects like a bankerbut I know your gaze is not on him but the thing I saw on the street in Citt di Castello in 1499, a girls death forcing itself out of her belly in a parody of birth. Hell recognize the fear in your eyes but also a hint of relish as you begin to understand it could be this very evening, while he strolls through his vineyards testing the firmness of a fist of grapes (not quite ripe) with his practiced fingers, that he

will become a thing: he will look up at Scorpio and know and know and rage that not everyone dies alone, not everyone, and if God is omnipotent, then He can will Himself to not exist for those who come to realize too late that their whole lifeeach sip of wine under the arbormust have sounded to Him like a prayer to be left alone, a prayer that even He had to answer. Two Poems by Manoel de Barros translated from the Portuguese by Idra Novey, September 2008 from An Education on Invention To enter the state of being a tree its necessary to begin with a geckos amphibian torpor at three in the afternoon in the month of August. In two years inertia and scrub grass will begin to expand our mouths. We will suffer a little lyrical decomposition until the scrub grass emerges in our speech. For now, I have designed the smell of the trees. In War The Mayor dispatched a messenger by horse with a letter to the Emperor. The letter announced the city had been invaded by Paraguayan troops and expressed a need for extra recourses. Two months later, the messenger handed the letter to the Emperor. When the recourses arrived, the Paraguayans were no longer there. The Emperors men came with fifteen young women and a few provisions to eat on the way. I guess they ate them all. Corumb is a city whose population is well mixed with Paraguayans. Only Different by Richard Howard, September 2008 for Seymour Kleinberg who reminds me what Kate Croy knew i Hotel del Coronado May 2, 1904

Papa dearest, please dont think for a moment Im finding fault as things turned out, it was a piece of luck you left behind those two late books of his that Uncle Henry sent last year when you were at Palo Alto lecturing on Pragmatism and the Sense of Common Sense. Youll soon see why we needed specimens of Uncles recent work (anything but thick on the ground in this locale), and lo! there they were in your old rooms at Stanford. Bruce says it was Fate, and I assure you it never occurred to either of us to attribute their preternatural existence in the Far West (wild or tame) to whether you had or hadnt read them. The great thing is that books by Henry James are here! And now for the explanation: Poor Uncle complainedsurely, Papa, youll recognize the tune of being so spent by the myriad claims of nine hundred members of a female culture club in Los Angeles that with promises of quiet and cuisine we conveyed him to this hotel on Coronado Beach, the grandest in the Stateor in the States! where even Uncle could recuperate or, in his words, lie awake nights listening to the languid lisp of the Pacific. When the Manager showed us the Grand Suite which had been reserved for Uncles repose, he further revealed, in reverent tones befitting the Grandeur of it all, that another author, quite a famous one, occupies (with his wife and his five sons) the matching rooms in the opposite wing, a Mr. Baum L. Frank Baum is the name he uses, we were informed, for his books, which books (there are but two so far) have won a fervent audience of young readers vast enough to constitute actual fame. Its trueBruce himself has given his niece the Oz booksand it occurred to us

that after a fitting interval of del Coronado comforts, Uncle might like to invite the young author to lunch he must be young to have those readers and I, meanwhile, would obtain the Oz books to further ensure Uncles taking part in such regalement, convinced as I am that after a regular regimen of 900 cultured female members, Baum might afford Uncle some refreshment. Bruce has already supplied that sort of enkindling company for him, and is now determined to sound out Mr. Baum, who might, for all we know, be a shy old recluse reluctant to meet anyone so august as Henry James. But five sons! wouldnt any father enjoy some relief from all that filial life? Were leaving Uncle here for a week (with the Oz books), while I help Bruce pack, and then we all make our ways back to Chocorua: despite the lurid splendors of California (Uncle claims they are solely vegetal: Italy without the castles), I miss the shy glories of a New England spring; Im so glad Mother wants the wedding at the Chocorua houseBruces parents say they are thrilled to be visiting that part of the country, and Im sure youll love them as we love Bruce, who says hell write after our historic luncheon with that famous author, Mr. L. Frank Baum. Having actually read The Land of Oz, Bruce claims it would be madness to suppose these two poles of American Romance does What Maisie Knew fit at the North Pole? The Land of Oz at the South?could even hypothesize each others existence He says by bringing them together we might do our native literature some service by making antipodean extremities meet, or at least, meet us!

I send all my love, and Bruce would send his if he were here, Peg ii Hotel del Coronado May 7, 1904 Peggot, dearest niece, What could you have hoped to effect, in terms of collegial communion (if this was your initial goal?) or even the mere polite impingement of fellow-strangers in this ever so richly cupolad and columniated caravansary, by allowingindeed by exhorting your helplessly critical old uncle to acquaint himself all too utterly with the literary productions of Mr. L. Frank Baum? Any neophyte with a sweet tooth sufficiently sharpened by commercial enticement (I allude thus indelicately, dear child, prompted by eons of promiscuous exposure to the twaddle of a tribe deluded by the notion that to write for children one need be merely childish), any scribbler and this Tree you set before me is the unconditional epitome of the dreadful forest I speak of might be counted on to commit (indulged by an infantile reading or read-to public), and not merely to commit one Book of Oz but quite incorruptibly to deliver two alreadyand more sequellae liable to disembogue from such a sourcea series infinite: If Wizard, then why not Witch? If Land, then as likely bring forth Sea, Sky, indeed a veritable (invraisemblable) Library of Oz! Nonetheless, dear niece, my Ozian? Ozite? Ozic? dismay has left me neither deaf nor blind

to possibilities latent in one Suggestive Scene occurring late, but for my interest, in the nick of time in those alas far from singular volumes which you so culpably bestowed (if only to dissipate my ennui htelire) It is the case that what your father has habitually diagnosed as my compositional scabies was aroused, only to be routed, by Baums treatment (or lack of treatment) of an episode in the final chapters of The Land of Oz What a betrayal it was to dissolve the spell a wicked witch had cast upon the one pleasing and the sole plausible human being in the entire galre of ghouls, goblins and gear-driven gadgets upon the boy hitherto known as Tip, who by a highly inappropriate if not scandalous metamorphosis (its real motive being to ready Baums unwary readers for the subsequent installment offorgive melooming Ooze) emerges from the Sorceresss cloud of occult incense, numbly smiling at his former companions misgiving stares, now emerges gorgeously gowned, girdled, and garlanded by wanton peonies gaudily arrayed (but how planted? how plucked? how plaited together?) as OZMA lost Princess of Oz! Now Peggot darling, I still retain (however deep in my dotage I may appear) a sufficient compositional astuce to discern the disastrous pointlessness of turning Tip back into Ozma, without having first shown the effects of the Princesss consciousness she had become a Boy; here we have a fable undertaking to account for the composition of true majesty, which as the ancients taught, involves a double royal gendering:

its all well and good to secrete Ozma from danger as the estimable Tip, but somehow in the process she must know herself as him, thereafter he as her; instead of which important emblem of royal self-consciousness, were served a scene of futile consolation offered to the dismay of Tips old friends, compounded by the Princesss unimpressive lie uttered in bland reproof : Im just the same as I always was only different! How inescapably we learn we are never just the same as we always were. Didnt Kate Croy speak words to that effect? Aside from his botched Transformation Scene, Baums narrative (I veil the sacred name: the Oz books are never novels) might have been run up by a seamstress overfond of sweets who had eaten one too many clairs and slept upon her back to ill effect before scribbling such a text, and one so ill-illustrated though in that regard Im altogether unaware of what poor Baums responsibilities may be, and wish to remain so. Indeed, dear Peg, its best that I remove myself from all propinquity likely to result in a meeting, however accidental and nugatory, between the author, as he must be called, of THE LAND OF OZ and your fond but (in the gift of this grand hospice) firmly sequestered old Uncle iii Hotel Coronado May 11, 1904 Dear Associate, you type your standing at Stanford University beneath your signature, so I assume that though but an associate, you are to be

addressed as Professor Bruce Porter on more formal occasions than this note in answer to yours (and its enclosure) of last week. It was kind, I believe, and generous as well that no sooner had you found me at the Coronado than you asked me to lunch with your fiance and, more to the point, your uncle-in-law to-be who, it appears, is a famous Man of Letters (unknown to me, although something in your tone implied I might jump at the chance to meet Mr. Henry James). Well, I have lately corresponded with one William James, who is, I now learn, his brother and your future father-in-law. It was, as I say, generous to send one of that brothers books with your letter it was positively prescient! Do you, as I do, believe in Second Sight, and Other Worlds than this one? I have long since accepted Theosophys doctrines, and rejoice that my wife Maud and I had met in Earlier Incarnations And like William James, I too attend sances in the hope of obtaining objective evidence of the reality of spirits and the afterlife. Unfortunately I could not find in Henry Jamess book a trace of the spiritual. Such writing supports literature like the rope that holds a hanged man, and this book, What Maisie Knew, seems merely an overheated hothouse, perfumed but tainted, for in this Jamess London society, transgressions of the Few bear witness to depravities of the Many. The novelist himself has taken sick, and his toilsome language creeps across the page, line after crapulous line, like so many worms (though merely words!) Professor Porter, I have endeavored, with my girls and boys, to articulate all that is healthy and, in every sense,

spirited in the Youth of our country; had I taken poor Maisie as a sign or (Lord help us!) a model, Dorothy could never have survived a day in Oz, for what is Oz but where we are, Magic and all? At the end, what Maisie knew is what everyone else knows already: who has money, who hasnt. It is William James who tells the Truth: our American form of fulfillment is worship of the bitchgoddess success. That is our national diseaseyet all I find in his brothers novel, in which he chews so much more than he can bite off, is bitching about the bush. No goddess even Dear Porter, having read thus far into my ill temper, you will forgive me if I choose to skip your luncheon-party, which will be no less agreeable for the absence of one guest, invited perhaps but, I am now convinced, unwelcome. Yours, Lyman Frank Baum iv Palo Alto May 15, 1904 Dear Professor James, Peg and I supposed that in the time between the End of Term and our cross-country trip to New Hampshire there might be a Cultural Adventure in store for us: escorting your brother to San Diego for a weeks relief from lecturingfrom the audiences he lectures towe learned that L. Frank Baum, author of a couple of fantastic (and fantastically popular) books for children, more or less, was living on what Henry James calls the lagniappe of such popularity in the same hotel; perhaps it was the inordinateness

of the Del Coronado, a really extravagant resort, which inspired our scheme: we proposed to this pair of antithetical literary lights who, I was rightly sure, had never heard of one another, that they have what their various readers would nevertheless view as a veritable authors lunch. (An inducement, or at least a safety-net: Peg would supply her Uncle with the two Oz Books, while I would present Mr. Baum with Maisie and The Wings of the Dove, still in your old rooms at Stanford. Thus forearmed, our two masters would know what sort of meal they were in for.) Well, by now I assume Peg has written to describe our projects total collapse: upon perusal of each others literature, both authors declined our invitation to luncheon, and I think it best to protect you from the terms of either repudiation (I fear such withholding is a lot like the riddle in one of HJs tales). On this occurrence the only marriage of true minds will be the one between Pegs and mine, concerning which the two of us feel in the clear. Next week my parents and I leave from San Francisco; Peg and HJ meet up with us in Chicago to catch the Twentieth Century Limited. Symbolic enough? With my affection, Bruce The Gods Describe Building Bodies, like Badgers by Adam Day, August 2008 We pour the eyes in with a ladle like post-holes half-filled with mud-water, tap them in with it if we have to. Sprinkle hair onto bald, moist limbs and faces like boiled potatoes sometimes we confuse female for male and she is left looking like a pubescent billy goat. We take

the liver and kidneys squatting like frogs from the brown dresser drawer the flaps of flesh like mutilated leaves pinned open with a system of strings. The pliers are for pulling ears untucked from two white-rasped skull-craters. We shake the body hard by the arms and penis and more pop out; teeth fill the mouth gap, and finally, the green leakage of ordure falls from that button of twisted flesh. What, Friends, Is A Life? by Mark Yakich, August 2008 for Gabe Gudding Killing a chicken for dinner always prompted A quarrel about who had to do it. Today You can take tours of virtual slave ships. Many people are drawn to the dead On their holidays. Because of its abundance A large section of Birkenau was named Canada. You could get good boots there & sometimes A silk shawl or a jar of pickled herring. But it was In America that fake birds were first made To attract native fowl. The most familiar kinds Of camouflage make one thing appear to be two, Two things one & so on. Camouflage artists Make it an arduous challenge to see a figure On a ground (blending) or to distinguish one Category of object from another (mimicry). Less familiar but far more effective is dazzle Camouflage in which a single thing appears To be a hodgepodge of disparate components. At Shakespeares Globe Theatre, the actors say The audience always pays better attention When its raining. Mother loved the sun, She said, because its rays felt like ink to her Fingers. Honestly I dont understand many People. But, Friends, if you plan on dying By your own hand, dont use pills. Swallowing Is simply another way of marking time. Anectode One time a taxi driver pulled up parallel to my car. He rolled down his passengers side window and yelled Good morning! I dont know if he had seen me before in the lot and wondered why I am frequently there,

or if he was simply bored. He was the cheery sort, and we talkedor rather yelled back and fortha while about the weather, which is always a more serious conversation here than in other cities. He finally asked who I was waiting for. My wife. Wheres she coming from? New York. I thought it a bit odd that he was taking an interest in my wifes travel itinerary. Then he began telling me about his wife and two kids back in Egypthow hed moved to New Orleans ten years ago, and now had a nice little house (with backyard and two-car garage) in Mississippi. You drive in from Gulfport with your taxi? Steady airport fares all day long. He talked more about his family. His wife had been ill, on and off, back in Alexandria, but he couldnt return home. It seemed hed made his peace with having two homesone here in the present, and one there in the past: He hadnt been back to Egypt since he left. My son and daughter are now teenagers. He said it without any desire for sympathy. But I couldnt help thinking to myself: What in hell do I ever have to complain about? And what am I doing out here at the fucking airport anyway? I was about to start the car. He reached up for something in his sun visor: a photo of his kids. I reciprocated by taking out my cellphone which had a photo of my son holding his Fischer-Price airplane in the bathtub. Do you know the game airplane? I said. I explained that over and over I used to watch my wife play airplane with our baby son, pushing him up with her feet against his torso, and how I was always too worried about his getting hurt to do it myself. He nodded, and handed the phone back to me. Of course, I said, our son loved playing airplane, especially when my wife intentionally crashed the planehimonto the bed. Thats the whole point of the game.

He said something, but I continued: One night, we were playing in his room, and he picked up that Fischer-Price airplane. I motioned to it on the phone. He cradled it, and then began rocking it in his arms singing Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop....in all honesty, at that moment, I dont know whether I felt more tenderness for him or for the plane. I expected him to think I was a total lunatic, but he just smiled. He probably didnt know the lullaby. He said something about his wife, but I couldnt understand him over the roar of an incoming plane. I began to feel a bit guilty about lying, so I told him I wasnt actually waiting for my wife, but that I liked to watch the planes take off and land. And then that sounded a little juvenile, so I told him about my fear. He said that hed been on a plane only once, and didnt really know if he had a fear of flying. Then, with his thumb, he pointed up to the sky. But I didnt see or hear a plane. Theres an African legend, he said, thumb still midair, that says long ago the sky used to be closer to usso close you could reach up and touch it. But then, at mealtime people began using the sky as a napkin. The gods moved it higher and higher and finally out of reach. It didnt make me feel any better. But it was a good story, one that Ive repeated in the classroom whenever my students are having a hard time understanding why I believe myths and legends are still important, or why I am afraid to fly. http://www.iata.org/Pages/default.aspx Mutable and Immutable by Maya Bejerano translated from the Hebrew by Tsipi Keller, July 2008 section ten of Mutable and Immutable In a cage of blankets and stones a cage of tables and closets my banquet cage a cage of brave strokes slaps as kisses a cage of beatings what a wretched snappish cage not bright nor stunning invisible in the dark a cage of speech sounds and stares I stare from within at desires you stare inside well extend hands two caged beasts I in your cage you in mine

cage of gold, pursed lips the cage of your blindness let me go dont be a dog my very dear cage havent we agreed World's End: North of San Francisco by Tess Taylor, July 2008 I. Fortress Here at the continents end, fortifications linger for the end of the world. They greet each California morning, these barracks in the fog. Below, the lagoon is gunmetal, or mercury poured. Today I saw a river otter, lithe as compacted water, arch through the tule basin. A heron. A poker-faced coyote loped into the chaparral. The pelicans, ancient Christian symbol of charity, dove, hard spears mining water. I thought: I know and they do not how they are Renaissance symbols. How here hummingbirds are Miwok gods. II. Ghost Town At the Nike Missile site, one missile rises for tourists on Wednesdays. Other days, it is guarded by a mannequin behind barbed wire, his enclosure engulfed in thickets and foxtails. Hikers spelunk through each bunker. Battery Wallace: Battery Alexander: Battery Townsley. Labor cemented these hills. 1907. 1938. They seem almost Roman, these ruins guarding outpost California. Each gun could have destroyed this world. Now conquest is going on elsewhere. At dusk we watch hills waver in the lagoon. Imperfect reflections. Tree forms obscured. Out to sea, through the Golden Gate, we see the Hanjin Sea Princess sail west, west, towards China. III. Compass As a girl I named the plants here. As a pioneer girl I crossed the prairies by train: My life delivered me at the mouth of the Pacific. I learned these plant-names in English. Miwok gods fed at the bottlebrush tree in our backyard. In my home I discovered the East through 19th century novels and movies about New York.

The East was the past: My family came a long time ago. After lunch, I crest the ridgeline into the next valley thinking about what we bear or drag behind us, inadequacies of language to place. I think nothing, too, examining fur in coyote scat. Ochre in fault-line sandstone, jarred, upended plates. I am running on a sea floor sedimented 600 million years. I am running on willow thickets the Spanish called saucelito. The fog is a bridal veil but ghostful. The foghorn sounds perfect fourths. Below, the latticework fields, chartreuse mustard flowers. Plum trees from the Portuguese farms wild back into the hills. On a serpentine outcrop a crow rasps, like the handle on a hurdy-gurdy. His crackling call ripens away towards the fogbank. Poison oak glints among sticky monkey. I stand on the crumbling fortress, making bouquets of thistles. Two Poems by Gabrielle Althen translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker, June 2008 Confiteor The landscapes wheel has lost the power of speech Offering its empty eye to my empty eyes And yet a bit higher up The line of the spheres continues its dance An arabesque grasps us Will so much music have been for nothing? Asks the mathematical question Our question on this mountain ridge From where our loss can be observed Dusk is coming I have almost I have almost having finished my day but not Alas the work incumbent on my day The landscape turns the color of cowardly roses Around a heart Not heart enough Like every heart from The Unassailable IV Space is full of mental rooms where we can go Like a hunter unleashing his dogs, I freed my spirit into them High blaze of hieratic grasses Simple or resounding victory Although it wasnt an especially simple day All day long the sun suffused some leaves

Nearby harvesters bent in the vineyards Mindful of patient provisions in the grapes blood To each one his wine-press and his wine As for me, I unleashed my dogs First of all death deciphered itself in the gold Its obols waited at the foot of every tree Weightless coins of the glad munificence Which replaces summer Glory piercing loss through to its afterlife To each his crystal and to each his blood To each his drunkenness And his journey just a bit beyond himself I too was heavy I too, clumsy in the evenings affluence My wealth was too great for me A beautiful sunset thickening my lips Like a hunter heading home I whistled for my spirit wo Poems by Hamutal Bar-Yosef translated from the Hebrew by Rachel Tzvia Back, June 2008 The Well I am a poisoned well, I told the ram as he flared his nostrils. Everything in me is poisoned. Venom flows in my stones. On the bottom theres a bag, almost sealed. In it, silently putrefying, are the clothes of the dead. Far away, in days splendor, even the storks warn each other of the pollution. But the well is poisoned, I whisper to the ram at night, the well is entirely poisoned. And he with his blue tongue licks me and says: Stars. Waking When I woke after the destruction the boulders were the gray-white dust of salt, and salt-dogs cracked open the bones of doves. Then I saw one hidden chick thrown into the air,

its wings trembling like wind-blown flames unfurling a colorful fan, its skinny legs lifting for the first time above the Dead Sea. The Stagnation by James Galvin, May 2008 The stagnation is deafening. Then some menacing Nudists walk past Laughing, which doesnt Affect the stagnation. I hold out my hands, Palms turned down, And rain rains from them, Which affects the stagnation But not much. Here come the nudists Again, wielding Tire irons and saps. The wind kicks up, Affecting the stagnation. The rotary clothesline Starts spinning to beat hell, Clothes like garish, Terrified clowns Did you ever notice How easy it is To terrify clowns? Theyre already crying Before the fun Beginsclowns Clinging to the rotors Of a Navy helicopter Whose fuselage Is camouflage The desert kind Whose rocket Launchers are loaded, Whose orders are Anybodys guess. Two Poems by Sarah Messer, May 2008 American Familiar You dont think you know me, but you do. Im the one who threw bedclothes to branches, suckled the catbird with the space between my fingers.

You think that black dog outside your door is a pillar, one leg of your table of grief. I crack a window in my eye, make the milky trees whip like panic. Its not possible to hate everything. See how the sheets hang from the limbs like a girls cartwheel, like a wrecked ship? For years your past slept. You dragged it behind you like wet firewood. But I lived on, chiggering in your dead skin. Its the curse of the familiar: everything youve cast off, Ive become. I rolled the layers of your skirt back and left your legs kicking on the ottoman. Now the house can barely contain you. At night youll drink in rooms, listening for fingers digging, a beginning. A sound like nothing youve ever heard before, ringing in your own voice. The place where the bird first lighted tasting like horsehair, spice, broken stems. Stump Speech Never wear rat skin. Dont point a mirror at the sun. If you lose a tooth, crush it and throw it into the sky. Never call mice or snakes by their names. If a bear comes into your house in the morning, feed it milk. To remove poison, drink from the egg of a vulture. Its true I slept with Abe Lincoln. I now know everything there is to know about this country. Believe me, I carry a tapeworm for you the size of Kentucky. When I walk up hill, I carry an arrow. If I cant walk, I put a few donkey hairs in my shoe. That black stone in my path is the iron house of hell. I have always been kind to the black dog, whom I resemble more each day. When I hear a cuckoo, I pray for happiness. When my donkey brays, I say I believe you, three times. This consoles the donkey. When chased by wolves, I tie my shoes behind me. If you want to find treasure at the end of the rainbow, cover yourself in shit and ride a shit-covered dog. You should offer, they say, your Cuisinart body each night to all beings. I promise to give up this gigantic barge of sadness. I will keep your secret my entire life. Two Poems by Amy Hegarty, April 2008 Our Father Beautiful baby With your head cut off Why didnt they bury you then? Instead they left you

With your eyes wide open To do it yourself Amen Hail Mary Crazy lace And basement days And stars and apples Hideaway His tongue in your mouth His shame on your face No man or child Could ever erase Baby booties A fur-lined muff I wish you had only once Said Enough Found Myself in Search of Matthias & Paul by Robert Gibbons, March 2008 She wanted to get the day rolling early, while I wanted to hold on to the night & dream world where Id soon return to the museum exhibiting the cathedral doors a man from my past intimated he didnt understand why they were hanging on the wall. I said to Connors that the miracle for me was that that wood once had bark surrounding it, & that look, now, those carved figures are the spirit of Man. Realizing wed have to leave the museum, I told him we should try to track down the Grnewald Crucifixion & Gauguin Self-Portrait & take away in visual memory as much as we could from them. I left him there by the steel & glass railing still contemplating the massive doors, while I set off in search of Matthias & Paul. At the information desk three German flight attendants in blue uniforms stood ahead of me in line, but the receptionist asked what I wanted. The first flight attendant asked if I spoke German when I mentioned Grnewald, Nein, I answered, then asked for Gauguins Gauguin, quickly correcting myself with SelfPortrait. She asked if I lived on River Street, because if I entered through that entrance Id know where theyd moved the paintings a couple of years before. Then left me standing there staring at the marble floor. Two Poems by Reginald Shepherd, March 2008 Experiment V for Kate Bush Somewhere a door to day is opening, and she steps through it into morning fog. Here is an end to every dream, a room the climbing ivy builds where green waxes and wanes and stains the skin. (I thought that I might die, but not this time.)

Half the perfect world is here, although in need of some repair. One cloud looks like a smudged, torn map with all the destinations blotted out, one cloud looks like an open hand dispensing storms. This cloud says No. Two steps from the water, three steps from the shore, we throw our voices into the muddy stream, drowned out by past currents, current floods. Her hands are filled with snags, night-scented stock, and wishes gathered by the reedy river, the greedy river that steals all song. Night renders everything insensible, her eyes are filled with feathers, filled with burning bridges, burning cornfields wuthering to wind-blown ghosts of smoke. We take one last look at what weve lost and follow her into flight, with all the wings around us. By the Entrance to Cordova Mall, I Sat Down and Wept inside my overheated car, where no one could hear. Song said I come up hard. Song said Freddies dead. I overheard, heard under that the drone of air conditioning that wasnt on, or wafted from the womens shoe department, drained the battery that made the music play those words into those ears. Song said Trouble Man from 1972, trouble lasts that long, and longer, sweet badass song stuck on repeat, a desert wind inside my paid-for car, sand drift metallic drifting in Park. A suburban song for sure, the parking lot an asphalt meadow flowering with pickup trucks and budding Bible stickers planted on every other car. I overspoke, leaned into beige spokes of the steering wheel, Toyota, and cried away the songs Id learned too well, I was a secret that the hurtling-into-summer world

had kept too well. I turned the key, I drove into the day that didnt know my name, drove myself sane again, and came up hard to the first red light. Two Poems by Edip Cansever translated from the Turkish by Julia Clare Tillinghast and Richard Tillinghast, February 2008 Sky-Meaning I No matter the time or place, Ill always grow for the one who is the sea. With one thin finger cut in half. That is why Im the oldest recipient of your on-again, off-again love. And that is why I grew up in the desert, with nothing but a single slice of sweet melon. Ive made you into a cure, Ive emulated you. Ive torn up some of my poems, and procured new ones. And if Ive passed too quickly from one situation to the next Not because of blood, not fatallybut through a kind of companionability, Now, at last, Im the strength there is in numbers. Its just a memory, if I clam up, looking at my finger-stub. As I open my eyes, youre the sun hung out on the line. Youre a blue child, youre our love Peering out at me from the middle of a blue warehouse. The Rooster & the Stairs Up is up, down is down a little. The rooster and the stairs are in the middle. My dear rooster: hes telling a lively tale up there on the stairs. The bright red of a whistle makes the child a child. A ten-armspan thread draws my mother. I lean my head into the water bucket. How ever many fish I think of, that's how many fish there are. Two Poems by Ales Debeljak translated from the Slovenian by Andrew Zawacki and the author, February 2008 The Kiss How it rises out of waves in the bay and shudders like a gentle thrust of the sea, which sooner forgives than punishes, doomed as it is to feckless birth. How it wakes me up, takes me inside with a slender hand, with shimmering dust, gliding like a guess or premonition, up and up to the eyelashes, the eyebrows, the mouth

and spilling across the face and over the ears, where the cries of gulls are caught. A hymn to the moment that lasts and lasts, so nothing belonging together will separate, like a boat that worries only about its arrival in the harbor, dropping its anchor next to a dock, so the story will reach the close it was meant to reach. And the sailor, once turned to a pillar of salt, will forever remain doubled over, where lobes of water linger like wedding guests years after the flood has folded back. Exercise for the Renewal of a Family Line Small boats in the harbor, slack ropes rest at evening, quietly whisking the poles, but everything is as it should be, this calm. Without it, impossible to feel the muscular hand that stretches from above and from the side, out of waves and out of air, heavy with pleasure it reaches under me and carries me. I am diffused along its endless fingers, bloated sails inhale the wind, though the time is not quite right. The mast begins to crack when the stuff of prior miracles stirs within, and the boat recoils across the surface and drones like a shooting star, hailing from a minor key, vanishing before its echoed off the face now emerging from this foam. It agrees with me: in the warm sea of membranes and marrow, the world is rising again. Again, only one of us has an inkling of its shape. from The Mad Song by Michael Schiavo, January 2008 Of Bedlam in its prairie pride. Of the roach that winds between the stars, triumphal. Of well-water served in garnet goblets. Of crusted penknife sitting on the pillow in the crib. Of the foxy light July bestows. Of tightwad peace and spendthrift war. Of the ousted governors children, especially his eldest, and the way she swings her hips. Of notorious arts and how they make hoi polloi drunk. Of lauren-blue drifts and plumes. Of your vulcanized scent. Of nightly the oceanic barb I must remove from my heart. Of the bison and the owl. Of a country boy, not easy to know.

~ Ill recruit my army from the oldest religion. They in their carnival will be our liberty. O, but choir, but gas, but nail, and politician will not have it done. Ill eat out your eyes before sun-up. Ill declare the rooftops tarry and tally-ho the National Guard. The eyes of desire are slow fixed upon you. My throng rumbles blacker than theirs. And will be the fountain and the spring. What conference we hold with the heavenly tender. The heart is never wrong, though often mistaken. Dont wait for night to fall, lover. Our campaign has yet to begin. Come find me in the fields with the Atlas of Pan. ~ Had the bonfire not been there. Had the day been longer to whittle. Or had you danced that way with me alone. Every love is a losing cause. But had the night moved us closer. And the reputation of men is cowardice. If I had been a woman like you. ~ Of the coming rain. Of better hostilities toward incivility. Of a dusting broom. Of milk cows gone mad. Of fiery cities, fiery highways, leading to the doorway of more fire, endless fire. Of innumerable enumerations. ~ My mother, when I was young, said many things. I cant recall them but in love. If I were to say love to you would you recall me? Would you mark me as a man who loved even a little? Ive destroyed much I hold dear. Into these clumsy, rampant hands you have fallen. I will try and not destroy you but with fire. Let us go, with speed or slow, northward to that warmer world. And find the cabin where I once believed. And cozy ourselves for a better part. Wheel, then, my goddamn car to the fallen pines. Let it rust there for the next century. And the one after. The Yale Review, Tin House, Seneca Review, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Believer, LIT, The Hat, 1913: A Journal of Forms, and Forklift, Three Poems by Adonis translated from the Arabic by Adnan Haydar and Michael Beard, December 2007 Mask of Songs In the name of his own history, in a country mired in mud, when hunger overtakes him he eats his own forehead. He dies.

The seasons never find out how. He dies behind the interminable mask of songs. The only loyal seed, he dwells alone buried deep in life itself. In the City of the Partisans I. Open your arms O city of Partisans. Welcome him with thorns or with stones. Bind his arms above his head, stretch them into an archway to the grave, tattoo upon his head graven images, brand him with glowing coals and let the flames consume Mihyar. II. More than an olive tree, more than a river, more than a breeze bounding and rebounding, more than an island, more than a forest, a cloud that skims across his leisurely path: all and more in their solitude are reading his book. New Testament He doesn't speak this language. He doesn't know the voices of the wastes a soothsayer in stony sleep, he is burdened with distant languages. Here he comes from under the ruins in the climate of new words, offering his poems to grieving winds unpolished but bewitching like brass. He is a language glistening between the masts, the knight of strange words. Untitled by Pters Brveris translated from the Latvian by Inara Cedrins, January 2008 I am given ten cubic meters of darkness every night I pace over them obediently until the Sun presses its golden electroset to the panes and the garden is covered by compassionate mist

the floor long since worn out boards bleached white like the bones of saints submissively rest side by side disintegrating in corners are unworn violet wings above which the carousel of moths is silent Why Cant We by Kim Hyesoon translated from the Korean by Don Mee Choi, December 2007 leave Buddha alone? We make Buddha ride an elephant like the way a village boy rides on a mans shoulder, and we let Buddha run and play, then make him cry, and we make him couple blissfully with a buttery woman and call it Tantra, but then we make him smile by himself in emptiness, make him sit, lie down, make him be born from the waist, then teach him how to walk right away, and we question him when he lies down to sleep You said this and that didnt you? and we braid his fingers, cut off his nose and swallow it down with water, then dress him in gold, but then we cut his throat and sell his head at a store in Insadong, and we lock him up inside a cave on top of a mountain, and as if that werent enough we keep him inside a rock, starve him, paint his skin gold so that he cant even breathe, have him stand far away on top of a mountain and caress him slowly as we approach him by boat, and beneath his feet we beg him to beat us up. Why cant we leave him alone? We build a house on a cliff overlooking a blue river and lock him up, and a bunch of us go together to gawk at him. We pummel him, crush him, and push him over, then we come home and write a letter of apology in blood from our pierced fingers, and we pull his teeth and divide them up into numerous pouches and give them out to the whole world, and why do we go near him and bow on our knees till they are raw and look once into his eyes then return home with our downcast faces? Two Poems by Sean Singer, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith , November 2007 Sean Singers obsession with jazz has not subsided. On the contrary, his new poems continue to push and bend the jazz lexicon, racing toward the lives and voices that sit at its center. With sonic agility, these poems stride and comp and croon and whimper in service, not just of music, but of the aches and the dilemmas that make music necessary. In the two poems included here, he channels legendary musicians Charlie Parker and Hank Mobley.Tracy K. Smith This ones my Cadillac. This ones my house. Charlie Parker said, pointing to his vein, as he tapped it and some hazel kids played in the sprung yellow hydrant. Hes a target, has Melvillian fuzz, and puffy fingers, tiny bear-like eyesdark whorls, with burnt olive pit. Its heroin. Hero, like the heroisch of its German origin, he impresses others by sleeping late, dozing, and stealing. He never leapt tall buildings, but he did gorge the bucket chicken while a blonde and a redhead untied the apparatus and introduced a line of synthetic superior valve oils: large piston clearance,

low brass and rust-inhibition. Foamy black tar in a clarinet case. Inhibition. Heroin. Rain. Roil. Roast. Brain. Noir. Beat. Crump. Vamp. Doom. I began dissipating as early as 1932, when I was only twelve. Treatise on Hank Mobley Mobley talked about revolution. Asterisk, palladium, forever unjaded. He talked about two livesthe one we learn with and the one we live after that. Mobley slowly moped, as if he was impersonating himself in order to annihilate it. Mobley referred explicitly to everyday life, I put my heavy form on them, then I can do everything I want to do. Think of Leeuwenhoek, smaller and upside-down through his own lens, to capture the place as a sound, yet in making that sound, tightened the grasp on the material that supported his question. Mobley talked about what is subversive about love. When the door to a room closes, the light, orange as a feather, under. Mobley was positive about the refusal of constraints. Strung out, his rung in the ladder broke, as anyone who can swing can get a message across People who talk about revolutions and not these things have corpses in their mouths. Three Poems by Aaron Smith, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith, November 2007 Aaron Smith is an expert at locating the spaces within spaces. In these three poems, he zeroes in on the places where doubt and possibility collide and unsettle our beliefs. They are graceful, full of humility and hard fact, and they arent afraid of making you laugh to yourself, or betterat yourself.Tracy K. Smith Mailbox Blue (Ars Poetica) I don't know either, Jean the color of the sweater the man next to us is wearing:

red, I think, light or dark or regular red, not pink, I do know, but can never match object to crimson to cerise to scarletred, just red, plain red, if you ask me. Sometimes I cheat: Mead-envelope-box red or Irene-McKinney's-book-cover red or leaves-on-the-sidewalk-the-morning-he-died and hope somebody knows what I mean. for Jean Valentine The Bar Closes (But You Dont Want to Go Home) While the man you love bites stories into someone elses back, theres a flicker in your eye only seen in late-night television (the heroine stretching her face, halfgrin, half-cry), all youve done wrong clarified in a liquidy theme song. You say, the only party is my party, the only death worth dying is the disastrous one. If everything was black and white, darling, the world would look more like an afterlife, certain and grand and unexplainable. But even the shoreline against the city tonight is indecisive, jagged and rocky the way desire used to be before you knew enough to know it was desire. War on Terror The woman at the DMV wasn't happy when I asked if I could keep my old drivers license and use it to fight terrorism. She doesn't understand I'm trying to do my part. Ever since the president said we can win the war on terror by not letting fear stop our lives, Ive had a new sense of purpose for the ordinary. Now every object is an instrument for freedom; every action is as good as a Support Our Troops sticker

on a minivan. Yesterday, I was buying toilet paper at Walgreens, and I upgraded my four-roll pack to eight because: Take that! America Haters. Friday in SoHo, I bought sneakers and justice for all. I keep doing what I usually doreturning that polo to the Gap, putting skim milk in my coffeeand I have to admit I feel a whole lot safer in the airport. Because its vacation season I'm thinking of T-shirts: I Battled Terrorism on the New River Gorge; Florida Is for Terror-Fighters! Even my absence has hope: I cant take your call. Im out of the office fighting terror. My co-workers have taken up the cause, too. Annie was Xeroxing for world peace this morning, and Jeremys mass mailing is helping find weapons of mass destruction. After lunch, we sat by the harbor to let the terror digest in our stomachs. Committed tourists stood in a convoluted line to buy tickets for the statue of liberty, which looked small today in the distance, under the blinding, patriotic sun. Two Poems by Kyle Booten, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith, November 2007 Kyle Booten, the youngest writer in the group, is an undergraduate student of creative writing whose poems dwell in imaginative spaces on the far side of history. Im dazzled by his ability to balance arresting beauty and lyrical grace with a mischievous wit that moves quietly and steadily throughout his poems.Tracy K. Smith Country Parsons Epitaph It is the bog hour, the minute which dwindles into a speck of ash. As I do every morning I fall into my chair, like a pebble thrown into a well. I think you are not too thin, though I am lying. My body is old. Today I noticed it is covered with red insects. My body is where the cold goes to sleep.

When the night is lost, it sits on my shoulders and stares at its map, scratching a head with twice as much hair as mine. It is the 18th Century. January. Above my desk, the window frame breaks. Let me in my final moment read this as a symbol: the frame is my earthly living, my fixed stay unfixed. Spells only work while we mutter them, and the same goes for prayers. I am a single man, or less. I am a book held up before a mirror: illegible but not mysterious. I make prophecy: I will stay in this town forever. I foresee the rich lords jowls, quaking with a blood purple ague, and the freckled child squirming through the hay-loft. It is the 18th Century. In hindsight, we will call it the Age of More Politics, a plague milder than the last, printing presses widely distributed so illumination became rare. George III pisses his gilded tailcoat. It was never meant to be quite so shambolic! Once, a parishioner came to me with worries as earnest as a hand on glowing iron. Someone was sickshe was, or her child, or her mother (everyone was for a spell). She wept, and my hand rested upon her neck. I stared into the floor, and past it, into the heavy ground, and even deeper till I saw another land: shores of white dust, the glow of a green candle, the dim circles of owls wings. Invitations to Betsy Rosss Debutante Party I. George, On November 7th, the moon will hit another moonan invisible one. It has been there all along, winking a hollow eye, less than a smudge.

The two moons will collide like bullets. Beneath, there will be a party. My party. Betsy Rosss Debutante Party. Strong punch and sewing, though you do not have to sew. Moon shards will float downward, tearing our clothes as in a history painting, bleeding us a little, to look heroic. It will be cold, but my cheek will warm the red paint on the barn. It will be silent but my fingers will scrape the sheeps neck till the wool hisses and sparks. It will be one evening of many a pewter trinket, a small thing, I will hold it till it melts. II. Ben, Let us not recall the hoary ghost of your opal buttons. To think of this is to linger in an empty bowl. Im grown now. I sit in a hard wooden chair. When I wake, the dawn is respectful, submissive. The rooster hears my ankles pop, is astounded, hushed. III. Thomas, On November 7th, there will be a party. My party. Betsy Rosss Debutante Party. Youll be busy, I assume, tickling yourself with that pantograph. IV. Mother, How proud you were as I traced my first word letters in chalk, building a broken white fence that nobody would ever think to mend. So proud you gave me a lump of green taffy, and I carried it in my fist

down to the Crooked Billet, and threw it in the Delaware, That night, I found it again beneath my pillow, some soft green egg my quaking thoughts had laid. As I grew, the world gave me other words clutterbits of moldy cotton, two-legged stools and every time I wrote a word it was always that first one, your name. It was the dark center, the invisible gown I always wore, the burning star I sewed at the tip of each finger. Cinderella Briefcase brother, what silver Steamboat, brother, have you Got for me this time. Gingerbread cookies glued Blue in frosting for me. But Im starving in the sunroom. Black memory magnet ribbons, make me Better, brother, love me Like only a brother loves. At night When the animals arrive, I am alone As always, and tan as a Coppertone ad, Daddys funny bunny girl. Forever In the woods of this deafRetard fairy tale, of this Brother-loving daughter. And what Would you make of a girl Giving it up in the junkPacked backyard of someones frat party? Daddy, I am spit Pasting junk and shit into glittering Black pink pearls and beads of apathy. Track down the pony Trapped on the carnival-like barge Lit in key lime green like a California Ferris wheel to the Rhine, Back to my Germany Where this awful song began. Give me back my Ritalin. Give me my shock Of medicine. Make sure my spine

Is still living. Mommy Slip the black eel Back in the sealed aquarium. Christmas time in Germany, Mommys got me laced in some French Magic. Some burlesque, some circus and some queer, Candy ass. Now we can pretend I am Daddys blonde princess. Give me my Medicines, Mommy, so I can forget. Unravel the tapestry, the Bible Of childhood. Cock The shotgun to the crimson Crown of this sorry, sorry headCynthia Cruz Three Poems by Terrance Hayes, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith, November 2007 Terrance Hayes is constantly pushing toward new possibilities for private inquiry and new structures against which to ballast his buoyant and boundless sense of language. These poems marry swank and swagger to what I like to think of as a 21st Century gravitas. Tracy K. Smith God is an American I still love words. When we make love in the morning, your skin damp from a shower, the day calms. Shadenfreude may be the best way to name the covering of adulthood, the powdered sugar on a black shirt. I am alone now on the top floor pulled by obsession, the ink on my fingers. And sometimes it is a difficult name. Sometimes it is like the world before America, the kinship of fools and hunters, the children, the dazed dream of mothers with no style. A word can be the boot print in a square of fresh cement and the glaze of morning. Your response to my kiss is I have a cavity. I am in love with incompletion. I am clinging to your moorings. Yes, I have a pretty good idea what beauty is. It survives alright. It aches like an open book. It makes it difficult to live. A. Machine Hey, I am learning what it means to ride condemned. I may be breaking up. I am doing 85 outside the kingdom Of heaven, under the overpass and passed over, The past is over and Im over the past. My odometer Is broken, can you help me? When you get this messAge, I may be a half-ton crush, a half tone of mist

And mystery, maybe trooper bait with the ambulance Ambling somewhere, or a dial of holy stations, a bandAge of clamor and spooling, a dash and semaphore, A pupil of motion on my way to be buried or planted or Crammed or creamed, treading light and water or tread and trepidation, maybe. Hey, I am backfiring along a road Through the future, I am alive skidding on the tongue, When you get this message, will you sigh, My lover is gone? Anchor Head Because keyless and clueless, because trampled in gunpowder and hoof-printed address, from Australopithecus or Adams boogaloo to birdsong and what the bird boogaloos to, because I was waiting to break these legs free, one to each shore, to be head-dressed in sweat, my work, a form of rhythm like the first sex, like the damage of death and distance and depression, of troubled instances and blind instruction, of pleasure and placelessness, because I was off key and careless and learning through leaning, because I was astral and pitchforked and packaged to a dim bungalow of burden and if not burden, the dim boredom of no song, I became a salt-worn dreamanchor, I leapt overboard and shackle and sailed through my reflection on down to ruin, calling out to you, and then calling out no more. Three Poems by Tina Chang, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith, November 2007 In her new poems, Tina Chang steps from the terrain of history and loss navigated in her gorgeous first collection, Half-Lit Houses, toward the various places where one can sense the weight and the tug of public and private danger. Here, speakers move with quicksilver fluidity between the surreal or imagined and the grave realities of the worlds that contain them.Tracy K. Smith

Strange Theater You are reading a book at a table on the stage of a small theater. The theater will be closing in two months. There are books by Freud, Nietzsche, and Foucault on the table. You are seven, face beautifully framed by thick glasses, having read since four with just one candle. There is nothing on stage except you, the candle, the books. The curtain falls. You are crushed between the purple velvet. Act II, Scene I Open, A girl in a garden. She is picking azaleas, placing them into a metal can, swelling. The bees and the dragonflies wont leave her. She swats at them with a small shovel. The background changes and she is ten years older, in the army with a rifle. The rifle is always the main character. Two years later, times have changed. Shes performing in a sequined number, face covered with pancake and blush, just a few people in the audience as she sings her final number, a couple of steps and her stockings fall to her ankles. Act II, Scene II The spotlight is focused on someone new. A hustler with a purple fedora, a cigar, a fat gold cane. He dances, sidesteps the woman. He is the predator and she shouldve seen it coming but she had her childhood glasses on. She is tough and wrestles the hustler. She has him head-locked under her arm, the props are falling, they are tumbling down a hole left of stage. Act III, Scene I The hustler is gone. All she has left of him is his plumage. She is hungry and indicates so by holding her stomach and grimacing. She wants to go home. There is a paper boat that can take her back to New York but she is not sure it can hold her weight. The paper boat gondolier pushes her onto the boat. People wave from the other side. They wanted her to leave all along, her presence needed off stage, in the minutes elsewhere. Epilogue The journey was under the bright lights, a floor functioning like an emergency room in a hospital, gurney and urgency. She exits and exits again, until shes

on the street, in a parking lot. How those faces still light up. She walks through the lot, as if blindly feeling. She knows them now in her waking life. They inhabit her, shaking her down in daylight. The moon never did any good but light the way to those pale faces. Wild Invention This is a story about a girl who ran, all night she ran after the wolf, aimed at its hind legs, then stood above it, and shot it between the eyes, skinned it until the soul of the animal departed from this world. Then the meat stopped pulsing, then it shined with all its delicate possibilities. This is the story of the girl who stalked the forest with nothing but a shotgun and compass, due North, hollowed the animal under moonlight, desire dripping like blood into a tin pan, the stars leaking a tonic into her cup. Her appetite was the forest she traveled. Though lost, she dragged the wolf with her like a past surrendering to a new life. The sun emerging over the mountain like a heart flayed open with a light in the middle. * The animal must be shot. You must be hungry enough to skin it without flinching, must be willing to cook it, still trembling over the watchful eye of the fire. You must also be willing to track yourself down, see the will of the god who made all beasts fear for their lives. The rabbit quivers in its white coat, raises its ears and takes off, the boar nothing but an exotic pest roaming the hillsides. You eat, grateful for the skin that keeps this life in tact, under the roof beams of your long life, under a bridge that is a heaven of deer bones. You are a more wonderful animal than you could ever imagine: Great flying

loon, foxes coupling in the dark brush. Imagine, Refugee Dream blood, dream red, dream. The r and then the ea and the dm. Let the letters ride there, then subtract it. The roof of a shelter, the grandeur of smoke, a sun print on a rocket. I have come to the border town. Take away the I and put it in a shelter dream, now fill it up with bullets, now dream bull. Now take the b out of it which is the engine that makes it go. Theres a baby in a basket. Theres a burning basket lullabye. You know the words. The words are mixed with the soil when the soil is lifted with a shovel. Place the soil on top of the wooden boxes whose bodies dream oos and ahs, of fireworks branching out in the sky on holiday, pots and pans clanging, children playing by dawn, a dream nailed down to a box. Two Poems by David Semanki, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith, November 2007 David Semankis terse and elegant poems study the weight of gestures, silence, hope and misgiving as they exist within his human subjects. His gaze is cinematic in its precision, spotlighting the emotional and narrative significance of small yet key details within the everyday world: street lamps, roadside weeds, chimes in a courtyard, the frost on a window.Tracy K. Smith Film Study: Transcendence A modern section of Rome. She walks home from his apartment along the edge of a wide, empty street passing under the dusky branches of a conifer. The street lights are off. Close by, a water tower rises. Contentment fills her. She sweeps her shawl over the purple and burnt orange heads of roadside weeds and wild flowers. A silence ripens in all things. Reflected in the late summer sprawl, finality and prospect. Night has faded. The dawn shimmers like hand-blown glass, activated by light.

Argument Shouldnt you both be used to it a ritual which you revert to each night? This turning off the light, lying still, falling asleep. Why such sadness between you? Isnt there comfort in even this simple sound of chimes stirring in the courtyard willow? Do you always need more? Such clarity to barren winter; moonlight on a block of row houses, the river end of the street shimmering these arent obstacles, but gifts youve been given, as now youre privileged to behold each others despair in despair youre called back to your real selves. Behind the blue and white curtain frost stars the window. Two Poems by Kyle Booten, Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith, November 2007 Kyle Booten, the youngest writer in the group, is an undergraduate student of creative writing whose poems dwell in imaginative spaces on the far side of history. Im dazzled by his ability to balance arresting beauty and lyrical grace with a mischievous wit that moves quietly and steadily throughout his poems.Tracy K. Smith Country Parsons Epitaph It is the bog hour, the minute which dwindles into a speck of ash. As I do every morning I fall into my chair, like a pebble thrown into a well. I think you are not too thin, though I am lying. My body is old. Today I noticed it is covered with red insects. My body is where the cold goes to sleep. When the night is lost, it sits on my shoulders and stares at its map, scratching a head with twice as much hair as mine. It is the 18th Century. January. Above my desk, the window frame breaks. Let me in my final moment

read this as a symbol: the frame is my earthly living, my fixed stay unfixed. Spells only work while we mutter them, and the same goes for prayers. I am a single man, or less. I am a book held up before a mirror: illegible but not mysterious. I make prophecy: I will stay in this town forever. I foresee the rich lords jowls, quaking with a blood purple ague, and the freckled child squirming through the hay-loft. It is the 18th Century. In hindsight, we will call it the Age of More Politics, a plague milder than the last, printing presses widely distributed so illumination became rare. George III pisses his gilded tailcoat. It was never meant to be quite so shambolic! Once, a parishioner came to me with worries as earnest as a hand on glowing iron. Someone was sickshe was, or her child, or her mother (everyone was for a spell). She wept, and my hand rested upon her neck. I stared into the floor, and past it, into the heavy ground, and even deeper till I saw another land: shores of white dust, the glow of a green candle, the dim circles of owls wings. Invitations to Betsy Rosss Debutante Party I. George, On November 7th, the moon will hit another moonan invisible one. It has been there all along, winking a hollow eye, less than a smudge. The two moons will collide like bullets. Beneath, there will be a party. My party. Betsy Rosss Debutante Party. Strong punch and sewing, though you do not have to sew. Moon shards will float downward, tearing our clothes as in a history painting, bleeding us a little, to look heroic.

It will be cold, but my cheek will warm the red paint on the barn. It will be silent but my fingers will scrape the sheeps neck till the wool hisses and sparks. It will be one evening of many a pewter trinket, a small thing, I will hold it till it melts. II. Ben, Let us not recall the hoary ghost of your opal buttons. To think of this is to linger in an empty bowl. Im grown now. I sit in a hard wooden chair. When I wake, the dawn is respectful, submissive. The rooster hears my ankles pop, is astounded, hushed. III. Thomas, On November 7th, there will be a party. My party. Betsy Rosss Debutante Party. Youll be busy, I assume, tickling yourself with that pantograph. IV. Mother, How proud you were as I traced my first word letters in chalk, building a broken white fence that nobody would ever think to mend. So proud you gave me a lump of green taffy, and I carried it in my fist down to the Crooked Billet, and threw it in the Delaware, That night, I found it again beneath my pillow, some soft green egg my quaking thoughts had laid.

As I grew, the world gave me other words clutterbits of moldy cotton, two-legged stools and every time I wrote a word it was always that first one, your name. It was the dark center, the invisible gown I always wore, the burning star I sewed at the tip of each finger. 'struth by Christopher Mulrooney, October 2007 its a fine American laggard sea found Haitian with a boatload sinking under the precipice there fallen into the new sink in the new kitchen the one the ratsll never never gnaw into well anyways not sos youd notice in the interim so youd regard the pretty new kitties and rogue scholars we have a million of em all down the alles of New Luxembourg Gardens in the nice new backyard of some pimp or other Mambo Cinema by Barbara Hamby, October 2007 Last night at the mambo cinema, with its wide screen diamond sheen, my medulla oblongata was knocked back to the Stone Age, primal scream rising as I took my seat like a black sheep, Red Queen, a two-ton gorilla of white light on the noir scene, my kundalini shaking like the late-night shriek of a wino in the middle of Tennessee Street, sick of the sky and its deluge of thunder and sun. Last night at the mambo cinema I was the Hun in Garbos eyes again, her sideways voice, Russian chic, a Red this time, on the lam in Paris, drinking its music, champagne, her cheekbones fading into Faye Dunaways just before the machine gun blast. O Mrs. Mulwray, last night at the mambo cinema, I was dancing with Ringo and 50 Cent, all the low-rent fencing between pop and hip-hop a dream. Michelangelo in the scaffolding, between the beams his rococo Old Testament unfolding like the silent screen, John Gilberts moustache on Noahs puss, dim-bulb, neo-con of the big flood, bad blood between him and God, his girls trying on suede boots, Manolo slingbacks, in a whirl

while Marie Antoinette paced back stage, wig askew itching for her top billing in the knife-fight beef stew of history. Last night at the mambo cinema I was kissing Keanu Reeves, the sad enema of daylight melting in the cracked sundown Crimea of my mind, a middle-school fumble in the dark. Hark hark, the gods do bark, hurl their thunderous quarks into the rathskeller of the twentieth century burning my back as I run away. O hail Mary full of firestorms, hallowed be thy payday, cause last night on the mambo highway I was serving some fast food chili dogs to Mao and Idi Amin, crying my eyes out over the red onions, burgers frying on the slick grill, my black mouth a shill for the crap shoots, jack boots, quick shags in the shed, lost again on the root canal of love. Last night I quivered in a dark room, waiting for a stranger, a strangler, the old big boom to blow me into another body, the sweet tomb of my mind scratching its lottery tickets, sure win this time. Last night I was seven again, my blue Schwinn gliding down the Champs-Elyses, four in the morning, my feet on the handlebars, blonde hair streaming, learning how to move in the darkdancing Jesus!seeing how far a poor girl could get with a firefly tiara and a bellyful of Keats. Last night I was dreaming of youmy heart attack, lymphoma, low-rent beaming rattlesnake reunion with the other side, red tide taking me away on the cholera sea where Id like to find a key, please, or a map, because X marks the spot on my heart, my chart, my evolving partMexican diorama of the New World, the smart ass conquistadors stinking in their tin suits. Last night I was the sacrificial maiden on the far right, two hundred of us buck naked on the high altar of blood and breasts, last requests filtering in, Walter Matthau, high priest with a Sonny Bono wig, necklace of Aztec gold, raising his knife to the tender place at the base of my throat, the final vote. Last night I woke up sweating, Nefertiti again, wondering, Why cant I move? wrapped in a hundred thousand dirty looks with the presidential contenders, the corner crooks, because theres no plan, no script, no high Jacobean biblical conclave to translate this fog, the seam between who we are and our two-bit movieland dream. Two Poems by George Szirtes , September 2007

Questions for Stan Laurel How could the body not be comical when the music it plays is the fiddling of bones, the deep fart of flesh in the stalls, the high whine of bagpipes in the ear, a fusillade of drumming automatics, a small rattling of hollow balls, the faint harmonics of the queer? How could the body not be comical when one is fat, the other thin and the belly droops to the crotch, and the sliding trombone is the ripping of pants in the sunshine, when comedy is being unhurt in the shadow of the great cliff having fallen from air and proving the hard ground harmless? How could the body not be comical when grace is the other name of loss, along with scapegrace, disgrace, the un-grace entailed in clumsiness? How could your body not be mine and mine yours in the constant exchange of bodies, from the svelte athlete, the ploughman with his lunch, the groan of the almost defeated Bulgarian weightlifter, when it is the childs body that holds no surprises? When the song and dance you break into begins as something twangs in the doorway and the barbershop boys sing you into the eternal bar kept open for such as you, and the terrible force of the mallet on your head makes you break into your one true falsetto.

Canzone for Marilyn Hacker Somewhere there is a perfect architecture where light, form, shadow, space all move to form a language beyond architecture, where to dream of the wrong architecture is to dream of dying. But waking bans the dream and reinvents the architecture of the empty day that is all architecture and no dream. Is there somewhere a culprit we might blame for this, and is the culprit ourselves? We make our own architecture

and live in it as in a house of ill fame, it being all we desire of fame. Our fame is inward: it is a private fame for which we must create an architecture of outwardness if only because fame cannot remain private if it is to be fame. We know our names and must pronounce the bans from the pulpit of our anonymous fame. Who can object to this? It is our own fame we give names to, couple with and move house with. It is ourselves we move and no one else. We proclaim our fame to the walls that recognise a culprit when they hear one: name itself is culprit. And what, after all, is it to be a culprit? It is to have a certain portion of fame and take it for self, blaming the culprit for desire to survive merely as a culprit. It is the self building an architecture in which it may be possible to be a culprit. But who could bear always to be a culprit, a culprit, what is more, at one remove beyond the self, unable to move a culprit in a pulpit perhaps but still a culprit, subject therefore to all the usual bans, both hating and welcoming such bans? Theres a certain kind of building the city bans, the builder of which it treats as a culprit, applying not only these but other bans, because cities depend on applying bans in case the rampant self obscures the fame due only to cities. Order dictates bans: bans dictate anonymity. No one bans no one. None may construct the architecture that is merely a building calling itself architecture. The self may bar itself against some bans but no self can afford to stay still. It must move. Theres always another building, one more move. Self is an architecture that must move in order to accommodate. No self bans movement because it knows that to move is to survive. Heart must beat, blood move around the building. To live is to be a culprit. And then another enters with a neat move slick as a poem that is obliged to move the heart, which is all a self can know of fame,

bestowing fame through accommodation. Fame at last is words like these, constantly on the move turning the building into architecture or simply calling the building architecture. I touch the miraculous architecture of your face feeling its own solitary fame knowing myself both self and culprit. Something inside the word rebels, bans conversation. Its language on the move. Lovelier Near the End by Mark Bibbins, September 2007 The fate of the interoffice matchmaker is to be forever sitting on press releases intuiting one big happy time zone. Whither the lamplight and moreover the magic beans surely the prospectus will guide us? He says my heart beats in the sun, he says Im just saying, he says nobody just says, he says the troops are literal and Im working on my skee-ball game, he says we serve at the pleasure of harms way, he says Muzak has gotten really sophisticated, he also says poison grows and grows everywhere and will outrun us all. Thumb, Throat, Affidavit by Tung-Hui Hu, August 2007 At this point your credit score will be helpful. Turn in your old train tickets and walk the way you have always walked, feet turned out, heels light as oars. Request letters of reference from those

proper to you, those who speak for you when you are held, speechless. The grocer finds evidence you once stole candy, and in doing so, proves your existence, young, unafraid of the law, desired. Another remembers the treehouse that grows silver with age, lumber turning back to forest. Have you heard the phrase Lend me your hands? Your parents, when they were still in love, learned each others signature. Angle after loop, teaching one another how to become another. Love Tokens by Tran Da Tu translated from the Vietnamese by Linh Dinh, August 2007 Ill give you a roll of barbwire A vine for this modern epoch Climbing all over our souls Thats our love, take it, dont ask Ill give you a car bomb A car bomb exploding on a crowded street On a crowded street exploding flesh and bones Thats our festival, dont you understand Ill give you a savage war In the land of so many mothers Where our people eat bullets and bombs instead of rice Where there arent enough banana leaves to string together To replace mourning cloths for the heads of children Ill give you twenty endless years Twenty years seven thousand nights of artillery Seven thousand nights of artillery lulling you to sleep Are you sleeping yet or are you still awake On a hammock swinging between two smashed poles White hair and whiskers covering up fifteen years A river stinking of blood drowning the full moon Where no sun could ever hope to rise Im still here, sweetie, so many love tokens Metal handcuffs to wear, sacks of sand for pillows Punji sticks to scratch your back, fire hoses to wash your face How do we know which gift to send each other And for how long until we get sated Lastly, Ill give you a tear gas grenade A tear gland for this modern epoch A type of tear neither sad nor happy Drenching my face as I wait. Saigon, 1964 Rescue

by Rebecca Morgan Frank, July 2007 I. Santo Tomas Internment camp, Manila The hero arrives in an armada, years after you begin dreaming of him in black and white. Armies stamp through your sleep, dole out chocolate, dried milk with a chalkiness you long for. In daylight hours you let your babys face grow into a young man, turn sounds of crying into words, and answer chores, homework, grounded: You long to punish someone. Men die for talking back. You collect retorts, place them in a bamboo box that took days for you to make. Some nights they come on horseback, charge and sweep you up, as if you were a girl, a damsel, a princess. You wake, shamed, in sweat. Other times they throw you a sword and you fight back. You pin the officers sleeve with the blade and make him stand until he falls in fatigue. This is what it is to be weak. You have seen strong men become bone, beggar, betrayer. You dream of when you were a small boy, crying in a dorm in Hong Kong. No one comes. Then footsteps. Your dead mother vanquished by each strike of the cane. Once you rescued a starved dog from a man with a stick. On the walk home, it bit you, drawing blood. God damn dog. Your waking words. The fleet has come. Or tomorrow, the fleet will come. Every night, the fleet comes. II. What do I know about rescue? The dead possum with her babies writhing in the bloody mess a car made on impact? How I got on the school bus and left them there, drowning in blood? The time a girl pulled me out of the back of a pickup my belly full of pillsand drove me to the hospital? The way it was never spoken of again? Here is what rescue looks like in a photograph: A sea of starved faces, a General: MacArthur rescues my grandfather from internment. I dont know what it is to be confined from life. To be worthy of an army, of thousands of prayers back home. What do I know about rescue? Or the lack of it, as I was pinned to a bed. Or later, chained to the near dead.

Who wants to hear these tales of local losses, of misplaced sacrifice? Small parts of ourselves scalped, carried off by the victor. The ones we had been trying to rescue. What do I know about rescue, how to go in and do the job and then leave? MacArthur never moved into the camp and became a prisoner. What is it about leaving I dont understand? III. after Nelly Sachs We the rescued carry forth your burdens. We take them in flight across the South China Sea, the Philippine Sea, the islands between. We beat the tin can of our enclosure, the failing wing, the sing song of an engine dying. We drop ourselves into the white stretch of our task, each grain a mask of who we have become. The sun glares against our teapot of a temper, the whistling grows: When will we be rescued? We the rescued report that you have not returned us to ourselves. The plants are dying all around you. Where is the water, the secret potion, the band-aid in the first aid, the white apron, the history of helpers, the stethoscope, the doctors note: excuses for ourselves and everybody else. Resuscitated blame. Why have you not come? We the rescued are the ones already dead, the ones you said had returned. We the rescued come postage paid. Bury us, take us back to our soils. There is no place that does not call us home. We are skinless, eyeless, we have no tongue. Can you hear us? We the rescued rely on memory. You cannot forget what follows you like a low dust, settling across the tables and shelves, the back of the chair, whitening your hair. We are everywhere you have not been. Do you feel us sticking the elevator door? We the rescued, we are waiting. Can you not hear our songs? How have you never come? Double Reed by Kazim Ali, July 2007 when dusk says hand it over what am I supposed to hand over in printing you have to choose between portrait or landscape some evenings even though I am cold I wont go inside for a jacket the bulb in the hallway has gone out or did someone purposely unscrew it I dont know how to talk to you also I dont know how to listen

I dont know anything about music except clarinet is single reed and oboe is double reed doubled in the night and finally warm I keep thinking about how I didnt lock the doors the trees have vanished into dark but evening is the sound of cars in the road truancy is my life among the succulents and my ardent wish that the war years be finished in sculpture you are not supposed to carve but carve away double reed means your mouth isnt even touching the instrument you are only lightly holding a reed against another reed New Translations of Ren Char by Nancy Naomi Carlson, June 2007 The Slapped Adolescent He was hurled to the ground by the same unjust blows that hurtled him far ahead in his life, toward future years when one person alone could no longer make him bleed. Like the small shrub that draws succor from roots, clasping bruised branches against its resolute core, he backed away mute into what he knew and into his innocence. Finally freed and filled with sovereign joy, he fled to the meadow and reached the trembling wall of dry reeds. He cajoled the mud to rise up. What was noblest and most enduring on earth seemed to adopt him, as if to make amends. And so it would start again. He knew one day he would hold his ground, attentive and standing tall among menmore at risk, more resistant. Mute Game With my teeth I have seized life Upon the knife of my youth. With my lips today, With my lips alone Briefly come, Bloom of the slopes, Orions spear Has reappeared. Wholesale Romania by Chris Tanasescu translated from the Romanian by Ilya Kaminsky and Martin Woodside, May 2007 All these people speaking of the revolution are emptytheir fingers and elbows cremated in secret by Ceausescu in that sainted Januaryall we talk now is the future EU prices, Belgian tourists, and low interest loans.

But you are the only one reading my poems before I publish them (if I ever do); there is no other Authority in the studio-apartment we proudly possess in the milltown outskirt. You seem so disengaged with your literature engag, this is how you sometimes chaff me in the cold mornings. Yes, thats right, maybe Ive run out of patience, we have certainly run out of cigarettes and the latter, as Cioran used to say hold more fire than the Gospels in our blessed country. New Translations of Polina Barskova by Ilya Kaminsky, May 2007 Manuscript Found by Natasha Rostova During the Fire I will try to live on earth without you. I will try to live on earth without you. I will become any object, I dont care what I will be this speeding train. This smoke or a beautiful gay man laughing in the front seat. A human body is defenseless on earth. Its a piece of fire-wood. Ocean water hits it. Lenin puts it on his official shoulder. And therefore, in order not to suffer, a human spirit lives inside the wind and inside the wood and inside the shoulder of a great dictator. But I will not be water. I will not be a fire. I will be an eyelash. A sponge washing your neck-hairs. Or a verb, an adjective, I will become. Such a word slightly lights your cheek. What happened? Nothing. Something visited? Nothing. What was there you cannot whisper. No smoke without fire, they whisper. I will be a handful of smoke over this lost city of Moscow. I will console any man, I will sleep with any man, under the armys traveling horse carriages.

A Still Life Saturday morning. Schubert. Frosya torments the slipper. White hydrangea. (Remember, as in Sapunov?) I lie on the floor between dolls, small hats, t-shirts. I stare at you, and close my eyes. Music for performance over water? Over waters? The German rhythm stops like a member of the National-Socialist party in a frightened mouth. You sit by the computer, covered with light ice covered with your porcelain beauty. And waters of Schubert like thousands of tiny mice boil in your mouth. Ive been looking at you for three years, like a maniac at the corpses cameo waitingthe policemen will arrivetheyll begin to yell beat me with a shoe, and I will lay quietly on the floor. Know nothing. Hear nothing. Nothing. The white hydrangea, a fistful of fireworks in the sky, as if some celestial mole labors in the sky. Mishenka, it is too bright? It is not too bright. Bubbles of Schubert. Tears bubbling in my mouth. Four New Translations of Paul Celan translated from the German by Ian Fairley, April 2007 I HEAR THE AXE HAS FLOWERED, I hear the place can't be named, I hear the bread that looks on him heals the hanged man, the bread his wife baked him, I hear they call life the only refuge. WITH A FIELDMOUSE VOICE you squeak up, a sharp clamp, you bite through my vest into flesh, a cloth, you slip over my mouth, even as my talk would weigh you, shadow, down.

IN LIZARD skins, Epileptic, I bed you, on the sills, the gable holes infill us, with lightsoil. SNOW PART, pitched, to the last, in the updraught, before for ever unwindowed huts: to skim flat dreams over fretted ice; to hew out the wordshadows, to cord them round the cramp-iron in the pit. Average Three Poems by Jon Woodward, April 2007 Average You know what I mean? You know what I mean? (Molotov cocktail, unlit) The symbol shows only all its previous lives (16 oz. can of Miller High Life) Throw it at him! Dont just stand there, throw it at him! It transforms in mid-air, hidden in plain sight, monster on the wing in its defenders mouth skywriting its name in the optical illusion blank spaces shifting around the surface of the necessary paperwork (also in mouth) Concentrate hard to work out a set of modular clarifications (for later)

average maybe, active maybe, surprising maybe, potential maybe, Im kinda surprised that its still alive, cuz I got that from uh, what was her name? Yeah, so the - I mean thats gotta be like, what, six seven eight years old now? Cuz what that was what, ninety - ninety six, maybe? That - that thing was uh I mean it always seemed like it was kind of neglected when it was living at their place. You know what I mean? Ive heard that they can live quite a long life, but I dont know how long that is. [long pause] Obviously ten years. The effects? On what, the lifespan? Ha haI kind of, think so? I dont remember exactly when he went but I think thats when it was. I dont remember exactly but I think thats when it was The sun was shedding apples Like a lyric of shuffled cards The marigolds kept blooming & the pie turned out okay Im ears I said & Im proud of it but Im really a terrible listener The dog turned into a doughnut maker The maple turned into a flight simulator The lieutenant told him to squeeze his hand if he understood what was being said In a Station of the Metro Oh glory! Alive! Interstellar travel or seaweed observer Mutual information or beggarly doggerel Head that shifts independently of the eye(s) colossus nuke it from orbit its the only way to be absolutely certain from the INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION those crass incessant stupid right angles, but then again, War! Bring the full articulation or suffer! Im looking at you! the bending thing (an octopus?) says to a bending man dancing for spare change from passersby, Where you got yours!? Out, from usage. Movement from my eyes (out) fades, the movement

has faded into rows and rows identical in air, in subtle air. Usage from my hands out has faded, movement fades and rows and rows emerge out of the unnoticed subtle static continuous moves They keep the man in a bright orange uniform They keep him in the rows. Curse In the President, when he purrs, Are two liquids, which he stirs Cool saliva warmed by sunlight Tepid ichor cooled by moonlight With a headless daisy stem He, motioning, mingles them Purposeless potion, President-swirled Beautiful President, blameless world Four New Translations of Rumi by Coleman Barks, March 2007 Calm in the Midst of Lightning When the love-lion wants to drink our blood, we let him. Every moment we offer up a new soul. Someone comes to collect the turban and the shoes. Calm in the midst of lightning stands the cause of lightning. The way I look is so fragile, yet here in my hand is an assurance of eternity. A snake drags along looking for the ocean. What would it do with it? If, for penance, you crush grapes, you may as well drink the wine. You imagine that the old sufis had dark sediment in their cups. It does not matter what you think. The flower that does not smile at the branch withers. Shams Tabriz rises as the sun. It is night now. What's the point of counting stars?

Spilled Speech As everyone drifts off to sleep, I am still staring at the stars. Separation from you does have a cure. There is a way inside the sealed room. If you will not pour wine, at least allow me half a mouthful of leftover dregs. Secretly I fill my sleeve with pearls. When the love-police detain me, let your moon come down and hold me in its arms. Officer, I know this man. I will take him home. Let my wandering end as the story does of the Kurd who loses his camel. Then the full moon comes out, and he finds what he lost. These rocks and earth-forms were originally sun-warmed water, were they not? Then the planet cooled and settled to what we are now. The blood in our bodies carries a living luminous flow, but watch when it spills out and soaks into the ground. That is how speech does, overflowing from silence. Silk on one side, cheap, striped canvas on the other. A Mountain Nest Have you seen a fish dissatisfied with the ocean? Have you seen a lover? Have you seen an image that tries to avoid the engraver? Have you seen a word emptied of meaning? You need no name. You are the ocean. I am held in your sway. Fire in your presence turns into a rosebush. When I am outside you, life is torment. Then Solomon walks back into Jerusalem, and a thousand lanterns illuminate.

The divine glory settles into a mountain nest. The emperor and the source of light, Shams Tabriz, lives here, with no location in my chest. Let the Soup Simmer As the air of April holds a rosebush, I draw you to myself. But why mention roses? You are the whole, the soul, the spirit, the speaker, and what follows Say, the quarry and the bowstring pulled to the ear. The lion turns to the deer, Why are you running in my wake? There are thousands of levels from what lives in the soil to humanity, but I have brought you along from town to town. I will not leave you somewhere on the side of the road. Let the soup simmer with the lid on. Be quiet. There is a lion cub hidden in a deer-body. You are the polo ball. With my mallet I make you run. Then I track you. Four Erotic Poems by Chinese poets translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping, January 2007 To the Tune of Magpie on the Branch Her peony is raised high and dewed with fragrance but his legs are too short to reach, so he uses a small table like a man climbing up a cloud ladder or an old monk beating the temple drum. His vast and gentle squashy passion, is like a swing swinging up and down in the courtyard till the urge is uncontainable. When the tree falls down, monkeys scatter everywhere. from Flower Encampment and Battle Formations (Ming Dynasty)

_________ Conversation between Heart and Mouth Thinner the day before yesterday, even thinner yesterday, the more I look, the thinner I become. I sleep in the morning, sleep in the evening, too lazy to comb my hair. Speaking of evening makes me fear this evening but now its evening again. I want yet should not think about him; I want and yet cannot push him from my mind. With my mouth I ask my heart; with my heart I ask my mouth. Anonymous Poetry Collection by Feng Menglong (1574-1646) _________ Idiot Thoughts My handsome fatal foe, why are you gone so long? I cant stop my heart from trembling, missing you. You put some sugar on the tip of my nose. I cannot lick it, though it smells so nice. You leave something sweet behind and let me think about it slowly. Anonymous Poetry Collection by Feng Menglong (1574-1646) _________ The Poem of Huizhen A thin moon pierces the window lattice and firefly lights appear in the jade sky. Where the far sky begins is all silky distance. The low trees emerge as a dark blur of green. Dragon songs swirl through the courtyard bamboo as phoenix songs touch parasol trees by the well. Thin fog descends like silk gauze. In slight wind the sound of jade rings is heard. The Royal Mother of the West trails a dark red train. Her maids carry cloud-shaped jade in their hands. Deep in the night, people all are quiet. Our meeting is like dawn, though rain is drizzling. Pearl light shines from her decorated shoes, flowers peek from her embroidered clothes, her jeweled hairpin is a colored phoenix, and her silk shawl covers a red rainbow. She says shes from Yao Hua Garden

and is on pilgrimage to the Jade Emperors palace. Because she took a tour to Luo City she happened to come here, east of Song family. When I flirt with her she resists at first. but soft feelings already secretly connect us. When she bows her hair it seems the shadows of cicadas move. As she walks about her jade stocking are gilded with dust. When she turns its like snowflakes swirling. On the bed we embrace through silk and like Mandarin ducks dance with our necks twined. Like two kinds of jade, we go well together, though her dark eyebrows knit frequently in shyness. Her warm red lips feel like they are melting. I taste her breath like a fragrant orchid, her creamy skin, her full jade flesh. She feels strengthless, unable to move even a wrist, though shes so sensitive that her body tenses. The light of her sweat is like pearls. Her tangled hair is loose and black. Happiness like this comes once in a thousand years. But now we hear the fifth beat of the night drum. We want to stay, but time is scarce, We are so close that it is hard to stop. Her face is sorrow and her words promise faithfulness. She gives me ring to remember this time, ties a knot, to say our hearts are twined. Her tears drop on the mirror and around the guttering lamp insects swirl. The dawn light comes slowly and the rising sun starts to show. She flies back to Luo on the back of a crane and plays a vertical flute on Song Mountain. My clothes are fragrant as if dyed with musk. There are red stains still on the pillow. Standing in front of the grass in the pond, my thoughts are floating far away. I hear a harp crying and complaining like a crane. gaze at the clear River of Stars and hope to see her crane returning. But the ocean is too broad to cross and the sky is too high to soar above, so like a floating cloud with nowhere to go I walk back inside the tower. by Yuan Zhen (779-831) Four Poems on War by Chinese poets translated by Geoff Waters, January 2007

Lodging at the Stone Creek Way-Station, Hearing a Woman Crying by Li Duan (ca. 780) Outside the door of this mountain station is a woman, Crying bitterly into the night clouds of autumn. She told me her husband died in the wars; This morning she met his general coming home. ---------To a Friend Lost in the Tibetan War by Zhang Ji (768-830?) Last year you were sent to garrison Yuezhi, Soon the whole army was destroyed below the walls. Since then, Tibet and China have been cut off, no news; Are you dead, or alive, wandering some distant land forever? No one went to bring back the abandoned tents; A few horses returned with torn flags we couldn't make out. I would have a ceremony for you, but what if you are alive? So, all I can do is shed a few tears for you, lost at the end of the sky. ---------On Birds and Bugs by Bai Juyi (772-846) Mites fight bloody battles for nests on a mosquito's eyelash; Tiny kingdoms are at war over lands on a snail's horn. If we looked down across our own world from highest heaven, We would see heroes fighting to the death for a speck of dust. ---------At the Frontier by Xu Hun (791?- late 850s) We fought all night, north of the Sanggan River; Of our forces, half did not return. When morning came, so did mail from home; Families still sending dead men warm clothes for winter. Complaint / Za_alenie by Andrzej Bursa translated from the Polish by Kevin Christianson and Halina Ablamowicz , November 2006 Mr. Minister of Justice... you Sir offend me. I don't know you personally, but I saw your photo in the paper and I feel deeply offended, unfortunately not just by you Sir, the majority of State-run and social institutions are insults to me, almost every one of the citizens of our state is an insult aimed directly at me. Really, not just once do I ask myself for whom was it so vital to construct so enormous a machine with architecture, a military, law and crime, so that it would personally plague ME. Even the blind man installed on the street corner is there to drive me insane. Yet how about it if e.g. you just sent me a package along with a letter:

Mr. Bursa You are a clever and not bad-looking lad. We offer you this sacrifice: here is a pair of shoes size 10. Signed: Mankind The Government RE: appeal to the World Council. But no, doing this is a waste of money to you. But for the creation of all those ideologies and apostles, each one of whom must have at the very least 20 pairs of boots (with goat-skin uppers), for this, to spite ME for stuff like this youve got money Mr. Minister! Ultimately I don't hold any grudges against you Sir. You Sir are one bitter pill (your jokes) tossed surreptitiously into my morning coffee. Ill digest it as well as you Sir. But the law, what does the law have to say about this? Wheel by Jennifer Burch, October 2006 if I am not green and horses do not fly then my thymus strikes an unseen note antelopes across a sky of time I wear a coat of smoky petals burning red and white twelve suns bounce light on shapes five crystal-faced I swim the air two, four, or ten arms churning loose till I wear shining yellow, lime if in my hands I hold a skull, a trident, drum, and noose I rub the secret lining of a fire beat the sound of ou, bend down and scatter blue Three Poems by Terese Svoboda, July 2006 Dove Intensive A name or idea settles on me while this dove flies an eight over the wainscoting, while wind overcomes it, flap by flap, until the blue of its lungs and this room both sigh it. Even doves get frantic in spring, sore-throated single-minded machines looking for a gear. Under the bird-swell, fresh light alarms the buds and in a day leaves look ornamental and dirt, so simple, cracks as if beat.

Think of crumbs vs. getting away. Dear soul, con-soul me, re-soul me, give me your coun-soulthe lyrics. The V.P. bags the president instead of an employee, or even bird flu. Grey is the new blue, dove. Bad Neighbor All the ivy ever cannot cover what you see in peekaboo. The great fly-bynights, Satan and his fold, hoot in great swoops announcing what you glimpse as more of a problem than a few ex-mammals cruising tonight's skies. Like an electric alarm out of you a chirp dits its way into Hello. Science says nothing's lost, then it hedges. The hedges, as square as the capital letters important books begin with, screen the neighbor but not his feet--could shoes do, the part for whole, each for Each? You'd rather see more clouds or dawn, a length of snake as hose, not Other. An otter in the gutter. Not one bad neighbor. Hamlet in Hirsute The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect domestic security. --ACLU Who goes there? Hamlet in hirsute, nude as a pickle, dragging the skull as toy. His chest hair waves To be or not? or Tis nobler-Whatever. Check the curtain. Spy vs. spy vs. spy its community, just healthy curiosity. Ophelia doesnt sleep,

she circles her bowl, eyes alert to all sides, Is everywhere. When nine of the elect stand on chairs, we ask: How high are those chairs? They grow so old whispering their lips whisker, their tongues shake. If they didnt have ears but no one says that. We wash wash wash their hands. Three Poems by Peg Boyers, July 2006 Mantilla Paper-thin prayer thing, neither shawl nor veil nor scarf nor cape: swaddler of babes and believers: to leave you is to grow up. I loved being swaddled in your black and pearl gray lace, such womanly colors for a pre-teen who received you as a keepsake from her mother on a trip to Spain, each tiny knot in the cloth pulled tight by some bent-over crone in a rocker in the Canary Islands or sullen Andalusa. We fingered the mantillas in the box, leafing through them like a book, speed-reading for fineness of texture and design, proportion and holy aspect, that day we walked on the Gran Via, two pious knock-outscomo hermanas se parecen shopping for church garments, head coverings to wear to Mass, long gauzy shimmer draped over our bare shoulders so as not to offend saints, or arouse priests. See how I profane your lace, pull it around my neck in a jocular noose-knot, its anarchy of frills bursting from my staid collar in funky irreverence, a flourish to amuse our grown-up son, whom we will meet for lunch at Hatties if hell have us.

The knot at my neck It's not irrelevant. I remember now. It has a sacred, insubstantial use. I tied it loose to remind myself to prayonly tentatively not to presume, not even to hope. The Effects of Intemperance after Jan Steen It's the usual story, the mother has fallen asleep, too bored And exhausted to notice what is happening around her. All the lights in the house on: TV's, computers, radios Alive with violence and sex; the childrenmine, But not mine Running around naked, Shouting casual obscenities, Laughing the careless laugh Of the young. A pig presides in the center In a manger full of straw, and before him, As in a nativity scene, Parade the lusty children Heralding him with roses As they grab each other's pricks And romp. The parrot on his perch Repeats their chant: Hail the pig! Hail the pig! Hail the pig! I am dreaming the dream of helpless inattention. The pig is real. Time Orders Old Age to Destroy Beauty The crone has come. I've seen her before. First, as a Rubens madam, holding the light to Delilah and her barber castrating Samson with a haircut, each fallen tress pulling her gap-toothed smile a little wider. Once in a procession of shepherdesses in an adoration scene by an unknown Neapolitan, she hovered on the hillside licking her chops.

I know her, too, from Leonardo's sketches, each sepia line a record of some love lost or never won, her face a map of disappointment. Recently I found her in the painting by Pompeo Girolamo Batoni, obscure but potent on the museum wall. She is haggard but muscular, unashamed of her bare shoulders, her gooseflesh neck twisting as she reaches for the kill. Though old, she is vigorous in obeying orders. From the shadows she yanks in the dark like a stage curtain, whips out her craggy arm, swipes at the still pretty lady in late career. The crone has come. After Reading Some Tales of the Hindu Gods by Billy Collins, July 2006 She looked into his mouth and saw the whole universe displayed therein beyond his oral threshold. --Bhagavata Purana Usually, when I would lock my elbows on the bathroom sink and open my mouth wide in front of the mirror, I would see teeth and a quivering tongue and that little glistening punching bag that hangs from the roof of the mouth. But now, I look past all that, past the factory of mastication into the darkness of the throat where you can see universes created and destroyed, world spinning in and out of being, a cosmos blossoming then closing its petals. I never understood why anyone would want to be a dentist until today, but back in bed, reading the book of the ceiling, I still do not understand why anyone would choose to be a podiatrist or work in a brightly lit store that sells mattresses. Responsibility by Craig Morgan Teicher, June 2006 Such a large absenceshould it not compel the largest presence? -Jorie Graham We were trying to make the best of a very short time. Though we would not admit it we were hurrying things to their end. The signs were apparent but we were too busy and knew that we would only make the same mess again so we did not try. We wanted too much

and everything we wanted we thought we could have. To those who will be left to keep all our promises there is nothing more we can promise. Nor will anything change if we tell each other how sorry we are. We knew even then what we should not do and if guilt could return all that we wasted and apologies could clean all our wounds we would have been twice as decadent. Throwing Star by Jocelyn Casey-Whiteman, June 2006 Aida knew it was the sound that would get to her. An astigmatism has steadied her for years, hazing automatic response, letting arms go limp as he yanks leather straps, hooks buckles, walks away from her until his head blurs into a black smudge. Her costumes velvet, the color of flattened crimson roses. The arc of his arm, star-blade tumbling toward her, the way he stands back after each throw, as if inspecting art. The knives, a rush of wasps aimed around, not at her, he would remind. Knowledge being the best antidote for fear, he reviews the routine with her an hour before curtain, point by point. At family gatherings, edges seem to follow her: the shine of the cuisinart blade coated in wet onion or the strange habit her mother had of turning the steak knives away from the dinner plates. When Aidas eyes relax and spotlights blaze, its like peering into a kaleidoscope and hearing matches strike in her ear. She breathes for the audience, exhaling with each thunk and stick. For the death spiral, he winds her up like a pocket watch and walks away on the ceiling. At night, head to pillow, she can still hear the buzz. Best is after the bow, when she can look back at the empty space where her body had been, the outline he had made of her: surely a proof of something, and glittering, too. Three Haiku by Tomas Transtrmer translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly , May 2006 ~~~ Night-a twelve-wheeler goes by making the dreams of the inmates shiver ~~~

The boy drinks his milk and sleeps cozy in his cell, a mother of stone ~~~ They kicked the football suddenly confusion-the ball flies over the wall. Sonnet by Cecco Angiolieri translated from the Italian by Robert Bly , May 2006 If I were fire, I'd burn the world down; If I were wind, I'd rip the world to shreds; If I were water, I'd drown the whole damned thing; If I were God, I'd send it off to hell. If I were the Pope, I'd be a happy man, And I would screw the Christians for their money; If I were the Emperor, guess what? You'd see a lot of heads flying around. If I were Death, I'd go visit my father; If I were Life, he would see my back, And about my mother-the same routine! If I were Cecco-I've been him and I amI'd take the handsome women, the spirited ones too, And leave all the stale and embittered ones for you. High Noon Two Poems by Antonio Machado translated from the Spanish by George Kalogeris and Glucia Rezende , March 2006 High Noon Just as the scales of a leaping fish catch fire So far from the sky's azure, and the wings of Eros Quiver, though his eyes are blank marble, So, too, somewhere inside that leafy elm's Tremulous limbs is a green cicada trilling Though it sounds no different than a toy whistle. Siesta time. Let us praise the Lord Almighty, whose open palm can silence the loud And unruly anytime he pleases, and casts a shadow Dark as the one that extends from the cypress tree. God of distance and God of absence, anchor Stone that plumbs its own bottomless depth; Path that's open for all to walk on; key That turns on ubiquitous life, and shuts the door. Freedom. By this glass of wine so dark it brims Like rising nightfall, with a heart whose deepest faith Is insatiable thirst, let us praise the Lord of Desire, Who molded our mind as if it was good for nothing. [Translated from the Spanish by George Kalogeris and Glucia Rezende]

Siesta Mientras traza su curva el pez de fuego, junto al ciprs, bajo el supremo ail, y vuela en blanca piedra el nio ciego, y en el olmo la copla de marfil de la verde cigarra late y suena, honremos al Seor la negra estampa de su mano buena que ha dictado el silencio en el clamor. Al dios de la distancia y de la ausencia, del ncora en el mar, la plena mar l nos libra del mundoomnipresencia, nos abrea senda para caminar. Con la copa de sombra bien colmada, con este nunca lleno corazn, honremos al Seor que hizo la Nada y ha esculpido en la fe nuestra razn. Rainbow at Night One night, on a train that was bound for Madrid, In the darkness over Guadarrama, I saw a rainbow Just as it was emerging from moonlit fog. O peaceful April moon, covered by clouds You can drive away just by looking down! Though he's fast asleep in his mother's lap, the child Still sees the meadows flash by, and it feels so lush Lying there in his mother's arms he dreams he's enclosed By a warm circle of trees, and closes his eyes Tighter to catch the flutter of yellow butterflies. But his mother, whose face is lined like a map Of yesterday's gloom as well as tomorrow's, sees only The coals smoldering out and the black oven Crawling with spiders. One of our fellow passengers Must be seeing things, too. He stares out the window, Muttering something to himself. Then his shattered look Looks right through us. My mind dwells on fields Buried under snow, even as it pictures pine trees Evergreen on other mountains. And you, O Lord, Overseer of our souls, and the one through whom Our eyes are able to see: will the day ever dawn When your countenance shines in everyone's eyes? Doctor of Teeth (White, Natasha) by Mebane Robertson, March 2006 I had this steel drafting pencil behind my ear Which must have slipped out while I dozed and performed random violence for evidence On a scratch pad during a fugue.

Some jackass gets lashed behind the curtain And guess who catches the flak. It's lonely it's getting harder To do the dirty work of ever getting them back. Gardener brushed the willow with tar, Which on a phase-shifted wavelength we fucked under Slowly on some pills The Angel of Minor Tranqs had cheeked that week. In the service it's good for my hands Not to know what each other is doing, but the agency Wants to update my file and run some Rhine tests. I told them, Before you lock the door, make sure I'm actually inside this time. Visiting Chicago by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, February 2006 The same high, pointed fences guarding nothing I want. The same flat spill that says I will lie down at the slightest flinch. This is new, this reaching to admit a subway run through me. If the lake will have me. If the lake will let me say, this was home. Wadded, tooth-marked, dried, the tilled word insists on its tiny flavor. My kind of town, it says, My kind of city, hacking up a lung. My El, my pallor, my gasfed water, tell me how to touch your walks. Remember how to swim? it says, Do you still know how to save someone and not drown? The House of Hissing Radiators by Adam Davis, February 2006 Under the rain the Geiger counter went a-clicking that day in Edinburgh. On the same latitude as Moscow and storm clouds advanced like Jackboots. Lacquered and angry the television spun with supercilious gossip of a failed Atomic Age. In the heirless East a building was smothered in concrete and since then nothing's been the same. Even the most calculated run into walls of festooned brick or chain or glass. I can't tell you the number of times I've struck my head on this hatch. Not worth the Naugahyde horse they rode in on, nor the alabaster mollusk used as a coffer. An accomplice to the illness of a caved-in quarry this retention of radioactive elements. The wasp and bee of Linlithgow are said to have no lungs for this reason. Coyotes swarm these hills at night in great flurries of electric lantern-light. They have moved on in due time dear Constance so shall we. Without trees rain foreclosed its grace upon us and I grinned in thirst upon the sun's one-thousandth day. Catapult

by Joanne Straley, January 2006 i. Let's forget mankind for a minute. Pretend I am your brother and we breathe The same. How easy it was to climb through tree stumps with you. Cut and fallen redwoods second me now. Mustard seeds and their workers do too. I can see the human nature in you like frogs in a Finnish bath. Aren't we all waiting for our skins to crease? Aren't you still waiting to crawl? ii. I was looking for my trick in youa bed, a floor, a hill. You often stood In awe of yourself. I removed the splinters. The flinch of it lingers As I exchange my insides for the front of the line, the train ride home. Your hoarfrost is a gift to the redbud trees. And I'm a hothouse in search of its cradle. I swear I am not still searching for what I have already found in you. iii. Rather, I've shipped it off to Tucumcari with time hanging heavy on its hands. My final steps from you are marked by the exchange of ringleaders and their lions. Soon I'll be cleaning clocks and searching my pockets for a widow's mite. As if I knew better. Repeat what you said, I'll get it right this time. The Beginnings of Stars by Russell Thornton, November 2005 The late sun burning close, and slow waves coming in the seas mysterious lit wine of touch on the sand, slipping away glittering in scattered glasslike grains for an instant, and returning again; if we belong to each other, we belong to that touch. Then suddenly the sun is gone; the sky is a dark purple darkening to black. Those sky deities appear, those bright ones inexorably performing their fixed and millennia-old roles said to rule a life glints, coruscations, crushed glare-origins within abundant rich clusters of grapes spreading throughout the nights summer vineyard. There are the never-beheld-before stars, we wish we could say rightly and at last, when we know even the closest we see had to have been born more than long ago, and the farthest born and died before that. But since the light is the way we see light, it must be travelling in a heaven of more than our memory will allow, where we ourselves might see how no person or thing or love is ever gone, but visible,

and forever new, in light, and in us, where light is always turning, flower-like, opening and closing and opening. We build a fire which will repeat at night what the sun did during the day; the sparks fly off and disappear the way the stars will seem to disappear tomorrow in the sun. The body is the wine-flask and the wine; the lover is the veil on the beloveds face. And what we hide within, and hides from us through all our hours of light, seems dark, and yet, now in the dark as in the one centre of the fusions that are stars, is pure time, when the bodies we are wake in their day, and we taste that days wine, that endless beginning of nameless fate, when we give ourselves up to our lives, and enter another life. Keelhauled: Three Poems by Julianne Buchsbaum, December 2005 KEELHAULED Once for a lustrum I was landless, was anyone. When the wind moaned, I thought of barnacles, blue waves, dank fumes from gangplanks. Had no job, no house on a hill. I fed you fruit, forced you to be still. The sound of wharves aswarm with rats woke me from stupor to nuance of anemone and blackfin, the sea is Weird, is Grand Seignior of Weird. The world came dripping from distant isles ten leagues off mainland, lavish with lime trees. Some eyes see sky, some eyes see heaven. Some find portholes on strange horizons where daybreak bleeds from calyx throats and seagulls' eyes. Now I plunder what the sun has touched, I'm in love with green July, south of the cape where I hide. You say love is x,

love is y, as waves cough up their ornaments of death. I can only guess how far I'll drift, how rootless the nocturnal currents of the sea. ARCHEOLOGY I see them Saturdays on Sawgrass Road, grown old in the radiance of refused passion. They have been taking gifts from my emptiness, digging small holes in its geometry. Let us have your mouth a minute. They have been here before, looking for red-letter messages from nevernever land: a curl of raffia, shard of kaolin clay, feathers of Guinea fowl. Who brought you here? With an air of fused cogs, they drift toward the golf course on the still waters of carefully drafted wills, leaving behind burnt patches in the grass. Who stuck these shells in you? Cursing the steel wheels of the zodiac, they wander into the mouth of the moraine where the pines are deserted, as usual, shifting their fronds fussily, as if embarrassed. THIS WANTON GEOMETRY Midnights, beyond the fjords, widowed from timbers, I hear, in drowned valleys or barges off the coast of Maine, a retinue of echoesas above a graveyard of cars, stars fall into the fat green hills where I watched you leave your wildness behindwhile you slept and the women came toward you with their beauty and their mouthfuls of earth, goblets of milk on silver traysyou've seen such monotints in moons and dreams of moons, marl of palsied trees, but never thought to take such cold inside and make it yours, wind like a mongrel dog snarling across the fields

outside the ranch your parents bought in '89, in fits of sunlight flecked like fronds like night laborers bowed in the scrivening aggregate of febrile breezes, sleep a kind of bag you fall into at night where all the women wear dark hats covered in money, dust-colored wings of moths, and other small insects of night, where we talk of how to migrate beyond the farthest shore of Florida, with nothing but dropped consonants and a lessened luster of matted hair of how, in the nounstillness of the sea, its iron-colored helixes, a silent monkfish steals under starsand still, in the Prussian blue bluffs of summerthis wanton geometry of love remains. After History by Carol Vanderveer Hamilton, November 2005 History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. Ulysses The sky, fragile like old parchment scriven and torn past repair, floats over us. Cities, villages, vistas of the pastfaded, irradiated the names of wars, statues of kings, symphonic themes forgotten. Now only the clouds seem familiar, like wedding guests just arrived from a funeral, their dark coats ironed and shiny, their white shirts soiled with tears. Yesterday there was this figment in the mirror. There were these ghosts in the machine. Today is flat, stale, and profitable. While snow flurries over their faces, people queue up for part-time jobs, buy lottery tickets, kneel outside the Stock Exchange, and dream

of some large clear place devoid of pain. After history, with its sieges, plagues, and massacres, chieftains, serfs, conquistadors, and slaves, guillotines, oubliettes, and racks, time will float aimlessly, without referents. The sky will be seamless again. After history we will all drive home alone through present darkness and impending rain and count the seconds that cluster, dying, on the windshield, like flies. Stone by Nurit Zarhi translated from the Hebrew by Tsipi Keller , September 2005 How deep pain breaks, as the feet simply step on the hard ground of the lane. On both sides of the street, buildings, and in them all the people still alive, rewarded for having loved no more than being loved, no less. This is sanitywhen love comes to offer a bed, a chair, sustain and raise it like a pet (a lionor a cockatoo). Treetops are smothered, sparrows return to their nests. Is true love measured by the small coin of anguish, or is it the one which has adhered to the floor, the walls. In my house, the floor and walls are made of floor and walls. Only in my presence do they reveal what they can turn into a void. Except for a few plants, and half-scribbled notes, I grow only stone. Day and night it tells me: Be a floor, walls, dont disclose more than crows in their puzzling cries. This time youll love intelligently, from this place, no, from that one. Lock your mouth, your head, the nerve centers. Lock the vision, the hope, be sane, be a stone. Star by Herman Asarnow, September 2005 At birth a slow star bursts inside us, its heat expanding as the smoke of a growing fire billows as young flesh fills outward

the smoke dilating, seen into its dissipation unseeable, as a face rounds into itself, then (slow!) breaks-shatters first into lines, starlike, streaking from the eye's edge, the path of heat's leaving a slow glow, age's radiance, the rays we live outward to oblivion, scattering husks, leaving what's heavy, the darkness after stars Insomnia by Robin Beth Schaer, September 2005 We sleep on stilts, above the floor, as if the air in between could change where we began, or a cheek against the ground might carry us underneath. Robin Beth Schaer works at the Academy of American Poets and has taught writing at Columbia University and Cooper Union. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and have appeared in Rattapallax, Small Spiral Notebook, Denver Quarterly, and are forthcoming in Spinning Jenny. Still Life with Hatchet and Picasso by Eamon Grennan, June 2005 Today is paintings and chopping kindling. In this still life by Morandiits chalky whites and greys, its bowls, carafe, its milky lemon and turquoise citrus-squeezereverything seems quietly determined to disappear on us, wishing itself away, yet there to the hilt of being there. Now the hatchet clicks into a split log; the duller thump when the log wont split, the hatchet sticks, and I hit it a dunt on the concrete path till its free: more clicking as the sticks slice off. Air around me quivering with winged ants: out of nowhere they drop to earth like prisoners jumping a wall. They scuttle about, then take to air once more, blundersome novices. Leonardos Head of a Girl gazes down through her silverpoint hatching of shadow, highlights mapping her face a creamy grey: she could be, it seems, a soul drifting into and out of mist, half-lidded

eyes about to open so you know shell see through you. The blunt hatchet-head nicks my finger, draws no blood. The midden of kindling gleams in cloudy sunshine like bloodless, dismembered flesh and bone: it is the heart of the matter, dried to lightness, getting ready for the fire. Not all the geometry in Uccellos Battle of San Romano lances diagonal and horizontalcan take the white blaze of fright from the horses eyes or lighten the weight of chaos, muffle the awful clang a man in armour makes, crashing from his saddle, death-rattling. Did magpie Picasso, I wonder, pick at this for Guernica? Tossing its shapely figurations to unimaginable winds of war, heaped limbs quick-chopped for kindling? Mirror on High by Olga Orozco translated from the Spanish by Guillermo Castro and Ron Drummond , June 2005 to Alberto Girri I dont know if youve managed to compose your verses with that meticulous tapestry of errant leaves that used to bring order to hollows and reliefs, tidy ideograms on this stripped-down dawn; nor do I know if in the past few months you spoke to me with that frozen tinkle of glass, with the murmur of wicker, or the hurried beat of the heart in the dark; and perhaps that agates circular gaze was your gaze, which from water in the air unfolds itself, expands itself, amplifies itself beyond stone, beyond resplendence, beyond the world. Impossible to know. Im not able to embrace that which exceeds me and includes you; I cannot suddenly decipher unfamiliar signs. Because youve now totally broken through the region of deliriums and emanations, where the jungle and the stalkers of the jungle are jumbled together, and days are stained with the color of what no longer is, and will not be, and between a body and its shadow the wind overturns twenty centuries of history and in one hand and the other the seeds of uncertainty multiply, and around one foot and the other the serpents of contradiction tie themselves into knots. Because such is the proof and such are the intrigues of the dissembler inaccessible reality. Not in vain did you strip the petals off the wrapping of sleep and wakefulness, word by word, absence by presence, down to the last petal, to the motionless trembling of silence. Did you perhaps examinefeeling, poking through the weaves of the poem both the reverse and front sides of destiny, the knots of mistakes, the illusory embroidery,

without encountering that pure transparency that allows a look at the other side? Your strength was in inhabiting the house of countless labyrinths in the Kingdom of No, testing the entrances, stalking the exits, lying in wait for infectious visions, insects and perils and mice. It was a house that swung back and forth, in continuous equilibrium, just on the edge of immensity; and there you lived in alertness, rehearsing for absence, set loose from yourself your first person singular each time always further off, always closer to some other you, being the hunter that simultaneously finds his prey and calls off the chase, and the bird that tries to send memories of the earth into exile through the beating of its wings. You are already part of everything in another realm, the Kingdom of Permanence and Unity, you are in the eternal present that flees, that is consumed and doesnt end, and you will at last be able to be both the name and the one named. But I know that almost half a century of friendship, constancy, emotions and shelter is not enough for me to find that a small footprint, a suspended spark, a floating perfume, arein the middle of the anonymous universal choir, the present moment your way of dictating to me the most just, the most beautiful and the most truthful, like before, like always, with a gesture, with a talisman, with a tear. And if that were so, how to respond? Out of my parted lips, from my grief and my ignorance I can only beg: Lord, make your son be like the most uncontaminated of all your mirrors and show him things as he would want them to be, just as they are. [translated by Guillermo Castro and Ron Drummond] Spider Web by Paula Bohince, June 2005 The heart is made first, to make a foothold. First cell replicated to build a body. Iron bridges lead out of the city and back in. The heart is also the cemetery. The Bypass by Sandy Tseng, June 2005 It was a kind of trespass into the unknown, a machine but not a machinemechanical pumps working as human heart and lung. It was a confirmation of our inadequacy: each hour required 5 watts of power. Here perfusionists cooled the body to 82.4 F, a kind of hypothermia, a prevention of ischemic injury. It was the stopping of time. A silencing of the heart. A body stripped down to the wedding band surrounded by surgeons in masks. They were children circumnavigating a haunted house, trekking into private property. The bypass. A forbidden ground, a double dare, a gods game. Here the PhDs, the rich and the poor lived or died without laws. It was a rerouting

around the mountain, a way of avoiding the congestion in the tunnel. It was the detour among detours, a circumvention of the city, a means of getting by. Here the courageous were fearful. A strong man became weak, a grown woman became a child. Although the skin of his face sagged against the bone. Although she looked more grandmother than mother. He no longer had the answers. Her fingers could not twist the child-proof cap. Here the orchids lose their blooms. Will they be tended by hired hands or tender hands? Frail leaves and roots over peat moss. A quiver in the draft, a muffled cough. Phlegm from the lung. The bypass was a shot at passing up the apple in the Garden of Eden, grace in the disguise of affliction. The bypass. It was a rescue mission. Skin cells flaked off the body and dogs found the scent along the trail. Survivors of the fall were rescued here. Those who believed it became branches of the vine, a graft into the line of David, a vein of the leg acting as an artery of the heart Two Poems by Jean Gallagher, June 2005 And Then Who Shows Up (Hymn to Aphrodite) How did I not know you but you fool me every time. The alias, the fake passport, the clever excuse for why you talk like me. Then you fell like something fancy and on fire in my lap and theres no going home for me. For you, theres the long track of shine in which no one, you included, can ever say your name. Did You (Hymn to Athena) Did you feel it, that minute when everything waited: when the sea screamed and then stopped screaming, when the ground started yacking and then shut up, when even the sun let out the clutch and forgot to re-engage it? Did you feel the lurch of your brand-new heart swinging open and staying that way? Did you know that was the armor called God sliding like sea water off your back? Why I Don't Worry by Ghalib translated from the Urdu by Robert Bly and Sunil Dutta , May 2005 Why I Dont Worry The sorrows of the world are truly abundant; but wine is abundant too. Im a slave of Heavens wine-seller, so I dont worry. Your style of torture is well known to all of us. I dont feel its unjust that you love the other one more. If someone is not afraid of the Day of Judgement, Its hard to know how my words could have much effect.

In poetry circles, Ghalibs pen is known to scatter fire. But I dont think theres much fire in his words now. Midwinter by Tomas Transtrmer translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly , May 2005 Midwinter A blue glow Streams out from my clothes. Midwinter. A clinking tambour made of ice. I close my eyes. Somewhere theres a silent world And there is an opening Where the dead Are smuggled over the border. Time Is the One Essential Mystery, Says Jorge Luis Borges by Tony Barnstone, May 2005 Time Is the One Essential Mystery, Says Jorge Luis Borges Everything tumbles forward end-over-end like a stone down a mountain. I keep waking up (its a pinprick, like the mosquito that bit me on the neck just now) and then forgetting again. Just now, for instance, my wife walks in the door from washing her bathing suit and gives a little shriek: a very large grasshopper has bounced through the open door and crouches on the floor near my computer cord, about to leap. Get out! Get out! You stupid grasshopper, Im going to have to kill you, she whispers, trying not to disturb me as I write, urging the grasshopper toward the door with a flyswatter. One thing, then another. Now, for instance, my brother is at the door, come to take us dancing at the port. I have to stop writing this. My wife says, Rob says you have to come right now. And now, for instance, I come back years later to revise this poem, and wonder if I should take out words that no longer apply, such as my wife. Heres what gets me: how it never stops, world after world, how we keep falling through. Ghazal #61: The Fire of Love

by Farid ad-Din Attar translated from the Arabic by Robert Bly , May 2005 Ghazal #61: The Fire of Love The sweetest thing in the soul is the fire Of your love; still sweeter is the fire Leaping out of the soul from your love. Whoever takes one sip from the wine cup Of your love will discover it still sweeter to be Drunk and bewildered on the day of resurrection. As soon as you became open, I became Hidden. But you know being Hidden with Her is even sweeter. Even though there is in the pain of your love A poison that scorches the soul, That pain is still sweeter than life itself. Just pour down your suffering into me; And dont worry about healing because Your suffering is sweeter than any remedy. You never feel in harmony with me Until you burn me; therefore burning Up in your love is a delight still sweeter. Since union with you is never faced By anyone, this turning to the wall Of separation is a joy sweeter than union. Union with you resembles a whole year With no rain; so it is even sweeter to me That a hurricane has opened in my eyes. Attar now is like a candle that Because of separation is weeping Even more sweetly from twilight to dawn. [Translated from the Arabic by Robert Bly] Aswim with Happiness Four poems by John Brehm, April 2005 Aswim with Happiness Our ideas leap like fish upstream to spawn and die in sunlight their backs flecked with blood their eyes ruinous and open. Kingdoms Clouds stream from hilltops across the valley like shredded flags my own breath torn wordless in the same cold wind.

Empty and Full Trash in the street so stinkingly much more vivid when I clear the garbage from my mind. Undoing Years I ran my heart counterclockwise to find you to keep time from taking me away from you wound it backwards to now. Seven Poems by Han Shan translated from the Chinese by Tony Barnstone, February 2005 Introduced and Translated from the Chinese by Tony Barnstone Han Shan is the name given to the putative author of a collection of fascinating Tang Dynasty poems, more than three hundred in number, who may or may not have existed-at present there is no reliable way of deciding. The poems tell the story of his retreat to Cold Mountain to live a life of hermetic simplicity, seeking Taoist and Zen (Chan) enlightenment in nature. They are proselytizing poems, but in their vernacular speech, in their clarity of focus, and in their celebration of simplicity, they embody the attitudes toward the world that they seek to teach and, in this, achieve their greatest success. Strangely enough, Han Shan is not considered a major poet in China. The Chinese complain that his work is too vernacular, full of good ideas but lacking in elegance and poetic polish. He has, however, become a favorite poet for the American readership, in part because he has had marvelous translators, such as Red Pine, Burton Watson, and Gary Snyder. Perhaps he is a poet who, to echo Robert Frost's famous snub of Carl Sandburg, "can only be improved in translation." If one ignores the politics of literary reputation, though, a remarkable voice emerges from the poems of Han Shan, one quite rare in Chinese poetry. He is a cynic and an ironist, like Meng Jiao, and the two poets' bitter cynicism seems to have damaged their reputation among readers in China. He is a strange mixture of dogmatist and free-thinker, and one senses a personality behind the poems that is harsh and yet humorously irrepressible. Whatever the poetic value of his work in Chinese, there is much to appreciate in the riddling Buddhist thought-problems in these poems and in the way they capture the personality of a person who may or may not have ever lived. ____ Greedy men love to store wealth like owls love their babies, but small owls eat their mother when grown, and the self is hurt by too much wealth. Give away your wealth and you are blessed; gathering it makes disasters rise.

With no wealth and no disasters, you can glide on wings in blue clouds. ____ Heaven is endlessly high, Earth so thick it has no poles, and in between live creatures supported by the Maker's strength; fighting head to head for food and heat, they scheme to eat each other, never understanding cause or effect, blind babies asking what's the color of milk. ___ I gaze on myself in the stream's emerald flow or sit on a boulder by a cliff, My mind a lonely cloud leans on nothing and needs nothing from the world and its endless events. ___ Talking about food won't fill your stomach. Talk about clothing won't keep out cold. To be full, eat rice. To stay warm, wear clothes. Those who don't understand complain it's hard to get help from Buddha. Look inside your heart. That's where Buddha is. Don't look for him outside. ___ When people meet Han Shan, They all say he's crazy. His look doesn't attract the gaze, and he is wrapped up in a cloth gown. I speak and they don't understand, When they speak I keep silent. So I tell people come and visit me on Cold Mountain. ___ This life is lost in dust. Like bugs in a bowl we all day circle, circle unable to get out. We're nothing like immortals, our sorrows never end, years and months flow off like water and in an instant we're old men. ___ The hermit escapes the human world and likes to sleep on mountains

among green widely-spaced vines where clear torrents sing harmonies. He steams with joy, swinging at ease through freedom, not stained with worldly affairs, heart clean as a white lotus. Two Poems by Elisabeth Frost, January 2005 Washington Im in the Halle Targowa when he finds me. Im waiting for the locksmith, I need an adapter for this place. He mumbles fast in his language till I shake my head, English, to make him stop and when he doesnt understand, America. At the word he steps closer, unzips his torn plaid jacket, shows a tobacco-stained shirt. Eyes lit, he points at me, taps his chest. Washington, he whispers. Smokers voice, long liquid cough. He raises the thumb of one hand, spreads wide the fingers of the other six, but what, children, years? He looks to the side nobodys heard points at me, at his unzipped chest, whispers faster, urgent rasp, Washington. With no breath left. Happiness Again I try to explain how all talk is slippery. See, I might want to convey one thing, frustration, say but all that gets conveyed is some other thing, rage my hand coming fast, erratic, menacing. Who can say how a thing in words turns, flowers like that? It happens. Now say I want to say to you happiness. No motive. Nothing behind it. Just the awareness of a valve turned suddenly open and hallelujah! happiness. Its in the lungs, the bones. But somehow all you hear is I dont need you. Were in this room, and youre not hearing how Im still trying to say this thing. Ill say it again. Here. Happiness. Noon by Quinn Latimer, January 2005 After Ingeborg Bachmann Already the departures have been rehearsed, the shores reservedbanners folded, put away and lost. Already, today, I forgot your face. Already the crowds have been dispersed, left to wander the empty galleries of words unspoken and shivering in white reflections. Already the air has thinned with anticipation, clouds pressing against that intention with dull malice, our modern feelings nearing an end. Already, beneath the calculating sky, alien flowers are blooming, studio lights hooding their progress. Already they distract the light with their expert lies. Already the skirt has matched its seam with a rip spreading like water across silk, like animals moving over a dark field toward a darker field of stars.

Already the ship hovers, a soft mark near the harbor, the ashen shore unsure if it is approaching land or leaving, its curved backthat long laborrocking in black water. Already I reach, longing through this hour, parting sun and moon like hair. Already they draw back with dislike, with fear. Already I am done here. Weeping Icons by Rigoberto Gonzlez, January 2005 New York City Push open the window. Pigeons blend into the stone ledge as their small ruby hearts fade to charcoal. Delicate as ash, they erode with the wind and leave the white daisies of their droppings. Stranger birds have cluttered the city sidewalks, their gray wings crushed into exotic fabrics too thin for winter. Your socks are yellow cotton, the bedroom carpet deep. You step out of your footprints easily. From the mantel your mother weeps for you on the day of your birth. In every other photograph she mourns for you. Her eyes melt like snow on the street, always darkening. The Labrador you bathed twenty years ago snuck into your parents room and splashed the television screen. The pope arrived into the Mexican peninsula to a parade of teary-eyed saints. Your mother had been making love to a stranger beneath the sheets. You remember that morning above any other because thats when both your mother and your faith began to fade. All things holy came in chalk or plastic after that and the small god the priest placed in your mouth finally dissolved the night your mother greeted her last star. When she cried out you confused the sound with the groan of ecstasy the time you found her with her lover. Twice youve been forced to carry her loneliness until your own demise. Motherless, you have lived detached from the world long enough. Should you decide to take flight, you will die by day, divide the sky into what will fall, what will rise. One stunned passerby will drop a bottle of cranberry juice on the pavement. Youll blink, surprised it doesnt shatter holding in the red lake of its lung. SoOften the Pitcher Goes to Water until It Breaks, Harvest & Walking Home Two Poems by Monica Ferrell, January 2005 Harvest 1. Tonight the lares have eaten their offerings. The sweetbreads are gone, black kidneys Infantine and nacred as mollusk-eggs. The smoke Circles and begins to clear. When the finger points toward us, we answer, When the eagle opens its mouth, When the fly sings to a honeycomb, Emptied by plague, the hive scattered with bodies, Let us not forget the wolf, his last rite. Let us not forget the due.

These animals bode well for the new year: We will begin this again and again. 2. The violence has congealed to a horn, a bucks Long cartilagineous tube: It must be the beginning of abundance. The swarm lifts and banks from the hills; Everyone is coming to witness me Coming apart: I have made myself so edible, So extraordinarily meat. The way you spoke to me just now, I almost heard The murmur of insects, preparing a new hegemony. We break the glass in the green drum. The beetle swims in the eye of day. Time marries me inside myself. 3. Our witch is lighting the fires; her hut smokes, Sending up its sole grey plume. I am homeless. I live everywhere. The forest yawns open like the ocean, a green grave Where I could be an intaglio locket, Birds singing between my bones. The water-snake slithers in the palace hall. The blue-white tiles fall off the wall, Breaking, breaking the Delft plate. At evening we fished out the boot under the dock Scratched our heads and turned home While the beetles went on breeding there in the boards. Walking Home A cold yellow light on the cobblestones, you Stumble from the bar like a wayward star Fallen off its chart. October, the darkness Takes your temperature, pressing a cool moon Sliver to your fevering brow. You speak the moon, Hieroglyphs of jade dropping from your stone lips. Night rises out of the river like a bad Aphrodite: Jet, burnished as a rococo tomb. She walks you home, coyly taking an arm, Dripping her curled locks over your shoulders As if tonight all your kisses were hers. She whispers A name into your auricle that turns its cartilage To bone; she nudges your ball of yarn down still another Tangle of lit alleys. You pass by the deluging world Greying in its watery obsolescence, light-strafed, Where cars sleep the dreamless sleep of steel

And fountains purl like minxing cats, a stirring Avalanche: the sound fills up the silence like a bowl. Blue-grey pigeons shatter the airungainly, Deprecating, fatly hurrying to their sick moults. A thousand minuets lie coiled in a pomander ball Raised in the pale yellow hall of an Austrian queen; A thousands minuets lie under the sea And you too will be one of these, you have only To find the house in this long row of painted doors With your number. But the hours spin you on their fortune-wheel And you walk on, as if one thin bone finger were Pressing you, a chess-piece through the white and black Squares of these vacant streets; you walk as the genius Of yourselfas a shooting star: instant, irresponsibly beautiful, Without issue. And yet if the good monk should find you, Guide you up the stair to his tower room, holding a taper To show you the star chart of all your fatal incidents, Your sketched-out combinations and imprecations, Your storied path like ice-skates on the frozen lake, By morning it would all, all, as always, be forgotten. Said the Leader of the Free World Four Poems by Marjorie Agosn translated by Betty Jean Craige and Laura Rocha Nakazawa, January 2005 Said the Leader of the Free World Tonight My dear children I will come to burn your village Your homes Your schools I will kill old people And women of all ages As you watch Then perhaps I will begin killing you My dear children But I assure you I do this in the name of peace and love Tonight I will wound some of you Then I will wound others I will leave some of you blind Others lame And history will absolve me For when your village disappears I will reconstruct the shrines Where you worshiped

History may even forget that tonight I determined who would live And who would die [Translated from the Spanish by Betty Jean Craige] To Federico Garca Lorca In the thick of the night Root of the starry sky You Federico Diaphanous dancer Designer of dreams Wove melodies and verses From the vapors of the moon Till your voice was stilled Your principles Your faith At the bottom of the earth Generals buried your death and your history At the bottom of the earth But you sent your roots Across Iberia You spread your passion Without vengeance Generals cannot hide the moon Or cover the stars Or kill dreams Generals cannot betray the memory Of your somnambulant spirit Generals cannot still the gypsy dance I no longer seek your tomb Federico Your verse is enough [Translated from the Spanish by Betty Jean Craige] Afghanistan The bright-eyed children Gaze at the sky In the frigid night In the punishing night They no longer pray They whisper They stare unflinchingly at the sky While the helicopters scatter manna And bombs The children fear nothing Not even their failure to pray

Their country is burning Their homes are on fire Emotionless The children await the dropping of manna And bombs On an Afghanistan Where prayer is gone [Translated from the Spanish by Betty Jean Craige] Translating is another way of loving Step by step, Our apprenticeship Moves slowly, Opening like a Nocturnal poppy. I translate your words Fragments of skin, Of histories. I am careful with them, They emerge from dark regions, I translate them to Bring them into the light. Small fireflies in the promontory Of my hands, Humility of entwined words. I do not know how to embroider, only to gather leaves. Every autumn I repeat the ceremony Of gathering myself, to then gather Leaves. Now they are words Filling another voice With joy and winged thoughts. Exquisite astonishment is this To render one word for another, Discovering what you conceal, What you reveal, That which is hardly said, The glory of communicating in another language. Deliberately I move through your silences As if you were an underground body So long have you resided under the earth. Today I come out to greet you In a different language A different I reborn in the melodies of my country. How would you be in my tongue? Language of my mothers early songs

Language in front of a starry and ambiguous mirror Until I penetrate in the fullness of the torpor of oblivions sleep. I translate without oblivion, Only presences Of a voice Over another Like a hand that resembles A garden in the shadows To be born translated in a different light A hand that resembles moss, A hand that clairvoyantly stretches out in the plenitude of another tongue, From a different voice, accomplice to the first voice. I learn, I allow myself to be taken by a secret Melody that becomes mine, Humble place of my emotions, Now, yours in my voice. Translating is another way of loving More than words To allow to be carried by the fissures of words Holding them in your hands like someone Who holds back the life of a newborn, The beauty of knowing that each word is unattainable But perhaps possible In this cluster of human Voices, In the constellations of beings without borders. I do not know how to embroider cloth, Only to gather leaves like the gentle rocking from birth to death. I love leaves before they die, Just like roses before perishing Still retain their beauty in the savage firmament of goodbyes. I enjoy making necklaces with them Like I do with your verses To assemble invisible necklaces Weaving them with my hands In the simple gesture of learning to love From one language that loves another. From one hand in love with the quartz of letters, The supportive republic of writing. A reflection from another word, Pale fire over a leaf, both empty and full. Translating is another way of loving. [Translated from the Spanish by Laura Nakazawa] From Four Square Poems Two Poems by Patrice Nganang translated by Cullen Goldblatt, January 2005

3. to have a mouth only to be quiet, waiting for the next word / to have had arms but paralyzed before the coming of the next crime / the fallen stone, the exhausted music, man divides and rejoins at the summit of speech speech turned inoffensive speech that ceases to fill its principal function of speaking and yet is still speech / arms tired in their motion / their stream of negotiation indecisive in the end, but essential nevertheless / of the anger of the demonstrated demo, done, over but starting again / the tentacular enemy / to look for life in the nonlife / war effort with only martyrs in its sack, lost among the pebbles / only the dead on its side, after the treason of words on this route wiped clean of its crime / this city capsizing / only the dead are not accomplices to the next treason, in this problematic May morning / of mourning / yet still of waking / to have no home but the cemetery / for [THE REVOLUTIONS OF MORTICIANS] 4. to look for a lifesaving buoy in the flood / the destruction of the last drop of man / to look for support for the man who flounders / the raft without master to laugh in the waves, waiting for the ultimate shock / the navigator who has lost the winds direction and awaits the storm / grasping words / like the roots of the water / words that remake life / to believe in words / that soothe the pains the verb that is poetry / the verb that is life, poetry that is life / but words have ceased to say, lost virginity / words are the raped virgin who rips at her sex / the violent castration of the powerless / my words have lost the meanings of their definitions / my words refuse all shared gestures / and speech to meat / droppings / rinds / shit how to avoid [THE WRATH OF GOD] Absinthe by Salavador Novo translated by Rigoberto Gonzlez, January 2005 Your two green eyes on me are as intense as absinthe, and their glow like emeralds. Id guess that burning themtheyd have the pungent smell of incense. And to me your eyelashes possess the quite bizarre and bitter power of the thistle or of parasites, that in order to avoid your eyes Id sacrifice my sight. But your eyelids hold such flowery perfume, that they breed inside my mind the bastards doom of drinking absinthe, and the thrust into the thistles womb. From Mozarts Third Brain by Gran Sonnevi translated by Rika Lesser, January 2005 XVI I heard your voice say goodnight to me when you didnt think I could hear you It was naked, without reservation Then you woke me, utterly, so much that I

couldnt sleep I was elated XVII Every word carries all its despair all its joy We carry one another XVIII Last night I saw the point central to the underground mans neurosis: Freedoms point Every action, every insight, bad or good foolish or wise hinges on this one point All acts of humiliation, internal or external, and all crimes against others are set in motion when this point is denied or refused The point takes flight, flees Like a bird It has its own will, its bird-logic Ive known this for a long time Freedom also has the potential to annihilate because it is limitless in each person Nor is there anything that cannot become a prison But a prison can never fly like a bird I hear the motion of breath in the beating of wings XLIX Now the enclaves are being opened One after another, where people have lived shut in, under grenade fire, month after month, for years Half-starved, many physically injured; some with shattered psyches Children perhaps forever locked into psychoses I see their gentle smiles, their helplessness As if they'd been whirled out into a Hades of Chance A girl's milk teeth shine Her eyes bespeak hopelessness That which is nameless The brain's enormously split-up time, in continual integration, which is itself the prerequisite, the basis for all integration Just so, the one is created

Just so, the unity of all life is created We will suffer the consequences The human vortices, in the torrent of dreams, uncontrolled In pain, disappointment, joy While the ground gives way; we hang onto trees, other beings in gliding toward the flux; its ever more powerful surge The Brownian motion in each human brain; we construct its order As if awakened, fresh, after lovemaking, you say, love To what? To what sort of surrender Time Silence Time The embittered are watching us As if unable at any moment to see the lesser evil I understand them But I don't want to be like them Here now is warmth In the cold that is freedom's I shall love you warm And you me Interference Toward destruction or consummation. . . LIX How am I to reach the greater integration? It can come only from what is free of strain; the enormous compactness, its lightness, its weight. . . I touch you with the gray wing I touch your brown cheek with my wing I saw you walk among the flowers, among your tall tulips The glass-clear wave of tenderness; tears that come then. . . Immortal we are mortal; mortal we are immortal Forms that arise within us The leap constantly occurs The translations The testing out We risk our lives on the durability of these forms, their ability to describe the world And yet not one of them holds We see the spent forms, from outside And yet they were life No life forms are eternal This is liberation Interior theater What is neither Germany, nor Bosnia Nor any other country, not even a utopia As in a huge absence; where all seem to sit with their faces turned away Entre-visages, I thought once, and saw before me faces turned toward each other, their contacts, through absence itself, the averted state We are there alone With the terror I hear the wind in the trees in the rain The sound of all the new leaves The sound of all the new children While they are swept into the vortex. . . The heart bears its simplifications Its wings rattle In the burning brain are convection currents of feeling The burning heart bears its chill, its wrath

Before us new wars, new revolutions Once I myself was prepared; in any case emotionally Intellectual preparations The movements of the real were greater by far I am burned Gasoline soon extinguishes the burning house LXXXV Into which conversations do I enter? Into which psychotic necessity? History's movements are extremely delicate And can be as rapid as within a brain Everything was transformed so quickly. . . As if the ground were pulled out from under my existence to this point in time The folding structures just fall We do not feel the land beneath us Something else begins, over there The empire? Some other sort of city? Babylon? It exists in time's rising function That which has unknown numbers As if values were interchangeable But they are not The glass-clear form rises, up from the trench of time As if it were a continual resurrection, but with discrete values, exact, complete Utopias and dystopias gather Rest like shards around the radiant forehead The birth of a head? We watch this with the eyes of monsters, filled with fear What are we afraid of? Dying to a further extreme? No! But I do not want to kill The empire of nothing rises with identical counts of the living and the dead Rapidly Slowly But the eyes of the tortured and the humiliated? Yes They look at us I wait for all that builds up inside me, also innermost in the city of crystal Where I am not In which city do I want to be? I want to be in the face between the realms I want to touch your hot face Passing infinitely between realms, I touch your nightgown, the one you left on the banister while I was sleeping We are in the house of the real It is raised up from below LXXXVIII The white, scintillating light From roofs of frost, from naked branches, from the thin white coating on the bark, over purplish brown birch twigs, not yet attuned

to the light of spring It's still November I enter into new transformations In politics In the economy I shall try to enter into listening, here as well To resonate while listening Even to the point of shattering Which can also be in delight Even your voice is audible What's human cannot be preserved Nothing of me can exist As if all meanings existed within the huge brain, in a sea-birth All time comes into being What returns is never time, only its shadows, in its blinding. . . The night countenance sparkling with pain Sparkling with all of its stars As if each star were one possible fate We exhausted the cosmic pictures long ago We may yet have nothing but this star-birth These lost children This trembling love's heart Eyes that touch one another with their gaze We literally look into one another's brains Into analogy, sublime, the radiant iris of truth. . . Seeing also the gray, transparent framework, the construction of what is, in Being As if nothing did not exist Or in Becoming Then I see the forms of time, Time. . . As if the functions of description ceaselessly changed places around this vision, in coordinate systems perpetually interchanged, shifting algorithms, shifting representations, unfinished, around the invisible center Your heat looks at me. . . February Two Poems by Robert Wrigley, January 2005 A Walk in the Woods So maybe there isnt language enough, maybe language truly is debased by common usage, or used up, like fuel. It seems a sad, pathetic theory though, almost as if a professor somewhere had got himself tenured on the basis of a monograph which postulated that love doesnt always last forever. Or maybe its just the weather these days. Unseasonably cold, constant rain, wind. Though I noticed how, on this mornings walk, just before I stumbled across that crop of perfect, rain-washed, succulent mushrooms, that the woodsall of it, from its soils up

through stalk and blossom to the crowns of its trees seemed not so much wet, or soaked, but sodden. February Its a shock how cold this door handle made of deer antler becomes, a deeper cold even than steel. Yes, this is something else. Its a special kind of frigidity, a cold no mans meager skin is match for, chilling from bone to bone and thus to blood as though the hand in its common grasping were the mind of a wakeful animal, needing some old way to survive the moon. World Weather Forecast Three Poems by Virgil Surez, October 2004 World Weather Forecast children suckle bombs, grin mouthful of bullets, step on barb wire dreams, a landmine jigsaws them to pieces. Across the river, new tenements finger toward heaven. This side bombs the other, and they riddle our days with missiles. On the water, we see images of clouds bursting, burning into that line many have learned to cross, where our dead whisper their songs in smoke-blind wind. The Exile Speaks of a red tongue, black words a necessary longing for shadow, a corpuscle, a dangled leaf from a spider webs thread, useless hands, fingers claw any dirt, seeds bloom into fists an anger never allowed to ebb, dreams of rotted, worm infested pulp, all that tastes bitter, agrio like bile, a regurgitation of lost steps. Why not forget? Teeth chatter in cold night air, dentures in a glass. Away from the mouth, teeth sing to all those about to drown. Profiling We keep an eye open, even in sleep, watching the couple of hairs twitch on the man sitting next to me on this West-bound flight. His skin deep olive, his eyes Arabic coffee ground. What language is spoken between us?

Our bodies? He suspects that I too am not from here, these parts, where the earth leaps and bounds over mesas, rivets up in bluffs, canyons, rivers sparkle down below. He smells me, and I in turn smell a faint scent of tumeric, or bijol, the colorant my mother used in her paellas, or arroz con pollo dishes. He knows where Im going, keeps an eye on my shoes, my coat, my laptop upon which I am writing: I know you, I know where you come from. I see that place of rivers in your eyes where your dead have floated off into eternity burning, sinking into forgetful waters. Glass Sphere in Battlefield A falcon passes in hedgehopping, seizes the sphere (talons scratching the surface) soars over a cornfield, a river, a road with tiny tanks and men marching in silence, a hill, another river comes down to drink, flies upstream, wetting the sphere. Gradually dark. Small nightbirds fly from tree to tree. The falcon dives into the narrow gap between two trunks, legs back, wings half-open. Releases the sphere, attacks. One bird hungry, another dead. The sphere rolls a short distance on the grass, stops. On a sunny morning, a blink, and the sounds Unleveled City Between street number zero and the sea, women carry pails of water and little bags of powder. They talk to each other, laughing, children hanging on their skirts, other houses to be cleaned day out. Balancing on scaffolds, they sing near windows with a broad view of the sea. Later they wash the dishes with too much soap and receive anonymous calls: an antonio, son, husband, neighbor. As it gets dark, sea becomes noise. Sweating in the bus, tones of brown.

The pails left empty at the bottom of the hill: water is spilled, the powder dispersed. Their children hiding in skirts corridors, alleys, stray. Flavia Rocha Girish Karnad's Flowers Another new play by Girish Karnad premiered at the Ranga Shankara Theatre Festival 2006. Starring Rajit Kapur and directed by Rosyten Abel, the play is a dramatic monologue that questions duty and its complex relationship with human desire. The plot centres on a pious priest who violates both his dharma and his bhakti because of his love for a courtesan. Torn between his love for his god and his love for Chandravati, between his duty to the king and his duty to his wife, the priest tells the story of his life after matters have come to a head and all his loves and his duties collide on a single night. Once again, Karnad takes a folk tale about the human condition and refreshes it with a contemporary sensibility that embraces love, loyalty and honour. A pan-Indian team was put together by Ranga Shankara to bring to stage this exceptional work. Ranga Shankara joined forces with Rage, a theatre troupe from Mumbai to produce the play. Roysten Abel, a young director from New Delhi who is known for his innovative approach to direction, was invited to direct the play. Rajit Kapur, a wellknown theatre, television and screen actor from Mumbai plays the lead. The crew was selected from among the best in the country the lighting designer, Arghya Lahiri, comes from Mumbai, the music was especially composed by Amit Heri from Bangalore, and Shashidhar Adapa, who is the most sought after Stage Designer of Karnataka. Flowers is a joint production of Ranga Shankara and Rage (Bombay). Playwrights note Flowers is based on a folktale from the Chitradurga region of Karnataka. The tale deals with the metaphysical dilemma that would result if God were truly merciful and allforgiving. Would Gods grace ignore moral turpitude? What has greater weightage in the cosmic order of things faith (bhakti) or morality? It has been pointed out that the Indian philosophical tradition has never treated what would be called moral philosophy as a separate discipline. But the painful moral concerns are very much alive and find expression in epic stories or narrative literature or as here, in tales orally handed down. Broken Images A synopsis The one-act one-performer play tells the story of Manjula Nayak, a professor of English literature who has been an unsuccessful writer in Kannada. She finds international acclaim when she writes a novel in English, which becomes a bestseller.

The story starts with her introducing the audience to her novel in a TV studio, prior to a film on it is telecast. After she finishes her introduction, she is confronted by her own image on the screen which poses questions on betrayal of her language and identity when she chooses to write in English. Broken Images -- Playwrights note The twenty-first century is the age of the electronic image. From every corner of our world, electronic images fling themselves at us, entertaining, educating, enticing, offering us a virtual world of global dimensions to immerse ourselves in. The very notion of a private self seems threatened by this onslaught from outside. But suppose the most vociferous of these images were ones own? Manjula Nayak is a not very successful Kannada short-story writer. She suddenly becomes wealthy and internationally famous by writing a best-seller in English. The question haunting Manjula is whether in thus opting for the global audience she has betrayed her own language and identity. A little-known face in Karnataka, she has now acquired an international image. And inherited problems of loyalty and betrayal. And, without warning, its her own image that decides to play confessor, psychologist and inquisitor. .for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter.. T.S.Eliot The Waste Land The Poetic Establishment Has Co-opted Contradiction by Ben Lerner The poetic establishment has co-opted contradiction. And the poetic establishment has not co-opted contradiction. Are these poems just cumbersome or are these poems a critique of cumbersomeness? The sky stops painting and turns to criticism. We envy the sky its contradictions. We envy the sky its exposed patches of unprimed canvas and their implicit critique of painterly finish. It is raining for emphasis. Or it is raining emphases on a public ill-prepared for the cubist accomplishment. Perhaps what remains of innovation is a conservatism at peace with contradiction,

as the sky transgresses its frame but obeys the museum. From The Lichtenberg Figures D.C. area filmmakers look to bring Bollywood to America By Tara Bahrampour Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, August 22, 2010; C01 The strapping 36-year-old actor, wearing a leather blazer and shades, strode into the conference room at the Hampton Inn in College Park where a panel of filmmakers awaited. "You guys are having casting all the way out here, huh?" said Ozzy Fiaz, his Urdu accent swirled with a strong flavor of Long Island, where he has lived since age 11 and works as a taxi driver between acting gigs. Fiaz had driven for four hours and hadn't had anything to eat or drink since 4:30 a.m. because he was fasting for Ramadan, but he and two dozen other South Asian actors from the Eastern seaboard flocked here yesterday to audition for a movie titled "9 Eleven." According to its Indian-born makers, it will be the first Bollywood movie to be filmed in Washington, and they are looking for 15 to 20 main characters and 250 extras. The producer, Narain Mathur, a real estate agent in Waldorf who has long been interested in Bollywood, funded the budget, which will come in under $1 million. The director, Manan Singh Katohora, is a Silver Spring resident who has made two low-budget English-language movies, including "a cross-cultural lesbian film," and also works as a promoter for South Asian businesses in the United States. They compare the film, which they hope to release next spring, to Hollywood productions such as "Inception" and "Crash." Plenty of U.S. film directors shoot in India and vice versa, they said, noting that the new Julia Roberts film "Eat Pray Love" was filmed partly in India. To count as a Bollywood movie, the film does not need to be shot in India but must be in Hindi, said Katohora, adding, "I watch every single Hindi film, and I'm 120 percent sure a Bollywood film has never been shot here." As the day progressed, one actor after another read from a script in Hindi while bathed in klieg lights. One young woman was eliminated immediately -- her Hindi wasn't good enough. A stage actor wowed the filmmakers with his emotion but wasn't sure he could get a month off from his IT job for the filming this fall. In fact, many who auditioned had day jobs in software engineering or systems analysis. "Indian immigrants are fulfilled" financially, said one of the auditioners, Paul Singh, a computer systems administrator from Fairfax Station who is also a stand-up comic. "Now they're looking for things that give them more fulfillment." Several said their families had initially opposed their acting aspirations. "I've been discouraged all my life, and now I'm finally doing it," said Farida Malik, a Chantilly resident in her 30s, adding that her mother, a doctor, insisted she follow a professional path first. "I got one degree, and I'm about to do another one," she said, adding, "as long as the role is okay, she's not going to say anything." Katohora assured her the film involves no nudity.

But the climate is changing, the filmmakers said. "Decades ago, if a girl goes in a Bollywood film, they look at her in a bad way," said Mathur, who wore a white and gold kurta pajama and was flanked by his wife, Sadhna, and his daughter, Priya, 17, who also plans to audition. "Today, parents encourage their kids to dance . . . and go on reality TV," Katohora said. The filmmakers advertised the auditions on Facebook and Craigslist, as well as in local Indian newspapers. The respondents ranged from experienced actors toting headshots and DVDs of their work to local teenagers who had performed in student plays. Half of them had traveled from New York, but the filmmakers say they hope to give a chance to local South Asian actors. "Everything happens in New York," said Katohora. "Even people living in remote Indian villages, they know what the Brooklyn Bridge looks like, they know what Times Square looks like." So will the film show what Washington looks like? Mathur looked at Katohora and smiled nervously. "It takes place globally," Katohora said, adding that as the film unfolds, "the viewer will know" its location. When pressed, they revealed only that most of the scenes will be indoors and that the setting is somewhere in India, though flashbacks may include scenes of Washington and New York. Nor do they want people to know what their film is about, other than that it is "a thriller with an undertone of terrorism," according to Katohora. And despite the title, it's not about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. It's about a different true-life terrorist attack, although they wouldn't say which one. Though it is a thriller, to be a true Bollywood film, doesn't it need a dance sequence? "We have dance, yes," said Mathur, adding that they may draw from local Indian dance companies. "But where that is going to be in the film, we can't reveal." The filmmakers are holding more auditions Sunday and next weekend and can be reached at manan.katohora@jmd-creations.com. View all comments that have been posted about this article. Poetry bowl One Letter Is Enough for Xia one letter is enough for me to transcend and face you to speak as the wind blows past the night uses its own blood to write a secret verse that reminds me each word is the last word

the ice in your body melts into a myth of fire in the eyes of the executioner fury turns to stone two sets of iron rails unexpectedly overlap moths flap toward lamp light, an eternal sign that traces your shadow 8. 1. 2000 Longing to Escape for my wife abandon the imagined martyrs I long to lie at your feet, besides being tied to death this is my one duty when the hearts mirrorclear, an enduring happiness your toes will not break a cat closes in behind you, I want to shoo him away as he turns his head, extends a sharp claw toward me deep within his blue eyes there seems to be a prison if I blindly step out of with even the slightest step Id turn into a fish 8. 12. 1999 A Small Rat in Prison for Little Xia a small rat passes through the iron bars paces back and forth on the window ledge the peeling walls are watching him

the blood-filled mosquitoes are watching him he even draws the moon from the sky, silver shadow casts down beauty, as if in flight a very gentryman the rat tonight doesnt eat nor drink nor grind his teeth as he stares with his sly bright eyes strolling in the moonlight 5. 26. 1999 Daybreak for Xia over the tall ashen wall, between the sound of vegetables being chopped daybreaks bound, severed, dissipated by a paralysis of spirit what is the difference between the light and the darkness that seems to surface through my eyes apertures, from my seat of rust I cant tell if its the glint of chains in the cell, or the god of nature behind the wall daily dissidence makes the arrogant sun stunned to no end daybreak a vast emptiness you in a far place with nights of love stored away 6. 30. 1997 Acrobat by Elise Paschen The night you were conceived we balanced underneath a tent, amazed at the air-marveler, who, hand-over-hand, seized the stars,

then braved the line to carry home a big-top souvenir umbrella. Earth-bound a year, you dare gravity, sliding from the couch to table. Mornings, on tiptoe, stretching fingers, you grab Saturn, Venus and the moons raining down from the sky of ceiling. Ash Theres a moth trapped inside the fire, my daughter says, but I explain, No, its an ash. She asks, Like Paba? A month before, we had transported my fathers ashes on a plane to Oklahoma. When we boarded, Airport Security insisted on viewing my fathers remains inside the urn. After they pried the lid, the crack kept fissuring. The day before my father died, a tree surgeon hacked down the Ash which towered tall above our house. Struck by lightning, the tree had split in two, about to strike the roof. My father, cut down by disease, could no longer swallow or speak, yet he wanted to sit upright in his cane-back chair. I knelt on the oak floor, holding his gnarled hands. We shuddered to hear the buzz-saw chop down the branches. Early June. Outside my fathers house, the wood shavings hovered in air like moths.

Barn Owl and Moon Night-fall, we stretch and tumble under rafters, beneath the moon. Bats breath against our lips. The barn owl and the moon. A scream, a snore, a hiss, a click, a scratch. Duets of eyes ignite, burn out the night. Your heart-shaped face, talons, and tawny skin. My crescent arc waxing all marrow, pearl. Fixed in the sky. A scythe. Afraid to cut. We hide. This flash might blind and talons strip. Its dark. A drumbeat of feathers scales up my spine. Rapt, out-of-breath, we tilt, take wing. You clasp a shell of skin. I shed more light tucked between claw and claw. Rise above earth: the barn owl and the moon.

Birth Armored in red, her voice commands every corner. Bells gong on squares, in steeples, answering the prayers. Bright tulips crown the boulevards. Pulled from the womb she imitates that mythic kick from some gods head. She roars, and we are conquered. Her legs, set free, combat the air. Naked warrior: she is our own. Entire empires are overthrown.

Monarch From milkweed to lupine a woman shadows

a monarch. Slowly makes her way, conveys her weight with care. Inside the womb her son flutters, then butterfly-kicks against walls. The woman tracks a trail of burnished wings, migrating into the heart-notch of forest, then settles on a lichened tree-trunk where underground rivers flowing out of snowmountain lakes rumble the decree of her unborn son: Journey farther, journey deeper. Into darker woods she transports a monarch ruling, even now, unnamed territory.

Pond in Winter Throughout the night deliberate steps of mammals leave an impression upon the sheer sheet of pond where the Great Blue Heron once dipped its beak, where the Wood frogs jumped from the hands of the children, where, in the dead of summer, a Northern Water snake coiled on the bank, alive in the sunlight, but now lies buried beneath the glass. Where do the fish escape, the minnows, the blue gill? Angels inhabit the willow trees where Orb Web spiders wove their evanescent graves. Above the house, a secret of smoke. The wood burns inside the grate as it once smoldered under leaves. From the winter forest a solitary light rises through a window in thick dusk as if surfacing, again, out of water. Diving

The woman sleeps in a pearl-white bathtub: her skin, basin, and water remind you of conch or cowrie, of your son inside, nacre in shell. She dreams she dives off a boat holding bucket to ribs, freefalling until the smack of water, releasing the pail, a parachute, then spiraling, swathed now in transparent white, protected like a surgeon or larva, twisting through sea depth, boring home; imagining how her skin will glow near seaweed fires, she resists the pull of water, the cold. Her body plummets, a pearl dropped in liquid; the world is green and filled with ghosts. Just there one glimmers. She loosens shell from sand. It is your child she must let go before resurfacing.

Two Standards at a Native Writers Conference in Norman, Oklahoma Joan's one eighth. I'm a quarter. When we walk into Billy's I want to look like her, full Osage. "You wouldn't find an Indian here," she tells me, "if not for the conference." And the cigar-chewing driver shuttling in from the Will Rogers Airport confides: "I never seen so many Indians all in one spot." The bar's packed like a bar should be. Joan shows me off, introducing her friends to a light-haired, East Coast educated outsider

whose mother, Betty Tallchief, is Oklahoma's pride. "At that table are some Osages you should meet." They know my relatives in Fairfax, though they come from Pawhuska, Pawnee. Angela says the Tallchiefs, the keepers of the drum, will host the Osage dances next June. "Will you join us? You'll be given your Osage name." Even though my grandmother Tallchiefs daughters became well-known as ballet dancers, she displayed photographs of my mother and aunt when they were twelve, eleven in Osage ceremonial dress, performing at a powwow. My mother said her father's mother taught her those dances. I say, when asked, I never wanted to dance, but here, in Billy's with the jukebox repeating the Beatles' "Twist and Shout," all I want is to dance and to adopt my mother's Osage name "Wa-Xthe-thon-ba": "Two Standards." All I want is to return to Oklahoma and answer Angela "Yes," though New York City's half a continent away. I am my mother's daughter, "Two Standards," and tonight, forgetting my given name, I will take that ancestral one.

Taxi Why dont we cruise Times Square at noon enjoy the jam Im not immune to your deft charm in one stalled car Id like to take you as you are Meter Meter comes from the Greek metron "a measure" and is related to the English word mete "to measure (out)". It is also related to the Latin metiri "to measure" with the past participle of mensus, whence the noun mensura and the verb mensurare "to measure", and eventually through French, the word measure itself come. Other related words/forms are Latin mensis "month", and English month and moon. And of course -meter as in diameter, kilometer, etc, and -metry, as in symmetry and geometry! In poetry, meter is the measure or count of special "pulses" of sound called beats in a line. In conjunction with regulating the number of beats, the number of syllables in a line or between beats can also be regulated to control the pace of the meter. _______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________

Stress & Beats

What makes these "pulses" of sound called beats? In English, most beats are created by stresses. The stress of a word is the syllable with the main "pulse" of energy or pressure on it when it is pronounced. Every word (unless it's a one-syllable "function word", as you will see in the next section) has one main pulse, or stressed syllable, as indicated by the capitalized and bolded letters in the words below: aLOUD DOWNfall expecTATion If you have difficulty recognizing the stress of a word, try pronouncing each syllable of

the word with more emphasis. For example, pronounce horror as HORror, then horROR. HorROR should sound unnatural because this word doesn't have its stress on the second syllable in normal English. Therefore you know that the stress is on the first syllable. If you are still unsure where a word's stress is, you can look its pronunciation up in the dictionary. Dictionary.com for example shows the pronunciation of the word in brackets, with the stressed sound indicated in bold letters: hor-ror [hawr-er, hor-] The stressed syllable generally goes where the meter or pattern "expects" a beat. Just as a stress is the pulse of a word, it then becomes a pulse of the meter: a beat. If you say aloud five times, you establish a pattern that has, and therefore expects, the stress every second syllable: aLOUD aLOUD aLOUD aLOUD That is a dull line, but it has a metrical pattern established by the stresses. The stresses now are not just stress of words, but are pulses (beats) of the pattern of the whole line. This is the basic principle behind making a meter. Now let's replace it with an actual sentence: a VERSE with MEter PLEASes EARS Every second syllable is still stressed, but now it is both a line with meter and a meaningful sentence. That wasn't too difficult was it?

One-syllable Function-words But why don't the words "a" and "with" have stress in the line above? This is because they are part of a special group of one- syllable words that are "Function Words". One syllable function-words are the only words that normally don't have a stress. There are four kinds of function words: "Bits and peices"-words: to, from, for, and, as, the, this, that, etc. Pronouns: I, he, she, who, what, etc. "Auxiliary" verbs: will, shall, do, must, have, etc (as in will go, shall go, do go, must go, have gone, etc) Forms of the verb be: be, is, are, was, were, 'tis, 'twas, etc. All other one-syllable-words have the stress on the whole word/syllable: DAY NIGHT SWEET

Special Cases In combinations such as "turn off", "high up", "stand still", "take heed", etc. the stress is generally on the second word: turn OFF set UP hold ON high UP far OFF stand STILL hold TIGHT make SURE take HEED

Also, if a one-syllable function-word is given abnormal emphasis to make it stand out, it can be treated as a stressed syllable: He did receive the note she sent = he DID reCEIVE the NOTE she SENT 'Tis he alone she loves til death = 'Tis HE alONE she LOVES til DEATH

Non-Beat Stresses Sometimes a poet wishes to use a stress, but doesn't want it to be a beat. As long as this is not done too often, the stress may be used as non-beat, without altering the beat of the meter. This may be done most handily with one-syllable adjectives (especially very common adjectives, such as such, much, each, some, etc. ). Whenever a stress isn't a beat we will indicate it with unbolded capitalized letters: SOME MEN were WISE, SOME MEN were FOOLS

Unstress

Unstress or unstressed syllables are syllables that are not stressed with the main "pulse" of energy of a word, the stress that we have been referring to so far. This doesn't mean they don't have any stress at all though. Usually it is not necessary to distinguish other degrees of stress, but once in a while you shall hear poets talk of a less degree of stress called "secondary stress". This is a syllable that doesn't have the main stress, but has more stress than the average "unstressed" syllable. This kind of syllable is often found in two-word compounds: DOGhouse GROUNDhog SILvertongued The unstressed syllables "house" "hog" and "tongue" have more stress than an average unstressed syllable and therefore could be called "secondary stress". Since they are words themselves within a compound words, it is easy to understand why they have a different degree of stress from other unstressed syllables. But you will find most of the time it isn't necessary to make an issue of "secondary" stress. _______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________

Unstress & Beats

If stresses were all that made up the "pulses" of meter it would be a strict and difficult thing. Thankfully meter is much more flexibile than just stresses. You know how stresses are usually beats, but it is important to understand "beats" a bit more completely. Stresses refer to the main pulses of words: HORror, expecTATion, LOVE, etc. Beats, though, refer to the main pulses of an established meter or pattern in general. Beats often correspond with stresses, but not always. This is because once you have a meter or pattern established mostly by the stresses, it is acceptable to slip in an unstressed syllable as a beat without hindering the meter. Consider the line below, capitalizing only the syllables with stresses: the KINGdom of the MIGHTy KING The unstressed word "of", however, blends in as a beat, even though it isn't a stress. This may work better or worse depending on how important the syllable is to the structure or

meaning of the line. When a beat isn't a stress (as the onesyllable functuion- word "of" in this example) it will be indicated only with bold lettering, but not capitals: the KINGdom of the MIGHTy KING

Natural Rhythm-Points With most words that have more than two syllables, we can take advantage of natural rhythm-points in the unstressed syllables, based on where the stressed syllable is. The rhythm naturally has an up and down movement, based on where the stress is. Therefore, as long as you know where the highest point (the stress) of the rhythm is, you will know where the next highest points of the rest of the word's rhythm is. Every second syllable away from stressed syllable (to the right or the left) is a higher "up"-point in the rhythm of the unstressed syllables. In personALity, for example, the highest point of the rhythm is the syllable with the stress (AL), but the next highest points are the bolded syllables pers and ty It is these kind of syllables that may also be used as beats when using longer words in a meter. harMOnious BEAUtiful expecTAtion

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Coming to Terms

There are many different terms poets have to refer to different kinds of meters. Most of them are somewhat unnecessary, for as long as one knows the key elements, that is, stresses and beats, things that go into every meter, he may generally understand whatever pattern is being used for a meter, even if he doesn't know the official name for the pattern. Therefore, don't make too much of the terminology. It is given here only to

encourage some awareness of it. The Main Groups of Meters The two main groups of meter are stress meter and syllable-stress meter. Stress (or accentual) meter is a meter that only has a certain number of beats in a line, but allows the number of syllables between the beats to vary from none to a few. Below is an example of this kind of meter: STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT FIRST STAR I SEE toNIGHT, I WISH I MAY, I WISH I Might, HAVE the WISH I WISH toNIGHT. There was an OLD WOMan who LIVED in a SHOE. She HAD so MANy CHILDren, she didn't KNOW what to DO. She GAVE them SOME BROTH, withOUT ANy BREAD, WHIPPED them ALL SOUNDly, and SENT them to BED. In both examples there are only four beats in each line, but syllables between beats are variable and sometimes absent as in the line STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT (all four syllables are beats). Syllable-stress meter is a meter that has a certain number of beats, but also regulates the number of syllables between the beats. It is this kind of meter that uses the special names such as Iambic, Trochaic, etc. to refer to pattern of beats and syllables.

Foot Syllable stress meter is often thought of in terms of a basic unit called a foot. Representing a beat with a slash (/) and a non-beat with an x, the below line is made up of the foot ( x / ): (x / )( x / )( x / )( x / ) a VERSE with MEter PLEASes EARS

The Kind of Foot in a Line

The kind of foot used in a line is indicated by its own special name: Foot (x/) (/x) (xx/) (/xx) Name = Iamb = Trochee = Anapest = Dactyl

The adjectives to refer to meters that use these feet are: Iambic, Trochaic, Anapestic, and Dactylic. When the beat comes after the other syllables, as in the Iamb and Anapest it is called rising rythm. When the beat comes before the other syllables, as in the Trochee and the Dactyl it is called falling rhythm Those with two syllables in the foot (the Iamb and Trochee) are sometimes called duple rhythm. Those with three syllables in the foot (the Anapest and Dactyl) are sometimes called triple rhythm.

The Number of Feet in a Line When we wish to refer to the number of times a foot is used in a line we prefix the greek word/form for the number onto the word meter. Number of Feet + Meter mono- "one" + meter = monometer di- "two" + meter = dimeter tri- "three" + meter = trimeter tetra- "four" + meter = tetrameter penta- "five" + meter = pentameter hexa- "six" + meter = hexameter hept- "seven" + meter = heptameter octa- "eight" + meter = octameter ennea- "nine" + meter = enneameter

deca- "ten" + meter = decameter

Now let's go back to our earlier example: 1 2 3 4 (x / )( x / )( x / )( x / ) a VERSE with MEter PLEASes EARS Since this line uses the foot ( x / ) called the Iamb, it is therefore Iambic Meter. If we wish to refer to the number of times the Iamb is used in the line, then Iambic tetrameter, because the Iamb ( x / ) is used tetra (four) times in the line of the meter. Examples You already saw a few examples of the Iamb used in meter. Here are some examples of the other three kinds of foot: Trochee The Trochee ( / x ) is a foot where the beat comes before one non-beat. The last foot in a trochaic line is often shortened to only the beat so that it is easier to use as a rhyme. ( / x)( / x)(/ x) (/ ) TWINKle, TWINKle, LITTle STAR, TWINKle, TWINKle, LITTle STAR, how I WONDer WHAT you are! up aBOVE the WORLD so HIGH, LIKE a DIAmond in the SKY! WILLiam DEWy, TRANTer REUBen, FARMer LEDlow LATE at PLOUGH, ROBert's KIN, and JOHN'S, and NED'S, and the SQUIRE, and LADy SUSan, LIE in MELLstock CHURCHyard NOW! (From Thomas Hardy's "Friends Beyond") Anapest

The Anapest ( x x / ) is a foot where the beat comes after two non-beat syllables. ( x x / )(x x / )(x x / )( x x /) 'Twas the NIGHT beFORE CHRISTmas and ALL through the HOUSE 'Twas the NIGHT beFORE CHRISTmas and ALL through the HOUSE not a CREAture was STIRring, not EVen a MOUSE; The next two lines need us to look a bit more carefully. Remember the Iamb is the foot that only has one syllable before the beat instead of two as the Anapest. We therefore can recognize an Iamb (with red type) at the beginning of the following lines. When a different kind of foot is slipped in like this it is called a substitution and the best place of a substitution is often at the beginning (or the end) of a line. It helps give a bit of variety to the way the meter sounds, without losing the main rhythm of it. ( x / ) (x x / ) ( x x / )( x x /) The STOCKings were HUNG by the CHIMney with CARE, The STOCKings were HUNG by the CHIMney with CARE, In HOPES that ST.NICHolas SOON would be THERE. Dactyl The dactyl ( / x x ) is a foot where the beat is followed by two non-beat syllables. The last foot may be adjusted for the sake of creating more flexible rhymes: ( / x x)( / x x)( / x x )( / x ) HAIL to the CHIEF who in TRIumph adVANCes! HAIL to the CHIEF who in TRIumph adVANCes! HONored and BLESSED be the EVer-green PINE! LONG may the TREE, in his BANner that GLANCes, FLOURish, the SHELter and GRACE of our LINE! (From Sir Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake) _______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________

Common Variations

Initial Trochee in Iambic Meter As mentioned earlier, a meter may slip in a different foot sometimes, usually at the beginning or end of the line to give it some variation. One of the most common is a Trochee ( / x ) at the beginning of an Iambic line. This substitution is solidly established, and can be found in the works of most famous poets, including Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott and Alexander Pope just to name a few. Here is a passage from Dryden's translation of Aeneid. Notice the substitution in the very first line: ( / x ) ( x / ) ( x / )( x /) (x /) ARMS and the MAN I SING, who, FORC'D by FATE, ARMS and the MAN I SING, who, FORC'D by FATE, And HAUGHTy JUno's unreLENTing HATE, ExPELL'D and EXil'd, LEFT the TROjan SHORE. LONG LAbors, both by SEA and LAND, he BORE,

Extra Syllables A rhyme word may have extra syllables if necessary, as the -en and -on of the burden and guerdon below. These add extra syllables to the meter, but are necessary for certain rhymes: In HOLDing this mine HEART apPLAUDS To GAIN SUCH ANswers from the gods. This is the BIRTH from your NIGHT'S BURDen, For SMITES and BLOWS, your GAIN and GUERDon. (From a translation I wrote of Statius' Thebaid, BOOK II )

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Special Pronunciations

I Pronounced as "Y" Endings such as ious, ier, ior, ient, ial, etc. may be pronounced as one-syllable with a ysound: -yous, -yer, -yor, -yent, -yal, etc. Therefore, material (pronounced as mat-er-yal) and genial (pronounced as gen-yal) in the below lines fit perfectly into the Iambic meter: To MUTE and to matERial THINGS NEW LIFE reVOLVing SUMmer BRINGS; The GENial CALL DEAD NATure HEARS, And in her GLORy reapPEARS (From Sir Walter Scott's Marmion) The endings -eus, -eous, -eon may be treated the same, the e being pronounced as a ysound: So SINKS the YOUTH: his BEATeous HEAD dePREST BeNEATH his HELMet, DROPS uPON his BREAST. (From Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's Iliad) The phrase many a often experiences a similar shortening to "man-ya" as in: LULL'D in the COUNTless CHAMbers of the BRAIN Our THOUGHTS are LINK'D by MANy a HIDden CHAIN. (From Samuel Roger's The Pleasures of Memory) That MANy a DWELLing HAD the FOX But HERE, high UP aMONG the ROCKS, Was FOUND the SAFest, and the best (From F. S. Ellis' History of Reynard the Fox) U Pronounced as "W" Likewise, endings such as -uous, ual, -uent, -uit, etc. are sometimes pronounced as onesyllable with a w-sound: -wous, -wal, -went, -wit, etc. as contiguously and confluent in the lines below: The NEXT of KIN, conTIGuously emBRACE;

And FOES are SUNDer'd, by a LARGer SPACE. (From John Dryden's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses) BUZZ the WING'd BEES, and TRAIL in CLOUDS their FLIGHT, On TOPmost TREES in CONfluent CROWDS unITE, (From William Sotheby's translation of Virgil's Georgics)

Short'nings with M, N, L, or R Syllables such as -om, -en, -il, er, (with m, n, l, or r) may be shortened to 'm, 'n, 'l , 'r, in words like bosomy, evening, heavily, every, giving pronunciations such "bos'my", "ev'ning", "heav'ly", "ev'ry". These words may or may not have apostrophes to indicate the pronunciation: Til HARD'ning EV'ry where, and SPEECHless GROWN, She SITS unMOV'D, and FREEZes to a STONE. (From Dryden's Translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses) Some two syllable-words are often shortened as well; ever and never may be shortened to e'er and ne'er (pronounced as "air" and "nair"), even to e'en (pronounced as "een"), over to o'er (pronounced as "ore"), heaven, given, driven, to heav'n, giv'n, driv'n, etc. And when he DIES this consoLAtion's GIV'N His CHAMber's NEARest in the HOUSE to HEAV'N. (From The Bard's Advantage) Likewise words such as flower, tower, bower, power etc. may be pronounced as "-our" (as in hour): FAR as creATion's AMPle RANGE exTENDS, The SCALE of SENsual, MENtal POWERS aSCENDS (From Alexander Pope's Essay on Man)

Th' and t'

The and to may be shortened to th' and t' before words beginning with a vowel or h and are then pronounced as one with that syllable instead of taking up their own syllables in a line: Thy BEAUTies then from which I would reBEL Th'EYES SEE, th'EARS HEAR, th'HEART THINKS, and TONGUE must TELL. Note: Th'eyes, th'ears, th'heart are just one syllable each. (From William Alexander's Sonnet XCIV) Then MET th'eTERnal SYNod of the SKY BeFORE the GOD who THUNDers from on HIGH (From Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's Odyssey) At EIther PUMP they PLY the CLANKing BRAKE, And TURN by TURN th'unGRATEful OFfice TAKE. (From Shipwreck, by William Falconer) Why STILL deSIRE t'inCREASE thy WRETCHed STORE And WISH for what must WASTE LIKE those beFORE? (From Thomas Creech's translation of Lecretius' Of the Nature of Things)

-'d for -ed To indicate that the e of ed should not be pronounced, earlier poets would use an apostrophe, as in wing'd, because winged would imply the pronunciation wing-ed. In today's English the -e of -ed is normally not pronounced in such words, therefore we expect only one syllable in winged. There are only a few examples, such as bless-ed, learn-ed, belov-ed, that could somewhat logically be spelt as learn'd, bless'd, belov'd if one wished to omit the sound of the e. Otherwise this convention is no longer useful in modern English. Yet OH that FATE, proPITiously inCLIN'D Had RAIS'D my BIRTH, or had deBAS'D my MIND (From Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel)

Showing quotations 1 to 30 of 109 quotations in our collections I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties. Agatha Christie (1890 - 1976) I always wrote with the idea that what I put out there is going to stay there. Once I publish something, it has been published. I've never deleted more than one or two posts from my site. I don't think that there are takebacks. I don't feel right about it. Alison Headley, Digital Preservation and Blogs, SXSW 2006 If the weak hand, that has recorded this tale, has, by its scenes, beguiled the mourner of one hour of sorrow, or, by its moral, taught him to sustain it - the effort, however humble, has not been vain, nor is the writer unrewarded. Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1764 The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it. Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881) Not every story has explosions and car chases. That's why they have nudity and espionage. Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum, Unshelved, 09-14-08 I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter. Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662), "Lettres provinciales", letter 16, 1657 All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things. Bobby Knight (1940 - ) Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963) Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963) Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own. Carol Burnett (1936 - ) Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them. Charles Caleb Colton (1780 - 1832), Lacon, 1820 An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.

Charles de Montesquieu (1689 - 1755) This is pretty much what journals are all about, at least to me. I knew as I wrote them that even though they provided an excellent place for brain (and heart, and psyche) dump, they were mainly a map of me. Colleen Wainwright, communicatrix, 03-23-2006 Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. Cyril Connolly (1903 - 1974) Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard. Daphne du Maurier (1907 - 1989) Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it. David Sedaris, interview in Louisville Courier-Journal, June 5, 2005 A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness. Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937) Beneath the rule of men entirely great, The pen is mightier than the sword. Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803 - 1873), Richelieu Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book. Edward Gibbon (1737 - 1794) The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think. Edwin Schlossberg If writers stopped writing about what happened to them, then there would be a lot of empty pages. Elaine Liner, We Got Naked, Now What, SXSW 2006 Please write again soon. Though my own life is filled with activity, letters encourage momentary escape into others lives and I come back to my own with greater contentment. Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, 'A Woman of Independent Means' It's not enough to create magic. You have to create a price for magic, too. You have to create rules. Eric A. Burns, Gossamer Commons, 06-15-05 You ask me why I do not write something....I think one's feelings waste themselves in words, they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.

Florence Nightingale (1820 - 1910), in Cecil Woodham-Smith, Florence Nightingale, 1951 Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try. Fran Lebowitz (1950 - ) After being Turned Down by numerous Publishers, he had decided to write for Posterity. George Ade (1866 - 1944), "Fables in Slang", 1899 The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time. George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950) This is the sixth book I've written, which isn't bad for a guy who's only read two. George Burns (1896 - 1996) A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? George Orwell (1903 - 1950), "Politics and the English Language", 1946 In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. George Orwell (1903 - 1950), "Politics and the English Language", 1946 Showing quotations 31 to 60 of 109 quotations in our collections No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft. H. G. Wells (1866 - 1946) Keep writing. Keep doing it and doing it. Even in the moments when it's so hurtful to think about writing. Heather Armstrong, Keynote Speech, SXSW 2006 How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862) Be generous, be delicate, and always pursue the prize. Henry James (1843 - 1916), from his essay about the rules of writing I am a galley slave to pen and ink. Honore de Balzac (1799 - 1850) The cure for writer's cramp is writer's block. Inigo DeLeon You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on

another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist. Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992) It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them. Isabel Colegate Writing well mean never having to say, 'I guess you had to be there.' Jef Mallett, Frazz, 07-29-07 The first step in blogging is not writing them but reading them. Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine, 07-10-2006 Write something to suit yourself and many people will like it; write something to suit everybody and scarcely anyone will care for it. Jesse Stuart I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. Joan Didion (1934 - ) If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832) The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood. John Burroughs (1837 - 1921), The Snow-Walkers The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything. John Irving (1942 - ) Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them. John Ruskin (1819 - 1900) About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment. Josh Billings (1818 - 1885) Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none. Jules Renard (1864 - 1910)

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money. Jules Renard (1864 - 1910) A writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway. Junot Diaz, O Magazine, November 2009 Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility. Katherine Paterson, The Spying Heart, 1989 The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it. Leo Rosten (1908 - ) Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long. Leonard Bernstein (1918 - 1990) Learn as much by writing as by reading. Lord Acton I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes you ought to go away and write a book about it. Lord Brabazon (1884 - 1964) First you're an unknown, then you write one book and you move up to obscurity. Martin Myers When you write things down, they sometimes take you places you hadn't planned. Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been, 2010 There's always something to write about. If there's not then you need to live life more aggressively. Min Kim, Better Blogging Brainstorming, SXSW 2006 I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again. Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900) I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork. Peter De Vries Showing quotations 61 to 90 of 109 quotations in our collections

In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment. Pliny the Elder (23 AD - 79 AD), Natural History There is nothing to write about, you say. Well then, write and let me know just this - that there is nothing to write about; or tell me in the good old style if you are well. That's right. I am quite well. Pliny the Younger (62 AD - 114 AD), Letters Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren't distracted by the total lack of content in your writing. Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive Comic, 07-03-05 You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance. Ray Bradbury (1920 - ), advice to writers At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable. Raymond Chandler (1888 - 1959) Good writing takes more than just time; it wants your best moments and the best of you. Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com weblog, 10-09-04 I think people want their illusions and writers are mostly illusion. When you read their words, you read a flattened, incomplete version of the writer. Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, January 05, 2004 I write because I'm afraid to say some things out loud. Real Live Preacher, Real Live Preacher weblog, 03-13-05 If you want to write you must have faith in yourself. Faith enough to believe that if a thing is true about you, it is likely true about many people. And if you can have faith in your integrity and your motives, then you can write about yourself without fear. Real Live Preacher, Real Live Preacher weblog, 07-25-06 See things as they are and write about them. Dont waste your creative energy trying to make things up. Even if you are writing fiction, write the things you see and know. Real Live Preacher, Real Live Preacher weblog, 07-25-06 This is the challenge of writing. You have to be very emotionally engaged in what youre doing, or it comes out flat. You cant fake your way through this. Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, January 29, 2004 The key to non-anxious sermon-writing is that its not about me. Its about the congregation. I honor the fact that the listeners bring more to the sermon than I do. I remind myself of the hundreds of times someone says, 'I loved how you said' and then

tell me things that they heard that were nowhere in my text and that I never said. But they heard what they needed to hear. Reverend Sean Parker Dennison, Ministrare, 04-07-2006 Detail makes the difference between boring and terrific writing. Its the difference between a pencil sketch and a lush oil painting. As a writer, words are your paint. Use all the colors. Rhys Alexander, Writing Gooder, 12-09-05 A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor. Ring Lardner (1885 - 1933), "How to Write Short Stories" It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous. Robert Benchley (1889 - 1945) Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. Robert Heinlein (1907 - 1988) Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book. Ronald Reagan (1911 - 2004) Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it. Russel Lynes The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any. Russell Baker (1925 - ) I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead. Samuel Goldwyn (1882 - 1974) Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out. Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), from Boswell's Life of Johnson Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good. Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), (attributed) There are a lot of people who can't write and maybe shouldn't write. Sarah Hepola, How To Add Video To Your Blog, SXSW 2006 Even writers need relief from words.

Sarah Vowell, O Magazine, March 2009 There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book. Saul Bellow (1915 - 2005) Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning. Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters. Solomon Short Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin. Stanislaw J. Lec (1909 - 1966), "Unkempt Thoughts" I never feel that I have comprehended an emotion, or fully lived even the smallest events, until I have reflected upon it in my journal; my pen is my truest confidant, holding in check the passions and disappointments that I dare not share even with my beloved. Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor, 1996 Showing quotations 91 to 109 of 109 quotations in our collections Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. Stephen King (1947 - ), "Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully - in Ten Minutes", 1988 If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write. Stephen King (1947 - ), On Writing, p. 147 You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despairthe sense that you can never completely put on the page whats in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page. Stephen King (1947 - ), On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, 2000 You must not come lightly to the blank page. Stephen King (1947 - ), On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, 2000 Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)

All a good letter has to do is make you feel special. Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata, Animal Crossing: Wild World, 2005 It's not about the writing. It's about the feelings behind the words. Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata, Animal Crossing: Wild World, 2005 Why do writers write? Because it isn't there. Thomas Berger A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955) A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to. Tom Bissell, Truth in Oxiana, 2004 I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil. Truman Capote (1924 - 1984) If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away. Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885) An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do. W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), The Razor's Edge, 1943 People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are. W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), The Razor's Edge, 1943 There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to. W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything. Walter Bagehot (1826 - 1877) Journalism is just a gun. It's only got one bullet in it, but if you aim right, that's all you need. Aim it right and you can blow a kneecap off the world. Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan: Back On The Street

Vigorous writing is concise. William Strunk Jr., "The Elements of Style", 1919 044-42052907 Students Xerox A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? A new collection of a significant poet's work is a matter for celebration. A renewal of faith. But read Jayanta Mahapatra's Random Descent (Third Eye Communications, 2005) and the only source of light is the lucidity in the verse. A cross between wise owl and naughty imp, Mahapatra's shy face is ready to break into quick smiles. But, belonging to a region where famine and starvation deaths are not news clips but daily sights, how can he fail to record the holocaust around him? "Close the Sky", "Rain of Rites", "Dispossessed Nests", "Burden of Waves and Fruit", "Shadow Space", "Bare Face"... his very titles reflect bleakness, guilt, incertitude. Five collections of verse in Oriya, and translations into English from Oriya and Bengali, testify to his trilingual creativity. Included in anthologies of contemporary Indian poetry, Mahapatra has been published in journals abroad (The Times Literary Supplement, The New Yorker, Critical Quarterly, Chicago, Kenyon, Sewanee Reviews), and won his share of honours, from the Jacob Gladstein Memorial Award (1975) to the Sahitya Akademi (1981) and Vaikom Mohammed Basheer (!997) Awards. Agony and melancholy claw at his verse where childhood provides the canvas for strokes from every stage of experience. "A scream never ends... Blindfold your scream again, sweet Mariam,/ with the quick blood flowing down your seven-year thighs." Brutality is the truth of his landscape. "My eyes, like these poems,/ seek something to hold on to, hoping to steady/ the hour"; but "The stony silence of the men staring hard/ crosses the line of sanity"; while "God hides in the dark like an alien." In this interview, as in Random Descent, Mahapatra talks about his passage through angst. Your approach to time and space have changed through the years. Do you see this as a part of the creative process? As a boy, when I thought I was the centre of the universe, I was proud to be an Indian. I saw the newborn nation as an indivisible entity. As a student in Patna University, hearing Mahatma Gandhi was to feel this unity. This encounter gave me the courage to face the world, its bitter truths, brought conviction to my poetry... Now regionalism has taken over completely. My space and time must reflect this splintering process. Have you romanticised Gandhi? Poetry itself is a romantic attitude. Otherwise I'd be doing what Gandhi did, what Mother Teresa did, fighting destitution and injustice in slums, villages. I sit in my house and write poems about what I see through the window. A safe option. You started writing poetry at an age when people stop writing poetry. What got you started at 40? I wrote fiction as a young man. Always rejected. I dabbled at many things. I was a good photographer, portraits fascinate me. I got a job, but felt restless. No sense of direction. Poetry made me orient myself, express bottled up feelings, anchored my perception. Shyness led me to write. I couldn't mix with people.

But you taught Physics in college! You had to interact with students. Not so difficult to talk to the young, but relating to people of my age was tough. I wouldn't go back to my childhood. The youngest in class, pushed around by everyone. Eldest at home, burdened with responsibilities. As an inspector of schools, my father was always travelling. We lived in an old village house, no electricity... I had to look after everything. Did Physics lead you to speculate about time finite and infinite? Physics taught me that time held you captive, but it also made you free. I was nothing but an infinitesimal speck floating in the vast universe. This broadened my vision, but I also feel pressurised, burdened by the weight of time. If you are an inconsequential speck, your poetry is equally immaterial. Sometimes I feel that. What does it mean, in itself? To me? To you? Are there also times when you feel your writing has value? If you read a line and can't forget it, it touches you, you return to it again, that's poetry. Today I realise that all my life, I've been writing not many poems, but a single one! Yet, when I analyse my work I think may be four to five can be called poems. I see great poets... Lorca, Neruda... I feel humbled. Don't stand a chance against them. You have been true to your ethos, culture, roots. Isn't that something? You can't rid yourself of them. In the hot summer months we have whole night open-air operas. Their tunes and melodies get into you, so do our dance and architecture. They have shaped our people's sensibility, my sensibility. An Indian poet writing in English has a niche existence. But you took your time to start writing in Oriya. Why? Didn't write in English out of ambition. I was educated in an English medium school, my vocabulary came from voracious reading. When I began to write in my mother tongue I found myself doing in Oriya what I couldn't do in English. Oriya has opened up a new readership. I have a sense of belonging to my people, my community, in a different way. The Oriya tradition is unrivalled in sringara. Your verse is filled with karuna, bhayanaka and bibhatsa. What about the joys? Difficult to say. There are sudden surges of joy, but the next moment you are pulled down. Here and there little lamps dispel the darkness. You strain to catch the light. Pain and terror stalk you, especially where I live. I must find the little lights to keep going, to raise levels of thinking and feeling. I don't know if my poetry does that. Has the suffering increased or have you become more sensitive? As we grow older our physical faculties fail, mental faculties grow. I don't know how to live with such desolation. In Random Descent you quote Sylvia Plath and the Israeli poet Amichai. But how do Baudelaire, and more surprisingly, Wordsworth, also quoted by you, fit into your scheme? Baudelaire is a city poet. I'm not. I don't like all his poetry. Somehow these lines got in. I shouldn't have used Wordsworth. Sometimes you don't like a thing and yet you feel compelled to do it. Diamond Once thought to be a product of aristocratic breeding, perfect vision allows a human to read a quarter-inch-tall print from twenty feet away. In the 11th century, Scottish King Malcolm

II could identify the members of any clan in his jurisdiction a full two minutes before they were within arms reach if they were walking at a reasonable pace. Many men are offended by the idea of perfection. A man, when he wants to spend his life with another man, may consider him perfect. A man must be a product of what he is surrounded by, not of what he wishes to be surrounded by. A garbage man finds ugliness at home, where his daughter is constantly courted. The boys see in her one fine woman. The truth is: she is shy. Her father doesnt prefer a single one of them over any other. The typeface of any given text affects how one processes the information communicated by that text. Is it scientific, gleeful, an emergency, a suggestion? For easy readability, the best book and newsprint typefaces are said to disappear. Once, a woman said to me, Oh, its past midnight. I wasnt sure if her rapid hand gestures were meant to obscure or show me the diamond. A.J. Collins But to say first something about the shoes wouldnt be right. The whole thing started with sunrise, getting there, a broken fog sifting birch limbs, an owl tucked, full of shrews, with floating a pontoon down the Pactolus to shoot mallards, when a pair of legs rose stark beside a half-built beaver dam. The toes were grey and nailless. I was scraping along the brackish flats, looking for something to shove off of, and nudged the white-haired boy from beneath the branches, his ears clogged with silt. The shoes were found a while later, by then the hollow in me having filled up and left, leaving what? Laces untied, sitting on the bank beside some cypress roots. Prosthesis Significant appendages cant take vacations. And, no flesh-replacement available, sometimes carbon fiber becomes near-human with use, sometimes a beige lobe of silicone hardly held by a bra. A newborn, oblivious to his mothers past breast-cancer trauma, kneads the ordained suckling-place, its offering subtracted years ago. While the child is present, warm against his source, the fake breast tries to replace what had to be lost. Its weight, wholly separate, offers nothing against destructiona poor talisman. Sometimes a joke about

ghost limbs, about a whore who faked her shudder, claiming so good when you wiggle, silent-sighing jeez, get up inside, it's your nickel. Seeing their reflection in the mirror, the john saw this stand-in hand him a strap-on and said irregardless, Ill be a part of you. A.J. Collins http://fishousepoems.org/archives/evie_shockley/ Battle Rhyme for the Rhetorical Disenfranchisers Youre like the fat kid offering up ho-hos, one finger in the nose, sweet treats exchanged for friendship. Or the little dog, big dog ankle-yip aestetic. If you need ask who is who, you validate pathetic. Like a concierge once he realizes hes just a parking attendant. A snappy tie doesnt mean independent. A snappy vest doesnt mean success even if your walk is what Dick Gregory calls swagger. Disrespect for your poetry is a read-by: line by line and posthumous like appreciation for Kafka is. Let me tell you how your verse stands with me: you, embargoer of poetic place, you, fat cat at a soup line. Since you take up page space one undeserved iam at a time, Ive got no choice but to backslap your verse like Mister did Ceilie. You better hope Shug starts singing and distracts me. Otherwise, everyone from here to here will know youre fraudulent.

Theyll know you didnt go platinum or win a Pulitzer. You didnt reach Byzantium or tap-dance to a Wurlitzer. When real poets are writing, youre in bed dreaming Wilfred Owens Anthem but without the flowers in your mind. Only the slow drawing of the blinds. Adrian Matejka Pigment Blue They say the Devil owns all blues, transcendental dream-shaded: indigo heavier than cat-gut when the moon is preening. Cobalt homespun in Zaire, the country itself an outline of monopoly lacking palate. Belly-color blue. They say Picasso played the Devils game because he couldnt afford red paint. My womans slept-in hair can be blue. Mid-squawk vocal chord, taffeta ghost in a devils chorus. Call blue I dont know why like the weight of water. Red Monks forgotten triangles of color. Leftover stew meat in the fold, shouldnt have been seen red. Down the drain, armatured memory. Brewed melanin red. My brothers 5th grade handwriting, slide of needle punctuation. Need the pop for cursive, like red-branched trees applauding wind just because. Red is the color of nausea, serration of tongue and lung intersection. Panhandling Eddie Hazel: eyes like Romare Beardens color on a good day. Misnomer red, an apostrophe of ash trying to separate tobacco from bone. Ochre Its in the rise of skirt around thighs. Not seeing makes the difference; haves and nots falling apart, molecules at a time. and there is nothing to be done, no paint to fill spaces. Memorys predication: ring in belly, garters reaching hips,

meniscus of silk between arched middles. Gods ignored love songs: O, serenity of orange. None of Goyas witches. Just porcelain curve split by gravitys symmetry, the natural way of evening out space stereophonically. Dusty orange, running hips like a drowned man still scrimping sand. Black, White Ecology leads to mulattoed color, lulled by ambiguitys generosity. That husk of absorbed light, those slim-spired Gaud concoctions. Check the cortex for totality in colors, black. Or find flesh stripped for Siqueiros brick underside: white. Check the rinds for permutations. Sienna, teal, or magenta improvisation in a modal spectrum. Instructions for the End Everything seems closer from far away. Your face a name on an envelope. Here is your hair in ink, a cathedral. Do you trust me? You can always remove the keystone. A summer scarf looking for a wheel. The hair on my sheets wrapped tight round my fingers. Slipped in my mouth a nipple resistant to fingerprints. Follow this to the beginning, trace upon trace removed (The paper is blank. The pulp is unpressed. The tree is a virgin to sawblades. The earth is empty, is an empty lake) to memory: Before me is your back on a breakwater, your hair an opening to your neck, your skin a shadow of my tongue. An effigy burns eternally. It is never erased. All ashes are arrows. The bluejay of your stare. Andrew Kozma The Influence of Anxiety They weigh more than yesterday, their bodies engorged by a grand contradiction, thinning skin

swelled like this breakfast sausage askitter in the pan. Im learning over your shoulder how you bring yourself pleasure, fascinated at the deftness of your silences, breathing even held to a fine point. A beautiful girl is diminished. Somewhere their laughter descends from the highest ceiling to turn light bulbs into eyes, fans into empty pockets, and leaves mirrors just as they are. Smells I praise as ikons of you are stationed around the room. A pack of seven dogs deceives the street into being a veldt cracked by drought; they surround my car with the prolonged slowness of the starving. They have been emptied from their leashes, and they weigh more in motion. Sometimes the sky closes with the peripheral notion of rain, and you are nowhere to be seen. Andrew Kozma Poets A.J. Collins Adrian Blevins Adrian Matejka Aimee Nezhukumatathil Alex Dimitrov Alexander Long Amaud Jamaul Johnson Andrew Kozma Angie Hogan Anne Marie Macari Anne Shaw Annie Finch Anthony Deaton Anthony Walton April Ossmann Aracelis Girmay Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis Averill Curdy Barbara Jane Reyes Beth Bachmann Betsy Sholl Brian Turner Camille T. Dungy Camille-Yvette Welsch Carey McHugh Carey Salerno Carmen O. Menndez

Carrie Jerrell Cate Marvin Catherine Barnett Chad Davidson Charles Flowers Charlotte Matthews Chris Dombrowski Christian Barter Connie Voisine Curtis Bauer Dan Albergotti Dana Levin David Bruzina David Cappella David Roderick Diana Marie Delgado Djelloul Marbrook Dobby Gibson Doug Van Gundy Douglas Kearney Douglas Woodsum Ed Pavlic Elaine Sexton Eliot Khalil Wilson Elizabeth Bradfield Elizabeth Volpe Elizabyth Hiscox Emily Warn Emmy Prez Erica Wright Erika Meitner Eugene Ostashevsky Evie Shockley Frank Giampietro Frank X Walker Gabriel Fried Gabriel Welsch Gabrielle Calvocoressi Geoffrey Brock Gerald Stern Gibson Fay-LeBlanc Gillian Kiley Gregory Pardlo Helen Wickes Henrietta Goodman Hermine Pinson

Ilya Kaminsky Ira Sadoff James Allen Hall James Hoch Jane Hilberry Jeffrey Thomson Jenn Habel Jennifer Kwon Dobbs Jennifer Tseng Jericho Brown John Casteen John Murillo John Olivares Espinoza John Poch John Struloeff Jon Pineda Joseph O. Legaspi Joshua Kryah Karen Holmberg Kate Northrop Kazim Ali Keetje Kuipers Ken Cormier Ken Rumble Kevin A. Gonzlez Kevin Goodan Kevin McFadden Kyes Stevens Kyle G. Dargan La Tasha N. Nevada Diggs Laura McCullough Laura-Gray Street Lauri Conner Lee Herrick Lee Sharkey Leslie McGrath Linda Susan Jackson Lindsay Ahl Lola Haskins Lucy Anderton Luisa A. Igloria Lynne Thompson Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon Lytton Smith M.L. Smoker Major Jackson

Margo Berdeshevsky Maria Hummel Marie Harris Mark Conway Mark Yakich Mary Crockett Hill Matt O'Donnell Matthea Harvey Matthew Dickman Matthew Lippman Matthew Shenoda Matthew Zapruder Meghan O'Rourke Michael Collier Michael Dickman Michael McGriff Michael Morse Miranda Field Molly Peacock Monica Ferrell Nickole Brown Nina Corwin Oliver de la Paz Orlando White Patrick Donnelly Patrick Phillips Patrick Rosal Paul Guest Paul Welch Paula Bohince Philip Metres Priscilla Becker Purvi Shah R. Erica Doyle Rachel M. Simon Ravi Shankar Raymond McDaniel Reb Livingston Rebecca Black Rebecca Foust Reginald Harris Richard Siken Rick Barot Rick Noguchi Rigoberto Gonzlez Robert Cording

Robert Farnsworth Robin Beth Schaer Robin Ekiss Rodger LeGrand Roger Bonair-Agard Ross Gay Ruth Ellen Kocher Sabrina Orah Mark Sally Bliumis-Dunn Sam Taylor Sandra Beasley Santee Frazier Sarah Gambito Sarah Gridley Sarah Lindsay Sarah Manguso Sarah Messer Sean Hill Sean Singer Sebastian Matthews Seth Michelson Shane Book Sherwin Bitsui Stacey Lynn Brown Stefanie Wortman Steve Scafidi Stuart Dischell Stuart Greenhouse Sun Yung Shin Suzanne Cleary Suzanne Wise Terrance Hayes Terry L. Kennedy Thorpe Moeckel Tim Seibles Tina Chang Tom Thompson Tony Barnstone Tracy K. Smith Tyehimba Jess V. Penelope Pelizzon Victoria Chang Vievee Francis Willis Barnstone Wind Lin Xochiquetzal Candelaria

Yona Harvey Disciplines [If there is prayer, there is a mother kneeling] by Dawn Lundy Martin If there is prayer, there is a mother kneeling, hands folded to a private sign. We recognize it. If there is a mother kneeling, hands a tent, she is praying or she is crying or crying and praying at the same time. Although it is recognized, the signals of it, it is private and no one knows, perhaps not even she, the content of the prayer, and perhaps its object. If there is a mother praying, she is on her kneels over some object, as one does not often pray in the middle of the room. One prays at the window or over the bed, the head bent slightly up or down, the eyes open or closed. This is a prayer for prayers, you know, a wanting something equal to a prayer, even though I am not a mother. Disciplines [Near adust. Caves. Closings] by Dawn Lundy Martin Near adust. Caves. Closings. Relentlessly the body leaves the bed. Does things. A day is merry and eager for prosperity. It dings dings the bell in its own head. The ritual of masking the breasts in heavy fabric, of covering the legs and feet. A face from the mirror says, I am pretty, I am pretty. Skin of opening, meant for opening. A sex in training. Trimmed, fastidious. Damp reasoning. Yet, adherence. Mask the breasts. Mark the skin. You are not from here, are you? Part tissue. What does it feel like? It feels like everything else. It must be different from some other thing. No. This is what a woman's body is. An effort in covering or not covering. A way toward exits. Disciplines [This is how much fortuitiveness weighs] by Dawn Lundy Martin This is how much fortuitiveness weighs. Measure in dirt. Of vices and other habits. Of leaving a house at 3 am and drawn as would any tether and here is your lock, my dear. I want to say this plainly: it is only when I am in a womans arms that my body is not a threat. Neither crosses nor damnation. Fix nor flutter. Hangs here, this balance, and one opens the car door and drives along the river where it said a crossing might happen. Had happened. Many times. Sticklers will say, not here. There are no crossings here. But, there the I is, reflection and delivered, on the other side. Like hams, I think, holding on to what was. It Was Raining In Delft by Peter Gizzi A cornerstone. Marble pilings. Curbstones and brick. I saw rooftops. The sun after a rain shower. Liz, there are children in clumsy jackets. Cobblestones and the sun now in a curbside pool. I will call in an hour where you are sleeping. Ive been walking for 7 hrs on yr name day. Dead, I am calling you now. There are colonnades. Yellow wrappers in the square. Just what youd suspect: a market with flowers and matrons, handbags. Beauty walks this world. It ages everything. I am far and I am an animal and I am just another I-am poem, a we-see poem, a they-love poem. The green. All the different windows.

There is so much stone here. And grass. So beautiful each translucent electric blade. And the noise. Cheers folding into traffic. These things. Things that have been already said many times: leaf, zipper, sparrow, lintel, scarf, window shade. Echoes by Barbara Guest Once more riding down to Venice on borrowed horses, the air free of misdemeanor, at rest in the inns of our fathers. Once again whiteness like the white chandelier. Echoes of other poems... Noisetone by Barbara Guest Each artist embarks on a personal search. An artist may take introspective refreshment from green. Or so they say in Barcelona when air is dry. In our country it is a water sprinkler that hints, "rinsed green." Colors often break themselves into separate hues of noisetone. In a Barcelona cabaret when green is overtaken, it is stirred into the mint color of drink. The spirit is lifted among primary colors. Nine rows of color. The future writ in white spaces. Sound and Structure by Barbara Guest "Sound leads to structure." Schnberg. On this dry prepared path walk heavy feet. This is not "dinner music." This is a power structure. heavy as eyelids. Beams are laid. The master cuts music for the future. Sound lays the structure. Sound leaks into the future. The Blue Stairs by Barbara Guest There is no fear in taking the first step or the second or the third having a position between several Popes In fact the top can be reached without disaster precocious

The code consists in noticing the particular shade of the staircase occasionally giving way to the emotions It has been chosen discriminately To graduate the dimensions ease them into sight republic of space Radiant deepness a thumb passed over it disarming as one who executes robbers Waving the gnats and the small giants aside balancing How to surprise a community by excellence somehow it occurred living a public life The original design was completed no one complained In a few years it was forgotten floating

It was framed like any other work of art not too ignobly kicking the ladder away Now I shall tell you why it is beautiful Design: extraordinary color: cobalt blue secret platforms Heels twist it into shape It has a fantastic area made for a tread that will ascend Being humble i.e. productive Its purpose is to take you upward On an elevator of human fingerprints of the most delicate fixity Being practical and knowing its denominator To push one foot ahead of the other Being a composite which sneers at marble all orthodox movements It has discovered

in the creak of a footstep the humility of sound Spatially selective using this counterfeit of height To substantiate a method of progress Reading stairs as interpolation in the problem of gradualness with a heavy and pure logic The master builder acknowledges this As do the artists in their dormer rooms eternal banishment Who are usually grateful to anyone who prevents them from taking a false step And having reached the summit would like to stay there even if the stairs are withdrawn Red Lilies by Barbara Guest Someone has remembered to dry the dishes; they have taken the accident out of the stove. Afterward lilies for supper; there the lines in front of the window are rubbed on the table of stone The paper flies up then down as the wind repeats. repeats its birdsong. Those arms under the pillow the burrowing arms they cleave as night as the tug kneads water

calling themselves branches The tree is you the blanket is what warms it snow erupts from thistle; the snow pours out of you. A cold hand on the dishes placing a saucer inside her who undressed for supper gliding that hair to the snow The pilot light went out on the stove The paper folded like a napkin other wings flew into the stone. Barbara Guest: Fair Realist by Peter Gizzi When Barbara Guest passed away in the winter of 2006, America lost one of its most fiercely independent and original artists. She had been writing poetry for sixty years. One might call her commitment to the art "heroic" but her primary task was rather, in her words, "to invoke the unseen, to unmask it." Hers is a poetry of revelation and of mystery. When Guest arrived on the scene in the mid-1950s, her work was characterized by an advanced lyricism that must have seemed already full-blown to her contemporaries. Yet as The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest attests, over the decades that followed, her poetry kept pushing the limits of the art with astonishing urgency, complexity, and daring. With only sporadic recognition along the way, most of it late, her work remained at the vanguard of the genre throughout her career. Guest's poetry, like all great art, makes us reconsider traditionnot as a fixed canonical body that exists behind us or bears us up but as something we move toward. We find it reading back through those very works that were ahead of their own time, their readers, and even their authorsin the poems of Emily Dickinson or William Carlos Williams, for instance. If this model of discovery teaches us anything, it is that tradition is, in fact, always just ahead of us. It is an occasion we rise to. In her essay "Wounded Joy," Guest writes: "The most important act of a poem is to reach further than the page so that we are aware of another aspect of the art. . . . What we are setting out to do is to delimit the work of art, so that it appears to have no beginning and no end, so that it overruns the boundaries of the poem on the page" (Forces of Imagination, 100). "The Trler Losses," one of her most adumbrated and yet literal poems, about the loss of a wristwatch, suggests the double bind of keeping and losing time, and the wonder of poems as timepieces. It is only, it seems, in reiterating temporal markers that one feels time expand within the poem, extending forward and looping back, incorporating and re-imagining the relation of future and pastand the difficult role of the poem in negotiating between them.

This desire to "delimit" the poem spatially and temporally has characterized Guest's work from the very beginning. Strictly speaking, her poems are not abstract; rather, they locate us always exactly where we already are, at the edge of meaning in an already impacted, developing world. Her poems begin in the midst of action but their angle of perception is oblique. In this way, the poem, like the world, exists phenomenally; it is grasped as it is coming into being, and she records the outer edges of the context of this movement, placing the poem at the horizon of our understanding. Her early poem "Parachutes, My Love, Could Carry Us Higher" is a classic example of Guest's facility with paradox in the context of a complex emotional clarity. Suspension is the chief conceit of the poem: the suspension of disbelief, the suspension of a locatable time and place, the suspension of a shared amorous attachment, and the suspense of notknowingnot knowing how to proceed and not-knowing as a human condition. It's a poem about being adrift but also about being alert to the elements, the medium of transport, willing to reconsider the terms of perception at each turn, as each line launches us into a variable reality. Throughout her career, a contrapuntal tension between location and unlocatability would permeate her work. Guest was born in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1920, the daughter of James Harvey and Ann Pinson. As a child, she moved to Florida and to California, living at various times with her aunt and uncle and with a grandmother. Guest wrote, "I never really had a 'home.' That was hard and it created unnecessary anxiety." Perhaps the indeterminacy and expansiveness of her voice were an answer to the necessity of establishing a lived space within the work of art. Guest attended UCLA, then UC Berkeley, receiving her BA in 1943. She moved to New York and married twice, to Stephen, Lord Haden-Guest in 1949 and to Trumbull Higgins, a professor of military history, in 1954. She raised two children: Hadley Guest and Jonathan Higgins. She wrote art criticism and was an editorial associate at Art News from 1951 to 1959. In this period she was also a poetry editor for the Partisan Review. Her first book of poems was published by the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1960. It was titled The Location of Things, and, in fact, it located her within the New York poetry nexus in ways that both have and have not served the reception of her work. In that same year, her Berkeley classmate Donald Allen placed her among the New York School in his seminal anthology The New American Poets. Of the 65 contributors in the periods two major anthologies of American poetry (one edited by Allen in 1960 and the other by Donald Hall in 1962), she was one of only five women. In the coming years she would publish Poems (1962) and The Blue Stairs (1968), followed by Moscow Mansions (1973), The Countess from Minneapolis (1976), and The Trler Losses (1979). Guest also wrote several plays, which were produced in New York in the Artists Theatre and the American Theatre for Poets, and a novel entitled Seeking Air (1978). In a 1996 interview with the American Poetry Review, Guest described her process as similar to that of the abstract expressionists who believed in "letting the subject find itself." Reading her art writing, it becomes clear that her understanding of painting derived fromand in retrospect serves to elucidateher own processes of composition. She wrote that Helen Frankenthaler's paintings are "landscapes of the interior" and positions them "on the margin of her universe." Disturbing the conventional relations of

subjects and objects, of reality and imagination, is one of Guest's signature gestures. She writes that Frankenthaler "forces Nature to copy Art" (Drer in the Window, 8). In Guest's hands, art can say something about itself without becoming pedantic; it can be absorbed in the quandaries of perception without getting lost. Her poems more often evoke the joy of being found. There is a tenderness in Guest's ability to view experience as a composition in its own right, taking it in at a respectful distance as one might view a work of art; or as lived experience might be triangulated and compounded through a work of art, as in a poem like "Roses," with its gestures to both Gertrude Stein and Juan Gris or in her masterful poem "The Nude." Her poems bespeak a long engagement with literary and artistic tradition, less by establishing allusive signposts than by exposing and exploring the difficulties that acts of imagination have always presented. She would find herself at home in Modernism, influenced by H.D.'s imagism and by other manifestations of the high modern, including Surrealism and Dada. Guest drew from Imagism a sense of the impacted history of objects and of words and how they can be "set" within a poem. In a sense, Guest's work reflects a natural progression of imagism into literary abstract expressionism. That is, if an image is but a fragment of a larger field, it has already become abstract. It bears the traces of a human context but is not immediately locatable within a specific time or place. For Guest, "the poem begins in silence," not noise, and it is quietly drawn into polyphony with its own echoes (FI, 20). She had an integrity that predisposed her for telling the truth as she saw it, and writing poetry as she understood it, even when it ran contrary to popular trends. As the women's movement was gaining strength and might have offered her a sense of context, Guest eschewed overtly polemical and political poetrythough it is worth noting that at this time she spent close to a decade writing the definitive biography of her great modernist precursor, H.D.: Herself Defined (1984). Her later poems were often characterized by the bridging of antagonistic dualities, as expressed in two of her most influential books, Fair Realism (1989) and Defensive Rapture (1993). Even a title like "Wild Gardens Overlooked by Night Lights" implies a frisson between the forces of nature (wild) and the cultivated (gardens). In its brilliant control of framing and juxtaposition to build emotional intensity through narrative compression, the poem exemplifies the heights of contemporary lyric practice. One doesn't think of Guest as a narrative poet, but her poems are laced with dramatic tensions and an engagement with invisible, imaginary, phantasmagorical elements, inexplicable turns in the path, and a mysterious sense of inevitability. Her most recent poems in Rocks on a Platter (1999), Miniatures (2002), The Red Gaze (2005), and after, take the reader quietly from one realm to another, as evidenced in one of her last poems, "Shelley in the Navy Colored Chair" (dedicated to her editor Suzanna Tamminen). As in Wallace Stevens' late poems, the relation between reality and imagination has become seamless. Guest spoke eloquentlyand defensively in the sense of Shelley's "Defence"about mystery, about poetry and its spiritual dimension, a theme that permeates her recent collections of prose, Drer in the Window: Reflexions on Art (2003) and the magisterial Forces of Imagination: Writing on Writing (2003). She wrote that "vision is part of the poet's spiritual life of which the poem, itself, is a rsum" (FI, 27). The poem "should not be programmatic, or didactic, or show-off"; rather, one should "go inside the poem itself and be in the dark at the beginning of the journey" (FI, 80). Her statements on poetics

were direct ("Respect your private language") and, at times, as practical as a survival manual ("When in trouble depend upon imagination") (FI, 78, 79). Implied always was a sense of poetry's chargeits energy and intensity but also its responsibilityand the understanding that writing was, in many ways, playing with fire: The forces of the imagination from which strength is drawn have a disruptive and capricious power. If the imagination is indulged too freely, it may run wild and destroy or be destructive to the artist.. If not used imagination may shrivel up. Baudelaire continually reminds us that the magic of art is inseparable from its risks.." (FI, 106) She was fearless and, to those who knew her, sagacious and outspoken. Her last book, The Red Gaze, ends with a sentence by Theodor Adorno: "In each genuine art work something appears that did not exist before." This is the Promethean power of which Guest's poems never lost sight and which have thus, in their own way, changed our world. Brenda Hillman A book was sometimes held in your hand when the Committee on Understanding met as you waited for them to call you in & the man who mowed the graveyard waved with a circular wave in the manner of cousins under the elm where it seemed sweet spices had been cast down near accordion streets so once the small democracies had begun, time could make an exception for owls with the faces of seeds that looked just like themselves only open; it is late & sweet with a late democratic sweetness when seeds had been cast down in the manner of spices, where once the small committees had begun, time played accordion with its foot in the door, & you felt at ease in a circular way so even had the parties called your name you would not have been wrong; the elms had made an exception & a book was sometimes found in your hand that looked just like itself, only open AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL CORPSE FLOWER | RUNAWAY DACHSHUNDS | WHILE I VACATION IN BANGOK, I RESPOND TO A STUDENT E-MAIL ASKING WHY HE RECEIVED A D IN CREATIVE WRITING | COCOA DANCE | WHEN THE MOTHER OF THE GREEDY BOY HAS ENOUGH | RIVER PHOENIX | THE CARCASS OF BEEF

CORPSE FLOWER And when the farmer saw the giant flower with smell like bad fish and bad sugar, he could not look away.

The purple skirt of the bloom begged him to return. And so he didwith a pail of waterand sang to it and caressed it and swiped beetles away from the blossoms lip. He even gave it a name and when the farmer said the name out loud, the flower began to move then completely devoured him. * Villagers searched and searched for the farmer. When they too stumbled upon the large blossom, they decided to name it after a beautiful jaguar that once killed several children. But this flower does not want to be named. Does not want to be owned. When the flower heard the name, it stretched to the closest person and ate her

ate the name as well.

RUNAWAY DACHSHUNDS CENTRAL KANSAS No sign of lake or puddle for miles but: a speedboat left in a wheat field. This journey is worth many fish. Two dachshunds meet at a rest stop and run away together into the wheat. Where do they think they will go? Perhaps they want to travel to a land full of soft neck meats and cheeses. Oceans of blue-sueded pillows. This journey is worth many fish. And what of their former owners? What will comfort their eyes shot through with thin blood? Who but the wheatbuds will hear their muffled wails?

WHILE I VACATION IN BANGOK, I RESPOND TO A STUDENT E-MAIL ASKING WHY HE RECEIVED A D IN CREATIVE WRITING

I do a fingernail dance at you.

COCOA DANCE ST. LUCIA You step on the cacao bean and all the shells shimmy off like a slip. You polish each bean, some beans stick between your third and fourth toes and still the air seethes with parrot calls. You dance and dance for the cocoa cake you need the cocoa cake and so you lift your hands above your head a scarf on your neck like a wound happy in the sun. The wound breathes open with each step. You need to rub the seeds under your high arch, so smooth and wet like the belly of a fish. Make these fish swim the dirty river: step-splash-step. Its funny now: you with your hands still in the air, waving for balance on top of this heap of beans. You semaphore a rescue

to a passing plane there is no rescue from this dance. When you come home, you tap your shoe against the wall: nothing. But later that night you will swear you feel a shake of beans between the sheetseven when you sleep alone.

WHEN THE MOTHER OF THE GREEDY BOY HAS ENOUGH On the island of Negros there lived a widow & her greedy boy. They could hardly afford meat for the tinola & had to borrow waxy rice sacks to line the walls of their home. The greedy boy slept in a nest of excelsior & had aphids in his hair. A hen wrapped in his coat.

When he walked by the mirabelle tree, all the yellow round fruits fell to the ground. The boy learned how to hunt deer, pigs, & squawking labuyo & when he finally brought one home (he saved all the very best pieces for himself), he only gave claws & neckbones to his mother. The next day she stopped at a neighbors funeral. She bought the body. She bought the body for the clothes & left the body in the church. She wore the bodys clothes (it had been so hot so hot and the body was five days ripe) & waited for her son to come home with his catch, give her only some back bones & necky meat. When he came home & cooked for her like that again oh my, she loved him, yes she did, oh my.

RIVER PHOENIX (1970-1993)

I want to shake the hand of the blind policeman who can recognize over three thousand thieves just by their voices. But what if the thief was a giraffethe quietest animal on land? Surely all the shredded acacia leaves would point you or I in the right direction, but what is the sound of hunger, no matter how spotty the reach? In ancient Egypt, spoons were shaped like fishlike splash and fin and maybe that is the sound we all listen for. What is the sound of a young actor who had eyes like a wise fish, who died in the knife of a sidewalk? I still have his old movies and can barely believe he is gone. Its a crime, really. Someone should follow the trail of wild apricots. At least you might find a sorry giraffe that just needs to stroll home.

THE CARCASS OF BEEF after a painting with the same title by Chaim Soutine (1925) As soon as I walk by the butcher shops with all manner of carcass in the window, I find myself hurrying past. I have no idea why I do this. There is no pause to consider the length of roast duck, the sweet drippy links of sausage. I can't bring myself to look past the carcass of beef to the young family inside. Where does the butcher's daughter go to school? Where is the stained sock? I know each morning she washes her hands with a steel spoon to get rid of the garlic and penny stink. I was that girl. I washed just like her, ashamed of my father's cooking. Pleated skirts and grosgrain hair ribbons reeked of curry. I washed until my hands were pink as meat. I wished so hard that Id be lifted right out of my home, my block, up and over all the cacti jabbed into the skyI wished so hard this smell would vanish, and one day it did

http://shampoopoetry.com/ Crush by Ada Limn June 8, 2009 Share Print E-Mail Single Page Keywords Maybe my limbs are made; Persimmons; Fruit; Food; Eat, Eating Maybe my limbs are made mostly for decoration, like the way I feel about persimmons. You cant really eat them. Or you wouldnt want to. If you grab the soft skin with your fist

it somehow feels funny, like youve been here before and uncomfortable, too, like youd rather squish it between your teeth impatiently, before spitting the soft parts back up to linger on the tongue like burnt sugar or guilt. For starters, it was all an accident, you cut the right branch and a sort of light woke up underneath, and the inedible fruit grew dark and needy. Think crucial hanging. Think crayon orange. There is one low, leaning heart-shaped globe left and dearest, can you tell, I am trying to love you less. Read more http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2009/06/08/090608po_poem_limon#ixzz18hn hLPF8 Poem for Hannah The tiny bee on its mission died before it felt a thing. Its body rested for a moment on the railing of my sunny porch in California. Then wind took it away. You are an older sister now so it's true the world owes you massive reparations. Also you have special alarm pheromones implanted in your nose that explode with phacelia distans i.e. wild heliotrope each time what they say will happen turns out to be a compendium

of what can never exactly be. Today the electric bus full of humans listening through tiny flesh-colored earbuds to the music news or literature perfectly calibrated to their needs kneels before the young man in his gleaming black wheelchair. Inside green laboratories experiments in the realm of tiny particles are being for our vast benefit completed. Already I can see the same little wrinkle I have appearing on your brow. You were born to feel a way you don't have a word for. Writing itself is a form of action" (Ron Silliman. The New Sentence 4) "My theme probably has most to do with a very strong feeling that telling stories actually has an effect on the world, and that a relation is achieved between the one telling those stories and her or his audience and history" (Bruce Boone. Century of Clouds 42). My talk sketches out two particular writing strategies developed in the 1970s in the San Francisco Bay Area: New Narrative as developed by Robert Glck and Bruce Boone; and Ron Silliman's New Sentence. Both of these projects were critical of the poetic practice of their day and aimed to produce writing that related to the social and political world. Glck and Boone posited narrative as a way for writing to participate in community, to address social subjects with bodies. Ron Silliman constructed the New Sentence and a practice of labor for intervening in capitalism's stranglehold on language. Silliman advocated a turn away from a speech-based poetics, the individual and subject, while he retained the New Left's focus on labor and class as an organizing framework. Silliman's is a poetics of assertion and confidence, yet, despite his turn away from a focus on the individual lyric "I," his texts often want it both ways, unwittingly reinscribing, only to make them disappear, textual subjects of discourse. Glck and Boone, two gay writers, proposed New Narrative as a means for tracking the uncertain discontinuities between ideologies, communities, indviduals, and subjects who have bodies on the line. Ultimately these contestatory writing practices share similar goals but propose differing politics and literary forms. Money Talks 1. Money is talking to itself again in this season's bondage and safari look, its closeout camouflage.

Hit the refresh button and this is what you get, money pretending that its hands are tied. 2. On a billboard by the 880, money admonishes, "Shut up and play." ______________________ http://www.kickingwind.com/archives.html "[F]or me the poem is an animal. It's imperfect, asymmetrical. Rules and laws are probably good for it, but it has a mind of its own. It can get across the room even when one leg is shorter than the other, even when it has no legs." Terrance Hayes What happens when markedly different kinds of subjects/tones/discourses come into contact? Sparks may fly. Maybe B doesn't come after A. Maybe X does. Then you have an ax." Rae Armantrout "Ironically, though contemporary poets who are also teachers (myself included) seem to like to talk about materiality, they tend to avoid discussions of product. We valorize process over product, as if the product, the evidence of process, is an unfortunate outcome of writing. But there is a product, and it is important. There are books, and most of us like them." Sasha Steensen "Working with hundreds of kids taught me that the weird and fascinating panoply of knowledge the mind receives in American grade schools -- marine life, volcanoes, planets, numbers, colors -- as well as neighboring streets, music, food, and the grandparents' donkey in Mexico are completely equal and exciting and allowable phenomena within a child's poem. The borders aren't there." Karen Volkman "One student of mind likened the workshop to sitting meditation where you are chanting in Japanese, and you don't know why you are doing it, but when you are done you are centered and energized." Hoa Nguyen The lines I've chosen are neither random nor representative, but they give you some sense of the ways one's teaching practice might be enlivened simply by reading and thinking along with the writers of these essays. There are some naysayers among them, who are skeptical about whether creative writing, in particular, can be taught -- food for thought. Overviews of successful class meetings or syllabi are shared. And, yes, there are particular prompts and exercises outlined, including a number of ways to play with "translation" and even more ways to experiement with the sonnet. Mostly, I think of it as a window in on a whole slew of poets' classrooms, through which I can glimpse the vast range of options available to me as a teacher of poetry myself. You might want to check it out. (If you stumble across an essay by one Evie Shockley, just skip it and don't come back until you've exhausted all the other lovely possibilities in the collection!) As you may have noticed, I've included links from each poet's name to a site on the web where you can take a look at a poem or two that s/he has written. I thought it would be nice to offer an easy route into the work of one or more poets who might be new to some of you. These links will be a special treat for people who are interested in or curious about poetry that veers away from the more conventional styles. Enjoy! Free! What is the origin of pizza?

The common belief is that Italians invented pizza, but its origin goes back to ancient times in the Middle East. Babylonians, Israelites, Egyptians, Armenians, Greeks and Romans, and other ancient cultures ate flat, unleavened bread cooked in mud ovens. The Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians were eating the bread topped with olive oil and native spices (what is today called focaccia). But Italy's version of the dish, especially from Naples, is the one we are familiar with - with tomato, cheese, and other toppings and seasonings. Supposedly, this pizza was first created by the baker Raffaele Esposito in Naples. His creation was immediately a favorite, and Esposito was called to make a pizza for the visit of King Umberto and Queen Margherita of Italy in 1889. The first known pizza shop was the Port 'Alba in Naples, which opened in 1830 and is still open today. Pizza spread to America, England, France, and Spain but it was little-known in these countries until World War II. In occupying Italian territory, many American and European soldiers tasted pizza. In America, Italian immigrants sold pizza in their stores and the first pizzeria was opened in 1905 by Gennuardo Lombardi at 53 1/3 Spring Street in New York City. The origin of the word pizza is uncertain. It is Italian for 'pie' and may have come from Latin pix 'pitch' or Greek pitta. Poetology The Art of Finding by Linda Gregg I believe that poetry at its best is found rather than written. Traditionally, and for many people even today, poems have been admired chiefly for their craftsmanship and musicality, the handsomeness of language and the abundance of similes, along with the patterning and rhymes. I respect and enjoy all that, but I would not have worked so hard and so long at my poetry if it were primarily the production of well-made objects, just as I would not have sacrificed so much for love if love were mostly about pleasure. What matters to me even more than the shapeliness and the dance of language is what the poem discovers deeper down than gracefulness and pleasures in figures of speech. I respond most to what is found out about the heart and spirit, what we can hear through the language. Best of all, of course, is when the language and other means of poetry combine with the meaning to make us experience what we understand. We are most likely to find this union by starting with the insides of the poem rather than with its surface, with the content rather than with the packaging. Too often in workshops and classrooms there is a concentration on the poem's garments instead of its life's blood. My early life was changed drastically by the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, but not primarily because of the poems' gorgeous words and rhythms. Rather it was because poems like "Pied Beauty" and "The Windhover" gave me a special way of knowing the earth and experiencing God. In the same way, Lorca was important to me when I was very young because of the mystery within the singing. There is a luminosity in those poems of Lorca and Hopkins, and for me ever since when I see such luminosity beginning in a poem, it is a sign that something significant has been found. It may be that the major art in poetry is the art of finding this shiningthis luminosity. It is the difference between a publishable poem and one that matters. Certainly one can make good poems without feeling much or discovering anything new. You can produce fine poems without believing anything, but it corrodes the spirit and eventually rots the seed-corn of

the heart. Writing becomes manufacturing instead of giving birth. I do not have a road map or a neat system to give you to help you find the luminosity in your poemsyour art, but I would like to share how it has been for me. At the start, let us agree that the poet must master the elements of his craft: the rhythm, the strategies, the importance of compression, when to use rhyme and when not to use itall of that. But at the same time, we have to acknowledge that the craft must not become the content of the poem. It must not become an end in itself. The craft must serve primarily to deliver what the poet is trying to say to the reader, and to deliver the feelings or discoveries to him with as little loss as possible. Ezra Pound defined craft as "the means for delivering the content of the poem and to deliver it alive." However, there is always a danger in making the craft the thing to be delivered. The poet must have craft, but he/she must also locate the substance, the art within the poem, which is at the center of the best poetry, and is upon what the craft works. Akira Kurasawa, the great Japanese filmmaker, said that the script was the crucial thing in making a movie. "If you have a good script and a mediocre director," he said, "you can still end up with a pretty good movie. But if you have a bad script it is hard for a director with even the finest craft to get a good result." There are two elements in "finding" a poem: discovering the subject matter and locating the concrete details and images out of which the poems are built. In this instance, I do not mean the subject matter to be the ideas or subjects for poems. Instead, I am referring to finding the resonant sources deep inside you that empower those subjects and ideas when they are put in poems. For example, I am made of the landscape in northern California where I grew up, made of my father's uninhabited mountain where my twin sister and I spent most of our time as small children with the live oak trees, the stillness, the tall grass, the dry smell of the hot summer air where the red-tailed hawks turned slowly up high, where the two of us alone at ten did the spring roundup of my father's twenty-six winter-shaggy horses. Down below there were salmon in the stream that ran by our house, the life of that stream and the sound of it as we lay in our bunks at night, our goat and the deer standing silently outside in the mist so many mornings when we awoke. The elements of that bright world are in my poetry now when I write about love or Nicaragua or the old gods in the rocky earth of Greece, just as the Greek islands where I lived for almost five years resonate in the poems I write now about the shelter for abused women in Manhattan or how a marriage failed in New Englandbut not directly. They are present as essences. They operate invisibly as energy, equivalents, touchstones, amulets, buried seed, repositories, and catalysts. They function at the generating level of the poems to impregnate and pollinate the presentprovoking, instigating, germinating, irradiatingin the way the lake high up in the Sierra mountains waters the roses in far away San Francisco. Your resonant sources will be different from mine and will differ from those around you. They may be your long family life, your political rage, your love and sexuality, your fears and secrets, your ethnic identityanything. The point is not what they are but that they are yours. Whatever these sources are, you must hunt out them out and feed your poems with them, not necessarily as topics, subjects or themes, but as the vital force that fuels your poems. Once you discover this source, you must find the images and concrete details to make your poems visible and effective. These images and details fuel the poem from the outside and also are what help distinguish poetry from prose. It is the way we give a body to the ideas and feelings of the

poem, whether the concrete images are literal or only seemingly concrete, as with metaphors and similes. Part of the art of "finding" a poem is choosing those concrete details that have a special energy and vibrancy. The best poets seem to have a gift for finding such detailsa genius for choosing the two or three particulars that create a whole landscape, which manifest a city street with its early morning rain, or simply construct a room. These poets can make us see a person better with two details than prose can do with pages of description. I am astonished in my teaching to find how many poets are nearly blind to the physical world. They have ideas, memories, and feelings, but when they write their poems they often see them as similes. To break this habit, I have my students keep a journal in which they must write, very briefly, six things they have seen each daynot beautiful or remarkable things, just things. This seemingly simple task usually is hard for them. At the beginning, they typically "see" things in one of three ways: artistically, deliberately, or not at all. Those who see artistically instantly decorate their descriptions, turning them into something poetic: the winter trees immediately become "old men with snow on their shoulders," or the lake looks like a "giant eye." The ones who see deliberately go on and on describing a brass lamp by the bed with painful exactness. And the ones who see only what is forced on their attention: the grandmother in a bikini riding on a skateboard, or a bloody car wreck. But with practice, they begin to see carelessly and learn a kind of active passivity until after a month nearly all of them have learned to be available to seeingand the physical world pours in. Their journals fill up with lovely things like, "the mirror with nothing reflected in it." This way of seeing is important, even vital to the poet, since it is crucial that a poet see when she or he is not lookingjust as she must write when she is not writing. To write just because the poet wants to write is natural, but to learn to see is a blessing. The art of finding in poetry is the art of marrying the sacred to the world, the invisible to the human.

2009, Academy of American Poets. All Rights Reserved. Elvies Educates His First Born The harvest of all that I am tells me he done with book learning and silly college dreams. Wants to be grown, do man things like work the railroad, do the gandy dance. Sometime a man got to find himself for himself, go in the wilderness like Moses. I try to tell him: Six with rail thongs on one end. Six on the other. A three-foot span of track is eighty-five pounds. Thats eighty-five pounds of dead muscle riding flat-line on shoulders of men whose spit is fresh with last nights taste of rot-gut whiskey, fresh with the root smell of jook-joint easy women. Eighty-five pounds of steel looking

at sunrise and sunset. Thats twelve men who never turned leaf pages of a Blueback Speller; learned to write with a hoe and reap with a plow, understood math by how many bales of cotton a pair of hands could snatch before the sun dipped to its knees. Its the lift of lining bar, the regular sound of a mauling, driving three hundred, five pound spikes a day Its the sound of a conductor moving a dozen down the line.
Damn young fool lasted three days with men who forgot more work than hell ever do. Men who been working since they stopped sucking milk from they mamas tit. Men born from cant get no harder than these times.

Mary Elizabeth: The Knee Baby Moves in With Relatives, 1955 When I first moved to Look Out Avenue I still harbored beliefs momma beat in me raw with three braid switches until it became difficult to endure other people telling me what to do like I am their daughter. Now my skin is hardened with a defiance of an unbroken mustang, I do what I please; like chase boys who drive dark blue Chryslers, step my saddle oxfords in dime socials, dance with the First Street Boys who wear V-neck cardigans

with razor sharp crew cuts caked full of Murray s doing the Madison , cause Im free to twirl like a top. Let them pull, snap the hem of my ivy league skirt to Frankie Lymon spinning real crazy; like a 78 on the Victrola. Stay out till the moon gets tired of smiling. Let them know Momma raise me womanstrong like the back of her hand.
About Keith Althaus Keith Althaus is the author of Rival Heavens (1993, Provincetown Arts Press). His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, and numerous other magazines and journals. He has worked at many jobs, including loft renovation, tree planting, and clerical work, and now runs a gallery with his wife, the painter Susan Baker. They live in North Truro, Massachusetts. IN HIS OWN WORDS On Ladder of Hours: I began to write in the simplest and most straightforward language because I thought it would be easy. And because I had no audience, any attempt to impress or seduce the reader with rhetoric would only come back to me. Years later, by the time I realized how difficult it is to write simply, I was hooked on the promise of its reward. While technically these poems cover many years, more than half my life, it is in fact no time: the pleasures and sorrows that preoccupied me when I began have not gone away, but have grown clearer, sharper, more insistent upon being heard. And the mysteries I set out to explore have, as mysteries do, only deepened and widened. I stand no nearer conclusion now than I did then, yet, as if in compensation, writing has given me a second, concurrent life, more like a companion than a shadow. A poet can only hope his wild stabs occasionally strike bone, a startling occurrence for both the reader and writer. Its fitting for an art born of solitude that we share these moments alone.

Ladder of Hours A ladder of hours leads to the dark. Midnights tower looks down on where you stood at noon, poised on a rung, wondering what is this room that stands outside, in pure light, even as the ladder curves in space to meet itself, become a treadmill, whose blurring bars create a see-through wall, on the other side of which, the room endures, and waits, though moonlit now. Back to Top First Snow The earth is white today, as if it could choose. Torn paper fell through the night on the school and yard. Chalk limned the charcoal lees of elms. The orchard floor is solid again with petals, and miles of city streets are paved with harmless stone. Snow is beautiful because it never changes from the day you were a kid; the same flakes fall in front of headlights, slant the same way, sound the same, when everything else has changed.

It buries years, the makes of cars, setting the stage for the return of earths vanished race of snowmen, who come back with eyes that once were soft and green; they stay for days or weeks, or just the afternoon. Back to Top There I am far ahead when I close my eyes, already there, where the dead ends of the future lie like lines down after a storm, and the avalanche of words ends in an ellipsis followed by dead air. Fear is behind me, down a long aisle of lost breaths. Needs that were sharp, insistent, are barely audible above the building quiet. The rest is unimaginable: how the voice in the head grows silent, the lights of the body dim, and nothing happens next.

New Year's Underground

by Keith Althaus

This subway map reminds me of the colored stripes on hospital floors that guide us to recovery or dead ends (I lift my glass to the Amber line), or the spacious room that overlooks a beautiful parking lot where the roofs of the cars are like tiles youll be walking on in the same sunshine, just a little older, paler, having seen a blizzard of empty beds, too much aluminum, so many shaky starts. In this howling tunnel they come into focus: lemon, pink, lime, the corner where a couple stands aside to let you pass, motioning you forward while murmuring red, red, waiting for their strength to return. The lines are like the nerves and veins themselves that are having trouble now, that somehow got intertwined or clogged, yet here cross without difficulty or getting tangled up or lost, regrouping at the next intersection, then heading off again on their separate missions, sometimes shadowing each other for a while until the lungs pull away from the heart

with a jolt like a train. Underground, beneath the citys streets and sewers, stores, and traffic, and high-rises, the celebration leads to sober reflection, reassessments and the desire to work to change, but not today, where were sandwiched by a past and whats not yet arrived. I am lost between the revelers with one more stop, and those whove already had their cup of sweetness on a tray.

To One Who Owed Me Money

To finally locate you after all these years and then its in a dream!: youre near the end in a hospital in a small New England city, what monstrous snake of a road led you here, where you sit on the bed making calls as you did, to the rich and famous, trying to raise money for your wifes pathetic project, and by extension, us, laboring within earshot of your makeshift desk. They were never home to you, always at lunch or in a meeting. I dont think I ever heard you get through to anyone. It was forty years ago. The money you owe me would be a fortune now. I could use it.

But I needed it then, as I have almost every year since. You used it to run away with your wife and daughter to England, and then with your daughter away from your wife back to America. You were a fool under her spell, and when the spell was broken... well, we all fear the day the endearing, idiosyncratic traits turn to irritants and hideous faults, the way a clowns face goes to scary after funny. We loaned you strength on those filthy floors looking over Second Avenue, tearing down walls, pulling through the lathing old horse hair from the century before, as outside it went from winter to spring and early summer, and all we took away were a few indelible songs from the radio, news that kept getting shriller, and a sense what happened here would always be tested, weighed against another life that spoke in anger and in silence, and whose outstretched claw you passed each day on the corner. Painting, sheetrocking, we gave up months of lifes best season: youth, which disappeared without a trace. Now youve returned the only way you could to pay your debt, and left this poem. Well call it even.

When Young: Unpainted Masks

by Keith Althaus

When Young: Unpainted Masks

by Keith Althaus

The faces changing

in the rooms changing light were just the beginning of stories, unwritten, untold, hardly imagined, whose flickering hid promises of the expected, of loves, of works to come, deeper in the plot, and the edge of thinking pressed against the heart like an argument, its rupture, loss of blood, the near-death scene, then the long recovery of green, and finally in exile the braiding of myth and truth, the voice elaborate and threadbare. If you had stayed... while they were being written, heard them told the first time, you might not have noticed the plot thicken, the characters develop, the action carried by events offstage, or Times corrosive glare bouncing off of puddles and pools, around stopped drains like footlights blinding us. But all that time you were busy writing your own story, more than this thread of ink, the miles around a room, the unchanging journey of the hours watching pine needles

slowly move by a snakes abandoned skin. Its happening right now, within, and being transferred, and written backwards, end to beginning, the way words run east to west in furious flight across the pages endless sand. The illusion is the lowering of the light, corners growing, including more of the room, deep piles of shadows, spreading, the ink tipped over. The faces changing in the rooms changing light were just the beginning of stories, unwritten, untold, hardly imagined, whose flickering hid promises of the expected, of loves, of works to come, deeper in the plot, and the edge of thinking pressed against the heart like an argument, its rupture, loss of blood, the near-death scene, then the long recovery of green, and finally in exile the braiding of myth and truth, the voice elaborate and threadbare.

If you had stayed... while they were being written, heard them told the first time, you might not have noticed the plot thicken, the characters develop, the action carried by events offstage, or Times corrosive glare bouncing off of puddles and pools, around stopped drains like footlights blinding us. But all that time you were busy writing your own story, more than this thread of ink, the miles around a room, the unchanging journey of the hours watching pine needles slowly move by a snakes abandoned skin. Its happening right now, within, and being transferred, and written backwards, end to beginning, the way words run east to west in furious flight across the pages endless sand. The illusion is the lowering of the light, corners growing, including more of the room, deep piles of shadows, spreading, the ink tipped over. Bread and Butter by Donald Hall In 1936, when a tramp knocked on the farmhouse door and asked, please, for bread and butter, Kate hacked him a slice from the loaf she baked last Wednesday, and spread on it the Holstein butter

she churned Saturday morning. He thanked her, Maam, and walked down the road looking for Help Wanted, for a sawmill starting up, for an outhouse to clean, for a nation of buttered bread, a roof, and a fat wife.

Stephen Dobyns is the author of nine books of poetry, including Concurring Beasts, Griffon, The Balthus Poems, Cemetery Nights, Body Traffic, Velocities, and Common Carnage. He is also the author of a collection of essays on poetry, Best Words, Best Order, and nineteen novels, ten of which comprise a very popular series of detective books, known as the Charlie Bradshaw mysteries, set in Saratoga Springs, New York. He began his writing career as a police reporter in Detroit.

LAURE-ANNE BOSSELAAR: In his book of essays, Orphan Factory, Charles Simic ends one of his essays by saying: It makes absolutely no difference whether gods and devils exist or not; the secret ambition of every true poem is to ask about them, even as it acknowledges their absence. What do you think about that? STEPHEN DOBYNS: Well, I think youre always asking about them. One of the functions of poetry is to create a cosmology, to map out the dimensions of what we imagine reality to be, and what, then, may be beyond that. Were always dealing with our existential isolation and trying to decrease that isolation. So that by mapping out that greater area, theres always the attempt to people it. And when one tries to people it with something larger than human, some kind of spiritual or deific creature, then ones not only peopling it, but attempting to create a reason for being as well. It becomes part of our constant endeavor, identifying the reason for populating a cosmos. Thats one of the reasons one writes. But the basic reason is to try to erase the isolation. BOSSELAAR: Camus once told his students: Writing is a mans trade, not God-given inspiration. In a recent interview in The Connecticut Review, Richard Eberhard said: I believe in inspiration, which is not a popular concept these days. In your essay Writing the Readers Life, you say: The act of inspiration is, I think, the sudden apprehension or grasping of metaphor. Can you extrapolate about that? DOBYNS: Any piece of writing is a metaphor which, at one level, stands for or represents the writers relation to what he or she imagines the world to be. By relation I mean emotional, spiritual, intellectual, physical. So you hit upon something that you can use as metaphor; for instance, a liar is like an egg in midairthat metaphor that W. S. Merwin uses. To hit upon the idea of the egg in midair may lead to the realization that one can use this to present an idea of the liar, what it is to lie. All art is metaphor. Even Anna Karenina obviously is metaphor. So as I say, that aspect of intuition is to hit upon

something that will function as metaphor. But it may not be an idea, it may be a sound or it may be just a wriggling in the brain. One writes something to find out why ones writing it, and one pursues it. And in that search, often the metaphor evolves. I dont believe in inspiration as something that comes from the other. I think all that comes from within the self. But there are different aspects of the self, the conscious self and unconscious self. Sometimes that act of inspiration seems to be a joining of that conscious and unconscious self. Theres suddenly a kind of traffic between those two places, because the metaphor that one suddenly understands has to have some kind of psychological relation to the person whos having it. Its not an arbitrary grasping. Its something with some personal, psychological, spiritual, emotional meaning. BOSSELAAR: Right, rightbut then art is the consequence of grasping the metaphor. It is the discovery of how and why one has grasped that metaphor. DOBYNS: In part. I mean, art becomes something made. And what makes it art is the nature of that end productthat there is something within it which corresponds to our definition of art. BOSSELAAR: I know that music has a very big importance in your life, and that you like many kinds of music: classical, jazz, rock-and-roll. You often listen to music when you write. How does it help your writing? DOBYNS: It orders the silence, it orders the chaos. I dont write all the time to music, but sometimes I do. And otherwise, its often playing. And it can be mixtures, as you say, of classical or jazz or South American. I dont listen to that much rock-and-roll anymore; I find the lyrics too tiresome. I also listen to music for the rhythms, that there is much in the rhythms that I try and use in the poems. So theres also that aspect of listening in order to steal, if I hear something that I think works well, or that I might be able to use. And Im sure that in some ways I use it for completely middlebrow reasons, almost as Muzak. But beyond that theres that general sense that it orders the silence around me. It gives structure to it. And it gives me a constant example of art, of a kind of metaphor which is being presented through the medium of sound. BOSSELAAR: Which brings me to noise. In our many conversations about poetry, you often mention liking the noise in certain poems. What exactly do you mean by noise? DOBYNS: Most simply, its rhythm; and then on top of the rhythm theres the relationship between stressed and unstressed syllables; and on top of that theres the sound of different consonants, the relationships between different consonants; and then beyond that theres the relationship of vowels; beyond that theres the relationship of pitch. And so you have those different aspects of sound, which you try and weave into some kind of a pattern, something which may not even seem to be a pattern. But often the poem will begin with a particular sound that works as a kind of tonic note that I keep up through the poem, and sometimes Ill switch to another pattern, or sometimes keep the same pattern all the way through, which can be no more but a simple t sound. The noise aspect of it becomes one of the things that I like best about it. And also that the noise can

have some metaphoric relation to the content, and can point to a greater kind of cacophony in the world, a greater kind of chaos in the world, so that while the content can be fairly mellow, the noise in the background can be the opposite, can seem nearly out of control. That becomes something else that I like: the sense of the poem in its noise as being almost out of control, seeming to be out of control, yet never out of control. BOSSELAAR: What directed, what influenced the noise in Freight Cars? I hear it in the first two lines: Once, taking a train into Chicago / from the west I saw a message / scrawled on a wall in the railway yard. Theres an emphasis on the assonances. DOBYNS: Well, the first noise is the Once/west rhyme, and then using as you say the wall, all those noises: scrawl, rail. In the making of the poem was the desire to create a series of noises, relationships between those noises, that would have some metaphoric relation to the subject matter, and which would be almost cacophonous, in that what the poem then deals with is the lost, a world populated by people who are wandering and wandering. And that all our rationalizations, all our statements of what were doing and what were worth and what were meaning to do, etc., etc., are just so many bits of color imposed on that basic idea of wandering, wandering. And what becomes most important obviously in the poem is the relationships between people, and that those relationships become sacrificed to these ideas of ambition or desire or BOSSELAAR: [Quoting a line in Freight Cars.] Imagining some destination for oneself . . . DOBYNS: Exactly. [Quoting another line.] Some place to make all the rest all right. BOSSELAAR: Yeats, who I know you admire, once said: Great art chills us at first by its coldness, or its strangeness, by what seems capricious; and yet it is from these qualities it has authority, as though it had fed on locusts and wild honey. I love that quote, and find it particularly appropriate to your poetry. Who for you wrote or writes great art today? In fiction or poetry? And could you briefly explain why those authors are important to your work? DOBYNS: I dont know if anyone alive now writes great art. I expect that they do; I dont have the objectivity to judge it or to look at it that way. I was struck the other night listening to C. K. Williams read how marvelous those poems were, and how completely they made a shapehis poem Ice, for instance. There are people that I like: Thomas Luxs poems, I admire greatly; Simics poems, I admire, and some of Mary Oliver; Ellen Bryant Voigt, Louise Glck, and a few others. But when I think of that quote and who it brings to mind, it has to be people like Rilke. Perhaps Baudelaire, perhaps Neruda. But Rilke comes closest to personifying those words for me. Given the strength of that remark by Yeats, I think, Who is this true of? There are a few Yeats poems, there are a few of Philip Larkins poems, a couple of Auden poems . . . I cant think of any Lowell poems, I cant think of anyone in those other generations. There are certainly poems that I love by Roethke and Berryman and Lowell and Bishop, but none that do that kind of work on my interior, as is suggested by that quote. Thats something that I see in Rilke

more than anyone else. BOSSELAAR: And in fiction? Chekhov? DOBYNS: I suppose Chekhov. I admire him certainly more than anyone else. Possibly some Faulkner, but Im not even sure of that. A book I read recently that I felt was powerful in that way was Thomas Manns Doctor Faustus. It had that kind of strength. Other writers that I likeKundera, I think is a marvelous writer. Also Cormac McCarthy, also William Trevor. But of those three, William Trevor is the one that I admire the most . . . what hes able to do. Yes. I dont know if theres anyone in poetry who can do anything comparable to what Trevor can do in prose. BOSSELAAR: Often, when I ask you what poetry youre reading, youre reading either South American or East European poets. You seem to prefer them to many contemporary American poets. Why? DOBYNS: I really despise American popular culture, and so its appearance in contemporary fiction or poetry becomes sufficient reason for me not to read it. Its one of the reasons I also dont see many American films. It seems to be a culture driven by a frenzy of appetite, that has no empathy, no sympathy, no roots, no direction. Its just a matter of filling its belly as quickly as possible. Theres other kinds of writingI mean, I used to read mystery novels, Chandler and Simenon. There are the high peaks that one reads for and then there are the low peaks that one reads for, and obviously there are far more low peaks than high peaks. But Thomas Manns novels, certainly, I would see as high peaks. Dostoyevsky, all the Russians, seemingly. Otherwise I cant think of any contemporaries except for the ones Ive mentioned. And the Poles, there are five or six great postwar Polish poets, beginning with Zbigniew Herbert. BOSSELAAR: To go back to your own poems, and to the sudden apprehension or grasping of metaphorwhat sudden apprehension or grasping of metaphor occurred when you wrote a poem as wild as The General and the Tango Singer in Cemetery Nights, or more importantly the Czanne sonnets in Body Traffic? DOBYNS: The General and the Tango Singer is for me much more of a political poem, with these two definitions of art being argued at the expense of the world around them. What is going to triumph in the world? Is it going to be this definition of art or that definition of art? Well, basically, by that kind of ignorance what will triumph in the world is the fire which obviously destroys the restaurant and will destroy other things as well. That is one of the poems that I wrote when I was living in Santiago, Chile, and it was certainly affected by living under a dictatorship, with a curfew, with constant evidence of living in a police state. Thats what the General represents, that aspect of it. As for the Czanne sonnets, I think more and more I was seeing Czanne as someone who I wished I could emulate. I dont mean necessarily in his ability or his skill, but his concentration on the work to the exclusion of all else. It would seem that he had every reason to stop painting, because he was surrounded by people who told him how bad it was, from all the critics who were writing, from many contemporary painters of his time,

from his best friend, Zola, from his wife and soneveryone. And he was very crude, his table manners were awful, he was clumsy in his speech, he was very shy, yet he continued to work, with a single-mindedness that really approached madness, considering how determined it was. And even the fact that he died in the midst of working. He was working on one of those last landscapes, and it rained. He was in his sixties, he caught cold, and was dead three days later. Hed stayed out in the rain trying to finish what he was doing. I admired that steady-mindedness in the face of all else. The world becomes a tremendous distraction. Its hard not to pay attention to it, to be caught up in ideas of success, ideas of publication, ideas that people are patting ones head. People like my poems, they dont like my poems, or bullshit like that. Ideally I should just have the poems themselves, as Czanne seemed to have the painting. Im not saying that would result in better poemsthere clearly have been poets, painters, and musicians who have worked with that same steadiness of purpose whose work never amounted to anything at all. What I admire is that ability to work without interruption. BOSSELAAR: And is the sonnet form of the Czanne poems appearing in groups throughout Body Traffic a kind of willed structure and homage? A metaphor within the metaphor? DOBYNS: Just to the degree of linking it to the history of art, of linking it to the tradition, that art is something ongoing, that has a past, a present, and ideally will have a future; to write those poems in an established form, yet also taking liberties with that form. BOSSELAAR: Which you did. DOBYNS: It seemed to make the homage more significant to me. BOSSELAAR: About discipline: do you have a strict writing discipline? When do you write the poems, when do you write fiction, or journalism, or the mystery novels? How do you go from one to the other? DOBYNS: It goes back and forthif Im caught up in an idea for a poem or for a series of poems then I work on those, and the fiction gets pushed off a little bit. When Im busily revising the poems, then Im also able to work on the fiction. When I finish a larger novel, then Ill often do a mystery novel right after that. The fiction creates an order in my life that I find useful. If I only wrote poems, then I feel my life would be far more disorderly. But the practice of fiction requires a plan, it requires doing something every morning, working on it every day, maintaining that schedule, following an outline. And that makes my life more orderly than it might otherwise be. If I could write poems far more at will and have it come at any time, then I suppose I would do more of that and less of the fiction. But I also write fiction for economic reasons: it pays the bills. And I have very mixed feelings about that, really. I sometimes wonder what kind of writing I would do if I didnt need that money. Its a distraction rather than a burden. I love writing fiction as well.

BOSSELAAR: When will your next book of poetry come out? What is its title? DOBYNS: The next books scheduled to come out from Penguin in the fall of 99, and its called Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides. Its a group of sixty poems which is split in the middle by a long other poem called Oh, Immobility, Deaths Vast Associate. The sixty poems are all about one character, who I call Heart. Ideally, one learns how to read the poems, and so the first thirty poems show one how to read the later poems, which are far more complex in their arguments, in their meditations, in their language, in their syntax, in their sound. I suppose to some degree we dont see the character from early life until late in life, but the development of that character follows some kind of chronology. The poems that conclude the book are more concerned with the end of life, and the poems that begin the book are more concerned with those emotional relationships which we value in the middle of our lives. BOSSELAAR: Who is Heart? You? DOBYNS: Heart is not me. Hes not a persona for me. He has many childlike and absurd aspectsin that way, hes closer to the [Christian] Morgenstern poems, which are poems that Ive read for a long time, and which were one of the influences for the series. Hes also somewhat like Henry, but Henrys far more sophisticated in the Berryman poems. As is Mr. Cogito, far more sophisticated in the [Zbigniew] Herbert poems. So theyre closer to the Morgenstern, although Morgensterns poems are mostly comic. These poems of mine often use the comic to move to a much more serious conclusion. BOSSELAAR: To go back to the body of your poetry: in Concurring Beasts you were very much influenced by, or aware of, the Vietnam War and the Democratic Convention in Chicago. When you wrote Griffon you were a journalist for The Detroit Newsso again, one feels the influence of the outside world. Some poems in Body Traffic, the new poems in Velocities, and some poems in Common Carnage have to do with Chile. There is a political attentiveness present, but not constantly so, in your work. Some of your books have no autobiographical poemslike The Balthus Poems, for example. In Body Traffic one feels you are completely engaged with the autobiographical. I feel this movement of looking out, looking in, looking out. Is that willed? DOBYNS: All my poems are autobiographical; all my poems are political. Sometimes theyre more obviously autobiographical, and use the first-person pronoun. Anything I write aboutif I write about a chair, and talk about nothing but the chairIm still writing an autobiographical poem. Theres just no way for a human being to not do that. At the same time, if Im writing about an event which I believe happened, then theres no way that I can write precisely or realistically or truly about that event. All autobiography really becomes a form of fiction, because Im seeing it through a filter thats so subjective that its relation to what actually happened may be impossibly distant. As for the political, theres always that question behind every work of art: how does one live? Sometimes thats focused very clearly on the events within the society, and sometimes its more internalized. But the very nature of that questionhow does one live?obviously has its political dimension. So those become constant concerns. One of the attempts of art,

ironically, is to use the subjective to try and be free of the subjective, to break loose of the self by using something which is totally of the self. In dealing with the question of how does one live, one is attempting to grasp some larger sense of the political, some larger sense of the society, and be able to identify oneself as a participant, as a member within that society. That becomes very tenuous, especially if youre arguing from a position of existential isolation, where youre wondering, Do I really exist at all? To what degree am I a figment even to myself? But I have pretty much the same themes all through my books, and basically from one book to another, Im choosing to deal with those themes slightly differently; I feel that Ive found a new access, or a new way of writing about those themes, or I feel that my command of the language has become more precise. All of it, I think, is trying to get through the mirror to the other side, to the so-called real. And that just may be a case of self-delusion. Yeats says that we write about the same themes all our lives. When I first read that in his autobiography at the age of twenty-two, it seemed preposterous. Now at fifty-seven, I think its true. And I could find poems that Ive written again and again and again. They may be similarities that nobody else would recognize, but theyre recognizable to me. One seeks paradigms, new ways of doing something, and when a paradigm is discovered, then usually that can result in a new body of poems. It may be that that body of poems constitutes a whole book. In this new book, Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides, that whole book is controlled by the new paradigm. That was also I think true of Cemetery Nights and Body Traffic. That can be very exciting, because you feel that you have this huge thing in front of you and youre trying to map out all its dimensions. And the writing of the poem is the mapping of those dimensions. And you do it until every scrap is gone. Then its over, and you sit there half out of breath and half impatient for some new paradigms to take its place. BOSSELAAR: How important is friendship for you? DOBYNS: I find it the thing that really sustainsyet I suspect that I also have great doubts about it. One has been betrayed in ones life, or has betrayed others, and so one sees the fragility of friendship. Yet if the enemy is really existential isolation, if the enemy is the solipsistic, then friendship is one of the only tools, or one of the strongest tools one has to defeat that enemy, and so it has to be constantly nurtured. BOSSELAAR: But isnt there also the constant fear of losing that friendship? And the temptation of preferring isolation to the pain of that lossbe it through death or disloyalty? DOBYNS: I think thats a danger. The people I know who have chosen to be single, who have chosen to have not friends but acquaintances, all veer into eccentricity, and are unable to judge themselves accurately. Theyre unable to judge their work, theyre unable to judge the right and wrong of any situation in their lives. Its not simply a matter of becoming self-indulgent. They no longer are able to see themselves in relation to the world. We need friendships for many things, but one of the reasons we need friendships is to keep us sane, because without them we veer off.

BOSSELAAR: But when a dear friend diesan essential friend, someone who has been integral to your life like your friend the Spanish painter Jos Berruezowhat happens then? DOBYNS: Then theres a great vacancy in ones life. Ones reaction to any death is partly a selfish reaction: How can this person have deserted me? How can this person have removed himself or herself from my life? Didnt they know I needed them? Thats very difficult. I think the tendency then is to close down, and not let any person get that close. But thats even more destructive. One has to remain vulnerable to pain. If youre going to be an artist, you have to remain vulnerable to pain. If you become completely self-sufficient, completely impervious, then you cant make anything that anyones going to ever care about. [Long silence.] I mean, all that youre finally left with is wit. BOSSELAAR: Yes . . . and books. But they dont talk back. DOBYNS: No. They dont talk back. Poetic Form: Cinquain The cinquain, also known as a quintain or quintet, is a poem or stanza composed of five lines. Examples of cinquains can be found in many European languages, and the origin of the form dates back to medieval French poetry. The most common cinquains in English follow a rhyme scheme of ababb, abaab or abccb. Sixteenth and seventeenth-century poets such as Sir Philip Sidney, George Herbert, Edmund Waller, and John Donne frequently employed the form, creating numerous variations. Among the many cinquains written by Herbert is "The World," which begins:
Love built a stately house, where Fortune came, And spinning fancies, she was heard to say That her fine cobwebs did support the frame, Whereas they were supported by the same; But Wisdom quickly swept them all away.

Other examples of the form include "To Helen" by Edgar Allen Poe, which begins:
Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore.

Adelaide Crapsey, an early twentieth-century poet, used a form of 22 syllables distributed among the five lines in a 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2 pattern, respectively. Her poems share a similarity with the Japanese tanka, another five-line form, in their focus on imagery and the natural world. Poetic Form: Rondeau

The rondeau began as a lyric form in thirteenth-century France, popular among medieval court poets and musicians. Named after the French word for "round," the rondeau is characterized by the repeating lines of the rentrement, or refrain, and the two rhyme sounds throughout. The form was originally a musical vehicle devoted to emotional subjects such as spiritual worship, courtship, romance, and the changing of seasons. To sing of melancholy was another way of using the rondeau, but thoughts on pain and loss often turned to a cheerful cest la vie in the final stanza. The rondeaus form is not difficult to recognize: as it is known and practiced today, it is composed of fifteen lines, eight to ten syllables each, divided stanzaically into a quintet, a quatrain, and a sestet. The rentrement consists of the first few words or the entire first line of the first stanza, and it recurs as the last line of both the second and third stanzas. Two rhymes guide the music of the rondeau, whose rhyme scheme is as follows (R representing the refrain): aabba aabR aabbaR. Where the rentrement appears in its traditional French form, it typically does not adhere to the rhyme-scheme--in the interest of maintaining the lines buoyancy and force. But when nineteenth-century English poets adopted the rondeau, many saw (or heard) the rentrement as more effective if rhymed and therefore more assimilated into the rest of the poem. An example of a solemn rondeau is the Canadian army physician John McCraes 1915 wartime poem, "In Flanders Fields": In Flanders fields the poppies grow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place, and in the sky, The larks, still bravely singing, fly, Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the dead; short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe! To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high! If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. The challenge of writing a rondeau is finding an opening line worth repeating and choosing two rhyme sounds that offer enough word choices. Modern rondeaus are often playful; for example, "Rondel" by Frank OHara begins with this mysterious directive: "Door of America, mention my fear to the cigars," which becomes the poems refrain

Poetic Form: Ballade

The ballade was one of the principal forms of music and poetry in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century France. Not to be confused with the ballad, the ballade contains three main stanzas, each with the same rhyme scheme, plus a shorter concluding stanza, or envoi. All four stanzas have identical final refrain lines. The tone of the ballade was often solemn and formal, with elaborate symbolism and classical references. One of the most influential writers of early ballades was Franois Villon. He used the exacting form and limited rhyme scheme to create intense compositions about poverty and the frailty of life. Inspired by debauchery and vagrancy of his criminal life, his work often included scathing attacks on the wealthy and declarations about injustice. In English, ballades were written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth-century, and revived by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne in the nineteenth-century. Aside from adaptations of Villon composed by Ezra Pound, there are few modern examples of the ballade and it is most often reserved for light verse

Poetic Form: Ballad

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Centuries-old in practice, the composition of ballads began in the European folk tradition, in many cases accompanied by musical instruments. Ballads were not originally transcribed, but rather preserved orally for generations, passed along through recitation. Their subject matter dealt with religious themes, love, tragedy, domestic crimes, and sometimes even political propaganda. A typical ballad is a plot-driven song, with one or more characters hurriedly unfurling events leading to a dramatic conclusion. At best, a ballad does not tell the reader whats happening, but rather shows the reader whats happening, describing each crucial moment in the trail of events. To convey that sense of emotional urgency, the ballad is often constructed in quatrain stanzas, each line containing as few as three or four stresses and rhyming either the second and fourth

lines, or all alternating lines. Ballads began to make their way into print in fifteenth-century England. During the Renaissance, making and selling ballad broadsides became a popular practice, though these songs rarely earned the respect of artists because their authors, called "pot poets," often dwelled among the lower classes. However, the form evolved into a writers sport. Nineteenth-century poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth wrote numerous ballads. Coleridges "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the tale of a cursed sailor aboard a storm-tossed ship, is one of the English languages most revered ballads. It begins: It is an ancient mariner And he stoppeth one of three. --"By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stoppest thou me? The bridegroom's doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: Mayst hear the merry din." He holds him with his skinny hand, "There was a ship," quoth he. "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!" Eftsoons his hand dropped he. He holds him with his glittering eye-The wedding-guest stood still, And listens like a three-years' child: The mariner hath his will. Other balladeers, including Thomas Percy and, later, W. B. Yeats, contributed to the English tradition. In America, the ballad evolved into folk songs such as "Casey Jones," the cowboy favorite "Streets of Laredo," and "John Henry."
2009, Academy of American Poets. All Rights Reserved.

Poetic Form: Sestina

The sestina is a complex form that achieves its often spectacular effects through intricate repetition. The thirty-nine-line form is attributed to Arnaut Daniel, the Provencal troubadour of the twelfth century. The name "troubadour" likely comes from trobar, which means "to invent or compose verse." The troubadours sang their verses

accompanied by music and were quite competitive, each trying to top the next in wit, as well as complexity and difficulty of style. Courtly love often was the theme of the troubadours, and this emphasis continued as the sestina migrated to Italy, where Dante and Petrarch practiced the form with great reverence for Daniel, who, as Petrarch said, was "the first among all others, great master of love." The sestina follows a strict pattern of the repetition of the initial six end-words of the first stanza through the remaining five six-line stanzas, culminating in a three-line envoi. The lines may be of any length, though in its initial incarnation, the sestina followed a syllabic restriction. The form is as follows, where each numeral indicates the stanza position and the letters represent end-words: 1. ABCDEF 2. FAEBDC 3. CFDABE 4. ECBFAD 5. DEACFB 6. BDFECA 7. (envoi) ECA or ACE The envoi, sometimes known as the tornada, must also include the remaining three endwords, BDF, in the course of the three lines so that all six recurring words appear in the final three lines. In place of a rhyme scheme, the sestina relies on end-word repetition to effect a sort of rhyme. Many twentieth-century poets have taken on the form, including Ezra Pound and John Ashbery. In the dramatic monologue "Sestina: Altaforte," Pound, in one of his many responses to his great influence, the Victorian poet Robert Browning, adopts the voice of troubadour-warlord Bertrans de Born. The poem is a tour-de-force in the praises of war as de Born, addressing Papiols, his court minstrel, laments that he "has no life save when the swords clash." This poem is a good example of the possibilities of end-word repetition, where, in expert hands, each recurrence changes in meaning, often very subtly. Note, too, the end-words Pound chose: "peace," "music," "clash," "opposing," "crimson," and "rejoicing." The words, while general enough to lend themselves to multiple meanings, are common enough that they also present Pound with the difficult task of making every instance fresh. Here are the first two stanzas (after a prefatory stanza which sets the scene): I Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace. You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let's to music! I have no life save when the swords clash. But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson,

Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing. II In hot summer have I great rejoicing When the tempests kill the earth's foul peace, And the lightnings from black heav'n flash crimson, And the fierce thunders roar me their music And the winds shriek through the clouds mad, opposing, And through all the riven skies God's swords clash. Contrast Pounds sestina with Ashberys "Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape," a playful romp involving the cast of the Popeye cartoon world. Ashbery deftly remixes the end-word order to great comic effect (notice the surprise in each use of "scratched") while sketching a disturbing domestic pathos, resulting in a poem both funny and melancholic. The poem, a masterful instance of the sestina, manages to also poke fun at the obsessive form. Other notable sestinas include "Mantis" by Louis Zukofsky, "Sestina" and "A Miracle for Breakfast" by Elizabeth Bishop, "Paysage Moralise" by W.H. Auden, "Toward Autumn" by Marilyn Hacker, and "Sestina: Bob" by Jonah Winter, which employs the pedestrian name Bob for each end-word, to great comic effect. The Web version of the literary magazine McSweeneys maintains a repository of contemporary sestinas; indeed, the sestina is the only type of poem the site will consider for publication. There have also been several variations of the sestina form, which usually expand or contract the length. Algernon Charles Swinburnes "The Complaint of Lisa" is a double sestina, in which twelve end-words recur across twelve twelve-line stanzas, culminating in a six-line envoi. To top things off, Swinburne took the unusual step of rhyming the end-words. Marie Ponsot invented the "tritina," a good example of the contraction of the sestina form. Here, three end-words repeat over three three-line stanzas that marvelously compress into a single line envoi, as in her poem "Living Room," where the end-words, "frame," "break," and "cold," bed down in the final line: "Framed, its a wind-break. It averts the worst cold."

Invented by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri in the late thirteenth century to structure his three-part epic poem, The Divine Comedy, terza rima is composed of tercets woven into a rhyme scheme that requires the end-word of the second line in one tercet to supply the rhyme for the first and third lines in the following tercet. Thus, the rhyme scheme (aba, bcb, cdc, ded) continues through to the final stanza or line. Dante chose to end each canto of the The Divine Comedy with a single line that completes the rhyme scheme with the end-word of the second line of the preceding tercet.

Terza rima is typically written in an iambic line, and in English, most often in iambic pentameter. If another line length is chosen, such as tetrameter, the lines should be of the same length. There are no limits to the number of lines a poem composed in terza rima may have. Possibly developed from the tercets found in the verses of Provencal troubadours, who were greatly admired by Dante, the tripartite stanza likely symbolizes the Holy Trinity. Early enthusiasts of terza rima, including Italian poets Boccaccio and Petrarch, were particularly interested in the unifying effects of the form Fourteenth-century English poet Geoffrey Chaucer introduced terza rima to England with his poem "Complaints to his Lady," while Thomas Wyatt is credited, with popularizing its use in the English language through his translations and original works. Later, the English Romantic poets experimented with the form, including Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose "Ode to the West Wind" is an example of what is sometimes called "terza rima sonnet," in which the final stanza comes in couplet form. A clever mixture of poetic techniques, the poem is a series of five terza rima sonnets, of which the following is the first: 0 wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: 0 thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The wingd seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and Preserver; hear, 0 hear! Twentieth-century examples of terza rima come in two different forms: poets who have written in the form and scholars and poets who have translated Dante. Those who have written in terza rima usually employ near and slant rhymes, as the English language, though syntactically quite versatile, is rhyme poor. "The Yachts" by William Carlos Williams and "Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost are two examples. More recent works written in terza rima include "The Sow" by Sylvia Plath and the eponymous "Terza Rima" by Adrienne Rich.

While there are nearly as many translations of Dante as there are cantos in his masterpiece, the question of how to reproduce the intricate rhyme scheme of terza rima namely, the reproduction of the rich rhyming possibilities offered by the Italian language has been a principle concern for translators. John Ciardi chose not to concern his translation with a faithful rendering of the terza rima rhyme scheme; he thought such a gesture would be a "disaster." Robert Pinsky chose a different approach in his translation of the Inferno, employing a terza rima that rhymed when possible, and used near and slant rhymes in places where the rhyme might seem forced, creating what he called "a plausible terza rima in a readable English." The triolet is a short poem of eight lines with only two rhymes used throughout. The requirements of this fixed form are straightforward: the first line is repeated in the fourth and seventh lines; the second line is repeated in the final line; and only the first two endwords are used to complete the tight rhyme scheme. Thus, the poet writes only five original lines, giving the triolet a deceptively simple appearance: ABaAabAB, where capital letters indicate repeated lines. French in origin, and likely dating to the thirteenth century, the triolet is a close cousin of the rondeau, another French verse form emphasizing repetition and rhyme. The earliest triolets were devotionals written by Patrick Carey, a seventeenth-century Benedictine monk. British poet Robert Bridges reintroduced the triolet to the English language, where it enjoyed a brief popularity among late-nineteenth-century British poets. Though some employed the triolet as a vehicle for light or humorous themes, Thomas Hardy recognized the possibilities for melancholy and seriousness, if the repetition could be skillfully employed to mark a shift in the meaning of repeated lines. In "How Great My Grief," Hardy displays both his mastery of the triolet and the potency of the form:
How great my grief, my joys how few, Since first it was my fate to know thee! - Have the slow years not brought to view How great my grief, my joys how few, Nor memory shaped old times anew, Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee How great my grief, my joys how few, Since first it was my fate to know thee?

The first line, "How great my grief, my joys how few," is, in its two subsequent appearances, modified by the movement of time in the poem. Initially, the line assumes a declarative position, indicating the subject and tone of the poem, one of grief and love lost. By its third iteration, after several queries to the person being addressed, the line takes on the added weight of the speakers astonished grief that the addressee has not, despite the years, recognized the speakers profound sense of loss.

Poetic Form: Triolet

The triolet is a short poem of eight lines with only two rhymes used throughout. The requirements of this fixed form are straightforward: the first line is repeated in the fourth and seventh lines; the second line is repeated in the final line; and only the first two endwords are used to complete the tight rhyme scheme. Thus, the poet writes only five original lines, giving the triolet a deceptively simple appearance: ABaAabAB, where capital letters indicate repeated lines. French in origin, and likely dating to the thirteenth century, the triolet is a close cousin of the rondeau, another French verse form emphasizing repetition and rhyme. The earliest triolets were devotionals written by Patrick Carey, a seventeenth-century Benedictine monk. British poet Robert Bridges reintroduced the triolet to the English language, where it enjoyed a brief popularity among late-nineteenth-century British poets. Though some employed the triolet as a vehicle for light or humorous themes, Thomas Hardy recognized the possibilities for melancholy and seriousness, if the repetition could be skillfully employed to mark a shift in the meaning of repeated lines. In "How Great My Grief," Hardy displays both his mastery of the triolet and the potency of the form:
How great my grief, my joys how few, Since first it was my fate to know thee! - Have the slow years not brought to view How great my grief, my joys how few, Nor memory shaped old times anew, Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee How great my grief, my joys how few, Since first it was my fate to know thee?

The first line, "How great my grief, my joys how few," is, in its two subsequent appearances, modified by the movement of time in the poem. Initially, the line assumes a declarative position, indicating the subject and tone of the poem, one of grief and love lost. By its third iteration, after several queries to the person being addressed, the line takes on the added weight of the speakers astonished grief that the addressee has not, despite the years, recognized the speakers profound sense of loss. The highly structured villanelle is a nineteen-line poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. The form is made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain. The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem's two concluding lines. Using capitals for the refrains and lowercase letters for the rhymes, the form could be expressed as: A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2. Strange as it may seem for a poem with such a rigid rhyme scheme, the villanelle did not start off as a fixed form. During the Renaissance, the villanella and villancico (from the Italian villano, or peasant) were Italian and Spanish dance-songs. French poets who called their poems "villanelle" did not follow any specific schemes, rhymes, or refrains. Rather, the title implied that, like the Italian and Spanish dance-songs, their poems spoke of simple, often pastoral or rustic themes.

While some scholars believe that the form as we know it today has been in existence since the sixteenth century, others argue that only one Renaissance poem was ever written in that manner--Jean Passerats "Villanelle," or "Jay perdu ma tourterelle"--and that it wasnt until the late nineteenth century that the villanelle was defined as a fixed form by French poet Thodore de Banville. Regardless of its provenance, the form did not catch on in France, but it has become increasingly popular among poets writing in English. An excellent example of the form is Dylan Thomass "Do not go gentle into that good night": Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Contemporary poets have not limited themselves to the pastoral themes originally expressed by the free-form villanelles of the Renaissance, and have loosened the fixed form to allow variations on the refrains. Elizabeth Bishops "One Art" is another wellknown example; other poets who have penned villanelles include W. H. Auden, Oscar Wilde, Seamus Heany, David Shapiro, and Sylvia Plath. 1. Basic Terms denotation: the dictionary meaning of a word connotation: the implied or suggested meaning connected

with a word literal meaning: limited to the simplest, ordinary, most obvious meaning figurative meaning: associative or connotative meaning; representational meter: measured pattern of rhythmic accents in a line of verse rhyme: correspondence of terminal sounds of words or of lines of verse 2. Figurative Language apostrophe: a direct address of an inanimate object, abstract qualities, or a person not living or present. Example: "Beware, O Asparagus, you've stalked my last meal." hyperbole: exaggeration for emphasis (the opposite of understatement) Example: "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse." metaphor: comparison between essentially unlike things without using words OR application of a name or description to something to which it is not literally applicable Example: "[Love] is an ever fixed mark, / that looks on tempests and is never shaken." metonymy: a closely related term substituted for an object or idea Example: "We have always remained loyal to the crown." oxymoron: a combination of two words that appear to contradict each other Example: bittersweet

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paradox: a situation or phrase that appears to be contradictory but which contains a truth worth considering Example: "In order to preserve peace, we must prepare for war." personification: the endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities Example: "Time let me play / and be golden in the mercy of his means" pun: play on words OR a humorous use of a single word or sound with two or more implied meanings; quibble Example: "They're called lessons . . . because they lessen from day to day." simile: comparison between two essentially unlike things using words such as "like," as," or "as though" Example: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" synecdoche: a part substituted for the whole Example: "Friends, Romans, countrymen: lend me your ears" 3. Poetic Devices irony: a contradiction of expectation between what is said and what is meant (verbal irony) or what is expected in a particular circumstance or behavior (situational), or when a character speaks in ignorance of a situation known to the audience or other characters (situational) Example: "Time held me green and dying / Though I sang in my chains like the sea" imagery: word or sequence of words representing a sensory experience (visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory) Example: "bells knelling classes to a close" (auditory)

synesthesia: an attempt to fuse different senses by describing one in terms of another Example: the sound of her voice was sweet symbol: an object or action that stands for something beyond itself Example: white = innocence, purity, hope alliteration: the repetition of consonant sounds, particularly at the beginning of words Example: ". . . like a wanderer white" assonance: the repetition of similar vowel sounds Example: "I rose and told him of my woe" elision: the omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve the meter of a line of poetry "Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame" onomatopoeia: the use of words to imitate the sounds they describe Example: "crack" or "whir" allusion: a reference to the person, event, or work outside the poem or literary piece Example: "Shining, it was Adam and maiden" 4. Poetic Forms open: poetic form free from regularity and consistency in elements such as rhyme, line length, and metrical form closed: poetic form subject to a fixed structure and pattern stanza: unit of a poem often repeated in the same form throughout a poem; a unit of poetic lines ("verse paragraph")

blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter free verse: lines with no prescribed pattern or structure couplet: a pair of lines, usually rhymed heroic couplet: a pair of rhymed lines in iambic pentameter (tradition of the heroic epic form) quatrain: four-line stanza or grouping of four lines of verse sonnet fourteen line poem in iambic pentameter with a prescribed rhyme scheme; its subject is traditionally that of love English (Shakespearean) Sonnet: A sonnet probably made popular by Shakespeare with the following rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg Italian (Petrarchan) Sonnet: A form of sonnet made popular by Petrarch with the following rhyme scheme: abbaabba cdecde OR cdcdcd Its first octave generally presents a thought, picture, or emotion, while its final sestet presents an explanation, comment, or summary. 5. Meter stress: greater amount of force used to pronounce one syllable over another pause: (caesura) a pause for a beat in the rhythm of the verse (often indicated by a line break or a mark of punctuation) rising meter: meter containing metrical feet that move from unstressed to stressed syllables iambic (iamb): a metrical foot containing two syllables-the first is unstressed, while the second is stressed anapestic (anapest): a metrical foot containing three syllables--the first two are unstressed, while the last is

stressed falling meter: meter containing metrical feet that move from stressed to unstressed syllables trochaic (trochee): a metrical foot containing two syllables--the first is stressed, while the second is unstressed dactylic (dactyl): a metrical foot containing three syllables--the first is stressed, while the last two are unstressed spondee: an untraditional metrical foot in which two consecutive syllables are stressed iambic pentameter: a traditional form of rising meter consisting of lines containing five iambic feet (and, thus, ten syllables)
Related Prose

Poetic Form: Abecedarian Poetic Form: Ballad Poetic Form: Ballade Poetic Form: Blues Poem Poetic Form: Cento Poetic Form: Cinquain Poetic Form: Elegy Poetic

Form: Epic Poetic Form: Epigram Poetic Form: Found Poem Poetic Form: Ghazal Poetic Form: Haiku Poetic Form: Limerick Poetic Form: Ode Poetic Form: Pantoum Poetic Form: Prose Poem Poetic Form: Renga Poetic Form: Rondeau Poetic Form: Sapphic Poetic Form: Sestina Poetic Form:

Sonnet Poetic Form: Tanka Poetic Form: Terza Rima Poetic Form: The Bop Poetic Form: Triolet Poetic Form: Villanelle The Great Figure: On Figurative Language
by D. A. Powell Related Pages

Essays on Teaching

Poetic Form: Abecedarian The abecedarian is an ancient poetic form guided by alphabetical order. Generally each line or stanza begins with the first letter of the alphabet and is followed by the successive letter, until the final letter is reached. The earliest examples are Semitic and often found in religious Hebrew poetry. The form was frequently used in ancient cultures for sacred compositions, such as prayers, hymns, and psalms. There are numerous examples of abecedarians in the Hebrew Bible; one of the most highly regarded is Psalm 118 (or 119 by King James numbering). It consists of twenty-two eight-line stanzas, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Chaucer's "An ABC" is an excellent medieval example of the form. He crafted his translation of a French prayer into twenty-three eight-line stanzas that follow the alphabet (minus J, V, and W). Abecedarian poems are now most commonly used as mnemonic devices and word games for children, such as those written by Dr. Seuss and Edward Gorey. However, there are

fine contemporary examples by Carolyn Forch in Blue Hour, and Harryette Mullen in Sleeping with the Dictionary. In Forchs forty-seven page poem, "On Earth," she adheres to a rigorous form in which alphabetical order guides not only the stanzas, but also the words themselves. For example, she writes: "languid at the edge of the sea lays itself open to immensity leaf-cutter ants bearing yellow trumpet flowers along the road left everything left all usual worlds behind library, lilac, linens, litany." A form derived from the abecedarian is the acrostic, which spells out names or words through the first letter of each line. The intent of the acrostic is to reveal while attempting to conceal within the poem. William Blake addresses the despairs of the plague in the poem "London," telling the reader how he listens to everyones pain while wandering along the Thames River. Blake uses an acrostic in the third stanza to emphasize the horrifying sounds: "How the Chimney-sweeper's cry Every blackning Church appalls; And the hapless Soldier's sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls." A recent example is Anna Rabinowitzs Darkling. This book-length acrostic sequence investigates her family's Holocaust experiences and uses "The Darkling Thrush" by Thomas Hardy for its structure I Belong There by Mahmoud Darwish Translated by Carolyn Forch I belong there. I have many memories. I was born as everyone is born. I have a mother, a house with many windows, brothers, friends, and a prison cell with a chilly window! I have a wave snatched by seagulls, a panorama of my own. I have a saturated meadow. In the deep horizon of my word, I have a moon, a bird's sustenance, and an immortal olive tree. I have lived on the land long before swords turned man into prey. I belong there. When heaven mourns for her mother, I return heaven to her mother. And I cry so that a returning cloud might carry my tears. To break the rules, I have learned all the words needed for a trial by blood. I have learned and dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a single word: Home. Poetic Form: Cento From the Latin word for "patchwork," the cento is a poetic form made up of lines from poems by other poets. Though poets often borrow lines from other writers and mix them in with their own, a true cento is composed entirely of lines from other sources. Early examples can be found in the work of Homer and Virgil. With lines from Charles Wright, Marie Ponsot, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, and Samuel Beckett, the staff of the Academy of American Poets composed the following as an example:

"In the Kingdom of the Past, the Brown-Eyed Man is King Brute. Spy. I trusted you. Now you reel & brawl. After great pain, a formal feeling comes-A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree Day after day, I become of less use to myself, The hours after you are gone are so leaden." Modern centos are often witty, creating irony or humor from the juxtaposition of images and ideas. Two examples of contemporary centos are "The Dong with the Luminous Nose," by John Ashbery and Peter Gizzi's "Ode: Salute to the New York School." Ashbery's cento takes its title from the poem of the same name by Edward Lear and weaves together an unlikely array of voices, including Gerard Manley Hopkins, T. S. Eliot, and Lord Byron. Gizzi employed the form to create a collage of voices, as well as a bibliography, from the New York School poets.

The elegy
The elegy began as an ancient Greek metrical form and is traditionally written in response to the death of a person or group. Though similar in function, the elegy is distinct from the epitaph, ode, and eulogy: the epitaph is very brief; the ode solely exalts; and the eulogy is most often written in formal prose. The elements of a traditional elegy mirror three stages of loss. First, there is a lament, where the speaker expresses grief and sorrow, then praise and admiration of the idealized dead, and finally consolation and solace. These three stages can be seen in W. H. Audens classic "In Memory of W. B. Yeats," written for the Irish master, which includes these stanzas: With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress; In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise. Other well-known elegies include "Fugue of Death" by Paul Celan, written for victims of the Holocaust, and "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman, written for President Abraham Lincoln. Many modern elegies have been written not out of a sense of personal grief, but rather a broad feeling of loss and metaphysical sadness. A famous example is the mournful series of ten poems in Duino Elegies, by German poet Rainer Maria Rilke. The first poem begins: If I cried out who would hear me up there among the angelic orders?

And suppose one suddenly took me to his heart I would shrivel Other works that can be considered elegiac in the broader sense are James Merrills monumental The Changing Light at Sandover, Robert Lowells "For the Union Dead," Seamus Heaneys The Haw Lantern, and the work of Czeslaw Milosz, which often laments the modern cruelties he witnessed in Europe. Poetic Form: Epic An epic is a long, often book-length, narrative in verse form that retells the heroic journey of a single person, or group of persons. Elements that typically distinguish epics include superhuman deeds, fabulous adventures, highly stylized language, and a blending of lyrical and dramatic traditions. Many of the world's oldest written narratives are in epic form, including the Babylonian Gilgamesh, the Sanskrit Mahbhrata, Homers Iliad and Odyssey, and Virgils Aeneid. Both of Homer's epics are composed in dactylic hexameter, which became the standard for Greek and Latin oral poetry. Homeric verse is characterized by the use of extended similes and formulaic phrases, such as epithets, to fill out the verse form. Greek and Latin epics frequently open with an invocation to the muse, as is shown in the opening lines of the Odyssey: SPEAK, MEMORY-Of the cunning hero, The wanderer, blown off course time and again After he plundered Troy's sacred heights. Speak Of all the cities he saw, the minds he grasped, The suffering deep in his heart at sea As he struggled to survive and bring his men home But could not save them, hard as he tried-The fools--destroyed by their own recklessness When they ate the oxen of Hyperion the Sun, And that god snuffed out their day of return. Over time, the epic has evolved to fit changing languages, traditions, and beliefs. Poets such as Lord Byron and Alexander Pope used the epic for comic effect in Don Juan and The Rape of the Lock. Other epics of note include Beowulf, Edmund Spensers The Faerie Queene, Dante's Divine Comedy, and John Miltons Paradise Lost. The epic has also been used to formalize mythological traditions in many cultures, such as the Norse mythology in Edda and Germanic mythology in Nibelungenlied, and more recently, the Finnish mythology of Elias Lnnrots Kalevala. In the twentieth-century, poets expanded the epic genre further with a renewed interest in the long poems. The Cantos by Ezra Pound, Maximus by Charles Olson, The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford, and Paterson by William Carlos Williams, while not technically epics, push and pull at the boundaries of the genre, reenvisioning the epic through the lens of modernism Poetic Form: Epigram

An epigram is a short, pithy saying, usually in verse, often with a quick, satirical twist at the end. The subject is usually a single thought or event. The word "epigram" comes from the Greek epigraphein, meaning "to write on, inscribe," and originally referred to the inscriptions written on stone monuments in ancient Greece. The first-century epigrams of the Roman poet Martial became the model for the modern epigram. The epigram flourished in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England thanks to John Donne, Robert Herrick, Ben Jonson, Alexander Pope, Lord George Byron, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In France, the poet Nicolas Boileau-Despraux and the philosopher Voltaire often employed the epigrammatic form. Defining the epigram by example, Coleridge offered the following: What is an Epigram? A dwarfish whole, Its body brevity, and wit its soul. Another Coleridge epigram demonstrates the wittiness and bravado usually associated with the form: Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet. More recent practitioners include William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, and Ogden Nash, whose poem, "Ice Breaking," is a very well-known epigram: Candy Is dandy, But liquor Is quicker One of the sharpest, wittiest, and oft-quoted epigrammatists is Oscar Wilde. His works are studded with examples of the epigram, such as, "I can resist everything except temptation. " Poetic Form: Ode Ode" comes from the Greek aeidein, meaning to sing or chant, and belongs to the long and varied tradition of lyric poetry. Originally accompanied by music and dance, and later reserved by the Romantic poets to convey their strongest sentiments, the ode can be generalized as a formal address to an event, a person, or a thing not present. There are three typical types of odes: the Pindaric, Horatian, and Irregular. The Pindaric is named for the ancient Greek poet Pindar, who is credited with inventing the ode. Pindaric odes were performed with a chorus and dancers, and often composed to celebrate athletic victories. They contain a formal opening, or strophe, of complex metrical structure, followed by an antistrophe, which mirrors the opening, and an epode, the final closing section of a different length and composed with a different metrical structure. The William Wordsworth poem "Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" is a very good example of an English language Pindaric ode. It begins: There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;-Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. The Horatian ode, named for the Roman poet Horace, is generally more tranquil and contemplative than the Pindaric ode. Less formal, less ceremonious, and better suited to quiet reading than theatrical production, the Horatian ode typically uses a regular, recurrent stanza pattern. An example is the Allen Tate poem "Ode to the Confederate Dead," excerpted here: Row after row with strict impunity The headstones yield their names to the element, The wind whirrs without recollection; In the riven troughs the splayed leaves Pile up, of nature the casual sacrament To the seasonal eternity of death; Then driven by the fierce scrutiny Of heaven to their election in the vast breath, They sough the rumour of mortality. The Irregular ode has employed all manner of formal possibilities, while often retaining the tone and thematic elements of the classical ode. For example, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats was written based on his experiments with the sonnet. Other well-known odes include Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," Robert Creeley's "America," Bernadette Mayer's "Ode on Periods," and Robert Lowell's "Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket." Poetic Form: Sapphic The sapphic dates back to ancient Greece and is named for the poet Sappho, who left behind many poem fragments written in an unmistakable meter. Sapphics are made up of any number of four-line stanzas, and many Greek and Roman poets, including Catullus, used the form. It was introduced to Roman and European poets by Horace, who frequently used sapphics in his Odes, and later became popular as a verse form for hymns during the Middle Ages. Modern sapphics have been written by Ezra Pound, John Frederick Nims, and Anne Carson. The original sapphic form was determined by quantitative meter, based on the nature of the ancient Greek language in which syllables were either long or short, depending on vowel length and ending sound. However, modern sapphics are rendered in accentual meter determined instead by the stress and intensity of a syllable. The accentual meter of the sapphic approximates the original form by equating long syllables with stressed ones, and short syllables with unstressed ones. The main building blocks of the sapphic are trochees and dactyls. The trochee is a metrical foot with one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one, while the dactyl contains a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones. The first three lines of the sapphic contain two trochees, a dactyl, and then two more trochees. The shorter fourth, and final, line of the stanza is called an "Adonic" and is composed of one dactyl followed by a trochee. However, there is some flexibility with the form as when two stressed syllables replace both the second and last foot of each line. For example, the following stanzas from Sapphos "The Anactoria Poem," here translated by Richard Lattimore:

Some there are who say that the fairest thing seen on the black earth is an array of horsemen; some, men marching; some would say ships; but I say she whom one loves best is the loveliest. Light were the work to make this plain to all, since she, who surpassed in beauty all mortality, Helen, once forsaking her lordly husband, fled away to Troy--land across the water. Not the thought of child nor beloved parents was remembered, after the Queen of Cyprus won her at first sight. The strict meter of the sapphic, with its starts and stops, creates a powerful emotion that the language of the poem intensifies. Starting with a stressed syllable, as opposed to the familiar iambic foot that begins on an unstressed syllable, provides a sense of forcefulness and urgency to the sapphic, while the extra unstressed syllable at the core of the first three lines, offers a pause, or caesura, within the driving movement. The short fourth line may offer either a rest or a quick turn to the poem, or even an opportunity for conclusion, as with the final two lines of a Shakespearean sonnet. Poetic Form: Ballad Centuries-old in practice, the composition of ballads began in the European folk tradition, in many cases accompanied by musical instruments. Ballads were not originally transcribed, but rather preserved orally for generations, passed along through recitation. Their subject matter dealt with religious themes, love, tragedy, domestic crimes, and sometimes even political propaganda. A typical ballad is a plot-driven song, with one or more characters hurriedly unfurling events leading to a dramatic conclusion. At best, a ballad does not tell the reader whats happening, but rather shows the reader whats happening, describing each crucial moment in the trail of events. To convey that sense of emotional urgency, the ballad is often constructed in quatrain stanzas, each line containing as few as three or four stresses and rhyming either the second and fourth lines, or all alternating lines. Ballads began to make their way into print in fifteenth-century England. During the Renaissance, making and selling ballad broadsides became a popular practice, though these songs rarely earned the respect of artists because their authors, called "pot poets," often dwelled among the lower classes. However, the form evolved into a writers sport. Nineteenth-century poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth wrote numerous ballads. Coleridges "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the tale of a cursed sailor aboard a storm-tossed ship, is one of the English languages most revered ballads. It begins: It is an ancient mariner And he stoppeth one of three. --"By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stoppest thou me?

The bridegroom's doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: Mayst hear the merry din." He holds him with his skinny hand, "There was a ship," quoth he. "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!" Eftsoons his hand dropped he. He holds him with his glittering eye-The wedding-guest stood still, And listens like a three-years' child: The mariner hath his will. Other balladeers, including Thomas Percy and, later, W. B. Yeats, contributed to the English tradition. In America, the ballad evolved into folk songs such as "Casey Jones," the cowboy favorite "Streets of Laredo," and "John Henry." Poetic Form: Tanka The Japanese tanka is a thirty-one-syllable poem, traditionally written in a single unbroken line. A form of waka, Japanese song or verse, tanka translates as "short song," and is better known in its five-line, 5/7/5/7/7 syllable count form. One of the oldest Japanese forms, tanka originated in the seventh century, and quickly became the preferred verse form not only in the Japanese Imperial Court, where nobles competed in tanka contests, but for women and men engaged in courtship. Tankas economy and suitability for emotional expression made it ideal for intimate communication; lovers would often, after an evening spent together (often clandestinely), dash off a tanka to give to the other the next morning as a gift of gratitude. In many ways, the tanka resembles the sonnet, certainly in terms of treatment of subject. Like the sonnet, the tanka employs a turn, known as a pivotal image, which marks the transition from the examination of an image to the examination of the personal response. This turn is located within the third line, connecting the kami-no-ku, or upper poem, with the shimo-no-ku, or lower poem. Many of the great tanka poets were women, among them Lady Akazone Emon, Yosano Akiko, and Lady Murasaki Shikibu, who wrote The Tale of Genji, a foundational Japanese prose text that includes over 400 tanka. English-language writers have not taken to the tanka form in the same way they have the haiku, but there are several notable exceptions, including Amy Lowell, Kenneth Rexroth, Sam Hamill, Cid Corman, and Carolyn Kizer. There are many excellent anthologies of Japanese verse, most of which feature lengthy selections of tanka. Rexroth's translations, which include One Hundred Poems from the Japanese and One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese, are considered classics, and The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi & Izumi Shikibu, translated by Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani, continues this tradition. Poetic Form: Ghazal The ghazal is composed of a minimum of five couplets--and typically no more than fifteen--that are structurally, thematically, and emotionally autonomous. Each line of the

poem must be of the same length, though meter is not imposed in English. The first couplet introduces a scheme, made up of a rhyme followed by a refrain. Subsequent couplets pick up the same scheme in the second line only, repeating the refrain and rhyming the second line with both lines of the first stanza. The final couplet usually includes the poet's signature, referring to the author in the first or third person, and frequently including the poet's own name or a derivation of its meaning. Traditionally invoking melancholy, love, longing, and metaphysical questions, ghazals are often sung by Iranian, Indian, and Pakistani musicians. The form has roots in seventhcentury Arabia, and gained prominence in the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century thanks to such Persian poets as Rumi and Hafiz. In the eighteenth-century, the ghazal was used by poets writing in Urdu, a mix of the medieval languages of Northern India, including Persian. Among these poets, Ghalib is the recognized master. Other languages that adopted the ghazal include Hindi, Pashto, Turkish, and Hebrew. The German poet and philosopher Goethe experimented with the form, as did the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. Indian musicians such as Ravi Shankar and Begum Akhtar popularized the ghazal in the English-speaking world during the 1960s. However, it was the poet Agha Shahid Ali who introduced it, in its classical form, to Americans. Ali compared each ghazal couplet to "a stone from a necklace," which should continue to "shine in that vivid isolation." Ali's ghazal "Even the Rain" is excerpted here: What will suffice for a true-love knot? Even the rain? But he has bought grief's lottery, bought even the rain. "our glosses / wanting in this world" "Can you remember?" Anyone! "when we thought / the poets taught" even the rain? After we died--That was it!--God left us in the dark. And as we forgot the dark, we forgot even the rain. Drought was over. Where was I? Drinks were on the house. For mixers, my love, you'd poured--what?--even the rain. To carve a place for the traditional form of the ghazal in American literature, Ali put together the anthology Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English in 2000, for which he collected more than 100 ghazals, some more faithful to the traditional form than others. American poets, including John Hollander, Maxine Kumin, Heather McHugh, and W. S. Merwin, wrote the majority of the poems. McHughs "Ghazal of the BetterUnbegin" is a good example of the form, as it respects the autonomy of the couplets, the length of lines, as well as the rhyme-refrain scheme established in the opening couplet. Below are the first three couplets: Too volatile, am I? too voluble? too much a word-person? I blame the soup: I'm a primordially stirred person. Two pronouns and a vehicle was Icarus with wings. The apparatus of his selves made an absurd person. The sound I make is sympathy's: sad dogs are tied afar. But howling I become an ever more unheard person.

Numerous scholars and poets have attempted to translate ghazals from their original language to English. The task is daunting, as keeping the literal meaning of each poem while respecting the rhyme, refrain, and length of lines is difficult, if not impossible. Aijaz Ahmads Ghazals of Ghalib; Versions from the Urdu, provides a fascinating look at how various poets, including Adrienne Rich, William Stafford, William Hunt, David Ray, and W.S. Merwin, worked with a literal translation of Ghalibs Urdu ghazals to render their own versions in English. Elizabeth T. Grays The Green Sea of Heaven, which offers fifty ghazals by Hafiz, provides a reliable literal translation of the Persian master, at the expense of form. A traditional Japanese haiku is a three-line poem with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count. Often focusing on images from nature, haiku emphasizes simplicity, intensity, and directness of expression. Poetic Form: Haiku Haiku began in thirteenth-century Japan as the opening phrase of renga, an oral poem, generally 100 stanzas long, which was also composed syllabically. The much shorter haiku broke away from renga in the sixteenth-century, and was mastered a century later by Matsuo Basho, who wrote this classic haiku: An old pond! A frog jumps in-the sound of water. Among the greatest traditional haiku poets are Basho, Yosa Buson, Kobayashi Issa, and Masaoka Shiki. Modern poets interested in the form include Robert Hass, Paul Muldoon, and Anselm Hollo, whose poem "5 & 7 & 5" includes the following stanza: round lumps of cells grow up to love porridge later become The Supremes Haiku was traditionally written in the present tense and focused on associations between images. There was a pause at the end of the first or second line, and a "season word," or kigo, specified the time of year. As the form has evolved, many of these rules--including the 5/7/5 practice--have been routinely broken. However, the philosophy of haiku has been preserved: the focus on a brief moment in time; a use of provocative, colorful images; an ability to be read in one breath; and a sense of sudden enlightenment and illumination. This philosophy influenced poet Ezra Pound, who noted the power of haiku's brevity and juxtaposed images. He wrote, "The image itself is speech. The image is the word beyond formulated language." The influence of haiku on Pound is most evident in his poem "In a Station of the Metro," which began as a thirty-line poem, but was eventually pared down to two: The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. The pantoum originated in Malaysia in the fifteenth-century as a short folk poem, typically made up of two rhyming couplets that were recited or sung. However, as the pantoum spread, and Western writers altered and adapted the form, the importance of rhyming and brevity diminished. The modern pantoum is a poem of any length, composed of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve

as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The last line of a pantoum is often the same as the first. Poetic Form: Pantoum The pantoum was especially popular with French and British writers in the nineteenthcentury, including Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo, who is credited with introducing the form to European writers. The pantoum gained popularity among contemporary American writers such as Anne Waldman and Donald Justice after John Ashbery published the form in his 1956 book, Some Trees. A good example of the pantoum is Carolyn Kizers "Parent's Pantoum," the first three stanzas of which are excerpted here: Where did these enormous children come from, More ladylike than we have ever been? Some of ours look older than we feel. How did they appear in their long dresses More ladylike than we have ever been? But they moan about their aging more than we do, In their fragile heels and long black dresses. They say they admire our youthful spontaneity. They moan about their aging more than we do, A somber group--why don't they brighten up? Though they say they admire our youthful spontaneity They beg us to be dignified like them One exciting aspect of the pantoum is its subtle shifts in meaning that can occur as repeated phrases are revised with different punctuation and thereby given a new context. Consider Ashbery's poem "Pantoum," and how changing the punctuation in one line can radically alter its meaning and tone: "Why the court, trapped in a silver storm, is dying." which, when repeated, becomes, "Why, the court, trapped in a silver storm, is dying!" An incantation is created by a pantoum's interlocking pattern of rhyme and repetition; as lines reverberate between stanzas, they fill the poem with echoes. This intense repetition also slows the poem down, halting its advancement. As Mark Strand and Eavan Boland explained in The Making of a Poem, "the reader takes four steps forward, then two back," making the pantoum a "perfect form for the evocation of a past time." Poetic Form: Renga Renga, meaning "linked poem," began over seven hundred years ago in Japan to encourage the collaborative composition of poems. Poets worked in pairs or small groups, taking turns composing the alternating three-line and two-line stanzas. Linked together, renga were often hundreds of lines long, though the favored length was a 36line form called a kasen. Several centuries after its inception, the opening stanza of renga gave rise to the much shorter haiku. To create a renga, one poet writes the first stanza, which is three lines long with a total of seventeen syllables. The next poet adds the second stanza, a couplet with seven syllables per line. The third stanza repeats the structure of the first and the fourth repeats the second, alternating in this pattern until the poems end.

Thematic elements of renga are perhaps most crucial to the poems success. The language is often pastoral, incorporating words and images associated with seasons, nature, and love. In order for the poem to achieve its trajectory, each poet writes a new stanza that leaps from only the stanza preceding it. This leap advances both the thematic movement as well as maintaining the linking component. Contemporary practitioners of renga have eased the forms traditional structural standards, allowing poets to adjust line-length, while still offering exciting and enlightening possibilities. The form has become a popular method for teaching students to write poetry while working together. How the Winters Once Were Poem of the Week Poetry For the best visual quality, please download the PDF. by Lars Gustafsson That cold green streak that was morning had nothing in common with us. And the proud plumes of chimney smoke rose straight up. To some god who liked such vertical movements. And the scrunching underfoot! Oh that indescribable scrunching: no one could approach unheard that was for sure. And the suspicion that life perhaps really was meaningless and not just in Schopenhauer and the other daring old guys. But here, too under the skys white plumes of smoke. From The Erotic Philosophers Poem of the Week Poetry For the best visual quality, please download the PDF. by Carolyn Kizer Its a spring morning; sun pours in the window As I sit here drinking coffee, reading Augustine. And finding him, as always, newly minted From when I first encountered him in school.

Today Im overcome with astonishment At the way we girls denied all that was mean In those revered philosophers we studied; Who found us loathsome, loathsomely seductive; Irrelevant, at best, to noble discourse Among the sex, the only sex that counted. Wounded, we pretended not to mind it And wore tight sweaters to tease our shy professor. We sat in autumn sunshine as the clouds arose From slimy desires of the flesh, and from Youths seething spring. Thank you, Augustine. Attempting to seem blas, our cheeks on fire, It didnt occur to us to rush from the room. Instead we brushed aside the briars of unclean desire And struggled on through mires of misogyny Till we arrived at Kierkegaard, and began to see That though Saint A. and Sren had much in common Including fear and trembling before women, The Saint scared himself, while Sren was scared of us. Had we, poor girls, been flattered by their thralldom? Yes, it was always us, the rejected feminine From whom temptation came. It was our flesh With its deadly sweetness that led them on. Yet how could we not treasure Augustine, Stuck fast in the bird-lime of pleasure? That roomful of adolescent poets manqu Assuaged, bemused by music, let the meaning go. Swept by those psalmic cadences, we were seduced! Some of us tried for a while to be well-trained souls And pious seekers, enmeshed in the Saints dialectic: Responsible for our actions, yet utterly helpless. A sensible girl would have barked like a dog before God. Lazy Comet, Hurry Poem of the Week Poetry For the best visual quality, please download the PDF. by Matthew Zapruder At the party to celebrate the party everyone so slowed down and pretending to look like they never once knew how just to like tonight with more than a feeling she comes how deep is your landslide or each other as easy as you and I wireless live from inside the lotus reporting this party is not fine without us even this party

would have us believing a hotel is mostly a place to rest a talent for situations such as these sleepy day elevators never reproach they forgive me strobing a front step superflower time of waiting no wannabe sorrow to brush my reverie I am wind up a dress and so many questions like what color tanktop and isnt always the oldest thing somewhere on earth and who knew why baltimore had a coast slaves did say would it be too extreme to say Im a slave to the question what kind of music would ever dare leave you I am a dress you are not in saying where do you want me supine I spun you then over then stunned american poetry is thinking of you do you wish I would come back and leave you alone or take you first roughly then to the movies in the half functioning I think might have witnessed my first kiss with its posing half mannequins mall or into the driveway pulling abstracted luscious leaking the question into my mouth how many hours can watch me brushing the seventies back from your secrets without me share them only I know where youve been blazing The Unwed Mother Poem of the Week Poetry For the best visual quality, please download the PDF. by H Xun Hng Because I was too easy, this happened. Can you guess the hollow in my heart? Fate did not push out a bud even though the willow grew. He will carry it a hundred years but I must bear the burden now. Never mind the gossip of the world. Dont have it, yet have it! So simple. From Spring Essence. Translated by John Balaban Six Poems Poetry Poetry For the best visual quality, please download the PDF.

by Dan Gerber Now As I grow older, more sodden, and wedded by time to the earth, I spend so much more of it dreaming of spreading out these arms and letting all the nothing Ive lived through lift away the nothing Ive spent my breath becoming. Cinema Verit Often my life seems like a foreign film through which I keep glancing down at the subtitles to see how much of what the beautiful, sad woman on the screen is saying reflects what the beautiful, sad woman in me would have her say. Advice You know how, after it rains, my father told me one August afternoon when I struggled with something hurtful my best friend had said, how worms come out and crawl all over the sidewalk and it stays a big mess a long time after its over if you step on them? Leave them alone, he went on to say, after clearing his throat, and when the rain stops, they crawl back into the ground. August Afternoon: Napping in a Cabin near Ennis, Montana Seven different shades of green well up and reach out and wrap their slender arms around my shoulders and thighs. My friend Jim asks if I have a pencil. I realize its only a dream, and Im not obliged to write it down. I dont want to wake up yet, to leave the tendrils Im loving. A horse nickers in the deep summer grass, and Im willing to believe though he stamps his foot, and I hear the swish of it through the window that hes grazing in the green of my dream.

Now I hear someone trying to start a rusty old pump-wheel, but it turns out to be sandhill cranes yodeling extravagantly from the bog beyond the river willows. Do you have a pencil, he asks. Wang Wei in His Leisure Hours Wang . . . somehow cobbled together his career as a renowned hermit in whatever free time his office job allowed. David Hinton This tiny gentian, so faithful to the earth in its teardrop of honey-colored amber, bloomed and became immortal thirty-five million years before anyone thought of God. And today I read that we exist because of a cosmic imbalance. For a reason no one understands, the universe contains just a little more matter than antimatter. Wang sought an image of a world that fled like darkness from his lamp. He found himself in the trees, the grass and leaves, the river, the fawn come to drink in the landscape of midsummer. Verlaine called the universe a flaw in the purity of nonexistence; Keats, the vale of soul-making. Rilke said, I have such pure mornings, and Cafavy lamented that Night returns to draw us back with its same fatal pleasure. Wang wondered why the spring breeze blew its scattered blossoms to his door. Above the mountain, the days first cloud turns from gray, to mauve, to gold. He found that springtime in a pot of wine, which often brought with it a poem, often carried it away before he could write it down.

The Dark Is Always at the Top Mark Rothko 1. While I waited for the waitress to bring my iced-tea, a fly, clinging to the body of the saltshaker, let go, suddenly dropped to the table on its back, kicked two or three of its legs in the air and died. 2. Every day we bear up under the liminal weight of air, a million pounds and more, in tiny increments because weve grown used to it, like the heat of our own blood we remark only in a fever or in the bodies of others. 3. How did Jesus picture the cup he asked the father to take from him, and what did St. Teresa have in mind when she prayed to be released from the consolations of the world? 4. Sunflower, heavy-headed girl gazing down on me, surrounding world that will not be denied, heart that longs to fly with everything it loves, let go. About Narrative Donate ADVERTISE Archive Submit Your Work My Account My Submissions Log out A Nonprofit Organization

Poem of the Week

Two Poems
by Jane Miller

4
DO
YOU KNOW

how long it has been since a moral

choice presented itself and the wrong choice was made not two minutes why is it not quiet between lightning and thunder as if someone were asking do you have other articulable feelings if so express them now

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Waiting
by Stephen Kuusisto

IS

PART OF

something: a blue door opens,

Portuguese fishermen walk from a coffee shop In Providence, Rhode Islandor Lisbon And head for the pier with buckets. Part of something, they ride the sea: The Atlantic, part of something. 4 comments Read more For the best visual quality, please download the PDF.

Loading a Boar
by David Lee

WE

a boar, a goddam mean big sonofabitch and he jumped out of the pickup four times and tore out my stockracks and rooted me in the stomach and I fell down and he bit John on the knee and he thought it was broken and so did I and the boar stood over in the far corner of the pen
WERE LOADING

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The Cows at Night

by Hayden Carruth

THE

was like a full cup tonight, too heavy, and sank in the mist soon after dark, leaving for light
MOON

faint stars and the silver leaves of milkweed beside the road, gleaming before my car. 1 comment Read more For the best visual quality, please download the PDF.

Thigh and Digression

by Emily Walter Seitz
B E T W E E N H I S G I R L F R I E N D S legs,

Euclid wouldnt admit the moon is a circle or an olive pit is round as a fig or ripe plum.

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That Magnificent Part the Chorus Does about Tragedy

by Lisa Olstein

THERE

IS A

theory of crying that tears are the bodys way of

releasing excess elements from the brain. There is a theory of dreaming that each one serves to mend something torn, like

cells of new skin lining up to cover a hole. Im not one to have dreams about flying, but last week we were thirty feet above the baythis was where we went to discuss things, so that no matter what we decided it was only we two out there, and wed have to fly back together. Im not one to have dreams where animals can speak, but last night a weeping mare Id been told to bridle wanted me to save her.

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Five Poems
by Han Shan

4
LOOKING
FOR A

refuge

Cold Mountain will keep you safe a faint wind stirs dark pines come closer the sound gets better below them sits a gray-haired man chanting Taoist texts ten years unable to return he forgot the way he came

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Bosnia Bosnia
A Poem
by June Jordan

TOO

BAD

there is no oil between her legs that 4-year-old Muslim girl and her 5-year-old sister and the 16-year-old babysitter

and the 20-year-old mother of that 4-year-old/that Muslim child gang raped from dawn to dark to time become damnation Too bad there is no oil between her legs

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From The Dream We Carry

by Olav H. Hauge

When All Is Said and Done Year in, year out, youve bent over books. Youve gathered more knowledge than youd need for nine lives. When all is said and done, so little is needed, and that much the heart has always known. In Egypt the god of knowledge had the head of an ape. Mouth But we do despise beauty. We connect it with softness and immortality. I never sleep at night but I remember: a yellow inflatable cat a waxed church pew and the long low labor moans. Whats in your Get that out of your The words have not yet been coined that will fit my We woke craving salsa, lemon. We wandered lonely in the mall. Chest Lo, I came in sight of several pelicans perched on the branches of the mangrove trees. It was typical weather for the winter of the year: a roar at the door embraceless limbs cranberries like drops of blood. To my utmost disappointment,

I saw each pelican, young and old, leave his perch and take to wing. I have become timid and hesitant and live, as it were, mechanically. And wish to lay me down upon this superb male whose icon is before me. 1977: Poem for Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer by June Jordan You used to say, June? Honey when you come down here you supposed to stay with me. Where else? Meanin home against the beer the shotguns and the point of view of whitemen don never see Black anybodies without some violent itch start up. The ones who said, No Niggas Votin in This Town . . . lessen it be feet first to the booth Then jailed you beat you brutal bloody/battered/beat you blue beyond the feeling of the terrible And failed to stop you. Only God could but He wouldnt stop you fortress from selfpity Humble as a woman anywhere I remember finding you inside the laundromat in Ruleville lion spine relaxed/hell whats the point to courage when you washin clothes? But that took courage just to sit there/target to the killers lookin

for your singin face perspirey through the rinse and spin and later you stood mighty in the door on James Street loud callin: BULLETS OR NO BULLETS! THE FOOD IS COOKED AN GETTIN COLD! We ate A family tremulous but fortified by turnips/okra/handpicked like the lilies filled to the very living full one solid gospel (sanctified) one gospel (peace) one full Black lily luminescent in a homemade field of love

The Talking Back of Miss Valentine Jones:

well I wanted to braid my hair bathe and bedeck my self so fine so fully aforethought for your pleasure see: I wanted to travel and read and runaround fantastic into war and peace: I wanted to surf dive fly climb conquer

and be conquered THEN I wanted to pickup the phone and find you asking me if I might possibly be alone some night (so I could answer cool as the jewels I would wear on bareskin for you digmedaddy delectation:) "WHEN you comin ova?" But I had to remember to write down margarine on the list and shoepolish and a can of sliced pineapple in casea company and a quarta skim milk cause Teresa's gaining weight and don' nobody groove on that much girl and next I hadta sort for darks and lights before the laundry hit the water which I had to kinda keep an eye on because if the big hose jumps the sink again that Mrs. Thompson gointa come upstairs and brain me with a mop don' smell too nice even though she hang it headfirst out the winda and I had to check on William like to burn hisself to death with fever boy so thin be callin all day "Momma! Sing to me?" "Ma! Am I gone die?" and me not wake enough to sit beside him longer than to wipeaway the sweat or change the sheets/ his shirt and feed him orange juice before I fall out of sleep and Sweet My Jesus ain but one can left and we not thru the afternoon and now you (temporarily) shownup with a thing you says' a poem and you call it "Will The Real Miss Black America Standup?"

guilty po' mouth about duty beauties of my headrag boozeup doozies about never mind cause love is blind well I can't use it and the very next bodacious Blackman call me queen because my life ain shit because (in any case) he ain been here to share it with me (dish for dish and do for do and dream for dream) I'm gone scream him out my house because what I wanted was to braid my hair/bathe and bedeck my self so fully because what I wanted was your love not pity your love your love

Poem for Bob

Protected by a .357 Magnum out of sight the sign says, "Ken's Garage" and right around the gas pumps ten tomato plants loll ripening inside a vine confinement wire tent that's set to let them climb and mime the latitude of flowers wild

enough to fly Today they're green (Or what about them can be seen) just like your tee shirt putting on all passers by with "BUM EQUIPMENT" stretched across your muscled gut but really you can fix whatever's broken CHEAP NO TRICKS!!

Poem for South African Women

Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land into new dust that rising like a marvelous pollen will be fertile even as the first woman whispering imagination to the trees around her made for righteous fruit from such deliberate defense of life as no other still will claim inferior to any other safety in the world The whispers too they intimate to the inmost ear of every spirit now aroused they carousing in ferocious affirmation of all peaceable and loving amplitude sound a certainly unbounded heat from a baptismal smoke where yes there will be fire

And the babies cease alarm as mothers raising arms and heart high as the stars so far unseen nevertheless hurl into the universe a moving force irreversible as light years traveling to the open eye And who will join this standing up and the ones who stood without sweet company will sing and sing back into the mountains and if necessary even under the sea: we are the ones we have been waiting for.

Poem on the Death of Princess Diana

At least she was riding beside somebody going somewhere fast about love

What Great Grief Has Made the Empress Mute

Because it was raining outside the palace Because there was no rain in her vicinity Because people kept asking her questions Because nobody ever asked her anything Because marriage robbed her of her mother Because she lost her daughters to the same tradition Because her son laughed when she opened her mouth Because he never delighted in anything she said

Because romance carried the rose inside a fist Because she hungered for the fragrance of the rose Because the jewels of her life did not belong to her Because the glow of gold and silk disguised her soul Because nothing she could say could change the melted music of her space Because the privilege of her misery was something she could not disgrace Because no one could imagine reasons for her grief Because her grief required no imagination Because it was raining outside the palace Because there was no rain in her vicinity Dedicated to the Empress Michiko and to Janice Mirikitani

Poem Against the Temptations of Ambivalence

Quit? Save? Sign Off? Cancel? ARE YOU SURE? ARE YOU SURE?

EMPTINESS
by Kay Ryan Emptiness cannot be compressed. Nor can it fight abuse. Nor is there an endless West hosting elk, antelope, and the tough cayuse. This is true also of the mind: it can get used.

THIS LIFE
by Kay Ryan It's a pickle, this life. Even shut down to a trickle it carries every kind of particle

that causes strife on a grander scale: to be miniature is to be swallowed by a miniature whale. Zeno knew the law that we know: no matter how carefully diminished, a race can only be half finished with success; then comes the endless halving of the rest -the ribbon's stalled approach, the helpless red-faced urgings of the coach.

Swan Song of the Last Believer

How to know when to cry out? At the incipient prickle of doubt mistaken for a subtle rise in temperature? Or at the doubt after that, threatening to affirm your most miserable surmise? Or when more insidious doubts start multiplyingstart to dance and surge chaotically like sperm, too speedy and paisley to chart? Or on the first panicky glance at the vast hall that once was crowded, the barely hearable gasp and soft stumble of the one beside you? When the one beside you is suddenly not beside you? When memory of that one grows too distant not to be doubted?

Homestead
ARTICLE TOOLS

GOOSEFEATHERS When I was twelve I sat in the streamliner alone with a shoebox of sandwiches and deviled eggs my mother made, and ate everything right away as I headed north by the Sound where the trestles

of derelict trolley lines roosted nations of seagulls. From South Station I took a taxi across Boston to a shabby, black locomotive with a coal car that pulled two rickety coaches. It puffed past long lines of empty commuter trains, past suburbs dense with houses, past the milltowns of Lawrence and Lowell, until the track curved into New Hampshires pastures of Holstein cattle. My grandfather waited in his overalls at the depot with horse and buggy to drive me to the farmhouse, to fricasseed chicken, corn on the cob, and potatoes. At nine oclock, after shutting up the chickens from skunk and fox, we sat by the cabinet radio for Gabriel Heatter booming news of the war. I slept through the night on my goosefeather bed. ALTERATIONS My great-grandfather built the woodshed in 1865, cobbled together from clapboard, with enough space for a five-hole outhouse and worn farm equipment. At the age of fifty, when I moved here to stay and snowdrifts piled tall in the yard, I carried kindling and firewood from woodshed through toolshed to kitchen range and Glenwood parlor stove, without stepping outside. After a dozen years of hauling, I gave up and installed an oil furnace. The woodshed became a museum of rusted scythes. Now that old age prospers, walking to the car over the driveways ice turns perilous. Last fall, I hired a carpenters crew to expand the woodshed into a garage with an electric door opening from inside, as tidy and decorative as suburban Long Island. No wonder that I backed out one afternoon without raising the door, smashing it to pieces, like an idiot, or a man speeding into his eightieth year.

Poets Corner

Omen
by Joseph Campana | August 2009
Outside, and without warning, the inexplicable raised its ugly head. The temperature went, again, and the sun went too: all south. And wouldnt you know a single dark crow was sitting on a gravestone like a vicious monument to patience, mocking sleep, as if the world needed more cheap significance. All night through the woods rain made the same sullen song because the world had drunk and drunk and drunk it in. All the bottles are empty: all the storm clouds have given up. You are not yourself a form of truth. You are drowning but knowing so will not help you. Slate, Boston Review, Conjunctions, New England Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry, TriQuarterly

A Note from the Spadefoot Toads

When it seems less like a song than a drunk hooting gibberish in a culvert somewhere, stubborn and unwilling to come clean, forget the winged horse and remember us waiting for that first warm April night rain to blow in waves from the west and pool out here in the Province Lands. Waters shallow and ephemeral will appear in this vest-pocket Sahara, and soon where weve hibernated

half the year under sand we burrowed with the spurs on our hind feet, the night will be totally gaga with us, hundreds calling for our consorts on new shores among the dunes. Youll hear us a half mile away, drab as brown pebbles but crying like nothing so much as newly fledged crows who havent yet learned their karoks and yawks. These hourglass stripes on our backs will seem like promises then: wait and take heart

Fire Ants
Squatting in the coppery mud of the drainage ditch behind my cousins house, we searched for fish, saw none. We found a speckled frog instead, unspooling a long, gelatinous thread of black eggs in the water. Then fire ants my feet a blaze of pain, a fumbling dance, and fact and memory begin to stutter. What happened next? What curses did I utter? And how did I ever get back over the fence? I remember having a kind of reverence for the whole affair: the pity I got, each bite growing large and lustrous as a pearl, my tight and swollen toes. I must have liked the pain. What else would make me prod again, again? A whole week hobbling barefoot on the lawn, and still I missed the welts when they were gone.

EMPTINESS
by Kay Ryan Emptiness cannot be compressed. Nor can it fight abuse. Nor is there an endless West hosting elk, antelope, and the tough cayuse. This is true also of the mind: it can get used.

THIS LIFE
by Kay Ryan It's a pickle, this life. Even shut down to a trickle it carries every kind of particle that causes strife on a grander scale: to be miniature is to be swallowed by a miniature whale. Zeno knew the law that we know: no matter how carefully diminished, a race can only be half finished with success; then comes the endless halving of the rest -the ribbon's stalled approach, the helpless red-faced urgings of the coach.

Swan Song of the Last Believer

How to know when to cry out? At the incipient prickle of doubt mistaken for a subtle rise in temperature? Or at the doubt after that, threatening to affirm your most miserable surmise? Or when more insidious doubts start multiplyingstart to dance and surge chaotically like sperm, too speedy and paisley to chart? Or on the first panicky glance at the vast hall that once was crowded, the barely hearable gasp and soft stumble of the one beside you? When

the one beside you is suddenly not beside you? When memory of that one grows too distant not to be doubted?

Homestead
ARTICLE TOOLS

GOOSEFEATHERS When I was twelve I sat in the streamliner alone with a shoebox of sandwiches and deviled eggs my mother made, and ate everything right away as I headed north by the Sound where the trestles of derelict trolley lines roosted nations of seagulls. From South Station I took a taxi across Boston to a shabby, black locomotive with a coal car that pulled two rickety coaches. It puffed past long lines of empty commuter trains, past suburbs dense with houses, past the milltowns of Lawrence and Lowell, until the track curved into New Hampshires pastures of Holstein cattle. My grandfather waited in his overalls at the depot with horse and buggy to drive me to the farmhouse, to fricasseed chicken, corn on the cob, and potatoes. At nine oclock, after shutting up the chickens from skunk and fox, we sat by the cabinet radio for Gabriel Heatter booming news of the war. I slept through the night on my goosefeather bed. ALTERATIONS My great-grandfather built the woodshed in 1865, cobbled together from clapboard, with enough space for a five-hole outhouse and worn farm equipment. At the age of fifty, when I moved here to stay and snowdrifts piled tall in the yard, I carried kindling and firewood from woodshed through toolshed

to kitchen range and Glenwood parlor stove, without stepping outside. After a dozen years of hauling, I gave up and installed an oil furnace. The woodshed became a museum of rusted scythes. Now that old age prospers, walking to the car over the driveways ice turns perilous. Last fall, I hired a carpenters crew to expand the woodshed into a garage with an electric door opening from inside, as tidy and decorative as suburban Long Island. No wonder that I backed out one afternoon without raising the door, smashing it to pieces, like an idiot, or a man speeding into his eightieth year.

Poets Corner

Omen
by Joseph Campana | August 2009
Outside, and without warning, the inexplicable raised its ugly head. The temperature went, again, and the sun went too: all south. And wouldnt you know a single dark crow was sitting on a gravestone like a vicious monument to patience, mocking sleep, as if the world needed more cheap significance. All night through the woods rain made the same sullen song because the world had drunk and drunk and drunk it in. All the bottles are empty: all the storm clouds have given up. You are not yourself a form of truth. You are drowning but knowing so will not help you. Slate, Boston Review, Conjunctions, New England Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry, TriQuarterly

A Note from the Spadefoot Toads

When it seems less like a song than a drunk hooting gibberish in a culvert somewhere, stubborn and unwilling to come clean, forget the winged horse and remember us waiting for that first warm April night rain to blow in waves from the west and pool out here in the Province Lands. Waters shallow and ephemeral will appear in this vest-pocket Sahara, and soon where weve hibernated half the year under sand we burrowed with the spurs on our hind feet, the night will be totally gaga with us, hundreds calling for our consorts on new shores among the dunes. Youll hear us a half mile away, drab as brown pebbles but crying like nothing so much as newly fledged crows who havent yet learned their karoks and yawks. These hourglass stripes on our backs will seem like promises then: wait and take heart

Fire Ants
Squatting in the coppery mud of the drainage ditch behind my cousins house, we searched for fish, saw none. We found a speckled frog instead, unspooling a long, gelatinous thread of black eggs in the water. Then fire ants

my feet a blaze of pain, a fumbling dance, and fact and memory begin to stutter. What happened next? What curses did I utter? And how did I ever get back over the fence? I remember having a kind of reverence for the whole affair: the pity I got, each bite growing large and lustrous as a pearl, my tight and swollen toes. I must have liked the pain. What else would make me prod again, again? A whole week hobbling barefoot on the lawn, and still I missed the welts when they were gone.

Study for Salome Dancing Before Herod by Eric Pankey

In the movement toward disappearance, She is pulled by an undertow of ecstasy. She wakes in a room where she never fell asleep. A thousand starlings leaf-out a bare tree. She wakes in a dusky, tenebrous zone. Evening on the ridges and in the mountains, But light still spills on the valley floor. What transport brought her here? The shape of gravity embodies a pear on the table. Here time is the only sovereign. She is like an arrow slipped from its quiver.