515

The Body

has its little hobbies. The lung

likes its air best after supper,

goes deeper there to trade up

for oxygen, give everything else

away. (And before supper, yes,

during too, but there’s

something about evening, that

slow breath of the day noticed: oh good,

still coming, still going ... ) As for

bones—femur, spine,

the tribe of them in there—they harden

with use. The body would like

a small mile or two. Thank you.

It would like it on a bike

or a run. Or in the water. Blue.

And food. A habit that involves

a larger circumference where a garden’s

involved, beer is brewed, cows

wake the farmer with their fullness,

a field surrenders its wheat, and wheat

understands I will be crushed

into flour and starry-dust

the whole room, the baker

sweating, opening a window

to acknowledge such remarkable

confetti. And the brain,

locked in its strange

dual citizenship, idles there in the body,

neatly terraced and landscaped.

Or left to ruin, such a brain,

wild roses growing

next to the sea. The body is

gracious about that. Oh, their

scent sometimes. Their

tangle. In truth, in secret,

the first thing

in morning the eye longs to see.

by Marianne Boruch

474: good fences make good neighbors

There are so many interpretations of Robert Frost's "Mending Wall," that it isn't surprising one can get tangled up inside. Conservatives like to use the phrase, "Good fences make good neighbors," in relation to foreign policy, or even in honest relationship with literal neighbors.

But what did Frost mean? Yes, there is tongue-in-cheek, a sweet humor in his poem, but there's also that undertone that Brende brought to Better Off, which was how mutual work can bring forth community. I prefer to consider this interpretation when I look out my window at the newly-erected six foot fence ringing our yard; last weekend, I was able to peer out the window, alongside Zephyr, and watch as my husband bonded with our former neighbor. We hired him for the project and Ryan certainly could have stayed indoors, in the air conditioning, sipped his beer, futzed on his computer, but he chose to be outdoors, to turn his forehead red as he knelt in the grass and did the entire row of bottom screws.


The fence is sturdy because our dogs burst through the old one on a regular basis. It was patched together in an embarrassing way--little boards found in the garage, mismatched and facing odd directions, holding the rotten wood together. At four feet, Zeph was capable of barreling his weight into the fence, barking and, thanks to a little trick we've taught him, fully capable of frightening the passers-by at his leaping powers.


It's also six feet tall because we live in a fishbowl, and this hermit needed some privacy. We're on the corner of a four-way stop, a little playground kitty-corner, a popular route to the ball park. Our neighbors peer over in spring, criticize, gossip; not all, of course, but enough that I wanted to pull the comforter over my head and never venture outdoors. I don't mind that my garden gets a little weedy after several days of rain, or that our dogs tear patches in the dirt. I don't mind lying about in the grass on a blanket, reading in the afternoon sun. But I don't want to be peered at while doing so behind twitchy curtains. In this sense, the misinterpretation of Frost comes into place--this boundary, this selfish hoarding of land that isn't really mine to begin with, this belongs-to-me attitude rears its ugly head. I love when neighbors are good friends, when we have bonfires and share beer, but I've always been overly sensitive to criticism, a deep, deep weakness of mine, which can be damaging to a place that is, in many senses, sacred and beautiful.

341

942

Snow beneath whose chilly softness
Some that never lay
Make their first Repose this Winter
I admonish Thee

Blanket Wealthier the Neighbor
We so new bestow
Than thine acclimated Creature
Wilt Thou, Austere Snow?

c. 1864, Emily Dickinson


I don't know how it happened, but Saturday gave us a dusting and this morning, when I woke, I discovered a sheet--not yet a blanket, no, but still, little flakes drifting down--upon our yard. I cringe when I think of the Brussels sprouts I wasted in the garden, the withered pumpkins and squash that won't make it now.

I was just adjusting to autumn--those glorious reds and oranges--and celebrating the briskness of the air. I don't think I'm ready for Minnesota's six months of winter to set in.

Yesterday I put a pot of water to boil on the stove in reaction to those days of dry, itchy skin. In it, I put in cut oranges and lemons and cinnamon, which then smells so festive throughout the house. Am I ready to think pumpkin pie and gingerbread? I love these things, love so much about winter, but the snow has me startled. I should be used to Minnesota's weather by now, but every time it comes around again, I think: Truly? But it's October. And remember my first winter here--snow on the 18th of October, the pain of slipping on my first ice patch, the rounds of wearing long underwear, stepping outside in snow in bare feet. It's all there, all part of my history. Snow in October. Who I am, perhaps, too.

274 (grateful)

Submersible

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Psalm 42


Down from twilight into dark at noon,
through darker, down until the black
could not be more devoid of star
or sunlight, O my soul near freezing
in subphotic stillness past
the fragile strands of glowing jelly
radiant with tentacles to sting,
and bioluminescent lures of anglers,
down where water beading on the cold hatch
overhead has sheathed in dewdrops
the titanium, past dragonfish
with night-lights set into their heads
and flanks, past unlit cruisers,
blackcod, owl fish, eelpout, skate,
where spider crabs, arms long as mine,
on creamy prongs drift floodlit
over the pillow lava, here,
our craft has taken us where no one
could have come till now but corpses.

-- Brooks Haxton
from Uproar: Antiphonies to Psalms

----

Still reading a book of poems a day, still introducing myself to new work. This semester, my largest writing accomplishment was in the form of creative non-fiction, and it almost feels as if my poetry-self was dormant during this time. I knew the story I wanted to tell, and I knew I hadn't been successful in writing it in verse. This forced reading, this small project, has found my mind rumbling, wanting to write a poem I can love a little more than I hate. I feel as if I am on the cusp, and I am grateful. I hope it becomes something.

This weekend, I carry a friend's poetry manuscript with me to Missouri as well as that series of grandfather poems to beat about; we agreed to exchange, and I haven't yet upheld my end of the bargain. But on Monday, when I return from the middle of America, I will pass them into her in-box and be grateful for any direction she can give. I'm already thinking more critically than I could before--the process is so long!--and realizing its faults, where I need to work harder, such as: there needs to be a stronger arc; I need to consider what is needless repetition versus what is a motif; I need to build more poems considering Alzheimer's in variation; etc. I also have a book my grandmother gave me on my last visit on caring for someone suffering from Alzheimer's as well as a copy of a long email she sent my father when my grandfather was still alive--these stories will likely enter the ms. as well.

Also, post-spring semester: book reviews. Gobs of them. Piling up and sending out. And sending out poems to physical literary magazines. And putting up a new fence in our backyard. All in a summer's work.

271

Composition

Language is a diluted aspect of matter.
-- Joseph Brodsky

No. Not diluted.
Flaked; wafered;
but not watered.
Language is matter
leafing like a book
with the good taste
of rust and exposure
the way ironwork
petals near the coast.
But so many more
colors than rust:
or, argent, others--
a vast heraldic shield
of beautiful readable
fragments revealed
as Earth delaminates:
how the metals scatter,
how matter turns
animate.

-- Kay Ryan

250

Spring

by Gerald Stern

(New Yorker, June 2008)

The road the road just south of Frenchtown the poem

the one by Mordecai the river the river the

one on my left if I am travelling north the

car a box with wires loose on top of my

left leg the radio fine the light behind

behind the clock not working the rose so dead

I am ashamed the crows too shiny their feathers

too wet the cliff on my right too red the blood

the blood of an animal, a skunk, they bleed

and stink, they stink and bleed, the monkey on top

of me, a New World monkey, not a howler,

an organ-grinder monkey, a capuchin,

his small red hat is on my head and he’s

on my back, he’s dropping orange peels down my neck

March 22nd on the Delaware River.

228

Not Only the Eskimos
by Liesel Mueller
from Alive Together

We have only one noun
but as many different kinds:

the grainy snow of the Puritans
and snow of soft, fat flakes,

guerrilla snow, which comes in the night
and changes the world by morning,

rabbinical snow, a permanent skullcap
on the highest mountains,

snow that blows in like the Lone Ranger,
riding hard from out of the West,

surreal snow in the Dakotas,
when you can't find your house, your street,
though you are not in a dream
or a science-fiction movie,

snow that tastes good to the sun
when it licks black tree limbs,
leaving us only one white stripe,
a replica of a skunk,

unbelievable snows:
the blizzard that strikes on the tenth of April,
the false snow before Indian summer,
the Big Snow on Mozart's birthday,
when Chicago became the Elysian Fields
and strangers spoke to each other,

paper snow, cut and taped,
to the inside of grade-school windows,

in an old tale, the snow
that covers a nest of strawberries,
small hearts, ripe and sweet,
the special snow that goes with Christmas,
whether it falls or not,

the Russian snow we remember
along with the warmth and smell of furs,
though we have never traveled
to Russia or worn furs,

Villon's snows of yesteryear,
lost with ladies gone out like matches,
the snow in Joyce's "The Dead,"
the silent, secret snow
in a story by Conrad Aiken,
which is the snow of first love,

the snowfall between the child
and the spacewoman on TV,

snow as idea of whiteness,
as in snowdrop, snow goose, snowball bush,

the snow that puts stars in your hair,
and your hair, which has turned to snow,

the snow Elinor Wylie walked in
in velvet shoes,

the snow before her footprints
and the snow after,

the snow in the back of our heads,
whiter than white, which has to do
with childhood again each year.

226

All from Esquire. (Also: Weird. And: Do all U of MN poetry graduates get a weird such as this?)

December 25, 2008, 6:00 AM

The Meaning of Life Meets Winter Style

Buzz up!

For the seven men in this portfolio, the meaning of life isn't something they kick around in their spare time. It's their job to make sense of the world and make us laugh, think, and question our way to a little bit of wisdom and, over the following pages, anyway, a sharp sense of winter style.

ALEX LEMON

Poet, author of Hallelujah Blackout, At Last Unfolding Congo, and the following poem written for Esquire on the meaning of life:

"Being Here"

Listless blight, safe words, every little
Sound in the night is a gasp -- bonetip

Blossoming through skin. It's no Bull, man. Anymore, we're all

winners

& afraid to pull these faces off.
Maple leaves & plastic bags summersault

Through the park. One cloud
Grips the moon. Call me anything

Before morning comes, little lover, Because it's true & doesn't

fucking matter.

Kill the lights. Feel the burn. Rev yourself
Up & sing along with the good thrum

Found in everything. Hang around
Until the end. Melt my ashes on your tongue.

Double-breasted wool peacoat ($945) by Emporio Armani;

cashmere sweater ($865) by Malo; cotton shirt ($245) by

Armani Collezioni; stainless-steel Portuguese Chrono-Automatic

watch with crocodile strap ($6,800) by IWC; glasses ($375) by

Tom Ford.

201: PBPF, Day 1

Today: last night's sleep didn't get me far; perhaps calling it a three or four hour nap would do it more justice. Flight delayed in Atlanta; slept from before take off until the touch down jolted me awake, me thinking: that's a bit of turbulence. Went to the wrong hotel, and an eighty dollar taxi drive later, I am an hour late to the opening night. Despite all this, I am settled, signed up for a conference with Kimiko Hahn, contemplating what on earth I could say out loud that would be worth her fifteen minutes, thinking of how I already feel the buzz of jump-starting. Tonight, a book pile to consider.

And a poem, for you:

Ode to the Maggot
--- by Yosef Komuyakaa

Brother of the blowfly
And godhead, you work magic
Over battlefields,
In slabs of bad pork

And flophouses. Yes, you
Go to the root of all things.
You are sound & mathematical.
Jesus, Christ, you're merciless

With the truth. Ontological & lustrous,
You cast spells on beggars & kings
Behind the stone door of Caesar's tomb
Or split trench in a field of ragweed.

No decree or creed can outlaw you
As you take every living thing apart. Little
Master of earth, no one gets to heaven
Without going through you first.


Kimiko Hahn gave us a packet of four poems, and the idea is for us to use them as "stealing" prompts, as she put it. Look at the poem, figure out what you see, craft-wise, then turn it into a prompt:

- Write a poem that is a direct address.
- Write a poem that is a direct address and reveal who that subject is in the beginning. Or the end.
- Write a poem about something appalling and use an elegant style. Or vice versa.
- Make a list / definition poem of a particular object.
- Use heroic diction for something thing-ish.

She spoke of how workshops are to go: instead of those nitpicky line edits, we are instead to open ourselves up to listening, to knowing where the poem is working the hardest. She pointed out how revision isn't about polishing and fixing always as much as it's about making choices.

That sort of thinking takes a great weight off the poet's shoulders. Instead of finding a way to say it right, you find a way to fit it all together that works for you, that makes your heart sing. My heart singing? In my own work?

Trish Hampl talked about how we often think of life after the first draft as: "Fix it, stupid." But it's not about that. It's about re-singing, re-assigning, re-assessing, re-writing, re-vision, not about repair. Not in the frozen pipe / cracked windshield sort of way anyway.

It is night, and despite my hour and a half nap on the way here, I think I can get myself to sleep by midnight, wake to breakfast in the lobby on wicker chairs and between vibrantly mango colored walls.

164

Late Hours
by Lisel Mueller

On summer nights the world
moves within earshot
on the interstate with its swish
and growl, an occasional siren
that sends chills through us.
Sometimes, on clear, still nights,
voices float into our bedroom,
lunar and fragmented,
as if the sky had let them go
long before our birth.

In winter we close the windows
and read Chekhov,
nearly weeping for his world.

What luxury, to be so happy
that we can grieve
over imaginary lives.

104

Yesterday: first day of classes, waking to pull a sweatshirt on, sun gazing out from behind clouds. Students were met, though briefly, after lecture; tonight is the true test. And my first workshop with MDB, a shiver. Frisson.

We were to bring in favorite poems, and I will share one from a classmate:

Black Wings
by Robert Hill Long

I was four when they slid my uncle's iron bed
into my room and wheeled him in. Mother said

after the war his bones had all gone hollow.
I touched his arm. It was like mine, but yellow

and he smiled, too sleepy to say anything. His body
lay on a dozen pillows. I thought he was lucky

to own so many pillows and sleep all day.
Because he was a hero he was going to stay

with us. He needed peace and he needed me to be
quiet, because it wasn't for long, they told me.

At night I heard his bones. First the sheet
whispered, then they started aching and he would shout

"Black wings, black wings!" Even when I slept
down the hall between my parents, the bones kept

making that noise, but uncle's voice got smaller
and scratchier, like a baby bird's, and then farther

told me not to cry because he was dead.
He asked me if I wanted to big iron bed

and carried me down to my room to see it. The mattress
and all uncle's pillows were gone. I said yes.

That night I woke up thirsty. I would have asked
for water, but something was sitting on my chest

and when I opened my eyes uncle was staring
at me. He was very small and wasn't wearing

any clothes. His fingers were snapped sticks of chalk.
He was drawing on my chest and started to talk:

"First you say goodbye to the room, then the house,
then all the trees along the street. Then you rise--"

Everywhere he touched my chest felt like fire.
He was touching my bones. I thought they would tear

through my skin, but he said they were my wings
and would be beautiful. And he showed me his wings,

black and shiny. Then father held me
over the toilet--I was vomiting--and he

promised there was no such thing, no such thing.
When we had to move away I remember repeating

"First the room, then the house," watching them disappear
with the trees through the back window of our car.

99

This is what it is: up until now, it was all before. Up until now, it was all a turning point, a very slow, slow turn. Up until now, I could have turned back, could have called up the offices of Florida State or Emerson or Bennington and said, No, wait, I was wrong! Or called my principal of last year and begged her to consider my return, to find a wiggle in the budget for me. As of today, the decision will be final. Never mind I signed two contracts--one accepting the offer of admission and the other as a graduate instructor. Never mind people have filled in those empty places I left behind when I declined. In my fantasy world, I could have chosen the other doors, kept my safety net instead of casting it away. Up until today.

I leave you, this ninety ninth post before I am out the door for orienting, this post-on-the-cusp with a poem that has recently drawn my eye. It seems only fitting:

The Shoulders of Women
from Cornucopia
by Molly Peacock

The shoulders of women are shallow, narrow,
and thin compared to the shoulders of men,
surprisingly thin, like the young pharaohs
whose shoulders in stick figures are written
on stones, or bony as the short gold wings
of cranes on oriental screens. Lord, how
surprising to embrace the shortened stirrings
of many bones in their sockets above breasts! Now
what I expect, since I've long embraced men,
is the flesh of the shoulder and the cave
of the chest and I get neither--we're so small.
Unwittingly frail and unknowing and brave
like cranes and young kings, the shoulders of women
turn to surprise and surprise me again with all
their gestures of renewal and recall.

84: Leaves of Grass

I'm really loving the blue-grays, the hints of green, and the woody browns of this place. So much so that I put together a set I'm simply calling The Lake--images to give you a sense of the peacefulness of here. I told my father that he should take his half of the house inheritance and instead of considering selling out to his brother, he ought to will it to me, so I can turn this place into an artist's retreat. Photographers, painters, writers. We could build a studio across the street at the edge of the woods, add a kiln, maybe a printing press.

My thoughts have turned to Walt Whitman. Not out of that celebration of self and environment, but out of necessity, though I do love turning over his words at this moment, in this place (with this grandmother who is so insistent that I vote, one who had been hopeful for Hilary, and has sent money to Al Franken).

The Weismann Art Museum, a part of the university campus, is involved in Minneapolis' Un-Convention, and on September 4th, there will be a one hour reading of selections from Leaves of Grass. We are to pick a five to ten minute section to read, and at the end, we'll do a choral reading as well.

My father suggested section thirty one:

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,	660
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,	665
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels,
And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the farmer’s girl boiling her iron tea-kettle and baking shortcake.
I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots,
And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over,
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,	670
And call anything close again, when I desire it.
In vain the speeding or shyness;
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach;
In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder’d bones;
In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes;	675
In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low;
In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky;
In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs;
In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods;
In vain the razor-bill’d auk sails far north to Labrador;	680
I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.

65

... The terror is
not losing you but having you before
you are lost. The terror is, loving you
this way, my body is gone, and the wind
carries my songs, until you are words, too.

-- David Baker, "Cardiognosis," Midwest Eclogue

59: Bathing the Newborn

Bathing the New Born
by Sharon Olds

I love with an almost fearful love
to remember the first baths I gave him--
our second child, our first son--
I laid the little torso along
my left forearm, nape of the neck
in the crook of my elbow, hips nearly as
small as a least tern's hips
against my wrist, thigh held loosely
in the loop of thumb and forefinger,
the sign that means exactly right. I'd soap him,
the long, violet, cold feet,
the scrotum wrinkled as a waved whelk shell
so new it was flexible yet, the chest,
the hands, the clavicles, the throat, the gummy
furze of the scalp. When I got him too soapy he'd
slide in my grip like an armful of buttered
noodles, but I'd hold him not too tight,
I felt that I was good for him,
I'd tell him about his wonderful body
and the wonderful soap, and he'd look up at me,
one week old, his eyes still wide
and apprehensive. I love that time
when you croon and croon to them, you can see
the calm slowly entering them, you can
sense it in your clasping hand,
the little spine relaxing against
the muscle of your forearm, you feel the fear
leaving their bodies, he lay in the blue
oval plastic baby tub and
looked at me in wonder and began to
move his silky limbs at will in the water.