Author: admin

My pencil, Venus Velvet No. 2,
The vein of graphite ore preoccupied
In microcrystalline eternity.
In graphite’s interlinking lattices,
Symmetrically unfolding through a grid
Of pre-existent crystal hexagons.
Mirror-image planes and parallels.
Axial, infinitesimal bonds.
Self-generated. Self-geometrized.
A sound trapped in the graphite magnitudes.
Atoms, electronics, nuclei, far off.
A break, without apparent consequence.
Near-far, far-near, those microfirmaments.
Far in, the muffled noise of our goodbyes.

The surgeon, seeking only my surrender,
Has summoned me: an evening conference.
We sit together in the Quiet Room.
He cannot ask for what I’m meant to give.
No questions anymore. Just say he’ll live.
A world of light leaks through the double doors,
Fluorescent mazes, frigid corridors,
Polished linoleum, arena sand
Where hope is put to death and life is lost
And elevator doors slide open, closed,
The towers of the teaching hospital.
The field where death his conquering banner shook.

My writing tablet, opened on the table.
I touch it with my hand. The paper thins.
The paper’s interwoven filaments
Are bluish gray and beige. No questions now.
What is the chiefest deed that’s asked of us.
No questions anymore. No questions now.
I turned my back on heaven for good, but saw
A banner shaken out from heaven’s walls
With apparitions from Vesalius:
A woodcut surgeon opening a book
Of workshop woodcuts, skilled, anonymous,
The chisel blade of the engraver felt
Reverberating through the wooden blocks
Among eroded words, ornately carved:
Annihilation, subtly engraved:
All those whom lamentation cannot save
Grown fainter through successive folios.
A seraphy turns a page above: he’ll live;
Then turns a page again: he can’t survive.
I turn the page myself, and write: he’ll live.
Smell of my sweat embedded in my clothes.
The surgeon says: we’ve talked with him; he knows.
A seraph leaning near, Oh say not so.
Not so. Not so. My wonder-wounded hearer,
Facing extinction in a mental mirror.
A brilliant ceiling, someone’s hand on his.
All labor, effort, sacrifice, recede.
And then: I’m sorry. Such a man he is.

Notes on the Poem
Gjertrud Schnackenberg's arresting collection "Heavenly Questions" is epic in scope, abounding in rich classical references, mythology, science, mathematics. She majestically marshals those themes and sources to circle and zero in on her own pain. This portion of the poem "Venus Velvet No. 2" illustrates well her ability to swoop from the immense to the intimate.

As the narrator of this poem awaits devastating news, her pencil and paper are like talismans. Contemplating the organic miracles that make the objects possible distracts her and takes her to other marvellous realms ... where perhaps other miracles are possible.

"Atoms, electronics, nuclei, far off." 

But does the scientific wonder that is graphite, now in her hand, also make her confront the science that can do no more for her own personal situation? 

"Far in, the muffled noise of our goodbyes."

Spiralling in and out of levels of awareness, from the microscopic to the broadly universal and cosmic ("microcrystalline eternity"), Schnackenberg struggles to find where in that vast spectrum she can face and deal with her immense grief and bewilderment. The harsh reality of her situation brings her up abruptly in the midst of this contemplation:

"No questions anymore. Just say he'll live."

Just as the results of a pencil touching paper can endure for a while, Schnackenberg acknowledges that all ultimately fades ...

"Annihilation, subtly engraved:
All those whom lamentation cannot save
Grown fainter through successive folios."

              There is a sound
that is a whole of many parts,
a sorrowless transparency, like luck,
that opens in the centre of a thing.
An eye, a river, fishheads, death,
gold in your pocket, and a half-wit
son: the substance of the world
is light and blindness and the measure
of our wisdom is our love.
Our diligence: ten fingers and
a healthy set of lungs. Practise
ceaselessly: there is
one art: wind
in the open spaces
grieving, laughing
with us, saying
improvise.

Notes on the Poem
Fascination with and love of music infuses much of the poetry comprising Jan Zwicky's "Forge." "Gigue" is the final section of a series of short pieces gathered under the title "Practising Bach". The title of each section following the prelude is a type of traditional dance, and collectively the entire poem encompasses a suite of different dance styles and steps, of which the gigue is probably the liveliest.

As the name phonetically suggests, a gigue is a lively baroque dance similar to a jig. A jig is a jaunty dance consisting of lots of leaping and bouncing movements. You can't imagine feeling downhearted or pensive when you are either participating in or watching someone else perform a jig. 

In short, crisp, unadorned lines, Zwicky captures the rhythm and spirit of a jig. Surprisingly, her subject matter flits from the benign ("sorrowless", "an eye", "a river") to the practical ("diligence") to the seemingly positive ("luck", "gold in your pocket") to the possibly or definitely negative ("death", "blindness", "a half-wit son"). But the spritely tempo of the piece continues throughout, through joy and sorrow, to a final exhortation to try to laugh, to improvise, to prevail through it all. Literally and figuratively central to the dance is that "the substance of the world / is light and blindness and the measure / of our wisdom is our love."

When I can’t sleep – when I’m sick – when no one else is home – when I’m lost in transit – I tinker

This is my word for what I do – a slow – un-clever – tactile – cheap – harmless rearranging of odd bits of my nature & gatherings – until they sing – off-key

I tinker at long sequences – & stay close to notebooks – mostly when no one is looking

Am increasingly filled with hopelessness – but sometimes when I’m up to my elbows in a line’s perplexities

Confidence lands its flocks upon me & I feel – inside the poem – unafraid

Notes on the Poem
Phil Hall examines the poetic process in a very personal way in this fragment from the long essay-poem sequence "A Thin Plea" from his collection "Killdeer." Within a few deceptively simple lines, he covers the mental and emotional cycle from uncertainty to quiet triumph in creating a work of art.

Hall is succinct but intimate as he confesses to insomnia, illness, loneliness and being disoriented. He offers his coping mechanism, the humble practice of what he calls tinkering. It's all very self-effacing, because we know that the "odd bits of my nature & gatherings" he is tinkering with are the words, phrases, images and themes that form his powerful, memorable poetry. We know those poems sing very much on key and very true.

With his modest description, Hall makes the artistic process very approachable, even as he suggests that he engages it "mostly when no one is looking." By connecting it to moments and feelings we've all had, but perhaps don't always admit to or acknowledge, Hall makes what is singular about his own personal artistic process into a shared, accessible experience.

The last line of this sequence is striking in contrast to the images of vulnerability, furtiveness, doubt that lead up to it. The sweep of a winged flock is majestic and exultant. Hall feels "unafraid" inside the poem that is now falling into place for him. It gives the reader of the poem - perhaps an aspiring poet him or herself - the hope of that same feeling of safety and confidence.

Cargo has let down
her hair a little and stopped pushing
Pliny the Elder on

the volunteer labour
During summer it was all Pliny the Elder,
Pliny the Elder, Pliny

the – she’d cease only
for scotch thistle, stale Cheerios, or to reflect
flitty cabbage moths

back at themselves
from the wet river-stone of her good eye. Odin,
as you already know,

was birthed under
the yew tree back in May, and has made
friends with a crow

who perches between
his trumpet-lily ears like bad language he’s not
meant to hear. His mother

Anu, the jennet with
soft hooves of Killaloe, is healthy and never
far from Loki or Odin.

The perimeter fence,
the ID chips like functional cysts slipped
under the skin, the trompe

l’oeil plough and furrowed
field, the UNHCR feed bag and visiting
hours. These things done

for stateless donkeys,
mules, and hinnies – done in love, in lieu of claims
to purpose or rights –

are done with your
generous help. In your names. Enjoy the photo.
Have a safe winter

outside the enclosure

Notes on the Poem
What inspires an artist to create has always been a source of speculation and wonderment for those not so gifted or inclined, but grateful for those fruits of artistic inspiration. You name it, and someone has probably painted a picture, penned a song, crafted a poem, or birthed some work of incredible art sparked by clear, sometimes surprising, sometimes unlikely and sometimes obscure sources of inspiration. Ken Babstock's "Autumn News from the Donkey Sanctuary" boasts an unusual poetic muse that is one of the poem's singular delights.

Babstock shares in an interview how he learned about the donkey sanctuary and its newsletter. Descriptions and names from the newsletter are the starting point for Babstock to progress through the possible characters of and interactions among the scarred, "stateless" but gentle and gently healing donkeys, to a suggestion that how they are subsisting, surviving and thriving offers lessons for us all.

Babstock's poem presciently complements a brief reflection on the donkey sanctuary web site about anthromorphism. Attributing human characteristics, reactions or behaviour to non-human entities, including animals, is inaccurate, potentially troublesome, maybe presumptuous ... but also tempting, comforting and even instructive at times, as both the donkey sanctuary correspondent and Babstock suggest. We don't know for certain if Cargo has really "let down / her hair a little", but if she seems more relaxed and not going on about whatever (Pliny the Elder as likely as anything), we could all stand to follow her example, stop and enjoy our stale Cheerios too. We also don't know if Odin and the crow are friends or the crow is tormenting him, but we can all learn and benefit from relationships outside our immediate circles.

Inspiration doesn't have to be lofty or conventionally beautiful to potently inform an artistic creation. What are the most unusual sources you've seen most skillfully and memorably woven into poetic form?

Fallen
angels

look like
flakes of soot
abacuses
cabbage leaves
stuffed with black rice
hail
painted red
blue flames
with yellow tongues

fallen angels
look like
ants
moons wedged beneath
the green fingernails of the dead

angels in heaven
look like the inner thighs
of an underage girl

like stars
they shine in shameful places
they are pure like triangles and circles
with silence
inside them

fallen angels
are like the open windows of a morgue
like cows’ eyes
like the skeletons of birds
like falling planes
like flies on the lungs of fallen soldiers
like streaks of autumn rain
connecting lips with birds taking flight

over a woman’s palm
wander
a million angels

devoid of belly buttons
they type on sewing machines
long poems in the shape
of a white sail

their bodies can be grafted
onto the trunk of an olive tree

they sleep on ceilings
falling drop by drop

Notes on the Poem
The judges' citation for Sobbing Superpowers: Selected Poems of Tadeusz Rozewicz notes how Rozewicz's work, deftly and deferentially translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak, takes on grand themes but uses plain speech to examine them. "Homework Assignment on the Subject of Angels" is a striking example of this approach, as Rozewicz takes on and Trzeciak interprets in English the multiplicity of meanings of the sacred symbol of angels.

Rozewicz deconstructs the symbol of the angel - an idealized being and a messenger from God with an equivalent in many religious and spiritual traditions - by associating it and its "fallen" counterpart with numbers of simple and vivid images. While simple, though, some of the images are difficult to align, even nonsensical. If the angel and the fallen angel are delineated as the embodiments respectively of good and evil, or the failure of goodness, why aren't the images associated with each also obviously denoting or connoting good or evil? For example, why is a fallen angel like an abacus? what are the negative connotations, if any, with being compared to "streaks of autumn rain" or "birds taking flight?" While equating an angel with the purity of a young girl might make sense, equating an angel with the anatomy of a girl described with a more pointed adjective is troubling.

In keeping it simple to the point of terse, Rozewicz the poet and Trzeciak the translator powerfully call into question, even subvert the symbols. While contemplating something truly immense, they still modestly categorize the exercise as a "homework assignment." The symbols are viewed freshly and anew. With clear language and images, it's revelatory to discover the surprisingly blurred lines between good and evil.

I remember the girl leaning down from the sunlight
To greet me. I could have been anyone. She could not:
She was Josie, remember, and smiling – she knew me already –
Auburn gate-girl to the garden-world,
To the lilacs and pears, the first summer
Seen perfectly once, then never again. And she left.
The garden – the garden, of course, has gone under the stone
And I cannot complain, a half-century gone
Like the cherry tree weeping its resin,
The dry grass, the slab of white marble
The butcher propped up in the back yard to sit on –
Things of the world that the world has no need of,
No more than of Josie or me or that morning.
Still a child as I see now, she leaned down
To smile as she reached out her brown hands to greet me
As though this were how these matters must be
And would be forever amen. She was saying goodbye.
And I cannot complain. What is under the stone
Must belong there, and no voice returns,
Not mine and not hers, though I’m speaking her name.

Notes on the Poem
Wielded as a poetic device, repetition can achieve any number of powerful and pervasive impressions. Sean O'Brien uses that device sparingly in the poem "Josie", to subtle and moving effect.

Repeating a sound, word, phrase, fragment, line, stanza, or some other pattern or element within a poem can have subliminal, sensory, emotional and other types of impact. The frequency and form of repetition either intensifies or more carefully interweaves the effect in the poem, which can be stirring, pleasurable, maybe provoking. Poetic repetition at its best, however overt or suggestive, is always memorable.

In Sean O'Brien's wistful remembrance of a girl named Josie, he repeats two phrases: "I cannot complain" and "under the stone". He only repeats each of them once. The contexts in which the phrases are used are very different. The passages of time and circumstance between the two instances is both vast and intimate. The minimal but telling use of repetition strikes a profound and touching chord.

Glowing images in this poem also help to build its sense of nostalgia. The simplicity of the words and phrasing underscore the poem's quiet, noble, understated yearning. The echo of those two phrases frames it all poignantly.

These frantic blooms can hold their own
when it comes to metaphor & God.
Take any name or shade of irony, any flowery
indifference or stolen gratitude, & our eyes,
good or bad, still run up to this hue.
Take this woman sitting beside me,

a descendant of Hungarian Gypsies
born to teach horses to dance & eat sugar
from her hand, does she know beauty
couldn’t have protected her, that a poppy
tucked in her hair couldn’t have saved her
from those German storm troopers?

This frightens me. I see eyes peeping
through narrow slats of cattle cars
hurrying toward forever. I see “Jude”
& “Star of David” scribbled across a depot,
but she says, That’s the name of a soccer team,
baby. Red climbs the hills & descends,

hurrying out to the edge of a perfect view,
& then another, between white & violet.
It is a skirt or cape flung to the ground.
It is old denial worked into the soil.
It is a hungry new vanity that rises
& then runs up to our bleating train.

I am a black man, a poet, a bohemian,
& there isn’t a road my mind doesn’t travel.
I also have my cheap, one-way ticket
to Auschwitz & know of no street or footpath
death hasn’t taken. The poppies rush ahead,
up to a cardinal singing on barbed wire.

Notes on the Poem
Colour can be a potent symbolic or sensory component of the most memorable and affecting poetry. Colour associated with specific objects or beings can add layers of meaning that can in turn produce rich emotional resonances. However, if layered on too thickly, that deluge of highly charged colour can intimidate, overpower, muddy the intent of a piece. Yusef Komunyakaa uses colour and vividly coloured entities sparingly and, as a result, powerfully in this selection from his collection The Chameleon Couch.

Not only does Komunyakaa use colour carefully in "Poppies," but he pragmatically hastens to deconstruct the usual associations with the colour and the internationally significant symbol of the flower by tackling it in the opening lines of the poem:

These frantic blooms can hold their own
when it comes to metaphor & God.

While going on to grant that we'll still react to "this hue" regardless, he moves on to place the flower in the hair of a women under threat. Not only is the placement of the flower not expected - we think of it pinned solemnly to coats and lapels - but its seeming potency is immediately defused, as it doesn't save her.

Komunyakaa moves swiftly from historical but still pervasive memories of horror to more recent and personal concerns and challenges, relating quite literally to colour. The red morphs from poppies to a cardinal - vibrant, passionate, singing defiantly, as vividly symbolizing life as well as death. The blazing red frames and continues to inflame an unflinchingly provocative poem.

In darkness. In rain. Yourself at the very point
where what’s yours bleeds off through the palings
to terra incognito, and the night’s blood-hunt
starts up in the brush: the notion of something smiling
as it slinks in now for the rush and sudden shunt.

A women is laying a table; the cloth
billows as it settles; a wine-glass catches the light.
A basket for bread, spoons and bowls for broth
as you know, just as you know how slight
a hold you have on this: a lit window, the faint
odour of iodine in the rainfall’s push and pull.

Now she looks out, but you’re invisible
as you planned, though maybe it’s a failing
to stand at one remove, to watch, to want
everything stalled and held on an indrawn breath.

The house, the woman, the window, the lamplight falling
short of everything except bare earth –
can you see how it seems, can you tell
why you happen to be just here, where the garden path
runs off to black, still watching
as she turns away, sharply, as if in fright,
while the downpour thickens and her shadow on the wall,
trembling, is given over to the night?

Surely it’s that moment from the myth
in which you look back and everything goes to hell.

Notes on the Poem
Shouldn't this be a pleasant, warming, welcoming series of images? Why isn't it? How does David Harsent take this innocuous view of a household and garden and give it such a sense of unease?

Harsent creates that sense of underlying threat explicitly and from the outset. "In darkness. In rain." That sounds abrupt, stark and unhappy. Swiftly, the poem's metaphors raise the level of alarm with "the night's blood-hunt" and "the rush and sudden shunt". Something is stalking and something is being stalked.

But why? The observer standing in the rain and darkness is familiar with the cozy scene that unfolds in the second stanza, a scene with elements "as you know" ... But perhaps "just as you know how slight / a hold you have on this" is the frustrated reason motivating the feeling of menace.

Even more pervasive, though, than these and other ominous and specific references ("indrawn breath", "as if in fright") is the overall sense that the poem is not ringing true, but that the note of dissonance is somehow deliberate. Harsent achieves that with different variations of off rhyme, where there is almost a rhyme, but not quite. There are examples of true rhyme in the poem, such as "hunt/shunt", "cloth/broth", "light/slight" and "fright/night". Others are close but oddly off, such as "breath" with either "earth" or "path". The poem even contains intriguing pararhyme combinations where the consonants are the same but the vowel sounds are difference, such as "failing/falling" and "broth/breath". Line after line, all so closely knit, some words rhyming and others having seemingly not fully resolved connections to each other ... has Harsent subtly captured something about the relationship between the person in the garden and the person laying the table in the house?

The first person is an existentialist

like trash in the groin of the sand dunes
like a brown cardboard home beside a dam

like seeing like things the same
between Death Valley and the desert of Paran

An earthquake a turret with arms and legs
The second person is the beloved

like winners taking the hit
like looking down on Utah as if

it was Saudi Arabia or Pakistan
like war-planes out of Miramar

like a split cult a jolt of coke New York
like Mexico in its deep beige couplets

like this, like that … like Call us all It
Thou It. “Sky to Spirit! Call us all It!”

The third person is a materialist.

Notes on the Poem
Is it virtually impossible to write about certain events that are too immense, too devastating, too charged on so many levels? To go into the specifics, one risks being maudlin, self-absorbed, short-sighted, too emotional. To try to broaden the discussion and perhaps recklessly try to scale something to the universal, one risks being too political, polarizing or simply missing the mark. Nowadays, is it also a fairly hopeless search to find an original angle, picture or perspective that hasn't already been captured, replicated, retweeted and interpreted to oblivion when a significant (or even a not-so-significant) happening goes viral?

But if one feels compelled to comment, can a more oblique way of expressing it still bring something fresh, unique and resonant to the subject? Fanny Howe has done that in a poem that tackles the powerful and freighted subject of what happened on September 11, 2001. She uses as her title the abbreviation that is internationally and indelibly associated with the events of that day and all that followed, an abbreviation that has gathered its own connotations since that date. 

She moves right away from the familiarity of that abbreviation to images that seem to have no or tenuous association with the title - or do they? The images are strong but puzzling at first, second, even third glance. What compellingly seems to gather these images together, though, are three people. Their presence in the poem is both enigmatic but oddly comforting. The powerful event of the title and the disquietingly disjointed images and references throughout the poem are somehow softened by the presence of the people. The first and third persons frame the poem from one end of the philosophical spectrum to the other, suggesting that the range of interpretation of an event like 9/11 is that vast. But at the heart of the poem, suggesting the heart of the event's impact, is how it affects who and what we love.