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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.

I’m bouncing across the Scottish heath in a rented Morris Minor
                    and listening to an interview with Rat Scabies, drummer
of the first punk band, The Damned, and Mr. Scabies,
          who’s probably 50 or so and living comfortably on royalties,
is as recalcitrant as ever, as full of despair and self-loathing,

but the interviewer won’t have it, and he keeps calling him “Rattie,”
                    saying, “Ah, Rattie, it’s all a bit of a put-on, isn’t it?”
and “Ah, you’re just pulling the old leg now, aren’t you, Rattie?”
          to which Mr. Scabies keeps saying things like
“We’re fooked, ya daft prat. Oh, yeah, absolutely – fooked!”

Funny old Rattie – he believed in nothing, which is something.
                    If it weren’t for summat, there’d be naught, as they say
in that part of the world. I wonder if his dad wasn’t a bit of a bastard,
          didn’t drink himself to death, say, as opposed to a dad like mine,
who, though also dead now, was as nice as he could be when he was alive.

A month before, I’d been in Florence and walked by the casa di cura where
                    my son Will was born 27 years ago, though it’s not a hospital
now but a home for the old nuns of Le Suore Minime del Sacra Cuore
          who helped to deliver and bathe and care for him when he was just
a few minutes old, and when I look over the gate, I see three

of these holy sisters sitting in the garden there, and I wave at them,
                    and they wave back, and I wonder if they were on duty
when Will was born, these women who have had no sex at all,
          probably not even very much candy, yet who believe in something
that may be nothing, after all, though I love them for giving me my boy.

They’re dozing and talking, these mystical brides of Christ,
                    and thinking about their Husband, and it looks to me
as though they’re having their version of the sacra conversazione,
          a favorite subject of Renaissance artists in which people who care
for one another are painted chatting together about noble things,

and I’m wondering if, as I walk by later when the shadows are long,
                    their white faces will be like stars against their black habits,
the three of them a constellation about to rise into the vault
          that arches over Tuscany, the fires there now twinkling,
now steadfast in the chambered heart of the sky.

Notes on the Poem
David Kirby's poetry - not to mention the way in which he presents it in readings - is noted for its accessible and even conversational tone. If you heard him read this poem before seeing it on the page, would you be surprised by the seemingly contradictory form of the poem?

The consistent, rather formal structure of "The Little Sisters of the Sacred Heart" on the page (or screen here - although screen layouts of poetry are a story unto themselves) seems to contradict Kirby's charming, rambling storytelling. Or is it the other way around? That is, the seemingly unstructured but not unpleasant unfolding of the narrative, or of two seemingly unrelated stories, seems to tweak the formality of how it's all laid out on the page.

Then again, the ordered spaciousness and conscientious spacing of the poem's layout makes clearer any number of parallel structures and commonalities between the two ostensibly diametrically opposed stories, and ends up making them startlingly resonant as they're set side by side. Rat Scabies (who "believed in nothing, which is something") was probably in his raucous punk rock heyday at the same time that David Kirby's infant son was being carefully and lovingly attended to by the holy sisters ("who believe in something / that may be nothing"). Years later, possibly those same holy sisters are peacefully engaging in holy and sacred conversation, while Mr. Scabies is ranting with despair that "we're fooked". What else does David Kirby say about the bitter punk rocker and the gentle, steadfast nuns by observing them both in this fashion? What does David Kirby suggest about himself, as the narrator and captivated listener and observer of both Mr. Scabies and the Little Sisters of Sacred Heart?

Joy unmixed with sorrow
Is like a fountain turned off at night.

Notes on the Poem
Suzanne Buffam is careful to title a goodly portion of her collection The Irrationalist as "Little Commentaries" instead of, say, "Wee Aphorisms" or "Tiny Truisms". As befits the delightfully rueful tone of the entire collection, Buffam is self-effacing about her brief, sometimes pointed, sometimes whimsical blank verse observations. They're not aphorisms, concise statements capturing agreed-upon principles. Nor are they necessarily truisms, statements of self-evident truths so obvious they almost don't merit comment. Calling these charming snippets "commentaries", though, does suggest a level of assessment, versus straight, ostensibly unbiased observation. What exactly is Buffam contemplating in "On Joy" then?

Because On Joy is so succinct, it allows you to concentrate on and weigh every single word. Because you know Buffam has classified it as a commentary, you find yourself going over and over these two lines, searching for and trying to understand what is possibly being judged or opened for debate. Is joy unmixed with sorrow then pure joy, or just joy mixed with ... other elements? Let's assume it's pure joy. Pure joy - a good thing - is like a fountain - another good thing, especially when it's operating and splashing and sparkling ... but when the fountain is not operating at night, is that no longer a good thing? So, pure joy is ... something not so good? Or does that mean that joy mixed with sorrow, or mixed with other things, is like a fountain turned on during the day, in the clear light, splashing and sparkling? Or does it mean that true, pure joy is what we enjoy after the light has faded and the fountain - however lively and musical and refreshing, but maybe also kind of noisy and messy - has been shut off and we can revel in the silence that follows?

For a little commentary, "On Joy" offers much to ponder.

A cold and stormy morning
   I sit in Ursula’s place
and fancy something spicy
   served with the usual grace

by one of her bright workforce
   who know us from before,
a nice girl from Tbilisi,
   Penang or Baltimore.

Some red basil linguine
   would surely hit the spot,
something light and shiny,
   mint-yoghurty and hot;

a frosty but delightful
   pistachio ice-cream
and some strong herbal
   infusion wreathed in steam.

Once a tomato sandwich
   and a pint of stout would do
but them days are over.
   I want to have a go

at some amusing fusion
   Thai and Italian both,
a dish of squid and pine-nuts
   simmered in lemon broth,

and catch the atmospherics,
   the happy lunchtime crowd,
as the cold hand gets warmer
   and conversation loud.

Boats strain at sea, alas,
   gales rattle the slates
while inside at Ursula’s
   we bow to our warm plates.

Notes on the Poem
Derek Mahon's At Ursula draws you in swiftly from "a cold and stormy morning" to a haven of warmth and sensory delights. Part of Homage to Gaia, a nine-poem sequence at the heart of his collection Life On Earth, the poem is clearly reveling in creature comforts.

Those delicious sensations spill out in the tumble of succinct, rhythmic lines that comprise the poem. You can feel the radiated literal warmth of the room and the figurative glow of the gracious, friendly greeters and servers in Ursula's place. And oh, isn't the menu rolled out with a riot of mouthwatering tastes and colours and scents, from "red basil linguine" to "mint-yoghurty and hot" to "frosty but delightful pistachio" to "strong herbal infusion wreathed in steam"? Your tastebuds are devouring this poem as much as your eyes are leaping over the lines. Combined with the joys of a jaunty rhyme scheme, the whole occasion of being at Ursula's fine establishment is lent an air of celebration of everything toothsome and companionable. Even the increasing hubbub in the room - something that might annoy at another time - adds to the cozy pleasures.

But in the midst of the lunchtime festivities, these lines strike a slightly dissonant tone:

Once a tomato sandwich
   and a pint of stout would do
but them days are over.

Has the narrator or has Ursula changed and become pretentious in their culinary choices since their more down to earth days of simpler, local fare? Is the narrator making light of one or both of them with his reference to "amusing fusion", suggesting they've become a tad ridiculous, maybe even wasteful with combinations of Thai and Italian influences, of squid and pine-nuts and lemon broth? But then that suggestion, and the larger world with its storms and troubles, is conveniently shut out in the clatter of dishes and conversation ...

In his blackest suit
the father carries the coffin

It is light as a box of Kleenex
He carries it in one hand

It is white and gold
A jewel box

Their baby is in it

In the unconscionable weather
the father sweats and weeps

The mother leans
on the arms of two women friends

By the sacred light of the church
they are pale as gristle

The priests talk Latin
change their elaborate clothes

their mitres, copes
their stoles embroidered by nuns

Impervious to grief
their sole intention

is the intricate ritual
of returning a soul to God

this sinless homunculus
this tiny seed

Notes on the Poem
"A line is a subdivision of a poem, specifically a group of words arranged into a row that ends for a reason other than the right-hand margin. This reason could be that the lines are arranged to have a certain number of syllables, a certain number of stresses, or of metrical feet; it could be that they are arranged so that they rhyme, whether they be of equal length or not. But it is important to remember that the poet has chosen to make the line a certain length, or to make the line-break at a certain point." The Poetry Archive (www.poetryarchive.org) thus explains the structural foundation of all poems. With this in mind, what effects does P.K. Page achieve with the choices she's clearly made regarding the lines in Funeral Mass?

The striking brevity of each line in this poem drives home that something very small is being considered. The one line that stands completely alone says it most nakedly, starkly, plaintively.

That Page uses few words emphasizes that more words are not possible in the face of such grief - the loss of a very young child - and more words are not necessary. The few words Page chooses carefully, concisely are that much stronger because they stand nearly alone in each short line. The father's suit, appropriate for the very sad occasion, is not just black, but "blackest". That stands in sharp contrast to the "white and gold" box that he bears.

Page takes simple, monosyllabic words served up in the poem's short lines to capture how the parents are feeling. Those few words verge on blunt - "sweats" and "weeps" and "leans" - but they illustrate plainly and poignantly the father and the mother's stunned, abject grief.

In contrast, the same short lines with which the poem continues seem freighted as Page turns her eyes to those conducting the funeral ceremony. It seems as if those same short lines will break under the ponderous weight of the adjectives and verbs associated with the priests: "elaborate", "embroidered", "impervious" and "intricate".

In the last couplet, Page brings together with succinct, telling power the cold, ornate formality of the funeral observance in contrast to the simple, unalloyed sorrow of the parents.

this sinless homunculus
this tiny seed