Old Post from Tangled Swans

I don't want to lose this cool old post from 2007 so here: Stella and I are writing poems for her class, whose are better, you decide!

(This one is Stella's)
Yin

Masculine, sky

Penetrating, pursuing, swaggering

Uranus ♂♀ Gaea

Enveloping, nurturing, swooning

Earth, feminine

Yang

(This one is mine)
dull
slow, tarnished
waning, softening, aging
wearing out & warming up
refreshing, shining, honing
bright, quick
sharp

Kerouac pun for Al Gelpi

This is a great find! A poem that has it all - humor, a retro poet, an icon of American Literary Studies, the thrill and intrigue of discovery, the patina of age and mystery: a poem written by Jack Kerouac for Albert Gelpi, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. See the one-of-a-kind broadside here (with the proper line breaks and indent).

A Pun for Al Gelpi

Jesus got mad one day
at an apricot tree.
He said, "Peter, you
of the Holy See,
Go see if the tree is ripe."
"The tree is not yet ripe,"
reported back Peter the Rock.
"Then let it wither!"
Jesus wanted an apricot.
In the moring, the tree
had withered,
Like the ear in the agony
of the garden,
Strucky down by the sword,
Unready.
What means this parable?
Everybody
better see.
You're really sipping
When your glass
is always empty.

The other cool thing, is the website on which I found this pun - Modern Books and Manuscripts
Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138. What could be better than a link to a library that is in the business of acquiring beautiful old and new books, poems, items of desire and importance!

I'm happy about all this today because - if I am lucky - Al Gelpi will be able to serve as my advisor during my upcoming thesis year. My thesis has been approved with a reservation or two - mostly that I narrow my focus - which I knew I would have to anyway. I am looking at the evolution of domestic imagery (laundry?) in American poetry in the second half of the twentieth century. It should be lovely and hard and exciting and exhausting and gorgeous and revelatory - I'm tired already. But this conditional approval of my thesis is a good thing. It's hard to say, but, "yeah for me!"

Tangled Swans -- Witness to the Collision

I've encountered a blog called Tangled Wings put together by a woman photographer. It looks like she's got some beautiful photos. I couldn't figure out how to comment on her photos, so am putting my own "tangled swans" poem here. Go to her blog to see the pictures.

Witness to the Collision
The tangled swans have managed it,
they rise, a struggling clump, black
and white, light and clacking.

Black feet, webbed like the sticky
blood, membranous from a womb,
flop and shudder at the ends

Of their dangling legs, as if
empty black stockings were kicking,
dragged up into the air, still the shapes

Of knees and heels, stretched, unreleased.
Above the legs, curl the warm white
bodies, heavy with breast meat, rosy

Brown thighs, warm from fighting,
thrusting and flushed— only hunger
thinks of a swan as a meal, what

Of the cloud—the white smother—
put up your hand there, against
the flank, softly curved, it pulses.

So, then the outside, the white white
still tangled, at odd angles,
wings flawed and shredded as a book,

Huge plates of feathers, sliding
airplanes of silver, 2 wings
into 4 wings, articulating

From the bone—remiges and retrices—
Semiplumes—to the smaller, small
down, quills, then spaces

Between which warm air trembles.
Can you see through the fury
and horrible noise to their

Necks? Where ultimately they tango—
knotted—twisting, as twisted voice,
2 throats inclined and enraged,

Throats locked into smooth
white serpentine undulation of
barking. I don’t think they sing

Any song I understand, but those
tangled swans, so strong,
so broken, reassemble into a sky

I will call up to as they tighten
their bodies together into what
I will call heaven.

And heaven is only a white place,
a silence, an uninterrupted mind,
fluttering, born.

Keeping two blogs up is hard

I'm trying to segregate myself still -- poems here and laundry songs there -- I wonder if I should force this dichotomy -- any opinions? It feels right for the time being. Although I do get confused sometimes. Maybe I should try my PAD here again? (Poem A Day) or maybe I should call it DAD (Draft a Day) -- no, I don't like that -- MYAED -- (Move Your Arm Every Day) -- that's a good start.

To prove I mean it, here's a draft from a couple of weeks ago. (Not really today but oh well -- as Jackson would say -- cheese and rice.) This poem was inspired when Missy was hurtling herself along California on an AIDS ride.

the beauty of bicyclists
is an elastic flush
orange pink and red
lycra and titanium
a black thin loping
of human leg
and spoke into the next
rotation space street

the beauty of bicyclists
is a comfort, I'm driving
close enough to see the muscled
calves, the heart-shaped divot
behind the knee, a winking
ankle bone, flashing
like a kid with a torch
in the dark
signaling a friend
in the next house
darkness all around them except
in the bright orange
pink and red fingers
brain flesh, lips

the beauty of bicyclists
laps up the miles of road
between now and all the next
nows, working and work,
the rhythm
the language of the wheel

(you know it's a draft because there are no capital letters)

More IRB HRPP AAHRPP poetry

Our submission was Fedexed today.
Do you think they will increase our pay?
The flowers are fresh
Moral is a mesh
Good buddy, let's call it a day.

Magnolia Trees, Poems, and Me

Last week there was a lovely article in the New York Times, by Kerry Kennedy, describing her father's love for poetry -- this is something I did not know, that Bobby Kennedy loved poetry, kept a "battered book" by his side at the dinner table, and challenged his kids to memorize poems while he and Ethel were on trips. I have written my own poems about war's futility, and keep a Norton Anthology at the dining room table, but I don't have something that RFK had -- an ability to connect history, current American life and culture, poetry, and my children together in a way that reverberates for them. At least, if I do have that ability, I can't see it yet.
I did write a poem about a magnolia tree once. And I've learned a lot about RFK this month. Now if only I were writing more.

The Tree Attended

The rain is okay.
Wind scares me
makes that slap clacking sound
in the flags at the end of the pool,
when I put my head up I think of
skeletons or someone dropping silverware.
The black sky okay, too,
safe and close, oddly warm even when
the window is flat ice under my palms.
Hail jumps sweet,
sugar candy or popcorn,
the shy rain that changed its mind into shapes
big enough to share, then
brags its brightness, dents the air.

When it’s over
the tulip magnolia tree stands like a crossing guard,
a fair shepherdess,
blossoms pink and bruised white,
scattered along the sidewalk in two directions.
But many are still on the tree
jealous of their spring
like new breasts, eager
to fall into whatever the weather builds for their falling
and somehow reluctant
enjoying the shape of the their beauty.

Lisa, see how the tree is as big as a pick-up truck,
powerful, hauling the glistening oxygen,
damp, competent, moving
in the steaming evening,
flowers cupped with rain in the branches
and some in the street.
Everything lies down under the deluge.
The flowers don’t care
where they will fill up with nightfall,
or who sees them,
losing their minds.

(2005)

Swimming on a Summer Evening

Tonight I went swimming with my friend Michelle. She meets me at the club and we swim back and forth for about a half hour, chatting a little bit at the end of the lanes and while we shower. Tonight I swam on my back a bit more -- my neck is getting stronger. There was a sliver of moon in the early evening sky, 7 pm, still bright daylight but the sun low behind the tall redwoods. The afternoon feeling is heightened by the murky luminescence of sunscreen and sweat in the water -- a day of swim lessons, swim team practice, and little kids always leaves the water smelling and tasting like a sticky afternoon. I was glad to swim and feel stronger, glad to have a chance to talk to a grown up about something other than my job, glad to think about this poem, that I wrote many years ago, swimming after work, watching the moon lapping me in the sky as I swam on my back then, no longer angry.

Forgiveness

After you left
I swam on my back
watching the spider web clouds
break up in the deepening sky,
or maybe coalescing,
crystal seeding itself in ice,
or child’s hair in wind.
For a while I could taste the cut grass
from the playing field,
then the rubber chair of the lifeguard,
and the wet soap smell
of the other woman in my lane.
With each breath an open mouth
of surprises, of someone else,
I watched the sky and the evening,
now unpatterned lace,
brittle, fair and random, cloth of heaven,
and the colored flags
as they moved into sight
always five strokes away from the wall.
I found the moon, too,
less than half crescent,
in the western nightfall,
right where we agreed
it would be.

Poetry as punishment?

I guess the kids who broke into Robert Frost's house to party didn't think about getting caught -- and certainly didn't expect to have poetry as part of their punishment. I hope this is a good thing --

The vandalism took place at the Homer Nobel Farm, and here's a photo -- before the mess. There are plenty of photos of the mess after the break-in, but I think the NY Times did the best job of illustrating their article with a lovely snowy sunrise image -- Frost would have approved.

More IRB poetry

Haiku this time -- in strict 5/7/5 form -- which is perfect for research compliance but dorky for good hiaku -- forgive me, true haiku believers -- post something better, would you?

IRB all day --
at night CFR and more
words than butterflies