Do you love me?

Do you love me?
Robert Wrigley

She's twelve and she's asking the dog,
who does, but who speaks
in tongues, whose feints and gyrations
are themselves parts of speech.

They're on the back porch
and I don't really mean to be taking this in
but once I've heard I can't stop listening. Again
and again she asks, and the good dog

sits and wiggles, leaps and licks.
Imagine never asking. Imagine why:
so sure you wouldn't dare, or couldn't care
less. I wonder if the dog's guileless brown eyes

can lie, if the perfect canine lack of abstractions
might not be a bit like the picture books
she "read" as a child, before her parents' lips
shaped the daily miracle of speech

and kisses, and the words were not lead
and weighed only air, and did not mean
so meanly. "Do you love me?" she says
and says, until the dog, sensing perhaps

its own awful speechlessness, tries to bolt,
but she holds it by the collar and will not
let go, until, having come closer,
I hear the rest of it. I hear it all.

She's got the dog's furry jowls in her hands,
she's speaking precisely
into its laid-back, quivering ears:
"Say it," she hisses, "say it to me."

Meditation on a Grapefruit

Meditation on a Grapefruit

Craig Arnold

To wake when all is possible

before the agitations of the day

have gripped you

                    To come to the kitchen

and peel a little basketball

for breakfast

              To tear the husk

like cotton padding        a cloud of oil

misting out of its pinprick pores

clean and sharp as pepper

                             To ease

each pale pink section out of its case

so carefully       without breaking

a single pearly cell

                    To slide each piece

into a cold blue china bowl

the juice pooling       until the whole

fruit is divided from its skin

and only then to eat

                  so sweet

                            a discipline

precisely pointless       a devout

involvement of the hands and senses

a pause     a little emptiness

each year harder to live within

each year harder to live without

Idiot Psalm 12

BY SCOTT CAIRNS

A psalm of Isaak, amid uncommon darkness

O Being both far distant and most near,

             O Lover embracing all unlovable, O Tender

             Tether binding us together, and binding, yea

             and tenderly, Your Person to ourselves,

Being both beyond our ken, and kindred, One

             whose dire energies invest such clay as ours

             with patent animation, O Secret One secreting

             life anew into our every tissue moribund,

             afresh unto our stale and stalling craft,

grant in this obscurity a little light.

From Blossoms

From Blossoms

Li-Young Li

From blossoms come
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
come nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

Oh, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

and that will be heaven

and that will be heaven

Evangeline Patterson

and that will be heaven
at last      the first unclouded
seeing

to stand like the sunflower
turned full face to the sun       drenched
with light       in the centre
held        while the circling planets
hum with utter joy

seeing and knowing
at last      in every particle
seen and known      and not turning
away

never turning away
again

From “The Invention of Influence”

BY PETER COLE

Freud could never be certain, he said,

in view of   his wide and early reading,

whether what seemed like a new creation

might not be the work instead

of   hidden channels of memory leading

back to the notions of others absorbed,

coming now anew into form

he’d almost known within him was growing.

He called it (the ghost of a) cryptomnesia.

So we own and owe what we know.

How To Be a Poet

BY WENDELL BERRY

(to remind myself)

i   

Make a place to sit down.   

Sit down. Be quiet.   

You must depend upon   

affection, reading, knowledge,   

skill—more of each   

than you have—inspiration,   

work, growing older, patience,   

for patience joins time   

to eternity. Any readers   

who like your poems,   

doubt their judgment.   

ii   

Breathe with unconditional breath   

the unconditioned air.   

Shun electric wire.   

Communicate slowly. Live   

a three-dimensioned life;   

stay away from screens.   

Stay away from anything   

that obscures the place it is in.   

There are no unsacred places;   

there are only sacred places   

and desecrated places.   

iii   

Accept what comes from silence.   

Make the best you can of it.   

Of the little words that come   

out of the silence, like prayers   

prayed back to the one who prays,   

make a poem that does not disturb   

the silence from which it came.

The Afterlife

The Afterlife

Dean Young

Four a.m. and the trees in their nocturnal turns

seem free from our ideas of what trees should be

like the moment in a dance you let your partner go

and suddenly she's loose fire and unapproachable.

Yesterday I saw L again, by a case of kiwis

and she seemed wrongly tall as if wearing cothurni.

Would it be better never to see her at all?

 

In Jim's poem about death, shirts pile on a chair.

I imagine them folded, the way shirts are,

arms behind the back, then boxed in mothballs

and marked with Magic Marker, Jim's Shirts.

Probably what would really happen

is his wife might save a few to hang among her own.

Even that off-the-shoulder thing of hers

commingled with grief, overlapping    ghosts.

The rest she'd give away, maybe dump

in a Salvation Army bin in some parking lot

or just drop off in People's Park. It scares me

to think of that guy with sores on his face 

trying on the parrot shirt. It scares me

how well it fits. Maybe if I just walked up to her

and said, Enough. Maybe she still has my blue belt.

Outside, the rain riffs off the shingles, wind 

mews down the exhaust tube of my heater.

On the isinglass flames rush in smudges

like lovers who must pass through each other

as punishment for too much lust and feeding.

Still life

Still Life

Kathy Nilsson

I'm having trouble looking animals in the eye.

Their empty suits in outer space!

Monkeys injected with a virus to show off

Our eminent domain, the nervous system.

Teacup pigs we breed and obsessive mice

Worrying themselves bald in a miniature opera.

For pleasures of the tongue we are

Winking cattle out of meadows

Slashing their throats and swiftly quartering them.

In riding habits with gold flame pins we ride horses

To hounds, chase a fennec fox until his red

Coat flares up against the extinction

Of light. Once in a circus we made

An elephant disappear and he did not mind.


It was difficult to choose a poem out of those I has available to me today. So many seemed to have images of shut and violence and death and I felt too sensitive for it today. Or maybe I like poems that make me feel holy in a less human way.

So this poem was a compromise, concerned as it is with the obscenity of our cruelty to animals, our exploitation of them. It deals with those horrors but without too much horror - I say that, but there is plenty of horror actually. Still somehow I find it more bearable here.

How is it more bearable? I guess because her list is quite detached, almost jokey in a way. There are these things that we do, but somehow these things are made so bizarre that it is easy to detach, to feel it to be happening somewhere else, done by someone else, under the umbrella of 'we'.

I'm not sure that I can identify the technical elements... There are some pleasurable sound effects - "empty suits in outer space"; chase a fennec fox until his red coat flares up against the extinction of light". i can't really find an explicit pattern to the rhythm. The are some nice subtle rhymes or echoes - space/mice; show off/ nervous; opera/we are; red/made.

This light touch, these subtly rhythms and rhymes do seem to keep the whole thing light. And then there is a overwheming tragedy to the description of the fox's death - this beautiful creature hounded and savaged to death, to to the end of light, to extinction - like so many other creatures we have made extinct.

And then the elephant who is made to disappear in a circus. Another kind of cruelty, another kind of extinction, and in the service of our entertainment. And the elephant did not mind? Not sure about that - a kind of mystery. Maybe he didn't mind because he was out of our control; maybe he didn't mind because so lobotomised by imprisonment; maybe did not mind as in paid no mind, paid no attention.

I remember you

I remember you

Norman MacCaig

The boat sits stuck in light, the water
Lies heavy as honey; and which
Is stiller, the supple air or the gray
Boulder lichened on the beach?

Here, one would think, is a whole legend,
Not to be added to, caught and held
In the still hallucination of summer
That honey's to blue the breathless wood.

But through the pine tops slants a mallard
Down to its gushing arrowhead;
It makes a whole mountain tremble;
It waves the arras of green shade.

Onto a Vast Plain

Onto a Vast Plain

Rainer Maria Rilke

You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.

The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees' blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit:
now it becomes a riddle again
and you again a stranger.

Summer was like your house: you know
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

Magdalene - The Seven Devils

MAGDALENE–THE SEVEN DEVILS

by Marie Howe

“Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven devils had been cast out” —Luke 8:2.

The first was that I was very busy.
The second — I was different from you: whatever happened to you could not happen to me, not like that.

The third — I worried.
The fourth – envy, disguised as compassion.
The fifth was that I refused to consider the quality of life of the aphid,
The aphid disgusted me. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The mosquito too – its face. And the ant – its bifurcated body.

Ok the first was that I was so busy.
The second that I might make the wrong choice,
because I had decided to take that plane that day,
that flight, before noon, so as to arrive early
and, I shouldn’t have wanted that.
The third was that if I walked past the certain place on the street
the house would blow up.
The fourth was that I was made of guts and blood with a thin layer of skin
lightly thrown over the whole thing.

The fifth was that the dead seemed more alive to me than the living

The sixth — if I touched my right arm I had to touch my left arm, and if I touched the left arm a little harder than I’d first touched the right then I had to retouch the left and then touch the right again so it would be even.

The seventh — I knew I was breathing the expelled breath of everything that was alive and I couldn’t stand it,

I wanted a sieve, a mask, a, I hate this word – cheesecloth –
to breath through that would trap it — whatever was inside everyone else that
entered me when I breathed in

No. That was the first one.

The second was that I was so busy. I had no time. How had this happened? How had our lives gotten like this?

The third was that I couldn’t eat food if I really saw it – distinct, separate from me in a bowl or on a plate.

Ok. The first was that I could never get to the end of the list.

The second was that the laundry was never finally done.

The third was that no one knew me, although they thought they did.
And that if people thought of me as little as I thought of them then what was
love?

Someone using you as a co-ordinate to situate himself on earth.

The fourth was I didn’t belong to anyone. I wouldn’t allow myself to belong
to anyone.

Historians would assume my sin was sexual.

The fifth was that I knew none of us could ever know what we didn’t know.

The sixth was that I projected onto others what I myself was feeling.

The seventh was the way my mother looked when she was dying.
The sound she made — the gurgling sound — so loud we had to speak louder to hear each other over it.

And that I couldn’t stop hearing it–years later –
grocery shopping, crossing the street –

No, not the sound – it was her body’s hunger
finally evident.–what our mother had hidden all her life.

For months I dreamt of knucklebones and roots,
the slabs of sidewalk pushed up like crooked teeth by what grew underneath.

The underneath —that was the first devil. It was always with me.
And that I didn’t think you— if I told you – would understand any of this -

What the Living Do

What the Living Do

Marie Howe

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss--we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you. 

This is a poem that made me want to be a poet. It might even be the poem that made me want to be a poet. And reading it now I feel so moved by it my throat thickens with tears that don't quite come. I feel that longing all over again, or as Howe quotes Johnny - that yearning. 

How to understand how it is working? it feels packed with detail: long, claustrophobic lines describe the trivia of everyday life - groceries, coffee, hairbrush, parking. So that we understand how busy it is to just live, how packed with stuff we have to do and get and make and be. But there is also breakdown going on: the kitchen sink is blocked, the dishes can't be done, the heating won't turn off, coffee is spilt, the grocery bag breaking. Things are clogged, dangerous, wobbly. The poem's narrator is busy, her life a bit unmanageable, even. But even so, even though we perpetually want things to be different, even though things are so fucked-up, even though life is difficult, we can receive the blessing of it, we can love this life, this life that "I am living".  And perhaps this remembering is an act of honouring those who lost their lives. People like Johnny who we might infer died too young and even perhaps took his own life? (What you finally gave up)

So, in terms of how the poem is constructed, there are these long lines that seem packed with information. And the use of enjambment also gives this sense of hurry, of too much to do and too much to think about, too much to fit in the already long lines. But the effect is not overstated, which would make it be a bit of a joke, rather the sense of too much to do, to much to cope with is just quietly stated and contained, kind of the way I often feel, that maybe a lot of us feel. Pressured and overloaded, but coping. 

I'm not sure about other musical elements of the poem - I can identify some sound patterns that make the first half of the poem more percussive (if that is the right word), more "cutlery" than the second half of the poem, which does sound softer and more pensive, more reflective. So, the first couplet has those hard sounds of 'K' - kitchen, clogged, crusty and 'D' - days, drano, dangerous, dishes. But then the second couplet goes a bit softer and dreamer - waiting, we, winter; and the internal rhyming of 'blue' with 'through'.  But then we're back on the job again in the third couplet - driving, dropping, bag breaking. And in the fourth couplet - "Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold." I just get the sense of that, it's not special fancy poetic language, it's just cold and hard and life is busy and you have to carry your own groceries and get stuff done.  And it's material for a poem. 

It seems to me that the busy-ness and the reflection weave in and out of those first five couplets. But then once the idea of "that yearning" is introduced, the mood turns entirely reflective. And under the heading of what the living do, we can see ourselves as this weird tribe, the living, who are full of wants. And the writing becomes softened by all these softer sounds of W and U and O and OA - we/want/what; you/who; more and more and then more; walking/window/own blowing.

And then the ending, which is so beautiful: "I am living. I remember you." We have been arrested by the previous lines, when the narrator is "gripped by a cherishing so deep" and the hard sounds of G, P, B and D. And then in the pause we observe the intensely ordinary details of hair and face and unbuttoned coat seen in reflection, and we are thus invited to see ourselves, to imagine seeing ourselves in this very ordinary way and to know that we live. The poet lets us pause and recall our life and those we have lost.

And I was alive

And I was alive

And I was alive in the the blizzard of the blossoming pear,
Myself I stood in the storm of the bird-cherry tree.
It was all leaflife and starshower, self-shattering power,
And it was all aimed at me.

What is this dire delight flowering fleeing always earth?
What is being? What is truth?

Blossoms rupture and rapture the air,
All hover and hammer,
Time intensified and time intolerable, sweetness raveling rot,
It is now. It is not.

Osip Mandelstam (1937)
Trans. Christian Wiman


I know from hearing Christian Wiman speak about this that it is the last poem Mandelstam wrote, that he was destined to be murdered by the Stalinist regime against which he protested, and he knew that at the time he wrote this. So it has that poignancy of looking back on a life loved and lived well, that is ending too soon.

The first stanza suggests that fullness of life, the beauty and richness of life on this planet, but at the same time there's something menacing in there. So while there is the blossoming pear, the bird-cherry tree, leaflife and starshower (lovely made up words) - there is also a blizzard, a storm, and self-shattering power - and "all aimed at me". And I think that perhaps it is this ambivalence of beauty and violence in life that is summoned here, this dire delight, that we are always dying, always losing what we love, always subject to a certain kind of violence by mere fact that we are human and therefore subject to aging, sickness, death - not to mention the explicit and murderous violence and cruelty of others.

And Mandelstam makes it personal - I was alive, Myself I stood, it was all aimed at me. Why is that important? This is what makes it human - I, this man, this me, this particular life which is mine. But then this self is not mentioned again in the rest of the poem, then it is what is being, what is truth. We move from my life, the tragedy of the loss of my life to a contemplation of the nature of existence, which is fleeting and destined to end.

The third and final stanza rests in the present, you can imagine him looking out of his window on a summer's day, sensing the sweetness and the decay even in that moment of beauty and falling into the present and knowing that the present is always already lost - It is now. It is not.

The first stanza has satisfying alliterations, rhythms, rhymes - and repeated sounds that emphasise a series of downbeats that underscore the speaker's aliveness, his I-ness. And then the alliterations - blizzard/blossoming; stood/storm; and rhymes - tree/me; starshower/power. These repeated sounds seem to create the contained world which compels the reader's attention to what the speaker is saying.

In the second stanza, the three questions don't ask why? but rather what? three times what? So no sense of being a victim here, but rather a kind of distancing curiosity that is belied by the language effects of dire delight flowering fleeing and the rhymes - fleeing/being; earth/truth. And somehow these sounds bring forward the sense of loss for all of us, that being is always fleeing, that the frailty of our materiality is our truth. So it is somehow impersonal, yet we are all implicated.

And in the last stanza this alliteration again: rupture and rapture; hover and hammer. A repetition of the blossoms from the first line creates a sense of continuity, but now these blossoms are too much, their fragrance hovers but also hammers and they are decaying - sweetness raveling rot. Because he knows that the end is near, time is intensified and the time that is available is too packed with sensation to bear, it is intolerable. And then the staccato of the last two lines hammers home the ending of it all. It is now. It is not.