National Poetry Month: Thomas Merton

"At This Precise Moment of History"
Fr. Thomas Merton


1. At this precise moment of history
With Goody-two-shoes running for Congress
We are testing supersonic engines
To keep God safe in the cherry tree.
When I said so in this space last Thursday
I meant what I said: power struggles.

2. You would never dream of such corn. The colonials in
sandalwood like running wide open and available for
protection. You can throw them away without a refund.

3. Dr. Hanfstaengel who was not called Putzi except by
those who did not know him is taped in the national
archives. J. Edgar Hoover he ought to know
And does know.

But calls Dr. Hanfstaengel Putzi nevertheless
Somewhere on tape in the
Archives.

He (Dr. H.) is not a silly man.
He left in disgust
About the same time Shirley Temple
Sat on Roosevelt’s knee
An accomplished pianist
A remembered personality.
He (Dr. H.) began to teach
Immortal anecdotes
To his mother a Queen Bee
In the American colony.

4. What is your attitude toward historical subjects?
—Perhaps it’s their size!

5. When I said this in space you would never believe
Corn Colonel was so expatriated.
—If you think you know,
Take this wheel
And become standard.

6. She is my only living mother
This bee of the bloody arts
Bandaging victims of Saturday’s dance
Like a veritable sphinx
In a totally new combination.

7. The Queen Mother is an enduring vignette
at an early age.
Now she ought to be kept in submersible
decompression chambers

For a while.

8. What is your attitude toward historical subjects
Like Queen Colonies?
—They are permanently fortified
For shape retention.

9. Solid shades
Seven zippered pockets
Close to my old place
Waiting by the road
Big disk brakes
Spinoff
Zoom
Long lights stabbing at the
Two together piggyback
In a stark sports roadster

Regretting his previous outburst
Al loads his Cadillac
With lovenests.

10. She is my only living investment
She examines the housing industry
Counts 3.5 million postwar children
Turning twenty-one
And draws her own conclusion
In the commercial fishing field.

11. Voice of little sexy ventriloquist mignonne:
“Well I think all of us are agreed and sincerely I my-
self believe that honest people on both sides have got
it all on tape. Governor Reagan thinks that nuclear
wampums are a last resort that ought not to be re-
sorted.” (But little mignonne went right to the point
with: “We have a commitment to fulfill and we better
do it quick.” No dupe she!)

All historians die of the same events at least twice.

13. I feel that I ought to open this case with an apology.
Dr. H. certainly has a beautiful voice. He is not a silly
man. He is misunderstood even by Presidents.

14. You people are criticizing the Church but what are
you going to put in her place? Sometime sit down with
a pencil and paper and ask yourself what you’ve got
that the Church hasn’t.

15. Nothing to add
But the big voice of a detective
Using the wrong first names
In national archives.

16. She sat in shocking pink with an industrial zipper spe-
cially designed for sitting on the knees of presidents in
broad daylight. She spoke the president’s mind. “We
have a last resort to be resorted and we better do it
quick.” He wondered at what he had just said.

17. It was all like running wideopen in a loose gown
Without slippers
At least someplace.

"At This Precise Moment of History" appeared in The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton (New Directions, 1969). Merton was a Trappist monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani near Bardstown, Kentucky . He had attended Columbia University in the 1930s, and became interested in social and political causes there. The Seven Storey Mountain, about his conversion to the Catholic faith and involvement in monastic life, became a national best-seller in 1948 to a generation disillusioned by World War II. By the 1960s he developed a personal radicalism which had political implications but was not based on ideology and was rooted in non-violence. He became interested in the Christian mystics and saw parallels in many Eastern religions. His study led him to travel extensively, and he was preparing to give a lecture in Bangkok, Thailand at an interfaith conference when he was accidentally electrocuted by the faulty wiring in an electric fan on December 10, 1968 at the age of 53. He had published more than 70 books of prose and poetry.

National Poetry Month: Scott Ezell

"Ishi"
Scott Ezell

square tongues speak brick words

that couple into nothing
surrounded by hair and flowers.

decay of fruit and love and sex,
all subside
into chemical contemplation,
alcohol and buzzing bees,
sweet sticky scents.

police machines chop the sky
into thistles of noise and fear--

I pick up and carry a river on my back,
a cloak of home
to drape across
the shoulders of the world,
enfloding streams and stones.

glaze of bone
across my eyes.
a hood of silence,

my tongue of salt
dissolving into words
I speak to you.

This poem appears in Songs from a Yahi Bow: A Series of Poems on Ishi (2011; Pleasure Boat Studios). In 1911, Ishi emerged from an isolated hunting and gathering lifestyle in the foothills of northern California. Called the “last wild American Indian,” he was taken to San Francisco, where he lived until his death in 1916. Songs from a Yahi Bow, the first published book of poems on Ishi, consists of work by three poets, written across four decades, and coincides with the 100th anniversary of Ishi’s emergence from the wilderness. This collection includes an introduction to recent discoveries about Ishi, as well as Thomas Merton’s 1968 essay, “Ishi: A Meditation.”

National Poetry Month: Jean Valentine

"Time is matter here"

Jean Valentine

Time is matter here

The freight train

I saw in the morning

still in the evening

inching across the flatlands

word after slow word

too many to count

And you are matter—

your eyes, your long legs,

slow breath sometimes catching

in your sleep, your head

resting against the bus window,

tired horse,

tired rider

This poem appeared in Jean Valentine's 2010 collection Break the Glass, which was nominated for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

National Poetry Month: Maurice Manning

"A Blasphemy"

Maurice Manning

You wouldn't have believed it, how

the man, a little touched perhaps,

set his hands together and prayed

for happiness, yet not his own;

he meant his people, by which he meant

not people really, but trees and cows,

the dirty horses, dogs, the fox

who lived at the back of his place with her kits,

and the very night who settled down

to rock his place to sleep, the place

he tried so hard to tend he found

he mended fences in his sleep.

He said to the you above, who, let's

be honest, doesn't say too much,

I need you now up there to give

my people happiness, you let

them smile and know the reason; hear

my prayer, Old Yam. The you who's you

might laugh at that, and I agree,

it's funny to make a prayer like that,

the down-home words and yonder reach

of what he said; and calling God

the Elder Sweet Potato, shucks,

that's pretty funny, and kind of sad.

Maurice Manning's 2010 book of poems, A Common Man, was one of the finalists for this year's Pulitzer Prize.

National Poetry Month: Kay Ryan

"Survival Skills"

Kay Ryan

Here is the virtue

in not looking up:

you will be the one

who finds the overhang

out of the sun

and something for a cup.

You will rethink meat;

you will know you have

to eat and will eat.

Despair and hope you keep

remote. You will not

think much about the boat

that sank or other boats.

When you can, you sleep.

You can go on nearly forever.

If you ever are delivered

you are not delivered.

You know now, you were

always a survivor.

"Survival Skills" appeared in the collection Say Uncle, 2000. It was announced yesterday that Kay Ryan's The Best of It: New and Selected Poems won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

National Poetry Month: Charles Baudelaire

"The Drunkard"

Charles Baudelaire

My wife is dead, and I am free!
Now I can drink both night and day.
When I came home without my pay
Her crying upset me horribly.

I am as happy as a king.
The air is soft. The sky is clear.
Ah, what a lovely spring, this year!
I courted her in such a spring.

Now I can drink to drown my care
As much wine as her tomb would hold —
The tomb where she lies pale and cold.
And that will be no small affair,

For I have thrown her, body and limb,
In an old well; I even threw
All the loose stones around the brim
On top of her. Good riddance, too!

I asked her in the name of Christ,
To whom our marriage vows were told,
To be my sweetheart as of old —
To come to a forsaken tryst

We had when we were young and gay,
That everything might be the same:
And she, the foolish creature, came!
We all have our weak moments, eh?

She was attractive still, all right,
Though faded. I still loved her — more
Than there was rhyme or reason for.
I had to end it, come what might!

Nobody understands me. What's
The use of wasting my good breath
Explaining to these stupid sots
The mysteries of love and death?

They take their women by routine,
These louts — the way they eat and drink.
Which one has ever stopped to think
What the word love might really mean?

Love, with its softness in your reins,
With all its nightmares, all its fears,
Its cups of poison mixed with tears,
Its rattling skeletons and chains.

— Well, here I am, alone and free!
Tonight I will be drunk for fair,
And I will lay me down, I swear,
Upon the highroad happily,

And sleep like an old dog, be sure,
Right where the heavy trucks go by,
Loaded with gravel and manure.
The wheel can smear my brains out — ay,

Or it can break me like a clod
In two, or it can mash me flat.
I care about as much for that
As for the long white beard of God!

On April 18, 1839, Charles Baudelaire was expelled from College Louis-le-Grand, where he was difficult and rebellious, often fighting with other students. Following his expulsion, his mother sent him away as a merchant-marine to remove him from "bad influences." The website Fleurs du mal offers readers different translations from various editions of Baudelaire's poems over the years: this version of "Le Vin de l'assassin" is a translation by George Dillon in 1936 and republished in 1982. The website notes wryly that "these are not necessarily the best or the worst translations — though fleursdumal.org is partial to Edna St. Vincent Millay's renderings." Millay and Dillon had been lovers when these translations were published. Dillon was an editor of Poetry magazine; his papers are at Syracuse University.

National Poetry Month: Paul Violi

"Index"

Paul Violi

Hudney, Sutej IX, X, XI, 7, 9, 25, 58, 60, 61, 64

Plates 5,10, 15

Childhood 70, 71

Education 78, 79, 80

Early relationship with family 84

Enters academy, honors 84

Arrest and bewilderment 85

Formation of spatial theories 90

“Romance of Ardoy, The” 92

Second arrest 93

Early voyages, life in the Pyrenees 95

Marriage 95

Abandons landscape painting 96

Third arrest 97

Weakness of character, inconstancy 101

First signs of illness, advocation

of celibacy 110

Collaborations with Fernando Gee 111

Composes lines beginning: “Death, wouldst that I

had died / While thou wert still a mystery." 117

Consequences of fame, violent rows,

professional disputes 118, 119

Disavows all his work 120

Bigamy, scandals, illness, admittance of

being “easily crazed, like snow.” 128

Theories of perspective published 129

Birth of children 129

Analysis of important works:

Wine glass with fingerprints

Nude on a blue sofa

The drunken fox trappers

Man wiping tongue with large towel

Hay bales stacked in a field

Self portrait

Self portrait with cat

Self portrait with frozen mop

Self portrait with belching duck 135

Correspondence with Cecco Angolieri 136

Dispute over attribution of lines: “I have

as large supply of evils / as January has

not flowerings.” 137

Builds first greenhouse 139

Falling-out with Angolieri 139

Flees famine 144

Paints Starved cat eating snow 145

Arrested for selling sacks of wind

to gullible peasants 146

Imprisonment and bewilderment 147

Disavows all his work 158

Invents the collar stay 159

Convalescence with third wife 162

Complains of “a dense and baleful wind

blowing the words I write off the page.” 165

Meets with Madam T. 170

Departures, mortal premonitions, “I think

I’m about to snow.” 176

Disavows all his work 181

Arrest and pardon 182

Last days 183

Last words 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190

"Index" appeared in the 1982 collection Splurge. Paul Violi died April 3 at the age of 66.