National Poetry Month: Philip Levine

 

"Baby Villon" - Philip Levine

He tells me in Bangkok he’s robbed

Because he’s white; in London because he’s black;   

In Barcelona, Jew; in Paris, Arab:

Everywhere and at all times, and he fights back.

 

He holds up seven thick little fingers

To show me he’s rated seventh in the world,   

And there’s no passion in his voice, no anger   

In the flat brown eyes flecked with blood.

 

He asks me to tell all I can remember

Of my father, his uncle; he talks of the war   

In North Africa and what came after.

The loss of his father, the loss of his brother,

 

The windows of the bakery smashed and the fresh bread   

Dusted with glass, the warm smell of rye

So strong he ate till his mouth filled with blood.

“Here they live, here they live and not die,”

 

And he points down at his black head ridged   

With black kinks of hair. He touches my hair,   

Tells me I should never disparage

The stiff bristles that guard the head of the fighter.

 

Sadly his fingers wander over my face

And he says how fair I am, how smooth.   

We stand to end this first and last visit.   

Stiff, 116 pounds, five feet two,

 

No bigger than a girl, he holds my shoulders,   

Kisses my lips, his eyes still open,

My imaginary brother, my cousin,

Myself made otherwise by all his pain.

 

 

 

Philip Levine started to work in car manufacturing plants at the age of 14. He went to college at Wayne University in Detroit, where he began to write poetry, encouraged by his mother, to whom he dedicated the book of poems, The Mercy. In his 1988 Paris Review interview Levine commented on his early work: "Rhythm is deep and it touches us in ways that we don’t understand. We know that language used rhythmically has some kind of power to delight, to upset, to exalt, and it was that kind of rhythmic language that first excited me. But I didn’t encounter it first in poetry . . . perhaps simply in speech, in prayer, preaching. That made me want to create it. My earliest poems were a way of talking to somebody. I suppose to myself. I spoke them and I memorized them. I constantly changed them. I would go out and work on my rain poem and improve it. ... Rain was my first, and I guess, a constant theme. But things like wind in the winter, the trees, and my sense of relationship with them. You could actually see the stars, we were on the outskirts of Detroit, there were no factories around. So you could see the stars and, oh the world is, you know, a cosmos, is immense."

Philip Levine died in 2015 at the age of 87. His final collection, published in 2016, was The Last Shift.

National Poetry Month: Charley Seagraves



"Somebody With a Gun" - Charley Seagraves

Somebody with a gun
walked into a convenience store
just outside of Charlotte,
pulled on a stocking mask,
pointed a .44 Magnum
in the clerk's face,
and that began his fall from grace,
and now he's on the run,
somebody with a gun.

Somebody with a gun,
in a drive-by with an A-K
just outside of Atlanta,
accidentally hit a 7-year-old
who died in the emergency room--
he didn't mean to kill that kid,
but he did,
and now he's on the run,
somebody with a gun.

Somebody with a gun
got into an argument with her spouse
just outside of Topeka,
reached into her purse
and pulled out a 9mm Glock--
he ended up dead,
a single shot through his head,
and now she's on the run,
somebody with a gun.

Somebody with a gun
is knocking on the door of despair
just outside of your hometown,
oh lord, it's a jungle out there,
and their life is slowly coming undone
and it's somebody's daughter
and it's somebody's son
and soon they too will be on the run,
somebody with a gun.

Photo of Charley Seagraves at The Globe, Athens, Georgia, by David Noah [2014].

National Poetry Month: Warren Zevon

 



"My Shit's Fucked Up" - Warren Zevon

 

Well, I went to the doctor
I said, "I'm feeling kind of rough"
He said "I'll break it to you, son,
Your shit's fucked up."
I said "my shit's fucked up?
Well, I don't see how."
He said, "The shit that used to work
It won't work now."

I had a dream
Ah, shucks, oh, well
Now it's all fucked up
It's shot to hell

Yeah, yeah, my shit's fucked up
It has to happen to the best of us
The rich folks suffer like the rest of us
It'll happen to you

That amazing grace
Sort of passed you by
You wake up every day
And you start to cry
Yeah, you want to die
But you just can't quit
Let me break it on down:
It's the fucked up shit

 

Warren Zevon  was an occasional visitor to the home of  Ivor Stravinsky, where he briefly studied modern classical music. When he was 16 years old he quit high school and moved from Los Angeles to New York City to become a folk singer. In 1992 he told an Australian interviewer: “My advice to starting-out songwriters – not that I ever get the opportunity to say this to them – is that all those songs you’ve written have probably got a couple good lines in ‘em. Throw out everything but those and start over. Then build those up on a couple songs – then combine the two. That’s it. Be ruthless.” He died of cancer in 2003.

 

National Poetry Month: W.S. Merwin

 

"Before the Flood" 
(W.S. Merwin)

Why did he promise me
that we would build ourselves
an ark all by ourselves
out in back of the house
on New York Avenue
in Union City New Jersey
to the singing of the streetcars
after the story
of Noah whom nobody
believed about the waters
that would rise over everything
when I told my father
I wanted us to build
an ark of our own there
in the back yard under
the kitchen could we do that
he told me that we could
I want to I said and will we
he promised me that we would
why did he promise that
I wanted us to start then
nobody will believe us
I said that we are building
an ark because the rains
are coming and that was true
nobody ever believed
we would build an ark there
nobody would believe
that the waters were coming


W.S. Merwin, 90 later this year, began his writing career at the age of five by writing hymns for his father, who was a Presbyterian minister. ("I was very disappointed that they weren’t used in church"). His first book, A Mask for Janus, was chosen by W.H. Auden in 1952 for the Yale Younger Poets series. He has lived in Majorca, London, France, Mexico, as well as the United States; in 1976, Merwin moved to Hawaii to study with Robert Aitken, the Zen Buddhist teacher, and he now lives on Maui with his wife Paula. In his 1987 Paris Review interview he tells Ed Hirsch: "Writing poetry is never a wholly deliberate act over which you have complete control. It’s important to recognize that writing is at the disposition of all sorts of forces, some of which you don’t know anything at all about. You can describe them as parts of your own psyche, if you like, they probably are, but there are lots of other ways of describing them that are as good, or better—the muses, or the collective unconscious. More suggestive and so, in a way, more accurate. Any means of invoking these forces is good, as far as I’m concerned."

National Poetry Month: Joy Harjo

 

    
"Ah Ah"

for Lurline McGregor

Ah, ah cries the crow arching toward the heavy sky over the marina.

Lands on the crown of the palm tree.

Ah, ah slaps the urgent cove of ocean swimming through the slips.

We carry canoes to the edge of the salt.

Ah, ah groans the crew with the weight, the winds cutting skin.

We claim our seats. Pelicans perch in the draft for fish.

Ah, ah beats our lungs and we are racing into the waves.

Though there are worlds below us and above us, we are straight ahead.

Ah, ah tattoos the engines of your plane against the sky—away from these waters.

Each paddle stroke follows the curve from reach to loss.

Ah, ah calls the sun from a fishing boat with a pale, yellow sail. We fly by

on our return, over the net of eternity thrown out for stars.

Ah, ah scrapes the hull of my soul. Ah, ah.

 

 

"Ah, Ah" originally appeared in  How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems:1975-2001. Joy Harjo 's most recent collection is Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015). Harjo is the first Native {Creek] to win the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, which bestows the honor annually “to recognize outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry.” In a 2015 interview, she comments that "I came to realize that as poets we just write songs. So, we have to take it all on, these stages of life, every seven years, create community, be creative, and make art. You have to open up, accept frailty, failure, there’s really no failure, you’re learning, it’s like sketches. You are giving back, like breathing, like life, like death, you take that place in the circle, part of the gift is to give back. And you are really giving forward."

National Poetry Month: Deacon Lunchbox

Deacon Lunchbox was the stage name of Atlanta performance artist and poet Timothy Tyson Ruttenber. A construction worker by day, he was popular in the Atlanta area for his flamboyant spoken-word performances. He often punctuated each line of his poems by banging an old torpedo casing or metal bucket with a hammer. His onstage props included a chainsaw, and often a bra was part of his costume. Deacon is credited with giving the Atlanta alternative country music scene its name - the Redneck Underground. He died in an auto accident, along with two members of the Atlanta group The Jody Grind, in April 1992.

More about Deacon Lunchbox, the Jody Grind, and the Cabbagetown music scene here.

National Poetry Month: Jo Podvin

 

 "My cells with giddy recall reel and spin"
 (Jo Podvin)

My cells with giddy recall reel and spin
Ancestral trick of photosynthesis
Dendrites have turned to fuzzy buds within
My interstitial spaces sing of this
What is not green of shoots is blue of sky
The scent of bee seduction fills the air
There is no where, no what, no who, no why
There is no past, and certainly no care
This drunken blossoming expands and grows
This blooming fills up all possible space
Here there is only yes, no room for nos
Intoxicating sweetness, hazy grace
Expanding yes, as birdsong from above
Love, then, is yes, and yes, oh yes, is love


Jo Podvin lives in Oakland, CA, and is the program manager for a small non-profit, Youth Enrichment Strategies (YES). 

National Poetry Month: Terry Kattleman

"The I Bing: The Book of Exchanges #1" (Terry Kattleman)

Hexagram 1: Ch’ien—The Creative

Dry dollars the ninth
day of every month. Hidden
dragon: do not use.

Tin dragon: do see
adults. A gentleman’s dry
all day, a watchful

tiger, no blame in
a guilt-free sky, flying deep
in time. Concubine

logistics work the
engine; a good long hang will
also benefit.

Vigorous thing to
do: announcing sufficient
justice is solid

enough, without the
stuffy, boring music, so
one cannot worry

the contrary; it
cannot be drawn. Evil is
good governance and

easy, great virtue.
The faithful German course is
inferior and

without pride. Be dry,
dry and watchful, and despite
adversity, be

without blame of cloud.
Disaster preparedness
is world governance.

The United States
is energy potential,
civilization

accompanying
the poles of temperament,
leather together.

The Ephesians! Pure
essence of imperial
days, benevolent

evidence, latent,
but implicit, the seasons
of order. Play the

bypass and breach the
ghost of Robert Frost for good
or ill luck. Knowledge

in its turn, but do
not know the dead, and do not
know death. Only saints

advance and retreat
in life and death. Only saints
advance and retreat.

[Original Chinese (auto-detected as Chinese Simplified) via Bing translator]


If the word is a virus, according to Burroughs, it is always subject to a series of recombinant permutations: the artist is free to manipulate the word as any substance and from any source. THE BOOK OF HAIKU REVELATION is the home of Terry S. Kattleman's Bingian Translational Reanalysis. In his own incantory words: Gysinian Haikuistics® (aka The Process™) is a constrained volitional cut-up methodology formulated by Terry S. Kattleman, Moriarty dean of the Department of Poetic Assemblage, College of Etheric Arts, Interzone University, and Chief Executive Offertory of the Society for Bingian Translational Reanalysis. Bingian Translational Reanalysis™ is a modality of language permutation contingent upon erratic Internet translation procedures. Deus Ex Logos Machina. Note on quote formation: Quasi-quotations, registered with the Patagonian Patent Office as Squotations™ (an e-adaptation of “misquotation”), are constructed entirely from the selected Internet quote site content of the quotee (see Incitements).
Kattleman is currently publicity director/production editor at the literary magazine Confrontation. In addition to the Death Palette Trilogy, he is the author of It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Ka-ching): A History of Federal Jazz Policy.

National Poetry Month: Tiel Aisha Ansari

 

"Before there was color photography"
(Tiel Aisha Ansari)

Before there was color photography
it was sepia sorrow and black-and-white laughs
that filled up our grayscale memory
with old-fashioned love caught in old photographs.
We kissed under rainbows in monochrome,
the girls in white dresses, the boys in black ties,
recorded both travel and coming home
in silver emulsions unsullied by dyes.
We flatter ourselves on development
of accurate, full-color vision that sets
our lives down in vivid emotion palettes.
We claim that it's truer to represent
the brilliance of love with a gaudy bouquet-
but love was as strong back when roses were gray.

  Tiel Aisha Ansari's work has appeared or is forthcoming in several print and online venues including Islamica Magazine, Mezzo Cammin, and The Lyric, and she is the author of the poetry collection Knocking from Inside, published by Ecstatic Exchange. Her blog is knockingfrominside.blogspot.com.   

National Poetry Month: David Rattray

"A red-framed print of the Summer Palace"

(David Rattray)

My mother died in her bed

one balmy night in May, 1974;

my hair wasn't yet gray.

At the head of the bed

was a red-framed print

of the Summer Palace near Peking

in salmon pink and tea green

over a lake with a little stream launch

and a bridge

to an island in the foreground.

She'd been there as a girl

and for 50 years later

dreamt of it

only to awake

in tears at not returning

to the summer palace of youth.

In her will she left me the picture --

it's on my study wall.

Last year a Sinologist came by, and I learned 

the bridge   

is incorrectly rendered.

There are in fact

17 arches, not 14 as shown.

Also, there are errors in perspective

and the Chinese writing in the clouds

over the lake

is cut and dried description, 

not the poetry I'd hoped.

"A red-framed print of the Summer Palace" by David Rattray (1958-1993) appeared in Sulfur #3, 1982. His translations included work by the 20th-century French writers Antonin Artaud and Rene Crevel; he published a book of collected stories and essays, How I Became One of the Invisible and a poetry collection, Opening the Eyelid (1990). He died unexpectedly of a brain tumor at the age of 57. (Photo of David Rattray by Ira Cohen.)

National Poetry Month: W.D. Snodgrass

W.D. Snodgrass

"Who Steals My Good Name"

(W.D. Snodgrass)

For the person who obtained my debit card number and spent $11,000 in five days

My pale stepdaughter, just off the school bus,

Scowled, "Well, that's the last time I say my name's

Snodgrass!" Just so, may that anonymous

Mexican male who prodigally claims

My clan lines, identity and the sixteen

Digits that unlock my bank account,

Think twice. That less than proper name's been

Taken by three ex-wives, each for an amount

Past all you've squandered, each more than pleased

To change it back. That surname you affect

May have more consequence than getting teased

By dumb kids or tracked down by bank detectives.

Don't underrate its history: one of ours played

Piano on his prison's weekly broadcast;

One got rich on a scammed quiz show; one made

A bungle costing the World Series. My own past

Could subject you to guilt by association:

If you write anything more than false checks,

Abandon all hope of large press publication

Or prizes—critics shun the name like sex

Without a condom. Whoever steals my purse

Helps chain me to my writing desk again

For fun and profit. So take thanks with my curse:

May your pen name help send you to your pen.

   "Who Steals My Good Name" by W.D. Snodgrass was originally published in Poetry magazine, April 2003, and collected in Not For Specialists (2006).  He gained early fame with his first book of poems Heart's Needle in 1959, which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1960. He taught at Syracuse University for many years and died at his home in upstate New York in 2009.

National Poetry Month: Delia Gist Gardner

"Hail and Farewell"

Delia Gist Gardner

(Reflection from a cabin in Skull Valley, Arizona, over an old Indian camping ground, 1945)

 

Think not on my brittle bones mingling with dust, for

These

Are but a handful added

To those gone before.

Think, rather, that on this borrowed hilltop

One lived joyously, and died content.

 

In this dark soil

I found reminders, saying:

"You, too, will pass; savor for us

The wind and the sun."

 

From the smoke-blackened earth

I dug

A frail shell bracelet, shaped lovingly, skillfully,

For a brown skinned wrist, now dust.

The broken piece of clay

Was a doll's foot and leg, artfully curved ,

Made for brown-eyed child.

 

Pottery shards saying:

"Yours for a little time only

Take delight in this, as we did."

 

The tree will die; the vine wither and rattle in the wind.

For I broke a law of Nature.

I carried the water to the hilltop. Nevertheless,

For those after me there will be

These things I have loved:

 

Morning sun rays, slanting across the hilltop,

Lighting the great trees in the green meadow.

Wind, the great blue sky,

Peace of the encircling hills

And flaming glow of sunset.

"Hail and Farewell" appears in Cowgirl Poetry: One Hundred Years of Ropin' and Ridin', edited by Virginia Bennett, published by Gibbs-Smith, 2001. From the introduction: "Vintage writings were a rich discovery. 'Hail and Farewell,' found recited as a dramatic ending to Gail Steiger's CD of truthful cowboy music, was penned by Delia Gist Gardner, whose husband, Gail Gardner, wrote many classic cowboy poems, including 'The Sierry Petes' (better known as 'Tying Knots in the Devil's Tail'). Steiger related that no one knew that his grandmother had been a writer, yet after her death, this single poem as found among her things."

National Poetry Month: Martha Collins

from Blue Front 

(Martha Collins)

There were trees on those streets that were named for trees: Sycamore, Cedar, Poplar, Pine, Elm, where the woman's body was found, where the man's body was taken and burned—

There must have been trees, there were trees on Seventh Street, in front of the house that stands in the picture behind the carriage that holds the boy's mother, the boy's cousin, the boy—

And of course there were trees on Washington Avenue, wide boulevard lined with exotic ginkgoes, stately magnolias, there were trees on that street that are still on that street,

trees that shaded the fenced-in yards of the large Victorian houses, the mansion built by the man who sold flour to Grant for the Union troops, trees that were known to the crowd that saw

the victim hanged, though not on a tree, this was not the country, they used a steel arch with electric lights, and later a lamppost, this was a modern event, the trees were not involved.

......

"hang"

as a mirror on a wall, or the fall of a dress. a dress, a shirt on a line to fasten to dry. on the rack, or back in the closet again, a sweet curse on it all, sliver of nail, delayed attack. shamed creature, a curse on itself, so the act of doing it changes the verb, tense with not quite right. with rope, like a swing from a tree. from a pole, like a flag, or holidays, from an arch lit bright with lights. in the night, in the air like a shirt. without, or with only a shirt. without, like an empty sleeve.

Blue Front (Graywolf Press, 2006) is Martha Collins' booklength poem about a lynching in her father's home town of Cairo, Illinois in the year 1909, when he was five years old. From a review by Janet St. John in Booklist: "One November day, he was hoisted on a relative's shoulders to watch a bloodthirsty mob kill a black man and then, in an escalation of its 'hunger,' hang an accused white murderer. Collins carefully examines the event and its aftermath, especially the effect on her father. ... She then extends her thoughtful scrutiny to incorporate newspaper accounts, photographs, personal accounts, and history to expose the way racism permeates all layers of society. Collins employs a staccato, matter-of-fact tone that strikes like a sledgehammer at persistent, if hidden, hate. More than worthy as poetry, Blue Front is also a powerful statement about America and a potent reminder of humankind's terrible potential."

National Poetry Month: John Giorno

 

"Thanx 4 Nothing" - John Giorno

I want to give my thanks to everyone for everything,
and as a token of my appreciation,
I want to offer back to you all my good and bad habits
as magnificent priceless jewels,
wish-fulfilling gems satisfying everything you need and want,
thank you, thank you, thank you,
thanks.

May every drug I ever took
come back and get you high,
may every glass of vodka and wine I’ve drunk
come back and make you feel really good,
numbing your nerve ends
allowing the natural clarity of your mind to flow free,
may all the suicides be songs of aspiration,
thanks that bad news is always true,
may all the chocolate I ever eaten
come back rushing through your bloodstream
and make you feel happy,
thanks for allowing me to be a poet
a noble effort, doomed, but the only choice.

I want to thank you for your kindness and praise,
thanks for celebrating me,
thanks for the resounding applause,
I want to thank you for taking everything for yourself
and giving nothing back,
you were always only self-serving,
thanks for exploiting my big ego
and making me a star for your own benefit,
thanks that you never paid me,
thanks for all the sleaze,
thanks for being  mean and rude
and smiling at my face,
I am happy that you robbed me,
I am happy that you lied
I am happy that you helped me,
thanks, grazie, merci beaucoup.

May you smoke a joint with William,
and spend intimate time with his mind,
more profound than any book he wrote,
I give enormous thanks to all my lovers,
beautiful men with brilliant minds,
great artists,
Bob, Jasper, Ugo,
may they come here now
and make love to you,
and may my many other lovers
of totally great sex,
countless lovers
of boundless fabulous sex
countless lovers of boundless fabulous sex
countless lovers of boundless
fabulous sex
in the golden age
of promiscuity
may they all come here now,
and make love to you,
if you want,
may each of them
hold each of you in their arms
balling
to your hearts
delight.
balling to your hearts
delight
balling to
your hearts delight
balling to your hearts delight.
             
May all the people who are dead
Allen, Brion, Lita, Jack,
and I do not miss any of you
I don’t miss any of them,
no nostalgia,
it was wonderful we loved each other
but I don’t want any of them back,
now, if any of you
are attracted to any of them,
may they come back from the dead,
and do whatever is your pleasure,
may they multiply,
and be the slaves
of whomever wants them,
fulfilling your every wish and desire,
(but you won’t want them as masters,
as they’re demons),
may Andy come here
fall in love with you
and make each of you a superstar,
everyone can have
Andy.
everyone can
have Andy.
everyone can have Andy,
everyone can have an Andy.

Huge hugs to the friends who betrayed me,
every friend became an enemy,
sooner or later,
I am delighted you are vacuum cleaners
sucking everything into your dirt bags,
you are none other than a reflection of my mind.
Thanks for the depression problem
and feeling like suicide
everyday of my life,
and now that I’m seventy,
I am happily almost there.                
               
Twenty billion years ago,
in the primordial wisdom soup
beyond comprehension and indescribable,
something without substance moved slightly,
and became something imperceptible,
moved again and became something invisible,
moved again and produced a particle and particles,
moved again and became a quark,
again and became quarks,
moved again and again and became protons and neutrons,
and the twelve dimensions of space,
tiny fire balls of primordial energy
bits tossed back and forth
in a game of catch between particles,
transmitting electromagnetic light
and going fast, 40 million times a second,
where the pebble hits the water,
that is where the trouble began,
something without substance became something with substance,
why did it happen?
because something substance less
had a feeling of missing out on something,
not
getting it
was not getting  it
not getting it,
not getting it,
imperceptibly not having something
when there was nothing to have,
clinging to a notion of reality;
from the primordially endless potential,
to modern day reality,
twenty billion years later,
has produced me,
gave birth to me and my stupid grasping mind,
made me and you and my grasping mind.

May Rinpoche and all the great Tibetan teachers who loved me,
come back and love you more,
hold you in their wisdom hearts,
bathe you in all-pervasive compassion,
give you pith instructions,
and may you with the diligence of Olympic athletes
do meditation practice,
and may you with direct confidence
realize the true nature of mind.

America, thanks for the neglect,
I did it without you,
let us celebrate poetic justice,
you and I never were,
never tried to do anything,
and never succeeded,
I want to thank you for introducing me to
the face of the naked mind,
thanx 4 nothing.


John Giorno wrote "Thanks 4 Nothing" for his 70th birthday in 2006. A poet and visual artist born in 1936 in New York City, Giorno attended Columbia University and worked as a stockbroker for a short time before meeting Andy Warhol in 1962. A romantic relationship ensued, and Giorno was featured in Warhol’s first film, Sleep (1963). The influence of pop art and Warhol’s Factory are evident in Giorno’s work, which developed out of verbal collages of appropriated texts drawn from advertising and signage. In 1971, following a trip to India, Giorno converted to Tibetan Buddhism. In his later years, he has become well known for his confrontational readings and his contributions as a gay rights activist; he founded the AIDS Treatment Project in 1984. In 2010, he had his first solo gallery show, Black Paintings and Drawings, which focused on the development of poem painting. He currently lives in New York City.