I said to so many people once, "I write poetry."
They said, "Oh, so you are a poet." Or they said,
"What kind of poetry do you write? modern poetry?"
Or "My brother-in-law is a poet also."
Now if I say, "I am the poet Kenneth Koch," they say "I think I've
heard of you"
Or "I'm sorry but that doesn't ring a bell" or
"Would you please move out of the way? You're blocking my view
Of that enormous piece of meat that they are lowering into the Bay
Of Pigs." What? Or "What kind of poetry do you write?"
Kenneth Koch, from "Days and Nights," in The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch (Knopf, 2007), p. 403
Monday, February 08, 2010
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Haiku
Autumn afternoon --
in the cool, dark chapel a
single candle glows.
*
Look! The branches of
these sturdy, ancient trees are
blossoming -- with snow!
*
Yesteryear's verses --
racing horses, strong and fierce!
Now our words stumble.
*
Winter moonlight, cold
and pure as hundred-proof gin,
goes down like water.
*
Poet sleeps and dreams
of the perfect line. Wakes up
and forgets the words.
*
Cold Sunday morning --
sun shines on the golden cross
of the small Greek church.
in the cool, dark chapel a
single candle glows.
*
Look! The branches of
these sturdy, ancient trees are
blossoming -- with snow!
*
Yesteryear's verses --
racing horses, strong and fierce!
Now our words stumble.
*
Winter moonlight, cold
and pure as hundred-proof gin,
goes down like water.
*
Poet sleeps and dreams
of the perfect line. Wakes up
and forgets the words.
*
Cold Sunday morning --
sun shines on the golden cross
of the small Greek church.
Monday, February 01, 2010
The Dance
It's cabernet o'clock in Arlington.
Outside, a winter day draws to an end.
An icy glare of white and blinding sun
Brightens the west and sinks below the bend
Of the tree-lined horizon. Warmth and cheer
Inside these walls, with Solitude (dear friend!)
And cordial flames of an imagined fire.
Flashes and flickers blaze inside the hearth
Made of the mind's untamable desire
For beauty, peace -- for what? heaven on earth?
Outside, it darkens. Wine gives breath and bloom
To drowsy Muses, coaxes them to mirth
And banishes solemnity and gloom:
See, how they dance inside this little room!
Outside, a winter day draws to an end.
An icy glare of white and blinding sun
Brightens the west and sinks below the bend
Of the tree-lined horizon. Warmth and cheer
Inside these walls, with Solitude (dear friend!)
And cordial flames of an imagined fire.
Flashes and flickers blaze inside the hearth
Made of the mind's untamable desire
For beauty, peace -- for what? heaven on earth?
Outside, it darkens. Wine gives breath and bloom
To drowsy Muses, coaxes them to mirth
And banishes solemnity and gloom:
See, how they dance inside this little room!
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Draft of a sonnet
It's nineteen eighty-five. You're at the beach.
December. Age sixteen. Reading Hart Crane.
The peak of Mt Parnassus within reach!
Sounds of the cold gray ocean flood your brain.
A day for poetry and truancy.
The fierce Atlantic wind batters Revere.
Miss Plath wrote of "the sluttish, rutted sea"
Remembering Winthrop. (Not too far from here.)
Jump on the train and head for Harvard Square.
Browse the bookstores for anthologies
From thirty years ago.
The Welshman's dithyrambic rhapsodies.
Those lines that make you drunk with vertigo!
Your "muse of fire." Approach her, if you dare!
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Scrambled eggs
President Ford liked scrambled eggs. He also liked English muffins. He even made his own English muffins while he was President and living at the White House. Another Republican, William F. Buckley, Jr., was fond of peanut butter. On occasion, he would have peanut butter on an English muffin. The first President Bush was rumored to enjoy pork rinds -- although many observers find it difficult to credit that the patrician statesman, born in New England, could have had a hankering for a snack so seemingly Southwestern and proletarian. We do know that President Bush did not like broccoli. His successor, President Clinton, claimed not to be turned off by the vegetable. However, it strains belief that a man of such hearty appetites could be satisfied with such a non-epicurean but salutary foodstuff. Senator-elect Scott Brown has a hamburger named for him at a venerable Harvard Square burger joint. The burger contains generous quantities of bacon. Does President Obama like bacon?
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Five alternative sonnets
1.
Oldening ici. Under the moony stars and the dark metropolitan ceiling. Memories exist, of V------- and her nose, her subversive belly. For the plupart of tiempo we mope most joyfully. Do not go grumbling into that good night.
2.
I will salute you presently as my sovereign queen. I shall praise your name, your chevelure, and your purple socks. I shall venerate your thermostat. I shall keep an eye on Lucky. I shall leaf through your shelves, blunder through your busses, and bow to your ever-youthful smile. Let anthems be composed in praise of your wristwatch. Astral benedictions, monastic vigils! For the glance of your eye is the wine of astonishment, and the beacon of your silence a luminous serenity.
3.
Next week there shall be "missives" in the mail. Next Thursday, there shall be weather in Portland. At five o'clock, at Kip's Cafe, Canadians shall polka. They shall drink Labatt's and perform acrobatic karaoke. The quislings shall swoon for the love of country matters. And knowledgeable fiends shall scatter biases and blisses. Dedalus and Cranly shall take their argument to the threshold of the rosy-fingered Dawn, and the precincts of hankering and hunger shall breathe in a deep, deep peace.
4.
Afterthought. The sabbath of the ordinary. Cynthia's minimal gestures. There is a light and it never goes out. To coin a pretty plagiarism. Radiance and shelter, life's jolie surmises. Wally spoke French, and the lingo of Insurance. It's an owl's brow of a night. Now I lay me under much blanket and beaucoup de quilt, it being a great frost. Sally Tomato complains of no snow. Just like the old man in that sarabande by Gordon and the crew.
5.
My love is like a presidential press-conference that's newly assembled in March. My love is like the soundtrack to Peter's Friends, not forgetting the coffee-jingle. All my psalters are crumbling like mad. Gymnastic shouts go echoing down the corridors of dreams. Oh, my love is lovely. Oh, she's a brick, she's the ace of spades, she's the water-spider in my stream of consciousness. She suspends my disbelief, and that right early. Oh, she weigh much pound but give me gallons of joy. She's my health, my hope, my jeux-de-mot, ma jouissance. A frowsty old hag she is not. She's my cloister, my marketplace, my violet iris, my cedarwood chest. She's a deck that's most fairly stacked against me. She's a wayward young sprite, she's my heart's delight, she's my glorious and shapely ampersand.
17.I--3.II.2003
Oldening ici. Under the moony stars and the dark metropolitan ceiling. Memories exist, of V------- and her nose, her subversive belly. For the plupart of tiempo we mope most joyfully. Do not go grumbling into that good night.
2.
I will salute you presently as my sovereign queen. I shall praise your name, your chevelure, and your purple socks. I shall venerate your thermostat. I shall keep an eye on Lucky. I shall leaf through your shelves, blunder through your busses, and bow to your ever-youthful smile. Let anthems be composed in praise of your wristwatch. Astral benedictions, monastic vigils! For the glance of your eye is the wine of astonishment, and the beacon of your silence a luminous serenity.
3.
Next week there shall be "missives" in the mail. Next Thursday, there shall be weather in Portland. At five o'clock, at Kip's Cafe, Canadians shall polka. They shall drink Labatt's and perform acrobatic karaoke. The quislings shall swoon for the love of country matters. And knowledgeable fiends shall scatter biases and blisses. Dedalus and Cranly shall take their argument to the threshold of the rosy-fingered Dawn, and the precincts of hankering and hunger shall breathe in a deep, deep peace.
4.
Afterthought. The sabbath of the ordinary. Cynthia's minimal gestures. There is a light and it never goes out. To coin a pretty plagiarism. Radiance and shelter, life's jolie surmises. Wally spoke French, and the lingo of Insurance. It's an owl's brow of a night. Now I lay me under much blanket and beaucoup de quilt, it being a great frost. Sally Tomato complains of no snow. Just like the old man in that sarabande by Gordon and the crew.
5.
My love is like a presidential press-conference that's newly assembled in March. My love is like the soundtrack to Peter's Friends, not forgetting the coffee-jingle. All my psalters are crumbling like mad. Gymnastic shouts go echoing down the corridors of dreams. Oh, my love is lovely. Oh, she's a brick, she's the ace of spades, she's the water-spider in my stream of consciousness. She suspends my disbelief, and that right early. Oh, she weigh much pound but give me gallons of joy. She's my health, my hope, my jeux-de-mot, ma jouissance. A frowsty old hag she is not. She's my cloister, my marketplace, my violet iris, my cedarwood chest. She's a deck that's most fairly stacked against me. She's a wayward young sprite, she's my heart's delight, she's my glorious and shapely ampersand.
17.I--3.II.2003
Jottings
Under the main
empathy nest
skeltonic thoughts
*
Asterisk mine
prohibit dense
ruminant gloom
*
Doubting the word
insists on sight
achieves his proof
*
Slumber impends
let us renounce
busyness haste
*
Psalmody weighs
so glorious so
easy so light
26.IV.2003
empathy nest
skeltonic thoughts
*
Asterisk mine
prohibit dense
ruminant gloom
*
Doubting the word
insists on sight
achieves his proof
*
Slumber impends
let us renounce
busyness haste
*
Psalmody weighs
so glorious so
easy so light
26.IV.2003
Friday, January 22, 2010
Palindromes
Deb sees bed,
not as level, sat on.
1991:
Merton, not R.E.M.!
Ee-ya! procedure Meru décor payee!
Maniac, roll Lorca in a.m.!
Yahweh mayhem? Meh. Yam hew hay.
not as level, sat on.
1991:
Merton, not R.E.M.!
Ee-ya! procedure Meru décor payee!
Maniac, roll Lorca in a.m.!
Yahweh mayhem? Meh. Yam hew hay.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Book meme
(via Steven & TSO)
1. Which book has been on your shelves the longest?
Not sure. I'll say Seamus Heaney's Field Work, since early '85.
2. What is your current read, your last read and the book you'll read next?
Currently reading the poems of GarcÃa Lorca. Just finished rereading Kenneth Koch's Making Your Own Days, next to read hopefully Koch's collected poems.
3. What book did everyone like and you hated?
I tend not to read books that everyone likes.
4. Which book do you keep telling yourself you'll read, but you probably won't?
Beowulf, maybe.
5. Which book are you saving for "retirement?"
I've been retired since my twenties.
6. Last page: read it first or wait till the end?
Wait.
7. Acknowledgments: waste of ink and paper or interesting aside?
Interesting aside. I like the prosy appendages to big books.
8. Which book character would you switch places with?
Tom More in Love in the Ruins?
9. Do you have a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time)?
Not really.
10. Name a book you acquired in some interesting way.
Has to be the seventeen books, including four by Mary Oliver, that I got from Mom's neighbor C.
11. Have you ever given away a book for a special reason to a special person?
Yes.
12. Which book has been with you to the most places?
Either Dylan Thomas's Collected Poems or Marianne Moore's Complete Prose.
13. Any "required reading" you hated in high school that wasn’t so bad ten years later?
Auden, maybe?
14. What is the strangest item you’ve ever found in a book?
???
15. Used or brand new?
Oh, used when possible, but I hanker these days for a mammoth book of poetry that I may have to purchase new.
16. Stephen King: Literary genius or opiate of the masses?
Yes.
17. Have you ever seen a movie you liked better than the book?
This is an easy one. Breakfast at Tiffany's.
18. Conversely, which book should NEVER have been introduced to celluloid?
I don't know -- The World According to Garp?
19. Have you ever read a book that's made you hungry, cookbooks being excluded from this question?
Dylan Thomas makes me hungry for sonic richness that is more delectable than any gastronomic delight.
20. Who is the person whose book advice you'll always take?
For a while, it was Marianne Moore.
1. Which book has been on your shelves the longest?
Not sure. I'll say Seamus Heaney's Field Work, since early '85.
2. What is your current read, your last read and the book you'll read next?
Currently reading the poems of GarcÃa Lorca. Just finished rereading Kenneth Koch's Making Your Own Days, next to read hopefully Koch's collected poems.
3. What book did everyone like and you hated?
I tend not to read books that everyone likes.
4. Which book do you keep telling yourself you'll read, but you probably won't?
Beowulf, maybe.
5. Which book are you saving for "retirement?"
I've been retired since my twenties.
6. Last page: read it first or wait till the end?
Wait.
7. Acknowledgments: waste of ink and paper or interesting aside?
Interesting aside. I like the prosy appendages to big books.
8. Which book character would you switch places with?
Tom More in Love in the Ruins?
9. Do you have a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time)?
Not really.
10. Name a book you acquired in some interesting way.
Has to be the seventeen books, including four by Mary Oliver, that I got from Mom's neighbor C.
11. Have you ever given away a book for a special reason to a special person?
Yes.
12. Which book has been with you to the most places?
Either Dylan Thomas's Collected Poems or Marianne Moore's Complete Prose.
13. Any "required reading" you hated in high school that wasn’t so bad ten years later?
Auden, maybe?
14. What is the strangest item you’ve ever found in a book?
???
15. Used or brand new?
Oh, used when possible, but I hanker these days for a mammoth book of poetry that I may have to purchase new.
16. Stephen King: Literary genius or opiate of the masses?
Yes.
17. Have you ever seen a movie you liked better than the book?
This is an easy one. Breakfast at Tiffany's.
18. Conversely, which book should NEVER have been introduced to celluloid?
I don't know -- The World According to Garp?
19. Have you ever read a book that's made you hungry, cookbooks being excluded from this question?
Dylan Thomas makes me hungry for sonic richness that is more delectable than any gastronomic delight.
20. Who is the person whose book advice you'll always take?
For a while, it was Marianne Moore.
Three Improbable Tales
1.
I weigh a zillion kilograms and have a bright blue stomach. I eat Metropolis for breakfast, heavily salted. I sleep sixteen hours a day and plot bank robberies by night. I am older than the Pilgrims, than Columbus, than the Battle of Hastings. I have travelled to more than fifty different galaxies in the past three minutes alone. I compose barbaric symphonies with the heat and fatal force of an erupting volcano. All of this is true.
2.
Sometimes I sleep in the library between the companionable bookshelves. The gal who writes for the Monitor records my every snore, she copies my somniloquent mutterings. She can even see my dreams. I dream of stupendous herds of buffalo roaming the ravaged plain. I dream of Glastonbury monks chanting psalms in Old Church Slavonic. I dream of the Littleton Pizza Palace and its cataclysmic jukebox.
3.
O age fifteen and a half! You were so joyful and red, unlike age twenty-four, dark purple and serious! And I salute you, age thirty-seven, die-hard realist of recalcitrant whiskers! Who can forget age seventy-six, when we spoke nothing but Portuguese under the branches of anxious elms? And zowie! the boundless vigor of a hundred and nine, when we drank Charles Dickens martinis till the silver stars blushed, to celebrate our mastery of calculus!
I weigh a zillion kilograms and have a bright blue stomach. I eat Metropolis for breakfast, heavily salted. I sleep sixteen hours a day and plot bank robberies by night. I am older than the Pilgrims, than Columbus, than the Battle of Hastings. I have travelled to more than fifty different galaxies in the past three minutes alone. I compose barbaric symphonies with the heat and fatal force of an erupting volcano. All of this is true.
2.
Sometimes I sleep in the library between the companionable bookshelves. The gal who writes for the Monitor records my every snore, she copies my somniloquent mutterings. She can even see my dreams. I dream of stupendous herds of buffalo roaming the ravaged plain. I dream of Glastonbury monks chanting psalms in Old Church Slavonic. I dream of the Littleton Pizza Palace and its cataclysmic jukebox.
3.
O age fifteen and a half! You were so joyful and red, unlike age twenty-four, dark purple and serious! And I salute you, age thirty-seven, die-hard realist of recalcitrant whiskers! Who can forget age seventy-six, when we spoke nothing but Portuguese under the branches of anxious elms? And zowie! the boundless vigor of a hundred and nine, when we drank Charles Dickens martinis till the silver stars blushed, to celebrate our mastery of calculus!
Monday, January 18, 2010
Questions for today
Do I stop in Cambridge on the way to Chelsea?
Do I stop in Chicago on the way to Santiago?
Do I stop in a whiskey emporium on the way to the hamburger joint?
Do I pay a visit to the peach-pit museum on the way to the boob-job gallery?
Do I stop at the French library on the way to the Mandarin newsstand?
Do I perpetrate nonsense as someone asks for directions to the nearest polling place?
Do I sip black coffee as my denim-clad galpal shouts, "Myocardium! Pre-Raphaelite!"?
Do I make a thousand-smackeroonie withdrawal from the mackerel-scented ATM?
Do I proclaim to the blogosphere that, yes, it is snowing again?
Do I zip when the President zaps? Do I live in Wrentham and drive a pick-up truck?
Do I give a rat's patoot about the Golden Globes?
Do I visit my friends at Seacrest and mumble Zen koans at tea-time?
Do I campaign for clear green skies and turbulent purple oceans? Do I take to the airwaves 24/7 with my nutball ideas?
Do I go through the shoeboxes in my closet and search for a metric converter?
Do I bemoan the laxity of modern morals? Do I ever give it a rest?
Do I stop in Chicago on the way to Santiago?
Do I stop in a whiskey emporium on the way to the hamburger joint?
Do I pay a visit to the peach-pit museum on the way to the boob-job gallery?
Do I stop at the French library on the way to the Mandarin newsstand?
Do I perpetrate nonsense as someone asks for directions to the nearest polling place?
Do I sip black coffee as my denim-clad galpal shouts, "Myocardium! Pre-Raphaelite!"?
Do I make a thousand-smackeroonie withdrawal from the mackerel-scented ATM?
Do I proclaim to the blogosphere that, yes, it is snowing again?
Do I zip when the President zaps? Do I live in Wrentham and drive a pick-up truck?
Do I give a rat's patoot about the Golden Globes?
Do I visit my friends at Seacrest and mumble Zen koans at tea-time?
Do I campaign for clear green skies and turbulent purple oceans? Do I take to the airwaves 24/7 with my nutball ideas?
Do I go through the shoeboxes in my closet and search for a metric converter?
Do I bemoan the laxity of modern morals? Do I ever give it a rest?
Sunday, January 17, 2010
NFL team names in Latin
Funny title
And weirdly unselfflattering. Spotted in a used bookstore yesterday:
The Prosaic Soul of Nikki Giovanni.
!!!
Yes, quite.
The Prosaic Soul of Nikki Giovanni.
!!!
Yes, quite.
The Jury Box
New blog from MCNS (of Irish Elk). Cheerful Republicanism from the bluest of blue states.
I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut
"To You" -- an early poem by Kenneth Koch (1925-2002), at the Poetry Foundation website. With audio!
Lorca
En las últimas esquinas
toqué sus pechos dormidos,
y se me abrieron de pronto
como ramos de jacintos.
In the farthest street corners
I touched her sleeping breasts,
and they opened to me suddenly
like spikes of hyacinth.
(from "The Faithless Wife," trans. Stephen Spender and J. L. Gili)
:: :: :: :: ::
Los relojes se pararon,
y el coñac de las botellas
se disfrazó de noviembre
para no infundir sospechas.
The clocks ceased to strike
and the bottles of brandy,
to arouse no suspicion,
wore the mask of November.
(from "Ballad of the Spanish Civil Guard," trans. A. L. Lloyd)
:: :: :: :: ::
From The Selected Poems of Federico GarcÃa Lorca (New Directions, 1961), pp. 70-71, 90-91.
toqué sus pechos dormidos,
y se me abrieron de pronto
como ramos de jacintos.
In the farthest street corners
I touched her sleeping breasts,
and they opened to me suddenly
like spikes of hyacinth.
(from "The Faithless Wife," trans. Stephen Spender and J. L. Gili)
:: :: :: :: ::
Los relojes se pararon,
y el coñac de las botellas
se disfrazó de noviembre
para no infundir sospechas.
The clocks ceased to strike
and the bottles of brandy,
to arouse no suspicion,
wore the mask of November.
(from "Ballad of the Spanish Civil Guard," trans. A. L. Lloyd)
:: :: :: :: ::
From The Selected Poems of Federico GarcÃa Lorca (New Directions, 1961), pp. 70-71, 90-91.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Proust questionnaire
(via A Momentary Taste of Being)
Your favorite virtue: Compassion.
Your chief characteristic: A very good memory for trivial things; garrulity.
Your main fault: Laziness, I fear.
Your favourite occupation: Wandering through used bookstores; reading; blogging.
Your idea of happiness: Being among friends. Writing. Peace and quiet. Autumn.
Your idea of misery: The late spring and early summer of 2003, when I was hospitalized and under the care of The Least Compassionate Doctor In The World.
If not yourself, who would you be: A famous poet or an obscure monk.
Where would you like to live: Alaska, or any place with cool summers.
Your favourite colour and flower: Blue, I think, in spite of the purple of my prose! Rose or carnation.
Your favorite prose authors: Oscar Wilde, Walker Percy, Marianne Moore for her reviews and essays, Donald Hall for his writing on poetry and on Eagle Pond
Your favorite poets: Dylan Thomas, Edward Estlin Cummings, William Shakespeare, Theodore Roethke, Emily Dickinson, John Ashbery (guilty pleasure), Kenneth Koch, Wallace Stevens, and lately Mary Oliver.
Your favorite heroes in fiction: I don't read much fiction, but can identify with Tom More of Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins.
Your favorite heroines in fiction: ?
Least favorite heroines in fiction: ?
Least favorite male characters in fiction: ?
Your favorite painters and composers: Composers: Mozart for the Requiem, Schubert for Ave Maria, The Beatles. Painters: Vincent van Gogh, Salvador Dalí.
Your heroes/heroines in real life: The two most recent Bishops of Rome; several saints and martyrs of holy Church. Literary heroes include Edward Estlin Cummings and Marianne Moore.
What characters in history do you most dislike: Anyone who persecuted the Church.
Your favorite food and drink: Pizza, pasta; beer, wine, gin martinis, "clear water, cold, so cold."
Your favorite names: Elizabeth (with a "z", not with an "s"!)
What I hate the most: Excessively hot weather; bullies of any variety.
World history characters I hate the most: Wasn't this already asked?
The military event I admire the most: ?
The reform I admire the most: Any attempt to preserve or to restore liturgical dignity to the celebration of Mass in the Roman Catholic Church.
The natural talent I’d like to be gifted with: Singing.
How I wish to die: Not suddenly! Prepared, and in the state of grace.
What is your present state of mind: Trying to forget about some tedious errands I have to do next Tuesday, but otherwise upbeat.
For what fault have you most toleration: A fault or a sign of a disease? I tend not to condemn persons who indulge excessively in alcohol.
Your favorite motto: I like Mallarmé's line (not really a motto, but noteworthy nonetheless): "Poems are made of words, not of ideas." Marianne Moore: "Humility is a quality that attracts our admiration oftener than it impels our imitation" (inexact; from memory). Cummings: "unbeingdead isn't beingalive."
Your favorite virtue: Compassion.
Your chief characteristic: A very good memory for trivial things; garrulity.
Your main fault: Laziness, I fear.
Your favourite occupation: Wandering through used bookstores; reading; blogging.
Your idea of happiness: Being among friends. Writing. Peace and quiet. Autumn.
Your idea of misery: The late spring and early summer of 2003, when I was hospitalized and under the care of The Least Compassionate Doctor In The World.
If not yourself, who would you be: A famous poet or an obscure monk.
Where would you like to live: Alaska, or any place with cool summers.
Your favourite colour and flower: Blue, I think, in spite of the purple of my prose! Rose or carnation.
Your favorite prose authors: Oscar Wilde, Walker Percy, Marianne Moore for her reviews and essays, Donald Hall for his writing on poetry and on Eagle Pond
Your favorite poets: Dylan Thomas, Edward Estlin Cummings, William Shakespeare, Theodore Roethke, Emily Dickinson, John Ashbery (guilty pleasure), Kenneth Koch, Wallace Stevens, and lately Mary Oliver.
Your favorite heroes in fiction: I don't read much fiction, but can identify with Tom More of Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins.
Your favorite heroines in fiction: ?
Least favorite heroines in fiction: ?
Least favorite male characters in fiction: ?
Your favorite painters and composers: Composers: Mozart for the Requiem, Schubert for Ave Maria, The Beatles. Painters: Vincent van Gogh, Salvador Dalí.
Your heroes/heroines in real life: The two most recent Bishops of Rome; several saints and martyrs of holy Church. Literary heroes include Edward Estlin Cummings and Marianne Moore.
What characters in history do you most dislike: Anyone who persecuted the Church.
Your favorite food and drink: Pizza, pasta; beer, wine, gin martinis, "clear water, cold, so cold."
Your favorite names: Elizabeth (with a "z", not with an "s"!)
What I hate the most: Excessively hot weather; bullies of any variety.
World history characters I hate the most: Wasn't this already asked?
The military event I admire the most: ?
The reform I admire the most: Any attempt to preserve or to restore liturgical dignity to the celebration of Mass in the Roman Catholic Church.
The natural talent I’d like to be gifted with: Singing.
How I wish to die: Not suddenly! Prepared, and in the state of grace.
What is your present state of mind: Trying to forget about some tedious errands I have to do next Tuesday, but otherwise upbeat.
For what fault have you most toleration: A fault or a sign of a disease? I tend not to condemn persons who indulge excessively in alcohol.
Your favorite motto: I like Mallarmé's line (not really a motto, but noteworthy nonetheless): "Poems are made of words, not of ideas." Marianne Moore: "Humility is a quality that attracts our admiration oftener than it impels our imitation" (inexact; from memory). Cummings: "unbeingdead isn't beingalive."
Spring
Yam yaw plinth shouts, "Lirpa! Bend splurb!"
And the beeswax brigade zithers, "No fie! Piazza!"
Fat rivers mow plows with laughter's daughters, and Pluto's
Platonic lobby sneezes, "Root beer conundrum!"
Oat my nubby! Chewable pamplona dingbat!
Pink squelch of caparisoned rubaiyat, field felt.
What goes with por favor better than pity back curl?
The lottery brink should exult, "Nab mabel flap!"
Intimate punchdrunk rebellions succeed George Meredith's
Armoire, and purchase rustling shadows for my onliest best :
Wade righteous, ye swabs, through sorrows by the rind muck hamper.
Experience, thou proper Glaswegian! Fractional bunch of grapes!
So long as funnels leak or sieves drain dry,
So long lives Petrarch O'Herlihy, Private Eye.
2003
And the beeswax brigade zithers, "No fie! Piazza!"
Fat rivers mow plows with laughter's daughters, and Pluto's
Platonic lobby sneezes, "Root beer conundrum!"
Oat my nubby! Chewable pamplona dingbat!
Pink squelch of caparisoned rubaiyat, field felt.
What goes with por favor better than pity back curl?
The lottery brink should exult, "Nab mabel flap!"
Intimate punchdrunk rebellions succeed George Meredith's
Armoire, and purchase rustling shadows for my onliest best :
Wade righteous, ye swabs, through sorrows by the rind muck hamper.
Experience, thou proper Glaswegian! Fractional bunch of grapes!
So long as funnels leak or sieves drain dry,
So long lives Petrarch O'Herlihy, Private Eye.
2003
Friday, January 15, 2010
Arthur Golding
For those of you who have suffered patiently through the surrealistic exuberances posted here in recent days (and I fear there may be more to come!), a link to some real poetry : Arthur Golding's mammoth 1567 translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, with prefatory epistle in verse.
Five poems
Wine, guitars, blue bulls, red sun,
outmoded whispers --
*
The haiku of blue
by Kobayashi-Rimbaud
shines like jolie lune ...
*
Ashberyana:
traceries of yestermorn,
forgeries of night
*
Hoosegow bumpkin strums
a mighty mandolin
*
Weightless grams of simple sound --
eccola! Spring rain
drops like light
2003
outmoded whispers --
*
The haiku of blue
by Kobayashi-Rimbaud
shines like jolie lune ...
*
Ashberyana:
traceries of yestermorn,
forgeries of night
*
Hoosegow bumpkin strums
a mighty mandolin
*
Weightless grams of simple sound --
eccola! Spring rain
drops like light
2003
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Etymologies of circumstance
Should come.
Whelmed thicket.
Went while.
Journeyings oft.
Bright other.
Peasant pleasant.
With lunch.
Made fact.
Crass what.
And clash.
We see.
Yes after.
Abscond properties.
Filchpenny Square.
Gallon whole.
Cloned incline.
Apply aptly.
Bend therefore.
Stopping station.
Derelict dactyl.
Reason seasons.
Much struggle.
Facile starter.
Disrobe burlap.
Weep vale.
Comfort confront.
Lung space.
Achieves aim.
Have you.
Whence voice.
Lark spark.
Holiday concert.
Scribble straw.
Hexed native.
Finished missive.
Spoke speech.
2003
Whelmed thicket.
Went while.
Journeyings oft.
Bright other.
Peasant pleasant.
With lunch.
Made fact.
Crass what.
And clash.
We see.
Yes after.
Abscond properties.
Filchpenny Square.
Gallon whole.
Cloned incline.
Apply aptly.
Bend therefore.
Stopping station.
Derelict dactyl.
Reason seasons.
Much struggle.
Facile starter.
Disrobe burlap.
Weep vale.
Comfort confront.
Lung space.
Achieves aim.
Have you.
Whence voice.
Lark spark.
Holiday concert.
Scribble straw.
Hexed native.
Finished missive.
Spoke speech.
2003
Awake
Second mug of coffee now.
Can I jingle? Tell me how.
Grant me wit to spin a rhyme,
Wind a yarn in mirthful time,
Tell a tale of long and short,
Drinking coffee by the quart:
Put it in a gallon-jug,
Or (more modest) in a mug.
2003
Can I jingle? Tell me how.
Grant me wit to spin a rhyme,
Wind a yarn in mirthful time,
Tell a tale of long and short,
Drinking coffee by the quart:
Put it in a gallon-jug,
Or (more modest) in a mug.
2003
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Suggestion box
Celebrities are ghosts on the oblong glass. With voices as graspable as a wavelet's delicate motion, are they worth going green over? Pas du tout. And as for the pseudonymity of last year's valentines, dropped through the slot of an erstwhile address, should it raise the hackles of a copper weathervane? Slapping the breeze on its back is a fractious pastime. Let all tin-can quibbles grow placid. Don't lash out at the spectres of someone else's daydream. Spare Miss Watkins and her two cheerful cheeks. Don't wring the neck of the cinema's dapper usher. Don't fling rocks at chickadees because they chirrup so yellow and blithe. Unsnit the remains of daylight. Have some peace, and a snippet of splendor.
2003
2003
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Memoranda
I loaf and loiter at my ease. Misquoting the textbook, and improving it a bit.
Where are the words that will enchant the hooligans? They're comin' up on PBS.
A vegetarian's obnoxious virtue. And clever games, and talk of mercy.
It's the best thing on commercial television. So I've heard. I haven't watched television since the Watergate hearings.
The vowel-and-consonant distribution of exotic names.
One is a juice and one is a "beverage."
Attention is a loan shark. Pay attention.
Carols and lessons at three o'clock. I'll be asleep, in all likelihood.
O spirit of optimism, am I man enough to sustain thy cordial stresses?
There's a party next Thursday night at seven. Will you be there? We're meeting at the Bow and Arrow Pub.
We don't know each other, but I met you in the summer. I don't have any college degrees. In fact, my presence here is probably lowering property values.
Why not just listen to the radio? I love a rainy night.
I was sixteen before I could mispronounce "Adonaïs" correctly.
It's patently obvious that we are becoming inventive.
Where are the words that will enchant the hooligans? They're comin' up on PBS.
A vegetarian's obnoxious virtue. And clever games, and talk of mercy.
It's the best thing on commercial television. So I've heard. I haven't watched television since the Watergate hearings.
The vowel-and-consonant distribution of exotic names.
One is a juice and one is a "beverage."
Attention is a loan shark. Pay attention.
Carols and lessons at three o'clock. I'll be asleep, in all likelihood.
O spirit of optimism, am I man enough to sustain thy cordial stresses?
There's a party next Thursday night at seven. Will you be there? We're meeting at the Bow and Arrow Pub.
We don't know each other, but I met you in the summer. I don't have any college degrees. In fact, my presence here is probably lowering property values.
Why not just listen to the radio? I love a rainy night.
I was sixteen before I could mispronounce "Adonaïs" correctly.
It's patently obvious that we are becoming inventive.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Ghazal
Beshrew this Persian form, this sticky glue-puzzle!
I'm ready to throw it out and start a new puzzle.
Give me synesthesia and a splash of color,
Give me tradition, apple pie, a true-blue puzzle.
Give me nuts and bolts, brass tacks, the hard facts,
Give me a child-proof difficult-to-unscrew puzzle.
I despise the ease of pedestrian enigmas,
Of the winding path, of the pebble-in-the-shoe puzzle.
I require a larger-than-life brain-tease, a tall order;
Give me a six-foot-eleven or seven-foot-two puzzle.
It's hard to write a ghazal when you've had beer to guzzle,
But I'm willing to try a hearty stout, a dark brew-puzzle.
Where are you going with this, O Eastie-bred dylan?
I'm off to Wales to solve a Cwmrhydyceirw puzzle.
I'm ready to throw it out and start a new puzzle.
Give me synesthesia and a splash of color,
Give me tradition, apple pie, a true-blue puzzle.
Give me nuts and bolts, brass tacks, the hard facts,
Give me a child-proof difficult-to-unscrew puzzle.
I despise the ease of pedestrian enigmas,
Of the winding path, of the pebble-in-the-shoe puzzle.
I require a larger-than-life brain-tease, a tall order;
Give me a six-foot-eleven or seven-foot-two puzzle.
It's hard to write a ghazal when you've had beer to guzzle,
But I'm willing to try a hearty stout, a dark brew-puzzle.
Where are you going with this, O Eastie-bred dylan?
I'm off to Wales to solve a Cwmrhydyceirw puzzle.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Coffee
O coffee most matutinal and mighty!
O fortifying friend! O cup o' joe!
You strengthen and you waken sluggish brains!
O happy Saturday of indoor leisure!
Long morning at the keyboard, with a mug
Full of your dark mysterious potency!
O energizing java, you inspire
Poets across the continents and oceans
To sing your praise with strenuous hearty sounds!
Critics may counsel calmer beverages,
Elegant orange juice or Adam's ale,
But we find joy in you, O coffee bold!
O fortifying friend! O cup o' joe!
You strengthen and you waken sluggish brains!
O happy Saturday of indoor leisure!
Long morning at the keyboard, with a mug
Full of your dark mysterious potency!
O energizing java, you inspire
Poets across the continents and oceans
To sing your praise with strenuous hearty sounds!
Critics may counsel calmer beverages,
Elegant orange juice or Adam's ale,
But we find joy in you, O coffee bold!
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