1269 Arts and sciences poems

Poetry, I tell my students, is idiosyncratic. Poetry is where we are ourselves (though Sterling Brown said “Every ‘I’ is a dramatic ‘I’”), digging in the clam flats for the shell that snaps, emptying the proverbial pocketbook. Poetry is what you find in the dirt in the corner, overhear on the bus, God in the details, the only way to get from here to there. Poetry (and now my voice is rising) is not all love, love, love, and I’m sorry the dog died. Poetry (here I hear myself loudest) is the human voice, and are we not of interest to each other?

—for Fleda It seems so different   art that moves me now From the sort of art I longed for long ago Soaring   Vatic   Agon I waited yesterday on the unsure shoulder Of a drenched back road    From my car I could behold Our highway agent Gordon Fill a rut with a spade  climb up on his grader And smooth things smooth as the top of a kitchen table There were frost heaves by the score And culverts clotted shut by April floods So it was brilliant    what Gordon did with mud On Wallace Hill      Pure mire Out there   The road goes narrow as a needle On which   you might wonder   could dance how many angels I don't care   I didn't No earthly need to summon spirits   daemons No sign of them at all    Nor would I dream one I might have once but wouldn't Nor gyre nor golem    Nor great Leviathan Nor djinn     Nor fiend    Nor signifying wind Nor Elementargeist That lingering in that lane might make me conjure I had to get somewhere and fetch my daughter To bring her home     Sweet Christ She might be standing in that mix of sleet And ugly rain    which called for Gordon's art I'm trying to be a grownup Better late than never    I suppose Or am I only jaded      I don't know It was as though I'd shown up Just to see him wield his spade and blade out there It kept me from surmising some furor divinis Why should I bother Now that I moved on    thanks be to Gordon Who signaled with his thumb for me to pass him He pulled the grader over Yes give me something useful here I said Impromptu        In my car it sounded odd To say it now sounds different I hope that Gordon watched me yesterday As I signaled back    I'd never have made my way Without a skillful agent I hope he saw me wave

I would figure out all the right answers first, then gently mark a few of them wrong. If a quiz had ten problems, I'd cancel out one. When it had twenty, I'd bite my tongue then leave at least two questions blank: _____ _____. A B was good, but an A was too good. They'd kick your ass, call your big sister slow, then stare over your desk, as if you'd snaked out of a different hole. Knowing taught me—quickly—to spell community more honestly:l-o-n-e-l-y. During Arts and Crafts, when Miss Larson allowed the scissors out, I'd sneak a pair, then cut my hair to stop me from growing too long.

not self of violence against will  not  be  gainsaid will  brook  no  argument won't  suffer  the  fools gladly would   I   climb   a mountain         of       salt       with       you before  dawn                                      lodestar             my  freight the  violent silence the  most  beautiful                       word is trespass

—I want to draw the sky. —Draw it, my darling. —I have. —And why do you spread the colors this way? —Because the sky has no edges. . . . —I want to draw the earth. —Draw it, my darling. —I have. —And who is this? —She is my friend. —And where is the earth? —In her handbag. . . . —I want to draw the moon. —Draw it, my darling. —I can't. —Why? —The waves shatter it continuously. . . . —I want to draw paradise. —Draw it, my darling. —I have. —But I don't see any colors. —It is colorless. . . . —I want to draw the war. —Draw it, my darling. —I have. —And what is this circle? —Guess. —A drop of blood? —No. —A bullet? —No. —Then, what? —The button that turns off the lights.

Why do you subdue yourself in golds and purples? Why do you dim yourself with folded silks? Do you not see that I can buy brocades in any draper’s shop, And that I am choked in the twilight of all these colors. How pale you would be, and startling— How quiet; But your curves would spring upward Like a clear jet of flung water, You would quiver like a shot-up spray of water, You would waver, and relapse, and tremble. And I too should tremble, Watching. Murex-dyes and tinsel— And yet I think I could bear your beauty unshaded.

i read your poem over and over in this landscape of women women purring on balconies overlooking the indigo sea my mother's blue taffeta dress is black as the sea she glides out my door to the beach where sleek white boats are anchored under a full, luscious moon still i am still the wind outside my window my mother's ghost evaporates in the long atlantic night i listen to the radio every chance i get for news of your city's latest disaster everything here the color of honey and sand everything there verges on catastrophe a constant preoccupation with real estate everything here a calm horizon taut bodies carefully nurtured oiled & gleaming hair & skin i read your poem over and over turning my head from prying eyes the low hum of women singing in another room i switch stations on the radio turn up the volume i almost touch the air buzzing electricity james brown "live at the apollo" the smooth female d.j. interrupts bo diddley groaning "i'm a man" it is a joke here in this baby-blue resort where art is a full-time hobby art is what everyone claims to do women sprawl like cats on each other's laps licking the salt off each other's skin and i walk in search of the portuguese fishermen who hide in the scorched trees the bleak, blond dunes that line the highway i imagine you asleep in another city i take your poem apart line by line it is a love letter we wrote each other some time ago trying in vain to pinpoint that first, easy thrill.

I like to feel like a Champion. Listening to Frankie Valli say "I can't take my eyes off of you" I feel like New York City is a scale model in my penthouse in North Carolina where I study economics, capital markets, and the World Bank. I like to look into a scene from the top of a building in my hometown down at the traders who are moving here from New York City because New York City started to be kind of like a losing place for wealth creation. Now I look down on them and say to myself "I'm too big to fail." I take my keys off of the ledge and walk down the condominium tower overlooking the entire city. When I reach the parking deck I open the door of a 1980 Mercedes Benz 450 SL and coast to a place called High Street. I'm at High Street knocking back a gin and tonic with three girls I met at the Arts & Technology Center conference on the decline of the book. We have a laugh about the old guard who make a book bound in glue and then pinch angel dust off our palms. At this point I'm so high I'm like, look, why don't we excuse ourselves and go up to my condominium tower I've just invested 3.5 million dollars in. They are like uh, we can do that. So we pile into my 450 SL and ride to the tower listening to the music of Frankie Valli transform our night into a piece of artwork. Nearly there, I look around at the Arts & Technology girls and sort of hum to myself. I feel like I've hit a milestone in my evening when we trip into the foyer of my massive penthouse that has those gleaming glass cubes set into the wall you see in Miami or Miami Beach. From the cubes a glimmer of the prosperity circling this region pierces the dark in the form of an orange- yellow beam of fluorescent light. One of the girls is removing her jewelry and I'm like no, don't. She takes off her clothes instead and lies face down on the carpet. At the stereo I play a song by Frankie Valli. The other two are kind of standing around surprised, I think, by the curtain of paperback books lining the north wall. Those are only bound books I tell them while I finger the Kindle on my coffee table. It is the new large Kindle and we are looking at a book called Boredom by Alberto Moravia, taking turns reading passages from the screen. When we get to the part when the boho girl is fucking the protagonist the totally white breast of one of the Arts & Technology girls slips coolly from her blouse. Pretending not to notice I continue to read in my turn. The girl sitting on the other side of me is wearing some totally white string of pearls and she's removing everything but the pearls. I continue to read the screen while the Arts & Technology girls start to make out like I had been planning for them to do ever since we licked angel dust off each other's palms. I get up and go to the stereo, set the needle back to the gold record "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," and walk calmly to the sofa. Once I'm there I melt into the sand-rubbed upholstery with the Arts & Technology girls who haven't yet passed out on the floor. While I'm lying with my back to the armrest I glimpse a piece of sky I've seen only in films of the old grain. It's a wild purple darkness with a bright white hole in it. I'm thinking to myself God, my personal Jesus Christ and saviour, I want you to come down here through that hole in the night and join me in Eden.

— “mu” one hundred eighteenth part — Heaved our bags and headed out again. Again the ground that was to’ve been there wasn’t. Bits of ripcord crowded the box my head had be- come, the sense we were a band was back, the sense we were a band or in a band...    The rotating gate time turned out to be creaked, we pulled away. Lord Invader’s Reform School Band it was we were in, the Pseudo-Dionysian Fife Corps, the Muvian Wind Xtet...    The sense we were a band or were in a band had come back, names’ wicked sense we called timbre, num- bers’ crooked sense our bequest. Clasp it tee- tered near to, abstraction, band was what to be there was...    Band was what it was to be there we shouted, band all we thought it would be. Band was a chant, that we chanted, what we chanted, chant said it all would be alright... A new band, our new name was the Abandoned Ones, no surprise. We dwelt in the well-being that awaited us, never not sure we’d get there, what way we were yet to know. I stood pat, a rickety sixty-six, tapped out a scarecrow jig in waltz time, big toe blunt inside my shoe...    Who was I to so rhapsodize I chided myself, who to so mark my- self, chill teeth suddenly forming reforming, who to let my heart out so...    To be at odds with my- self resounded, sound’s own City the wall I hit my head against, polis was to be and to be so hit... We heard clamor, clash, blue consonance, noise’s low sibling sense ________________ We pumped our arms as though they were pistons, elbows in and out. We nicked our name to Abandon. Abandon was our name now... Thus was our music no music. Music too we left behind. Everything beside the point that there was no point, everything thus the point... Thus was being there sibling sense gone treble, the balm to be a band the true amen- ity music was, the fact of having been there new to its Buddha-nature, the fact of having been there moot • To have been there wasn’t dasein. No Hei- degger told my horse. Trussed up to the side it sat, pressed and preponderant, sov- ereign, self-contained, were it music the music we sloughed... Slipped accompa- niment, surrogate cloud, rapt adjournment. Agitant. Surrogate cue... I kept clear of it, caught up at arm’s length, all but caught out I came to see... Thus was our music no music it seemed I said, mujic more than music I might’ve said, might as well have said, no matter I mumbled other- wise under my breath... The Freedmen’s Debate Society our name now was, the Ox Tongue Speaker Exchange. Fractal scratch. Nominative ser- ration. Cutaway run, cutaway arrest... Thus was our music no music I did say, say’s default on sing such as it was... We called it history even so, insisted it, the it crowding the corner of eve- ryone’s eye. None of us were not crept up on, none not required we sing it, say it. Thus was our say not so ________________ Beginning again for the muleteenth time, we counted off. It was our muleteenth breakdown, muleteenth new beginning... Brass rubbed off on our lips, reed rubbed off as well, string steel left on our fingertips, stick wood left on our thumbs

For Marina You say the old masters never got it wrong, But when Goya painted the death of the imagination It was a lost dog against a usurious yellow sky And the dog, a hapless creature who had drawn itself Ten miles on two legs, stared in amazement To see the man who once fed him from his plate Reduced to this. So I felt this week, the vile soil and everything upon it— The beggar guest kicked from the table Before his own dog, and even the honest unpicking Of art performed nightly and in seclusion. Like any Penelope my armor is resignation Although I thought I would lift the bow myself And draw. By the morning he is gone And what to make of this? The prostitutes hang from a beam like mice The suitors are piled unburied in the yard. And some say that it is now much better And others, that it is worse. So order was restored I stared in amazement • Perhaps Akhmatova was right When she wrote who knows what shit What tip, what pile of waste Brings forth the tender verse Like hogweed, like the fat hen under the fence Like the unbearable present tense Who knows what ill, what strife What crude shack of a life And how it twists sweetly about the broken sill: Pressingness, another word for honeysuckle But housewives? Has poetry Ever deepened in the pail Was it ever found in the sink, under the table Did it rise in the oven, quietly able To outhowl the hoover? Does it press more than the children’s supper The sudden sleepless wail? Did it ever? It lives. It takes seed Like the most unforgiving weed Grows wilder as the child grows older And spits on dreams, did I say How it thrives in the ashen family nest Or how iambs are measured best Where it hurts: With the heel of an iron On the reluctant breast Of a shirt? • MICHAEL BLANN There was a hush, then Michael Blann Stepped out onto the stage. Michael Blann, with his pipe and his jukebox head Oh, he’s your man. He has a song for all weathers, a pipe And a voice, and he sings and he roams He sings to the wind and a dog of how The trees are all bare and Jack’s come home. He’s a thin voice, like a spider thread On days when the sun is late and fine Live and let live, sings Michael Blann The wind yields not, but the hills is mine. He’s no call for fate passing over His sheep are all angels, the stars are his Lords He’ll play any part the clouds should fancy To humble tunes and hand-me-down words The acts are written in briar strands And the Pharisees are leaves in the air I likes a drop pipes Michael Blann Sing follow hark forward the innocent hare. He wore to his end a clutch of sheep’s wool To show the gods that Michael Blann Went alone, alone for most of his years But crossed the hills a singing man.