1269 Arts and sciences poems

Or nothing is really north, but you’re so civic and indivisible. The Folk Revival has no middle, no anachronism, just no more caption or advent, but you’re not them dilettantes.          As relentless as listening to the shore backwards, your words about how it happens, wanderlust and continental, badge verse the nourish of no mercy  crash short, burst slack,   repeat  as you were reallysomething. You know the house is empty, exempt, yours for the mentioning of will to power appears an officer on a horse with more posture than you’re used to, undoing your robe for it’s satin loose before a sash and give him the magician, night minion, answer over the flashlight nothing Authority I admire is kept during itself, kinetic, black market uncorrectable and in between admiring and participating, you wear the tight number which hugs risen the been-there under your eyes vindicates evasion head on    I don’t even imagine what real violation sounds    I stay at the Social Club while you go sell my high back to Cuba China   as a kind of sound of king of sound    He’ll ask me to speak up, come closer, note the kind of trouble I’m in here is absurd and prolific  the kind you catch for witnessing an author rewrite the book   skip the vista, the word vista,  the good word  and look as it’s splitting

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations “How like a well-kept garden is your soul.” “How like a well-kept garden is your soul.” The quotation is from Gray’s translation of Paul Verlaine’s “Clair de lune,” from Gray’s book Silverpoints(1893). John Gray’s translation of Verlaine John Gray’s translation of Verlaine The quotation is from Gray’s translation of Paul Verlaine’s “Clair de lune,” from Gray’s book Silverpoints(1893). & Baudelaire’s Baudelaire’s French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) butcher in 1861 shorted him four centimes on a pound of tripe. tripe Cow’s stomach, prepared for human consumption He thought himself a clever man and, wiping the calves’ blood from his beefy hands, gazed briefly at what Tennyson called at what Tennyson called Not an actual phrase by Tennyson. Possibly a play on “Hateful is the dark-blue sky”, from Tennyson’s “The Lotos-eaters” “the sweet blue sky.” It was a warm day. What clouds there were were made of sugar tinged with blood. They shed, faintly, amid the clatter of carriages new settings of the songs Moravian Moravian Could refer to either a person from Moravia, a region of the Czech Republic, or a member of the Moravian Church. virgins sang on wedding days. The poet is a monarch of the clouds The poet is a monarch of the clouds Translation from Charles Baudelaire’s “L’Albatros”: “Le Poëte est semblable au prince des nuées” (line 13) & Swinburne Swinburne [...] “trod,” he actually wrote, “by no tropic foot,” A slight variant, from Swinburne’s elegy for Baudelaire, “Ave Atque Vale” : “trod by no tropic feet”. on his northern coast “ trod,” he actually wrote, “by no tropic foot,” Swinburne [...] “trod,” he actually wrote, “by no tropic foot,” A slight variant, from Swinburne’s elegy for Baudelaire, “Ave Atque Vale” : “trod by no tropic feet”. composed that lovely elegy elegy A melancholy poem that laments a person’s death but ends in consolation. See more in the Glossary of Poetic Terms. and then found out Baudelaire was still alive found out Baudelaire was still alive Baudelaire died August 31, 1867, but his death was erroneously reported four months earlier, in April of 1867. According to Swinburne biographer Edmund Gosse, “Baudelaire came to life again, and Swinburne was on the point of tearing up his elegy. However, Baudelaire died some months later, and, after a delay of eleven years, “Ave atque Vale” was at length included in the volume of 1878.” Read “Ave Atque Vale” here. whom he had lodged dreamily in a “deep division of prodigious breasts.” “deep division of prodigious breasts.” A direct quotation from Swinburne’s poem “Ave Atque Vale” Surely the poet is monarch of the clouds. He hovers, like a lemon-colored kite, He hovers, like a lemon-colored kite, An allusion to Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “The Windhover” over spring afternoons in the nineteenth century while Marx in the library while Marx in the library Karl Marx (1818-1883), political economist, researched works in the reading room of the British Museum in London for his major publication,Das Kapital gloom studies the birth rate of the weavers of Tilsit Tilsit A town in what was East Prussia, now named Sovetsk, Russia. Marx mentions the 1807 Peace Treaties of Tilsit in his 1870 correspondence with Friedrich Engels. and that gentle man Bakunin Bakunin Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) was a Russian anarchist who participated in the Czech Rebellion of 1848. Bakunin met Karl Marx in Paris, and later Bakunin’s anarchist faction would clash with Marx’s socialist faction at a congress of the International Working Men’s Association, and Marx’s leadership prevailed and Bakunin and his men were expelled from the association. Bakunin had stood for violent overthrow, while Marx believed that existing political systems should be reformed into socialism. Compare to these lines from Larry Levis’ poem “At the Grave of My Guardian Angel: St. Louis Cemetery, New Orleans” : “And without beauty, Bakunin will go on making his forlorn & unreliable little bombs in the cold” , home after fingerfucking the countess, applies his numb hands to the making of bombs.

I'm just an assistant with the Vanishing Act. My spangled wand points out the disappeared. It's only a poor thing made of words, and lacks the illusive power to light the darkling year. Not prophecy, not elegy, but fact: the thing that's gone is never coming back. Late or soon a guttering silence will ring down a curtain like woven smoke on thickening air. The audience will strain to see what's there, the old magician nowhere to be found. For now, I wear a costume and dance obliquely. The applause you hear is not for me, its rabid sound like angry rain—as one by one the known forms cease to be: childhood, the farm, the river, forested ground; the tiger and the condor, the whale, the honeybee; the village, the book, the lantern. Then you. Then me.

When I think of the dead, it means they’re thinking of me,

The release of water in the base so controlled that the surface tension, tabletop of stability, a mirror, remains unbroken. Moisture seeps down polished basalt sides. This is how I grieve, barely enough to dampen river stones, until fibers in my husband’s tweed jacket brush my fingers as I fold it into a box. How close the whirlpool under my feet.

Why did my parents send me to the schools That I with knowledge might enrich my mind? Since the desire to know first made men fools, And did corrupt the root of all mankind. For when God's hand had written in the hearts Of the first parents all the rules of good, So that their skill infused did pass all arts That ever were, before or since the flood, And when their reason's eye was sharp and clear, And, as an eagle can behold the sun, Could have approached th'eternal light as near As the intellectual angels could have done, Even then to them the spirit of lies suggests That they were blind, because they saw not ill, And breathes into their incorrupted breasts A curious wish, which did corrupt their will. For that same ill they straight desired to know; Which ill, being nought but a defect of good, And all God's works the devil could not show While man their lord in his perfection stood. So that themselves were first to do the ill, Ere they thereof the knowledge could attain; Like him that knew not poison's power to kill, Until, by tasting it, himself was slain. Even so by tasting of that fruit forbid, Where they sought knowledge, they did error find; Ill they desired to know, and ill they did, And to give passion eyes, made reason blind. For then their minds did first in passion see Those wretched shapes of misery and woe, Of nakedness, of shame, of poverty, Which then their own experience made them know. But then grew reason dark, that she no more Could the fair forms of good and truth discern; Bats they became, that eagles were before, And this they got by their desire to learn. But we, their wretched offspring, what do we? Do not we still taste of the fruit forbid, Whiles with fond fruitless curiosity In books profane we seek for knowledge hid? What is this knowledge but the sky-stolen fire For which the thief still chained in ice doth sit, And which the poor rude satyr did admire, And needs would kiss, but burnt his lips with it. What is it but the cloud of empty rain, Which when Jove's guest embraced, he monsters got? Or the false pails which oft being filled with pain, Received the water, but retained it not? Shortly, what is it but the fiery coach Which the youth sought, and sought his death withal? Or the boy's wings, which when he did approach The sun's hot beams, did melt and let him fall? And yet, alas, when all our lamps are burned, Our bodies waste, and our spirits spent, When we have all the learned volumes turned, Which yield men's wits both help and ornament, What can we know, or what can we discern, When error chokes the windows of the mind, The diverse forms of things, how can we learn, That have been ever from our birthday blind? When reason's lamp, which like the sun in sky, Throughout man's little world her beams did spread, Is now become a sparkle which doth lie Under the ashes, half extinct and dead; How can we hope that through the eye and ear This dying sparkle, in this cloudy place, Can recollect these beams of knowledge clear, Which were infused in the first minds by grace? So might the heir whose father hath in play Wasted a thousand pound of ancient rent, By painful earning of a groat a day Hope to restore the patrimony spent. The wits that dived most deep and soared most high, Seeking man's powers, have found his weakness such; Skill comes so slow and life so fast doth fly, We learn so little and forget so much. For this the wisest of all mortal men Said, He knew nought but that he nought did know; And the great mocking master mocked not then, When he said, Truth was buried deep below. For how may we to others' things attain, When none of us his own soul understands? For which the devil mocks our curious brain, When, Know thyself, his oracle commands. For why should we the busy soul believe, When boldly she concludes of that and this; When of herself she can no judgment give, Nor how, nor whence, nor where, nor what she is? All things without, which round about we see, We seek to know, and how therewith to do; But that whereby we reason, live, and be, Within ourselves we strangers are thereto. We seek to know the moving of each sphere, And the strange cause of th'ebbs and floods of Nile; But of that clock within our breasts we bear, The subtle motions we forget the while. We that acquaint ourselves with every zone, And pass both tropics and behold the poles, When we come home, are to ourselves unknown, And unacquainted still with our own souls. We study speech, but others we persuade; We leech-craft learn, but others cure with it; We interpret laws, which other men have made, But read not those which in our hearts are writ. Is it because the mind is like the eye, Through which it gathers knowledge by degrees-- Whose rays reflect not, but spread outwardly-- Not seeing itself when other things it sees? No, doubtless, for the mind can backward cast Upon herself her understanding light; But she is so corrupt and so defaced, As her own image doth herself affright. As in the fable of the lady fair, Which for her lust was turned into a cow: When thirsty to a stream she did repair, And saw herself transformed, she wist not how, At first she startles, then she stands amazed, At last with terror she from thence doth fly, And loathes the wat'ry glass wherein she gazed, And shuns it still, though she for thirst do die. Even so man's soul, which did God's image bear, And was at first fair, good, and spotless pure, Since with her sins her beauties blotted were, Doth of all sights her own sight least endure. For even at first reflection she espies Such strange chimeras and such monsters there, Such toys, such antics, and such vanities, As she retires and shrinks for shame and fear. And as the man loves least at home to be, That hath a sluttish house haunted with sprites, So she, impatient her own faults to see, Turns from herself and in strange things delights. For this, few know themselves; for merchants broke View their estate with discontent and pain, And seas are troubled when they do revoke Their flowing waves into themselves again. And while the face of outward things we find Pleasing and fair, agreeable and sweet, These things transport and carry out the mind, That with herself herself can never meet. Yet if affliction once her wars begin, And threat the feebler sense with sword and fire, The mind contracts herself and shrinketh in, And to herself she gladly doth retire, As spiders touched seek their webs' inmost part, As bees in storms unto their hives return, As blood in danger gathers to the heart, As men seek towns when foes the country burn. If aught can teach us aught, affliction's looks, Making us look into ourselves so near, Teach us to know ourselves beyond all books, Or all the learned schools that ever were. This mistress lately plucked me by the ear, And many a golden lesson hath me taught; Hath made my senses quick and reason clear, Reformed my will and rectified my thought. So do the winds and thunders cleanse the air; So working lees settle and purge the wine; So lopped and prunëd trees do flourish fair; So doth the fire the drossy gold refine. Neither Minerva nor the learned muse, Nor rules of art, nor precepts of the wise, Could in my brain those beams of skill infuse, As but the glance of this dame's angry eyes. She within lists my ranging mind hath brought, That now beyond myself I list not go; Myself am center of my circling thought, Only myself I study, learn, and know. I know my body's of so frail a kind As force without, fevers within, can kill; I know the heavenly nature of my nind, But 'tis corrupted both in wit and will; I know my soul hath power to know all things, Yet is she blind and ignorant of all; I know I am one of nature's little kings, Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall. I know my life's a pain and but a span, I know my sense is mocked with everything; And to conclude, I know myself a man, Which is a proud and yet a wretched thing.

At the earliest ending of winter, In March, a scrawny cry from outside Seemed like a sound in his mind. He knew that he heard it, A bird’s cry, at daylight or before, In the early March wind. The sun was rising at six, No longer a battered panache above snow . . . It would have been outside. It was not from the vast ventriloquism Of sleep’s faded papier-mâché . . . The sun was coming from outside. That scrawny cry—it was A chorister whose c preceded the choir. It was part of the colossal sun, Surrounded by its choral rings, Still far away. It was like A new knowledge of reality.

Now everywhere the pageantry of youth is on display: The squeal of bike chains spinning through the gray plays fugue to puddle-froth; The punctual blitz of hyacinths in April ushers spring with lavender dripped from the upturned wing of wind-swept Gabriel. A youngish pair walks wired at the arms— she casually ribbing him, he lightly brushing her breast, jibbing their step to spare the worms stranded along the road. Too soon, their laughter rises and goes drifting toward silence. And now the young man knows love’s not the song, but after— like the mute, remembered chorus of the rain that stains the walk long after falling, or the lifeless stalk still hoisting its head of grain. Uneasy now, she loosens from his hand. Their dark familiars stare back, reflected by the passing cars, with speechless reprimand. Before the chill, each chartered hell grows hotter, yet every burn will teach him how to run—and how to turn her wine back into water.

When I am not writing I am not writing a novel called 1994 about a young woman  in  an  office park  in a  provincial town who has a job  cutting  and pasting time. I am not writing a novel called Nero about the world's richest art star in space.  I am not writing  a book  called Kansas City Spleen.  I am not writing a sequel to Kansas City Spleen called Bitch's Maldoror. I am not writing  a  book of  political  philosophy called Questions for Poets. I am not writing a scandalous memoir.  I am not writing a pathetic memoir. I am not writing  a  memoir  about  poetry  or  love.  I am not writing a memoir about poverty,  debt  collection,  or  bankruptcy.  I   am  not  writing   about family court.  I am not writing a memoir because memoirs are for property owners and not  writing a memoir about  prohibitions of memoirs. When  I am not writing a memoir  I am also not writing any kind of  poetry, not  prose  poems  contemporary   or  otherwise,  not  poems made  of frag- ments,  not tightened and  compressed poems, not loosened and  conversa- tional poems, not conceptual  poems, not virtuosic poems employing many different  types of  euphonious devices, not poems with epiphanies and not poems  without,  not  documentary  poems about recent political moments, not  poems  heavy with allusions to critical theory and popular song. I am not writing "Leaving the Atocha Station" by Anne Boyer and certain- ly  not  writing  "Nadja"  by  Anne Boyer though would like to write "Debt" by  Anne Boyer  though  am  not  writing  also  "The  German Ideology" by Anne  Boyer  and not writing a screenplay called "Sparticists." I am not writing an account of myself more miserable than Rousseau. I am not writing an account of myself more innocent than Blake. I am not writing epic poetry although I like what Milton said about lyric poets drinking wine while epic poets should drink water from a  wooden bowl. I would like to drink wine from a wooden  bowl  or to drink  water from an emptied bottle of wine. I am not writing a book about shopping, which is a woman shopping. I am not  writing  accounts  of  dreams,  not  my own or anyone else's. I am not writing historical re-enactments of any durational literature. I am not writing anything that anyone  has requested of me or is  waiting on,  not  a  poetics  essay  or any other sort of essay, not a  roundtable re- sponse, not interview responses, not writing prompts for younger writers, not my thoughts about critical theory or popular songs. I am not writing a new constitution for the republic of no history. I am not writing a will or a medical report. I am  not  writing  Facebook status updates. I am not writing thank-you notes or apologies. I am not writing conference papers. I am not writing book reviews. I am not writing blurbs. I  am not writing  about contemporary  art. I am  not writing  accounts of my travels.  I am  not writing  reviews for The New Inquiry and not writ- ing pieces for Triple Canopy and not writing anything for Fence. I am not writing a  daily  accounting  of my reading, activities, and ideas.   I am not writing  science  fiction  novels  about  the  problem  of  the idea of the au- tonomy  of  art  and  science  fiction  novels about the problem of a society with  only  one  law  which  is  consent.  I am  not  writing stories based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's unwritten story ideas. I am not writing online dat- ing profiles.  I am not writing anonymous communiqués.  I am not writing textbooks. I am not writing a history of these times or of past times or of any future times and not even the history of these visions which are with me all day and all of the night.

or Poem for Eighties Babies (~also for T. P., 1950-2010) If it's Teddy singing it—don't leave me this way—it isn't the arrangement your parents spun themselves through, becoming another strobe-lit dervish. Listen as it pounds. Think of them instead not dancing but stilled in a corner, buttressed by their own sweat and clairvoyant uncertainty. Every plea, every atonement that reaches sweet and hard from Teddy's vocal folds, is ambivalent toward their present, its travails—the night humid, reduced to tissue paper's fragility. It's June 1976, years before code like mother and father—before either is prepared to admit they could not imagine the uphill slope of love after disco's tongue licked the vinyl unfurrowed and the babies —babies that began as mere pheromone exchanges on a dance floor— began falling into their young laps. It isn't your fault. You did not stop the music. Or if you did, it was Thelma Houston's cover, not this bearded prayer of negative capability— the pleaseplease under each pace your parents took beyond the cusp of realizing nothing so good could stay that good so long.