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More on Poetry

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 31, 2011| Leave a Comment »

An island neighbor has just published Criminal Ingenuity: Moore, Cornell, Ashbery, and the Struggle Between the Arts (Modernist Literature and Culture). Ellen has been studying poets Marianne Moore and John Ashbery, and artist Joseph Cornell for some years — first as a member of the faculty at Vanderbilt and now at Pratt. I don’t know much about Joseph Cornell, but I did hear novelist Jonathan Safran Foer give a lecture about how Cornell’s work inspired him to cut up Bruno Schulz’s “Street of Crocodiles” every which way from Sunday and make a kind of art book out of it.

A few poets read this blog from time to time, so you might want to take a look at Ellen’s book. If you read it, could you send me a short review to post?

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Spontaneous Poetic Outbursts

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 4, 2011| 2 Comments »

James is an Irish poet, widely considered part leprechaun. Every few years he comes to stay with his cousins for a couple weeks, across the street from my house. James is on the left in this photo, which I took at the Fourth of July parade.

James has two main modes of conversation: storytelling and poetry recitation. It is a pure delight to chat with him. As we waited for the parade, he narrated pages of Irish history, including dates, and recited from W.B. Yeats and our own Nathaniel Hawthorne, among others.

Earlier, he was sitting on his cousins’ front porch and saw a young woman he knows coming across the street. He was moved by the way she walks, as he told me, and with a kind of poetic spontaneous combustion, intoned on the spot:

Meran, fairest maid art thou,

Lovely is thy stride.

My heart goes out to thee

As ebbs the great sea tide.

But, ah, my kind Meran, I’ll not forget thee.

Nor the kind words you said unto me.

James has self-published a couple books of lore in his unique style. He and his brother, both lifelong bachelors, sell peat. On certain Sundays, James bikes 18 miles to the ruins of an old monastery, where he narrates the history for visitors. Then he bikes 18 miles home. In any kind of weather. James is 73.

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Fire Island Poets

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 28, 2011| Leave a Comment »

What makes you happy? The bluebird of happiness brushed a little air current toward me today as I crossed over a bridge at lunch. So I can report that one thing that makes me happy is seeing the jellyfish arrive in Fort Point Channel on a sunny day in late June.
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I remember being ridiculously happy at the sight of Fort Point Channel jellyfish some years ago on a Boston visit that broke up a three-year landlocked Minneapolis sojourn. Minneapolis had its points, but it didn’t have jellyfish. Jellyfish naturally lead to thoughts of 25 summers on Fire Island and going with my father at dusk to shine flashlights on glowing blobs in the water along the boat dock.
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Two poets share many Fire Island memories with me. Poem 1 is by my sister Nell. Poem 2 is by Ronnie Hess, now based in landlocked Wisconsin. I offer the conclusion to Ronnie’s “Dinner at the Shish Cafe,” and you may read the whole poem here.
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1. May 1986

Now the island belongs to the deer

And the birds and the wild bayberry flowers

*

And the workmen

Wearily riding the ferry,

To work on other people’s houses,

Carrying their tools home at night.

*

There’s no honeysuckle

Yet rimming the streets

And the crown-vetch sliding through

Rips in the concrete

Has no pink buds

*

And the rain is like tears

Over the fog-filled ocean.

*

What brush, what watery ink

Has painted this sky

The color of bruises?

*******

2. My husband says listening to poetry is hard work. Poems are dense.
Sometimes, I let him read mine. He sits quietly. He studies them.
He edits in blue ink in the margins, he writes words like
Good, nice image, not quite right, and meaning unclear.
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Those lines of Ronnie’s remind me of the ever ironic poet Marianne Moore, who wrote of her beloved art, “I, too, dislike it.” By which she meant, I think, that it was hard work.
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More poetry by Ronnie is here and here.

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When People You Know Are Poets

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 21, 2011| 4 Comments »

I have always liked reading poetry, but there is something extra delightful about actually knowing people who write good poetry.

Nancy Greenaway is a friend I see summers in Rhode Island. I learned last weekend that among other output, she recently published this poem at the Texas Observer site. It begins:

Salaam.

You write ghazals under shade of an acacia,

speak Farsi or Pashto,

eat qurmas, sabzi, lamb kebabs,

wear burqas and hijabs.

I write free verse under shade of a maple,

speak English,

eat pizza, cod, corn on the cob,

wear jeans and t-shirts. 

Read it here. 

Francesca Forrest has several online poetry outlets. In the tantalizing “Temptation,” an internal voice whispers,

Throw yourself down from here; try!

This is a dream, and you will fly.

Read “Temptation” here, published at the Linnet’s Wings. Two other poems by Francesca are “Songs Were Washing Up,” in the publication Scheherzade’s Bequest, and “Old Clothes Golem,”  at the site Stone Telling.

When Suzanne was getting ready to launch Luna & Stella, she came to the conclusion that a poet should write the descriptions of the birthstones, because only a poet would have the right artistic sensibility. As it happened, she knew a poet who also did copywriting, Providence-based poet Kate Colby. Here is what Kate wrote about the gems for Luna & Stella.

You might also like to read one of Kate’s poems, “A Body Drawn By Its Own Memory.” It begins :

Certain labels are impervious

to solvents, impermeable

as drawn bridges. …

I will post poems from time to time. Perhaps you will let me know what you like. Try the comments feature. Or e-mail me at suzannesmom@lunaandstella.com.

Nancy writes: 
“Thought you might be one of the few who would appreciate our adventures in Boston/Cambridge on Sunday and Monday. Malcolm and I had a one-night vacation by driving to Cambridge on Sunday, staying at the Marlowe Hotel (with a view of the Charles) and hearing Naomi Shihab Nye read and then receive the Golden Rose Award from the Poetry Club of New England. She concluded with her poem about the Block Island ferry (which will appear in her new book of poems to be released by BOA Editions in September.) Before the reading, to the amazement of all in the audience, she rushed up the center aisle directly to me and gave me a wonderful hug.”

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Paul Nagel, cont’d

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 15, 2011|

I blogged in May about the late Paul Nagel, the great biographer of the John Adams family and a friend from the years my husband and I spent in Minneapolis.

Today his son sent a lovely memorial piece by Paul’s longtime buddy Norbert Hirschhorn. Bert’s article appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Read it here. Bert is a physician who has written investigative medical articles on the real illnesses that likely killed historic figures. He is also  a poet. His website and photo are here. He divides his time between London and Beirut, where his wife is a professor at the American University. The following poem, written about a period he spent in Finland, might be an elegy for Paul.

Finnish Autumn

by Norbert Hirschhorn

Leaves flee their trees. Gold coins strewn across
woodland paths turn black, rain-smashed to dross.

Silver birches’ ciliate tips outside my window
incised against the sky like intaglio.

Bohemian waxwings rise in flocks, take flight –
maple leaves mottled by black-spotted blight.

Bone-white horizon, a full setting moon;
bone-white the sun rising into the brume.

I am worried, curious: the coming chill –
mythic, drear – augury of a world… gone still.

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Rhyming

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 3, 2011|

Every once in a while the urge to write doggerel just overwhelms a person, and you have to give in. It seemed to happen more often when I had young children in the house.

Basil, Basil, you’re a cat
Never try denying that
Stand up for your kitty mother
Turn your back on no cat brother
When the cat god calls your name,
Let there be no cause for blame.
Future generations all
Will praise the cat that heard the call.

Or how about this ditty, which I associate with Suzanne’s friend Joanna, who must have been visiting when the urge overcame me:

Think how lovely it would be
Living always by the sea
Eating muffins with our tea
And jam.

Finally, when Asakiyume and I were working at a famous management journal and hearing lots of jargon, I used one such hackneyed phrase in a haiku I wrote about a dream Asakiyume described:

Watercolor moon
Grows larger nightly and yet
Is trending downward

My father was his class poet at Princeton, and I think he must be turning over in his grave right now.

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