J.D. McClatchy
Division of Spoils
“Tea with the Local Saint”
The pull of desire is nicely captured in this anaphora.
I wanted to feel the stalk rise and the blade fall.
I wanted my life’s arithmetic glazed and fired.
I wanted the hush, the wingstroke, the shudder.
Despite the repetition there is something jagged in these lines, like life itself.
And so for day 2261
20.02.2013
Madhur Anand
New Index for Predicting Catastrophes
“Nature Morte with Zoological Professor”
The poem ends on a delightful jeux de mots invoking the homonymic possibilities of the bated/baited pair: “1 man / is going fishing today to forget about brains, / casting bated lines”. So tiny a shift easy to miss. Like bran for brains.
And so for day 2260
19.02.2013
“Moving On” — its beginning and end…
I’m on a stationary bike looking at numbers.
Heart rate, calories consumed, distance travelled, time spent,
instantaneous speed. Each motivates, differently.
[…]
By half the year’s end I’m not where I thought I would be.
This meditation finds a neat echo in the last line of the next poem (“Type One Error”): “One deterministic seed, the mind recounting when / counting is not enough, though where many poems begin.” including of course the preceding poem — “Moving On”.
Madhur Anand also demonstrates a knack for recontextualizing by lifting lines from scientific papers and laying out the results in intriguing and suggestive poems collected in A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes. There is here an ecological sensibility. Or should we say echo-logical?
And so for day 2259
18.02.2013
John Williams
The Necessary Lie
“For My Students, Returning to College”
Now splintered grass encrusts the yard
And crisp leaves slant the brittle air;
Impassive, close, the neutral sky
Engages buildings lean and spare,
The day is lean and hard.Within these rooms the truth must lie.
Immortal, of the mortal brain,
It burns inert in cold black print
And warms the lifeless grasp to gain:
The concept does not die.Here we have come to search the gray
And sullen stubbor[n]ness of fact:
To learn that we can never sense
Or know what we can never act
Or what we cannot say.
Like coal – condensed to burn bright – action hooked to speech.
And so for day 2258
17.02.2013
I admire her self-possession and her imagination and, as the poet stresses, her ability to sit very still. Here are the concluding stanzas to her portrait. We are captivated by her swift transformations.
[…]
First she is an ancient queen
In pomp and purple veil.
Soon she is a signing wind,
and, next, a nightingale.How fine to be Narcissa,
A-changing like all that!
While sitting still, as still, as still
As anyone ever sat!
Gwendolyn Brooks Bronzeville Boys and Girls
And so for day 2257
16.02.2013
I admire his sequencing. Alain de Botton in The Art of Travel provides a lovely set up to his discussion of de Maistre’s Travel around My Bedroom (found in the chapter “On Habit” in the section “Return”) by in the previous chapter (“On Possessing Beauty”) introducing Ruskin’s reccomendation to sketch or word-paint in order to implant one’s experience of a place into memory. de Botton stresses along with Ruskin that aesthetic attainment is not the point; the practice is.
And, as he had pointed out when presented with a series of misshapen drawings that a group of his pupils had produced on their travels through the English countryside: ‘I believe that the sight is a more important thing than the drawing; and I would rather teach drawing that my pupils may learn to love nature, than teach the looking at nature that they may learn to draw.’
It’s all about paying attention wherever one’s steps may lead.
Thus ends a chapter and here ends the last chapter of the book…
There are some who have crossed deserts, floated on ice caps and cut their way through jungles but whose souls we would search in vain for evidence of what they have witnessed. Dressed in pink-and-blue pyjamas, satisfied within the confines of his own bedroom, Xavier de Maistre was gently nudging us to try, before taking off for distant hemispheres, to notice what we have already seen.
Off to sketch.
And so for day 2256
15.02.2013
A sample from The Beggar’s Handbook: A Guide To Successful Panhandling by M.T. Pockets (Loompanics Unlimited, 1989).
To be a successful panhandler you must lead the intended giver to believe that you will be slightly improved by the gift, however small. When you make your approach, be fearful, be distressed, be upset, even be a little disoriented, but be coherent. Lead the intended giver to believe that his or her gift will restore your equilibrium. This will lead the giver to believe that he or she will feel good about this transaction afterward. Of course, when you get what you want, look relieved. The giver will feel every bit as good about the transaction as you do. There is no sense doing it the other way; all that does is engender hostility and — just possibly — problems with the authorities in and around your chosen place of work. Once you are marked as a troublemaker, you will be forced to move on and that can mean giving up a goldmine for a tin quarry. I do not need to further belabor the implications in terms of dollars received for effort made.
Good tips on how to gather those tokens of appreciation and relieve apprehension.
And so for day 2255
14.02.2013
The poverty of means…
Exercises for Ear
(The Ferry Press, 1968)
Stephen Jonas
XII
in america
the rich
are poor &
the poor
outraged
since no
peasant tra-
dition
to lend
dig-
nity to cheap-
ness
… the riches of reading.
The rich are cheap and lacking in dignity because their efforts require no sacrifice. That’s one way to toss the coin.
And so for day 2254
13.02.2013
Exercises for Ear
(The Ferry Press, 1968)
Stephen Jonas
A fine pitch, an idiom in key:
CLXII
Lutes
we ain't got
but ghee'tars
aplenty
Sure to send you back to Ovid:
XIX
Echo, a beautiful nymph
loved the woodland sports
tho' favored of Diana,
she had one fault:
she talked
too much
the rest
needs no repeating
Half the fun is in the layout upon the page — sends you grappling.
And so for day 2253
12.02.2013
I love how the title page of Exercises for Ear (The Ferry Press, 1968) characterizes its author as “Stephen Jonas / Gentleman”. And it is the touch of the gentle man that concludes the book with a wry aside to Jack [Spicer?].
CLXXIX
(Jack):
strange abt women
when they discover you
on to their secret; they never
trust you
again alone
w/ their husbands
The full title (Exercises for Ear being a Primer for the Beginner in the American Idiom) explains some of the abbreviations deployed and the ellipsis of “are”. Also explains the use of the expression “on to someone” — be on to someone: be close to discovering the truth about an illegal or undesirable activity that someone is engaging in. We never quite know the secret but we do get a vivid picture of the reaction to coming close.
And so for day 2252
11.02.2013