Construction

Poem of the Day:
"Burn Lake: for Burn Construction Company" by Carrie Fountain
Poetry Daily; http://poems.com/

"Burn Lake"

When you were building the I-10 bypass,
one of your dozers, moving earth
at the center of a great pit,
slipped its thick blade beneath
the water table, slicing into the earth's
wet palm, and the silt moistened
beneath the huge thing's tires, and the crew
was sent home for the day.
Next morning, water filled the pit.
Nothing anyone could do to stop it coming.
It was a revelation: kidney-shaped, deep
green, there between the interstate
and the sewage treatment plant.
When nothing else worked, you called it
a lake and opened it to the public.
And we were the public.


I have been in the midst of construction often; it always seems that Montgomery County is doing some sort of bridge fixing, road widening project while I am home, and Harvard Square has been experiencing ongoing construction by way of Brattle Street since I moved to Cambridge. My walk to and from the T involves people-passing and bulldozer-grazing. Quite the excitement.

Fountain's piece has made me reflect upon this construction, the surgical work that we as humans conduct upon the earth, mostly earth in the urban/suburban context. The concept of land tenure or land ownership is muddled for me. Who owns this sidewalk and why does he get to cut it up?

All Fountain's speaker gets is "a lake," but really a mistake that was handed off to the poem's public as if by doing so a grand gesture had been made. I have yet to receive such a grand gesture from the construction company operating in Harvard Square.

Where is my faux-pond? Carve me out a space too, will ya?

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

The Speed of Things

Poem of the Day:
"Transit Authority" by Tony Sanders
The Best American Poetry, 1995

Today has been a hectic day. I was busy from 9 AM - 9 PM, working, interning and babysitting. Needless to say my spare time was spent in transit, bus to subway, with a view not quite beautiful, "a myriad of facades inevitably giving way/to sudden vistas" (lines 37-38), to ease me into the next task of my day.

Only when I reached my babysitting job did I feel that I was no longer 'transiting' -- now only babysitting. At the end of my 12 hour day I found myself reclining, playing Scrabble with a ten-year old girl named Lila.

Then, as it does now, my day finally felt as if it was slowing down, like "angels approaching earth for the first/time" (lines 54-55). Slow -- spelling words, getting beat at a board game by a ten-year old, slow.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Heaven, Hell, and Harvard Square

Poem of the Day:
"The Poet in Heaven" by Lynn Emanuel
The Dig and Hotel Fiesta

Excerpt from Emanuel's "The Poet in Heaven":

Dying was a breathless ride,
the billboards flying past,
and then in that dark car's
dark window, like Texaco,

bloomed Heaven's swank.
And now the moon is rising
on all my lost remembrance:
I was a sheaf of wheat

unbound, or the grass razed,
or the shadows' shuddering
run before the scythe;
that was what it was to die.


Tonight Steph and I walked to get ice cream around 10 PM. The midnight oil had just begun to burn for both of us and a sugary fix was in order. Needless to say, my brownie fudge milkshake really hit the spot.

Walking through Harvard Square at such a late hour makes for a walk with the devil; the summer night air is thick with warmth, the street lights are few, and the corners are buzzing with those for whom a bed is the curb. In many ways it is a hellish atmosphere. It is dark, hot, dirty and toothless. And the mix of drunken and hungry cries is palpable.

It is nothing like Emanuel's otherworldly "small hotel" (line 1) where the speaker's life is delicately arranged, "a place to eat at midday,/a place to have a drink at night" (lines 3-4). Harvard Square at night is much the opposite. Whereas Emanuel's speaker is "the clouds:/a storm in small white dresses,/a ghostly rout that kneels/above the cut field's eye" (lines 17-20), Harvard Square in the hour past the tenth is a sooty, concrete-laden version of hell, complete with sleepwalkers fighting their way home because they have none -- that, and insurmountable cravings for ice cream.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Water's Call & The Answering of Travelers

Poem of the Day:
"On This Small Continent" by Beth Simon
The Gettysburg Review, Summer 2007

Published three summers ago, this poem, or rather the reading of it, calls for numerous trips to the dictionary -- to a student of the internet age this is commonly referred to as Wikipedia.com.

Simon writes, "Tell me the flatline isn't a gift. Felucca,/bireme, coracle, catamaran" (lines 1-2), expressing both her conception of the earth as human body ("flatline" stands as both a medical and a geographical term) and her comprehensive knowledge of water vessels; "felucca" is a traditional wooden sailing boat used in the waters of the Red Sea while a "coracle" is a lightweight boat native to Wales and parts of Ireland.

Simon elaborates upon earth as human in the next line: "when the Marmara straits collapse,/from GPS to willow rope--it's all nothing but a raft of bone" (lines 2-3). But, I, or rather should I say my day, is less interested in the rhetoric of land and body and more in Simon's diction of water travel.

For the summer I am lucky to be living in a part of Cambridge that overlooks the Charles River -- fifty steps from my front door and I can touch the water, something I might want to do if I were aiming to catch a flesh-eating disease; since coming to Boston I have heard horror stories regarding the river's low level of sanitation (is this putting it too nicely?).

Regardless, this morning I had a lovely encounter, be it a purely visual one, with the Charles. With all intentions of watching my close friend Allie run a 5K I set out towards the river and parked myself on a bench with a commanding view of the water. Alas, I had read the race map entirely incorrectly and sat alone on a bench for twenty minutes confused, wondering where all the runners had gone to. But, the moments I spent searching for invisible joggers were not wasted.

Rather, I was able to watch the kayaks, the sailboats and the rowers traverse the crust of the river. The morning light made water travel seem lighter; the surface of the river looked golden, and each water vehicle was floating on the sun, a hot hot ball, rather than the cool depths of a blue (maybe green though, thanks to pollution levels) mass.

My morning chance meeting with Charles (hello again father!) was a 'small continent,' a gift of its own, smaller perhaps than the one of which Simon writes, but just as blessed with the man-made water creatures by whom she is fascinated.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Completely Unable to Relate.

Poem of the Day:
Michael Ryan's "Tutelary"
Poetry Magazine, April 2004

Tutelary

What a fuckup you are.
What dumbshit you do.
Your father's voice
still whispers in you,

despite the joys
that sweeten each day.
Your Genius it isn't
until, dying away,

it worms back through
the sparkling dream
where you drown him
in an inch-deep stream:

your knee in his back,
your strength on his skull,
it begins singing
praise for your skill.


My day, my present, my past and most undoubtedly my future is not empathetic to this poem. After numerous readings I wonder what a father must have done to his son to bring about such a written piece; my father has been the impetus of many writing projects, but always in a light of admiration.

For once the sheen of a poem does not shine in my personal life. For this I am thankful.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Headless Travels

Poem of the Day:
"Cephalophore" by Erin Belieu
One Above & One Below

Excerpt from "Cephalophore":

Inside the church, the vaulted
chambers are terminally green,
snow-globed in shadowed dust. I pause
before a pile of melting votives -
squat offerings, anonymous
as organ donations -

and think we raise a host
of inadvertent corpses when
we name a child,
because you're here -

without my even calling,
you come: a boy, too smart, small,
astringent as a lemon,
your fine, wooden posture
already rigid, redolent

of dignity and persecution.


In the first page of Belieu's poem (it spans a little over three pages) I was forced to revive memories and anecdotes; she begins the poem "[H]alfway up Montmarte" (line 1), which was my favorite section of Paris, and Belieu references a saint who, after being assassinated, lived sans head, choosing to carry the heavy (highly functional) body part with him. Part of the reason I chose my confirmation saint (Saint Ceceila) is because I was fascinated by the fact that she lived for three days, following her persecution, without a head.

It is poem like this one that are hard to mesh into my immediate present; the piece holds too fast to a certain memory and I have to, for the sake of my sanity, and heed the clear connection being made between words and past. It is a connection that is also bloody, for words resurface as frequently in our minds as recollections, despite the pain that reliving an awful conversation can bring.

If nothing else Belieu's poetic narrative reminds me of the time-manipulative power of words. In one poem I traveled between my recent trip to Paris and 2nd grade, fascinated with a crazy Catholic saint; right now, I'm not quite sure which place I'd rather be.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Addictions, Small & Large

Poem of the Day:
Dave Smith's "Remembering Cigarettes"
Fate's Kite

In the opening lines Smith's speaker is supine: "me sprawled on the couch, feeling fey/the way more and more it happens" (lines 2-3). His spirit too is in a sense supine for he feels "fey," close to death. His sense of impending disaster is translated in hellish terms. Smith writes, "everywhere/wicked sun dripping down on finch wing, the fire/like blood's backbeat" (lines 3-5). The world seems to be self-destructing and internal flames consuming the human body. This inner fire is contextualized; it is addiction, "the hatched/spurt in his carved cheeks a man's hook, appetite/gnawing inside for and against what?" (lines6-8). And Smith's title becomes more clear; the poetic space is the speaker's moment of recollection, of remembering what it is like to ache for a cigarette.

Watching "Kirk Douglas play a sleaze" (line 1) in a matinee film is the spark of the poem. The speaker returns to the film at the close of the piece: "now smoke he's [Douglas] holding drifts out good, slow, steady" (line 13). The pacing of this last line, directed by the comma use, relays the speaker's indulgence; the act of smoking a cigarette is very pleasurable to him despite the rest of the poem which is top-heavy with revulsion, be it self-revulsion, of the act.

Today I gave in and drank a large, chocolate-y, caramel-y, iced coffee. It was certainly not healthy for me, rather bad for me, but I wanted it. So I had it.

A frappucino is no cigarette. I do not think I will die from daily/weekly consumption of iced coffee. But, it is an addiction of sorts. And with each sip, "good, slow, steady," I began to further grasp Smith's words.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Soundscapes of Our Creation

Poem of the Day:
Charles O. Hartman's "Racket"
The Long View

Excerpt from "Racket"

No one blind could play squash, despite Tommy. Yet a deaf
squash player labors under an unappreciated disadvantage. The
player who turns to watch how her opponent shoots may get a
face sufficiently full of squash ball (average speed in tournament
play, 135 m.p.h.). Instead, a good player hears how hard the
other's racquet hit the ball, and whether square in the sweet spot
or, perhaps, deceptively hard off a bit of the racquet's frame.
None of this clearly communicates direction, but may dictate
whether she needs a quick run to the front court or a judicious
retreat toward the back wall.

Hartman's prose poem is decidedly unconventional; he begins with what seems to be a sportscaster's analysis but then again, not quite. He seems much more attentive than a sportscaster, perhaps a sportscaster turned poet or vice versa.

Eventually he makes this scene, the scene of the deaf squash player, into a photograph (titled, nonetheless, and therefore recognized as a work of art) making us, the reader, deaf as well. It is a photograph of a squash game -- "Blow Up ends with a tennis match the photographer watches/intently, as we watch his face" (lines 11-12) -- and to it, Hartman argues, we desire to and will add sound. He writes, "our ears...receive the exchanged shots in fact by two mimes/with imaginary racquets and an imaginary ball" (lines 13-14). In finishing the poem Hartman's title, "Racket," gains its full merit and humorous tone.

So, to what else do we, as viewers (eye-users) add sound?

Today was the World Cup match between the US and Algeria; if the US had tied or lost it is most likely that we would not have moved on to the second round of play. When we did indeed win, scoring the one and only goal in the final minutes of add-on play, my co-worker, of whom I today learned is an avid soccer fan, screamed and rejoiced...are these the right verbs?

I've told this story various times today. Each time my co-worker's sounds of exultation reach a higher pitch; towards the end of the day they began to rattle and shake the office windows. To her I've added sound and volume. I understand the excitement she felt. The music that accompanies the portrait of her celebration in my mind needs to be cranked up; louder, louder.

These are the sounds we add; then, must we all, to some degree, be deaf?

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Puzzles

Poem of the Day:
"Prose Poem" by James Tate
Selected Poems

This evening I took my first ballet class in six months; needless to say, my form was a little rusty. It felt so good to dance though. My brain was slow with the combination of movements but my body knew, for the most part, where to go.

After coming home, exhausted from my day, I came to the conclusion that I have a passion for various things. I didn't say it was a selfless conclusion; certainly, my realizations tend towards the ego-centric.

I love to read, I love to write. I love to dance. I love listening to music. I love yoga and tennis. Most days, expended passions in hand, I find myself exhausted.

Tate's work is unique among poets. From what I have read of him it is clear that he finds pleasure in the bizarre, though "Prose Poem" is less absurd than most. Tate begins the piece by writing, "I am surrounded by the pieces of this huge/puzzle: here's a piece I call my wife, and/here's an odd one I call convictions, here's/conventions, here's collisions, conflagrations" (lines 1-4). Slowly, it becomes clear that this "puzzle" is his life. And, the "pieces" he chooses to highlight reveal how he feels about the various parts of his existence; "Such a puzzle this is!" (line 5).

So how does he solve this puzzle? Tate's speaker ignores all conventions surrounding puzzle solutions; he does not try to fit all the pieces of his psuedo-life back together. Instead he "grease[s] up all the pieces and pile[s]/them in the center of the basement after/everyone else is asleep" (lines 6-8). Then, he jumps head first into the array of freshly oiled segments (of a whole?), kicking and strangling a few pieces in the commotion (lines 8-10).

His method seems to work. He brings order to his life; in the morning "it's all fixed!" (line 12). Apparently force, rough physical coercion, can mend the broken or disparate pieces of a life.

I do not really have conflicting "puzzle" pieces. I just love to do a lot of things and at times I have had to give up some of them to make room for more. Sure, I went about it less forcefully than Tate's speaker, but maybe there's some merit in greasing up life and performing a "savage resurrection" (line 14) in order to make it take on a semblance of cohesion.

Mostly though, Tate's poem only tires me more. Did the poet ever put together a simple Disney-themed puzzle?

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Old, Older, Oldest

Poem of the Day:
"Salute" by James Schuyler
Fifty Years of American Poetry

Salute

Past is past, and if one
remembers what one meant
to do and never did, is
not to have thought to do
enough? Like that gather-
ing of one of each I
planned, to gather one
of each kind of clover,
daisy, paintbrush that
grew in that field
the cabin stood in and
study them one afternoon
before they wilted. Past
is past; I salute
that various field.

Tonight my housemate Dan remarked upon old people and how they remind him of death; this was after I had successfully attended a monthly book club held at the Boston Public Library. Among the crowd (5 women) were Kitty and Dorothy, my new favorite women and future gal pals. They both have about sixty years on me, but since I've begun to gray at the roots I find it hard to discern much of a difference between us. Dorothy may have a bum hip, but I've got a lousy knee. I see your thinning hair Kitty and I raise you cracking bones.

Schuyler writes of a life at the last of its breaths; the sole focus of a poem is likely to be the past if the speaker foresees no future. Schuyler's tone invokes pity. In the final line it becomes clear that he has "various field[s]," all well-intentioned and imagined 'pasts,' but essentially pasts that never occurred. Do all people do this at the close of their lives, fool themselves into fashioned memories?

Kitty and Dorothy brought Schuyler back to me at our 7 PM book discussion. They are old women, and I wonder what they have chosen to keep or manufacture into remembrance. I suppose that if one passes away with a clear mind then that is all that can be asked of life, be it assembled or rigidly true.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

I Am Very Human

Poem of the Day:
"Fire Escape" by Sharon Olds
Blood, Tin, Straw

A horrific thunderstorm hit Harvard Square today. I should have known; the humidity all day was building to an unbearable degree. I stepped out of the subway right as the storm began into air so thick it was a thing to be traversed.

Thunderstorm air feels unnaturally charged, so full of tension that the world feels on the brink of revelation. It is the air in which realization brings about total defeat; "I wonder who is at the door," "Why isn't he back from the grocery store," "Where is my son?" People run from this air, and it is storms that remind us of our tenuous existence as humans.

Olds addresses a fire escape, an object generally untouched by poetic regard. Of its appearance she writes, "It held with rusted struts to the rear/corner of the wedding-cake hotel,/and it was made of rust, five-story spiral/cylinder" (lines 1-4). In this worn add-on of a building she finds a humanness: "it must have been made in a foundry, laid on its/side while the helix was riveted into it" (lines 7-8). Olds creates a crude figuring of sex; excuse my crassness, but what else is the "helix" and the act of being "riveted into"?

The poet recalls hanging out by this fire escape, climbing atop it and riding it back down to the street. She writes, "I would drop down through it, silent, illegal,/unseeing, heart half-stopped, a globule/of matter, a sperm in my father, who is not even/horizontal, now--burned up, ash" (lines 30-33). In a simple, be it strange set of motion, Olds returns to the most elemental of human properties, "sperm," a tool of reproduction and of what makes us truly animal.

So, I am humbled by storms and now, I suppose, I can add fire escapes to that list.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

What Would Remain?

Poem of the Day:
"Theory of Everything" by Rae Armantrout
Next Life

The couple from which we are subletting this summer love to cook. I have ascertained this fact from hearsay, but also from the various gadgets that adorn their kitchen; a junkyard of car parts with multifarious, but also unknown, purposes.

Armantrout approaches her poem from a very lofty position, one of philosophical musing. Thankfully she regards form as a means of giving the reader room to breathe, and places no more than four words in one line. The poem begins slowly and warily; Armantrout must understand that the title of her poem is a bit off-putting. She writes, "It both hurtles/and fidgets,/otherwise/it's empty space?" (lines 1-4). The speaker is trying to make sense of a world, specifically of motion and space. Armantrout then goes on to reference another body trying to comprehend the world; she writes of a newborn encountering an object "blue/and feathery green" (lines 7-8), and trying to place it in this new world of new things.

Gaining intellect in the next section she writes, "Everything that stays/once meaning has cleared out/is true?" (lines 13-15). Even though Armantrout is herself unsure of this statement, were it to be true it would mean that truth relies on existence; "meaning" is merely a justification for existence. Meaning, how I believe Armantrout sees it, is asking "Why are you here?" rather than saying "I am here," much like the difference between one who seeks the meaning of life as opposed to one who accepts that there is a life to be lived.

I think the strange kitchen gadgets are saying "I am here." I have come to accept their existence, and have stopped asking, "What does this do, what is the purpose of this small metal/wooden/brown thing?" I will bang with something that is meant to be wound, I will flip with something that is meant to cut and there will be a harmony; that is, until the kitchen utensils and Armantrout, angry with me at my poor philosophical interpretation of her piece, revolt against me.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Bach Cello Suite No. 1, Prelude

Poem of the Day:
John Ashberry's "The Template"
Where Shall I Wander

Having lived in Boston for nearly three weeks now my diurnal tasks have begun to take on a rhythm; schedules have been written down and committed to memory. Such is a template, a preliminary mold of each and every day.

Ashberry writes of this 'template' in regards to poetry. He writes, "The template was always there, its existence seldom/questioned or suspected" (lines 1-2). He goes on to make clear the reason for such a template, calling it "[A]n imaginary railing/disappeared into the forest" (lines 3-4); it is what sorts out the wild.

Schedules are much like this, they allow us to sift through the chaos and make sense (to some degree) of our existence. Nonetheless, schedules face the plunder that is the unanticipated.

Ashberry, in reference to poetry and raw poetic material (that which a poet writes about), talks of the unexpected, the 'anti-template' if you will. The words, "It seemed good, the clotted darkness that came every day" (line 10) end his poem. There is so much in this line; it is the juiciest in his piece. First, "[I]t seemed good." The word "seemed" is troubling; it is indefinite and uncertain. Next, "clotted." The "darkness" is liquid-like but still maintains a sense of the solid; there is form, schedule, but also un-form and chaos. And lastly, Ashberry writes "darkness." Is this "clotted" thing, this unexpectedness, dark because it is bad? Or evil?

I think "darkness" merely refers back to the nature of the beast; the unexpected cannot be seen. Perhaps then Ashberry should have written of the "clotted unlight" as to not force the connotations that abound with the word 'dark.'

Regardless, Bach's Cello Suite No. 1, Prelude was part of my "clotted darkness" today. A cellist has taken up house in the Harvard Square T stop, different from the electric guitarist that normally haunts the underground station. As I stepped onto the train en route to the library my cellist began to play Bach's most famous (and my most favorite) piece. It was like a farewell, a wish of good health, an adieu. And as the train exited the station and rolled on into the darkness of the underground the cellist's music, the unexpected but not unwelcome sound, was light and bright and not scary.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Lost, Canal-side

Poem of the Day:
"Pink Moon" by Maggie Nelson
Something Bright, Then Holes

Nelson has a very simple but musical quality to her pieces; they are like chocolate to the ear. In "Pink Moon" her tone is very prosaic, tending to the narrative. She writes, "A perfect day at the canal, the sun on my back/healing me, or so I imagined" (lines 1-2).

This morning I tried to recreate the first few lines of Nelson's poem; I went for a run along the river, trying to begin my "perfect day at the canal." Instead, I got lost. I merged into hordes of BU orientation students, considered grabbing a red packet and joining them, but then eventually made the (wise) decision to turn around and just run back from where I had come.

My story is mediocre and makes little of the world along the river while Nelson's work takes full notice. She writes of the relationship between human and moon, water; "But I know the moon/has compassion for us. So does the water" (lines 9-10). It is a relationship of renewal; when she looks at the moon she thinks "it might heal us...with its unbelievable pink/color" (lines 5-6).

Pink moon, red orientation folders; a colorful day as painted by Nelson and my poor sense of direction.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Boston Common; Underground

Poem of the Day:
E.E. Cummings' "Poem 31"
No Thank You

Excerpt from "Poem 31"

does yesterday's perfection seem not quite

so clever as the pratfall of a clown
(should stink of failure more than wars of feet

all things whose slendering sweetness touched renown)
suddenly themselves if all dreams unmake
(when in a most smashed unworld stands unslain

Today I got a job. In celebration I took the T to Boston Common, book and apple in hand. I found a beautiful tree which provided shade and back support (and needles in my hair); feeling comfortable, I settled into the park.

Midway through my celebratory reading session I thought my phone was vibrating. Alas, it was wishful thinking; the vibrations were too deep and too full to be the product of my outdated phone (we all know the iPhone rumbles and roars instead of vibrates). Then I realized that I could feel the T moving beneath the park, a queer heaven versus hell scenario.

Cummings writes, "suddenly themselves if all dreams unmake/(when in a most smashed unworld stands unslain/he which knows not if any anguish struck" (lines 5-7). Cummings is a beautiful read, and a difficult fit of comprehension. "[U]nworld stands unslain" is pleasing both to the ear and the eye, but those double negatives are a killer for those of us who want more than a sensory exploration of the poem.

I think Cummings is writing, among other things, about two separate worlds, reality ("yesterday's perfection") and the world in which our dreams are housed ("a most smashed unworld"). It is unclear which he regards more highly; reality seems contrived, "so clever as the pratfall of a clown" (line 2) whereas this dream world is unattainable by the simple fact of being an "unworld."

Today, was Boston Common my reality while the metro rumbling beneath my dreamworld? Or was the park my collection of dreams, paradise in its naturalness?

There may be no answer. I do know that I experienced a poem in the midst of reading it; how lucky I am!

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

The T as Sea

Poem of the Day:
"Agreement with Sir Charles Sedley" by Richard Howard
The Wesleyan Tradition: Four Decades of American Poetry

Howard tells a dated tale of forbidden love, between man and betrothed woman. Although the sincerity of the subject's (Sir Charles Sedley) gestures is unclear, he is merely "[A]ccommodating love with 'something still/Of the sea,'" (lines 1-2), Howard displays an adeptness for the mental tangle when he enmeshes love-making and the sea. He writes, "In truth love had a semblance of the sea,/Showing less among the fair/Ripples of Corinna's hair" (lines 21-23).

The poetic maritime world must be far-reaching; I swore that Howard's oceanic analogies followed me onto the T today. Returning from Philadelphia (at the crack of dawn might I add) I promptly boarded the T on a return voyage to my house in Cambridge. I sat down, bracing myself for the several stops until Harvard Square. From my view as seated passenger I began to take note of a woman walking up and down the subway car, her feet pacing as if troubled though on her face she wore a strange smile (contentment or drugs, I was unsure).

At first I thought her an early riser; she was eager to prepare herself for an exit at the next stop. But, she remained in the subway car throughout my ride

I pondered her actions for the entirety of my travel. In pacing she never reached to steady herself on a seat or a bar above her head; it was as if she enjoyed the challenge of trying to stay afloat on a moving subway car. Her body took on that of a man's at sea. She swayed with each movement, giving herself up entirely to the force of each wave (turn of the tracks).

Other than a maritime analogy, I am unsure where the subway pacer and Howard's poem converge most fully. In comparing love and the sea Howard acknowledges the tumultuous nature of both; perhaps then my subway car pacer was all too aware of the clamorous nature of the T and therefore she saw fit to give herself up to it entirely.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

The Jump-off Point: High School

Poem of the Day:
Jeffrey McDaniel's "Twentynothing"
alibi school

Excerpt from McDaniel's "Twentynothing"

Monday: scheduled root canal surgery with every dentist
in San Francisco, which isn't even my time zone.

Tuesday: mailed bomb threats to every Denny's
in America--switch to Dr. Pepper by sunset or else!

Wednesday: sat on my rooftop with a shotgun
and pulverized faxes zipping in from Europe.

Thursday: belched in the face of a smiling
toll booth lady for good luck.


And these are a compiling of the daily activities of McDaniel's speaker; he is a 'twentynothing' who spends his days doing, well, ridiculous things ("I begin each day with a little project").

Today at my sister's graduation her principal made an interesting point during his closing remarks. He declared high school graduation to be a sort of scale, a place to which many people look when tracking their success in life; "what have I accomplished since graduating from high school?" I think it was a very poignant observation.

I like to think that I spend my days doing more worthwhile things than McDaniel's 'twentynothing' but I also stress about being successful; if high school is the beginning of the race, am I ahead or behind?

Ah, who knows really. I'd like to say "who cares?" but I care a little, and also not all that much.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

P.S. I blame the fact that I have to wake up at 3:30 AM tomorrow morning for making this post a mediocre one. Yes, I have many excuses for poor writing. This is one of them.

Storm Brewed

Poem of the Day:
"Nature" by Emily Dickinson
Selected Poems

Much of this blogging endeavor is centered on chance; I have challenged myself to chance upon a poem every morning and to draw a link from the words on the page to the events of my day. Thus far, chance has been good to me.

I am sure Dickinson was in attendance at my sister's graduation party; how else would she have so beautifully reconstructed the weather patterns that were the 'rain, shine, rain' day?

She describes a particularly violent rainstorm, writing "The leaves unhooked themselves from trees/And started all abroad;/The dust did scoop itself like hands/And throw away the road" (lines 5-8). But it is the quality of gentleness she portrays that is most striking and demonstrative of Dickinson's poetic adroitness; the dust lifted by the wind is akin to a scooping action of hands, while the leaves are "unhooked" and not torn. Dickinson affords the storm grace in addition to ferocity.

In light of the storm that took place today, and quite a violent and temperamental storm it was, I am in awe of Dickinson. Her piece exhibits a respect for nature that is difficult to understand following a messy (weather-wise) graduation party. I applaud her. I applaud the party-goers, "[T]he cattle [who] fled to barns" (line 14), for embracing what could not be changed, and my mothers for laughing at the same.

Dear me, it is loud in my room right now with all this clapping.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

The Working Order

Poem of the Day:
Yusef Komunyakaa's "Gristmill"
Magic City

The voice of Komunyakaa's poem seems to be that of a child; it is utterly sincere and because of this it is brazenly observant. The speaker concerns himself with the process of grain-making in a work environment characterized by color. Komunyakaa writes, "Black hands shucked/& shelled corn into a washtub...Daddy shouldered a hundred-pound sack/To Mister Adam's gristmill" (lines 1-6). From the raw material handled by "[B]lack hands" comes "the meal & husk" (line 25) finally handled by "[S]mooth, white hands" (line 24). Within the mechanics of grain-making lies an order of color; the final product is white, the crude is black.

I am not of Komunyakaa's time, location or color. I am unable to tune into the rhythm of which he writes, the rhythm of "Slip-/Socket to ball-/Bearing & coghweel" (lines 10-12) that create the tension between two races. Rather, in the past few days I have become cognizant of a generational rhythm, a gristmill per era, that is taking place.

All weekend my family and I have been setting up the house in preparation for my sister's high school graduation party. Inherent in this process are sounds that I like to think mirror Komunyakaa's gristmill; there is the drilling of my father as he fixes a bar stand (at 7 AM nonetheless), the taping and stapling of pictures for my sister's aptly titled 'shrine,' and the emptying of ice into a keg barrel. These sounds coalesce to form a sort of machine, grinding out a social gathering.

There is also the generational rhythm superimposed upon these sounds; one day perhaps I too will be working tirelessly to set up for my child's high school graduation party, just as my parents did three years ago for mine and now for my sister's. It is a rhythm that persists over time and a rhythm that persists now, though shortly.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

My New Hat

Poem of the Day:
"The Swimming Pool Float" by William Baer
American Arts Quarterly: Spring 2010

The Swimming Pool Float

He remembers, before she died last May,
watching as she slowly blew up and inflated
that circular reddish float, puffing away,
as their eager little children waited.
He recalls her love, her yellow bathing suit,
that every breath we take in the summer breeze
contains some fifty million super-minute
molecules once breathed by Sophocles...

Tonight, holding the float, when the night is cool,
he moves her chair to exactly the same place,
opens the valve, and sits beside the pool--
then feels her breath rush gently over his face,
alone with loneliness, alone with death,
he inhales her last remaining breath.

Today I bought a hat; I have no money and as of yet no job, but I bought a hat. It is a beautiful hat. It is a floppy hat. Think of the other Audrey, "My Fair Lady," but with a flop. That is my new hat.

Because of my new hat my reading of Baer's poem is far from what I perceive to be the intended reading; rather than experience first the loss, and in the final lines the gain (perhaps) of the speaker I cannot help but focus upon the images created in the first stanza.

For me Baer creates a fashionably iconic summer scene; I am thinking 1950s or 1940s. He notes only primary colors, her "yellow bathing suit" and "that circular reddish float," leading me to believe that the rest of the poetically-secured portrait is black & white and that it is an old photograph.

Despite the nostalgia of the first stanza, the second stanza's regard for the present makes it clear that Baer's "love" is still in some form with the speaker, even if it is merely the thin air of her "breath." I want nothing more to hold on to this small hope of her remainder and to march into the scene of the first stanza, ignorant of impending death, wearing my new floppy hat and with "every breath [taking] in the summer breeze."

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Travel Stupor

Poem of the Day:
"Paradise Motel" by Charles Simic
Sixty Poems

Today I spent nearly 5 hours on a bus, 1.5 hours on a train and 40 minutes in a car in order to see my younger sister graduate from high school this weekend; it will be worth the numb legs and boredom. But, a natural consequence of so much traveling in one day is travel stupor. It is a daze that persists from the train/bus/plane/rocket; when one stares out of the window for hours on end one begins to stare at the day sans travel, blankly, for hours on end.

There is a similar awareness of visual numbness in Simic's poem, though the content is much different. Simic concerns himself with the boundaries that separate violence and love, and how such edges are blurring; "There were so many soldiers that day,/So many refugees crowding the roads...On the pay channel, a man and a woman/Were trading hungry kisses and tearing off/Each other's clothes while I looked on" (lines 8-15). Simic, or rather the speaker of Simic's poem, watches the pornographic film "[W]ith the sound off and the room dark" (line 16), further submitting the images to a decontextualization (I think I just fabricated this word) and a washing.

Simic's speaker is dazed by the television screen, sees nothing but the color, and how it has "too much red in it, too much pink" (line 18). In this hue remark he draws the final link between love and violence, love-making and blood.

Though the visual haze of Simic's speaker leads to a profound realization, mine has not thus far. Rather, I am merely dazed from sitting on a bus for too long, tuning out the crazed honking bus driver, day-dreaming in place of an iPod which was left behind and wondering how much of my life has been spent trying to get from one place to the next -- well now, lookie here, there's some profoundness amidst the daze after all!

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

What is To Come

Poem of the Day:
"Wool Squares" by Donald Hall
The Painted Bed

Hall's The Painted Bed comes after the loss of his wife and fellow poet, Jane Kenyon; the void made by her death is his work. "Wool Squares" is no exception. He writes of the life that no longer is without his love; the time now is "'Leftover life to kill'" (line 7), he eats nothing but "Starvation's food" (line 15).

I do not know Hall's sentiments; I have yet to meet someone whose life is so intricately entwined with mine that his/her death is simultaneously my death. I know not of starvation's food.

Rather, I am gluttonous. Take today for example: Dan, Steph and I attended Boston's 'Scooper Bowl,' an annual event that benefits cancer research and upset stomachs. This is how it works: for eight dollars you get all you can eat ice cream from various ice cream vendors across Boston. Upon entrance you are granted your one and only spoon; it is your tool and your key to unlock the deliciousness of each ice cream tent. Then, you approach each tent (Ben & Jerry's, Edy's, Haagen Dazs) and pick up your small ice cream bowl from the various flavors being provided as samples.

I was nearly sick by the end but happy. I had tried Bailey's Irish Cream ice cream, Milk & Cookies ice cream, and others too damn creamy for the blogosphere.

So Hall, I hear you but I cannot lay my experiences down beside yours. Your poem frightens me; it is perhaps what is to come with old age and loss. But until "I taste/In solitude/Starvation's food" (lines 13-15) I'll be sure to eat myself sick.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Ritualizing

Poem of the Day:
Deborah Gorlin's "Mischief Night"
Bodily Course

This summer I am living with my best friend Steph and her boyfriend Dan. Thus far we have cooked and eaten most dinners together; we have coined them 'family dinners' and various other cute phrases. The excitement of living away from home with friends is still strong.

Tonight Dan ate dinner at his parent's house (they live close by) to celebrate a family birthday. Hence, Steph and I had a little more space at the table this evening. We cooked up some tasty burritos, and despite our missing man we were able to find a kitchen rhythm in the stirring of rice and beans.

Gorlin's poem follows children on Mischief Night, the eve of Halloween. With a lyrical grace Gorlin creates the scene of a ritual tense with excitement; "At our small square desks, we do our homework./Repeat the moon is a primer, soon be wintry cold./All the while, fashion our faces, gaudy as gourds,/listen at the window, despite our parents" (lines 8-11). The entire scene becomes charged with the anticipation of children, so much so that the crass turns fantastical: "In bathrooms our urine is cider" (line 13).

Gorlin creates a scene of indulgent ritual; the children delight in the superstitions of the night until the morning that brings the reality of "pumpkins smashed in the streets" (line 19).

Steph and I too found an indulgent ritual in a house of just girls for the night. After dinner we crawled into our pajamas grabbed some snacks and put on The Devil Wears Prada. In these post-dinner hours we were giggly; there was something thrilling about watching a mindless movie in sweatpants while eating ice cream. It was our own Gorlin-inspired world, mischievous in its own right.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

The Unspeech(ed)

Poem of the Day:
Marilyn Nelson's "Albert Hinckley"
The Best American Poetry 2006

In the very first lines Nelson sets her poem in landscape and time: "Miss Crandall's Boarding School for Young Ladies of Color,/Canterbury, Connecticut, 1833" (lines 1-2). But, the poem is by no means made stale by this timestamp.

Today I had a very bizarre subway experience. I intended to take a morning yoga class but the T had made plans otherwise. After I boarded, the subway car braked at no stops and barreled to the end of the line. Passengers like myself were utterly confused; we had not been told this was some sort of express train (do express subway lines exist?) and for several moments I envisioned myself as having fallen victim to a subway car of doom. Neighboring passengers glanced at one another with small looks of confusion. No one spoke. No one asked. We barreled on.

"Last Sunday, a white boy openly smiled at me/where I sat with my sisters at the back of the Baptist Church," (lines 3-4) writes Nelson. Her second stanza, one of three, is full of articulations of 'glancing' movement; "When the pastor spoke of the sin of slavery,/the white boy looked back with his eyebrows arched" (lines 5-6), and these looks seem so powerful on their own. That which is actually spoken, that is, the words of the pastor's sermon, speak less than the face of the 'white boy.'

Yet by ending her poem with spoken words, "that boy took my hand. 'Let me help you, miss./From this day forward, I am an abolitionist'" (lines 15-16), Nelson makes clear that gestures, be it facial or more, will not undo the wrongs of society.

Certainly a subway car that refuses to stop is no such 'wrong of society,' but its malfunction went unspoken by the passengers, including myself. The estranged mass of morning commuters failed to give spoken form to the mishap; too many have done this in the past with far greater consequences than being a few minutes late to work, or in my case, missing a yoga class.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

The Boneless Heaps

Poem of the Day:
"I Said No No" by Daniel Berrigan
Prison Poems

Berrigan's collection of poems written while he was incarcerated for conspiracy and destruction of government property (he burned draft records as a form of protest against the Vietnam War) are complex, unmasking an angry and disordered mind. I had to read "I Said No No" multiple times today, sometimes very slowly, in order to grasp what I believe to be an abstract questioning of faith: "No help for it/a transmogrified high vaulter/by choice" (lines 11-13).

I did not see room for the poem as a whole in my day; rather, I encountered only one of the lines of Berrigan's poem today. This afternoon a few friends and I traveled to the Garment District near Kendall Square. I soon learned that the Garment District is the epitome of 'thrifting and sifting'; piles of worn and tattered (some) clothes slump on the floor and one must sift with great focus in order to find a wearable piece. The upside is that it is dirt cheap. The clothes rescued from the depths of the floor are sold at $1.50/lb. I paid $6.90 for 8 items of clothing.

But, some of the sifters were hard to distinguish from the clothing; heaps of body were slumped upon heaps of clothing. Sagging with the struggles that may have brought them to this very cheap lot of clothes, there were some women that sat upon the piles of clothes and sifted from this heavy position, as if to say it would take time to find what they were looking for but they had hardly the energy.

Berrigan ends his poem with the lines, "Clouds have no bones./He rides and rains" (lines 14-15). In his words I am reminded of the sagging women, the sagging clothes, and how they mirror one another. They "have no bones," but are also devoid of the quality of "[C]louds." In a book made up of poems about suffering, the last words of Berrigan's "I Said No No" seems more hopeful than scenes of today. At least he had lightness, "[C]louds," and "rains" that lead to suns.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

I Name This Place

Poem of the Day:
"Stranded" by Jenny Browne
What Have You Lost?

excerpt from "Stranded"

...My mother thinks my name is basil
thriving in the sun, ceiling fan stuck
on full speed, the persistence of mint.
In your dream my name is the leggy
avocado tree sprung overnight from
the firm shiny core you trusted...

Today was beautiful; I went to the Cambridge River Festival with several friends. We walked around, enjoyed the performances and crafts and what seemed to be an eternity of sunshine. But this post is not about today. Rather, it is about an encounter I had a few days ago; Browne's poem is just most perfectly suited for my Wednesday, not my Saturday.

I was riding the bus home from an internship interview when a small boy sat next to me, his mother in tow. He turned to me, with striking confidence, and asked of me, "What is your name?" I promptly replied with the obvious: "Audrey. What is your name?" "Calvin," he said.

I told him what an interesting name he had and, after taking a bite out of his cookie, he agreed. Falling to silence, I wished to keep him engaged. "What is your nickname?"

Calvin looked at me blankly. His mother, graceful in her keen intuition, understood that her son did not know what 'nickname' meant. "Calvin, what do Mommy and Daddy call you?"

"Oh!" He understood. "Cal!" His mommy and daddy call him Cal.

Browne's poem focuses on the concept of a name. From where does a name draw its power? I included the fifth stanza, what I like to call my 'Cal Stanza.' It reminds me of Cal, my four-year old bus friend, because I think Cal best understood what Browne is speaking of. He understood that 'Cal' comes from loving tongues, mommy and daddy mouths, and that it is more than a 'nickname' as I so crudely put it on the bus. His mother may not think that his name is "basil/thriving in the sun" but I think Cal knows that his mother imagines his name to be the finest of all things, the softest sweater, the coolest drink on a hot day.

A name is a gift bestowed upon us.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

My Dreary Day

Poem of the Day:
Philip Levine's "The House of the Hanged Child"
Not This Pig

Today was the first overcast day since I've been in Boston; we've had rain but never a day where the sun seemed an angry friend turning his back. The weather mirrored my mood. Job hunting in Cambridge has been difficult; do not my poetry awards and dance teaching experience make me qualified to work at Urban Outfitters? Apparently not.

As I sat in the living room, eating lunch and feeling utterly hopeless, Levine's poem leaped from page to canvas; the experience of reading it became a visual one. He writes of the darkness housed (literally and figuratively) within suburbia: "the white house/drops a black shadow" (lines 2-3). This tension between the white and the dark references both history (the American Civil Rights Movement) and metaphor (facade versus truth). There is the house, the place of supposed familial harmony, and the 'hanged child' it seems to be housing. He returns to color to express this tension, writing, "Near the cypresses shading the white/Impala no one can drive/a small dark brother leans" (lines 20-22).

These "cypresses" too line the Cambridge street on which I live. And, on the first overcast day thus far I was for the first time able to recognize the dark beneath the picturesque; gray skies made the brick and ivy street seem ominous rather than quaint. The sky and Levine, perhaps in that order, made me reconsider houses; and, more importantly, how their structures belie what they house.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Mind, Body, Earth, Human

Poem of the Day:
"Changes" by Ruth Stone
In the Next Galaxy

Tonight I attended a hot yoga class. My sweat did things I have never seen it do; it dripped, it pooled, it poured. I made the mistake of not eating enough before attending and halfway through the class I swore to the heavens that I would pass out. I think the 70-year old man in front of me, the one with the perfect headstands, agreed.

I have practiced yoga for about two years. Throughout my practice one concept has stuck with me; it is the idea that the mind gives up before the body. Our head screams "Quit!" while our body in fact has the ability to continue. Tonight I was mind-centered; it took the reigns and had not the strength to fight back.

What is this disconnect between mind and body like? Stone's poem speaks of the disconnect between human and earth; she writes of changes within a neighborhood, "Did 7-Eleven close down?" (line 5), otherwise local verse. But in the final moments of her poem the tone alters its scope quite drastically. Stone speaks to environmental change, change that spans centuries and not just a few years. She writes, "the open mouth of a glacier/one mile thick...after it gouged/the bedrock down to a whisper/and filled it with recycled water" (lines 31-36); her poem highlights the difference between human history and the history of earth, these different 'changes.'

I'm not sure that this disconnect in any way mirrors the disconnect between mind and body. The latter seems to be composed of competing forces while the former reflects cars parallel, moving at very different speeds. Despite this, it is interesting to observe the limits of landscapes, be them man or earth, body or mind; if nothing more today's experience has reintroduced me to life's many dualities, to various forces, opposed or not, that exist as part of the same universe. Thank you Stone and hot yoga for the reminder.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Lacking in Aftermath

Poem of the Day:
Sylvia Plath's "Aftermath"
The Colossus and Other Poems

Aftermath

Compelled by calamity's magnet
They loiter and stare as if the house
Burnt-out were theirs, or as if they thought
Some scandal might any minute ooze
From a smoke-chocked closet into light;
No deaths, no prodigious injuries
Glut these hunters after an old meat,
Blood-spoor of the austere tragedies.

Mother Medea in a green smock
Moves humbly as any housewife through
Her ruined apartments, taking stock
Of charred shoes, the sodden upholstery:
Cheated of the pyre and the rack,
The crowd sucks her last tear and turns away.


An aftermath is "something that results or follows from an event, esp. one of a disastrous or unfortunate nature" (Dictionary.com). My day was devoid of an aftermath. I spent much of it lost on the T, traveling back and forth on a bus and thereby creating an event-free zone in the whole of my day.

I traveled to Somerville for an interview and planned to make my way downtown to complete a job application; this was not to be. I boarded the bus heading in the wrong direction and found myself in a "[B]urnt-out" section of East Cambridge. While Plath's poem acknowledges the, though perhaps elementary, thought that an event, in this case a tragedy, sets in motion an aftermath I had no event of which to speak besides a mind-numbing set of bus transfers that only left me wishing that my CharlieCard came with a map.

Nonetheless, Plath's sonnet kept me going throughout the day. Despite the wretched subject, the vibrantly monstrous imagery ("Some scandal might any minute ooze/From a smoke-chocked closet") served as my daily dose of event and in my mind I carried on the natural process of cause and effect. Although my day was noiseless Plath's poems never are.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

The Bizarreness of Tuesday

Poem of the Day:
David Kirby's "Seventeen Ways from Tuesday"
The Best American Poetry, 2006

Kirby's poem begins with the recollection of a statement overheard; he hears a man whisper to his girlfriend at an art exhibit that he intends to "'put it to [her] seventeen ways from Tuesday'" (line 3). Throughout the poem Kirby reflects upon the nature and landscape of this raunchy slip. He wonders, what is it about art that makes people happy and in turn, so sexually aroused. Kirby also dissects the sheer bizarreness that is this stranger's statement; why Tuesday? What about this day of the week is especially stimulating?

Well, today is a Tuesday. It has certainly been stimulating but not in the sexual sense. I moved into a small townhouse in Cambridge today; I plan to intern and work in Boston this summer. After a six hour drive I unpacked all my clothes (itemized, this count comes to about one million) and met up with friends some of whom I have not seen since I left for a semester abroad in Ireland. So certainly, my Tuesday was stimulating.

But not all Tuesdays are stimulating. A Tuesday is not quite the middle of the work week, but close enough that it hurts. Also, on Tuesday one is still recovering from Monday which we all know can be brutal.

The aesthetics of Tuesday rub me the wrong way. The look of the word 'Tuesday' is just a bit queer. Double vowels always frighten me. Also, if 'Tuesday' were to be thought of as a phrase of Spanish (think 'Tu es day') and were it subjected to a VERY poor translation, it could mean 'You are day.' But 'day' has no translation in Spanish, so on Tuesdays I am inclined to ask, "What am I?"

I'm still not quite sure. But Tuesday I am sure of you; you are bizarre.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey