93 and Final

Poem of the Day:
"Lifeboat, Wingspan" By Steve Healey
10 Mississippi


Healey's poem is of an Inception-scape, pulsing through the intricacies -- and dangerous dreadfalls -- of a dream world. He writes of "his city on the Mississippi" (line 1), in which the weather can be anticipated by the shifts in his body: "When my head feels light, it rains on Monday" (line 8). It is this line that first tells us, in explicit terms, that Healey's city is built entirely of the mind, a construct of the speaker's imagination.

My summer city was real. You can point to Boston on a map; and Cambridge; and my house, that northern tip of the Charles. My over-referred to daily grind was real -- grittily so -- as was my internship, and the numerous people I met and got to know.

At the beginning of this project, or challenge as I like to think of it, I posed the cliché "A poem a day keeps the...away," hoping that at the close of these last three months I would have a filling for this blank. And, I think I do.

"A poem a day keeps the fugue away." Although the last month or so of keeping this blog became, at times, tiresome, my days became easier to recall. Because small moments had been pulled out, and then likened to published works of poetry -- sometimes more successfully than others -- my days were sharper in my memory: a new, more state-of-the-art summer lens.

The final line of Healey's poem is "I'm ready for the pluvial air" (line 37). It follows a violent dissipation of his self-created (inflicted?) dream world ("When I deny having a sister, the sun/burns her skin") and serves as a final release for all of the pent-up (literally, mind-sequestered) images that make up the piece.

"I'm ready for the pluvial air."

Well, I'm ready for the blogless air.

For the time being, at least.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Moving On, New Spaces

Poem of the Day:
"Wolf Lake, white gown blown open" by Diane Seuss
Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open


I am back in Horsham for a brief pause before I move back to Wesleyan for my final year. The drive from Boston today was long, and I am glad to be home and with my family.

Regardless, I can't help but keep looking ahead. Bad habit, maybe. I've begun a mental planning of my new space at Wesleyan -- a beautiful, beautiful house! -- and I've been reading design blogs in hopes of being inspired. I'm feeling an English countryside chic right now, a lot of whitewashed surfaces with spots of green, blue and yellows -- my own personal field.

Seuss begins her poem with my colors, writing, "White sky, a tinge of blue,/birds like silver crucifixes/children wear at their First Communion" (lines 1-3). She also captures the softness that I'm aiming for, with the image of a young child receiving Communion for the first time -- a portrait of innocence and holiness.

The remainder of her poem departs from these initial colors, though the feel is much the same ("the woody stems of the cattails hold/the earth steady"). I might just use her words as my artist's brush. I like the idea of formulating interior design with poem as spark.

Look for me in Bed, Bath & Beyond with my shopping cart, and printed-out poem.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Cirque du Fro

Poem of the Day:
"Thirty Lines About the Fro" by Allison Joseph
River Styx, Number 81, 2010


Tonight, my mother and I saw Cirque de Soleil's Ovo, a spectacle of grace and precision. It was nothing like a fro -- certainly not out of control and wiry, but a fluid rigidity.


Thirty Lines About the Fro

The fro is homage, shrubbery, and revolt—all at once.
The fro and pick have a co-dependent relationship, so
many strands, snags, such snap and sizzle between
the two. The fro wants to sleep on a silk pillowcase,
abhorring the historical atrocity of cotton.
The fro guffaws at relaxers—how could any other style
claim relaxation when the fro has a gangsta lean,
diamond-in-the-back, sun-roof top kinda attitude,
growing slowly from scalp into sky, launching pad
for brilliance and bravery, for ideas uncontained by
barbershops and their maniacal clippers, monotony
of the fade and buzzcut. The fro has much respect
for dreads, but won't go through life that twisted,
that coiled. Still, much love lives between
the two: secret handshakes, funk-bottomed struts.
The fro doesn't hate you because you're beautiful.
Or ugly. Or out-of-work or working for the Man.
Because who knows who the Man is anymore?
Is the president the Man? He used to have a fro
the size of Toledo, but now it's trimmed down
to respectability, more gray sneaking in each day,
and you've got to wonder if he misses his pick,
for he must have had one of those black power ones
with a fist on the end. After all, the fro is a fist,
all curled power, rebellious shake, impervious
and improper. Water does not scare the fro,
because water cannot change that which is
immutable—that soul-sonic force, that sly
stone-tastic, natural mystic, roots-and-rhythm
crown for the ages, blessed by God and gratitude.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

The Girl Across the Way

Poem of the Day:
"Dramatis Personae" by Aaron Fagan
Echo Train


Since Dan and Steph have left the house things have been quieter, and sounds from the neighbors have been wafting through. There is the Russian man who lives across the street, bald and, from what I can tell, alone. There is the couple and their young son who moved in next door. And, there is the little girl who lives down the street.

She is a chatty one. She and her mother have breakfast every morning out on their small stoop, and I can hear her talking away, so lively for daybreak.

I wonder how much sugar her mom puts in that cereal...

I shouldn't complain. Waking up to the wide-eyed lilt of a four (perhaps five?) year-old is enlivening. Fagan's poem reminded me of her, and how when I leave the house every morning her innocent voice gets slowly lower in volume, finally disappearing.


Dramatis Personæ

Once upon a time,
Books began this
Way—the O of once let
The reader beware up
Front that a story as
Ornate and colorful as
We are would follow—
And not for any of us
To be shocked to find
We must return and
Stand for what we are.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Summer as Wonderland

Poem of the Day:
"A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky" by Lewis Carroll
Poetry.com


From the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland comes this poem, a piece that paints the summerscape a wonderland, a season about which we all dream.

I've now said my goodbyes to both my job and my internship, and this weekend will be my last in Boston, signaled by the season's close. Although I'm not a summer person (fair skin, fear of sand), I will be sad to see it go. There is something utterly romantic about warm summer night air and days almost too green to write about -- though we all know I try.


A Boat beneath a Sunny Sky


A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July —

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear —

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream —
Lingering in the golden gleam —
Life, what is it but a dream?



Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Almond Milk

Poem of the Day:
"Milk" by Melissa Stein
Harvard Review, Number 38


I was wary when I first tried it. Almond milk contains no lactose, is completely vegan. It is a mixture of almonds and water masquerading as milk. But, it is actually very delicious.

I have recently stopped drinking milk, preferring this nut juice to that cow liquid. Milk goes bad. Almond milk stays for months. It adds a nice nutty flavor to my cereal. Milk is sometimes difficult to digest. Almond milk, at least the product I drink, has calcium, so I'm not missing out on those strong bones.

As my love for this dairy substitute has grown, I came upon this poem of the day. Here is Stein's piece:


Milk

The nurse has made up the bed so crisply.
Tucked the corners' rote origami
so soundly into the aluminum frame.

Your lips glisten, moistened with a square
of sponge. I hold your hand—weightless
thing of parchment and twig—

no more your daughter than a seed
cast from hoof-split rattlegrass, no more than
an asterisk sprung from thistle, caught, wished upon,

let go. I inhale the antiseptic scent of bay,
of balsam. Rooted here, in this cheap plastic chair,
as if I'll miss something,

as if my missing it would matter.
Just as—branch-snap to feeding deer, wing-shadow
to the scuttling mouse—it has always mattered.

The window frames a square of light
white and blameless as milk. I turn from you
and drink, and drink, and drink.


Almond milk is not as "white" as the "square of light" that Stein describes, her grief and inability to place this moment of her mother's struggle nearly blinding her. Almond milk is beige. It would not work as well in this poem. Also, the assonance in "as almond milk" makes for a stumbling read. Sometimes, milk is best.

But for now, I'm weighing my options.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Editing

Poem of the Day:
"Lisa Longs to Hold Harry" by Richard Holinger
Western Humanities Review, Winter 2010


Despite the strange date on this poem's publication (Winter 2010? Has this happened yet?), this piece perfectly coincides with the final work for my internship. For the past month or so we, the interns, have been working on researching and writing a longer and more journalistic piece for Foundwaves Magazine.

My piece focuses on the connections musicians draw between literature and music. I have been writing it for about four weeks now, but editing for about three. I think I have my four-page article memorized by now, as I'm sure the other interns do (we've edited one another's pieces so often). I'm ready to be done with it; good thing it's due tomorrow!

Holinger's poem is a reenactment of the editing process; "Cut" means simply that -- cutting a phrase/word/punctuation mark.

Here is Holinger's piece:


Lisa Longs to Hold Harry

Lisa longed to hold Harry
Cut
Lisa desired
Cut
Desiring Harry, Lisa
Cut
Desiring, Lisa
Cut
Lisa wanted Harry in the most
Cut
Lisa took Harry
Cut
Lisa surrounded Harry's hairy arms and begged for
Cut
Ever since Lisa was a little girl
Cut
Lisa as a little girl desired
Cut
The little girl playing in the sandbox hit the little boy with
Cut
When her family lived in Baltimore, Lisa
Cut
When her family lived in Boston, Lisa lost
Cut
When her family lived in San Francisco, Lisa stole a
Cut
When her family lived in a high rise overlooking Lincoln Park, Lisa explored the
Cut
Harry graduated a year before
Cut
Because he took summer classes, Harry
Cut
Lisa spent her summers alone. She worked at Marshall
Cut
Lisa looked longingly at the silver water pitcher perched on the glass shelf,
ruminating how
Cut
Even though they both attended Loyola University, Lisa
Cut
Harry bit his lip. Lisa sucked
Cut
When Harry bit down on a
Cut
Lisa had planned pot roast for the night she
Cut
Lisa picked up her cell to text Harry as she pulled over to exit North Avenue
Cut
Inside the burning car, Lisa wondered
Cut
Upside down, Lisa read Harry's
Cut
Hanging from her seatbelt, surrounded by flames, Lisa texted Harry, "I long
to hold you."


Holinger is perhaps a proponent of the "No Texting While Driving" laws?


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

It Has Been 3 Days Since I've Seen the Sun

Poem of the Day:
"Scale" by John W. Evans
The Missouri Review, Summer 2010


Evans' poem is accusatory in silence, a mourning without the wailing. He writes of his lovers' (quite possibly also his wife, it is unclear) death: "I measured exact distances wherever I went:/days since your death, weeks until your birthday,/how many steps it took to cross the interstate park/where every three weeks the billboard changed/until Oscar season" (lines 2-6). His tendency to measure things belies this grief; he is trying to rationalize every thought, math should help him make sense of his grievous world.

What becomes clear throughout the poem is that the death of Evans' wife is not without resentment towards another. Her brother is addressed with a tone of watchfulness, as if he were directly responsible for her death. He comes to stay with Evans' speaker ("The night your brother stopped talking to his wife"), injuring himself while in their home ("The week he finally/blew out his back your brother slept on the sofa"). He takes sleeping pills to assuage the pain, and this fact, though nearly mundane in its occurrence, haunts Evans. In the final lines of "Scale" he writes, "Through the window his truck engine turned over four times/before it began its morning loop around the city" (lines 23-24). We are left with the sound of his late wife's brother's car starting, taking its "morning" (perhaps also 'mourning'?) drive through the urban streets. It is clear that this reverberating sound, made more so by the fact that it concludes the poem, plagues Evans' speaker.

Today marks my third day without seeing the sun. Boston has been awash -- literally -- with rain. This, coupled with the fact that I'm currently reading Bret Ellis' American Psycho, has put me on edge, startled by each "truck engine [turning] over," filled nearly with a fright, an edge, that has nowhere to be pinned. I need some light in my days, less shadow.

Bring some light to Boston!


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Got That Itch

Poem of the Day:
"Itchy" by David Yezzi
Poetry, March 2010


Today was pay day, and I've got the shopper's itch. To my dismay, Urban Outfitters' online site is not working ("We are upgrading..."). How am I supposed to scratch my itch, eh?


Itchy


Hard to reach, so you yank your clothes
getting at it—the button at your neck,
the knotted shoe. You snake your fingers in
until your nails possess the patch of skin
that’s eating you. And now you’re in the throes
of ecstasy, eyes lolling in your skull,
as if sensing the first time the joy one takes
in being purely animal.

It’s so good to have a scratch,
though isn’t it a drag living like this,
jounced on a high wire of impulses,
every wish the same programmed response
to another signal passed from cell to cell,
amounting in the end to a distraction—
if truth be told—from rarer things, thoughts free
from the anchor-chain of self?

For even the least sweetness, we
behave like the old man on the low wall
I saw outside the hospital today,
who had his hand inside his flannel shirt,
scratching at his chest, trancelike, agog,
his eyelids fluttering like butterflies
in a meadow of snowy Queen Anne’s lace.
I never saw him stop.

Such root satisfaction is like
the dying desert legionnaire’s in films,
when he finds, against all odds, a water jug
and, lifting it, delights to feel it heavy.
The score swells, his eyes relume. He tugs
the stopper out, then fills his mouth with sand.
Though, worse: we’ve seen the film; we know it’s sand;
we gulp it anyway.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Rain & Birth

Poem of the Day:
Lesley Wheeler's "Twilight Sleep"
Heterotopia


Today was a strange day, its strangeness hanging on the weather. It rained all day, drizzling mostly, letting up only during the first few minutes of my run, and picking back up for the remaining half hour of my work out.

Regardless, I experienced an unanticipated calm during my run. Perhaps it was the Rachael Yamagata (sultry voice, jazzy piano) playlist that I put on, or the fact that the streets were deserted (does the rain stop even Massachusetts drivers?). Either way, I felt a strange sense of sadness mixed with renewal that was both heavy and lightening, as if to say, "The road ahead is long and difficult, but here are wings." The weather will do funny things to you.

Wheeler writes of birth, and her feelings towards birth are in tension, mirroring my own emotions during my rainy jog. In a sweeping narrative she writes of the labors of women in her family:


Some woman long ago drank caudle, laboring
in a dim room, stroked by a midwife. Forgotten.
Even my great-grandmother's suffering
was never told, save for the last birth, seventeen
years after the rest. Go to the pictures,
Father said, and the elder children grabbed
the coins and ran. They didn't know and he
was ashamed. The newborn small and powerful,
distilled from the ether, dreams, old rain.


(Notice that this stanza, in an appropriate fashion ends with the words "old rain"). The birth being described occurs in a "dim room," the father is "ashamed." Something so natural is kept hidden, despite its near heavenly result, the baby "from the ether." Wheeler describes her own arrival in the same removed tone, though with decidedly more negative diction: "Who/is that dark girl, her eyes like the first mud,/effervescing. A stranger, a to-do list" (lines 21-23).

Eventually Wheeler confronts the horror of birth, and the beginning of all things, or any thing. In my favorite stanza of the piece she writes:


Books say there are good births, but I
don't believe it. All beginnings hurt
someone: the animal, the ground. So much
to witness and all of it slipping away.


Perhaps then this explains my mixed feelings today. The washing away, the rain, unveiled my feelings about new starts: senior year, the Real World, etc. I do love beginnings. But I can't wipe away Wheeler's words: "All beginnings hurt/someone...So much/to witness and all of it slipping away."


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

...The 2nd (?) Post of the Day

Poem of the Day:
"Connubial" by Stephen Dunn
Poetry, February 2009


This weekend, two friends whom I met during my semester abroad came to visit me in Cambridge (see the postscript on last night's entry). Their visit has been a lot of fun, and our hangovers were cured enough to attend the Red Sox game tonight! Needless to say I drank water.

Although I have known Kiley and Conor only since January, they know me extremely well. When you share various hostel rooms with people you become very close, very quickly. They have seen me warped with bed bugs. They have seen me fresh out of the shower. They have seen me step off of an overnight bus into Prague, working with four hours of sleep and a crooked neck.

Dunn writes of a woman whom he is getting to know; she is doing the same of him. His short poem is below, in full:


Because with alarming accuracy
she’d been identifying patterns
I was unaware of—this tic, that
tendency, like the way I’ve mastered
the language of intimacy
in order to conceal how I felt—

I knew I was in danger
of being terribly understood.


Whereas Dunn is cognizant of this process, the process of one person becoming intimately aware of another, I was not. And now I have wonderful friends who know me better than most. I feel much less frightened than I do contented. I also, most notably, feel humbled.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Dancer vs. Musician

Poem of the Day:
"Horizon of Feet" by Philip Dacey


Horizon of Feet

"I hate dancers. Well, I don't really hate them,
but they're not musicians. They just count beats,
oblivious to the music. They wouldn't know a theme
if it bit them. They're arithmetician-athletes."

We're sitting, cooling off, after racquetball,
and I've asked the principal flutist of the New York
City Ballet Orchestra, Paul Dunkel,
to solo in words, to talk about his work.

"Musicians are there to serve the music, not
vice-versa, as with dancers. Think of us
as the composer's lawyers, and our job's to put
forward for our client the best possible case.

"But playing for dancers we're little more than
drummers in a circus, just there to highlight
with sound the dog whose trick it is to run
and jump through a flaming hoop: drumroll, rimshot.

"Likewise, some composers think they're tailors,
writing to order. They make the music fit
the dancing. Four extra steps? Then add two bars.
I call that music-as-Armani-suit.

"The truth is dancers and musicians live in two
different worlds. They're like passengers and pilots
on an airplane, and the conductor's the steward who
talks to them both and connects the dots.

"But Balanchine combined those two worlds with ease.
Russian-trained dancers learn music, and Mr. B.
played both viola and piano, would get ideas
at the keyboard for his choreography.

"My girlfriend used to dance, and when we go
to dance performances we disagree
on everything. She'll say the music's too slow,
I'll say the dancers are too fast; I see

"with my ears, she hears with her eyes. Or I'll say
a female dancer's too thin, and she'll say not.
But one thing we agree on: in his heyday,
Edward Vilella was just right; that is, hot.

"A guy's guy. Tough. I never heard Eddie whine.
He boxed—and learned fast footwork in the ring.
Was always revved, a Harley-Davidson.
Just did his work; let his feet do the talking."

"Vilella could be one of Whitman' s roughs,"
I say, and imagine the poet's ghost, eyes
wide, front row, watching the dancer do his stuff
while partnering Patricia McBride in Rubies.

"Walt leaned and loafed, didn't he? Like the faun.
In fact, we're rehearsing Afternoon today.
Setting the tempo's the catch. The dancers want one,
the musicians want another. They'll win, we'll play.

"Speaking of time ... " He stands to check the clock.
"Those games were long. I'm late. And outta here."
He waves, heads down the hall, then stops, turns back
and adds a coda before he disappears:

'I'm titling my memoir Dancing On My Head.
That sums up playing for dancers in the pit.
Once, I didn't recognize a dancer who said
she knew me. I told her, 'Let me see your feet.'"


An informative conversation within itself.



Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey


P.S. This note was written at 3 AM on Saturday, August 21. I mean for it to serve as the entry for Friday, August 20. Due to visiting friends, 6 rounds of beers, and difficulty hailing a cab I got home very late last night and Blogspot records the date automatically. I blame the booze -- a likely culprit.

On Seeing Small Clothes

Poem of the Day:
"There's a War in My Country" by Yael Shinar
The Carolina Quarterly, Summer 2010


Today, following my internship, I made a visit to the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art). Thursdays are free after 5 PM. I was there at 4:57 PM. My promptness nearly cost me.

One of the exhibits featured the work of New York-based artist Charles LeDray. His pieces are domestic miniatures, mostly clothing and houseware. For instance, there was glass case upon glass case of tiny vases. There was small suits and teeny trousers. The outfits were not cutesy, like those of a doll. They were more jarring, unnatural in their small scale.

Shinar's poem tries to make sense of war through ideas of evolution, humanity, and the earth. She writes, "In the Levant, human violence appears late/in prehistory./A slit in the sternum, a knick in the skull—/the worn, warm skeleton,/unearthed & stained/with millenia's diverse/mineral sediment" (lines 1-7), portraying humankind's violent tendencies as damaged fossils, which at one time were rotting corpses. In this first section of her poem Shinar -- who upon "Googling," I discovered to be a Cambridge resident -- pays careful attention to minute details of human anatomy; she is an archeologist uncovering a body.

During my museum visit today I felt the scope from which Shinar speaks. I was an observer removed, looking down upon these small articles of clothing, arranged for my viewing, and arranged, in many ways, in anticipation of my judgment.

Shinar is stepping back from her own people, and looking just as I have. Her conclusions are more relevant, as they draw conclusions about the state of humanity today. I merely wondered if LeDray could make some of his shirts in my size.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey


P.S. Happy Birthday to a beautiful Patricia McGlinchy. Sometimes I think you're the only person who reads this = )

Toni Morrison, Julia Child

Poem of the Day:
"Creationism" by Major Jackson
Holding Company

Today I found Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon" among our cookbooks. I didn't know that Morrison was a chef, or that "Song of Solomon" was something edible (dear me, what would this even taste like?).

For me, the close of Jackson's poem calls forth another of Morrison's novels, "Beloved."


Creationism

I gave the bathtub purity and honor, and the sky
noctilucent clouds, and the kingfisher his implacable
devotees. I gave salt & pepper the table, and the fist
its wish for bloom, and the net, knotholes of emptiness.
I gave the loaf its slope of integrity, the countertop
belief in the horizon, and mud its defeated boots.
I gave morning triumphant songs which consume my pen,
and death its grief which is like a midsummer thunderclap.
But I did not give her my tomblike woe though it trembled
from my white bones and shook the walls of our home.


God. I can't stop thinking about a Morrison cookbook: "Vengeful Daughter Vegetable Roast" and "Ugly Pecola Pineapple Bake."


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Returning, Despite the Ill Reward

Poem of the Day:
"Ravens Hiding in a Shoe" by Robert Bly

Excerpt from "Ravens Hiding in a Shoe"

There is something that men and women living in houses
Don't understand. The old alchemists standing
Near their stoves hinted at it a thousand times.

Ravens at night hide in an old woman's shoe.
A four-year-old speaks some ancient language.
We have lived our own death a thousand times.


This summer has been atypically busy, and at times more stressful than the season would suggest. With a job, an internship and occasional stints as a babysitter of a 5-year-old boy, I have had little downtime. But, I haven't been unhappy. I have thoroughly enjoyed my internship, love the people I met at my job, and have watched countless episodes of The Ninja Turtles. It's a surprisingly well-written television show.

I may have little to show at the end of the summer (paying back the rent, a small online publication) but I wouldn't change my humid months spent in Boston.

Bly writes of those who return despite no call: "Each time we say, 'I trust in God,' it means/God has already abandoned us a thousand times" (lines 8-9). Faith is strengthened without an external beacon.

Bly stays with the church, constructing a line that is particularly relevant to our contemporary lives. He writes, "Mothers again and again have knelt in church/In wartime asking God t protect their sons,/And their prayers were refused a thousand times" (lines 10-12).

Bly's true motive behind this piece becomes lucid in his closing words. He addresses himself, writing, "Robert, you've wasted so much of your life/Sitting indoors to write poems. Would you/Do that again? I would, a thousand times" (lines 16-18).

Me too Robert, me too.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Memory Vultures

Poem of the Day:
"I Remember" by Ciarán Carson
On The Night Watch


Carson's poem focuses on memory, and the circling, self-validating nature of remembering. He writes, "I remember/you wore/a sprig/of eyebright/when first I/met you" (lines 1-6), quickly seating the poem in the realm of memory with past action ("met") and sequencing prepositions ("first"). Then, begins the circuitous voice. The word "remember" begins the poem, strikes it in the middle, and ends the piece: "remember when/at close/of day/I asked you/what it was/& you said/eyebright something/to remember/me by" (lines 7-15). Also, "eyebright" appears again, now having come full circle from the speaker's association, to the subject's association ("something/to remember/me by").

I have been extremely stressed lately. The future is looming -- the future after college. It's a wide vast field, but also maybe a pit. What do I fill it with? What do I plant? And, will anything grow?

I suppose one fills a 'pit of the future' with the seeds of the past. Eh, cliché? Maybe. But all clichés are just overtruths. And Carson's poem comes at a time when I'm mining memories and cultivating, or least trying to, a future.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

P.S. Carson is Irish and I studied him last semester. More memories for ya -- well, for me.

Nature: Ruthlessness and Beauty

Poem of the Day:
"Aubade with Eggs Breaking" by Dorothy Barresi
American Fanatics


I am going to post Barresi's entire poem without comment, but not because I am extremely tired or perhaps a little drunk (see yesterday's post). Rather, Barresi's poem is complex. Really complex. It embodies both the beauty of nature (see the opening stanzas) and the ruthlessness that by being inherent in nature, she classifies as most natural (think the natural order of species, survival of the fittest, etc.).

This is not a cop out. She just puts it best.


Aubade with Eggs Breaking

Imagine, love, the sea turtles lying on shore
pulsing from themselves

the soft-hard eggs,
pliant as a baby's skull, that glow slightly

as though they had been pressed through immaculate doorlight,
then abandoned, and so,

covered with sand
until the treadwheel hoists,

the weights, wheels, gears of the birth world
grind and strike the phantom pins

that spark the tides together,
no corporate malfeasance or reveries of regret,

no dimwitted democracies,
the earth purposed by a single ray of light.

It is not too much to see—is it?—
how the congeries of the living

convene even in the switchblade oat grass
hiding the nest

(a pleasant ruse—
only one in twenty eggs survive)

for the ancien régime of the dunes
and the use to which

nature is put, naturing,
keeping the hapless going

come raptors squalls tourists and the ant's
scurrilous attention.

Imagine all this persistence, love,
for we shall never see it ourselves.

We are in the lifeboat trapped battering oarless
just beyond the swells,

exhausted by our good manners in deciding, by a show of hands,
who shall be eaten next, and who
shall do the eating.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Tired. Bars. Drinks.

Poem of the Day:
"Donor(Wind)" by Hadara Bar-Nadav
Prairie Schooner, Summer 2010


Donor (Wind)
The throat is optional,
as is the larynx.
What small object
can you pull
through the pink?
Many things died
here: a nest, an oil
leak, a typewriter
ribbon's language
of bile and thread.
Spread my useless
parts in the city
dump, spleen
fondled by seagulls,
vertebrae plucked
by lonely men.
Tape my useless
parts together again
and I'm your dis
appearing shatter.
Your snowflake
in heat. Now feed
me to the wind
where I belong.


Beautiful poem. To bed.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Meeting Again in Cities

Poem of the Day:
"A Second Train Song for Gary" by Jack Spicer
Poetry, July/August 2008


Today I had lunch with a friend from my study abroad program. He was a close friend during my stay in Europe; he was one in a group of several that I traveled with through Spain and Portugal.

Spicer uses the word "strange" or a variant of it (i.e. "stranger") seven times in his poem. The piece begins, "When the trains come into strange cities/The citizens come out to meet the strangers" (lines 1-2). From these first lines the reader inhabits a room of loneliness and estrangement. Where are these "strange cities" and who are these "strangers"?

Last semester I spent a lot of time in "strange cities." Munich was too clean, Berlin too sprawling and uncertain about its identity. Porto was cheap, and where I contracted bed bugs. Prague was old, and strange in the way it hoarded its oldness.

Today it was nice to be in a (somewhat) familiar city, with a familiar friend with whom I'd once been a stranger -- those odd days of orientation week -- in a strange city.

Through to the poem's end Spicer maintains the sense of estrangement; "A Second Train Song for Gary" ends with four words: "In this strange city." Atop this floats a yearning to be un-estranged by the act of love. He writes, "I leave my love with you/I leave my love with you/In this strange city."


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

That Which Cannot Be Divided By Anything But One and Itself

Poem of the Day:
"Prime Number" Laurie Lamon
Without Wings


Lamon writes of warped human figures, scarred bodies much like, I suppose, the lonely tenants of prime numberhood. Also, many of the people about which she writes are disfigured while aboard public transit; there is the "man who has already/gone to his death in a subway" (lines 2-3) and the "woman sitting on a bus where two dozen/are seated at an intersection" (lines 9-10).

At first, I thought this poem was a perfect link to my diurnal public transportation experience. The bus by nature self-selects its passengers -- those who do not have a car, cannot afford a taxi, and cannot even afford the T (a bus ride is .50c cheaper than a ride on the subway) ride the bus. It is a strange and often sorrowful lot.

Therefore Lamon's poem seemed to perfectly reflect my understanding of bus-goers, as if she had spent a day with me, swiping her Charlie Card at each turnstyle. "AND," I thought, "I ride a PRIME NUMBER bus to my internship, bus 91. How more perfect could this get?!"

Alas, my math is not so great.

Apparently 91 is divisible by 13 and 7. Who knew?


Sincerely,
A Poem (Not a Math Problem) A Day Audrey

A Poem Unmarred by My Thoughts

Poem of the Day:
"None of This Could Be Metaphor" by Todd Davis
The Least of These


None of This Could Be Metaphor

The experts tell us dolphins strand themselves
when they become disoriented, injured or sick.
Yet such explanations fail as numbers grow.
Off the coast of Florida more than forty
belly themselves onto flats and sandbars.

As the tide goes out, leaving less than a foot
of the sea, more swim in. If the only stipulation
for beauty is color and form, these corals the sun
casts in rising and falling upon the lengths
of their sides, the lines of their backs, would suggest

a map, directions for a way back to the waters
where none of this could be metaphor, where
dolphins leap, not for some abstract notion
of joy, but because it feels good to lift the body
out of the arms of the sea, even if only

for a matter of seconds, to feel the flesh fall
back toward the current, the tide's movements
tugged by the moon, the taste of salt, the refraction
of light beneath the water's surface.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

P-mail (Poetry Mail)

Poem of the Day:
Marianne Burton's "Thanks for your email"
Poetry Wales, Summer 2010


I am in the preliminary stages of thought regarding life after college (chokes, then screams). I have been actively pursuing various fellowship applications and teaching abroad programs, sending daily inquiry e-mails like a carnivorous hound, nipping excitedly at the thought of avoiding The Real World for another year or two.

This daily correspondence plus a job and an internship has left me with little time to write down any poetic scraps of my own. This neglect makes me anxious.

Then I read Burton's poem. Aha! I have been writing poetry all along. P-mail, if you will.



Thanks for your email
(after Wang Wei)

You drove through Hallaton?
Do I want the news? You bet.

Outside our back bathroom,
is the greengage flowering yet?



The rhyme is subtle, the rhythm even more so. The e-mail (p-mail) is short, brief, but tells of an intimacy ("our back bathroom") that need not ask a lot of questions. There is a silence full of knowing in this short piece, a silence made stronger but not more impersonal by the mode of correspondence.

Perhaps all my e-mails are p-mails. I certainly pay close attention to diction and syntax, trying to come across as both eager but well-informed. But poetry? Yeah, I'll buy it.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Blue Blue Blue Blue Blue

Poem of the Day:
"Blue" by May Swenson
www.americanpoets.com


I have referenced the daily grind often. It is daily, and it is grinding. It is the sound of those hot, grinding subway cars as they slice the tracks, determined and single-minded. "Work, work, work," they screech; "sleep, sleep, sleep," I cry.

On my walk to work this morning, I took note of a phenomenon: the color blue. Business men love wearing blue shirts, crisp and tucked into khaki pants. They look like flocks of bluebirds, their caffeine-wings shuttering.

Swenson, as her title suggests, writes about the color blue. Her blue is intoxicating: "I sink in Blue-/black Rose-heart holes until you/blink" (lines 15-17). A sensuality marks the speaker's conception of the color, as Swenson writes, "I milknip your two Blue-skeined/blown Rose beauties, too, to sniff/their berries' blood, up stiff/pink tips" (lines 20-23). Swenson's blue has layers, romantic and sexual.

The flock of men I saw today, and whom I see everyday, were of a starched blue, ironed and impersonal. At the 9 AM call they disperse across the green of Copley Square -- a cerulean gaggle of memos.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

A Poem About Shampoo

Poem of the Day:
"Alberto VO5" by Aaron Belz
Lovely, Raspberry


The thing I like best
about Alberto VO5
Extra Body Shampoo
is not that it contains
nutrients, nor even
that it contains shine-
enhancing nutrients,
but the graceful way
it contains them—
which is the same way
you carry bitter regret,
my love, invisibly,
allowing it to work
its way naturally
through my hair.


What a roundabout way of insulting someone.

I use shampoo everyday (nearly). Therefore, on the surface this poem pertains to each and every one of my days here in Boston. It is, at face-value, an easily applicable poem and in terms of my blog's purpose, heaven-sent.

But I cannot say that I know anyone whose "bitter regret" has worked "its way naturally/through my hair." Thank goodness. That sounds mighty awful, and not an ideal shower experience.



I also condition, if you must know.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

White-Faced Ladies

Poem of the Day:
Sylvia Plath's "Lorelei"
The Colossus and other poems


Numerous times in this blog I have mentioned the street performers that grace Harvard Square. There is the older man who sings children songs from behind a large, box-shaped creature. There are the revolving casts of street hip-hop groups. And, there are the living statues.

These mime artists stand still for hours on end, dressed in elaborate costumes which often include body paint and other adornments that look extremely uncomfortable in the Boston summer heat.

One living statue in particular I pass often. She dresses as a marionette, a china doll whose movement is controlled by a wooden cross and strings. From what I can judge she is a very popular site among Harvard visitors.

Plath writes of her, in a way. Her well-documented obsession with death is vivid in "Lorelei" where she writes of a river calling her force, though "[i]t is no night to drown" (line 1). The river calls to her through female voices, siren-like figures, "their limbs ponderous/With richness, hair heavier/Than sculpted marble" (lines 12-14).

When I read Plath's poem today I immediately conjured an image of the living marionette from Harvard square. And, I saw her today, out of her rigid context.

I saw her at the yoga studio I frequent. Still in costume, she was talking to one of the desk workers. Their breezy tone led me to believe that they were good friends. She moved freely and happily, her strings gone, though she remained painted and doll-faced.

It was unnerving. I had never seen her move, let alone speak. Seeing this living statue as a living person made me feel that the day had been unhinged and layers of reality and unreality had been compounded and in some way tampered with -- having seen Inception two nights ago did not help mitigate these feelings.

Plath's women too do not to belong in a real world: "Sisters, your song/Bears a burden too weighty/For the whorled ear's listening" (lines 16-18). The message of their voices is too radical ("Your voices lay siege"). But unlike me, Plath welcomes these intoning apparitions. She ends her poem by calling them "great goddesses of peace" (line 35) although it is clear that they are insidious creatures, those who "lodge/On the pitched reefs of nightmare" (lines 23-24). And in her desire to meet them, her wish to die is clear: "Stone, stone, ferry me down there" (line 36).

And, Plath was eventually ferried down with her suicide in 1963. I suppose it is a sign of good mental health that I, unlike Plath, am unnerved by the introduction of strange beguiling creatures into my reality.

But then again, these 'strange beguiling creatures' are not imploring me to enter, stone-laden, a river.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

The Close of These Things

Poem of the Day:
"Snake" by Rachel Hadas
The Ache of Appetite


This is the final weekend in Boston for some of my friends; one has already left. I am here for 3 more weeks, knowing that Cambridge has much more appeal to me than Horsham, although I do miss my family. Nonetheless I am shocked at how quickly this summer has gone. Many days I still feel as if I have just returned home from Europe.

Perfectly enough, Hadas' poem begins, "Ends: of summer; time in the country; time/before departures" (lines 1-2) as she, with much more eloquence, sums up my concerns. Time moves too quickly, especially when the weather is beautiful and good friends are near.

Hadas personifies time passed. Or, should I say she animalizes it? Regardless she refers to time gone by as a snake. She writes, "Time/tapers to a snake that slides invisibly/off into the long grass of the world" (lines 2-4) and those who wait in the "long grass" for something to occur miss what has "already happened,/[as it] slithers/off into the brush without a sound" (lines 9-10).

Although Hadas' choice of reptile is a tad unnerving (am I really supposed to mourn for time passed unnoticed when it is embodied by a slithering snake?) her wording and line breaks are graceful and calm. Her description of "the long grass of the world" invokes the pastoral tradition, and somehow the presence of a snake does not undo this (Garden of Eden, maybe?).

Here's to thinking of time as a snake slithering away, and may our prayers be heard: the serpent better not bite.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

I Have To Wake Up in 5 Hours for Work

Poem of the Day:
Seamus Heaney's "A Hagging Match"
District and Circle

I never said this would be easy. Here is Heaney's poem:


Axe-thumps outside
like wave-hits through
a night ferry:
you
whom I cleave to, hew to,
splitting firewood.


Hm. It speaks for itself? Here's a nod to my closing eyelids and need to sleep...


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Much Needed: Rain

Poem of the Day:
"Breach" by Nicole Cooley
Breach


Cooley's poem is interwoven with dictionary entries for the word "breach." Her piece opens, "Like a mouth packed shut, the levee wants to open the act or a result of breaking; break or rupture it desires the water's fluorescence, the water's depth, the water's dirt an infraction ." Without indents Cooley's prose poem looks like a small square of words, the breach being not immediately visible (say, a large space of white within the black lines of text) and therefore the "breach" exists perhaps in her inclusion of dictionary definitions; they break up her own voice.



and so the water, no pale lace collar fashioned of delicate mud, no mistress of careful spilling, the water in a storm surge cracks the floodwall apart gap made in a wall, fortification, line of soldiers sound of a gun shot and shot, sound of a bomb blast a rift, a fissure, a severance of friendly relations



Today was scorching, unlike the cool and mild weekend we had. We need a rainstorm, perhaps equal in violence to the heat, to release this humidity and bring back the breeze. We need Cooley's "levee" to break -- but this time from the sky -- and to ease the unwelcome strength of these rays.

I'm lookin' to you, Cooley.

Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Curls, Girls

Poem of the Day:
"There was a little girl" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
PoetryFoundation.org


There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.


My hair is getting longer, and those ringlets are returning. I feel saucier because of this. Many a girl is defined by her hairstyle. Here's to some Shirley Temple bounce returning to my step/hair.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

Talking Across Ravines

Poem of the Day:
Coleman Barks' "Lightning Bugs and the Pleiades"
The Georgia Review, Summer 2010


Barks' poem is long. Masterfully spurred by the practice of catching of fireflies at a young age, his piece covers nearly a man's entire emotional life, -- the poem ends with this stanza:

They open, you know, as roses do, pine cones,
from being tightly wrapped in themselves
to being how we all might become
this very moment, pointy, sinewy,
and ready for the fire of someone else's presence.

The section of his piece that most intrigues me -- or in the case of this blog, most relates to my day -- is the following:

That was the dell where we children
ran after lightning bugs, little poets looking
for the right word, letting them light
on the backs of our hands, then scintillate
off, which is all they do for the fourteen days
of their short lives, with surely some sleep.

In this Barks describes a romanticized youth spent catching fireflies, analogizing the act into the process or writing poetry.

Tonight I had a lesson in words, specifically in speaking. While riding the T to my dance class I encountered a conversation in sign. A man and a woman, seemingly a romantic couple, sat across from one another on the subway, speaking (or signing) back and forth. The nearly empty train seemed abuzz with their motion...and what appeared to be their many jokes, as the woman laughed heartily, though soundlessly, for the entire ride.

I was made breathless by the sight of the two communicating. At first, I couldn't reason why lovers would sit across from one another. As I came to understand their situation in the world I understood that sitting further away from one another allowed them to communicate better. The canyon, the large gap between them, was not a hindrance but a necessity. She had to see his hands and mouth, he hers.

Barks too comprehends a connection between touch and words. He writes, "little poets looking/for the right word, letting them light/on the backs of our hands, then scintillate/off" (lines 30-33). In his words I see my signing couple, gesturing in the air like children running amuck after a sea of lightning bugs.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey

The Library and the People We Meet.

Poem of the Day:
"Refraction" by Phyllis Koestenbaum
Michigan Quarterly Review, Spring 2010


What's of greater interest to me is the preface to Koestenbaum's poem. It is a quote from Grace Paley, specifically from her short story "Wants," which follows a bizarre and elucidating serendipitous encounter with her ex-husband. Paley writes, and Koestenbaum replicates, "I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library." Thus begins a strange tale and a beautiful poem.

I have had many encounters with the library this summer. They call me often to tell me that my books are on hold. Yes, yes they do.

I've also written about Dorothy and Kitty a lot on this blog; this will be the last time I promise.

Today while taking a walk through Boston Common I spotted Kitty. Her head was down, she was carrying a folding chair, and she looked mighty determined. I imagine she was on her way to see Shakespeare in the Park ('Othello' is playing).

Alas, she was too far away to allow me to give her a proper "hello." Also, I said my goodbyes when we last met, at the July Book Club, so perhaps I was meant only to see her and not speak with her. Regardless, it was lovely.

There are people to be met at the library, people we don't want to see like Paley and her ex-husband, and there are those whom we don't know and with whom we develop a special, library-centered bond. It was nice to see Kitty one more time, and to be thankful again for our brief, but wondrous friendship.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey