Words, words, words

Robert Hass began his career in poetry in the 1970s. At the time, many American critics, including his mentor, Yvor Winters, were exploring a new way of looking at literature as an “act of moral judgment.” While some writers responded to this idea by moving away from creative endeavors and into explorations of philosophy and linguistics, Hass nurtured his poetic talent. In 1979, he published Praise, his highly accomplished second book of poetry. In it, he uses modernist symbolism to explore the nature of language and its power as art. Stanley Kunitz writes that

“Reading a poem by Robert Hass is like stepping into the ocean when the temperature of the water is not much different from that of the air. You scarcely know, until you feel the undertow tug at you, that you have entered into another element.”

***

Transparent Garments

Because it is neither easy nor difficult,
because the outer dark is not passport
nor is the inner dark, the horror
held in memory as talisman. Not to go in
stupidly holding out dark as some
wrong promise of fidelity, but to go in
as one can, empty or worshipping.
White, as a proposition. Not leprous
by easy association nor painfully radiant.
Or maybe that, yes, maybe painfully.
To go into that. As: I am walking in the city
and there is whiteness of the houses,
little cubes of it bleaching in the sunlight,
luminous with attritions of light, the failure
of matter in the steadiness of light,
a purification, not burning away,
nothing so violent, something clearer
that stings and stings and is then
past pain or this slow levitation of joy.
And to emerge, where the juniper
is simply juniper and there is the smell
of new shingle, a power saw outside
and inside a woman in the bath,
a scent of lemon and a drift of song,
a heartfelt imitation of Bessie Smith.
The given, as in given up
or given out, as in testimony.

I once read that Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach is the most parodied work in English poetry (David Lehman, Best American Poetry 2007). Arnold’s speaker stands on the cliffs of Dover with his lover, looking out over the sea, questioning the underlying violence below love. It’s a classic.

It’s not surprising that Dover Beach is a popular subject for parody; what’s surpising is that some of those parodies are quite good. They don’t have Arnold’s gravitas, but they have a perspective that’s sometimes sorely lacking in poetry: a conscious yet free humor. In The Dover Bitch, Anthony Hecht lets that humor guide his contemporary version. It’s even good without the original.

The Dover Bitch

A Criticism of Life: for Andrews Wanning

So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, ‘Try to be true to me,
And I’ll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc.’
Well now, I knew this girl. It’s true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn’t judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She’s really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it’s a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come.
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d’ Amour.

 The Doldrum Fracture Zone

The place where sailors—though now open
to all professions—went to consider the mirage
of their own despair. Once, only sailors could
go there: the breezeless place,
the weed-choked and stinking sea plain
where they stalled for weeks, months. Today,
the Zone comes to us,
its great gray inertness dragged
like opaque knife wounds over each
who stands on a shore and calls it in,
dragged over him or her who believes his or her despair is
a mirage and not
a mirror. . . . That man
who still holds the handle of the mailbox open, its huge black mouth
having just swallowed
a letter that cannot be unwritten
which falls on a top of a pile of other such letters
in their white dresses
in the dark—that man has called it in.
There is a sound of tiny roots being torn,
and a water spider, skating smoothly over the Zone’s flat surface, sinks.

***

Thomas Lux was born in Northampton and has written prolifically for the last thirty years.His poems often dwell in the fantasies of everyday life, finding histories behind everything around him. “The Doldrum Fracture Zone” was published in The Street of Clocks (2001).

I met 3-time poet laureate Robert Pinsky this summer at the Aspen Summer Words writers’ workshop. He really intrigued me with the way he listens to poetry– for him, the heart of poetry is sound. This poem is from his most recent book of poetry, Gulf Music. He also writes a sporadic poetry column for Slate.

If the Dead Came Back, by Robert Pinsky

What if the dead came back not only
In the shape of your skull your mouth your hands
The voice inside your mouth the voice inside
Your skull the words in your ears the work in your hands,
What if they came back not only in surnames
Nicknames, names of dead settlement shtetl pueblo

Not only in cities fabled or condemned also countless dead
Peoples languages pantheons stupidities arts,
as we too in turn come back not only occulted
In legends like the conquerors’ guilty whisperings about
Little People or Old Ones and not only in Indian angles
Of the cowboy’s eyes and cheeks the Dakota molecules

Of his body and acquired antibodies, and in the lymphatic
Marshes where your little reed boat floats inches
Above the mud of oblivion O foundling in legends
The dead who know the future require a blood offering
Or your one hand accuses the other both lacking any
Sacrifice for the engendering appetites of the dead.

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

by Julie Sheehan

It’s Valentine’s, no time to window-gaze.
Across the way a woman leans westward,
smoking; another, two windows up and over,
steps back and shoulders her bag in one swift move.

Ready to go somewhere. And can they hear
the amateur saxophonist on the street
below, halting out “Moon River”? And can
they bear it? Valentine’s, no time to practice.

No time for alacrity lacked on instruments.
I can stay angry for hours at a simmer,
explosive and chilly like an elaborate sauce.
The low sun flares up, glazing bricks to burnt orange,

windows to metal, then sinks as unambitious
browns assert themselves and rooms yield depths
to the sun’s off-angle. Interiority
instructs me: turn on all the lights.

The saxophonist stumbles into the theme
from The Odd Couple and I swear to myself
I am not making this up. I will make up,
buy roses, call the office where your blinds

divulge through elegant Venetian slats
the fumarole: a Hudson lit to boiling
gold and, banking it, a Jersey kilned
adobe. Hues both poisonous and gorgeous.

***

I picked up Julie Sheehan’s new(-ish) book, Orient Point, at the most iconic and satisfying bookstore I’ve ever entered: City Lights, in San Francisco, owned by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. They had an entire level devoted to poetry, half of which was Beat poetry, with signs all over that said “Sit down and read a book.” I did just that and found myself marveling at Sheehan’s subtle authority over the page. I’m particularly impressed by household objects’ full presence as characters in the scene along with the speaker. Sheehan manages to engage with the scene itself as well as the people in it, all “poisonous and gorgeous.”

I’ll be back at Amherst in less than a week. Expect regular posts then. Right now I’ve written this poetry post to celebrate finishing my thesis proposal and express my unbridled excitement for the year ahead.

Yep, that’s the high today in Phoenix. But luckily, I’ve found refuge from the heat with my fellow Zu ‘09 Laura Bixby. For the past few days, I’ve been sleeping on her pull-out couch, playing with her dogs, and chilling here before I head out to California tomorrow (where I’ll be camping at Joshua Tree National Park for 1 or 2 days, depending on how long I can stand it).

Here, the color of summer is brown. Cactus flowers are gone by June, and the sandy soil is only contrasted by the sky, saguaros, and various types of brush vegetation that grow close to the ground. The saguaros stand like desert soldiers, a militia at attention on the mountainsides. Laura’s been telling me all sorts of stories about the mountains, the kind of folklore I love to hear and look for in the land. I particularly like the miners’ legends. Lost gold, etc. is pretty thrilling, and they even name mountains and recreation areas after the stories about them. I also like that there are mountains called The Superstitions.

So tomorrow, California. I’ll go from Joshua Tree to San Diego, where my brother will meet me on Saturday. Then we’ll drive up the coast to San Francisco. That’s all the plan we have for now; we’ll figure the rest out as we go. California folks, I’ll call you when I’m near you.

I’ve been waiting to get to the ocean all summer, but I’m going to miss the desert. Such an open yet mysterious and deceptive landscape. The sun bakes me out of the mid-days here, but the scenery more than makes up for it.

I got to Santa Fe in a bit of a frenzy last night, but man, this city has already gotten me into its slow groove. The art! The parks! The farmer’s market! The living is good here.

Yesterday, I spent the morning at the Taos Pueblo Reservation, where I saw ruins and walked through basically a craft market disguised as an actual village. But I bought an ocarina there. An ocarina is a small, round clay flute with a mouthpiece and 5 holes that vary in size. So I’ve been playing with that quite a lot today.

Then I had a bit of a mix-up about where I was supposed to be sleeping last night (not in the hotel I’d been in, apparently). But luckily, Laura Bixby came to my rescue and secured me a bed in her grandparents’ guest house in Santa Fe, my next destination. So I had a lovely sunset drive down to Santa Fe and arrived at Ann and Harry Bixby’s house, where I had great food and company. Ann was sporting a fantastic pair of peace sign earrings.

This morning, Harry advised me that I’d want to stop by the Santa Fe farmer’s market. So, I went. On the way in, there was a group playing these huge wooden xylophone-type instruments (I don’t pretend to know the difference between all those things). They were awesome, and then the first booth I got to in the market was giving away free home-grown iced tea! Woohoo market! I was looking for cherries, but I didn’t find any at all. Sad, but certainly a great time. There were so many people there, all looking for fresh produce, meat, dairy, etc. from the area on a Saturday morning. Glorious.

So I have another free day before my conference here starts. I suspect I’ll be writing, hiking, and hoping this big sky will keep raining down epiphanies.

At about 10 this morning, I crossed into New Mexico. After leaving Telluride on Monday, I went to Mesa Verde, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and Great Sand Dunes national parks. Each was fun in its own way– my geologic nerdiness was out in full form. I spent a lot of time driving and hiking, always moving, always going somewhere. My Chaco tan is getting out of control.

So here I am, in a new state: stationary. I’ve cruised through Taos for a few hours, and it’s not too big, so it looks like I’ll be sitting still more than I have been lately. The city’s architecture is incredibly disorienting. Since everything’s made of adobe, it all looks the same. I’ve gotten lost on foot a few times already. But when I’m driving, I can see the mountains and I can use them to figure out where I am. Reminds me of Quito.  Another thing that’s kind of exciting: New Mexico feels so different from the east coast. To me, it looks more like Mexico/Central America than the North America I know. The border crossed this place a long time ago.

During this journey, I’ve been thinking a lot about, well, what I’m traveling through: America. The other night, at the Best Western in Montrose, CO where I escaped from the heat, I had one of my favorite kinds of interactions. After the receptionist (white hair, smile, constantly talking) took my name, she asked me where I was from. I gave my long answer: I go to school in Massachusetts, and I’m from Memphis, TN. She asked, “Is it bad there?”

“Not so much  in Massachusetts,” I said, “but in Memphis it’s scary.” It’s something that’s been on my mind for awhile. When I went home for 10 days at the beginning of June, the city I grew up in had changed. There were “for sale” signs on about thirty percent of houses in middle-class areas. Buildings down the street from my Grandma’s house had been torn down. There was a bank robbery around the corner from my house, in a white, upper middle class neighborhood. My mom’s purse was stolen out of her minivan at a soccer game.

I told the woman (Sylvia, she introduced herself) that I was nervous about entering the job market, and she said she was nervous about friends defaulting on their mortgage. But then she said, “But maybe it will get better. Maybe Obama will win.” She then went on a 5-minute speed lecture about Obama. I ate it up, showed her my bumper sticker, and almost hugged her.

So now I’m here in Taos for a week, attending my second poetry master class. It starts tomorrow afternoon. I still have 60 pages of poetry to read for it. But thanks to my practice in Sofield’s contemporary poetry seminar sophomore year, I feel pretty confident it’ll get done. Love to my favorite Cape Codders this week.

I’ve fallen in love with the name “Telluride.” It’s so full and round in my mouth; I can’t stop saying it in my mouth, in my head.

I didn’t mean to come here. From Moab, I drove down to Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border. Lake Powell used to be Glen Canyon, before the Army Corps of Engineers put a dam on the Colorado River. It took 17 years to fill the canyon to make the lake that’s there now. I thought that it would be good to enjoy myself at this desert reservoir, relax and swim for a few days. Usually, swimming is one of my favorite summer pastimes. But at the lake, the water was, well, polluted. There were speedboats everywhere and the water smelled like gasoline in places. Little slicks of oil floated around me as I swam.

I was pretty sure I could find a better swimming spot the next day, but that night proved too much to bear. It didn’t get cool enough to sleep until midnight. I looked at my road atlas during the heat and saw Telluride within striking distance. I woke up at 6 AM the next morning and headed out, climbing mountain roads for a glorious 5 hours until I reached this place. I found a free campground on a mountainside, by a lake about 20 minutes from town. The altitude here (10,000 ft at my campsite) is a bit debilitating, but I’ve been indulging in some of my favorite Amherst-ish activities: hanging out in cafes until I get kicked out and reading on the town green. I also got to see a free blues concert (in the rain) yesterday. This morning I read half the Sunday Times at a cafe/bookstore, sitting next to two women talking about their NGO in Ethiopia. So Telluride’s treating me well.

The only place I really get to talk to people these days is at bars. Last night, a woman sitting next to me told me that I was brave for doing this trip on my own. At the moment, I was feeling particularly weak. It was raining, and I really didn’t want to go back to my tent and huddle in my sleeping bag, dreaming of a warm shower. But when she invited me out with her friends for the night, I suddenly knew that wasn’t where I wanted to be. I wanted my tent, my sleeping bag, my books: I wanted my solitude. It was time to pretend to be brave. And who could be lonely with so many books for company?

Tomorrow, I’m off to Mesa Verde. I’m hoping that the settlement there will feel foreign in a way my stops so far haven’t. I’ll see.

So I’m at Arches National Park (well, at the moment, technically in a cafe in Moab). I think if anywhere is going to teach me to appreciate sand, this is it. The sandstone formations are SWEET, but after arriving here at 7:30 AM from Aspen to get a campsite and then hiking for a couple hours, it got too hot to move. At 10 AM, my car thermometer read 95 degrees and I was unable to hike in more than a sports bra and shorts. My camelbak was sticking to my shoulders. Thus, after some consideration of the intentions of this trip, I decided to camp out tonight and then stay in a hotel for the next two nights. Lame, I know, but I can’t hide out in this cafe for 3 days during the mid-day heat. Also, I don’t smell that great :).

Other than the ghastly heat (bochornoso, I’d call it in Spanish), all’s well. Aspen was fun, especially the 3 days I spent camping just outside the town. And now I’m here being romanced by the desert. Hopefully I’ll also find something to do in Moab, since I haven’t yet found the hippie mecca everyone talks about. This cafe is a start, but I have a feeling there’s more. In any case, the writing and reading are going well when it’s cool enough to sit outside. It feels good to be out of ritzy Aspen, into somewhere new.