The Best American Poetry

A Little Epiphany (by Nin Andrews)

I've been traveling lately, giving readings and meeting new people.  Which means I am tired a lot, so tired, I sometimes feel as if there's someone else traveling and giving the readings.  Meanwhile the real me is out of her body, watching and taking notes.

Occasionally, when I'm out of my body, I have a little epiphany. 

Usually I just say silly things.  This often happens during a Q and A session after a reading. Like the day I read with some fiction writers, and afterward an elderly man asked: Why do you write poetry instead of fiction?  Especially when there's no money in it?  It almost sounds to me like you could switch genres if you wanted to.

I don't know, I answered. That answer never seems to satisfy anyone.  So the man asked me again.  and then he asked me again.  So I finally realized I had to say something.

I told him my belief that each genre is like a different kind of lover.  Fiction is like a lover who talks too much in bed. My problem is that I'm sound asleep before I get to the good part.  Poets, by contrast, like to get on with things.   

Of course it was bullshit. And in a room full of fiction writers, I don't think it was a popular thing to say.

But I started to wonder afterwards. What if poetry were like a lover? What sort of lover would he/she be? A mistress? A spouse? A flirtatious asshole a woman can't help adoring in spite of herself?

More on this subject will follow. . .

-- Nin Andrews

"Jazz" [by Angela Ball]

Jazz

I’d like to know everything
A jazz artist knows, starting with the song,
“Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.”

Like to make some songs myself:
“Goodbye Rickshaw,”
“Goodbye Lemon Drop,”
“Goodbye Rendezvous.”

Or maybe even blues:

If you fall in love with me, I’ll make you pancakes
All morning.  If you fall in love with me
I’ll make you pancakes all night.
If you don’t like pancakes
We’ll go to the creperie.  If you don’t like pancakes
We’ll go to the creperie.
If you don’t like to eat, handsome boy,
Don’t you hang around with me.

On second thought, I’d rather find
The fanciest music and hear all of it.

I’d rather love somebody
And say his name to myself every day
Until I fall apart.

-- Angela Ball

From Night Clerk at the Hotel of Both Worlds by Angela Ball (University of Pitttsburgh Press).
And from The Best American Poetry 2001 (edited by Robert Hass)

"Conduit" Corner: William Waltz Presents a Poem by Sabrina Orah Mark

Assembling an issue of Conduit sometimes feels like building a giant electron telescope and pointing it toward deep space. We never know what our mad invention will reveal until we peer through the viewfinder. We do know that the efforts and imaginations of many are required to bring our collective dream into focus every six months. In the case of the current issue, “Humans ‘N Nature,” over forty people helped to calibrate its searching eye.

For the majority, it was their first time in Conduit, but for a dozen contributors it was their second or third or fourth time between our covers. Last week I mentioned the joy of finding a wildflower among the weeds. Another great pleasure is to champion, over time, a writer whose work we admire and whom is, presumably, fond of us.

One such poet is Sabrina Orah Mark. Three of our issues have featured her prose poems, including “The 10 Stages of Beatrice,” which can be found below and in her forthcoming book Tsim Tsum (Saturnalia Books). To our enormous satisfaction, “The 10 Stages of Beatrice” was selected by Heather McHugh for the Best American Poetry 2007.

Ms. Mark’s recurring characters, Beatrice and Walter B., inhabit a world fecund with Old World charm and inanimate objects of mysterious significance, and, in the process of rendering this world, Sabrina Orah Mark has created a timeless fable full of longing, humor, and tendernes

-- William Waltz

THE 10 STAGES OF BEATRICE

Stage 1. — Belonging.

In the first stage Beatrice is precisely labeled and timed. She is able to divise complex graphs, answer questions in the order that they're asked, and construct coherent narratives without nostalgia or actual fear. There is no display of loud sobbing, nor are there visions.

Stage 2.— Happy.

Beatrice, during the second stage, believes she is alive. The possibility that she is not alive, in this stage, never enters her mind. This stage is only possible if the spectacle comes to town.

Stage 3. — Walter B.

This stage is also called "the latch stage." It is Beatrice at her most historical and strange.

Stage 4. — Romance.

Beatrice is hunted, captured, and softly strung to a tree. In this stage words are used to intoxicate, supply, and deceive. These words are rarely interesting. Gifts are exchanged that are of no use.

Stage 5. — Dread.

Beatrice is covered in feathers and twigs. She believes she is a nest. This stage, if it occurs in winter, is also called "The Babies."

Stage 6. — Slice. 

The sixth stage often appears in Beatrice's hand like a long instrument with a blade at the end. She will eat cake, during this stage, until she has visions.

Stage 7. — Cryptozoology.

In the seventh stage Beatrice wears a green dress with large white pockets in which to store the evidence. If this stage is mingled with the second stage, ecstasy is achieved.

Stage 8. — Crowded.

Beatrice is behind glass. In this stage Beatrice is blurred by the humans who observe her without caution. 

Stage 9. — Poland.

Beatrice gathers her grandfather into her arms. She recites him from his memory. The ninth stage sounds like this: tsim tsum, tsim tsum, tsim tsum.

Stage 10. — Return.

In the final stage Beatrice watches Beatrice feed the babies with a spade.

-- Sabrina Orah Mark

The Cow People [Richard Garcia]

Once, rushing out of my apartment, some lines occurred to me and I jotted them down. I thought of it as a children’s poem, I titled it 'The City is so Big'.  It took me about thirty seconds to write it.

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZfENAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26

It has been published many times in readers, at the Middle School level. I have since written other poems for children, but not a whole book. On one level, the vocabulary and concepts are fairly easy, yet I also find writing for children difficult in a way I can’t quite explain. It is kind of like fishing: it involves luck.

There are poems written at children (too many) and poems written for children. I think

Donald Hall said somewhere that in the best work written for children, the writer is down on his knees on the carpet, goofing around with the kids, a kid himself. 

If you read the biographies of the classic children’s authors, it seems many were solitary, did not have children, and did not particularly like children, but were themselves rather childlike. It is said that Edward Lear was teething a second time at age forty.

Recently I have seen poems that are almost like another genre; they straddle the border between children’s poetry and adult poetry.  Perhaps this is a new development in the history of writing for children—or are they just poems that could be enjoyed by anyone at any age?

What Bee Did  
Julie Larios

Bee not only buzzed.
When swatted at, Bee deviled,
Bee smirched. And when fuddled,
like many of us, Bee labored, Bee reaved.
He behaved as well as any Bee can have.

Bee never lied. Bee never lated.
And despite the fact Bee took, Bee also stowed.
In love, Bee sieged. Bee seeched.
Bee moaned, Bee sighed himself,
Bee gat with his Beloved.

                             And because Bee tokened summer
                             (the one season we all, like Bee, must lieve)
                             Bee also dazzled.

You can hear this:
http://www.cortlandreview.com/issue/31/larios.html - 1

H
Natasha Sajé

O how we hanky panky harum
scarum in our happy home, dancing hootchy
kootchy. Sure, it makes for hugger mugger
but we give a hoot for happenstance.
the yard is full o' hound and hares; the door
adorned by hammer and sickle; in the closets, hand-
me-downs. If Hammurabi and his Queen come
by, we won't be hoity-toity,  we'll
offer haggis or humble pie.  Our bed
floats on hocus-pocus (our corpore
wholly habeas) and the kitchen hums
a hymn, Hail to Higgledy-Piggledly.
If the world can't call our hurly burly hunky
dory, let it hara-kiri if it dares.

This is my last post as guest blogger.  I have enjoyed it. I’ll leave you with a praise poem written for children.  It is published as a beautiful children’s book, illustrated by Randy Cecil.  You’ll want to get it.  It feels like a lucky poem to me.  I imagine that once the poet had the conceit and the pattern, the poem wrote itself.

And Here’s to You
David Elliot

Here's to the birds, the feather people. Birds.
Here's to the whoo ones, the cock-a-doodle-doo ones,
their-breasts-as-red-as-fire ones,
the sitting-on-the-wire ones. Oh, I love the birds.

Here's to the fish, the bubble people. Fish.
Here's to the spiny ones,
the river and the briny ones,
the toothy and the eely ones,
all squishy-squishy-feely ones.
Oh, I love the fish.

Here's to the bears, the hungry people. Bears.
Here's to the black ones,
the humps-on-their-back ones.
Here's to the white ones,
the swimming-through-the-night ones.
Oh, I love the bears.

Here's to the bugs, the leggy people. Bugs.
Here's to the stingy ones,
the weird and the wingy ones.
Here's to the funny ones,
the buzzing, making honey ones.
Oh, I love the bugs.

Here's to the cats, the purring people. Cats.
Here's to the creeping ones,
the get-you-when-you're-sleeping ones,
all country, wild and city ones,
the kitty-kitty-kitty ones.
Oh, I love the cats.

Here's to the dogs, the dreaming people. Dogs.
Here's to the howling ones,
the running, yipping, yowling ones,
all go-and-fetch-a-stick ones,
the lick, lick, lick, lick, lick ones.
Oh, I love the dogs.

Here's to the cows, the giving people. Cows.
Here's to the wooly ones,
the bonny and the bully ones.
Here's to the silky ones
and butter cream and milky ones.
Oh, I love the cows.

Here's to the frogs, the singing people. Frogs.
Here's to the bass ones,
the big-nothing-but-face ones.
Here's to little peeping ones
and lily pad and leaping ones.
Oh, I love the frogs.

Here's to the people, the people people. People.
Here's to the merry ones,
the bald and the hairy ones.
Here's to the Mom-and-Dad ones
and polka-dot and plaid ones.
Oh, I love the people.

And here's to you, the you person. You.
Here's to the sweet you,
the messy and the neat you,
the funny-way-you-eat you,
the head-to-your-feet you,
the bones-and-the-meat you,
the total and complete you.
Oh, how I love you, the you person,
you person you.
Yes, you. I love you.

"Urban Myth" [by Jamey Dunham]

Paul Muldoon selected Jamey Dunham's prose poem "Urban Myth" for The Best American Poetry 2005.

Urban Myth

            A couple awaiting the arrival of their first born delivers instead a ring-tailed lemur.  They are beside themselves.  The father beats the obstetrician with clenched fists.  He curses the nurses and flings himself to the floor bawling.  The mother stands up on the table and denounces God.  The next day they go home.  The lemur eats all of the houseplants and defecates in the sink.  It refuses to come down from the refrigerator and keeps them up all night chasing flies along the window screens.  The parents are mortified, but being optimistic people they remain patient.  They dress the lemur as a boy and name it Colin.  They send it to the finest schools and indulge it with every extravagance.  Finally their hard work pays off.  One morning upon entering the nursery they find a neat stack of money in the lemur’s place.

-- Jamey Dunham

Jamey Dunham has a new book of prose poems: The Bible of Lost Pets. Watch for it!

From the Archives

Here's what we were writing about one year ago today:

Tough Sledding Versus Clear Sailing

Summers fall into two categories for investors: tough sledding and clear sailing. Clear sailing is when things are as they should be: light blue sky, nice little sailboat on Buzzard's Bay, with breeze enough for going out and coming back, the Red Sox are in first place but looking over their shoulders at the Yankees, and you sit back and feel pretty good about your GE, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Cisco, and Pepsi.

Unfortunately this summer looks like it's the other kind: tough sledding, when despite the summer heat (92 in New York City today) every step feels like your dragging a sled up a snow-filled slope for the thrill of chuting down later as fast as stock prices tumbled last Friday.

Oil prices per barrel and gasoline prices per gallon are still going up, unemployment is up, airlines are up in the air about how to deal with a whole Sunday Times of bad news, the Dow goes down four hundred points and NASDAQ sheds about fifty, and even GM is thinking twice about the wisdom of mass producing the Hummer.

In such a climate it makes sense to own rails, which run on coal and therefore benefit from the travails of the trucking industry. Warren Buffett has bought a bunch of rails including Burlington Northern and Norfolk Southern. Makes sense to me.

In View of the Fact [by Stacey Harwood]

    Just last Tuesday we got the call that David's mother had taken a turn and that she was being moved from home hospice care to the hospice wing of her local hospital.  I knew it was likely that we would have to drop everything and rush to Florida to be at her side.  On the heels of this news, snippets of Sharon Olds' "The Race" kept running through my mind. (Listen to the recording if you can.  Or read it here.) This had happened once before -- the recollection of Olds' poem -- when David and I rushed home from Copenhagen, having arrived there just two days earlier, to be with Anne during a medical crisis in August 2001.
   Later last Tuesday, David St. John posted about how often strangers, after a loss, have asked for his help in finding a poem from their past, because they know it will help them through a difficult time.  St. John's post made me think, first, how lucky the callers were to reach by chance such a generous and knowledgeable poet, and second, how lucky I am to have poems available to me just when I need them most. 
   Today is Anne Lehman's funeral.  And as I make the preparations for the post-funeral shiva I find myself returning to this poem by A. R. Ammons:

In View of the Fact

The people of my time are passing away: my
wife is baking for a funeral, a 60-year-old who

died suddenly, when the phone rings, and it's
Ruth we care so much about in intensive care:

it was once weddings that came so thick and
fast, and then, first babies, such a hullabaloo:

now, it's this that and the other and somebody
else gone or on the brink: well, we never

thought we would live forever (although we did)
and now it looks like we won't: some of us

are losing a leg to diabetes, some don't know
what they went downstairs for, some know that

a hired watchful person is around, some like
to touch the cane tip into something steady,

so nice: we have already lost so many,
brushed the loss of ourselves ourselves: our

address books for so long a slow scramble now
are palimpsests, scribbles and scratches: our

index cards for Christmases, birthdays,
Halloweens drop clean away into sympathies:

at the same time we are getting used to so
many leaving, we are hanging on with a grip

to the ones left: we are not giving up on the
congestive heart failure or brain tumors, on

the nice old men left in empty houses or on
the widows who decide to travel a lot: we

think the sun may shine someday when we'll
drink wine together and think of what used to

be: until we die we will remember every
single thing, recall every word, love every

loss: then we will, as we must, leave it to
others to love, love that can grow brighter

and deeper till the very end, gaining strength
and getting more precious all the way. . . .

                                     by A. R. Ammons
                                     first appeared in Epoch
                                     (reprinted in The Best American Poetry 2005)

Mother's Day [from "The Daily Mirror"]

The brain has chambers
on different floors
a warren of offices
upstairs a library
a wine cellar below
but the soul is simple
like a mother who
packs your lunchbox
and you walk home
wearing the raincoat
she made you take
though it is sunny
and mild my mother
when I was four was
talking to another
mother and I strayed off
and went to the park
and found someone to
walk me home where I sat
on a car waiting for
her to come back she was
frantic but when she saw
me she laughed the soul
is a hungry boy eating
her soup in the kitchen

-- David Lehman

Note: "May 6" from The Daily Mirror: A Journal in Poetry (2000). May 6 1996, when this poem was written, was Mother's Day.

Andrew Marvell

    Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) has been called “the greatest minor poet in the English language.” There’s plenty of competition for this curious distinction, but the case for Marvell is strong, especially if you like ambiguity and elegance in equal measure.
    Marvell happens to be one of the great mystery men of English letters. He had a gift for foreign languages, was an avid fencer, and lived a shadowy life on the continent that led to speculation that he was a spy or double agent. For twenty years he served as a member of parliament. He did not produce a large amount of poetry, but what he wrote was, as Spencer Tracey said of Katharine Hepburn’s anatomy, “cherce.”
    Probably Marvell’s most famous poem is “To His Coy Mistress.” Never was a declaration of lust more logical. Carpe diem: We won’t be young forever, so let us make merry while we can. But Marvell develops the argument as one would a syllogism. He begins with wild hyperbole. If we had “world enough and time,” he would woo the maiden “ten years before the flood” and not mind if she should turn him down until the second coming.
     But with the inevitable “but,” the tone changes drastically from genial to threatening: “But at my back I always hear / Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.” And now Marvell warns the lady that someday “worms will try / that long-preserv’d virginity” of hers – a grim image you’d not expect to find in a seduction poem. The stanza closes with a sarcastic couplet for the ages: “The grave’s a fine and private place, / But none I think do there embrace.”
    The third and final stanza clinches the argument as the lovers clinch. The image of the lovers rolled into a ball concludes the poem in an outburst of violence. But the violence is contained; Marvell pushes the couplet to the breaking point: “Let us roll all our strength and all / Our sweetness up into one ball, / And tear our pleasures with rough strife / Through the iron gates of life.” T. S. Eliot liked the image so much that he lifted it for “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
            When Oliver Cromwell returned to England after subjugating Ireland in 1650, Marvell greeted him with “An Horatian Ode” that set some sort of record for calculated ambiguity. This stately, grave ode can be read as straightforward praise of the conquering hero who had beheaded King Charles I and would, as the poem predicts, go on to suppress the Scots. But subtle critics have propounded the opposite interpretation, contending that the ode has a secret royalist agenda and is deeply critical of Cromwell. And so this mid-seventeenth-century poem became a perfect object lesson in mid-twentieth-century literary criticism.
            Read Marvell’s “The Garden” for his double vision of paradise lost and paradox gained: “Two paradises ‘twere in one / To live in paradise alone.” Before you declare your disagreement with this proposition, consider the mathematical metaphor Marvell employs. And then re-read the first three chapters of Genesis.
             Possibly no one, not even Pope, wrote couplets more complex and witty than Andrew Marvell.
-- DL

"Shanked on the Red Bed" (by Susan Wheeler)

Shanked on the Red Bed

 

The perch was on the roof, and the puck was in the air.

The diffident were driving, and the daunted didn't care.

When I came out to search for you the lauded hit the breeze

On detonated packages the bard had built to please.

The century was breaking and the blame was on default,

The smallest mammal redolent of what was in the vault,

The screeches shrill, the ink-lines full of interbred regret ––

When I walked out to look for you the toad had left his net.

The discourse flamed, the jurors sang, the lapdog strained its leash –– 

When I went forth to have you found the tenured took the beach

With dolloped hair and jangled nerves, without a jacking clue,

While all around the clacking sound of polished woodblocks blew.

When I went out to look for you the reductions had begun.

A demento took a shopgirl to a raisin dance for fun,

And f'r you, for me, for our quests ridiculous and chaste

The lead sky leered in every cloud its consummate distaste.

The mayors queued for mug shots while the banner rolled in wind
That beat at bolted windows and bore down upon the thin,

And everywhere warped deliverers got bellicose and brave,

When I walked out to find you in the reconstructed rave.

The envelopes were in the slots and paperweights were flung.

When I came down to seek you out the torrents had begun

To rip the pan from handle and horizons from their shore,

To rip around your heady heart looking there for more.

 

-- Susan Wheeler

 

from The Best American Poetry 1998  (ed. John Hollander)