The Best American Poetry

"Mount Washington Kroger is Out of Bananas”

"Mount Washington Kroger is Out of Bananas”

Yes, we have no bananas today,
but Cheetos and nacho chips—                                                                                                         
seven different brands—and instant
mashed potatoes complete with sodium                                                                                                  
acid pyrophosphate, and sodium bisulfite.
We have gummi bears and red cinnamon                                                                                         
candy hearts.  Ranch dressing, a whole row
of plastic-wrapped, sliced meat. Line up
for your diacetyl, your free glutamic acid,
your butylated hydroxyanisole.
We have everything but bananas,
those bright phallic bunches, those wrapped
wands of fruit-meat, potassium
hunger bombs, soft, sweet monkey crack.

Gylys writes:
"The poem emerged after my friend Jennifer sent the quotation that is the title as a writing prompt. It’s a bit of a playful rant against processed food.  I wrote it with that old Louis Prima song, “Yes, We Have No Bananas” running through my head.  so the playful energy probably emerged from that tune as much as from the quote."

The poem first appeared in the Crab Orchard Review in March 2019, and then in Gylys's most recent book, Body Braille (Iris Press, 2000). The poem will also asppear in the forthcoming book The Conversation Turns to Wide-Mouthed Jars.

Robert McDowell: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Pissed at Bukowski

 

I woke up at 2 a.m. pissed at Bukowski.

I rolled over half expecting to find him there

Snorting with his deviated septum,

Farting louder than the floor fan,

 

And if I had I would have killed him.

But the bed was empty except for me,

And I remembered that the poor old guy

Was already dead. I thought of his smell,

 

Then, not now, and almost made myself

Sick with it—that old man stink. Of course,

Bukowski smelled like an old man in his crib.

He got a head start in the stink game.

 

Don’t cringe when you read this.

Bukowski wouldn’t. He loved talking about

Smells, the fouler the better.

He didn’t believe in limits and gardenias.

 

He loved his women insulting, stinging,

With beer breath and a three-day stink

All over them. In a dark bar

He always took the back booth,

 

The smelly one next to the john. 

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Robert McDowell directed Story Line Press for 22 years and is the author of two new books: Emily & Virginia, a novel, and Sweet Wolf: Selected & New Poems with Introduction by Chad Abushanab.         

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                                    Gabe Leonard, Hard Thing in a Simple Way.  Mixed Media on Canvas.

                                   “An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way, and an artist says a hard thing in a simple way” – Charles Bukowski

Navigating Through Dreams [by Lera Auerbach]

Japanese Ink on Paper © Lera Auerbach

1. The Air We Breathe

This year we all learned how to wash hands. Perhaps, we didn’t learn but only made a lot of noise. Washing hands, sanitizing, staying in quarantine, balancing lockdowns. Victims of our vocabulary, we hold on to the relative calm. Death is everywhere, but it is also nowhere; it’s the air itself.

The ghosts are shimmering as if trying to conceal tiny openings in the world’s material – the porous nature of time and space. This year we learned not only to wash hands but to count our loved ones. Just in case they disappear through an invisible opening and slip into another realm.

 

2. The Need To Function

The world is a gigantic tuning fork, connecting distant galaxies the way overtones connect to the fundamental tone. Each moment everything is being created anew with each vibration.

One wouldn’t have any problems if one didn’t have to exist in the world. If you are just a soundwave and not a particle – do you have any concerns?  No. The problem is that we exist as both – soundwaves and particles at the same time, and more often, we choose to behave like particles, thus needing to function somehow.

The pull of gravity is at its strongest in the morning when you just returned from the abyss of nothingness. (The ghosts are shimmering as if trying to conceal tiny openings in the world’s material.) 

 

3. Navigation

What happens to the world when we are asleep? We assume that everything stays the same – the room, for instance, doesn’t turn into another room. The furniture remains with all its scratches or other peculiarities. We assume it is the same furniture, but how can one be sure of anything?

In the Quantum Universe, it is quite possible that in our sleep, we slip into some parallel dimension and wake up in a different universe altogether that only looks the same but is not. This is how and why divorces happen. One day, you may realize that the person next to you only appears to be the one you fell in love with, but in fact, is a stranger from an unfamiliar realm.

How to navigate safely through dreams?

(This year, we learned not only to wash hands but to count our loved ones. Just in case they disappear through an invisible opening and slip into another realm. Just in case…)

 

Yolanda Wisher: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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5 South 43rd Street, Floor 2

Sometimes we would get hungry for the neighborhood.
Walk up the sidewalk towards Chestnut Street.
Speak to the Rev holding the light-skinned baby,
ask his son to come put a new inner tube on my bike.
Cross Ludlow, past the mailbox on the corner,
Risqué Video, Dino's Pizza, and the Emerald Laundromat.
The fruit trucks tucked into 44th Street on the left,
house eyes shut with boards, fringes of children.
Once we went into a store sunk into the street,
owned by a Cambodian woman. She sold everything,
from evening gowns to soup. Over to Walnut and 45th,
where the Muslim cat sells this chicken wrapped in pita,
draped in cucumber sauce. The pregnant woman
behind the counter writes our order out in Arabic.
We grab a juice from the freezer, some chips,
eye the bean and sweet potato pies.

Back into the hot breath of West Philly, sun is setting.
The sky is smeared squash, tangerines in a glaze.
Three girls and one boy jump doubledutch. A white man
hustles from the video store with a black plastic bag.
We look for money in the street, steal flowers
from the church lawn. The shit stain from the wino
is still on our step. Mr. Jim is washing a car for cash.
John is cleaning his rims to Buju Banton.
Noel is talking sweetly to the big blue-eyed woman.
Linda, on her way to the restaurant. The sister
in the wheelchair buzzes by with her headphones on.

One night, a man was shot and killed on this block,
right outside our thick wood door. But not today.
Today is one of those days to come home from walking
in the world, leave the windows open, start a pot of
black beans. Smoke some Alice Coltrane. Cut up
some fruit, toenails. Hold on to the moment
as if time is taking your blood pressure.

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Philadelphia-based poet, singer, educator and curator Yolanda Wisher is the author of Monk Eats an Afro (Hanging Loose Press, 2014) and the co-editor of Peace is a Haiku Song (Philadelphia Mural Arts, 2013). Wisher was named the inaugural Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania in 1999 and the third Poet Laureate of Philadelphia for 2016–17. A Pew and Cave Canem Fellow, Wisher was awarded the Leeway Foundation's Transformation Award in 2019 for her commitment to art for social change. Wisher taught high school English for a decade, served as Director of Art Education for Philadelphia Mural Arts, and founded and directed the Germantown Poetry and Outbound Poetry Festivals. She has collaborated with artists and organizations to create community-driven programs rooted in the practice of poetry as a public art, including a neighborhood poetry festival, literary takeovers of local museums, a series of poetry church services, and a poetic address to the nation. Wisher performs a unique blend of poetry and song with her band The Afroeaters and works as the Curator of Spoken Word at Philadelphia Contemporary. [pronouns: she/her/y'all]

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Block-flute [by Lera Auerbach]

 

Marianna and I are at a summer retreat.
I am five years old. I have a wooden recorder
with me, a block-flute. I blow out melodies.

My parents left – they have some urgent matters.
What urgent matters could there be during the summer?
I play my flute. Igor is here with us. 

He is a genius, a chess prodigy who has won
chess games against the former world champions.
He is my brother, and he has very long legs. 

When Igor walks, I must run after him like a dog.
I quickly get tired. Igor puts me on his shoulders.

I imagine myself as an eagle, a stormy petrel, a seagull.
Igor runs; I fly after him – I am the wind.

The wind plays the flute. Grownups lie.
I know – my grandma, Musenka, is dead.
That’s why my parents left.
I will never see her again. Ne-ver.

“Iga, do you know?” I ask, landing my flight.
 “No,” he answers seriously.
Igor is almost an adult. Grownups lie.
(He Knows)

“Sure, I Was Loved. . .” [by Anne Carson]

for Dimitris Papaioannou

I tame you.
(No you don’t).
You were nude.
You were intangible.
You were unconvincing.
You were vague.
You claimed you were born from angels.
You stank of the horrors of war.
You blazed with ruthless pride.
Your full, loose mouth blazed.
You had a fruit bloom.
You bloomed like a cannibal.
Ready to devour or be devoured.
Or both.
You had your portrait painted as a butcher’s block.
Yet you were not a still life.
You were meat but recently living.
You had come with your own legs.
I replaced your legs.
I replaced your crotch.
Crotches.
All of them.
You were ghosting around as if a mystery of Hymen.
I undressed you.
That is the only difference.
Beyond that there was little development between us.
I used crutches, stilts, evisceration, plaster casts.
I rooted your shoes.
I tilted the stage, I knocked it apart, I combined you with other genders.
I rolled up my sleeves.
I showed you no tenderness, we might as well have been sexual!
Or medical!
Or archaeologists!
I required you to clean up whatever mess we made.
I used the mess again next day.
I slowed your steps, inhibited your breathing, assaulted you with film score
music (waltz).
I littered the stage with open graves and you fell into them – hilarious!
I laughed at you!
I made you walk on your hands without oxygen or effective friends.
I made you build the floor you walked on.
I blew your clothes off.
I mangled your Orpheus scene.
I threw someone else’s thighs at you.
I doused you with the waters of Lethe.
I flattened you into a lozenge and stuffed you in my pocket.
I shot all the arrows of King Darius’ Persian army at you (fast!)
then made you pick them all up (slow).
I tossed your skeleton off its slab (it smashed).
I played with your skull.
I got you chasing a nostalgic scrap of paper then turned out the lights
and told the audience to go home.
Beyond that nothing was resolved between us.
The legs were of various heights.
You invited me into your golden age, I made you a stranger,
a loser, an arriviste, an undocumented alien, an unclaimed hostage,
a bad birthday gift.
I had you eaten into by the human.
I broke your energy,
I invented your gravity,
I pulled you out through your own peep-hole.
(No you didn’t).
I tame you.
(No you don’t).

Anne Carson will publish, with Rosie Bruno, a comic book version of Euripides’ Trojan Women in 2021

from the Times Literary Supplement (January 22, 2021)

Matthew Zapruder: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Ceasing to Be

 

The idea is simple. Lucretius wanted to rid 

the world of death fear by writing 

On the Nature of Things. He says we fear 

death only believing the mind somehow 

continues even after the skull that holds it 

is broken and harmless vapor leaks out 

into everything dissolving. It's

true I fear my death, but I fear 

the death of others more, because that's 

a death without death through which 

I must live. Or I fear my death 

for the death others will have to live through 

without me. That and probably pain 

are why people are afraid. Anyway a world 

without death fear would be even more scary. 

Not that it matters. Death and fear. One 

hand of steel, one of gold. Even you 

wouldn't know which to cut off or reach 

out for first Lucretius, because it is always 

very dark here in the future. 

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Matthew Zapruder is the author most recently of Father’s Day and Why Poetry. He is editor at large at Wave Books, and teaches in the MFA in creative writing at Saint Mary’s College of California. [For more poems by, and information on, Matthew Zapruder, click this link.]

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   Botticelli’s ​Primavera (Spring), 1482.  Lucretius’ “De rerum natura” (On the Nature of Things) is a first-century BC didactic poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius (c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC), whose goal was to explain Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience. The work begins with a tribute to Venus (at the center of this painting), but very quickly shifts its focus to the philosopher Epicurus.

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The Will to Live [by David Lehman]

“They say that Schopenhauer [pictured] is pessimistic. That is not saying very much. [His] is a grandiose and tragic vision which, unfortunately, coincides perfectly with reality.”

– Witold Gombrowicz, A Guide to Philosophy in Six Hours and Fifteen Minutes

1. Arthur Schopenhauer was a competitive man
   who felt nothing but scorn for Hegel.
   So he scheduled his philosophy lectures
   on the same day and at the same time
   and therefore Hegel had a packed auditorium
   while only a handful of us – a Polish writer,
   an ex-girlfriend, a few wayward apostles
   and I – heard Schopenhauer’s lectures
   on Descartes, doubt, and the will to live.

2. Life’s a bitch and then you die. Everything proceeds from this proposition.

3. Many philosophers, professional sad sacks,
   make merry with women and whiskey at night.
   Not Schopenhauer. He was logical. Eating
   a delicacy like pressed goose livers with
   a good Sauterne proved only that nothing
   exists except the temporary satisfaction
   of a hunger that will return and a thirst
   without which no liquid tastes good.
   Pleasure is merely the absence of pain,
   not a thing in itself, and the same may be said
   of peace in relation to war. And yet –

4. Look at all the things we need to endure –
   death and pain, struggle and fear –
   in order for the species to survive
   and so great is our determination to live
   that endure these hardships we do, putting
   a good face on things, hurricanes
   and suicide bombers, the death of adulthood
   and the abandonment of the beautiful
   English language. And yet –

5. One of the apostles asked about suicides.
   What about them, Schopenhauer replied.
   "Don’t they invalidate your theory
    Of the will to live?” “Not at all,”
    he smiled for once. “In suicide they prove
    the will to live is greater than they are.”

6. There were two proofs:

    (a) God must exist
    if we can conceive of god

    (b) God must but cannot exist
    if we can conceive of that
    than which nothing greater
    can be or be conceived.

    Therefore,
    God has to exist
    as a logical possibility
    impossible to disprove
    or credit.
    That’s what he said.
    I wrote it down.
    You may think he was
    a world-class pessimist
    but then you didn’t know him
    as I did in Berlin
    a hundred years before Hitler.

– David Lehman (October 2004)   

Poetry on Vinyl: An Interview with Jeff Alessandrelli of Fonograf Editions [by Daniel Nester]

I suspect I know what you’re thinking, dear readers. “Poetry and vinyl records?” you exclaim. “That’s a recipe for commercial disaster!” 

To this hypothetical remark I would point out that interest in vinyl records is the highest it’s been in decades. While streaming remains the dominant way we listen to music, vinyl sales have outpaced CD sales for the first time in 34 years. Selling and listening to vinyl is no longer a niche interest for sad, middle-aged men trying to recover a mythical past; it’s for sad people of all ages!

One of the most interesting developments in the poetry on vinyl universe: Fonograf Editions, a bona fide literary record label that was founded in 2016 and has put out a steady run of superb poetry on wax, from Rae Armantrout’s Conflation to Nathaniel Mackey and Susan Howe’s Stray: A Graphic Tone (cover pictured here), and has recently branched out into CDs and print books such as Lovability by Emily Kendall Frey. There’s just so much to praise and cover in the Fonograf Editions universe, so I reached out to Jeff Alessandrelli, one of their editors. Over email, we talked about records as objects, an upcoming John Ashbery release, and branching out into books.

Fonograf has been around for a couple years now, and its backlist is really impressive. Can you tell me a bit about the receptions among the vinyl and poetry communities? 

Being at quite a few writing conferences and book fairs in the past few years has made clear that people are always really excited to see literary vinyl in the world—even if they don’t have a record player or really listen to records. All of our vinyl releases also come with a download card and poem/liner notes insert, so there have definitely been people who have bought our albums simply for the album-as-artifact (coupled with the electronic listening option).   

I do appreciate your whole packaging and pricing credo. You’re not going for the bespoke and often overpriced vinyl packages we see now during the vinyl renaissance,  but at the same time these are quality records with inserts and the recordings are always high quality.  

Whether it’s a book or record or t-shirt, the actual Fonograf Ed. object is supremely important to us. The goal with our albums is for them to be part of the owner’s collection for the long term. Meaning that I have a lot of literary vinyl records—from Gertrude Stein to Marianne Moore to Albert Camus to Langston Hughes—and I don’t listen to them every day. I sometimes go years without listening to them. But in my opinion the point of a literary album isn’t to constantly be putting it on your turntable; it’s instead to capture a specific time and place by a writer you really like or love. Our first three albums by Eileen Myles, Rae Armantrout and Alice Notley were all, to a certain degree at least, recorded live, and that exact experience will never be recreated, except in listening to the actual album. I like that concept/notion.

Where are your records physically made? Records are so much in demand that I have heard of actual shortages.

We’ve used a variety of different record pressing plants and suppliers over the years. One of the tricks is that most record pressing plants don’t also make album jackets/inserts, so what has often happened is that things are manufactured at different times and then it’s a process of coalescing everything together. That said, we’ve been lucky in that we haven’t had any major delays or anything of that sort…it’s been a learning process, though. It takes a lot of work (and $) to put a vinyl album out, 100%.   

Were there any specific record labels or publishers, past or present, that inspired you to do what you do?  

Caedmon Records was a big influence—a few years back I wrote a bit about Caedmon over here on the website TheFanzine.

OK, as they say in business meetings, blue sky thinking: what’s your dream record project? Any wish-list for releases, or is it a more organic process? 

Next year we’re putting out an archival John Ashbery LP, from a reading he gave in 76—that’s something we’ve wanted to do for a while. Our last LP release—Fodder by Douglas Kearney and Val Jeanty—is one that took a while to come together and we’re super happy with how it turned out. It was recorded live in Portland in the summer of 2019 and seems to supremely speak to our present moment. As for other LP releases—moving forward we’re looking to move more into actual music, albeit music that still has a literary bent. In November we’re releasing an album of original music by the poet/musician Brian Laidlaw that takes its album concept and (translated) lyrics from the 19th century French-Canadian poet Emile Nelligan. So we’re very excited about that.  

What's coming up next—any releases you'd like to plug, or photos of your headquarters you can share?

In the future we’re actually going to be as much a book press as a record label. In the last year we’ve released full length collections by the writers Dao Strom (which included a musical album component), Mark Leidner, Charles Valle and Emily Kendal Frey, with two forthcoming debut poetry collections by Brandi Katherine Herrera and Jan Verberkmoes. Next year we have the Ashbery LP, a magazine, a chapbook by Matvei Yankelevich, a poetry collection by Krystal Languell, and an essay collection by Hilary Plum. And in Winter 2023 we’re releasing two volumes by Alice Notley—one a 600-page collection (comprised of 6 books) of new work called The Speak Angel Series and the other a volume (tentatively) entitled The First Four Books of Poems, one that collects all of Notley’s now out of print early collections in one solidified book. So we have a lot in store and are verily hustling.  

Poetry on Vinyl: Ernest Hilbert’s Elegies and Laments [by Daniel Nester]

What would it sound like if a book of poetry had its own musical score, like a film, written specifically to match the poems line for line and word for word?

So begins the liner notes booklet that comes with poet and critic Ernest Hilbert’s LP, Elegies & Laments, which was released in a limited-edition pressing of 100 copies back in 2012. 

Ernest, Ernie, is a good friend. We are both South Jersey boys, both went to Rutgers-Camden, and are both poetry and music nerds. Ernie’s a a real renaissance man, a rare book dealer, and  bon vivant. To hear Ernie hold forth about metal metal bands of all varieties—hair, death, speed, thrash, parody, glam—is one of my life’s immense pleasures. 

It wasn’t that big of a surprise, then, to hear from Ernie about his plans to put out a record to go along with Sixty Sonnets, his 2009 debut collection from Red Hen Press.

[https://open.spotify.com/album/4IKzfIXSR8Z4HridaIklet?utm_source=embed_v2&go=1&play=1&nd=1]

What was surprising? The production value. This is not just a recording of Hilbert reading or performing poems. This is a music and poetry collaboration, produced by Dave Young and Marc Hildenberger, with orchestral composition by Christopher LaRosa. Sixteen poems feature over the course of four tracks, backed by the band Legendary Misbehavior and several string players. The record itself, a beautiful white-colored disc, sounds beautiful through my Technics 1200 turntable. 

Part One, “Failed Escapes,” features a kind of overture of famous spoken word and poetry snippets—Sylvia Plath, others—under a bed of transistor radio squelch sounds, and leads into the first four Hilbert poems. The remaining tracks pull off similar experiments, and even feature guest readers Paul Siegell, Quincy R. Lehr, and Kristine Young.

One question, when it comes to music combined with poetry performances, is if the music will overpower the poetry. There’s always the chance the music will drown out the vocals in the mix, or the music won’t really complement the poetry itself. Or, frankly, the music is more interesting than the poems. In Elegies & Laments, the music and poetry work together magically well, miraculously well. It’s a legitimate collaboration. The photos inside the liner notes show Hilbert drinking a beer at a studio console, watching the musicians lay down bass and guitar tracks, and smoking a cigarette on a rooftop with the Philadelphia skyline in the background. 

As with many things related to Ernie, I’m jealous I didn’t think of doing something like this first. Rounding up musician friends and colleagues to put together a musical score for a poetry book? It sounds like such a simple idea, at least now that Hilbert has done it. Here’s hoping more poets experiment with music with their poetry. And please: put out a vinyl record, so I can fill my house with more records.

Robert Hershon Presents "Counterman," a Poem by Paul Violi

 

This poem by Paul Violi appears in his collection Overnight and has been reprinted in a number of places, including The Best American Poetry.

Counterman

What’ll it be?
   Roast beef on rye, with tomato and mayo.

Whudduhyuh want on it?
   A swipe of mayo.
   Pepper but no salt.

You got it. Roast beef on rye
… you want lettuce on that?

   No. Just tomato and mayo.

Tomato and mayo. You got it.
…Salt and pepper?

   No salt.  Just a little pepper.

You got it.  No salt.
You want tomato?

   Yes. Tomato. No lettuce.

No lettuce.  You got it.
…No salt, right?

   Right. No salt.

You got it. – Pickle?

   No, no pickle. Just tomato and mayo.
   And pepper.

Pepper.

   Yes, a little pepper.

Right. A little pepper.
No pickle.

   Right. No pickle.

You got it.
Next.

   Roast beef on whole wheat, please.
   With lettuce, mayonnaise and a center slice
   Of beefsteak tomato
   The lettuce splayed, if you will,
   In a Beaux Arts derivative of classical acanthus,
   And the roast beef, thinly sliced, folded
   In a multi-foil arrangement
   That eschews the Bragdonian pretensions
   Or any idea of divine geometric projection
   For that matter, but simply provides
   A setting for the tomato
   To form a medallion with a dab
   Of mayonnaise as a fleuron.
   And—as eclectic as this may sound –
   If the mayonnaise can also be applied\
   Along the crust in a Vitruvian scroll
   And as a festoon below the medallion,
   That would be swell.

You mean like in the Cathedral St. Pierre in Geneva?

   Yes, but the swag more like the one below the rosette
   At the Royal Palace in Amsterdam.

You got it.
Next.

-- Paul Violi

This is my twelfth and last Sunday Poetry Post, and I thought I’d end the party by leaving a big gift box on your doorstep, one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets.  You want elegance, wit and a flawless ear?  You got it.

-- Robert Hershon 

from the archive; first posted April 25, 2010

This poem by Paul Violi appears in his collection Overnight and has been reprinted in a number of places, including The Best American Poetry.

Counterman

What’ll it be?
   Roast beef on rye, with tomato and mayo.

Whudduhyuh want on it?
   A swipe of mayo.
   Pepper but no salt.

You got it. Roast beef on rye
… you want lettuce on that?

   No. Just tomato and mayo.

Tomato and mayo. You got it.
…Salt and pepper?

   No salt.  Just a little pepper.

You got it.  No salt.
You want tomato?

   Yes. Tomato. No lettuce.

No lettuce.  You got it.
…No salt, right?

   Right. No salt.

You got it. – Pickle?

   No, no pickle. Just tomato and mayo.
   And pepper.

Pepper.

   Yes, a little pepper.

Right. A little pepper.
No pickle.

   Right. No pickle.

You got it.
Next.

   Roast beef on whole wheat, please.
   With lettuce, mayonnaise and a center slice
   Of beefsteak tomato
   The lettuce splayed, if you will,
   In a Beaux Arts derivative of classical acanthus,
   And the roast beef, thinly sliced, folded
   In a multi-foil arrangement
   That eschews the Bragdonian pretensions
   Or any idea of divine geometric projection
   For that matter, but simply provides
   A setting for the tomato
   To form a medallion with a dab
   Of mayonnaise as a fleuron.
   And—as eclectic as this may sound –
   If the mayonnaise can also be applied\
   Along the crust in a Vitruvian scroll
   And as a festoon below the medallion,
   That would be swell.

You mean like in the Cathedral St. Pierre in Geneva?

   Yes, but the swag more like the one below the rosette
   At the Royal Palace in Amsterdam.

You got it.
Next.

-- Paul Violi

This is my twelfth and last Sunday Poetry Post, and I thought I’d end the party by leaving a big gift box on your doorstep, one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets.  You want elegance, wit and a flawless ear?  You got it.

-- Robert Hershon 

from the archive; first posted April 25, 2010

Mycology [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

 

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photos 2021 (c) Jessica Kerns

This summer we have had so much rain here in the Finger Lakes that mushrooms, both edible and toxic, are popping up everywhere and the hunters are out. Better be careful! Over on Facebook, where friends are posting photos of their fungus finds, polymath Jessica Kerns responded with an emphatic "NO!" when I asked if I could serve up a spectacular mushroom I'd spotted while walking the dog. Elsewhere she notes that "[t]he forests are magical right now. Hunting mushrooms for harvest is therapy." Scroll through her photos, above, and you'll see what she means. "Not all of these are edible," says Jessica, "but two of them are and they are delicious!" Extra credit if you can guess which to saute with butter and garlic and a splash of wine and which belong in an Agatha Christie novel.  

I'm reminded of this poem: 

Mushrooms

        by Sylvia Plath

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.
>>>

And this passage from The Debt to Pleasure, a favorite contemporary novel by John Lanchester, also comes to mind: 

    On the seat beside me were my wicker basket, my Sherlock Holmesian magnifying glass (hardly ever used or needed), and my copy of Champignons du nos pays by Henri Romagnesi (ditto, though I also keep all six volumes of Champignons du Nord et du Midi by Andre Marchand back at the house).

    In the following account, the alert reader will notice that I am being a little bit coy about the geographical specifics. Forgive me, but we amateur mycologists, especially amateur mycologists of a culinary bent, passionately guard our favored patches of land--a promising batch of cèpes-yielding beeches here, a cropped roadside thronging with ink-caps there, a yonder patch of nettles known to feature spectacular examples of Langermannia gigantea, or the giant puffball, and somewhere else a field with a healthy quantity of cow excrement conducive to the fructation of the nasty tasting but currently popular halucinogen Psilocybe semilanceata, appropriately known in English as the Liberty Cap. (This, by the way, is not as it is sometimes taken to be, the hallucinogen used by the notorious shamans of the Koryk tribe in far Siberia, the Amanita muscaria, or fly agaric, ingestible via reindeer or indeed human urine, most often popularly reproduced in the image of a re-capped white-dotted toadstool, providing a convenient seat for any momentarily resting elf or fairy. The shamans call that mushroom the Wapag, after a body of magical beings who inhabit the fungi with a view to passing on secrets from the realm of the spirits.) We mushroom hunters are a secretive and wary breed, and it is through ingrained force of habit that I confine my account of the site of my labors to the description: a patch of land somewhere in the south of France. . .

Bon Appetit! 

Jane Shore: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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God

 

Mary, my baby sitter, once took me on a bus

to her shabby boardinghouse in Jersey City

where she showed me a white plastic statue

of a bearded man wearing a bathrobe

who stood on her dresser among her dime store perfumes.

I remember Mary telling me “This is God.”

 

God was about the size of a bottle

of eau de cologne, light as a chicken bone.

I held Him in one hand, turning Him over,

the way you’d examine an object

you’d picked up off the ground, thinking it was

just a rock but a minute later discovering

it was a gold ring, and how lucky you were

finding a thing like that

when you weren’t even looking.

 

In Sunday school, the rabbi told us

that God was invisible. It was a sin

even to draw a picture of Him

or to say His name out loud.

If you did, you’d die on the spot.

But here I was, staring at God, holding God,

and I was still on this planet breathing.

My best friend, Janet Crosio, had the same

statue on a shelf in her living room:

I thought it was one of her mother’s knick knacks;

I never dreamed that it was God.

 

Mary told me God’s name—Jesus Christ—

and that his mother’s name was Mary, too.

But Mary—my Mary—was sixteen, Italian,

a high school dropout, a heavy smoker

who lived in a boardinghouse, alone.

Why my mother had hired her, I don’t know.

I quickly slipped God back to her.

And while I waited to be taken home,

still amazed that I’d seen God,

I stared out of the second-story window

at an ugly concrete yard below.

                                                                      

On the windowsill, Mary’s glass ashtray

overflowed with ashes and cigarette butts.

I wasn’t thinking, something came over me—

I blew into the ashtray, and ashes flew

into my eyes, a whirlwind of ashes

stinging and burning, gritting up under my eyelids.

Rubbing only made it worse.

I had to cry the ashes out, every last one—

tears like burning rain.

I had to be blind for the hour or so

until I could see again without hurting.

Since then, I often confuse revelation and pain.

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Jane Shore’s six books of poems have garnered the Juniper Prize, the Lamont Prize, the 2010 Poets’ Prize, and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Widely anthologized, her recent poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Salmagundi, Moment, and the Best American Poetry (2019). She teaches at the George Washington University, and lives in Washington, DC, and in Vermont. [See this link for more poems by, and information on, Jane Shore.]

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The Solidness of Oceans [by Lera Auerbach]

Acrylic on Canvas by Lera Auerbach

 

1. THE SOLIDNESS OF OCEANS

The ocean is still there where I left it. It will remain. It is solid (even though it’s not, but you know what I mean.) It’s dependable (it’s unpredictable; but also, dependable.) It has a smell; it can be touched and tasted. It exists. And that’s a lot – to be certain that something really exists in this world.

 

2. CREATION OF HUMANS

Once upon a time, there was a Creature. This Creature had a bet with another Creature that it is possible to drink the ocean dry. So, the Creature sat on the shore and started drinking water from the sea. It drank and drank until it had no room left in its belly, but it drank some more and exploded from within into billions of tiny creatures mostly made of water. That’s how humans were born.

 

3. JUST A MYTH

Perhaps, this greedy Creature never existed. Perhaps, it’s just a myth I made up. But the ocean existed, and it is still here. And I exist because I can feel the ocean. And you exist because you are reading this. So, there must be some truth in this myth. Or if not in this, then in another one. There must be some truth somewhere.

 

4. RED

One way to prove you exist is to let blood. What a weird way to say it – let blood. The blood is already there, inside of you, whether you let it or not. But what “to let blood” means is to cut yourself. If you bleed – you are alive. It’s that simple. Dead people can bleed too, but only at the beginning of their death. The longer they are dead, the less blood they have left. After a while, nothing red remains.

 

5. WHERE THE SOUL RESIDES

In old times people thought that the soul resided in the blood. But this didn’t make sense. Let’s say you donate your blood – does it mean you are donating your soul? No, the soul is inside and outside of your body because your body is just like a great painting – a mystery that can be studied and analyzed but never fully understood.

 

6. WHY WE CAN’T UNDERSTAND GOD

Anything we understand – we can destroy.
That is why we can never understand God.
We can only believe that He (She, It) is.
Or isn’t.
That’s all. 

 

Buck Downs: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buck Downs, 2019. Photo by Steven Phillips

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More Special Music

 

            looking in my face

            at the shaving glass

 

                        a glass of air

                        I work by feel

 

            a dozen souls

                        have died

            in this body—

            reincarnation

running in reverse—

 

            the great glam drone

            of heart & head

beating together—

                        that’s my jam—

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A native of Jones County, Miss., Buck Downs works as a publishing consultant and writing coach for corporate clients, technology developers, and authors who need individual attention. In 2017, Furniture Press Books of Baltimore published a selected poems, Unintended Empire. His most recent book of poetry is Not Right, Now! (Buck Downs Dot Com). For thirty years he has distributed his poems as a series of postcards and other author-published ephemera. (Click here for Buck Downs on writing.)

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What Remains? [by Lera Auerbach]

Ink on Music Paper © Lera Auerbach

 

 

What do I remember? 

Sounds, sound all around. 

I don’t know words yet, but I can feel melodies of phrases. 

Everything is music: the voices of people, the wind outside, the bell of the streetcar.

When people speak loudly, I want to cry – there are more sounds than I can hold! 

I have no space left to breathe and gasp for air.

The voices become quieter, slower, lower… 

I can breathe again.

 

(Volume) 

 

 

(2)

 

Mama is teaching her students. 

I am crawling on the rug.
I already know the names of the notes – Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Si.
They are my friends. Each note is a different sound,
and each note is a different color. 

Mama is explaining how sound flies.

If sound can fly – where are its wings? 

Perhaps, they are invisible – the sound is flying and flapping its invisible wings.

How does the sound look without its wings?

Lying on my belly, I try to imagine the body of the sound, without wings.  

Instead of the body – I only see wings – wings of different colors.
‘Do’ is white with a rainbow overflowing on feathers, ‘Sol’ is golden, ‘La’ is red.

I understand now: the sound is the wings – long or clipped, colorful, wavy…
The sound is the flight itself and the trail of after-flight;
the wound left in the air, disappearing like ripples in water.

The sound is what continues to echo in the memory when nothing is sounding.

 

(What Is Sound?)

 

(3)

 

My mother is carrying me in her arms,
“Look at your stroller now. Look at it for the last time.
You will never see it again.”

I see the doorway to the bedroom.
There is my stroller – red, much taller than me.

But what is ‘never’? 

What a strange word – so heavy –
this moment is forever engraved in my memory:
the red stroller and my mother’s words.

 

(What Is Never?)

 

 

(4)

 

My parents do not buy a new stroller.
Instead, they roll me around in a folding carriage,
an accessory intended for a large doll.
I do not like that doll. I’m afraid of her –
her plastic complacency, her empty eyes.
But the doll’s stroller is helpful – I quickly tire of walking.

When I was born, the doctors said I had problems with my legs
and would not be able to walk.
For a year, my frightened mother took me for therapy every day.
I walked ahead of schedule. 

More than walking, I love flying while listening to music,
hundreds of winged creatures – sounds –
holding me up, not letting me fall.

 

(Canceled Sentence)

 

 

(5)

 

My grandmother, Alichka, walks poorly. 

Her legs are bowed like two letters C’s. Pain hides in each step.

Alichka brings me to the Tsvilling Square. 

(She rolls me in the stroller from the doll I do not like.)

On the bench, next to her, sits an old woman with a mourning veil. 

She is mourning for her son. There was a war. Yurochka was only ten. 

He was all swollen from dropsy and hunger. 

He asked for a gun, "Just shoot me, mama." 

The doctor said Yurochka would not survive the night. 

He did not survive.

Alichka: “Maybe you can help us tomorrow with Lera?

Her parents are at work; she’s too weak for a nursery,

but it’s so difficult with my legs.”

 

Marianna entered my life – the guardian of my childhood.

 

(Are You Still Watching Over Me?)

 

 

(6)

 

I'm three and a half.
I can already read words and notes.

I create fairytales and stories –
l tell them to my old Rönisch upright piano.

Without music, words lose their magic. 

If I stand on one leg and press the piano pedal with the other foot –
the wings of sounds become so long
they can fly far away into the great unknown. 

Yet I feel that all is distorted, not what it could be…
But what could it be? 

 

Where do the true sounds hide?

 

(Searching)

 

(7)

 

Too bad that seated, I can’t reach the piano pedals. 

Mama does not allow me to play the piano while standing.
She says it is bad for my professional education.
Luckily, she’s not home during the day, and Marianna doesn’t mind. 

While standing, I can press the pedal and paint an ocean of sounds.
The ocean is calm. The ocean is enormous.
The ocean is the bluest of blues in E-flat major.
Arpeggios of waves slowly float under my fingers. 

 

Now a lonely sail appears / amidst the blue mist of the sea…

Rebellious, it seeks out a storm.*

 

The melody of the sail is full of awe. The sail is thirsty for the storm. 

– Ah, you want a storm? I'll show you a storm!

 

In between the sea and clouds proudly soars the stormy petrel.

He cries out, and the clouds hear his joy in the bird’s cry of courage.

Thunder sounds in foamy anger, the waves groan with the wind in conflict.**

 

A thunderstorm rages in C minor – lots of pedal, clusters of thunder, glissandi of winds. 

 

The ocean was swollen and sullen

Its billows were boiling with fury.***

 

One still hears the theme of the sail,
but it is irreparably destroyed by its daring dream. 

It is drowning – the theme of the sail sounds lower and lower,
sinking to the bottom of the sea.

 

Now the storm has passed.
The ocean is calm again, as before.
Triadic waves splash softly as if nothing had happened.
Only far in the clouds – a memory –
one can hear the theme of the dreamy sail.

I sob with delight and horror at the drama
that just erupted beneath my fingers.

 

*Mikhail Lermontov

** Maxim Gorkyi

*** Alexander Pushkin

 

(The Monstrous Power of Music)

 

(8)

 

When Mama returns, I want to repeat for her the story of the brave, lonely sail. 

But the theme of the sail is different now, and the waves are not the same... 

I cannot repeat my story. As in a crooked mirror –
what was beautiful before has turned into its ugly caricature.

I’m crying, no longer with delight, but with shame: everything’s false again.

Where did the true sounds disappear?

 

(Where?)

 

(9)

 

Mama says, “If you wish to save ‘true’ sounds,
you need to write them down as soon as they are born.”
She hands me a Notebook for Music.

“How do I write them down? With words?”

“Why words? You already know how to write notes.
When you have ideas for words, you should use letters,
but when you hear music – you should use notes.
With the help of notes, you can always find your way back
and remember what you played.
Music notation is a time machine
to travel to the past and to the future.
Written music remains forever.”

 

“Mama, what is ‘forever?’”

 

(What Remains?)

 

(10)

 

Every morning I remember that I have to go to kindergarten and begin to cry.

Papa comes to my crib. He is holding a small empty jar.

I keep on wailing.

“Here, take this – it’s a piggy bank for tears. Tears are precious,

and they should be protected. If you are so intent on crying,

then cry into this jar and save your tears.”

I obediently cry into the jar, accumulate tears.

Each drop – like a caught note written in my Notebook for Music.

Perhaps music notes are unshed tears? 

 

Where are you, my piggy bank of tears?

 

(Unshed Tears)

 

 

Ted Berrigan on the 38th Anniversary of his Death: Posthumous Pick of the Month [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© Mark Hillringhouse Photography

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New Personal Poem

to Michael Lally

You had your own reasons for getting
In your own way. You didn’t want to be
Clear to yourself. You knew a hell
Of a lot more than you were willing
               to let yourself know. I felt
Natural love for you on the spot. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Right.
Beautiful. I don’t use the word lightly. I
Protested with whatever love (honesty) (& frontal nudity)
A yes basically reserved Irish Catholic American Providence Rhode
               Island New Englander is able to manage. You
Are sophisticated, not uncomplicated, not
Naïve, and Not simple. An Entertainer, & I am, too.
Frank O’Hara respected love, so do you, & so do we.
He was himself & I was me. And when we came together
Each ourselves in Iowa, all the way
That was love, & it still is, love, today. Can you see me
In what I say? Because as well I see you know
In what you have to say, I did love Frank, as I do
You, “in the right way”.
That’s just talk, not Logos,
               a getting down to cases:
I take it as simple particulars that
               we wear our feelings on our faces.

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Ted Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. He attended Providence College for a year before joining the army in 1954 at the age of 19. After serving in Korea he received a BA in English from the University of Tulsa in 1959 and an MA in 1962. Berrigan moved to New York in the early 1960s where he edited and published C Magazine and C Press Books, wrote art criticism, and collaborated with writers and artists Ron Padgett, Joe Brainard, and Anselm Hollo. Berrigan taught at the St. Mark's Poetry Project and was writer-in-residence/visiting poet at the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Yale University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, University of Essex in England, Northeastern Illinois University, and the Naropa Institute. In 1979 he received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Berrigan was a central figure in the second generation of the New York School of Poets, which included Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, Jim Carroll, and Anselm Hollo. He was the author of more than 20 books, including The Sonnets (1964), Bean Spasms (with Ron Padgett and Joe Brainard) (1967), Poems, In Brief (1971), Red Wagon (1976), and A Certain Slant of Sunlight (1988).  Blue Wind Press published So Going Around Cities: New & Selected Poems, 1958--1979 in 1980. The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (edited by Alice Notley with Anselm Berrigan and Edmund Berrigan) came out in 2005 from the University of California Press. [bio mostly from Poets.org]. Ted Berrigan died on July 4, 1983.

Michael Lally blogs at Lally's Alley.   [Also check out this post on Michael from 2008.]

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                                           Alex Katz,Ted Berrigan,1967.

 

             Ted Berrigan,Tim Dlugos, Penny Milford, Michael Lally, Caitlin Lally (profile) at Michael & Penny's wedding, NYC, 14 Feb 1982.

                                                 

 

Gardner McFall: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gardner McFall. Photo by Susan Unterberg.

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First Kiss

 

When Raymond glided by me across the playing field, I chased him

     like a jet off radar

to plant the ultimate sting on his cheek: a kiss that burned him

     to a blossom of tears.

"What drove you to that?" the teacher inquired, pulling us both aside,

     his small shoulders heaving,

my eyes scanning the air for a reason. It sprang from the boys'

     chanting, "Girls have cooties."

If I had them, why shouldn't he? After school, Mother's withering

     look met me at the door.

She forced me to confess the recess affair to my father,

     the squadron commander,

God's right-hand man, my prank now promoted to a top-ranking sin.

     Love and sex dove under-

ground, buried deep as my spinster great-aunts, though I recall once

     during my college years,

when I came home too late, Mother asked if she should screw a scarlet

     bulb in the front-yard lamp—

Did I plan to turn our street into a red-light district?

     Raymond, wherever you are, whatever your last name is,

you are the pyre on which I throw each guilt-ridden kiss.

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Gardner McFall is the author of The Pilot’s Daughter and Russian Tortoise (poems), an opera libretto entitled Amelia (commissioned by Seattle Opera), and two children’s books.  She edited Made with Words, a prose miscellany by May Swenson. She has poems in Norton’s 2018 anthology, Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees, edited by Laren McClung, with a foreword by Yusef Komunyakaa. Her 2018 chapbook, On the Line, was published by Finishing Line Press. [“First Kiss,” from Russian Tortoise (2009), is reprinted by permission of the author]

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   Roy Lichtenstein, Kiss II, 1962.

Bob Hicok: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

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The Order of Things

 

Then I stopped hearing from you. Then I thought

I was Beethoven's cochlear implant. Then I listened

to deafness. Then I tacked a whisper

to the bulletin board. Then I liked dandelions

best in their afro stage. Then a breeze

held their soft beauty for ransom. Then no one

throws a Molotov cocktail better

than a Buddhist monk. Then the abstractions

built a tree fort. Then I stopped hearing from you.

Then I stared at my life with the back of my head.

Then an earthquake somewhere every day.

Then I felt as foolish as a flip-flop

alone on a beach. Then as a beach

alone with a sea. Then as a sea

repeating itself to the moon. Then I stopped hearing

from the moon. Then I waved. Then I threw myself

into the work of throwing myself

as far as I can. Then I picked myself up

and wondered how many of us

get around this way. Then I carried

the infinity. Then I buried the phone.

Then the ground rang. Then I answered the ground.

Then the dial tone of dirt. Then I sat on a boulder

not hearing from you. Then I did jumping jacks

not hearing from you. Then I felt-up silence. Then silence

and I went all the way.

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Bob Hicok's tenth collection, Red Rover Red Rover, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2021. Elegy Owed (Copper Canyon, 2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. This Clumsy Living (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007) was awarded the 2008 Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress. Animal Soul (Invisible Cities Press, 2001) was also finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Recipient of nine Pushcart Prizes, a Guggenheim and two NEA Fellowships, his poetry has been selected for inclusion in nine volumes of Best American Poetry. [For more poems by, and information on, Bob Hicok, click here.]

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                         Joseph Cornell, mixed media collage

 

 

 

 

The New York School Diaspora (Part Six): The News in Sports [by Angela Ball]

Mississippi State’s Football Coach Ponders the Fake People in the Stands

--for and after Mike Leach

I have to be honest. I haven’t really gotten
the cut-out people in the stands,
the cardboard torsos
pretending to be fans.

A Twilight Zone episode! All these fakes
frozen in time, enthusing all day
regardless of who scores, who
throws the ball away. I haven’t really gotten
the fake people in the stands.

It’s science fiction meets haunted stadium:
you’re watching the big game, and you can’t move,
let alone cheer or boo. If it’s cool,
and people enjoy it, great, but it’s a little
surreal, the fake people in the stands.

Do the person impersonators have a lottery
to see who gets the best seats? Some have way better ones,
those fake people in the stands.

I want to be one of the lucky cut-outs
on the 50-yard line. Not one of those suckers
up in the rafters. In these weird times,
even a fake person can get screwed, stuck
in the worst part of the stands.

The moral of the story is this: live clean, live smart,
and maybe someday
you’ll get good seats at the LSU game
and won’t care you’re made of cardboard,
a fake person in the stands.

--Angela Ball

“Mississippi State’s Football Coach Ponders the Fake People in the Stands” honors Mississippi State’s idiosyncratic and polymathic football coach, Mike Leach, who last fall made comments to the media about a game played at LSU and the “fake people” in the stands. His words, which seemed to capture the dysphoria of sports and life at that time, invited the poem into being.

Leach is a writer of note. Here is his biography as it appears on his publisher’s website:

“Mike Leach is a legendary college football coach and New York Times bestselling author of Swing Your Sword. He has appeared on 60 Minutes and has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, and USA TODAY. He is the only college coach ever featured by NFL Films.”

"112th Street" [by James Longenbach]

112th Street

If only once, if ever you have the chance,
You should climb a volcano. 
The hermitage at basecamp, the glasses of brandy—
That’s the past. 
Who wants to think about the past?

You want to push forward, climb higher, while all around you,
Inches beneath your feet,
Earth is seething, a river of liquid rock.

Will you make it to the summit—
The flying slag, the pot holes
Red as an open wound?
Of course you will, it’s easy; everybody does.

So little behind you,
So much ahead—

Once, walking up Broadway
Late at night,
Both of us a little drunk, flurries in the air, Christmas trees
Lining the sidewalk, block after block—

At every corner
You kissed me.
Then the light would change.

Ed note: from Forever by James Longenbach (Norton), pub date June 22, 2021.