READIN

Friday, October 14th, 2011

🦋 Morning

Laura's wishing Peter would just
Give up this pretension, would just
Break this patterned silence
Where he builds his lonesome castle. Now she
Cries out in the morning when she
Wakes and finds him missing. Wishes
He'd reach out and touch her, wants
To hold him in his grief -- she wants to
Have back these long years that
     she's been waiting for his voice. Peter's
Walking in the garden, where he
Knows the paths are laid,
Planted crocus in the springtime, planted
Hostas in the shade, wanders
Down the road to town, but nothing's
Open Sunday morning, now he
Rubs his eyes and wonders if he'll
    ever find his home.

Expectation conquers knowledge and the
Evidence of senses; what I
    see and hear and feel
    I'll never grasp if I decline;
For all I wish and want and hope I'll never
Stand beside my grave, I'm seeing
Gauzy patterns traced out
On the page of wounded time.

She gets up, groggy, runs the water,
Steaming up the mirror, she hears
Peter downstairs in the kitchen,
    hopes he's making coffee,
Laura's tired out, she didn't sleep well,
Combs her hair and squints and in the
Mirror she can see the look of
    anguish on her face.
She's downstairs with a cup of coffee,
Looking quizzically at Peter,
Peter's solemn face that just
    can't seem to meet her gaze.
A question's in the air and they both know it, but the
        heavy silence keeps their lips held tight; keeps
Heavy thoughts drawn back to yesterday.

posted evening of October 14th, 2011: 3 responses
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Sunday, August 28th, 2011

🦋 Not a sonnet

The path to understanding verse
must lie through repetition --well,
that's where my thoughts are leading me,
internal iteration linking
letters on the page to solid
consonants and sibilation
nothingness, annihilation
pausing where there's punctuation--
Write the letters large enough,
inscribed inside my skull, retraced,
and give my mind no choice except
to follow where they lead, to paint
the pictures they express, to put
myself inside the poet's psyche:
See what he sees, maybe, or self-
consciously be made to see
exactly where my failure lies
to get across what's bugging me
my fault as reader or as writer,
guilt external to the page, the
page can feel no guilt, it's paper,
blank until I taint it with
my thoughts, my visions, my regret,
my happy-ever-after longing;
Strike a key and watch the letter
print itself, its inky form
laid down forever with its partners.
Sing in silent chorus from the
blankness of the page.

posted morning of August 28th, 2011: Respond
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Friday, August 12th, 2011

🦋 Dream Googling

A bit frustrating: last night's vivid dream was a dream explicitly about words; but the vividly recalled portion of the dream is all visual imagery and context, no words.

In the dream, I am writing a poem and think of a line that I want to use in it, a poorly-remembered line from a Salt-n-Pepa song. I bring up Google to check my memory of the lyric. Somehow Google will not give me the transcribed lyrics to the song, I can only find the song's video on YouTube. So I start watching it and listening. It is a fantastic, breathtaking video, with references to film noir and to Kurosawa, one that brings out resonances and meanings in the song that I have never understood before. But it is distracting and frustrating to be watching it and listening for a particular line, and trying to keep in mind the poem that I was writing and the way I wanted to use the line. The video is very long -- long enough to be divided into mutiple parts on YouTube -- and I wake up before I find the line I am looking for.

posted morning of August 12th, 2011: 2 responses
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Friday, July 15th, 2011

🦋 Waking Poem

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow

He dreamt of his distributed weight
lying hair's-breadth by hair's-breadth this side of collapse
on the springs of his mattress; his linen-clad pillow,
the thousands of hairs on the nape of his neck; dreamt of
covers and sheets and the million thread count, the
mechanics of sleep, of the pale thunder moon, of the

gasp from his lungs as his body escapes

this cold matrix of wakefulness, bitterness, playfulness:
memories of nuzzling close in the arms of the

black grinning spectre of night.

The epigraph is from a villanelle by Roethke: one I did not know of until today. I like its sense and its sound. "I learn by going where I have to go."

Here is a link to several pieces I've posted over the last few months that I've been particularly happy with: Memories and Dreaming -- 7 original pieces plus 2 translations. Maybe if I get a couple more together, I will make a chapbook.

posted evening of July 15th, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, July 10th, 2011

🦋 Eagle Rock

Still thinking about Cuadra, about the teacher and his teachings,
I met up with local cyclists for our Sunday morning ride.
We rode today through glorious weather up to Thomas Edison’s
Old factory in West Orange, to see the rusty old machinery,
The evidence that a genius once called our small hamlet home.

But I didn’t take the tour, still felt like riding, so I split off
From the group and rode up Eagle Rock into the reservation.
It’s a long, slow climb, fantastic when
You get up to the top and see
The valley spread before you,
Tops of trees like ocean waves and
White rooftops like breakers stretching out
Through Hudson County, in the distance see the
Skyline of Manhattan silhouetted in the yellow haze.

posted afternoon of July 10th, 2011: Respond
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Monday, July 4th, 2011

🦋 Not a soul to tell our troubles to

Woke up with a song ringing in my ears and a poem drifting through my head.

My shadow has no memory of
that frantic, panicked, pell-mell flight --

No pain or expectations, craving,
dying to escape his bondage.

Look, he's crouching, vibrates with
desire that only shadows feel;

He's poised to spring, to pounce, as if
the shadow of some predator,

Some dusky, fleeting contrast on
the sidewalk of my consciousness,

Some ragged blank impression on
the sand dunes of my memory --

We move, the spell is broken, sliding
frictionless along the garden

Seeking our reflection in
the pools of last night's rainfall,

In the golden machinations of the sunlight from the east.

posted morning of July 4th, 2011: Respond
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Thursday, June 30th, 2011

🦋 Breakfast and Lunch

A new poem from Pelele had the happy effect of reminding me of one of my very favorite poems, Kenneth Koch's "Lunch" -- and the funny thing is, I was noticing similarities to "Lunch" even before I looked up to the top of the poem and noticed Pelele's title...

Breakfast

by Eduardo Valverde

Last night I dreamed of you -- or of your father:
a tall man under his hat.
The place I found myself reminded me,
its silence, of a bird -- a bird that’s sleeping,
an engine, maybe, lying in the junkheap.
He came along, his face drawn long, like kids
when they play at grown-up
or like a bankrupt god
who tallies up his mornings carefully
and finds that all that glitters is not gold;
he carried a green bottle in his hands
and the analgesic pain that comes of touching earthly things.

He spoke enthusiastically of the sea's paternal womb,
of land unmapped, unconquered, which begins off in the darkness --
in every single letter of the word, “desperation” --
He spoke of a taste like olives, of the flavor in her breasts,
in hers who never aged but who had brought forth many daughters
each with olive nipples;
of the unease that he feels before the window in a photo
in which a bowl of fruit is standing lonesome on the floor
of the hallway in a vacant house --
or I should say, before the light that’s coming through the window,
an angel hewn of green basalt;
a solid angel, weak Annunciation.

He poured me out a cup and took the bottle by its neck.
Could not remember you; but he said,
with joy in his eyes, he said My kids were like the rattle
of the hills when trains are rolling by;
like a pack of dogs, dogs baying in the distance
to push your weary heart along the journey.
It must have been getting dark, I guess -- a solitary lamp
was turning back to ash his eyes and moustache

And me, I was anxious, I needed to pee;
I felt my dress was falling into shadow --
     its weight returning --
raised my hands to my cheeks and found I was not dying
nor was I really back among the living.

Two images in particular seem like they could have come from Koch's pen, the woman "who never aged but who had brought forth many daughters/ each with olive nipples", and the man boasting, "My kids were like the rattle/ of the hills when trains are rolling by" -- also the general flow of the text and of voice reminds me of Koch. (I have probably intensified this similarity in my translation; but I believe it is present in the original as well.) The "analgesic pain that comes of touching earthly things" is going to stay with me for a long time.

posted evening of June 30th, 2011: 2 responses
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Monday, June 20th, 2011

🦋 Poetry from prompts

A parking lot I walk by every morning on my way to work prompted this poem, composed on the way to work this morning and revised on the way home this evening.

Crumpled

Sympathetic gleaming crumpled chassis by the body shop,
I pass her every morning when I'm walking to the train: a shame --
been there two months, I guess she's totalled, looks brand-new...
except for at the front end where her frame is mashed together...
shiny hood is bent in half; bright jet-black paint job powerless
to cover up the damage that's been done.

Update -- another use of the parking lot image.

posted evening of June 20th, 2011: Respond

Sunday, June 19th, 2011

🦋 Sunday Cycling: Red Hook

Someone must know Brooklyn, all of Brooklyn, that’s what I was thinking
Riding past the sidestreets that line Red Hook, names I’ve never heard
Like Visitation Pl. and Wolcott, Coffey St., evocative,
Some modern-day Walt Whitman must have walked down all these paths, must know
The neighborhoods from Red Hook out to Sunset Park and Sheepshead Bay,
Canarsie, know the subway stops in Midwood, where to grab a bite
In East New York -- for all the time I lived here, my familiar steps
Are clustered in a narrow strip around Flatbush, long thin fingers running
South down Seventh Avenue and west along Atlantic, when
I think of Brooklyn what I see’s a small part of the borough, pictures
Culled from my meanderings through Park Slope (mostly),
Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill.      Today, we rode
Our bikes out to Ikea, it was great to see the borough through
New eyes, see corners foreign to my memories, my expectations,
Corners where a million dreams have played out, dreams of glory,
Where the docks begin, where underneath the pavement are the cobblestones
(They’re coming through in places, makes for shaky riding) -- stones
With memories of wartime and of labor struggles old and new, of
Love affairs between the street lamps, lovers whom I’ll never know,
I’ll never know the neighborhoods I’ve never been to, riding
Down the street here, through the crazy sunlight, colors catch my eye. The sun
Shines on a fading shipper’s sign, a sign down by the waterfront,
Old industry is everywhere, these piers, these cranes, these factories,
These crumbling bricks were witness to the unnarrated histories --
A million rises, unmourned falls (a bright red arrow points the way
To Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pies, we ride down there and walk the pier,
Trade looks and salutations with the rows of solemn fishermen) --
This new Red Hook’s delectable, a feast of light, we’re riding back now,
Savoring the wind that blows at angles off the waterfront
And thinking thoughts of driving back to Jersey and the week to come.
We hit Atlantic, now I’m back, the Brooklyn that I know and love,
Stop by Damascus Bakery and buy some bread for lunches
For the week, and every place I set my foot rings through familiar;
What new Whitman will I find to map this borough’s soul for me?

Eileen, Ellen and Rick
air-fishing on Valentino Pier.
Lady Liberty looks on.

posted evening of June 19th, 2011: 4 responses

Saturday, June 18th, 2011

🦋 Poetic process

I've been writing a lot of poetry lately (last week or two or three) -- if you've been reading the blog you have probably noticed... I thought I would just post a brief outline of the process I've been following. (Because: a key part of this process has been analysis, trying to understand what I am doing/seeking in writing the poetry, and how I am going about it. My instinct is that this kind of analysis should be stifling to creativity, but that has not been my experience, in this moment, not at all. The more I ask "why" and "how", the more it seems to work...)

Today I was riding my bike, for exercise and to do some errands. (Made it a little farther up Walker Street!) I was over by Vose and South Orange Ave. when a woman walked by and I overheard her saying to her friend, "Oh, I thought that was my car there by the corner -- we need to walk a little farther." This struck me as funny, and turning it over in my head I heard the first line of a silly poem. Riding along I started repeating this line in a sort of sing-song and it started fleshing itself out with more lines and a structure....

And that's basically how it usually happens, flowing out of a single line or couplet that I "hear" -- The composition works best when I am walking or riding bike, the rhythmic movement gives a background for the rise and fall of syllables (hmm: typing seems to do it too, a bit) that serves best as background for the composition process. A side effect of this is that when I'm reading the poem later on, it is easy to fall into that sing-song; the poem sounds better if I avoid this.

So once I've got a rough idea of the poem in mind, I write it out longhand, usually without division into lines -- the homemade notebook I got from Woody and Lisa has been serving me very well. Let it set a few hours or a few days and then I type it up with line divisions, often I will post it on the blog, usually it is nearly complete by that time -- each point of copying the poem, head to paper, paper to screen, screen to blog, involves revisions. And often I will see a couple of light edits that still need to be made after it has gone up on the blog.

Anyways: I am off to have some coffee and write out that poem. I'll post it later on as an update to this entry, assuming it comes together like I'm thinking it will.

Update: Yes -- This one came together very quickly and easily. Little substance but some fun imagery.

Parking Lot

Forgetting where you’re parked, a pleasant exercise, I recommend it,
silly mindless feeling, walk around the parking lot with
bags of groceries, or books, or cat food, hardware that you bought to build
your latest home improvement project,
5# nails are clanking in the bag and in your mind
you see a silver Nissan, license plate
you’ve seen so many times
the image crystal clear imagined,
in the back seat is the laundry that you mean to drop off yesterday
but didn’t, thought I parked it over here, indeed a car
that looks just like mine from a distance -- but it’s not, and here’s the owner,
now he’s taking out his keys and starting off, I’m back to square one
and I dig back through my memory, I opened up the door
and as I looked over my shoulder saw a note forbidding tresspassing:
it warned illegal parkers would be ticketed, behind that
was a yellow sign; that yellow’s over this way now, so clearly
I was looking that way, must have been right here -- let’s see...
I turn and orient myself, I’m looking at my car.

↻...done

posted morning of June 18th, 2011: Respond

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