Birthday Greetings!

Wislawa Szymborska, July 2, 1923.

And Happy Independence Day to all!

Floating

The other new poem mentioned in my previous post. It incorporates two recent "fragments" and may add more.

Cloud Suite

I.
One small cloud floats over
white smudge on otherwise
perfect sky I watch it
drift beyond sight
edges fraying.

II.
Lightning nibbles around
the edges of sky above
the buildings but farther
down the street the moon
glows faint behind
a shred of clouds.

I seem to have developed an obsession with clouds. Though perhaps not as great as these people:
The Cloud Appreciation Society.

Pattern

Tile

I laid it out for you
like tiles black and white
on the bathroom floor
and you still wouldn’t see
it you kept adding
yellow or red and
it’s such a simple pattern
I can replicate
until it hits the wall.

This poem is new. I have another new one as well, but I'm especially happy with this one. I was at a very fine musical event the other night and the phrase "black and white" was used in a song in more or less the same sense as here. It got me thinking and I wrote this poem in the train on the way home.

I'll post the other new work soon.

Do Something Else

"I have always believed in Jean Cocteau's dictum that the artist should find out what he can do and then do something else. The poet should always be venturing, trying out new things. One doesn't want experimentation for its own sake, the sense of the freakish doctor surrounded by retorts in the laboratory, but one does want the poet who is willing time after time to risk everything and play for the highest stakes. The poet must be constantly exploring, going out on a limb. This does not mean the continual development of wholly new styles, but rather the enlargement and expansion of one's basic style. It means putting out new shoots, growing as a tree grows up and out, feeding more and more on light and air."—William Jay Smith

My friend Bernadette Geyer posted this excerpt from Poets on Poetry (ed. Howard Nemerov) and I liked it so much I decided to pass it along. I find it inspiring as I grapple with the Hopkins-inspired poem I mentioned in the previous post.

Fragments

I recently re-read G.M. Hopkins' "The Wreck of the Deutschland"—really, I was reading it for the first time since my previous encounter was in graduate school and I rushed through it as one tends to do in such cases. it struck me with great force this time. It is not intended as a narrative and doesn't tell the "story" of the disaster; indeed, the tragedy is not even mentioned until stanza 12 in Part the Second. Rather, it came across to me as 35 tight, intensely composed poems linked by their theme of struggling to perceive God's grace and mercy in the midst of pain, suffering, and sorrow. The poem beautifully displays Hopkins' powerful gifts—his highly original rhythms and brilliant images—as well as his occasional lapses into obscurity and labored diction. I strongly commend this poem to your attention. It will remind you in some places of Whitman, in others early Robert Lowell (cf. especially "The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket), yet remains utterly original.

The lines from the first stanza have inspired me toward a possible new poem (watch this space!):

"Thou hast bound bones in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Once again I feel thy finger and find thee."

As if carrying that around in my head and trying to bring to life what it evoked isn't enough, last night another image floated into my imagination; this morning on the bus I composed the following fragment—or maybe it's a full first draft? Comments welcome as always.

One small cloud floats over
white smudge on otherwise
perfect sky I watch it
drift beyond sight edges
fraying.

Ending the Month

This April has been too busy for much posting, so I have been unable to post excerpts from favorite poems as I have done in the past. However, I am happily able to close out National Poetry Month 2009 with a new poem of my own. Once again, a few minutes at One Word has produced pay dirt.

Glossy

the sky yesterday
where it edged
the roofs of buildings
and lay on the surface
of the water in the
fountain basin in the park
and how the sun poured
down and gave
a sheen to the feathers
of the grackle bathing
in the fountain and to
all of us just
and unjust alike
out under the sky

The poem evokes a lunchtime walk I took on Tuesday to Lafayette Park (last four pictures).

Happy May!

Listen

The Smoking Book has posted a sound file of my reading my poem, "Mescal." They continue to receive and post some excellent work, both poems and prose, so visit often.