River of Play

Ammons v. Gilbert

I have returned to working through A.R. Ammons early collected. On every page, with pretty much every line, I can hear Walt Whitman. He has taken Ammons by the hand and walked him through the wild, wild world. Every dozen pages or so something jumps out at me, but otherwise the poetry feels slack and essayistic. Entire poems can go by without an image, or, mostly, one image tucked into the middle of hopeless craft. The words are all over the page, which, I think, is meant to add tension, but I'm not feeling it. I find myself sighing and trying to read faster; it's almost four hundred pages long. That'll suck the hope right out o' ya.

On the other hand, after reading Jack Gilbert, I sat down and scribbled this out. Real quick early draft, but it makes me feel all cozy.

The smell of the autumn’s apples on the ground
accompanied the albino deer Dominic saw
as it stepped further into the abandoned grove.
The rest of us gathered around the window
as quietly as we could, carrying the garlic, onions
and carrots we’d been chopping for the stew.
We had our university packed in books
in the smooth wooden rooms of the small cabin
we’d borrowed from Emily’s family friend.
The deer was moving down and away
from the mountain river white with recent rain.
Dana had only recently begun to touch me.
In two years, we’d move west and marry.
Dom and Luna would separate as soon as summer
sent him to law school in New England.
It’s hard to say if we’d agree that the deer
moved us more than the bat skeleton
in the spider web, or the twenty mile view
from the granite outcrop after the three mile hike.
We thought we were drawing our future
on our bodies with henna paste,
but it stepped away into the rising forest.

Finally, a Sentence

But not here. In this place. Below, maybe. A bit of reading for you.

I had not quite abandoned the house to insects
and their quick dreams of six-legged gods
when I went swimming through the pine dust
of the darkly baked attic where my grandmother
had stacked the games and toys
that had taken me from the Saturday afternoons
when rain turned the deep pocket
of her backyard into a wallow none of the cousins
was allowed to belly slide through
while our mothers percolated more coffee,
debated the use of sugar in their lives, worked
to gain their mother’s affection
while we played hide-and-go-seek
in the basement with its cold water smell,
built in mysteries and red paint
that rusted our white sweat-socks as we ran
and slid while our fathers—none of them
related to each other—shifted their guts
around the dangerous chemicals and grass clippings
of the garage and kept long silences
to themselves, wondering about the bodies
each of the others had married into their beds
and the stories that trailed those bodies
and the women’s children now opening worn toys
the wives abandoned long ago, toys that grandmother
talked one of the men into shoving into the attic
when the last of my cousins completed high school
and most of them settled into slow, erratic orbits
around the bay window of the low house.

I Present: February!

And a draft poem. See what ya think.

I had not quite abandoned the house to insects
and their dark dreams of six-legged gods
when I went swimming through the pine dust
of the darkly baked attic where my grandmother
had stacked the games and toys
that had taken me from the Saturday afternoons
when rain turned the deep pocket
of her backyard into a wallow none of the cousins
was allowed to belly slide through
while our mothers percolated more coffee,
debated the use of sugar in their lives, worked
to gain their mother’s affection
while we played hide-and-go-seek
in the basement with its cold water smell,
built in mysteries and red paint
that rusted our white sweat-socks as we ran
and slid while our fathers—none of them
related to each other—shifted their guts
around the dangerous chemicals and grass clippings
of the garage and kept long silences
to themselves, wondering about the bodies
each of the others had married into their beds
and the stories that trailed those bodies
and the women’s children now opening worn toys
the wives abandoned long ago, toys that grandmother
talked one of the men into shoving into the attic
when the last of my cousins completed high school
and most of them settled into slow, erratic orbits
around the bay window of the low house.

Snow? Snow!

We've got ourselves another cold front set to tighten our nipples and scrotums. There will be no relaxing of involuntary responses to temperature, I tell you. Though D and I cooked a lovely, spicy vegetable stew that warms us. Ah. . .

Right. So, there's still a bit of snow on the ground, and the powers that be suggest that we might get another bit o' dusting. I've been thinking about that stuff, and how we respond to it. And I've thought my thoughts into a poem form. It seems nice. But it won't let my nipples alone.

The Neighborly Business of Shoveling Snow

Wind scrubs his face, his shovel’s handle
is not wood, doesn’t feel like wood in his hands.
Gloves feel the world.

Birds dart from pine to ash, shake balance loose.
He woodburns ash and oak, not pine,
in the velvet barrel of his stove.

Snow continues to fall like snow.
Farther south, where sandhill cranes winter,
ice builds up in thin, bright layers.

Traces of summer garden are lost.
Paths appear, fill in, reappear with tracks
of red squirrels, sparrows, the neighbor’s pumpkin cat.

It’s a big storm. Anyone could see his breath
and imagine that the air hurts his lungs.
Windblown ice pebbles sting like lava sparks.

If he were younger, he’d test the snow for packing.
Older, and he might collapse soon, chest.
A bison would stand into the blow. He scoops again.

More Poems Online

So surf on over to Bolts of Silk to check out two more poems by your humble blogster. One's at the top. You'll need to scroll down a bit for the second--which was the poem that was up for xmas.

The best thing that's happened recently was that one of my cousins actually asked my about ecopoetics. And then didn't change the subject when I explained it. Ah. Made me feel all warm and stuff. And almost counterbalanced my cousin who showed up drunk. Family. They're you're jeans.

Given a Lack of Papers

Here's a poetry draft. Have at it.

Looking into the Reversed Mirror

The fortuneteller for the Navy predicts
a dark transition, a coup of spearheads,
a floor moldy with black fletchings,
a lieutenant colonel in a fig leaf
who can’t even piss rubber bullets.

This fortuneteller can tell
when tea sets are reversed, knows
when to abandon the melting hot cities
and flee to the beaches, the beaches
he knows where the elements meet.

As a boy, his mother had taken him
to lakes and farms where boundaries
kept things that belonged from things
that did not belong. In the fenced field,
there was no revolt.

The beach, for all its shifting in wind,
for all its shifting under water,
for all that it gets kicked in the face
of younger siblings and weaklings,
the beach refuses you passage. A boat is a lie.

The fortuneteller knows lines,
understands that signs cannot be crossed,
can feel attractors and singularities,
cannot feel the desires of goats and eels,
knows that every coup is the same river.

And Bonus Time

Over at Crafty Green Poet's Bolts of Silk (see both at left) there's a poem by your humble correspondent. Drop on by and give the site some love.

And if any of you know Dave Freeling and Nicole Achs, let 'em know the piece is for them and they, especially, should surf on over.

Mistakes and Boredom, Together at Last!

Yeah, I have no idea why that last post posted three times. You hit a button once and you expect to just forget about it. Like nuclear war. But I'll leave the three up so you can enjoy all of M's japes.

Here's a little piece inspired by sitting in a faculty meeting for an hour and a half while they discussed hiring priorities past and future. And pretty much nothing else. All very civilized, to be sure. The poem's title is the question that started me writing instead of taking notes.

What’s Happening to the Eighteenth Century?

It’s finally winding down,
its long influence diminishing.
The children have scattered
and never write, too busy
with wars and empires of their own.
Itss taken to drinking rum in port glasses.
After a few, it goes out alone
to the old rivers it grew up near
and starts to cry. At first, softly,
but then louder until the sobs
almost shake off its pewter buttons.
Often, during full moons, it strips
away the dark, heavy clothes
and steps into the cold wondering,
as it always has, about the hollow
space a body leaves when it sinks
into the flow. More and more,
it stays in longer and longer
watching the stars
in the sky and on the water.
It reaches out to capture blossoms
or snowflakes in their seasons.
Slowly, and very late, it steps out,
returns to its tobacco and its peat fire.

If any of you are going to AWP and are looking for a roommate, I've got a room already. Shoot me an email. Or, if any of you are going to be in Atlanta for the first weekend of March and need a roommate, let me know.

It's All About Knowing, Baby

A recent draft. I'm off to enjoy today's high of 22. Yesterday, we were in the 30s with lovely wind gusts also in the thirties. The first rule of not-freezing-yourself-to-death club is not freezing yourself to death. So enjoy this recent draft about epistemology.

The Occult

I feel my whole mountain body,
one family narrative.
My leg, my hands reach
for the sharp sunlight, the hills,
the creek rhythm.

I was young, wanted to work the hard bones.
My wife did not ask for piedmont cows,
hay and a thin creek line of sycamores.

What do I know of root?
I wasn’t much more than a boy when I moved.

Began. The world
barren without knowledge.

Like a root, the moving practice,
the sinking mind. Old men say
learn to turn, punch, kick.
I will grow back as a stronger vine.

We pushed off.
Atlanta began it all again.
Alone that time, root split.
In the mountains I found form
and I found bones.

It's All About Knowing, Baby

A recent draft. I'm off to enjoy today's high of 22. Yesterday, we were in the 30s with lovely wind gusts also in the thirties. The first rule of not-freezing-yourself-to-death club is not freezing yourself to death. So enjoy this recent draft about epistemology.

The Occult

I feel my whole mountain body,
one family narrative.
My leg, my hands reach
for the sharp sunlight, the hills,
the creek rhythm.

I was young, wanted to work the hard bones.
My wife did not ask for piedmont cows,
hay and a thin creek line of sycamores.

What do I know of root?
I wasn’t much more than a boy when I moved.

Began. The world
barren without knowledge.

Like a root, the moving practice,
the sinking mind. Old men say
learn to turn, punch, kick.
I will grow back as a stronger vine.

We pushed off.
Atlanta began it all again.
Alone that time, root split.
In the mountains I found form
and I found bones.