conclusion

My poem at qarrtsiluni

After Joan Mitchell's

La Grand Valle XIV

Check it out Joan Mitchell

recrudescence

Webs

my mother drew spider webs

on any paper within her reach

my mother on the telephone

drew webs across names in our address book

my mother in her rocker

drew webs on bills and Christmas cards

my mother in my bedroom drew

webs deep in diaries

everywhere in that house I found

ink    pencil    crayon

-Teresa Carson

from Elegy for the Floater

bloom

Magnolia

Ambition. Jealousy. The numbing flow

of adrenaline pumped along the blood.

The fear that loneliness is punishment

and that corrosive draining feeling down

the chest the natural and just result

of failures...What delicious leisure not

to feel it. What a sweet reprieve to linger

here with these ovals of purple and flamingo

plumed from the tree or splayed on the pavement.

If only for these seconds before returning

back to the open air those flowers keep

pushing out of themselves to die inside.

Peter Campion

drawn

A DRAWING

The meaning of this is entirely and best to say the mark, best to

say it best to show sudden places, best to make bitter, best to make

the length tall and nothing broader, anything between the half.

Gertrude Stein

from Tender Buttons

So the cruelest month is nearly over and I'll admit a certain rebellious disdain for napowrimo but fact is jumping part way on that bandwagon is yielding work or at least words, pages of them, all marks, some showing sudden places, which is a good thing, and when courage comes time to read, perhaps there'll be marks worth another look, then more work. This mark-making/type-making has been a relief.

more Gertrude

Water Raining

  Water astonishing and difficult altogether makes a meadow and a stroke.

one more from Matthea

Museum of the Middle

You're walking down the middle of the road when you start sinking.

Each white stripe gets successively softer, like strips of gum left out

in the sun.  You pass daffodils, coffins, and fossils until you're at the

earth's core.  The doorknob burns your hand but inside is the usual

cool, museum-ish hush.  A tapestry (2' x 48') charting the rise and fall

of the middle class is backlit so that the stitched line fluoresces like a

heartbeat on a monitor.  Most prized is a worm segment in the foyer,

a pink accordion mounted on black velvet and framed in gold. They

say a worm can live if you cut it in half but not if you extract its exact

middle.  In the next room and spilling into the one after that is the

ever-expanding gallery of middle-management--almost all white

men.  Today there are two special exhibits--to your left, Hermes

and Other Intermediaries; to your right, The Middle Distance: For-

gotten Focus. In each painting, the foreground and background have

been blacked out, leaving fragments of fields, flagstones, the occa-

sional midsized sheep.  But why are you here? Do your parents love

you exactly 5 % less than your brother and 5% more than the dog?

What museum-worthy mediocrity do the curators see in you?

from Modern Life

Reading Harvey's latest is a graphic experience. I'm learning how to lighten up. 

Not that she's funny haha. Rather that she's looser and kind of darkly playful 

in her associations and subject matter. Some of it is spookily goofy, 

if that makes sense.  Anyway, good reading.

dig it

Ode to the Double-Natured Sides of Things

God and the angels arrive in Eden to find only a scattering of stems

on the ground. Noticing how the angels' wings fall from left to right

as they bend over the stems, God invents a more flexible forgive-

ness. Things change just slightly  The usual botany class--two rows

of long tables, students on either side with wildflowers in vases be-

tween them--keeps its format, but now, if a boy puts down his refer-

ence book and stares instead at a dot of green on the cheek of the girl

across from him, his essay "How a Leaf So Tiny Got on Her Cheek"

is relevant, may even warrant an "A." Above the sky may be dark.

Below the corn may be dry. Some days recess has to be on the west

side of the school because it's raining on the east side.

Matthea Harvey

from Modern Life

dead line

Implications for Modern Life

The ham flowers have veins and are rimmed in rind, each petal a

little meat sunset. I deny all connections with the ham flowers, the

barge floating by loaded with lard, the white flagstones like platelets

in the blood-red road. I'll put the calves in coats so the ravens can't

gore them, bandage up the cut gate and when the wind rustles its

muscles, I'll gather the seeds and burn them.  But then I see a horse

lying on the side of the road and think You are sleeping, you are sleep-

ing, I will make you be sleeping.  But if I didn't make the ham flow-

ers, how can I make him get up? I made the ham flowers. Get up,

dear animal. Here is your pasture flecked with pink, your oily river,

your bleeding barn. Decide what to look at and how. If you lower

your lashes, the blood looks like mud. If you stay, I will find you

fresh hay.

Matthea Harvey

translation

WALDO WILLIAMS

What is it to be human?

What is staying alive? To possess

A great hall inside of a cell.

What is it to know? The same root

Underneath the branches.

What is it to believe? Being a carer

Until relief takes over.

And to forgive? On fours through thorns

To keep company to an old enemy.

What is it to sing? To receive breath

From the genius of creation.

What's work but humming a song

From wood and wheat.

What are state affairs? A craft

That's still only crawling?

And armaments? Thrust a knife

In a baby's fist.

Being a nation? What can it be? A gift

In the swell of the heart.

And to love a country? Keeping house

In a cloud of witnesses.

What's the world to the all powerful?

A circle spinning.

And to the children of the earth?

A cradle rocking.

translated from the Welsh by Menna Elfyn

This from the translation issue of Poetry. I dig into it when it arrives in the mail because the poems sound so different. Even through the veil of English they retain the trace of their native language. This issue, which the journal started a few years ago, is a favorite because it's full of new sounds. I tire sometimes of the droning of words in my head or on the page. This issue brings refreshment.

Menna Elfyn wrote this about her work with Waldo Williams' poem.

In Welsh poetry, and in Celtic poetry in general, poets sang their poems, and we sense here the aura of the songs, in tune with the sounds of trees and harvests. He depicts an era where singing was second nature to breathing, part of that same joyous song.

sign

We Are Ready: Petition to the Chinese Government

On August 8, 2007, China launched a publicity campaign proclaiming “We Are Ready” to host the Olympic Games in August 2008. We, the undersigned members of PEN American Center, are writing to ask you to show the world that China is in fact ready—not just to stage the Olympics, but to acknowledge, protect, and celebrate the full rights of its citizens. PEN believes there are currently 38 writers and journalists imprisoned in China for exercising their right to speak and write freely, as guaranteed under Chinese and international law. We are concerned that, despite official pledges to respect essential rights in this Olympic year, Chinese authorities continue to harass and detain writers in violation of their right to freedom of expression. In order to fulfill the promises China made in securing the Olympic Games, and to ensure that the rights of our colleagues are fully protected in your country, we therefore urge you to: • facilitate the immediate and unconditional release of all writers and journalists currently imprisoned and end the practice of detaining, harassing, and censoring writers and journalists in China • abide by China’s pledge that “there will be no restrictions on media reporting and movement of journalists up to and including the Olympic Games”; and • end internet censorship and reform laws that are used to imprison writers and journalists and suppress the free exchange of information and ideas on the internet. ACT NOW: sign the petition Visit the PEN website

weather

The Poems of Our Climate

I.

Clear water in a brilliant bowl,

Pink and white carnations. The light

In the room more like a snowy air,

Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow

At the end of winter when afternoons return.

Pink and white carnations-one desires

So much more than that. The day itself

Is simplified: a bowl of white,

Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,

With nothing more than the carnations.

II.

Say even that this complete simplicity

Stripped one of all one's torments, concealed

The evilly compounded, vital I

And made it fresh in a world of white,

A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,

Still one would want more, one would need more,

More than a world of white and snowy scents.

III.

There would still remain the never-resting mind,

So that one would want to escape, come back

To what had been so long composed.

The imperfect is our paradise.

Note that, in this bitterness, delight,

Since the imperfect is so hot in us,

Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

Wallace Stevens

elegy

Georgia O'Keefe's Sky Above Clouds

How Beautiful

A personal lens: glass bending rays

That gave one that day's news

Saying each and every day,

Just remember you are standing

On a planet that's evolving.

How beautiful, she thought, what distance does

For water, the view from above or afar.

In last night's dream, they were back again

At the beginning. She was a child

And he was a child.

A plane lit down and left her there.

Cold whitening the white sky whiter.

Then a scalpel cut her open for all the world

To be a sea.

By Mary Jo Bang

from Elegy

Excerpt from Susan Tichy's latest, Bone Pagoda, 

a beautiful, harsh book from Ahsahta Press. 

Corridor

What O'Keefe said in paint is that light lays hands on us

Not that color is event, but the weight of pure sensation

So rubble, when you touch it, could be absolute blue

Otherwise the word remains transparent

As when critics said the poet

Must be equal to what she has seen

An umbrella closes suddenly in the middle of the block

And a forest is not tableau it is a forest

When the hospital corridors ran with blood

They  said think of another image, that one's old

***************

Here's what O'Keefe said about bones--

I was most interested in the holes in the bones--

what I saw through them--

particularly the blue

from holding them up in the sun 

against the sky.

just say no

no na po wri mo for me

Willow in Spring Wind: A Showing

Pointless homesickness. Pointless shudderings.

Wind now clockwise: surrendering this way.

Wind now counter: surrendering that.

Wide tree with its good throat up from the dark

flinging forth embroiderings of inaudibles,

limbs jerked like a cough -- then like a credo, flung --

then broken oars; then oars not broken at all but thrumming in

unison into

the open sea of my

watching.

Clasp me, trellis of glancings,

delicatest machine--

body of the absconding god--

replacing something (I know not what)--

undulating, muttering liqudly...

Is it my glance or is it the willow kneeling wildly now

as if looking for corpses,

dragging its alphabet of buds all along the gravelly walk--

scraping -- ripping -- along the seemingly insatiable

hardness of gravel? Also the limestone wall they slap...

Where is the sharp edge that we seek?  Where

                                 the open mouth? --

the true roughness -- halo distended --

glittering with exaggeration --

dazzling the still philosophies --

by Jorie Graham