BillyBlog's Favorite Poems, #1 ("Bantams in Pine-Woods" by Wallace Stevens)

Well, here we are. The last day of April, National Poetry Month, 2008.

I have spent the last thirty days counting down my favorite thirty, then thirty-one, poems.

I have not claimed they were the thirty-one best, just the thirty-one, from different poets, that I liked the most.

Some you may have seen before, and some may be new. I hope that the vast readership out there enjoyed this exercise.

Then again, no one guessed who my favorite poem was by, so I can almost hear the echoes of my own grandiosity deflating in the blogosphere.

So, without further ado, I will praise the greatness of Wallace Stevens, whose The Palm at the End of the Mind, I studied in a Contemporary American Poetry class my junior year in college.

I don’t have any signed Stevens books, but I do have a hardcover first edition of The Plam at the End of the Mind, published seventeen years after Stevens’ death in 1955. I cherish it because the appreciation of a great poet that it represents.

I can think of a dozen poems that really rock my brain, many of which are here.

See, especially, “Anecdote of the Jar,” and “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”.

But, my all-time favorite Stevens poem is “Bantams in Pine-Woods”. It reads almost like nonsense, but it paints such a vivid, anthropomorphic scene that I often quote segments in my ongoing inner dialogue with the world. The small, proud bantam challenging the rooster in the wild. But the poem, as so deftly explained in its wikipedia entry, is a metaphor for American poetry.

Bantams in Pine-Woods

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

Damned universal cock, as if the sun
Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail.

Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the personal.
Your world is you. I am my world.

You ten-foot poet among inchlings. Fat!
Begone! An inchling bristles in these pines,

Bristles, and points their Appalachian tangs,
And fears not portly Azcan nor his hoos.

Stevens is best read aloud. Do it. Go back and read it out loud in front of the computer screen. And try not to smile. And see if you can feel your feathers ruffling in indignation.

So there we have it - my top 31. I think BillyBlog has had enough of poetry for a while. Thanks for coming a long for the ride!

Previous Favorite Poems for National Poetry Month:

#2 - "Self-Dependence" by Matthew Arnold
#3 - "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Charles Simic
#4 - "we ain't got no money, honey, but we got rain" by Charles Bukowski
#5 - "Garbage" by A.R. Ammons
#6 - "Rock and Hawk" by Robinson Jeffers
#7 - "Nostalgia" by Billy Collins
#8 - "A Piece of the Storm" by Mark Strand
#9A - "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forché and
#9B - "may i feel said he" by e.e.cummings
#10 - "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" by Galway Kinnell
#11 - "Symposium" by Paul Muldoon
#12 - "Poem for the Class of..." by Max Eberts
#13 - "Boss of the Food" by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
#14 - "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath
#15 - "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
#16 - "Buddhist Barbie" by Denise Duhamel
#17 - "One Train May Hide Another" by Kenneth Koch
#18 - "Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed!) by Frank O'Hara (with Audio)
#19 - "Crumbs" by Hal Sirowitz (Audio Added)
#20 - "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams
#21 - "They Feed They Lion" by Philip Levine
#22 - "Looking at Kilauea" by Garret Hongo
#23 - "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell (Audio Added)
#24 - A Handful of Richard Brautigan
#25 - "A Buddha in the Woodpile" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#26 - "Separation" by W.S. Merwin
#27 - "The Flea" by John Donne
#28 - Poem Twenty from Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
#29 - "Magpie's Song" by Gary Snyder
#30 - "Eunoia" by Christian Bok

BillyBlog's Favorite Poems, #2 ("Self-Dependence" by Matthew Arnold)

The Victorian poet Matthew Arnold may be best known for his classic poem "Dover Beach," but in the Fall of 1984, a girl I liked gave me one of his lesser-known poems that, to a high school senior struggling with his identity, floored me.

Arnold critics have labeled him derivative and trite, but sometimes that's just what a teenage boy needs.

This poem changed my life and I am fiercely loyal to it, thus it's surprisingly high ranking in my list.

Self -Dependence

Weary of myself, and sick of asking

What I am, and what I ought to be,

At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me

Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.



And a look of passionate desire

O'er the sea and to the stars I send:

"Ye who from my childhood up have calm'd me,

Calm me, ah, compose me to the end!



"Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters,

On my heart your mighty charm renew;

Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,

Feel my soul becoming vast like you!"



From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,

Over the lit sea's unquiet way,

In the rustling night-air came the answer:

"Wouldst thou be as these are? Live as they.



"Unaffrighted by the silence round them,

Undistracted by the sights they see,

These demand not that the things without them

Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.



"And with joy the stars perform their shining,

And the sea its long moon-silver'd roll;

For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting

All the fever of some differing soul.



"Bounded by themselves, and unregardful

In what state God's other works may be,

In their own tasks all their powers pouring,

These attain the mighty life you see."



O air-born voice! long since, severely clear,

A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear:

"Resolve to be thyself; and know that he,

Who finds himself, loses his misery!"

Previous Favorite Poems for National Poetry Month:

#3 - "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Charles Simic
#4 - "we ain't got no money, honey, but we got rain" by Charles Bukowski
#5 - "Garbage" by A.R. Ammons
#6 - "Rock and Hawk" by Robinson Jeffers
#7 - "Nostalgia" by Billy Collins
#8 - "A Piece of the Storm" by Mark Strand
#9A - "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forché and
#9B - "may i feel said he" by e.e.cummings
#10 - "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" by Galway Kinnell
#11 - "Symposium" by Paul Muldoon
#12 - "Poem for the Class of..." by Max Eberts
#13 - "Boss of the Food" by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
#14 - "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath
#15 - "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
#16 - "Buddhist Barbie" by Denise Duhamel
#17 - "One Train May Hide Another" by Kenneth Koch
#18 - "Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed!) by Frank O'Hara (with Audio)
#19 - "Crumbs" by Hal Sirowitz (Audio Added)
#20 - "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams
#21 - "They Feed They Lion" by Philip Levine
#22 - "Looking at Kilauea" by Garret Hongo
#23 - "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell (Audio Added)
#24 - A Handful of Richard Brautigan
#25 - "A Buddha in the Woodpile" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#26 - "Separation" by W.S. Merwin
#27 - "The Flea" by John Donne
#28 - Poem Twenty from Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
#29 - "Magpie's Song" by Gary Snyder
#30 - "Eunoia" by Christian Bok

BillyBlog's Favorite Poems, #3 ("The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Charles Simic)

Whoa. Bukowski #4? And now Charles Simic #3? What gives? You'll have to wait and see. Anyone want to guess who wrote my two favorite poems? Send me a comment....

Anyway, Simic has written better poems, but this one is my favorite. I still remember reading it in the Mary Norton Clapp Library at Occidental College in 1987, standing up, and saying, "Wow!"
This is from his awesomely-titled Return to a Place Lit By a Glass of Milk:

The Garden of Earthly Delights

Buck has a headache. Tony ate
a real hot pepper. Sylvia weighs
herself naked on the bathroom
scale. Gary owes $800 to the
Internal Revenue. Roger says
poetry is the manifacture of lightning rods.
Jose wants to punch his wife
in the mouth. Ted's afraid
of his own shadow. Ray talks
to his tomato plants. Paul
wants a job in the post office
selling stamps. Mary keeps
smiling at herself in the mirror.

And I,
I piss in the sink
with a feeling of
eternity.

I just love this poem.

And it was short and sweet to offset the Bukowski.

Previous Favorite Poems for National Poetry Month:

#4 - "we ain't got no money, honey, but we got rain" by Charles Bukowski
#5 - "Garbage" by A.R. Ammons
#6 - "Rock and Hawk" by Robinson Jeffers
#7 - "Nostalgia" by Billy Collins
#8 - "A Piece of the Storm" by Mark Strand
#9A - "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forché and
#9B - "may i feel said he" by e.e.cummings
#10 - "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" by Galway Kinnell
#11 - "Symposium" by Paul Muldoon
#12 - "Poem for the Class of..." by Max Eberts
#13 - "Boss of the Food" by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
#14 - "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath
#15 - "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
#16 - "Buddhist Barbie" by Denise Duhamel
#17 - "One Train May Hide Another" by Kenneth Koch
#18 - "Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed!) by Frank O'Hara (with Audio)
#19 - "Crumbs" by Hal Sirowitz (Audio Added)
#20 - "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams
#21 - "They Feed They Lion" by Philip Levine
#22 - "Looking at Kilauea" by Garret Hongo
#23 - "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell (Audio Added)
#24 - A Handful of Richard Brautigan
#25 - "A Buddha in the Woodpile" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#26 - "Separation" by W.S. Merwin
#27 - "The Flea" by John Donne
#28 - Poem Twenty from Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
#29 - "Magpie's Song" by Gary Snyder
#30 - "Eunoia" by Christian Bok

BillyBlog's Favorite Poems, #4 ("we ain't got no money, honey, but we got rain" by Charles Bukowski)

It is difficult to pinpoint one Charles Bukowski poem for this project. Not only because he wrote so many great poems, but because I have featured Bukowski poems on BillyBlog before, like “The Mockingbird,” which I would say is my favorite and “Dinosauria, We," which runs a close second.

So I settled on a poem whose title I evoke when a) it’s raining and/or b) money is tight. It’s one of the longer Bukowski poems (the audio at the end runs to eight minutes), but it’s one I recall often. So, pull up a chair and take a look and/or listen. This poem does what good poems do: it transports you to another time, and another place. Anyone who has lived through a long rain in Los Angeles can probably relate. There's an audio link at the end, as well:

we ain’t got no money, honey, but we got rain

call it the greenhouse effect or whatever

but it just doesn't rain like it

used to.

I particularly remember the rains of the 

depression era.

there wasn't any money but there was

plenty of rain.

it wouldn't rain for just a night or

a day,

it would RAIN for 7 days and 7

nights

and in Los Angeles the storm drains

weren't built to carry off taht much

water

and the rain came down THICK and 

MEAN and

STEADY

and you HEARD it banging against

the roofs and into the ground

waterfalls of it came down

from roofs

and there was HAIL

big ROCKS OF ICE

bombing

exploding smashing into things

and the rain 

just wouldn't

STOP

and all the roofs leaked-

dishpans,

cooking pots

were placed all about;

they dripped loudly

and had to be emptied

again and

again.

the rain came up over the street curbings,

across the lawns, climbed up the steps and

entered the houses.

there were mops and bathroom towels,

and the rain often came up through the 

toilets:bubbling, brown, crazy,whirling,

and all the old cars stood in the streets,

cars that had problems starting on a 

sunny day,

and the jobless men stood

looking out the windows

at the old machines dying

like living things

out there.

the jobless men,

failures in a failing time

were imprisoned in their houses with their

wives and children

and their

pets.

the pets refused to go out

and left their waste in 

strange places.

the jobless men went mad 

confined with

their once beautiful wives.

there were terrible arguments

as notices of foreclosure

fell into the mailbox.

rain and hail, cans of beans,

bread without butter; fried

eggs, boiled eggs, poached

eggs; peanut butter

sandwiches, and an invisible 

chicken 

in every pot.

my father, never a good man

at best, beat my mother

when it rained

as I threw myself

between them,

the legs, the knees, the

screams

until they

separated.

"I'll kill you," I screamed

at him. "You hit her again

and I'll kill you!"

"Get that son-of-a-bitching

kid out of here!"

"no, Henry, you stay with

your mother!"

all the households were under 

siege but I believe that ours

held more terror than the

average.

and at night

as we attempted to sleep

the rains still came down

and it was in bed

in the dark

watching the moon against 

the scarred window

so bravely

holding out 

most of the rain,

I thought of Noah and the

Ark

and I thought, it has come

again.

we all thought

that.

and then, at once, it would 

stop.

and it always seemed to 

stop

around 5 or 6 a.m.,

peaceful then,

but not an exact silence

because things continued to

drip

  drip

    drip

and there was no smog then

and by 8 a.m.

there was a

blazing yellow sunlight,

Van Gogh yellow-

crazy, blinding!

and then

the roof drains

relieved of the rush of 

water

began to expand in the warmth:

PANG!PANG!PANG!

and everybody got up and looked outside

and there were all the lawns

still soaked

greener than green will ever

be

and there were birds

on the lawn

CHIRPING like mad,

they hadn't eaten decently 

for 7 days and 7 nights

and they were weary of 

berries

and

they waited as the worms

rose to the top,

half drowned worms.

the birds plucked them 

up

and gobbled them

down;there were

blackbirds and sparrows.

the blackbirds tried to

drive the sparrows off

but the sparrows,

maddened with hunger,

smaller and quicker,

got their

due.

the men stood on their porches

smoking cigarettes,

now knowing

they'd have to go out

there

to look for that job

that probably wasn't 

there, to start that car 

that probably wouldn't

start.

and the once beautiful

wives

stood in their bathrooms

combing their hair,

applying makeup,

trying to put their world back

together again,

trying to forget that

awful sadness that

gripped them,

wondering what they could

fix for 

breakfast.

and on the radio

we were told that

school was now

open.

and

soon

there I was

on the way to school,

massive puddles in the 

street,

the sun like a new

world,

my parents back in that

house,

I arrived at my classroom

on time.

Mrs. Sorenson greeted us

with, "we won't have our

usual recess, the grounds 

are too wet."

"AW!" most of the boys 

went.

"but we are going to do

something special at

recess," she went on,

"and it will be

fun!"

well, we all wondered

what that would

be

and the two hour wait

seemed a long time

as Mrs. Sorenson

went about

teaching her

lessons.

I looked at the little

girls, they looked so 

pretty and clean and

alert,

they sat still and

straight

and their hair was 

beautiful

in the California

sunshine.

then the recess bells rang 

and we all waited for the 

fun.

then Mrs. Sorenson told 

us:

"now, what we are going to

do is we are going to tell

each other what we did 

during the rainstorm!

we'll begin in the front row

and go right around!

now, Michael, you're 

first!. . ."

well, we all began to tell

our stories, Michael began

and it went on and on,

and soon we realized that

we were all lying, not

exactly lying but mostly

lying and some of the boys

began to snicker and some 

of the girls began to give

them dirty looks and

Mrs. Sorenson said,

"all right! I demand a

modicum of silence

here!

I am interested in what

you did

during the rainstorm

even if you

aren't!"

so we had to tell our 

stories and they were

stories.

one girl said that

when the rainbow first

came 

she saw God's face

at the end of it.

only she didn't say

which end.

one boy said he stuck

his fishing pole

out the window

and caught a little

fish

and fed it to his

cat.

almost everybody told

a lie.

the truth was just

too awful and

embarrassing to 

tell.

then the bell rang

and recess was 

over.

"thank you," said Mrs.

Sorenson, "that was very

nice.

and tomorrow the grounds 

will be dry

and we will put them

to use

again."

most of the boys

cheered

and the little girls 

sat very straight and

still,

looking so pretty and 

clean and

alert,

their hair beautiful in a sunshine that 

the world might never see 

again.

If you made it this far, you may want to hear Buk reading it, too:

we ain't got no money, honey, but we got rain (m4a) - Charles Bukowski

Previous Favorite Poems for National Poetry Month:

#5 - "Garbage" by A.R. Ammons
#6 - "Rock and Hawk" by Robinson Jeffers
#7 - "Nostalgia" by Billy Collins
#8 - "A Piece of the Storm" by Mark Strand
#9A - "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forché and
#9B - "may i feel said he" by e.e.cummings
#10 - "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" by Galway Kinnell
#11 - "Symposium" by Paul Muldoon
#12 - "Poem for the Class of..." by Max Eberts
#13 - "Boss of the Food" by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
#14 - "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath
#15 - "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
#16 - "Buddhist Barbie" by Denise Duhamel
#17 - "One Train May Hide Another" by Kenneth Koch
#18 - "Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed!) by Frank O'Hara (with Audio)
#19 - "Crumbs" by Hal Sirowitz (Audio Added)
#20 - "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams
#21 - "They Feed They Lion" by Philip Levine
#22 - "Looking at Kilauea" by Garret Hongo
#23 - "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell (Audio Added)
#24 - A Handful of Richard Brautigan
#25 - "A Buddha in the Woodpile" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#26 - "Separation" by W.S. Merwin
#27 - "The Flea" by John Donne
#28 - Poem Twenty from Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
#29 - "Magpie's Song" by Gary Snyder
#30 - "Eunoia" by Christian Bok

BillyBlog's Favorite Poems, #5 ("Garbage" by A.R. Ammons)

Like Robinson Jeffers, A.R. "Archie" Ammons was likewise under appreciated, in my opinion. I had the pleasure of hearing him read once in the late 1990s. His work was quirky and complicated. I wrote several pale poems after A.R. Ammons. I am not a big fan of long poems, but his I will read.
In fact, his Tape for the Turn of the Year (written on an space-constricting adding machine tape) and Garbage are works of sheer brilliance. The latter won the National Book Award (his second time grabbing that honor) in 1993.

Bookslut recommends this book and I have lifted this brief excerpt of Garbage here. The whole damn book is worthy of cracking the top 5 favorite poems on my list...

from "Garbage"

gather up the scraps for pig-swill: anything
thrown out to the chickens will be ground fine

in gizzards or taken underground by beetles and
ants: this will be transmuted into the filigree

of ant feelers' energy vaporizations: chunk and
smear, grease and glob will boil refined in

time's and guts' alembics, the air carbonized
rich, potash in lacy leavings' milding terrain:

a breadcrumb borne away by hundreds like a stone
waist-high many legs to the pyramid: but nothing

much can become of the clear-through plastic
lid: it finds security in the legit

museums of our desecrations--the mounds, the
heights of discard . . .

Click on the Bookslut link here to read a much worthier analysis of the poem.

Previous Favorite Poems for National Poetry Month:

#6 - "Rock and Hawk" by Robinson Jeffers
#7 - "Nostalgia" by Billy Collins
#8 - "A Piece of the Storm" by Mark Strand
#9A - "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forché and
#9B - "may i feel said he" by e.e.cummings
#10 - "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" by Galway Kinnell
#11 - "Symposium" by Paul Muldoon
#12 - "Poem for the Class of..." by Max Eberts
#13 - "Boss of the Food" by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
#14 - "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath
#15 - "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
#16 - "Buddhist Barbie" by Denise Duhamel
#17 - "One Train May Hide Another" by Kenneth Koch
#18 - "Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed!) by Frank O'Hara (with Audio)
#19 - "Crumbs" by Hal Sirowitz (Audio Added)
#20 - "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams
#21 - "They Feed They Lion" by Philip Levine
#22 - "Looking at Kilauea" by Garret Hongo
#23 - "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell (Audio Added)
#24 - A Handful of Richard Brautigan
#25 - "A Buddha in the Woodpile" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#26 - "Separation" by W.S. Merwin
#27 - "The Flea" by John Donne
#28 - Poem Twenty from Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
#29 - "Magpie's Song" by Gary Snyder
#30 - "Eunoia" by Christian Bok

BillyBlog's Favorite Poems, #6 ("Rock and Hawk" by Robinson Jeffers)

Robinson Jeffers is one of the best underrated poets of the 20th Century. Perhaps I am biased due to my being a fellow alumnus from Occidental College (he was the original oxypoet) , but his work stands the test of time, as a truly amazing California poet.

In 1987, when I was a sophomore at Occidental, the college celebrated Jeffers' centennial. I was too busy being preoccupied with being a college student to appreciate it, or attend any of the centennial events, but I managed to salvage and keep a poster that marked the occasion.

[Come to think of it, I haven't seen it in a while. Could it have been lost along with my Ferlinghetti? That would suck.]

Anyway, here is the poem:

Rock and Hawk
by Robinson Jeffers
Here is a symbol in which Many high tragic thoughts Watch their own eyes. This gray rock, standing tall On the headland, where the seawind Lets no tree grow, Earthquake-proved, and signatured By ages of storms: on its peak A falcon has perched. I think, here is your emblem To hang in the future sky; Not the cross, not the hive, But this; bright power, dark peace; Fierce consciousness joined with final Disinterestedness; Life with calm death; the falcon's Realist eyes and act Married to the massive Mysticism of stone, Which failure cannot cast down Nor success make proud.

See the Occidental online resource center here.

Previous Favorite Poems for National Poetry Month:

#7 - "Nostalgia" by Billy Collins
#8 - "A Piece of the Storm" by Mark Strand
#9A - "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forché and
#9B - "may i feel said he" by e.e.cummings
#10 - "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" by Galway Kinnell
#11 - "Symposium" by Paul Muldoon
#12 - "Poem for the Class of..." by Max Eberts
#13 - "Boss of the Food" by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
#14 - "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath
#15 - "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
#16 - "Buddhist Barbie" by Denise Duhamel
#17 - "One Train May Hide Another" by Kenneth Koch
#18 - "Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed!) by Frank O'Hara (with Audio)
#19 - "Crumbs" by Hal Sirowitz (Audio Added)
#20 - "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams
#21 - "They Feed They Lion" by Philip Levine
#22 - "Looking at Kilauea" by Garret Hongo
#23 - "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell (Audio Added)
#24 - A Handful of Richard Brautigan
#25 - "A Buddha in the Woodpile" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#26 - "Separation" by W.S. Merwin
#27 - "The Flea" by John Donne
#28 - Poem Twenty from Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
#29 - "Magpie's Song" by Gary Snyder
#30 - "Eunoia" by Christian Bok

BillyBlog's Favorite Poems, #7 ("Nostalgia" by Billy Collins)

Either you love Billy Collins, or you don't. This poem shows why so many people love him:
NOSTALGIA

Remember the 1340's? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These days language seems transparent a badly broken code.

The 1790's will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.

I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,
or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture the serenity of last month when we picked
berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.

Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.

As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.
This poem and "Litany" are among his best.

Listen: "Nostalgia" (mp3) by Billy Collins.

Previous Favorite Poems for National Poetry Month:

#8 - "A Piece of the Storm" by Mark Strand
#9A - "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forché and
#9B - "may i feel said he" by e.e.cummings
#10 - "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" by Galway Kinnell
#11 - "Symposium" by Paul Muldoon
#12 - "Poem for the Class of..." by Max Eberts
#13 - "Boss of the Food" by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
#14 - "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath
#15 - "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
#16 - "Buddhist Barbie" by Denise Duhamel
#17 - "One Train May Hide Another" by Kenneth Koch
#18 - "Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed!) by Frank O'Hara (with Audio)
#19 - "Crumbs" by Hal Sirowitz (Audio Added)
#20 - "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams
#21 - "They Feed They Lion" by Philip Levine
#22 - "Looking at Kilauea" by Garret Hongo
#23 - "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell (Audio Added)
#24 - A Handful of Richard Brautigan
#25 - "A Buddha in the Woodpile" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#26 - "Separation" by W.S. Merwin
#27 - "The Flea" by John Donne
#28 - Poem Twenty from Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
#29 - "Magpie's Song" by Gary Snyder
#30 - "Eunoia" by Christian Bok

BillyBlog's Favorite Poems, #8 ("A Piece of the Storm" by Mark Strand)

I would select “Keeping Things Whole” by Mark Strand but that’s from a Poetry in Motion poster that I featured here last year. Oh wait, I featured "A Piece of the Storm" too. Sigh. I can't be bothered.

Behold, this amazing poem from Blizzard of One is a worthy replacement:

A Piece of the Storm

For Sharon Horvath

From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,
A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room
And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up
From your book, saw it the moment it landed.
That's all There was to it. No more than a solemn waking
To brevity, to the lifting and falling away of attention, swiftly,
A time between times, a flowerless funeral. No more than that
Except for the feeling that this piece of the storm,
Which turned into nothing before your eyes, would come back,
That someone years hence, sitting as you are now, might say:
"It's time. The air is ready. The sky has an opening."

More Strand poetry here.

I love both the literal and metaphoric image of a single snowflake falling and having an impact.

This poem still interests me years after I first read it.

Previous Favorite Poems for National Poetry Month:

#9A - "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forché and
#9B - "may i feel said he" by e.e.cummings
#10 - "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" by Galway Kinnell
#11 - "Symposium" by Paul Muldoon
#12 - "Poem for the Class of..." by Max Eberts
#13 - "Boss of the Food" by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
#14 - "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath
#15 - "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
#16 - "Buddhist Barbie" by Denise Duhamel
#17 - "One Train May Hide Another" by Kenneth Koch
#18 - "Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed!) by Frank O'Hara (with Audio)
#19 - "Crumbs" by Hal Sirowitz (Audio Added)
#20 - "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams
#21 - "They Feed They Lion" by Philip Levine
#22 - "Looking at Kilauea" by Garret Hongo
#23 - "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell (Audio Added)
#24 - A Handful of Richard Brautigan
#25 - "A Buddha in the Woodpile" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#26 - "Separation" by W.S. Merwin
#27 - "The Flea" by John Donne
#28 - Poem Twenty from Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
#29 - "Magpie's Song" by Gary Snyder
#30 - "Eunoia" by Christian Bok

Two for Tuesday Favorite Poem Bonus! (#9A – “The Colonel” by Carolyn Forche and #9B – “May I Feel Said He” by e.e.cummings)

As mentioned in the last post, I added someone extra in the teens and threw off my count, so instead of 30 posts, I was looking at 31. So, to right the ship, I am pairing off two poems that have absolutely nothing in common, other than the fact that I think they’re brilliant.

WARNING: The following two poems may not be suitable for children.

#9A is “The Colonel” by Carolyn Forché. I believe it is the first prose poem in the top 31 list. Be sure to listen to the audio link

The Colonel

WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD is true. I was in his house. His wife carried
a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went
out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the
cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over
the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English.
Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On
the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had
dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of
bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief
commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was
some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot
said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed
himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries
home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like
dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one
of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water
glass. It came alive there. I am tried of fooling around he said. As
for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck them-
selves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last
of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some
of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the
ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.
May 1978

There’s a bevy of literary analysis on this poem here.

It is worthwhile to jump to that page and scroll down to the excerpt of an interview with Bill Moyers as they discuss the poem. It was in that context that I first heard it read aloud.

It is one of the most haunting poems I’ve ever read, or heard. Forché, when she reads it, speaks in a volume a notch above a whisper. I get chills thinking about it. Listen to her reading it in this YouTube clip:



On a more light-hearted note is this one by e.e. cummings:

may i feel said he
may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she


(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she


(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)


may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she


may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she


but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she


(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she


(cccome?said he
ummm said she)
you're divine!said he
(you are Mine said she)

I discovered this sexy love poem in a version published accompanied by paintings by Marc Chagall. It’s an awesome self-inclusive marriage of poetry and art and it is HIGHLY recommended by me.

See more about Chagall here.

Click the badge below to buy it from Amazon. You won’t regret it.

   

 Previous Favorite Poems for National Poetry Month:

#10 - "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" by Galway Kinnell
#11 - "Symposium" by Paul Muldoon
#12 - "Poem for the Class of..." by Max Eberts
#13 - "Boss of the Food" by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
#14 - "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath
#15 - "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
#16 - "Buddhist Barbie" by Denise Duhamel
#17 - "One Train May Hide Another" by Kenneth Koch
#18 - "Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed!) by Frank O'Hara (with Audio)
#19 - "Crumbs" by Hal Sirowitz (Audio Added)
#20 - "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams
#21 - "They Feed They Lion" by Philip Levine
#22 - "Looking at Kilauea" by Garret Hongo
#23 - "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell (Audio Added)
#24 - A Handful of Richard Brautigan
#25 - "A Buddha in the Woodpile" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#26 - "Separation" by W.S. Merwin
#27 - "The Flea" by John Donne
#28 - Poem Twenty from Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
#29 - "Magpie's Song" by Gary Snyder
#30 - "Eunoia" by Christian Bok

BillyBlog's Favorite Poems, #10 ("After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" by Galway Kinnell)

Well, I seem to have miscalculated. The addition of Max Eberts' poem may have thrown off my pacing, and I am now facing my top 10, with 11 poets to go. Oops. I guess I could go back and strike one of the other poems, but that would just not be in the spirit of National Poetry Month now, would it?

So, 31 it is, which means I either post two on one day or post the last one on May 1. Let's go with one today and make tomorrow a Two-for-Tuesday.

The following poem is from Galway Kinnell. It is much-anthologized and even appears in the same anthology I was published in. That pleased me to be in such great company.

It's a great poem for anyone who has been a parent and has experienced the lack of privacy that a child carries along with them:

After Making Love We Hear Footsteps

For I can snore like a bullhorn

or play loud music

or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman

and Fergus will only sink deeper

into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,

but let there be that heavy breathing

or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house

and he will wrench himself awake

and make for it on the run—as now, we lie together,

after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,

familiar touch of the long-married,

and he appears—in his baseball pajamas, it happens,

the neck opening so small he has to screw them on—

and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,

his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.



In the half darkness we look at each other

and smile

and touch arms across this little, startlingly muscled body—

this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,

sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,

this blessing love gives again into our arms.

Listen: Galway Kinnell reading "After Making Love, We Hear Footsteps" (m4a)

Previous Favorite Poems for National Poetry Month:

#11 - "Symposium" by Paul Muldoon
#12 - "Poem for the Class of..." by Max Eberts
#13 - "Boss of the Food" by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
#14 - "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath
#15 - "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
#16 - "Buddhist Barbie" by Denise Duhamel
#17 - "One Train May Hide Another" by Kenneth Koch
#18 - "Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed!) by Frank O'Hara (with Audio)
#19 - "Crumbs" by Hal Sirowitz (Audio Added)
#20 - "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams
#21 - "They Feed They Lion" by Philip Levine
#22 - "Looking at Kilauea" by Garret Hongo
#23 - "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell (Audio Added)
#24 - A Handful of Richard Brautigan
#25 - "A Buddha in the Woodpile" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#26 - "Separation" by W.S. Merwin
#27 - "The Flea" by John Donne
#28 - Poem Twenty from Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
#29 - "Magpie's Song" by Gary Snyder
#30 - "Eunoia" by Christian Bok