Poet's Corner: Consolation, by Billy Collins

Not going to  battle the harried masses in a European capital this summer? Take heart, you ol' stick in the mud. Just remember how hot, crowded, and miserable it can be. Especially with a backpack and a Baby Bjorn hanging off of you. Or you can just read this poem:

Consolation

By Billy Collins

How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,

wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.

How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,

fully grasping the meaning of every road sign and billboard

and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.

There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous

domes and there is no need to memorize a succession

of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.

No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's

little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.

How much better to command the simple precinct of home

than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.

Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?

Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyed camera

eager to eat the world one monument at a time?

Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice,

I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress

known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning

paper, all language barriers down,

rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.

And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone

willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.

I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal

what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.

It is enough to climb back into the car

as if it were the great car of English itself

and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off

down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna.

Poet's Corner: "Fast Break" by Edward Hirsch

The Sweet Sixteen have come and gone, and the Elite Eight have been narrowed to a Final Four. We may have to wait a few more days to determine a champion, but that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate the roundball through a little poetry today, right? I had a hard time deciding whether to post the one below, which most of us can relate to as fans, or this one, which many of us relate to as sadly broken-down, hobbyist ballers. They're both great.

Fast Break

BY EDWARD HIRSCH

In Memory of Dennis Turner, 1946-1984

A hook shot kisses the rim and

hangs there, helplessly, but doesn’t drop,

and for once our gangly starting center  

boxes out his man and times his jump

perfectly, gathering the orange leather  

from the air like a cherished possession

and spinning around to throw a strike  

to the outlet who is already shoveling

an underhand pass toward the other guard  

scissoring past a flat-footed defender

who looks stunned and nailed to the floor  

in the wrong direction, trying to catch sight

of a high, gliding dribble and a man  

letting the play develop in front of him

in slow motion, almost exactly

like a coach’s drawing on the blackboard,

both forwards racing down the court

the way that forwards should, fanning out

and filling the lanes in tandem, moving  

together as brothers passing the ball

between them without a dribble, without  

a single bounce hitting the hardwood

until the guard finally lunges out  

and commits to the wrong man

while the power-forward explodes past them  

in a fury, taking the ball into the air

by himself now and laying it gently  

against the glass for a lay-up,

but losing his balance in the process,  

inexplicably falling, hitting the floor

with a wild, headlong motion

for the game he loved like a country

and swiveling back to see an orange blur  

floating perfectly through the net.

Poet's Corner: Thomas R. Smith

Ode to the Vinyl Record

by Thomas R. Smith (all emphasis is mine)

The needle lowers into the groove
and I'm home. It could be any record
I've lived with and loved a long time: Springsteen
or Rodrigo, Ray Charles or Emmylou
Harris: Not only the music, but
the whirlpool shimmering on the turntable
funneling blackly down into the ocean
of the ear—even the background
pops and hisses a worn record
wraps the music in creaturely
imperfections so hospitable to our own.
Since those first Beatles and Stones LPs
plopped down spindles on record players
we opened like tiny suitcases at sweaty
junior high parties while parents were out,
how many nights I've pulled around 
my desires a vinyl record's cloak
of flaws and found it a perfect fit,
the crackling unclarity and turbulence
of the country's lo-fi basement heart
madly spinning, making its big dark sound.

That’s pretty good. There’s almost a dash of Kerouac in the rhythm of some of the lines, especially the last couple, that really does it for me. You can really hear the crackle and hiss, and see the glassy threads turning.

Poet's Corner: "The Second Life of Christmas Trees," by Mark Perlberg

Here’s a poem to ponder as you drag your festive fire hazard of a fir tree out to the curb this year:

The Second Life of Christmas Trees

By Mark Perlberg

In frozen January, my friends and I
would drag discarded Christmas trees
from the sidewalks of our shivering town
to an empty lot. One match and fire
raced down a dry sprig like a spurt of life. 
A puff of wind and the pile ignited,
flamed above our heads. Silk waves.
Spice of pitch and balsam in our nostrils.

We stood in a ring around the body of the fire—
drawn close as each boy dared,
our faces stinging from the heat and cold,
lash of that wild star burst on a winter night.

Poet's Corner: Parody Edition

Can a poem be so bad that it crosses over into “awesome.” Today I’m operating on the assumption that it can. I happened upon some old scraps of paper yesterday, scraps I’d scribbled on in high school- when my only relationship to poetry was to make fun of it with my friends. I thought I’d share one of these creations here. I figure that if the internet can appreciate the brilliance of Shitty Watercolors, it must also have a place for intentionally crappy poems:

 -image source

Day of McDermot’s Silence

By Farkus

Incogitant winds make me sway,

Disregarding indemnifications,

Geminating my agony.

Time is a braying beast of burden.

Helen of Troy, make no vain promises!

They penetrate my fervid core.

                I am enervate.

Your turn.

Poet's Corner: Walt Whitman's "Election Day"

I’m not a huge poetry guy. But when I do force myself to dip an occasional toe in that literary form, the poems I gravitate towards are usually contemporary and very simple in language. Because of the timely subject matter, I’ll make an exception for this poem by Walt Whitman. (Also because he uses the word “powerfulest,” the band-name-worthy phrase “spasmic geyserloops,” and the awesome visual imagery of “The final ballot-shower from East to West.” See for yourself- and go vote tomorrow!:

Election Day, November 1884

By Walt Whitman

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,

’Twould not be you, Niagara—nor you, ye limitless prairies—nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,

Nor you, Yosemite—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon’s white cones—nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes—nor Mississippi’s stream:

—This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name—the still small voice vibrating—America’s choosing day,

(The heart of it not in the chosen—the act itself the main, the quadrennial choosing,)

The stretch of North and South arous’d-sea-board and inland-Texas to Maine—the Prairie States—Vermont, Virginia, California,

The final ballot-shower from East to West—the paradox and conflict,

The countless snow-flakes falling—(a swordless conflict,

Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:) the peaceful choice of all,

Or good or ill humanity—welcoming the darker odds, the dross:

—Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify—while the heart pants, life glows:

These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,

Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.

Poet's Corner: "Electrocuting an Elephant" by George Bradley

Today’s poem is a little longer than we normally like to feature, but it comes to you with the grainy, century-old footage that inspired it, so I thought it would be worth sharing.

Now, because I’m posting the Youtube video, someone’s going to say that I am condoning the very filming the author calls Edison on the carpet for- but it’s only meant to bring home the bleakness of the poem’s main message.

Electrocuting an Elephant

BY GEORGE BRADLEY

Her handlers, dressed in vests and flannel pants,

   Step forward in the weak winter light  

Leading a behemoth among elephants,  

Topsy, to another exhibition site;

   Caparisoned with leather bridle,  

Six impassive tons of carnival delight  

Shambles on among spectators who sidle

   Nervously off, for the brute has killed  

At least three men, most recently an idle  

Hanger-on at shows, who, given to distilled

   Diversions, fed her a live cigar.

Since become a beast of burden, Topsy thrilled

The crowds in her palmy days, and soon will star  

   Once more, in an electrocution,  

Which incident, though it someday seem bizarre,

Is now a new idea in execution.

Topsy has been fed an unaccustomed treat,  

   A few carrots laced with cyanide,

And copper plates have been fastened to her feet,  

Wired to cables running off on either side;

   She stamps two times in irritation,

Then waits, for elephants, having a thick hide,  

Know how to be patient. The situation

   Seems dreamlike, till someone throws a switch,  

And the huge body shakes for the duration  

Of five or six unending seconds, in which

   Smoke rises and Topsy’s trunk contracts

And twelve thousand mammoth pounds finally pitch  

To earth, as the current breaks and all relax.

   It is a scene shot with shades of grey—

The smoke, the animal, the reported facts—

On a seasonably grey and gloomy day.

Would you care to see any of that again?

   See it as many times as you please,  

For an electrician, Thomas Edison,

Has had a bright idea we call the movies,

   And called on for monitory spark,

Has preserved it all in framed transparencies  

That are clear as day, for all the day is dark.

   You might be amused on second glance

To note the background—it’s an amusement park!—

A site on Coney Island where elephants

   Are being used in the construction,

And where Topsy, through a keeper’s negligence,  

Got loose, causing some property destruction,

   And so is shown to posterity,

A study in images and conduction,  

Sunday, January 4th, 1903.

And here is Edison’s “moving picture” of Topsy's final moments:

Quite sad. Shades of Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant-” or even of Dumbo’s mother, no? 

The movie was good, but the poem was better...

So here’s an interesting topic: Movies based on poems.

Yes, they exist. It seems they are few and far between, but a little digging reveals a few prime examples. Of course most that spring to mind live in the epic poem category, but I’m going to go ahead and disqualify those right at the outset. An epic poem is, for all intents and purposes, basically a book. And a book-length work, regardless of its rhyme and meter, ought to contain more than enough plot to fill out a feature film. 

So, while they may be great movies, don’t give me your Troy (the Iliad), your Beowulf (Beowulf), your El Cid (Cantar de Mio Cid) or your Braveheart (The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace). Neither McKayla nor I am impressed.

Also, spare me the modern retellings like “O, Brother Where Art Thou” (the Oddysey) and the biopics like “Howl” (“Howl.”)- both of which are already disqualified based on length above.

No, I’m talking about relatively short poems, that spin complete yarns, and that have inspired some hungry screenwriter to create movie magic. Here are a few that fit the bill:

“The Man From Snowy River,” based on the 1890 poem of the same name, by Australian poet Banjo Paterson. The climax of the poem became the climax of the film- Jim Craig’s lunatic plunge down that impossibly steep gorge on horseback was seared into my five-year-old brain like few movie moments have been before or since.

“Gunga Din,” based on the 1892 poem of the same name, by Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling. This one’s a “loosely-based,” but the theme of the brave and decent native as compared to the craven British soldiers is true to the original.

“The Raven,” based on the 1845 poem of the same name, by drunkard and all-around wierdo Edgar Allen Poe. I haven’t seen this one, so I don’t know how loyal it is to Poe, but it’s a B movie horror-comedy. What more could you really want?

“Mulan,” based on “The Ballad of Mulan” a Chinese poem transcribed in the 6th century. I haven’t read this one, and haven’t seen the movie. But I did read the Chick-Fil-A kids meal version to my kids a year or so ago. Does that count?

Which ones did I leave out, readers and movie buffs? What other short poems have made their way to the silver screen?

Poet's Corner: "Tamed" by George Bilgere

As summer draws to a close (school starts next week here in Georgia- good grief!) I thought it would be good to pass along this poem I stumbled on a while back.

Because of the subject matter, it may remind you of this Ray Bradbury post, but while I think it certainly speaks to “summertime,” I think it also celebrates boyhood, rites of passage, and our relationship to the earth around us. A poem for the common man. Have a look:

Tamed

By George Bilgere

This summer my nephew
is old enough for his first job:
mowing the lawn.

I watch him lean his skinny chest
to the bar of the pushmower,
put his weight into it, and become,

for the first time, a beast in harness,
a laborer on the face of the earth,
somehow withering and expanding at the same time

into something worn and ancient, but still
a kid withal. And I remember
how bitterly I went into the traces,

hating that Saturday ritual
for a while, then growing inexplicably
into it, gradually mastering

the topography of the yard,
sometimes using the back and forth technique,
sometimes going for the checkerboard effect,
or my favorite, the ever-diminishing square
that left, at the lawn's center, one
last uncut stand of grass, a wild fortress

I annihilated with a strange thrill,
then stood back to take a look—
to survey the field. To cast

a critical eye on my work.
Just as this kid is doing, standing
at the edge of the mowed clearance.

Taking his own measure. And liking it.

Poet's Corner: "At The Cancer Clinic" by Ted Kooser

Alright. Today’s poem-for-the-common-man is short and sweet. There’s nothing overtly profound about it, but it still manages to tear your heart out. See for yourself:

At the Cancer Clinic

By Ted Kooser

She is being helped toward the open door

that leads to the examining rooms

by two young women I take to be her sisters.

Each bends to the weight of an arm

and steps with the straight, tough bearing

of courage. At what must seem to be

a great distance, a nurse holds the door,

smiling and calling encouragement.

How patient she is in the crisp white sails

of her clothes. The sick woman

peers from under her funny knit cap

to watch each foot swing scuffing forward

and take its turn under her weight.

There is no restlessness or impatience

or anger anywhere in sight. Grace

fills the clean mold of this moment

and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

 *******************************

Am I right? The imagery is simple, and yes, it’s got some nice lines. But what makes this poem truly great, in my view, are the seven words that make up that last line:   “and all the shuffling magazines grow still.”

Criminy, that’s good! One minute we’re reading some poem where almost nothing happens, and in an instant we’re made part of a crowded hospital waiting room, frozen in admiration of this woman’s courage, or reverently marking her impending death, or silently cheering her fight for life. Or Maybe all of the above. 

Sometimes all it takes to give us a little perspective is to watch the right person shuffle weakly down the hall.

Hats off to Mr. Koozer. Anybody else been bowled over by a poem lately?

A Poetry Pet Peeve

What             are              poems

                        written       like         this

                trying 

                                                                      to

                                                             prove?  

Can someone please explain it to me?

Poet's Corner

My high-school English teacher defined poetry as “crystallized thought.” As little as I’ve thought about poetry in the intervening fifteen years, I have always considered his definition to be a pretty decent one. It conjures up images of a weak, watery solution, boiled down to its purest essence- everything evaporating away except the poet’s most poignant pictures, thoughts and emotions.

And as long as a poem isn’t completely abstract and incomprehensible, I’m okay with nibbling these scattered bits and fragments, if they truly convey something meaningful. Then again, sometimes I just like a poem to tell a story. Here’s one that does just that. Hope you like it:

The Birthing

By Deborah Digges

Call out the names in the procession of the loved

Call from the blood the ancestors here to bear witness

to the day he stopped the car,

we, on our way to a great banquet in his honor.

In a field, a cow groaned, lowing, trying to give birth,

what he called front leg presentation,

the calf come out nose-first, one front leg dangling from his mother.

A fatal sign, he said, while rolling up the sleeves

of his dress shirt and climbed the fence.

I watched him thrust his arms entire

into the yet-to-be, where I imagined holy sparrows scattering

in the hall of souls for his big mortal hands just to make way.

With his whole weight he pushed the calf back in the mother

and grasped the other leg tucked up like a closed wing

against the new one’s shoulder

And found a way in the warm dark to bring both legs out

into the world together,

Then heaved and pulled, the cow arching her back,

until a bull calf, in whoosh of blood and water,

came falling whole and still onto the meadow

We rubbed his blackness, bloodying our hands

The mother licked her newborn of us, oblivious

until it moved a little, struggled.

I ran to get our coats, mine a green velvet cloak,

And his tuxedo jacket, and worked to rub the new one dry

while he set out to find the farmer

When it was over, the new calf suckling his mother,

leaving our coats just where they lay

we huddled in the car

And then made love toward eternity

without a word drove slowly home. And loved some more.

There are so many good lines in there, it's hard to choose highlights.  (I transcribed this from YouTube, so hopefully I got the line breaks and punctuation right.)  But what about the rest of you? What poems have punched you in the schnoz lately?

Poet's Corner

-Image courtesy of Fashion Abuse

Whereabouts

by Marcus Jackson, from Neighborhood Register. © Caravan Kerry Press, 2011.

—to Nicole

Finished early at the library,
          I strolled Canal Street to fill
          empty hours
before we'd meet home for dinner.

          Late-winter light sneered,
          reluctant to leave
the streets, bargain tables
          with t-shirts or imposter purses,
          jewelry coves
where gold necklaces refracted
          from squares of scarlet felt.

          All down Mulberry, arched
garlands of festival bulbs
          shined champagne.

          From Italian restaurant stoops,
waiters with handsome accents
          lured tourists by describing
          entrées like landscapes.

At Ferrara's dessert café,
          the wait bent
          halfway up the clogged block.
I whittled inside, browsed
          glass cabinets of cookies,
          yellow-shelled cannolis,
cakes displayed
on paper placemats
          that looked like lace.

I arrived 40 minutes late.
          You balanced, hand
          against bedroom door-jamb,
pulling off your office heels.

          Once you noticed the bakery box
          under my arm, your face calmed—
my earlier whereabouts
          evidenced in sweetness
          we would fork from the same plate.

This is a great little poem. I love how the first four stanzas start out slowly, just snapshots and observations from a lengthy stroll, and then in the final three stanzas we get a series of images that hone in on something very personal. Still, until those final few lines, you get the sense that the whole thing is centered on the narrator.

But the last stanza turns the aimless loafer into a romantic hero. It suddenly becomes a statement about a couple’s intimacy. And those last three lines are worth the price of admission alone:

“my earlier whereabouts

          evidenced in sweetness

          we would fork from the same plate”

Very good, no? Have you had your socks knocked off by a good poem lately? Share them in the comments.

Poet's Corner

In this running series we’ve tried to break the shackles of bucolic, pastoral settings and head-in-the-clouds love language that sometimes seem to have poetry in an unrelenting full-Nelson. As you can see in Wilfred Owen's WWI-era poem below, poetry can just as powerfully speak of death on the battlefield, of “froth-corrupted lungs” and “vile, incurable sores.”

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

By Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.*

* This Latin phrase comes from an ode by Horace. It means “It’s sweet and right to die for your country.”

Pretty amazing, right?

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Poet's Corner

-Walker Evans, 1936, Vicksburg Mississippi.

Here’s another helping of poetry for the poetically-impaired. I came across this one on the Writer’s Almanac podcast. As it says in the one line intro of the poem, it’s based on a Walker Evans photograph, which we’ve dug up and displayed above. Pretty cool to see the poet’s inspiration and final product side by side. What do you think?

Hitchhikers

By Charles Simic

After the Walker Evans photograph from the thirties

Hard times brought them out early
On this dreary stretch of road
Carrying a suitcase and a bedroll
With a frying pan tied to it,
The kind you use over a campfire
When a moss-covered log is your pillow.

He's hopeful and she's ashamed
To be asking a stranger to take them
Away from here in a cloud of flying
Gravel and dust, past leafless trees
With their snarled and pointy little twigs.
A man and a woman catching a ride
To where water tastes like cherry wine.

She'll work as a maid or a waitress,
He'll pump gas or rob banks.
They'll buy a car as big as a hearse
To make their fast getaway,
Not forgetting to stop for you, mister,
If you are down on your luck yourself.

This is from Simic’s 2005 collection. Take a look:

Poet's Corner

Poetry for the rest of us:

-Image by James Henkel

Design

BY BILLY COLLINS

I pour a coating of salt on the table

and make a circle in it with my finger.

This is the cycle of life

I say to no one.

This is the wheel of fortune,

the Arctic Circle.

This is the ring of Kerry

and the white rose of Tralee

I say to the ghosts of my family,

the dead fathers,

the aunt who drowned,

my unborn brothers and sisters,

my unborn children.

This is the sun with its glittering spokes

and the bitter moon.

This is the absolute circle of geometry

I say to the crack in the wall,

to the birds who cross the window.

This is the wheel I just invented

to roll through the rest of my life

I say

touching my finger to my tongue.

Poet's Corner

If literary fiction is misunderstood and ignored by Joe Sixpack, what hope does poetry have of reaching the unwashed masses? Not much. Not much at all.

Unless you can find just the right poem, that is.

This is the first look at a new feature we're calling Poet's Corner, a series aimed to prove that not only is poetry not dead, but that it isn't all flowers and butterflies and unrequited love anymore. We hope you enjoy it.



Short-order Cook

by Jim Daniels

An average joe comes in

and orders thirty cheeseburgers and thirty fries.

I wait for him to pay before I start cooking.
He pays.
He ain't no average joe.

The grill is just big enough for ten rows of three.
I slap the burgers down
throw two buckets of fries in the deep frier
and they pop pop spit spit . . .
pss . . .

The counter girls laugh.
I concentrate.
It is the crucial point—
they are ready for the cheese:
my fingers shake as I tear off slices
toss them on the burgers/fries done/dump/
refill buckets/burgers ready/flip into buns/
beat that melting cheese/wrap burgers in plastic/
into paper bags/fries done/dump/fill thirty bags/
bring them to the counter/wipe sweat on sleeve
and smile at the counter girls.
I puff my chest out and bellow:
"Thirty cheeseburgers, thirty fries!"
They look at me funny.
I grab a handful of ice, toss it in my mouth
do a little dance and walk back to the grill.
Pressure, responsibility, success,
thirty cheeseburgers, thirty fries.