I became a criminal when I fell in love.
Before that I was a waitress.
I didn't want to go to Chicago with you.
I wanted to marry you, I wanted
Your wife to suffer.
I wanted her life to be like a play
In which all the parts are sad parts.
Does a good person
Think this way? I deserve
Credit for my courage--
I sat in the dark on your front porch.
Everything was clear to me:
If your wife wouldn't let you go
That proved she didn't love you.
If she loved you
Wouldn't she want you to be happy?
I think now
If I felt less I would be
A better person. I was
A good waitress.
I could carry eight drinks.
I used to tell you my dreams.
Last night I saw a woman sitting in a dark bus--
In the dream, she's weeping, the bus she's on
Is moving away. With one hand
She's waving; the other strokes
An egg carton full of babies.
The dream doesn't rescue the maiden.
Celestial Music
- Louise Glück
I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she's unusually competent.
Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.
We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I'm always moved by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality
But timid also, quick to shut my eyes.
Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out
According to nature. For my sake she intervened
Brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down
Across the road.
My friend says I shut my eyes to God, that nothing else explains
My aversion to reality. She says I'm like the child who
Buries her head in the pillow
So as not to see, the child who tells herself
That light causes sadness-
My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me
To wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person-
In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking
On the same road, except it's winter now;
She's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:
Look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
Like brides leaping to a great height-
Then I'm afraid for her; I see her
Caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth-
In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
From time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It's this moment we're trying to explain, the fact
That we're at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn't move.
She's always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image
Capable of life apart from her.
We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, The composition
Fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
Going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering-
It's this stillness we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.
And me going on a bit too long about Glück:
And who says intellectuals can't write poetry! The first writing
I read of Louise Glück's, many years ago, was a book of her essays.
Quite an education for me. A few months later I got a tiny book of
her poetry and thought it was pretty good, but not that special. About
two years ago I found a giant hardcover tome of her collected works
in a 2nd hand book store. It still wasn't cheap. I leafed through it
and was instantly taken with her poems. I even looked at the book I'd
read so many years ago. It was wonderful as well! I must have changed...
for the better. I bought that book without hesitation.
When I saw the poem of hers you posted, I got that tome out from
under my bed (where I keep books I haven't finished or want to keep
close). Still wonderful.
Her poems have the emotional heart you'd expect from good poetry;
but what's special for me, what I love about her writing, is that
her heart has a body to hold it up, to beat in. Her poetry doesn't
just hang magically in midair. I know poetry isn't usually known for
its logical precision, but her poetry thrives on it. It doesn't
constrain her poems, it gives their passion a reason to exist.
Some of hers are complex, I don't understand them at first (and many
I still don't), but I know the meanings are there. She's faithful to
her emotions, her ideas; I trust her implicitly.
i used to know a lotta stuff, but i still have eight cats
^^ I think I've been introduced to her before, but I forget (maybe I'm confusing her with the composer?). Anyway, that is really, really amazing. The words are so simple and the line breaks (at least on that first one) a bit crude, but they all work together so well, so naturally, naturally well, and the simplicity and the crudeness makes it sound more like a high form of conversation than anything else. What's the book's name?
The hardcover Ray mentioned is Louise Gluck Poems 1962-2012 (I have it too). I started with her collection The Wild Iris. I probably have read it a hundred times now. She's probably my favorite living poet. Here's another one of hers I like:
September Twilight
I gathered you together,
I can dispense with you—
I’m tired of you, chaos
of the living world—
I can only extend myself
for so long to a living thing.
I summoned you into existence
by opening my mouth, by lifting
my little finger, shimmering
blues of the wild
aster, blossom
of the lily, immense,
gold veined—
you come and go; eventually
I forget your names.
You come and go, every one of you
flawed in some way,
in some way compromised: you are worth
one life, no more than that.
I gathered you together;
I can erase you
as though you were a draft to be thrown away,
an exercise
because I finished you, vision
of deepest mourning.
— Louise Glück
~~~
Here's one more:
Parable Of The Dove
A dove lived in a village.
When it opened its mouth
sweetness came out, sound
like a silver light around
the cherry bough. But
the dove wasn't satisfied.
It saw the villagers
gathered to listen under
the blossoming tree.
It didn't think: I
am higher that they are.
It wanted to wealk among them,
to experience the violence of human feeling,
in part for its song's sake.
So it became human.
It found passion, it found violence,
first conflated, then
as separate emotions
and these were not
contained by music. Thus
its song changed,
the sweet notes of its longing to become human
soured and flattened. Then
the world drew back; the mutant
fell from love
as from the cherry branch,
it fell stained with the bloody
fruit of the tree.
So it is true after all, not merely
a rule of art:
change your form and you change your nature.
And time does this to us.
I absolutely ADORE Glück. Since we're on the topic with a bunch of experts, I have a challenge. The very first poem I read by her had something to do with her standing on a cliff and it represented the precipice she was facing in life. I cannot for the life of me find it now, so please, if you can, point me in the right direction.
It sounds slightly familiar. I'll have to look it up. I thought it might be The Mountain (but that's probably more useful in our purpose of poetry discussion, but since I love it. Here goes:
The Mountain
My students look at me expectantly.
I explain to them that the life of art is a life
of endless labor. Their expressions
hardly change; they need to know
a little more about endless labor.
So I tell them the story of Sisyphus,
how he was doomed to push
a rock up a mountain, knowing nothing
would come of this effort
but that he would repeat it
indefinitely. I tell them
there is joy in this, in the artist’s life,
that one eludes
judgment, and as I speak
I am secretly pushing a rock myself,
slyly pushing it up the steep
face of a mountain. Why do I lie
to these children? They aren’t listening,
they aren’t deceived, their fingers
tapping at the wooden desks—
So I retract
the myth; I tell them it occurs
in hell, and that the artist lies
because he is obsessed with attainment,
that he perceives the summit
as that place where he will live forever,
a place about to be
transformed by his burden: with every breath,
I am standing at the top of the mountain.
Both my hands are free. And the rock has added
height to the mountain.
I.
It came to me one night as I was falling asleep
that I had finished with those amorous adventures
to which I had long been a slave. Finished with love?
my heart murmured. To which I responded that many profound discoveries
awaited us, hoping, at the same time, I would not be asked
to name them. For I could not name them. But the belief that they existed—
surely this counted for something?
2.
The next night brought the same thought,
this time concerning poetry, and in the nights that followed
various other passions and sensations were, in the same way,
set aside forever, and each night my heart
protested its future, like a small child being deprived of a favorite toy.
But these farewells, I said, are the way of things.
And once more I alluded to the vast territory
opening to us with each valediction. And with that phrase I became
a glorious knight riding into the setting sun, and my heart
became the steed underneath me.
3.
I was, you will understand, entering the kingdom of death,
though why this landscape was so conventional
I could not say. Here, too, the days were very long
while the years were very short. The sun sank over the far mountain.
The stars shone, the moon waxed and waned. Soon
faces from the past appeared to me:
my mother and father, my infant sister; they had not, it seemed,
finished what they had to say, though now
I could hear them because my heart was still.
4.
At this point, I attained the precipice
but the trail did not, I saw, descend on the other side;
rather, having flattened out, it continued at this altitude
as far as the eye could see, though gradually
the mountain that supported it completely dissolved
so that I found myself riding steadily through the air—
All around, the dead were cheering me on, the joy of finding them
obliterated by the task of responding to them—
5.
As we had all been flesh together,
now we were mist.
As we had been before objects with shadows,
now we were substance without form, like evaporated chemicals.
Neigh, neigh, said my heart,
or perhaps nay, nay—it was hard to know.
6.
Here the vision ended. I was in my bed, the morning sun
contentedly rising, the feather comforter
mounded in white drifts over my lower body.
You had been with me—
there was a dent in the second pillowcase.
We had escaped from death—
or was this the view from the precipice?
(05-09-2015, 11:59 AM)bena Wrote: YESSSSSSSS thanks so much for your effort Todd....can't remember but I think it was in college and couldn't ever find it again. So fantastic!
Thanks and hugs to kitty too...he tried, and I appreciate it. At least we got to read some GREAT poetry in the process.
love ya both,
mel.
I can SEE why you remembered it!!
Damn! Thanks for finding it mr todd.
How could anyone write that?
Mysteries.
Whatever... I get to read it!
i used to know a lotta stuff, but i still have eight cats
"Neigh, neigh, said my heart,
or perhaps nay, nay—it was hard to know."
This was a really interesting one for me to read right now, none of the obvious paring down so many modern poems have, a very conversational sound to it, yet why trim it? Thanks for the page, guys.
billy wrote:welcome to the site. make it your own, wear it like a well loved slipper and wear it out. ella pleads:please click forum titles for posting guidelines, important threads. New poet? Try Poetic DevicesandWard's Tips
What an amazing poem. I still can't get over it (hoping I never do).
I just printed it out. I'm taping it on the wall above my computer.
I'll build a shrine, burn incense, sit silently and worship it.
i used to know a lotta stuff, but i still have eight cats
That poem is amazing! I need to read it again -- every day for the rest of my life!
Or maybe just memorize it. Anyway, wow -- it's so, er, wide, and all that -- och, it's one of those things that lose beauty when analyzed and elaborated on in a reasonable, non-mystical way, like how the principles of evolution all mesh together into one grand circle of dynamic life, or how the existence of God so persists (and is really well reflected on by man's nature, especially by poetry -- although the poetry in that, er, respect, and, generally speaking, criticism on such poetry, ends up being as mystical as the whole idea). WOW
(05-10-2015, 12:16 AM)RiverNotch Wrote: That poem is amazing! I need to read it again -- every day for the rest of my life!
Or maybe just memorize it. Anyway, wow -- it's so, er, wide, and all that -- och, it's one of those things that lose beauty when analyzed and elaborated on in a reasonable, non-mystical way, like how the principles of evolution all mesh together into one grand circle of dynamic life, or how the existence of God so persists (and is really well reflected on by man's nature, especially by poetry -- although the poetry in that, er, respect, and, generally speaking, criticism on such poetry, ends up being as mystical as the whole idea). WOW
Gotta find them books
I just looked up that book (Louise Gluck Poems 1962-2012) on Amazon.
There is a paperback edition. It can be had, including shipping, for less
than $5 at quite a few of the used book stores Amazon has listed.
The headlines and feature stories alike
leak blood all over the breakfast table,
the wounding of the world mingling
with smells of bacon and bread.
Small pains are merely anterooms for larger,
and every shadow has a brother, just waiting.
Even grace is sullied by ancient angers.
I must remember it is always been like this:
those Trojan women, learning their fates;
the simple shortness of the good guillotine.
A filigree of cruelty adorns every culture.
I've thumbed through the pages of my life,
longing for childhood whose failures
were merely personal, for all
the stations of love I passed through.
Shadows in the shadow of shadows.
I am like the queen of a rainy country,
powerless and grown old. Another morning
with its quaint obligations: newspaper,
bacon grease, rattling dishes and bones.
- - -
i used to know a lotta stuff, but i still have eight cats
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, I Screamed! -David Daiches
(A letter from his girl to a G.I. in Tokyo)
Now April's here, what ever can I do
With those fantastic gifts I got from you?
Spring's in the air, but, honey, life is hard:
The three French hens are picking in the yard,
And the turtledove, the turtledove
(One of them died) -
Ah, love, my own true love, you have denied
Me nothing the mails or the express could bring.
But look: we're into spring;
The calling birds are calling, calling;
The pear tree's leaves are slowly falling;
I sit here with those cackling geese
And never know a moment's peace.
My memories are mixed and hazy,
The drumming drummers drive me crazy,
The milking maids enjoy canasta,
The lords are leaping ever faster,
The pipers - God in Heaven knows
I've more than had enough of those.
My love, you do such wondrous things
(Who else would think of five gold rings?)
I know you send me all you can
Of spoils of occupied Japan,
But you remain on alien shore
And waiting here is such a bore.
My love, the lively lords are leaping:
Some things will not improve with keeping.
Now April's here, the weary days go by;
I watch that wretched dove attempt to fly;
The partridge smells; the geese are getting hoarse;
My diction's growing positively coarse.
You must forgive me gestures of rejection -
I'm crazed with all your tokens of affection.
Enough's enough; next time be less romantic
And don't send gifts that drive a lady frantic.
Send me a postcard with a pretty view
And I shall look at it and think of you.
I bought that book without hesitation.
wae aye man ye radgie