Apology

by Joanna Klink

Lately, too much disturbed, you stay trailing in me
and I believe you. How could I not feel
you were misspent, there by books stacked clean on glass,
or outside the snow arriving as I am still arriving.
If the explanations amount to something, I will tell you.
It is enough, you say, that surfaces grow so distant.
Maybe you darken, already too much changed,
maybe in your house you would be content where
no incident emerges, but for smoke or glass or air,
such things held simply to be voiceless.
And if you mean me, I believe you.
Or if you should darken, this inwardness would be misspent,
and flinching I might pause, and add to these meager
incidents the words. Some books
should stay formal on the shelves.
So surely I heard you, in your complication aware,
snow holding where it might weightless rest,
and should you fold into me—trackless, misspent,
too much arranged—I might believe you
but swiftly shut, lines of smoke rising through snow,
here where it seems no good word emerges.
Though it is cold, I am aware such reluctance
could lose these blinking hours to simple safety.
Here is an inwardless purpose.
In these hours when snow shuts, it may be we empty,
amounting to something. How could I not
wait for those few words, which we might enter.

Joanna Klink, "Apology" from Circadian. Copyright © 2007 by Joanna Klink.

Ill-Advised Love Poem

by John Yau

Come live with me
And we will sit

Upon the rocks
By shallow rivers

Come live with me
And we will plant acorns

In each other's mouth
It would be our way

Of greeting the earth
Before it shoves us

Back into the snow
Our interior cavities

Brimming with
Disagreeable substances

Come live with me
Before winter stops

To use the only pillow
The sky ever sleeps on

Our interior cavities
Brimming with snow

Come live with me
Before spring

Swallows the air
And birds sing

John Yau, "Ill-Advised Love Poem" from Further Adventures in Monochrome. Copyright © 2012 by John Yau.

I Will Not Save The World

by Jerome Rothenberg

I like to cross
these borders. They take place
between the dead & dead.
I make my mind up
to be honest
only I fail to meet
their expectations.
I will not save the world.
The power in my blood
runs through my shoe.
I have never known fatigue
but know it now. I whistle
& the dog sits still
& ponders.
Nobody else is resting
or in love.
The taste of death is in my mouth.
I suck it like an arm
until it breaks me.
It is the fate of animals
& birds
the small lives left behind.
The children in the woods
run by like children.
I hide under a blanket
sick with counting.
Two & two are five
but two times two
is always four.
Call me tomorrow
—says the voice—
& I will call you back.
I am a net for all
voracious fish
& long for hell.

"I Will Not Save the World" By Jerome Rothenberg, from A Book of Witness: Spells and Gris-Gris, copyright © 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 by Jerome Rothenberg. 

I Dreamed That in a City Dark as Paris

by Louis Simpson

I dreamed that in a city dark as Paris
I stood alone in a deserted square.
The night was trembling with a violet
Expectancy. At the far edge it moved
And rumbled; on that flickering horizon
The guns were pumping color in the sky.

There was the Front. But I was lonely here,
Left behind, abandoned by the army.
The empty city and the empty square
Was my inhabitation, my unrest.
The helmet with its vestige of a crest,
The rifle in my hands, long out of date,
The belt I wore, the trailing overcoat
And hobnail boots, were those of a poilu.
I was the man, as awkward as a bear.

Over the rooftops where cathedrals loomed
In speaking majesty, two aeroplanes
Forlorn as birds, appeared. Then growing large,
The German Taube and the Nieuport Scout,
They chased each other tumbling through the sky,
Till one streamed down on fire to the earth.

These wars have been so great, they are forgotten
Like the Egyptian dynasts. My confrere
In whose thick boots I stood, were you amazed
To wander through my brain four decades later
As I have wandered in a dream through yours?

The violence of waking life disrupts
The order of our death. Strange dreams occur,
For dreams are licensed as they never were.

Louis Simpson, "I Dreamed that in a City Dark as Paris" from The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems 1940-2001. Copyright © 2003 by Louis Simpson.

Daffodils

by Alicia Ostriker

–for David Lehman

Ten thousand I saw at a glance

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

–William Wordsworth

Going to hell so many times tears it

Which explains poetry. 

–Jack Spicer

The day the war in against Iraq begins

I'm photographing the yellow daffodils

With their outstretched arms and ruffled cups

Blowing in the wind of Jesus Green

Edging the lush grassy moving river

Along with the swans and ducks

Under a soft March Cambridge sky

Embellishing the earth like a hand

Starting to illustrate a children's book

Where people in light clothes come out

To play, to frisk and run about

With their lovers, friends, animals, and children

As down every stony back road of history

They've always done in the peaceful springs

–Which in a sense is also hell because

The daffodils do look as if they dance

And make some of us in the park want to dance

And breathe deeply and I know that

Being able to eat and incorporate beauty like this

I am privileged and by that token can

Taste pain, roll it on my tongue, it's good

The cruel wars are good the stupidity is good, 

The primates hiding in their caves are very good,

They do their best, which explains poetry. 

What explains poetry is that life is hard

But better than the alternatives, 

The no and the nothing. Look at this light

And color, a splash of brilliant yellow

Punctuating an emerald text, white swans
And mottled brown ducks floating quietly along
Whole and alive, like an untorn language
That lacks nothing, that excludes

Nothing. Period. Don't you think
It is our business to defend it
Even the day our masters start a war?
To defend the day we see the daffodils?

"Daffodils" from No Heaven, by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, © 2005. 

I thought this poem would be perfect for my first post on our blog. The poem nearly perfectly captures how I feel about the importance of poetry, and I hope you dear readers enjoy!

Daffodils by Alicia Ostriker starts somewhat uniquely with two epigraphs. Most poems don’t even have one; the addition of two quotations in this poem highlights the complexity and theme of the poem as a whole. 

Ostriker abruptly introduces the poem with by mentioning the war in Iraq. The war isn’t referenced again until the last stanza, and while it’s essential to the poem, she uses the specific event to further her argument that poetry can apply at any time.

She continues by describing in beautiful detail the land around her as she photographed in a manner that is echoed throughout the poem, taking a small daffodil in England and expanding its beauty to show how it affects the world. The “yellow daffodils” with “outstretched arms” and “ruffled cups” can be seen as a metaphor for poetry itself. Throughout the poems Ostriker compels us to think more deeply about what poetry is, and what it does. She shows the complex nature of poetry as it allows for “people in light clothes” that play, while in the same breath “is also hell.” The speaker acknowledges the differing effects of poetry saying it makes “some of us in the park want to dance” while others experience poetry differently.

Ostriker moves seamlessly from the image of  dancing daffodils to speaking of poetry as a whole. The speaker praises her privilege to read and write poetry, pointing out that it allows her to “incorporate beauty…[and] taste pain.”  The speaker claims “cruel wars are good,” highlighting the nuanced nature of poetry in her juxtapositions.

She concludes the poem with a rhetorical question, a call to the “daffodils” even when “our masters” are starting a war. This final image beautifully illustrates the importance of small things amongst the craziness of life. The importance of capturing daffodils in poetry despite being surrounded in horror.
Well, I have a lot more to say and a lot more thoughts on this poem-but for now this will have to do. I hope you've all been having a lovely Wednesday! Until next week!

Sincerely,
Jane

You, If No One Else

by Tino Villanueva

Listen, you
who transformed your anguish
into healthy awareness,
put your voice
where your memory is.
You who swallowed
the afternoon dust,
defend everything you understand
with words.
You, if no one else,
will condemn with your tongue
the erosion each disappointment brings.

You, who saw the images
of disgust growing,
will understand how time
devours the destitute;
you, who gave yourself
your own commandments,
know better than anyone
why you turned your back
on your town's toughest limits.

Don't hush,
don't throw away
the most persistent truth,
as our hard-headed brethren
sometimes do.
Remember well
what your life was like; cloudiness,
and slick mud
after a drizzle;
flimsy windows the wind
kept rattling
in winter, and that
unheated slab dwelling
where coldness crawled
up in your clothes.

Tell how you were able to come
to this point, to unbar
History's doors
to see your early years,
your people, the others.
Name the way
rebellion's calm spirit has served you,
and how you came
to unlearn the lessons
of that teacher,
your land's omnipotent defiler.

Tino Villanueva, "You, If  No One Else" from Chronicle of My Worst Years. Copyright © 1994 by Tino Villanueva.

I chose to write about this poem first because I am at a point in my own life where I am questioning ideas and beliefs that, up until this point, I thought were truth. Now that I'm not sure anymore, I am trying to become more self-aware and identify what I do and don't believe anymore.

One of the first things that stands out about this poem is the form. Although the sentences form complete thoughts, they are broken up into multiple lines. This gives the impression that the speaker's thoughts are also broken up, as if the speaker is unsure or conflicted about the ideas he or she is conveying. Which makes sense, because the overall tone of the poem is one of contradiction and confusion.

The speaker never directly states what the message of the poem is. However, there seem to be a couple themes, centering around self-awareness and determining truth even when what we consider to be truth isn't a commonly held belief. To convey these ideas, the author uses descriptive imagery such as 'most persistent truth' and 'rebellion's calm spirit.' The first phrase might suggest , while the second implies that things are not necessarily what they appear to be. After all, rebellion is rarely seen as a calm thing, but in this case the speaker is asking his reader to think of the ways rebellion has been a good thing.

The author's word choice further supports the idea of rebelling against commonly held beliefs to find your own beliefs independent of others. This becomes very clear in the idea that you "gave yourself your own commandments." More than just going against the norm, however, the speaker also wants you to recognize and explain "why you turned your back," "how you were able to come to this point," and "how you came to unlearn the lessons" of your past.

Finally, there is the author's specific use of the pronoun 'you.' Perhaps the speaker is addressing a specific person, but it's more likely that he or she is focusing on a more general audience. The fact that we are drawn to this poem means that we probably relate to some part of the poem, and as such the speaker is asking us to increase our self-awareness and determine what we personally believe, rather than blindly accepting what we are told. As expressed in the title of the poem- you, if no one else, can understand why you believe what you do and what led you to those beliefs.

Anne

Introductions

Hello, and Happy National Poetry Day!
We’ve been living on this planet for around nineteen years now. The more time we spend here the greater our love for literature grows. This blog is a manifestation of that love. While  we are still novices to living and coincidentally, literature, we hope that our observations might help others gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of the beauty that is poetry. We plan on posting analyses of poetry and other thoughts at least once a week. If you ever have a poem you’d like us to look over, feel free to comment the title or send it to us, we will be sure to respond and possibly write a post on it!

A&J

On What Planet
By Kenneth Rexroth

Uniformly over the whole countryside
The warm air flows imperceptibly seaward;
The autumn haze drifts in deep bands
Over the pale water;
White egrets stand in the blue marshes;
Tamapais, Diablo, St. Helena
Float in the air.
Climbing on the cliffs of Hunter's Hill
We look out over fifty miles of sinuous
Interpenetration of mountains and sea.
Leading up to a twisted chimney,
Just as my eyes rise to the level
Of a small cave, two white owls
Fly our, silent, close to my face.
They hover, confused in the sunlight,
And disappear into the recesses of the cliff.
All day I have been watching a new climber,
A young girl with ash blonde hair
And gentle confident eyes.
She climbs slowly, precisely,
With unwasted grace.
While I am coiling the ropes,
Watching the spectacular sunset,
She turns to me and says, quietly,
"It must be very beautiful, the sunset,
On Saturn, with the rings and all the moons."

Kenneth Rexroth, "On What Planet" from The Collected Shorter Poems. Copyright © 1940 by New Directions Publishing Corporation.