Self
by Dan Chiasson

Found not founded. Attacking only
from the back
like the Bengal tiger; afraid

of the face. Sweet-talking like the addict
coveting
another addict's stash. Fished from

my own trash like the feared
letter I heard later
held a birthday check.

Watched like the tiger from
a great height,
hollered out. Two-faced, masked

like the villager tricking
the tiger. Tricked
like the tiger. Founded on owned ground.
---------------------------------------------------
The Afterlife of Objects, Dan Chiasson's first
collection of poems, was published in 2002 by the
University of Chicago Press.
He has just finished his second book of poems, Natural History,
as well as a book of criticism. Mr. Chiasson was born and
raised in Vermont, and has a BA from Amherst College. In
1999, he was a Whiting Foundation Fellow in
the Humanities while finishing his dissertation at Harvard.
A winner of a Pushcart Prize, his poems have appeared in
such magazines as The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Threepenny
Review, and The New Yorker. Mr. Chiasson was an Assistant
Professor of English and Director of the
Poetry Center at SUNY Stony Brook.

The Afterlife of Objects at:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/
cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/15354.ctl

Poetry and articles by Chiasson at
slate.com

Cynthia Zarin

Skating in Harlem, Christmas Day
>
> To Mary Jo Salter
>
>
> Beyond the ice-bound stones and bucking trees,
> past bewildered Mary, the Meer in snow,
> two skating rinks and two black crooked paths
>
> are a battered pair of reading glasses
> scratched by the skater's multiplying math.
> Beset, I play this game of tic-tac-toe.
>
> Divide, subtract. Who can tell if love surpasses?
> Two naughts we've learned make one astonished 0--
> a hectic night of goats and compasses.
>
> Folly tells the truth by what it's not--
> one X equals a fall I'd not forgo.
> Are ice and fire the integers we've got?
>
> Skating backwards tells another story--
> the risky star above the freezing town,
> a way to walk on water and not drown.
--------------------------------------------
>
> Cynthia Zarin teaches at The Graduate School
of Journalism at Columbia
> University and has published the following
books: The Watercourse, Fire
> Lyric, The Swordfish Tooth.
>

Sylvia Plath

One of Plath's early poems.

> Mad Girl's Love Song

> "I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
> I lift my lids and all is born again.
> (I think I made you up inside my head.)
>
> The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
> And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
> I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
>
> I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
> And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
> (I think I made you up inside my head.)
>
> God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
> Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
> I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
>
> I fancied you'd return the way you said,
> But I grow old and I forget your name.
> (I think I made you up inside my head.)
>
> I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
> At least when spring comes they roar back again.
> I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
> (I think I made you up inside my head.)"
> ------------------------------------------
> This poem is a villanelle.

> See Dylan Thomas's famous villanelle, "Do not go gentle into that good
> night"
> http://poets.org/almanac/index.cfm
?45442B782B5F425D047A624146580552387E037
> 61E33335A6926574B0B03047501

Robert Frost

The Oven Bird
> There is a singer everyone has heard,
> Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
> Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
> He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
> Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
> He says the early petal-fall is past
> When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
> On sunny days a moment overcast;
> And comes that other fall we name the fall.
> He says the highway dust is over all.
> The bird would cease and be as other birds
> But that he knows in singing not to sing.
> The question that he frames in all but words
> Is what to make of a diminished thing.
>
> This poem is another sonnet. Sonnets often reflect
on the passage of time.

Robert Frost cartoon in the New Yorker at:

http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?mscssid=XD8Q918HFBQ88P7SLBJUWT7621X8CFGD&sitetype=
1&did=4&sid=120743&whichpage=4&sortBy=popular&
keyword=robert+frost§ion=cartoons

> > Robert Frost for kids:
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/
obidos/tg/detail/-/0975897012/qid=1114172045/sr
> =1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-9986323-6494208?v=glance&s=books
>
> See an oven bird
> http://museum.gov.ns.ca/mnh/
nature/nsbirds/bns0337.htm

Eliza Griswold

From the latest issue of The New Yorker

TIGERS

What are we now but voices
who promise each other
a life neither one can deliver
not for lack of wanting
but wanting can't make it so,
We hang from a vine
at the cliff's edge,
There are tigers above
and below.  Let us love
one another and let go.

- Eliza Griswold

Read another poem by Griswold at:
http://www.versedaily.org/aboutelizagriswoldswr.shtml

In celebration of Earth Day!

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
William Wordsworth

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

With Coleridge that Wordsworth published the famous Lyrical Ballads in 1798. While the poems themselves are some of the most influential in Western literature, it is the preface to the second edition that remains one of the most important testaments to a poet's views on both his craft and his place in the world. In the preface Wordsworth writes on the need for "common speech" within poems and argues against the hierarchy of the period which valued epic poetry above the lyric.

Wordsworth is a “Romantic” poet. To literary scholars, romantic poetry is poetry written in the Romantic period (1790-1830). Indeed Blake, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Scott, and Keats displayed what the common reader still expects of poetry: soaring imagination, emotional intensity, freshness of individual experience, plus a deep sense of myth and mystery in natural events. There also arose the notion of Fine Art, which was created out of nothing (or at least out its own matter, and certainly for its own sake) and therefore superior to an Applied Art adulterated with practical or commercial considerations. From movements leading to Romanticism arose aesthetics (the philosophy art), with all its current problems, and our contemporary art that illustrates or challenges these conceptions.

The poem is a sonnet. From the Italian sonetto, which means "a little sound or song," the sonnet is a popular classical form that has compelled poets for centuries. Traditionally, the sonnet is a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, which employ one of several rhyme schemes and adhere to a tightly structured thematic organization. Two sonnet forms provide the models from which all other sonnets are formed: the Petrachan and the Shakespearean.

The structure of sonnets makes them easy to memorize. I can recite Shakespeare's sonnet CXL-"Be wise as thou art cruel..."

More on sonnets
http://www.poets.org/almanac/index.cfm?45442B782B5F425D047A62414
6580552387E02701E33335A6926574B0B03047501

More on Wordsworth:
http://members.aol.com/wordspage/links.htm

More on Romantic poetry:
http://www.poetry-portal.com/styles6.html

My favorite sonnet sequences:

Pamphilia to Amphilanthus by Mary Wroth
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/mary.html#Pamphilia

Astrophil and Stella by Philip Sidney
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/%7Erbear/stella.html

The Canzoniere by Petrarch
http://petrarch.petersadlon.com/canzoniere.html

Marianne Moore

If you’re tired of poetry week or just don’t “get” what all the fuss is about, you aren’t alone.

Poetry

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless
wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse
that feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against "business documents and

school-books"; all these phenomena are important. One must make
a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
"literalists of
the imagination"--above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them,"
shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.

Later Moore cut the poem to only three lines:

I, too, dislike it.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it,
one discovers in
it, after all, a place for the genuine.


Born near St. Louis, Missouri, on November 15, 1887, Marianne Moore was raised in the home of her grandfather, a Presbyterian pastor. After her grandfather's death, in 1894, Moore and her family stayed with other relatives, and in 1896 they moved to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She attended Bryn Mawr College and received her B.A. in 1909. Following graduation, Moore studied typing at Carlisle Commercial College, and from 1911 to 1915 she was employed as a school teacher at the Carlisle Indian School. In 1918, Moore and her mother moved to New York City, and in 1921, she became an assistant at the New York Public Library. She began to meet other poets, such as William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens , and to contribute to the Dial , a prestigious literary magazine. She served as acting editor of the Dial from 1925 to 1929. Along with the work of such other members of the Imagist movement as Ezra Pound , Williams, and H. D. , Moore's poems were published in the Egoist , an English magazine, beginning in 1915. In 1921, H.D. published Moore's first book, Poems , without her knowledge.

Moore was widely recognized for her work; among her many honors were the Bollingen prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. She wrote with the freedom characteristic of the other modernist poets, often incorporating quotes from other sources into the text, yet her use of language was always extraordinarily condensed and precise, capable of suggesting a variety of ideas and associations within a single, compact image. In his 1925 essay "Marianne Moore," William Carlos Williams wrote about Moore's signature mode, the vastness of the particular: "So that in looking at some apparently small object, one feels the swirl of great events." She was particularly fond of animals, and much of her imagery is drawn from the natural world. She was also a great fan of professional baseball and an admirer of Muhammed Ali, for whom she wrote the liner notes to his record, I Am the Greatest! Deeply attached to her mother, she lived with her until Mrs. Moore's death in 1947. Marianne Moore died in New York City in 1972.

For more on poetry against poetry visit:
www.slate.com/id/2116182/

Read Philip Sidney’s famous “Defence of Poesie” written during the Renaissance:
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/%7Erbear/defence.html

For additional poems about poetry visit
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/poetry/index.html

T. S. Eliot

In the interest of equal time for cats:

The Naming of Cats
T. S. Eliot

The naming of cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm mad as a hatter
When I tell you a cat must have three
different names.

First of all, there's the name
that the family use daily,
Such as Victor, or Jonathan,
George or Bill Bailey--
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names
if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen,
some for the dames;
Such as Plato, Admetus,
Electra, Demeter--
But all of them sensible everyday names.

But I tell you,
a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that is peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he
keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers,
or cherish his pride?

Of names of this kind,
I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quazo or Coripat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellyrum--
Names that never belong
to more than one cat.

But above and beyond
there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you will never guess;
The name
that no human research can discover--
But The Cat Himself Knows,
and will never confess.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought,
of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.
----------------------------------------
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in Missouri on September 26, 1888. He lived in St. Louis during the first eighteen years of his life and attended Harvard University. In 1910, he left the United States for the Sorbonne, having earned both undergraduate and masters degrees and having contributed several poems to the Harvard Advocate. After a year in Paris, he returned to Harvard to pursue a doctorate in philosophy, but returned to Europe and settled in England in 1914. The following year, he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood and began working in London, first as a teacher, and later for Lloyd's Bank.

It was in London that Eliot came under the influence of his contemporary Ezra Pound, who recognized his poetic genius at once, and assisted in the publication of his work in a number of magazines, most notably "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in Poetry in 1915. His first book of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, was published in 1917, and immediately established him as a leading poet of the avant-garde. With the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, now considered by many to be the single most influential poetic work of the twentieth century, Eliot's reputation began to grow to nearly mythic proportions; by 1930, and for the next thirty years, he was the most dominant figure in poetry and literary criticism in the English-speaking world.

His poems in many respects articulated the disillusionment of a younger post-World-War-I generation with the values and conventions—both literary and social—of the Victorian era. As a critic also, he had an enormous impact on contemporary literary taste, propounding views that, after his conversion to orthodox Christianity in the late thirties, were increasingly based in social and religious conservatism.

He became a British citizen in 1927; long associated with the publishing house of Faber & Faber, he published many younger poets, and eventually became director of the firm. After a notoriously unhappy first marriage, Eliot separated from his first wife in 1933, and was remarried, to Valerie Fletcher, in 1956. T. S. Eliot received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, and died in London in 1965.


Learn why “April is the cruellest month” – read The Wasteland by Eliot at:
http://www.camdenfamily.com/thunder/framer.cfm?frame=
http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html

For another cat poem read Christopher Smart’s tribute to his cat Jeoffry at:
http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Smart/
Jubilate.htm

Elizabeth Bishop

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop was born in 1911 in Worcester, Massachusetts. When she was very young her father died,
her mother was committed to a mental asylum, and she was sent to live with her grandparents in Nova Scotia. She earned a bachelor's degree from Vassar College in 1934. She was independently wealthy, and from 1935 to
1937 she spent time traveling to France, Spain, North Africa, Ireland, and Italy and then settled in Key West, Florida, for four years. Her poetry is filled with descriptions of her travels and the scenery which surrounded
her, as with the Florida poems in her first book of verse, North and South, published in 1946.

She was influenced by the poet Marianne Moore who was a close friend, mentor, and stabilizing force in her life. Unlike her contemporary and good friend Robert Lowell who wrote in the "confessional" style, Bishop's poetry avoids explicit accounts of her personal life, and focuses instead with great subtlety on her impressions of the physical world. Her images are precise and true to life, and they reflect her own sharp wit and moral sense. She lived for many years in Brazil, communicating with friends and colleagues in America only by letter. She wrote slowly and published sparingly (her Collected Poems number barely a hundred), but the technical brilliance and formal variety
of her work is astonishing. Considered for years a "poet's poet," her last book, Geography III, was published in 1976 and finally established her as a major force in contemporary literature. Elizabeth Bishop was awarded the Fellowship of The Academy of American Poets in 1964 and served as a Chancellor from 1966 to 1979.

She died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1979, and her stature as a major poet continues to grow through the high regard of the poets and critics who have followed her.

George Wallace

George Wallace served as Suffolk County’s first Poet Laureate from April, 2003 to April, 2005. I had the pleasure of hearing him read this poem in person at Stony Brook University in November, 2003.

www.poetrybay.com/index.html
An on-line poetry magazine for the 21st century edited by George Wallace

Poembeat.com
Polarity e Magazine
An on-line magazine of New American Bohemian Literature edited by George Wallace

YOU ARE MY RAIN
you are three thousand miles away
but rain comes from distant places too
and sometimes i can taste you on my lips
like rain or lost love or the smoke of forests burning
or the surprising bitterness of a cup of coffee after dining alone in new york city
as if there is a message in everything we touch and taste
a warning concerning something terribly important
perhaps it is only the fire in a raindrop
in the heart of a tree that grows in a burning forest when wind flows through it
like wheat or time or pain or memory or an ocean
like the way i could always feel in the motion of your hair
the motion of the sky at the particular moment
when your imagination caught fire
and you began to love me

these days i am always sitting in the raging sunlight near the end of summer
when love trembles out of control in the sky like a fledgling bird
or the head of a statue or a shooting star
and someone new is walking out with someone else new
hand in hand into the city and i am sitting alone
imagining a time when redemption was possible
and i can just remember that there was a time
when i could have stepped in front of a city bus
and gotten hit and survived it
because once you turned in my direction
and your voice was a possible raindrop
in the first heart of the world

it is autumn it is new york city
the fragrant mist of a cooling season is in the air
i watch a stranger playing with a napkin at a corner table
and i realize that even without you, i am possible
the peculiar angle of the sun when colder weather is about to arrive
is your glance at me over cappucino
the first time we looked at each other
and i realized that if i was lost in a forest
i could put my hands to the trunk of a tree
and listen through the gift of my palms
and be able to hear the calm intravenous beating of your blood
and find my way out of the forest

it is autumn it is new york city sometimes in the middle of the night
when i open my eyes and listen without comment or complaint or interruption
i can hear the regular breathing of a single flower in your garden three thousand miles away
i can taste the lithe perfume of your falling raindrops
and touch the stuttering wings of birds in your open field of flight
and taste through an empty patch of sky
your cloud passing through it

it is autumn it is new york city sometimes i look at the compass of the world
and i think the poles of the earth have gone insane
everybody around here is inventing directions
at another table someone is arguing about politics or money
over there a young woman i have seen on stage
is explaining something to a friend a lover a stranger or her father
something terribly important about meaning or art or love or ambition

it is new york it is autumn it is a season it is only a season
nothing is terrible nothing is important
i am finally at rest after many gestures and suicides
after many sweet and not so sweet navigations
on the avenue there are taxis
ambulances puddles criminals politicians
tourists traders cadillacs
and i am finally at rest, seated
at a side street cafe in greenwich village
with a tree growing beside it
i want to touch the trunk of that tree
look! it is a healthy gingko with a solid trunk
and it has leaves and the leaves are paddling at the wind
and there are raindrops everywhere and there is cappucino and people smiling
and everything is everywhere and there is laughter

it is your laughter
you are my rain
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

George Wallace, Suffolk County's First Poet Laureate, is an award winning poet and journalist from New York who has performed his work across America and in the great cities of Europe. He is co-host of PoetryBrook, a SUNY Stony Brook poetry radio show which is streamed live on the worldwide web at www.wusb.org Thursdays at 6 p.m. In 2000, he founded Poetrybay, a prestigious online poetry publication which was selected in 2004 by Stanford U. for archiving and distribution through the world-wide LOCKSS program.

While influenced by a number of aesthetics, Wallace's poetry frequently constitutes a departure from conventional academic poetry of the late 20th century, amalgamating directions suggested by French Surrealism and American Beat Prosody, emphasizing invention and the imagination as the wellspring for narrative.

In 2004 three chapbooks were released: in Italy, a new bi-lingual volume, entitled Fifty Love Poems (La Finestra Editrice, tr. under supervision of Flaminio di Biaggi); in England, Burn My Heart In Wet Sand (Troubador Books); and in the US, Without Benefit of Men (Chlemskyia Zhurnal).
His concert dates include appearances with composer Leonard Lehrman, jazz composer David Amram - with whom he has collaborated on three CDs - and musicians such as Levon Helm, Paul Winston, Joe Mannix, John Sinclair and Thurston Moore.

An author whose work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Korean, Bengali, Russian and Macedonian, he has also served as a translator - including works of Roque Dalton and Arturo Onofri. His work is in the collections of the New York State Historic Preservation Officer, the California State Archives and the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library.

Read more poetry by George Wallace at
www.poetrybay.com/georgewallace.html

Read “I Didn’t Say No by George Wallace” at
http://www.poetrybay.com/chapbooks.html#NO

Louise Glück

Today’s poet is Louise Glück. I had the pleasure of hearing Glück read her poetry at SUNY Stony Brook in 2003.

August

My sister painted her nails fuchsia,
a color named after a fruit.
All the colors were named after foods:
coffee frost, tangerine sherbet.
We sat in the backyard, waiting for our lives to resume
the ascent summer interrupted:
triumphs, victories, for which school
was a kind of practice.
The teachers smiled down at us, pinning on the blue ribbons.
And in our heads, we smiled down at the teachers.
Our lives were stored in our heads.
They hadn't begun; we were both sure
we'd know when they did.
They certainly weren't this.
We sat in the backyard, watching our bodies change:
first bright pink, then tan.
I dribbled baby oil on my legs, my sister
rubbed polish remover on her left hand,
tried another color.
We read, we listened to the portable radio.
Obviously this wasn't life, this sitting around
in colored lawn chairs.
Nothing matched up to the dreams.
My sister kept trying to find a color she liked:
it was summer, they were all frosted.
Fuchsia, orange, mother-of-pearl.
She held her left hand in front of her eyes,
moved it from side to side.
Why was it always like this
the colors so intense in the glass bottles,
so distinct, and on the hand
almost exactly alike,
a film of weak silver. .
My sister shook the bottle. The orange
kept sinking to the bottom; maybe
that was the problem.
She shook it over and over, held it up to the light,
studied the words in the magazine.
The world was a detail, a small thing not yet
exactly right. Or like an afterthought, somehow
still crude or approximate.
What was real was the idea:
My sister added a coat, held her thumb
to the side of the bottle.
We kept thinking we would see
the gap narrow, though in fact it persisted.
The more stubbornly it persisted,
the more fiercely we believed.

Read Radium by Glück at:
www.findarticles.com

Louise Glück was born in New York City in 1943 and grew up
on Long Island. She is the author of numerous books of poetry,
including The Seven Ages (Ecco Press, 2001); Vita Nova
(1999), winner of Boston Book Review’s Bingham Poetry
Prize; Meadowlands (1996); The Wild Iris (1992), which
received the Pulitzer Prize and the Poetry Society of
America's William Carlos Williams Award; Ararat (1990),
for which she received the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National
Prize for Poetry; and The Triumph of Achilles (1985), which
received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Boston
Globe Literary Press Award, and the Poetry Society of
America's Melville Kane Award. She has also published
a collection of essays, Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry
(1994), which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award
for Nonfiction. Her other honors include the Bollingen Prize
in Poetry, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, and
fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations,
and from the National Endowment for the Arts. Louise Glück
teaches at Williams College and lives in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. In 1999 she was elected a Chancellor
of The Academy of American Poets. In the fall of 2003,
Glück assumed her duties as the Library of Congress's
twelfth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.

Jim Morrison

"real poetry doesn't say anything, it just ticks off the possibilities... opens all doors you can walk through any one that suits you. If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel." -Jim Morrison

The Wolf,
Who lives under the rock
has invited me
to drink of his cool
Water.
Not to splash or bathe
But leave the sun
& know the dead desert
night
& the cold men
who play there.
------------------------------------------
Morrison wished to be accepted as a serious artist, and he published such collections of poetry as An American Prayer (1970) and The Lords and The New Creatures (1971). The song lyrics Morrison wrote for The Doors much reflected the tensions of the time - drug culture, the antiwar movement, avant-garde art. With his early death Morrison has been seen as a voluntary victim of the destructive forces in pop culture. However, he was not ignorant about the consequences of fame and his position as an idol.
Morrison once confessed that "We're more interested in the dark side of life, the evil thing, the night time."

James Douglas Morrison was born in Melbourne, Florida, on December 8, 1943. His father, Steve Morrison, was a U.S. Navy admiral. Morrison was early interested in literature, he excelled at school, and he had an IQ of149. Morrison studied theatre arts at the University of California. With his fellow student Ray Manzarek, keyboardist, John Densmore, drummer, and Robbie Krieger, guitarist, he formed a group which was in 1965 christened The Doors. They never added a bass player to their group. Its name was taken from Aldous Huxley's book The Doors of Perception, which quoted William Blake's poem ("If the doors of perception were cleansed / All things would appear infinite"). The lyrics Morrison wrote in 1965 dominated the first two Doors albums.

Morrison found in music a channel to project his poetry, and add to it a theatrical aspect. Thus improvising and unpredictableness was a part of the band's show on stage. The mythical Lizard King, Morrison's alter ego, appeared first in the best-selling record Waiting for the Sun (1968) in a poem that was printed inside the record jacked. I was entitled 'The Celebration of the Lizard King'. Part of the lyrics were used in 'Not to Touch the Earth' and the complete 'Celebration' appeared on record Absolutely Live (1970). Morrison's drinking, exhibitionistic performances, and drug-taking badly affected his singing and input at recordings. "Let's just say I was testing the bounds of reality," he confessed in 1969 in Los Angeles. "I was curious to see what would happen. That's all it was: just curiosity."

After finishing sessions for a new album, L.A. Woman, Morrison escaped to Paris, where he hoped to follow literary career. "See me change," he sang.
He never came back from Paris. His first book, The Lords and the New Creatures, was published by Simon and Schuster in 1971. It went into
paperback after selling 15,000 in hardback. An earlier book, An American Prayer, was privately printed in 1970, but not made widely available until
1978. On 3 July 1971 Morrison was found dead in his bathtub. Morrison was buried at Pére Lachaise cemetery in Paris, which houses remains of many famous artists and legendaries from Edith Piaf to Oscar Wilde. In 1990 his graffiti-covered headstone was stolen.

For further reading:

No One Here Gets Out Alive by Danny Sugerman (1980)

The Doors Complete Illustrated Lyrics by Danny Sugerman (ed.);

Poetry by Jim Morrison:

* An American Prayer, 1970

* The Lords and the New Creatures, 1971

* Wilderness: The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison
1989

* The American Night: The Writings of Jim
Morrison, vol.1, 1990

* The American Night: The Writings of Jim
Morrison, vol. 2, 1991

Selected records:

* THE DOORS, 1967
* L.A. WOMAN, 1971
* AN AMERICAN PRAYER, 1980
* MORRISON HOTEL , 1970

Patti Smith

true music
by Patti Smith
From Early Works 1970-1979

Time is expressed
in the heart
of an instrument
Something that stops
in the heart of a man
Time is the wall and the space around
Time is the tree a life that resounds
Time to adore and time to go
To give to the fisherman
the slippers of Rome
the whirling embrace
the arms of the fold
to gather together
the swirl of the leaves
turning and falling
returning as thee
to the clay of creation
tho' your children will hold
the wave of your hand
the smile of your soul


About Patti Smith:

Punk rock's poet laureate, Patti Smith ranks among the most influential rock & rollers of all time. Ambitious, unconventional, and challenging, Smith's music was hailed as the most exciting fusion of rock and poetry since Bob Dylan's heyday. If that hybrid remained distinctly uncommercial for much of her career, it wasn't a statement against accessibility so much as the simple fact that Smith followed her own muse wherever it took her -- from structured rock songs to free-form experimentalism, or even completely out of music at times. Her most avant-garde outings drew a sense of improvisation and interplay from free jazz, though they remained firmly rooted in noisy, primitive three-chord rock & roll. She was a powerful concert presence, singing and chanting her lyrics in an untrained but expressive voice, whirling around the stage like an ecstatic shaman delivering incantations. A regular at CBGB's during the early days of New York punk, she was the first artist of the bunch to land a record deal and release an album, even beating the Ramones to the punch. The artiness and the amateurish musicianship of her work both had a major impact on the punk movement, whether in New York or England, whether among her contemporaries (Television, Richard Hell) or followers. What was more, Smith became an icon to subsequent generations of female rockers. She never relied on sex appeal for her success -- she was unabashedly intellectual and creatively uncompromising, and her appearance was usually lean, hard, and androgynous. She also never made an issue of her gender, calling attention to herself as an artist, not a woman; she simply dressed and performed in the spirit of her aggressive, male rock role models, as if no alternative had ever occurred to her. In the process, she obliterated the expectations of what was possible for women in rock, and stretched the boundaries of how artists of any gender could express themselves.

Official Web Site: pattismith.net

Suggested Listening:

• Horses 1975
• Easter 1978
• Land: 1975-2002
• Gone Again 1996
• Trampin’ 2004

Suggested Reading:

• Early Works: 1970-1979
• Patti Smith : Complete lyrics, reflections, and notes for the future

It is a travesty that Patti Smith, one of the founders of Punk Rock, has not been inducted by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Write the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and demand that Patti Smith be inducted in 2006:

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation
1290 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10104

Maybe We Are Just Evolving Backwards: Pope John Paul and the average American on the theory of evolution.

POPE JOHN PAUL II ON EVOLUTION (1996):

“On 31 October 1992, I had the opportunity, with regard to Galileo, to draw attention to the need of a rigorous hermeneutic for the correct interpretation of the inspired word. It is necessary to determine the proper sense of Scripture, while avoiding any unwarranted interpretations that make it say what it does not intend to say. In order to delineate the field of their own study, the exegete and the theologian must keep informed about the results achieved by the natural sciences.

…Fresh knowledge has led to the recognition that evolution is more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favour of this theory.”

Pope John Paul II
Message to Pontifical Academy of Sciences, October 22, 1996
.......

AMERICA ON EVOLUTION (2004)

(CBS NEWS POLL) Americans do not believe that humans evolved, and the vast majority says that even if they evolved, God guided the process. Just 13 percent say that God was not involved. But most would not substitute the teaching of creationism for the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Support for evolution is more heavily concentrated among those with more education and among those who attend religious services rarely or not at all.

There are also differences between voters who supported Kerry and those who supported Bush: 47 percent of John Kerry’s voters think God created humans as they are now, compared with 67 percent of Bush voters.

VIEWS ON EVOLUTION/CREATIONISM

God created humans in present form
All Americans
55%
Kerry voters
47%
Bush voters
67%

Humans evolved, God guided the process
All Americans
27%
Kerry voters
28%
Bush voters
22%

Humans evolved, God did not guide process
All Americans
13%
Kerry voters
21%
Bush voters
6%

Overall, about two-thirds of Americans want creationism taught along with evolution. Only 37 percent want evolutionism replaced outright.

More than half of Kerry voters want creationism taught alongside evolution. Bush voters are much more willing to want creationism to replace evolution altogether in a curriculum (just under half favor that), and 71 percent want it at least included.

FAVOR SCHOOLS TEACHING…

Creationism and evolution
All Americans
65%
Kerry voters
56%
Bush voters
71%

Creationism instead of evolution
All Americans
37%
Kerry voters
24%
Bush voters
45%

60 percent of Americans who call themselves Evangelical Christians, however, favor replacing evolution with creationism in schools altogether, as do 50 percent of those who attend religious services every week.

This poll was conducted among a nationwide random sample of 885 adults interviewed by telephone November 18-21, 2004. There were 795 registered voters. The error due to sampling could be plus or minus three percentage points for results based on all adults and all registered voters. ©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Happy Spring from Edna St. Vincent Millay

Spring

TO what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. *
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Millay was found dead with her neck broken at the bottom of a flight of stairs in her home.

About Millay:

Poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine, on February 22, 1892. Her mother, Cora, raised her three daughters on her own after asking her husband to leave the family home in 1899. Cora encouraged her girls to be ambitious and self-sufficient, teaching them an appreciation of music and literature from an early age. In 1912, at her mother's urging, Millay entered her poem "Renascence" into a contest: she won fourth place and publication in The Lyric Year, bringing her immediate acclaim and a scholarship to Vassar. There, she continued to write poetry and became involved in the theater. She also developed intimate relationships with several women while in school, including the English actress Wynne Matthison. In 1917, the year of her graduation, Millay published her first book, Renascence and Other Poems. At the request of Vassar's drama department, she also wrote her first verse play, The Lamp and the Bell (1921), a work about love between women.

Millay, whose friends called her "Vincent," then moved to New York's Greenwich Village, where she led a notoriously Bohemian life. She lived in a nine-foot-wide attic and wrote anything she could find an editor willing to accept. She and the other writers of Greenwich Village were, according to Millay herself, "very, very poor and very, very merry." She joined the Provincetown Players in their early days, and befriended writers such as Witter Bynner, Edmund Wilson, Susan Glaspell, and Floyd Dell, who asked for Millay's hand in marriage. Millay, who was openly bisexual, refused, despite Dell's attempts to persuade her otherwise. That same year Millay published A Few Figs from Thistles (1920), a volume of poetry which drew much attention for its controversial descriptions of female sexuality and feminism. In 1923 her fourth volume of poems, The Harp Weaver, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In addition to publishing three plays in verse, Millay also wrote the libretto of one of the few American grand operas, The King's Henchman (1927).

Millay married Eugen Boissevain, a self-proclaimed feminist and widower of Inez Milholland, in 1923. Boissevain gave up his own pursuits to manage Millay's literary career, setting up the readings and public appearances for which Millay grew quite famous. According to Millay's own accounts, the couple acted liked two bachelors, remaining "sexually open" throughout their twenty-six-year marriage, which ended with Boissevain's death in 1949. Edna St. Vincent Millay died in 1950.

Millay on the Web:
http://www.sappho.com/poetry/e_millay.html

Suggested Reading:
The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay
(Modern Library Classics), NANCY MILFORD (Editor)

Savage Beauty : The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
by NANCY MILFORD

Judith Viorst

I dug this one up at the request of a coworker affectionately knows as “Dawg”.

Mother Doesn't Want a Dog
By Judith Viorst

Mother doesn't want a dog.
Mother says they smell,
And never sit when you say sit,
Or even when you yell.
And when you come home late at night
And there is ice and snow,
You have to go back out because
The dumb dog has to go.

Mother doesn't want a dog.
Mother says they shed,
And always let the strangers in
And bark at friends instead,
And do disgraceful things on rugs,
And track mud on the floor,
And flop upon your bed at night
And snore their doggy snore.

Mother doesn't want a dog.
She's making a mistake.
Because, more than a dog, I think
She will not want this snake.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judith Viorst was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1931. She
is the author of several works of fiction and nonfiction, for children
well as adults. Her most recent work of nonfiction, Imperfect Control,
was published by Simon and Schuster in 1998. She is also the author
of Murdering Mr. Monti (1994) and Necessary Losses (1986) which
appeared on The New York Times best-seller list in hardcover and
paperback for almost two years. Her children's books include The
Tenth Good Thing About Barney(1971), The Alphabet From Z to A
(1994), and the "Alexander" stories: Alexander, Who Used to be Rich
Last Sunday (1978); Alexander, Who's Not (Do Your Hear Me? I Mean
It!) Going to Move (1995); and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No
Good, Very Bad Day (1972). A graduate of the Washington Psychoanalytic
Institute, she is the recipient of variousawards for her journalism and
psychological writings. Judith Viorst livesin Washington, DC, with
her husband, political writer Milton Viorst.

For more on reading poetry with children:
http://poets.org/exh/Exhibit.cfm?45442B7C000C0705

Ezra Pound

In response to comments on the length of yesterday's poem, today's poem by Ezra Pound is considerably shorter.

This philosophy influenced poet Ezra Pound noted the power of haiku's brevity and juxtaposed images. He wrote, "The image itself is speech. The image is the word beyond formulated language." The influence of haiku on Pound is most evident in his poem "In a Station of the Metro," which began as a thirty-line poem, but was eventually pared down to two lines:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

--------------------------
A traditional Japanese haiku is a three-line poem with seventeen
syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count. Often focusing on images
from nature, haiku emphasizes simplicity, intensity, and directness of
expression.

Haiku began in thirteenth-century Japan as the opening phrase of renga,
an oral poem, generally 100 stanzas long, which was also composed
syllabically. The much shorter haiku broke away from renga in the
sixteenth-century, and was mastered a century later by Matsuo Basho,
who wrote this classic haiku:

An old pond!
A frog jumps in--
the sound of water.

Haiku was traditionally written in the present tense and focused on
associations between images. There was a pause at the end of the first or
second line, and a "season word," or kigo, specified the time of year.
As the form has evolved, many of these rules--including the 5/7/5
practice--have been routinely broken. However, the philosophy of haiku
has been preserved: the focus on a brief moment in time; a use of
provocative, colorful images; an ability to be read in one breath; and a
sense of sudden enlightenment and illumination.
-----------------------
More about Pound:

Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho, in 1885. He completed two years of
college at the University of Pennsylvania and earned a degree from
Hamilton College in 1905. After teaching at Wabash College for two years,
he traveled abroad to Spain, Italy and London, where, as the literary
executor of the scholar Ernest Fenellosa, he became interested in
Japanese and Chinese poetry. He married Dorothy Shakespear in 1914 and
became London editor of the Little Review in 1917. In 1924, he moved to
Italy; during this period of voluntary exile, Pound became involved in
Fascist politics, and did not return to the United States until 1945, when
he was arrested on charges of treason for broadcasting Fascist
propaganda by radio to the United States during the Second World War.

In 1946, he was acquitted, but declared mentally ill and committed to
St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. During his confinement,
the jury of the Bollingen-Library of Congress Award (which included
a number of the most eminent writers of the time) decided to overlook
Pound's political career in the interest of recognizing his poetic
achievements, and awarded him the prize for the Pisan Cantos (1948).
After continuous appeals from writers won his release from the
hospital in 1958, Pound returned to Italy and settled in Venice,
where he died, a semi-recluse, in 1972.

Thomas Gray

Today's unhappy selection is brought to you at the suggestion of a coworker who looks forward to reading more poetry in his retirement.

Perhaps as early as 1742 Thomas Gray embarked on a long meditative elegy in the tradition of the Retirement Poem...

Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day;
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea;
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower,
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care;
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield;
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour:
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:

But knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton, here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.

Th' applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind;

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet ev'n these bones, from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered Muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply;
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Ev'n from the tomb the voice of nature cries,
Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of the unhonoured dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say:
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn;

"There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove;
Now drooping, woeful-wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.

"One morn I missed him on the accustomed hill,
Along the heath, and near his favourite tree.
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood, was he.

"The next with dirges due, in sad array,
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne,
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."

THE EPITAPH

Here rests his head upon the lap of earth,
A youth to fortune and to fame unknown;
Fair science frowned not on his humble birth,
And melancholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere;
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to misery (all he had) a tear,
He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend.

No further seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose,)
The bosom of his Father and his God.
-----------------------------------------------

Suggested Link:

http://www.thomasgray.org/materials/bio.shtml

Emily Dickinson

"Nature is a haunted house - but Art - a house that tries to be haunted"
-Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson, the Belle of Amherst, published only 11 of her 1,775 poems during her lifetime. I have read every single one of the 1,775 poems.

Here are two poems that are NOT about death:

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you--Nobody--too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise--you know!

How dreary--to be--Somebody!
How public--like a Frog--
To tell one's name--the livelong June--
To an admiring Bog!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
We met as Sparks-Diverging Flints
Sent various-scattered ways-
We parted as the Central Flint
Were cloven with an Adze-
Subsisting on the Light We bore
Before We felt the Dark-
A Flint unto this Day-perhaps-
But for that single Spark.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
More about Dickinson:

Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830. She attended
Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley but severe homesickness led her to return home after one year. In the years that followed, she seldom left her house and visitors were scarce. The people with whom she did come
in contact, however, had an intense impact on her thoughts and poetry. She was particularly stirred by the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, whom she met on a trip to Philadelphia. He left for the West Coast shortly after a visit to her home in 1860, and his departure gave rise to a heartsick flow of verse from Dickinson, who deeply admired him. By the 1860s, she lived
in almost total physical isolation from the outside world, but actively maintained many correspondences and read widely.

Her poetry reflects her loneliness and the speakers of her poems generally live in a state of want; but her poems are also marked by the intimate recollection of inspirational moments which are decidedly life-giving and suggest the possibility of future happiness. Her work was heavily influenced by the Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England, as
well as by her Puritan upbringing and the Book of Revelation. She admired the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and John Keats. Though she was dissuaded from reading the verse of her contemporary Walt Whitman by rumor of its disgracefulness, the two poets are now connected by the distinguished place they hold as the founders of a uniquely American poetic voice. Dickinson was extremely prolific as a poet and regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends, but she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. The first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955. She died in Amherst in 1886.

Suggested Link:

http://www.emilydickinson.org/

Wallace Stevens

Poet and Hartford VP Wallace Stevens said that poetry is "a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right."

One of my favorite poems by Stevens:

THE POEMS OF OUR CLIMATE

I
Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
Pink and white carnations. The light
In the room more like a snowy air,
Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations - one desires
So much more than that. The day itself
Is simplified: a bowl of white,
Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
With nothing more than the carnations there.

II
Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one's torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.

III
There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.
-----------------------------------
More about Stevens:

Wallace Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on October 2, 1879. He
attended Harvard as an undergraduate and earned a law degree from New York
Law School. Admitted to the U.S. Bar in 1904, Stevens found employment at
the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Co. in Connecticut, of which he became
vice president in 1934. In November 1914, Harriet Monroe included four of
his poems in a special wartime issue of Poetry, and Stevens began to
establish an identity for himself outside the world of law and business.
His first book of poems, Harmonium, published in 1923, exhibited the
influence of both the English Romantics and the French symbolists, an
inclination to aesthetic philosophy, and a wholly original style and
sensibility: exotic, whimsical, infused with the light and color of an
Impressionist painting. More than any other modern poet, Stevens was
concerned with the transformative power of the imagination. Composing
poems on his way to and from the office and in the evenings, Stevens
continued to spend his days behind a desk at the office, and led a quiet,
uneventful life. Though now considered one of the major American poets of
the century, he did not receive widespread recognition until the
publication of his Collected Poems, just a year before his death. His
major works include Ideas of Order (1935), The Man With the Blue Guitar
(1937), Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction (1942), and a collection of essays
on poetry, The Necessary Angel (1951). Wallace Stevens died in Hartford in
1955.

Suggested Link:

Hartford Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens committed to raising awareness of Wallace Stevens in his hometown of Hartford, CT and beyond, through readings, discussions, and programs.
http://www.wesleyan.edu/wstevens/stevens.html

April is National Poetry Month

To celebrate National Poetry Month I will be posting a daily poem during the month of April. For more information on how you can celebrate National Poetry Month visit http://poets.org

Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead: A fond farewell to Hunter S. Thompson

Ever since that Sunday when Hunter S. Thompson sat in his kitchen/office and reportedly fired his final weapon, I’ve been continuously saying goodbye to a man I could never have hoped to meet. Obviously, he lived and breathed in an entirely different solar system than that of the ordinary suburban slob and, to use a blatant Thompsonism, that, I think, was the point. He was a larger than life character combining elements of Mark Twain, James Bond, Ernest Hemingway and Superman. Those, such as myself, who were inspired by his writing and his public persona (two halves of one masterpiece) tended to internalize parts of him and drew great strength from it. For a certain type of person, he was a superhero. Brave, dangerous, reckless with an unwavering belief in truth, justice and the American way. Hunter Thompson was probably the only person I ever saw look natural and deserving draped in the American flag and he seemed to know it. As an icon, he wore two hats: one being that of the staunch libertarian, screaming our civil rights like a war whoop, setting off sirens, blasting firearms and ingesting into his own private body anything he damn pleased. The other hat was of the astute, no-nonsense political insider and commentator. The kind of which may finally be outlawed from this country forever. These roles, together with his uncontestable ability to walk as tough as he talked made him a very important American and, yes, a deserving role model.

“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.” –HST

A good litmus test: If you think the above statement is irresponsible and inappropriate you never got it. If it elicits a chuckle or a smirk, you did. This is not to say that any of the above is good or right on it’s own but it is to say that anyone who absolutely, publicly condemns them is not to be trusted. Scratch the surface of any public angel and you will likely find a darkness much deeper than Thompson’s. With the good Doctor, you always knew where you stood. With many writers of his ilk, it is necessary to separate the man from the work but with Hunter Thompson, it was just the opposite. He was an offspring of the Lost Generation of the 1930’s as well as the Beat Generation of the 50’s. Admirers of Fitzgerald and Hemingway must separate the great art from the desolate, drunken, empty final years of their lives and most admirers of the Beat writers will likely find themselves a bit queasy when they investigate the actual lives of Allan Ginsberg, Burroughs and, sadly, even poor, dissipated Kerouac. This was not the case with Thompson’s forty-year career. Swigging from a big glass of Chivas, clenching his cigarette holder Macarthur-style, strong, fearless, uncompromised by life’s demands and fair by his own code, Thompson always stood tall as a man’s (and woman’s) man. For many, here was someone, not only to write like, but also to be like. It also helps that the post-mortem bios unanimously portray him as a fun, generous albeit demanding friend, father and husband. He was undoubtedly plagued by self-doubt, paranoia and avoidance but, given the persona he had to live up to every time, who could blame him? When you create a myth that good, you don’t want to screw it up. The last television appearance of Thompson’s that I know of was about a year ago on the Conan O’Brian Show. He was given his due and O’Brian was reverent and humble but it was troubling to see the Father Of Gonzo looking nervous, disoriented and slightly feeble, tipping his drink as the host helped him to his chair. I was worried that the nervous titters from the audience indicated ignorance of the icon before them. That they didn’t get it. When your identity is that strong and indelible, actually inked in Ralph Steadman’s caricature alongside his published prose, the risk of self-parody always looms. I think that is probably why Thompson never cared for Gary Trudeau’s cartoon Duke version of him and was so nervous about being portrayed in films. Both Bill Murray and Johnny Depp, by Thompson’s design, lived with him, shadowing him for months, playing Gonzo games of Truth Or Dare before attempting to emulate him on screen. Reportedly, both actors found the experience of proving to the Doctor that they had the necessary balls to associate themselves with him to be unnerving and life changing. Tellingly, both Murray and Depp remained close, admiring friends of Thompson’s from that point forward. As with the iconic American writers he now joins in history, being identifiable is just the tip of the creation. You can’t twirl a lasso while chewing tobacco and be Will Rogers; you can’t wear a linen jacket and a big white mustache and be Mark Twain and a cigarette holder, bowling shirt and white Converses will not make you Hunter S. Thompson although I can already picture the Off-Broadway actor attempting this while reading off sections of Fear and Loathing.

"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high-powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die." –HST

Although that could now easily apply to himself, that was how Thompson eulogized his attorney friend, the Brown Buffalo, Oscar Acosta in “The Banshee Screams For Buffalo Meat,” a mournful howl for his mysteriously missing friend and the overall death of the individual. In the winter of 1977, I was sixteen and this piece in Rolling Stone, complete with Steadman’s illustrations, introduced me to Gonzo Journalism. The bold truth lying just below the powerful writing and dry humor was immediate to me. I retraced and followed his career from that point on and never felt disappointed. Sure, his portrayal of the iconoclastic journalist, riding with Hell’s Angels, going transparently undercover through mainstream America, taking superhuman quantities of mind-altering drugs as a writing tool perfectly suited my anti-authoritarian sensibilities but the best part was that it was more than just a created character, it was really him. “You buy the ticket, you take the ride.” What could be more American or, for that matter, masculine than that? I absorbed it like a sponge.

And apparently so did many others. When I first heard a matter-of-fact statement of Thompson’s death “by a self-inflicted gunshot wound” on Monday’s morning news, I was worried that his passing was going to slip by with a mere mention. A forgone conclusion, breezed over as Abbie Hoffman’s suicide was years ago. As soon as I went online though, it was clearly not going to be the case. The God Of Google had already logged hundreds of “news” items regarding Hunter’s passing, By Tuesday evening, more than 1,800 and now, weeks later, over 3,800. An explosion of blogs saying goodbye to the man who’s telexed and later faxed “Dispatches From The National Affairs Desk” predated journalistic blogging by three decades. They were filled with tribute from people who were lucky enough to know him, fellow writers like Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer who praised him as one of the great voices of their lifetime and from those like myself who were simply changed forever by him. Almost immediately, the mythology around his suicide began to sprout and I was relieved to see it. What went on with our aging hero in the snow covered isolation of Owl Farm? Why did a man who seemed to Eat Life kill himself? That was my immediate question and everyone else’s. The blogs filled with each breaking disclosure, every one of which set off a chain reaction of speculation. Did he really plan this for months or was he “suicided” like he expressed concern about to a friend the day before? Why would he put a gun in his mouth in mid-phone call with his wife? What was the meaning of that Rosebud-like final word, “councelor,” carefully typed front and center on Fourth Amendment stationary on his trusty IBM Selectric as his second to last act on Earth? Was he working on exposing a gay pedophile prostitution ring that ran through Washington’s highest halls of power? Was there some connection between Thompson and that bizarre GOP press conference Golem, Jeff Gannon aka James Guckert possibly aka Johnny Gosch? Did he really have hard evidence that the World Trade Center had explosives planted in the base of the towers? (BTW: Anyone who thinks that last one is laughably absurd should step away from the computer and pull their head out of their ass right now). Was Prince Bandar really his fucking neighbor? Jesus! If Thompson was simply in pain, suffering from incapacitation and drenched in despondency over the post-November death rattle of his beloved America and decided to master his own fate, I guess that’s okay as well. The only thing we know for sure is that he stipulated that his final remains be shot out of a cannon and maybe that’s enough.

Thompson will be greatly missed for many reasons and on many levels but, for me, the most unfillable void will be the one he leaves as political commentator. From “Fear and Loathing On The Campaign Trail ‘72” on, he was a voice to be trusted and listened to for the brutal unvarnished truth of the matter. A self-proclaimed “political junkie” he moved easily inside and outside the process. He served you up what you didn’t want to know, doing it with such skill and humor that you had to listen. He was not beholden to any affiliation and his perception cut through the spin, clouded only by his own toxic bloodstream.

HST On The Republican Party:
"Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous 'trickle-down' theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich get Richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow 'trickle down' to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to pre-industrial America, when only white male property owners could vote."

And most poignantly prophetic of all, observations posted September 12, 2001 on ESPN.com:
“The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.

It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won't hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force.

OK. It is 24 hours later now, and we are not getting much information about the Five Ws of this thing.

The numbers out of the Pentagon are baffling, as if Military Censorship has already been imposed on the media. It is ominous. The only news on TV comes from weeping victims and ignorant speculators.

The lid is on. Loose Lips Sink Ships. Don't say anything that might give aid to The Enemy.”

Who in the world is going to fill these shoes? Probably no one. We are alone now and we had better rise to the challenge.

Goodbye, American Dream. Goodbye, Hunter.

Slap Another Jesus Fish On That SUV

"Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."
-John Lennon, 1966

I have a real problem with religion and sport utility vehicles. Ever since the last Presidential election, the two have become inseparably linked in my mind for what they represent and what they mean to our country. I have tried to make my peace with them but I am unable and I no longer feel the need to try. Somehow the rabid need to smile beatifically and tell people that you are in tune with the wishes expressed by the creator of the universe and having to drive off-road vehicles to the local Wal-Mart have become entwined into a single entity for me. A large, pious, single-minded beast, slowly transforming this country into something I will never tolerate. Fervent evangelical Christianity and unabashed oil consumption are doing too much damage and any sort of appeasement should no longer be offered. Enough is enough. Stop telling me how big you are, how right you are and how better you are. I’m not impressed. Your single-minded nature is your strength and your Achilles’ Heel. Just wait.

While broadminded people of fairness, intelligence and compassion are bleakly asking themselves how they could have lost the hearts and minds of this great land, roughly 51% of our people believe that the politicians and media handlers who answer only to the Energy Lobby and justify their horrifying policies by invoking Christianity have America’s best interest at heart. Most of them have to know by now that they have been aggressively lied to about our time’s most important matters: war, our safety in the world, our financial well-being, our health, human rights, liberty, the lost lives of sons and daughters… but, astonishingly, it doesn’t matter to them. It was laid out plain and simple last November in an unrelenting pastiche of gay marriages, war heroes besmirched by draft dodgers, ignorant leaders tolerated, tolerant leaders rejected, each day filled with messages of fear, hatred and, of course, the love of Jesus. Strong. Simple. Us. Them. Two hundred and twenty-eight years of valuing leaders with intellect and vision down the tubes. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.

According to the most recent U.S. Census, ownership of sport utility vehicles increased by fifty-one percent in the last five years. Now, one in eight American drivers are driving one of these dangerous, arrogant, gas guzzling TRUCKS with names like Explorer, Expedition, Navigator and Pathfinder to go about their daily errands, shoehorning these elephants into the white lines of parking spaces originally measured out for cars as we knew them. In the mind’s eye of their inner pioneer, they are splashing around rocky, overgrown, muddy, seldom explored terrain when, in reality, the only advantage an off-road vehicle has to these people is the ability to hop the curb in the mall parking lot, power drunk with the knowledge that they can kill any sedan driver on impact, so they can get home in time to watch CSI: Miami.

Big. Strong. Simple. Us. Them.

I know people who have purchased these trucks just because they were afraid of getting hit by them. If midtown traffic is our current form of jousting, then, by God, get the biggest stead. They’ll think twice before getting in the way of your left turn when you are sitting tall in the saddle of your new Durango. This may not seem extremely significant but it is. The pervasive culture of our age is a mean, selfish one. We value aggression most and we really love telling people what to do. Donald Trump takes his apprentices into the boardroom and fires one of them, in front of the others and the rest of America, of course. It wouldn’t be the same without humiliation. People in large numbers will turn to their TV to see their fellow American’s eat a plate of maggots in order to win a neat little pile of cash.  The exit polls of the last election still burn in my mind with that single word standing as the most important issue to most Americans: Values. Nobody’s fooling me. I know what “values” mean. Your values imposed upon my values. The inalienable right to tell people what to want, believe and do. The Puritanical nature of this country obviously traces back to the early settlers but these people were not Americans as the term has come to be known. The brilliance of Washington, Jefferson and Franklin were to come later and had nothing to do with the earlier intolerant, religiously fanatical Puritans with their stocks and dunking pools. In fact the Puritans’ penchant for public scorn, humiliation and moral ostracizing is not that different from today’s meat and potatoes American. From its inception and with few deviations, The United States Of America embarked on a linear quest for improvement; The Constitution, The Bill Of Rights, Abolition, Expansion, Suffrage, Industry and Entrepreneurialism, Civil Rights, Equal Rights, Human Rights. Obviously, we were always capable and culpable of gross inhumanities throughout our history but the underlying momentum always seemed to be, in varying degrees, forward. Today, fear of intellectualism, science, as well as differences in sexual and religious orientations are quickly turning my country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty into an intolerant wasteland, drying up and hardening into crimson blotches on our national map.

Why did this happen? Certainly some of this shift can be attributed to the cultural pendulum swinging away from the unrelenting progressivism of the twentieth century. A society’s attempted retreat to simpler, if bleaker, times. A Dark Ages for the new century comprised of equal parts cultural, economic and environmental devastation. Our Red State neighbors (and the Reds who dwell amongst us in the Blue States) have, for the first time ever, put the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of our once balanced government under the control of a single, ruthless, deceitful and selfish juggernaut that may finally spell the end of this country as we knew it and for what? The lust to tell other people what not to lust after. Historically, it makes sense. Some people will always be more comfortable with a clear definition of good and bad. It is always they who are good and some other people who are bad but that is, of course, the best part. Big. Strong. Simple. Us. Them.

I am convinced that when people put Jesus Fish, “Support Our Troops” ribbons and even American Flag or, sadly enough, “Remember 9/11” magnets on their vehicle, they are making political statements more than anything else. It is all thinly veiled “Vote Republican” merchandise. You can be reasonably sure that virtually none of the people behind the wheel voted for John Kerry and they would be just as comfortable with a “Stamp Out Alternative Lifestyles and Non-Christian Religions” bumper sticker if they thought they could get away with it. The fact that their Christian Right Wing agenda has become so successfully entwined with patriotism and love of liberty is just one more example of the astonishingly Orwellian (read Fascist) manipulations we have undergone in a short period of time. If there is any real hope for this country and the world we are a vital part of, it rests in tolerance, a government free of religious influence, and everything else contained in that wonderful Bill Of Rights that made us the envy of the world for so long. It’s not that complicated, almost self-evident:

Be yourself and let other people be themselves. I will never understand why that is so hard for some people.