billtrippe.com

February 14, 2009

Some Nights

“Some nights stay up till dawn,
as the moon sometimes does for the sun.
Be a full bucket pulled up the dark way of a well,
Then lifted out into light.”

Rumi, from the book, Essential Rumi

Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:41 PM

January 10, 2009

Self-Portrait

American Life in Poetry: Column 198

By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

This column has had the privilege of publishing a number of poems by young people, but this is the first we've published by a young person who is also a political refugee. The poet, Zozan Hawez, is from Iraq, and goes to Foster High School in Tukwila, Washington. Seattle Arts & Lectures sponsors a Writers in the Schools program, and Zozan's poem was encouraged by that initiative.

Self-Portrait

Born in a safe family
But a dangerous area, Iraq,
I heard guns at a young age, so young
They made a decision to raise us safe
So packed our things
And went far away.

Now, in the city of rain,
I try to forget my past,
But memories never fade.

This is my life,
It happened for a reason,
I happened for a reason.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Seattle Arts & Lectures. Reprinted from "We Will Carry Ourselves As Long As We Gaze Into The Sun," Seattle Arts & Lectures, 2007, by permission of Zozan Hawez and the publisher. Introduction copyright (c) 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:47 PM

December 31, 2008

A Small Moment

American Life in Poetry: Column 197

By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

I suspect that one thing some people have against reading poems is that they are so often so serious, so devoid of joy, as if we poets spend all our time brooding about mutability and death and never having any fun. Here Cornelius Eady, who lives and teaches in Indiana, offers us a poem of pure pleasure.

A Small Moment

I walk into the bakery next door
To my apartment. They are about
To pull some sort of toast with cheese
From the oven. When I ask:
What's that smell? I am being
A poet, I am asking

What everyone else in the shop
Wanted to ask, but somehow couldn't;
I am speaking on behalf of two other
Customers who wanted to buy the
Name of it. I ask the woman
Behind the counter for a percentage
Of her sale. Am I flirting?
Am I happy because the days
Are longer? Here's what

She does: She takes her time
Choosing the slices. "I am picking
Out the good ones," she tells me. It's
April 14th. Spring, with five to ten
Degrees to go. Some days, I feel my duty;
Some days, I love my work.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 1997 by Cornelius Eady, from his most recent book of poetry, "Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems," A Marian Wood Book, Putnam, 2008. Reprinted by permission of Cornelius Eady. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:00 PM

December 23, 2008

Gloves

American Life in Poetry: Column 196

By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

One of the most effective means for conveying strong emotion is to invest some real object with one's feelings, and then to let the object carry those feelings to the reader. Notice how the gloves in this short poem by Jose Angel Araguz of Oregon carry the heavy weight of the speaker's loss.

Gloves

I made up a story for myself once,
That each glove I lost
Was sent to my father in prison

That's all it would take for him
To chart my growth without pictures
Without words or visits,

Only colors and design,
Texture; it was ok then
For skin to chafe and ash,

To imagine him
Trying on a glove,
Stretching it out

My open palm closing
And disappearing
In his fist.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Jose Angel Araguz. Poem reprinted from "Rattle," Vol. 13, no. 2, Winter 2007, by permission of Jose Angel Araguz. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:46 PM

December 19, 2008

Christmas Night

American Life in Poetry: Column 195

By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

Here is a poem, much like a prayer, in which the Michigan poet Conrad Hilberry asks for no more than a little flare of light, an affirmation, at the end of a long, cold Christmas day.

Christmas Night

Let midnight gather up the wind
and the cry of tires on bitter snow.
Let midnight call the cold dogs home,
sleet in their fur--last one can blow

the streetlights out. If children sleep
after the day's unfoldings, the wheel
of gifts and griefs, may their breathing
ease the strange hollowness we feel.

Let midnight draw whoever's left
to the grate where a burnt-out log unrolls
low mutterings of smoke until
a small fire wakes in its crib of coals.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2008 by Conrad Hilberry, whose most recent book of poetry is After Music (Made in Michigan Writers)," Wayne State University Press, 2008. Poem reprinted from "The Hudson Review," Vol. 60, no. 4, Winter 2008, by permission of Conrad Hilberry. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:40 PM

December 11, 2008

Applied Geometry

American Life in Poetry: Column 194

By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

Father and child doing a little math homework together; it's an everyday occurrence, but here, Russell Libby, a poet who writes from Three Sisters Farm in central Maine, presents it in a way that makes it feel deep and magical.

Applied Geometry

Applied geometry,
measuring the height
of a pine from
like triangles,
Rosa's shadow stretches
seven paces in
low-slanting light of
late Christmas afternoon.
One hundred thirty nine steps
up the hill until the sun is
finally caught at the top of the tree,
let's see,
twenty to one,
one hundred feet plus a few to adjust
for climbing uphill,
and her hands barely reach mine
as we encircle the trunk,
almost eleven feet around.
Back to the lumber tables.
That one tree might make
three thousand feet of boards
if our hearts could stand
the sound of its fall.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Russell Libby, whose most recent book is Balance - A Late Pastoral, Blackberry Press, 2007. Reprinted from "HeartLodge," Vol. III, Summer 2007, by permission of Russell Libby. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:33 PM

December 5, 2008

How Is It That the Snow

American Life in Poetry: Column 193

By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

The first two lines of this poem pose a question many of us may have thought about: how does snow make silence even more silent? And notice Robert Haight's deft use of color, only those few flecks of red, and the rest of the poem pure white. And silent, so silent. Haight lives in Michigan, where people know about snow.

How Is It That the Snow

How is it that the snow
amplifies the silence,
slathers the black bark on limbs,
heaps along the brush rows?

Some deer have stood on their hind legs
to pull the berries down.
Now they are ghosts along the path,
snow flecked with red wine stains.

This silence in the timbers.
A woodpecker on one of the trees
taps out its story,
stopping now and then in the lapse
of one white moment into another.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2002 by Robert Haight from his most recent book of poetry, Emergences and Spinner Falls, New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2002. Reprinted by permission of Robert Haight. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:33 PM

November 25, 2008

Fences

American Life in Poetry: Column 192

By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

Class, status, privilege; despite all our talk about equality, they're with us wherever we go. In this poem, Pat Mora, who grew up in a Spanish speaking home in El Paso, Texas, contrasts the lives of rich tourists with the less fortunate people who serve them. The titles of poems are often among the most important elements, and this one is loaded with implication.

Fences

Mouths full of laughter,
the turistas come to the tall hotel
with suitcases full of dollars.

Every morning my brother makes
the cool beach new for them.
With a wooden board he smooths
away all footprints.

I peek through the cactus fence
and watch the women rub oil
sweeter than honey into their arms and legs
while their children jump waves
or sip drinks from long straws,
coconut white, mango yellow.

Once my little sister
ran barefoot across the hot sand
for a taste.

My mother roared like the ocean,
"No. No. It's their beach.
It's their beach."

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 1991 by Pat Mora, whose most recent book of poetry is Adobe Odes, University of Arizona Press, 2007. Poem reprinted from Communion, Arte Publico Press, University of Houston, 1991, by permission of the writer and publisher. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:46 PM

September 11, 2008

Prayer for the Dead

American Life in Poetry: Column 181

By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

Stuart Kestenbaum, the author of this week's poem, lost his brother Howard in the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. We thought it appropriate to commemorate the events of September 11, 2001, by sharing this poem. The poet is the director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts on Deer Isle, Maine.

Prayer for the Dead

The light snow started late last night and continued
all night long while I slept and could hear it occasionally
enter my sleep, where I dreamed my brother
was alive again and possessing the beauty of youth, aware
that he would be leaving again shortly and that is the lesson
of the snow falling and of the seeds of death that are in everything
that is born: we are here for a moment
of a story that is longer than all of us and few of us
remember, the wind is blowing out of someplace
we don't know, and each moment contains rhythms
within rhythms, and if you discover some old piece
of your own writing, or an old photograph,
you may not remember that it was you and even if it was once you,
it's not you now, not this moment that the synapses fire
and your hands move to cover your face in a gesture
of grief and remembrance.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2007 by Stuart Kestenbaum. Reprinted from Prayers & Run-on Sentences, Deerbook Editions, 2007, by permission of Stuart Kestenbaum. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:32 PM

September 8, 2008

Massachusetts Poetry Festival

Well, this sounds great:

The Massachusetts Poetry Festival is a three-day celebration of the poets, poetry, and literary heritage of a state whose contribution to American poetry is unsurpassed in the nation. Join us as we pay tribute to the poets and writers of the past while experiencing the creative energy of today’s literary artists. This first-ever, state-wide event will include readings by renowned and emerging poets, teacher workshops, performance poetry, films & music, programs for children and young writers, literary heritage tours, a small press fair, poetry in the streets, and much more.

It's on Columbus Day weekend, October 10-12, and is being held at the Lowell National Historical Park, which is a great venue. Featured poets include Andre Dubus III, Marjorie Agosin, and Robert Pinsky.

Most of the events on the schedule are free, but the featured readings require tickets that you can buy here.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:38 AM

September 5, 2008

My name came from. . .

American Life in Poetry: Column 180

By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

What's in a name? All of us have thought at one time or another about our names, perhaps asking why they were given to us, or finding meanings within them. Here Emmett Tenorio Melendez, an eleven-year-old poet from San Antonio, Texas, proudly presents us with his name and its meaning.

My name came from. . .

My name came from my great-great-great-grandfather.
He was an Indian from the Choctaw tribe.
His name was Dark Ant.
When he went to get a job out in a city
he changed it to Emmett.
And his whole name was Emmett Perez Tenorio.
And my name means: Ant; Strong; Carry twice
its size.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 2000 by Emmett Tenorio Melendez. Reprinted from Salting The Ocean: 100 Poems By Young Poets, Greenwillow Books, 2000, by permission of the editor. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:55 PM

August 28, 2008

Bushwick: Latex Flat

American Life in Poetry: Column 179

By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

I've always loved shop talk, with its wonderful language of tools and techniques. This poem by D. Nurkse of Brooklyn, New York, is a perfect example. I especially like the use of the verb, lap, in line seven, because that's exactly the sound a four-inch wall brush makes.

Bushwick: Latex Flat
2001

Sadness of just-painted rooms.
We clean our tools
meticulously, as if currying horses:
the little nervous sash brush
to be combed and primped,
the fat old four-inchers
that lap up space
to be wrapped and groomed,
the ceiling rollers,
the little pencils
that cover nailheads
with oak gloss,
to be counted and packed:
camped on our dropsheets
we stare across gleaming floors
at the door and beyond it
the old city full of old rumors
of conspiracies, gunshots, market crashes:
with a little mallet
we tap our lids closed,
holding our breath, holding our lives
in suspension for a moment:
an extra drop will ruin everything.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2007 by D. Nurkse, whose newest book of poetry The Border Kingdom, is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. Poem reprinted from Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn, ed., Julia Spicher Kasdorf & Michael Tyrrell, New York University Press, 2007, by permission of D. Nurkse. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:48 AM

August 21, 2008

Father, Child, Water

American Life in Poetry: Column 178

By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

We mammals are ferociously protective of our young, and we all know not to wander in between a sow bear and her cubs. Here Minnesota poet Gary Dop, without a moment's hesitation, throws himself into the water to save a frightened child.

Father, Child, Water

I lift your body to the boat
before you drown or choke or slip too far

beneath. I didn't think—just jumped, just did
what I did like the physics

that flung you in. My hands clutch under
year-old arms, between your life

jacket and your bobbing frame, pushing you,
like a fountain cherub, up and out.

I'm fooled by the warmth pulsing from
the gash on my thigh, sliced wide and clean

by an errant screw on the stern.
No pain. My legs kick out blood below.

My arms strain
against our deaths to hold you up

as I lift you, crying, reaching, to the boat.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2008 by Gary Dop. Reprinted from New Letters, Vol. 74, No. 3, Spring 2008, by permission of Gary Dop. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:51 AM

August 14, 2008

Rain at the Zoo

American Life in Poetry: Column 177

By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

Kristen Tracy is a poet from San Francisco who here captures a moment at a zoo. It's the falling rain, don't you think, that makes the experience of observing the animals seem so perfectly truthful and vivid?

Rain at the Zoo

A giraffe presented its head to me, tilting it
sideways, reaching out its long gray tongue.
I gave it my wheat cracker while small drops
of rain pounded us both. Lightning cracked open
the sky. Zebras zipped across the field.
It was springtime in Michigan. I watched
the giraffe shuffle itself backwards, toward
the herd, its bone- and rust-colored fur beading
with water. The entire mix of animals stood
away from the trees. A lone emu shook
its round body hard and squawked. It ran
along the fence line, jerking open its wings.
Perhaps it was trying to shake away the burden
of water or indulging an urge to fly. I can't know.
I have no idea what about their lives these animals
love or abhor. They are captured or born here for us,
and we come. It's true. This is my favorite field.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © Kristen Tracy, whose most recent teen novel is Crimes of the Sarahs, Simon & Schuster, 2008. Poem reprinted from AGNI Online, 9/2007, by permission of Kristen Tracy. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:19 PM

June 29, 2008

Whitman's Brooklyn

Another website that shows the potential of the web for providing a rich view of literary material.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:29 PM

April 10, 2008

The Inevitable

American Life in Poetry: Column 159

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Bad news all too often arrives with a ringing telephone, all too early in the morning. But sometimes it comes with less emphasis, by regular mail. Here Allan Peterson of Florida gets at the feelings of receiving bad news by letter, not by directly stating how he feels but by suddenly noticing the world that surrounds the moment when that news arrives.

The Inevitable

To have that letter arrive
was like the mist that took a meadow
and revealed hundreds
of small webs once invisible
The inevitable often
stands by plainly but unnoticed
till it hands you a letter
that says death and you notice
the weed field had been
readying its many damp handkerchiefs
all along

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Allan Peterson, whose most recent book of poetry is All the Lavish in Common, University of Massachusetts Press, 2005, winner of the Juniper Prize. Reprinted from The Chattahoochee Review, Winter 2007, V. 27, no. 2, by permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:31 PM

March 27, 2008

In Your Absence

American Life in Poetry: Column 157

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

From your school days you may remember A. E. Housman's poem that begins, "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now/ Is hung with bloom along the bough." Here's a look at a blossoming cherry, done 120 years later, on site among the famous cherry trees of Washington, by D.C. poet Judith Harris.

In Your Absence

Not yet summer,
but unseasonable heat
pries open the cherry tree.

It stands there stupefied,
in its sham, pink frills,
dense with early blooming.

Then, as afternoon cools
into more furtive winds,
I look up to see
a blizzard of petals
rushing the sky.

It is only April.
I can't stop my own life
from hurrying by.
The moon, already pacing.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Judith Harris, whose most recent collection of poems is The Bad Secret, Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Reprinted by permission of Judith Harris. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:10 PM

March 23, 2008

William Butler Yeats

It's Easter, and somehow I woke up thinking of Yeats and his poem Easter, 1916. There was a period in my life when Yeats was a cornerstone poet for me. I think, among other things, I was fascinated with how his life and work bridged the Victorian and Modern eras--he lived from the end of the U.S. civil war (1865) to the outbreak of the second World War (1939). But I also was attracted to his melancholy in poems like "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and "Sailing to Byzantium" (and yes, that opening line of Byzantium, "That is no country for old men" is indeed the source of the title of the book and the movie).

Not surprisingly, the Web is full of terrific Yeats resources. The Wikipedia article is excellent and chock full of citations and outbound links. I also found a voice recording of Yeats reading Innisfree, and you can find a wonderful short video about the genesis of "Byzantium."

Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:31 AM | Comments (1)

March 21, 2008

Today's News

American Life in Poetry: Column 156

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

We greatly appreciate your newspaper’s use of this column, and today we want to recognize newspaper employees by including a poem from the inside of a newsroom. David Tucker is deputy managing editor of the New Jersey “Star-Ledger” and has been a reporter and editor at the “Toronto Star” and the “Philadelphia Inquirer.” He was on the “Star-Ledger” team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. Mr. Tucker was awarded a Witter-Bynner fellowship for poetry in 2007 by former U. S. Poet Laureate, Donald Hall.

Today’s News

A slow news day, but I did like the obit about the butcher
who kept the same store for fifty years. People remembered
when his street was sweetly roaring, aproned
with flower stalls and fish stands.
The stock market wandered, spooked by presidential winks,
by micro-winds and the shadows of earnings. News was stationed
around the horizon, ready as summer clouds to thunder--
but it moved off and we covered the committee meeting
at the back of the statehouse, sat around on our desks,
then went home early. The birds were still singing,
the sun just going down. Working these long hours,
you forget how beautiful the early evening can be,
the big houses like ships turning into the night,
their rooms piled high with silence.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2006 by David Tucker. Reprinted from Late for Work by David Tucker, Mariner Books, 2006, by permission of the author. First printed in Montana Journalism Review. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:41 PM

February 28, 2008

Spare Parts

American Life in Poetry: Column 153

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

In this endearing short poem by Californian Trish Dugger, we can imagine "what if?" What if we had been given "a baker's dozen of hearts?" I imagine many more and various love poems would be written. Here Ms. Dugger, Poet Laureate of the City of Encinitas, makes fine use of the one patched but good heart she has.

Spare Parts

We barge out of the womb
with two of them: eyes, ears,

arms, hands, legs, feet.
Only one heart. Not a good

plan. God should know we
need at least a dozen,

a baker's dozen of hearts.
They break like Easter eggs

hidden in the grass,
stepped on and smashed.

My own heart is patched,
bandaged, taped, barely

the same shape it once was
when it beat fast for you.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Trish Dugger. Reprinted from "Magee Park Poets: Anthology 2007," No. 18, Friends of the Carlsbad City Library, 2006, by permission of Trish Dugger. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:49 AM

February 24, 2008

Medical History

American Life in Poetry: Column 152

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

A child with a sense of the dramatic, well, many of us have been that child. Here's Carrie Shipers of Missouri reminiscing about how she once wished for a dramatic rescue by screaming ambulance, only to find she was really longing for the comfort of her mother's hands.

Medical History

I wanted it: arc of red and blue
strobing my skin, sirens singing
my praises, the cinching embrace
of the cot as the ambulance
slammed shut and steered away.
More than needle-pierce
or dragging blade, I wanted the swab
of alcohol and cotton, the promise
of gauze-covered cure.
My mother saved anyone
who asked, but never me,
never the way I wanted:
her palms skimming my limbs
for injury, her fingers finding
what hurt, her lips whispering,
I got here just in time.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Carrie Shipers. Reprinted from Mid-American Review, Vol. 27, no. 2, 2007, by permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:26 PM

February 16, 2008

Is Valentine's Day for Poets?

Ted Kooser thinks so.

Around this time of year, for more than 20 years, women around the country have checked their mail and found a postcard bearing a red heart in the corner and a poem: a valentine from Ted Kooser, who was U.S. poet laureate from 2004 to 2006.

Now, he has collected those poems in a book called Valentines.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:51 AM

February 14, 2008

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Pitchers and catchers report today!

With apologies to Lewis Carroll.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:13 AM

October 25, 2007

The Crossing

American Life in Poetry: Column 135

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

What motivates us to keep moving forward through our lives, despite all the effort required to do so? Here, North Carolina poet Ruth Moose attributes human characteristics to an animal to speculate upon what that force might be.

The Crossing

The snail at the edge of the road
inches forward, a trim gray finger
of a fellow in pinstripe suit.
He's burdened by his house
that has to follow
where he goes. Every inch,
he pulls together
all he is,
all he owns,
all he was given.

The road is wide
but he is called
by something
that knows him
on the other side.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2004 by Ruth Moose, whose most recent book of poetry is The Sleepwalker, Main Street Rag, 2007. Reprinted from 75 Poems on Retirement, edited by Robin Chapman and Judith Strasser, published by University of Iowa Press, 2007, by permission of the author and publisher. Introduction copyright (c) 2007 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:08 AM

October 13, 2007

Afterwards

American Life in Poetry: Column 133

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

It may be that we are most alone when attending funerals, at least that's how it seems to me. By alone I mean that even among throngs of mourners we pull back within ourselves and peer out at life as if through a window. David Baker, an Ohio poet, offers us a picture of a funeral that could be anybody's.

Afterwards

A short ride in the van, then the eight of us
there in the heat—white shirtsleeves sticking,
the women's gloves off—fanning our faces.
The workers had set up a big blue tent

to help us at graveside tolerate the sun,
which was brutal all afternoon as if
stationed above us, though it moved limb
to limb through two huge, covering elms.

The long processional of neighbors, friends,
the town's elderly, her beauty-shop patrons,
her club's notables. . . The world is full of
prayers arrived at from afterwards, he said.

Look up through the trees—the hands, the leaves
curled as in self-control or quietly hurting,
or now open, flat-palmed, many-fine-veined,
and whether from heat or sadness, waving.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2004 by David Baker, whose most recent book of poetry is Midwest Eclogue, W. W. Norton, 2006. Reprinted from "Virginia Quarterly Review," Winter, 2004, by permission of David Baker. Introduction copyright © 2007 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:00 PM

August 9, 2007

Matinee

American Life in Poetry: Column 124

By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

Here is a lovely poem about survival by Patrick Phillips of New York. People sometimes ask me "What are poems for?" and "Matinee" is an example of the kind of writing that serves its readers, that shows us a way of carrying on.

Matinee

After the biopsy,
after the bone scan,
after the consult and the crying,

for a few hours no one could find them,
not even my sister,
because it turns out

they'd gone to the movies.
Something tragic was playing,
something epic,

and so they went to the comedy
with their popcorn
and their cokes,

the old wife whispering everything twice,
the old husband
cupping a palm to his ear,

as the late sun lit up an orchard
behind the strip mall,
and they sat in the dark holding hands.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Patrick Phillips, whose latest book is Chattahoochee, University of Arkansas Press, 2004. Reprinted from the "Greensboro Review," Fall 2006, No. 80, with permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:18 AM

June 24, 2007

Geometry

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 117

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

The subdivision; it's all around us. Here Nancy Botkin of Indiana presents a telling picture of life in such a neighborhood, the parents downstairs in their stultifying dailiness, the children enjoying their youth under the eaves before the passing years force them to join the adults.

Geometry

All the roofs sloped at the same angle.
The distance between the houses was the same.
There were so many feet from each front door
to the curb. My father mowed the lawn
straight up and down and then diagonally.
And then he lined up beer bottles on the kitchen table.

We knew them only in summer when the air
passed through the screens. The neighbor girls
talked to us across the great divide: attic window
to attic window. We started with our names.
Our whispers wobbled along a tightrope,
and below was the rest of our lives.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Nancy Botkin. Reprinted from "Poetry East," Spring, 2006, by permission of the author, whose full-length book of poems, Parts That Were Once Whole, is available from Mayapple Press, 2007. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:41 PM

June 7, 2007

Echo

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 114

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Poetry can be thought of as an act of persuasion: a poem attempts to bring about some kind of change in its reader, perhaps no more than a moment of clarity amidst the disorder of everyday life. And successful poems not only make use of the meanings and sounds of words, as well as the images those words conjure up, but may also take advantage of the arrangement of type on a page. Notice how this little poem by Mississippi poet Robert West makes the very best use of the empty space around it to help convey the nature of its subject.

Echo

A lone
voice

in the
right

empty space
makes

its own
best

company.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2005 by Robert West. Reprinted from Best Company, Blink Chapbooks, Chapel Hill, NC, 2005, with permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:37 PM

May 1, 2007

Wallpapering

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 109

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

One big test of the endurance of any relationship is taking on a joint improvement project. Here Sue Ellen Thompson offers an account of one such trial by fire.

Wallpapering

My parents argued over wallpaper. Would stripes
make the room look larger? He
would measure, cut, and paste; she'd swipe
the flaws out with her brush. Once it was properly

hung, doubt would set in. Would the floral
have been a better choice? Then it would grow
until she was certain: it had to go. Divorce
terrified me as a child. I didn't know

what led to it, but I had my suspicions.
The stripes came down. Up went
the flowers. Eventually it became my definition
of marriage: bad choices, arguments

whose victors time refused to tell,
but everything done together and done well.

Reprinted by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2006 by Sue Ellen Thompson, from her book, The Golden Hour, published by Autumn House Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:27 PM

April 12, 2007

Supple Cord

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 107

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Naomi Shihab Nye is one of my favorite poets. She lives in San Antonio, Texas, and travels widely, an ambassador for poetry. Here she captures a lovely moment from her childhood.

Supple Cord

My brother, in his small white bed,
held one end.
I tugged the other
to signal I was still awake.
We could have spoken,
could have sung
to one another,
we were in the same room
for five years,
but the soft cord
with its little frayed ends
connected us
in the dark,
gave comfort
even if we had been bickering
all day.
When he fell asleep first
and his end of the cord
dropped to the floor,
I missed him terribly,
though I could hear his even breath
and we had such long and separate lives
ahead.

Reprinted from A MAZE ME, Greenwillow, 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) Naomi Shihab Nye, whose most recent book of poetry is You and Yours, BOA Editions, Ltd., 2005. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:08 AM | TrackBack

April 6, 2007

Catching the Moles

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 106

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

By describing the relocation of the moles which ravaged her yard, Washington poet Judith Kitchen presents an experience that resonates beyond the simple details, and suggests that children can learn important lessons through observation of the natural world.

Catching the Moles

First we tamp down the ridges
that criss-cross the yard

then wait for the ground
to move again.

I hold the shoe box,
you, the trowel.

When I give you the signal
you dig in behind

and flip forward.
Out he pops into daylight,

blind velvet.

We nudge him into the box,
carry him down the hill.

Four times we've done it.
The children worry.

Have we let them all go
at the very same spot?

Will they find each other?
We can't be sure ourselves,

only just beginning to learn
the fragile rules of uprooting.

Poem copyright (c) 1986 by Judith Kitchen, whose most recent book is the novel, The House on Eccles Road, Graywolf Press, 2004. Reprinted from "Perennials," Anhinga Press, 1986, with permission of the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:31 PM

March 29, 2007

Laundry

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 105

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I've talked often in this column about how poetry can hold a mirror up to life, and I'm especially fond of poems that hold those mirrors up to our most ordinary activities, showing them at their best and brightest. Here Ruth Moose hangs out some laundry and, in an instant, an everyday chore that might have seemed to us to be quite plain is fresh and lovely.

Laundry

All our life
so much laundry;
each day's doing or not
comes clean,
flows off and away
to blend with other sins
of this world. Each day
begins in new skin,
blessed by the elements
charged to take us
out again to do or undo
what's been assigned.
From socks to shirts
the selves we shed
lift off the line
as if they own
a life apart
from the one we offer.
There is joy in clean laundry.
All is forgiven in water, sun
and air. We offer our day's deeds
to the blue-eyed sky, with soap and prayer,
our arms up, then lowered in supplication.

Reprinted from Making the Bed, Main Street Rag Press, 2004, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1995 by Ruth Moose, whose latest book of poetry, "The Sleepwalker," Main Street Rag, due out in 2007. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:25 PM | TrackBack

March 25, 2007

Guest House

This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-- Rumi

Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:16 AM

March 17, 2007

How Are You Doing?

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 103

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

One of the ways a poet makes art from his or her experience is through the use of unique, specific and particular detail. This poem by Rick Snyder thrives on such details. It's not just baseball caps, it's Tasmanian Devil caps; it's not just music on the intercom, it's James Taylor. And Snyder's poem also caught my interest with the humor of its flat, sardonic tone.

How Are You Doing?

As much as you deserve it,
I wouldn't wish this
Sunday night on you--
not the Osco at closing,
not its two tired women
and shaky security guard,
not its bin of flip-flops
and Tasmanian Devil
baseball caps,
not its freshly mopped floors
and fluorescent lights,
not its endless James Taylor
song on the intercom,
and not its last pint of
chocolate mint ice cream,
which I carried
down Milwaukee Ave.
past a man in an unbuttoned
baseball shirt, who stepped
out of a shadow to whisper,
How are you doing?

Reprinted from "Barrow Street," Winter, 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2005 by Rick Snyder. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:44 PM

February 22, 2007

The One I Think of Now

This week's offering from American Life in Poetry features Maine poet Wesley McNair.

American Life in Poetry: Column 100

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Here the Maine poet, Wesley McNair, offers us a vivid description of a man who has lived beyond himself. I'd guess you won't easily forget this sad old man in his apron with his tray of cheese.

The One I Think of Now

At the end of my stepfather's life
when his anger was gone,
and the saplings of his failed
nursery had grown into trees,
my newly feminist mother had him
in the kitchen to pay for all
those years he only did the carving.
"You know where that is,"
she would say as he looked
for a knife to cut the cheese
and a tray to serve it with,
his apron wide as a dress
above his workboots, confused
as a girl. He is the one I think of now,
lifting the tray for my family,
the guests, until at last he comes
to me. And I, no less confused,
look down from his hurt eyes as if
there were nothing between us
except an arrangement of cheese,
and not this bafflement, these
almost tender hands that once
swung hammers and drove machines
and insisted that I learn to be a man.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2002 by Wesley McNair, whose most recent book is "The Ghosts of You and Me," David R. Godine, 2006. Reprinted from "Fire: Poems," published by David R. Godine, 2002, by permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:37 PM

February 16, 2007

New Water

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 99

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

My maternal grandparents got their drinking water from a well in the yard, and my disabled uncle carried it sloshing to the house, one bucket of hard red water early every morning. I couldn't resist sharing this lovely little poem by Minnesota poet, Sharon Chmielarz.

New Water

All those years--almost a hundred--
the farm had hard water.
Hard orange. Buckets lined in orange.
Sink and tub and toilet, too,
once they got running water.
And now, in less than a lifetime,
just by changing the well's location,
in the same yard, mind you,
the water's soft, clear, delicious to drink.
All those years to shake your head over.
Look how sweet life has become;
you can see it in the couple who live here,
their calmness as they sit at their table,
the beauty as they offer you new water to drink.

Reprinted by permission of Sharon Chmielarz, whose most recent collection of poems is "The Rhubarb King," Loonfeather Press, 2006. Copyright (c) 2006 by Sharon Chmielarz. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:28 AM

February 8, 2007

Kissing a Horse

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 98

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

A horse's head is big, and the closer you get to it, the bigger it gets. Here is the Idaho poet, Robert Wrigley, offering us a horse's head, up close, and covering a horse's character, too.

Kissing a Horse

Of the two spoiled, barn-sour geldings
we owned that year, it was Red--
skittish and prone to explode
even at fourteen years--who'd let me
hold to my face his own: the massive labyrinthine caverns of the nostrils, the broad plain up the head to the eyes. He'd let me stroke his coarse chin whiskers and take his soft meaty underlip in my hands, press my man's carnivorous kiss to his grass-nipping upper half of one, just so that I could smell the long way his breath had come from the rain and the sun, the lungs and the heart, from a world that meant no harm.

Reprinted from "Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems," published in 2006 by Penguin. Copyright (c) Robert Wrigley, 2006, and reprinted by permission of the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:55 PM

January 28, 2007

For Weeks After the Funeral

OK, here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 96

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Grief can endure a long, long time. A deep loss is very reluctant to let us set it aside, to push it into a corner of memory. Here the Arkansas poet, Andrea Hollander Budy, gives us a look at one family's adjustment to a death.

For Weeks After the Funeral

The house felt like the opera,
the audience in their seats, hushed, ready,
but the cast not yet arrived.

And if I said anything
to try to appease the anxious air, my words
would hang alone like the single chandelier

waiting to dim the auditorium, but still
too huge, too prominent, too bright, its light
announcing only itself, bringing more

emptiness into the emptiness.

Copyright (c) 2006 by Andrea Hollander Budy. First published in "Five Points" and included in her book, "Woman in the Painting." Reprinted by permission of the author and Autumn House Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:04 PM

Young Man

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 095

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Literature, and in this instance, poetry, holds a mirror to life; thus the great themes of life become the great themes of poems. Here the distinguished American poet, John Haines, addresses--and celebrates through the affirmation of poetry--our preoccupation with aging and mortality.

Young Man

I seemed always standing
before a door
to which I had no key,
although I knew it hid behind it
a gift for me.

Until one day I closed
my eyes a moment, stretched
then looked once more.
And not surprised, I did not mind it
when the hinges creaked
and, smiling, Death
held out his hands to me.

Reprinted from "ABZ: A Poetry Magazine," No. 1, 2006, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2006, by John Haines, whose most recent book of poetry is "Of Your Passage, O Summer," Limberlost Press, 2004. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:59 PM

December 28, 2006

Home Fire

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 92

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Home is where the heart. . . Well, surely we all know that old saying. But it's the particulars of a home that make it ours. Here the poet Linda Parsons Marion, who lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, celebrates familiarity, in its detail and its richness.

Home Fire

Whether on the boulevard or gravel backroad, I do not easily raise my hand to those who toss up theirs in anonymous hello, merely to say "I'm passing this way." Once out of shyness, now reluctance to tip my hand, I admire the shrubbery instead. I've learned where the lines are drawn and keep the privet well trimmed. I left one house with toys on the floor for another with quiet rugs and a bed where the moon comes in. I've thrown myself at men in black turtlenecks only to find that home is best after all. Home where I sit in the glider, knowing it needs oil, like my own rusty joints. Where I coax blackberry to dogwood and winter to harvest, where my table is clothed in light. Home where I walk out on the thin page of night, without waving or giving myself away, and return with my words burning like fire in the grate.

Reprinted from "Home Fires: Poems," Sow's Ear Press, 1997, by permission of the author. Copyright © 1997 by Linda Parsons. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:13 PM

December 22, 2006

Driving Through

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 91

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

How many of us, when passing through some small town, have felt that it seemed familiar though we've never been there before. And of course it seems familiar because much of the course of life is pretty much the same wherever we go, right down to the up-and-down fortunes of the football team and the unanswered love letters. Here's a poem by Mark Vinz.

Driving Through

This could be the town you're from,
marked only by what it's near.
The gas station man speaks of weather
and the high school football team
just as you knew he would--
kind to strangers, happy to live here.

Tell yourself it doesn't matter now,
you're only driving through.
Past the sagging, empty porches
locked up tight to travelers' stares,
toward the great dark of the fields,
your headlights startle a flock of
old love letters--still undelivered,
enroute for years.

Reprinted from "Red River Blues," published by College of the Mainland, Texas City, TX, 1977, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1977 by Mark Vinz, whose most recent book is "Long Distance," Midwestern Writers Publishing House, 2005. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:10 PM | TrackBack

November 24, 2006

Raking

I have been remiss. Here, after a long hiatus on this blog, is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 87

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

The first poem we ran in this column was by David Allan Evans of South Dakota, about a couple washing windows together. You can find that poem and all the others on our website, www.americanlifeinpoetry.org. Here Tania Rochelle of Georgia presents us with another couple, this time raking leaves. I especially like the image of the pair "bent like parentheses/ around their brittle little lawn."

Raking

Anna Bell and Lane, eighty,
make small leaf piles in the heat,
each pile a great joint effort,
like fifty years of marriage,
sharing chores a rusty dance.
In my own yard, the stacks
are big as children, who scatter them,
dodge and limbo the poke
of my rake. We're lucky,
young and straight-boned.
And I feel sorry for the couple,
bent like parentheses
around their brittle little lawn.
I like feeling sorry for them,
the tenderness of it, but only
for a moment: John glides in
like a paper airplane, takes
the children for the weekend,
and I remember,
they're the lucky ones--
shriveled Anna Bell, loving
her crooked Lane.

Reprinted from "Karaoke Funeral," Snake Nation Press, 2003, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2003 by Tania Rochelle. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:54 AM

August 24, 2006

In the Mushroom Summer

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 74

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

In the Mushroom Summer

Colorado turns Kyoto in a shower,
mist in the pines so thick the crows delight (or seem to), winging in obscurity.
The ineffectual panic of a squirrel
who chattered at my passing gave me pause to watch his Ponderosa come and go-- long needles scratching cloud. I'd summited but knew it only by the wildflower meadow, the muted harebells, paintbrush, gentian, scattered among the locoweed and sage.
Today my grief abated like water soaking underground, its scar a little path of twigs and needles winding ahead of me downhill to the next bend. Today I let the rain soak through my shirt and was unharmed.

Reprinted by permission from "The Hudson Review," Vol. LIX, No. 2 (Summer 2006). Copyright (c) 2006 by David Mason. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:27 AM

August 10, 2006

My Father Teaches Me to Dream

I stand corrected. Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 72

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Those who survived the Great Depression of the 1930s have a tough, no-nonsense take on what work is. If when I was young I'd told my father I was looking for fulfilling work, he would have looked at me as if I'd just arrived from Mars. Here the Pennsylvania poet, Jan Beatty, takes on the voice of her father to illustrate the thinking of a generation of Americans.

My Father Teaches Me to Dream

You want to know what work is?
I'll tell you what work is:
Work is work.
You get up. You get on the bus.
You don't look from side to side.
You keep your eyes straight ahead.
That way nobody bothers you--see?
You get off the bus. You work all day.
You get back on the bus at night. Same thing.
You go to sleep. You get up.
You do the same thing again.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
There's no handouts in this life.
All this other stuff you're looking for-- it ain't there.
Work is work.

First printed in "Witness," Volume 10, Number 2, and reprinted by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1996 by Jan Beatty, whose latest book, "Boneshaker," was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2002. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:05 PM

August Morning

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 71

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

William Carlos Williams, one of our country's most influential poets and a New Jersey physician, taught us to celebrate daily life. Here Albert Garcia offers us the simple pleasures and modest mysteries of a single summer day.

August Morning

It's ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife's eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect--
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?

Poem copyright (c) by Albert Garcia from his latest book "Skunk Talk" (Bear Starr Press, 2005) and originally published in "Poetry East," No. 44. Reprinted by permission of the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:54 PM

July 27, 2006

My Son the Man

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 70

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

As a man I'll never gain the wisdom Sharon Olds expresses in this poem about motherhood, but one of the reasons poetry is essential is that it can take us so far into someone else's experience that we feel it's our own.

My Son the Man

Suddenly his shoulders get a lot wider, the way Houdini would expand his body while people were putting him in chains. It seems no time since I would help him to put on his sleeper, guide his calves into the gold interior, zip him up and toss him up and catch his weight. I cannot imagine him no longer a child, and I know I must get ready, get over my fear of men now my son is going to be one. This was not what I had in mind when he pressed up through me like a sealed trunk through the ice of the Hudson, snapped the padlock, unsnaked the chains, and appeared in my arms. Now he looks at me the way Houdini studied a box to learn the way out, then smiled and let himself be manacled.

"My Son the Man" from THE WELLSPRING by Sharon Olds. Copyright (c) 1996 by Sharon Olds. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:16 PM

July 24, 2006

Ironing After Midnight

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 69

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

This marvelous poem by the California poet Marsha Truman Cooper perfectly captures the world of ironing, complete with its intimacy. At the end, doing a job to perfection, pressing the perfect edge, establishes a reassuring order to an otherwise mundane and slightly tawdry world.

Ironing After Midnight

Your mother called it
"doing the pressing,"
and you know now
how right she was.
There is something urgent here.
Not even the hiss
under each button
or the yellow business
ground in at the neck
can make one instant
of this work seem unimportant.
You've been taught
to turn the pocket corners
and pick out the dark lint
that collects there.
You're tempted to leave it,
but the old lessons
go deeper than habits.
Everyone else is asleep.
The odor of sweat rises
when you do
under the armpits,
the owner's particular smell
you can never quite wash out.
You'll stay up.
You'll have your way,
the final stroke
and sharpness
down the long sleeves,
a truly permanent edge.

Reprinted from "River Styx," No. 32, 1990, by permission of the author, whose most recent book is "Substantial Holdings," Pudding House Publications, 2002. Poem copyright (c) 1990 by Marsha Truman Cooper. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:56 PM

July 7, 2006

Family Reunion

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 67

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

One in a series of elegies by New York City poet Catherine Barnett, this poem describes the first gathering after death has shaken a family to its core. The father tries to help his grown daughter forget for a moment that, a year earlier, her own two daughters were killed, that she is now alone. He's heartsick, realizing that drinking can only momentarily ease her pain, a pain and love that takes hold of the entire family. The children who join her in the field are silent guardians.

Family Reunion

My father scolded us all for refusing his liquor.
He kept buying tequila, and steak for the grill, until finally we joined him, making margaritas, cutting the fat off the bone.

When he saw how we drank, my sister
shredding the black labels into her glass while his remaining grandchildren dragged their thin bunk bed mattresses

first out to the lawn to play
then farther up the field to sleep next to her, I think it was then he changed, something in him died. He's gentler now,

quiet, losing weight though every night he eats the same ice cream he always ate only now he's not drinking, he doesn't fall asleep with the spoon in his hand,

he waits for my mother to come lie down with him.

Reprinted from "Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced," Alice James Books, 2004, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2004 by Catherine Barnett. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:32 PM

June 29, 2006

The Copper Beech

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 66

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

The Copper Beech

Immense, entirely itself,
it wore that yard like a dress,

with limbs low enough for me to enter it and climb the crooked ladder to where

I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone.
One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell darkening the sidewalk.

Sitting close to the center, not very high in the branches, I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy,

watching it happen without it happening to me.

Reprinted from "What the Living Do," W. W. Norton & Co., 1997. Copyright (c) 1997 by Marie Howe. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:38 PM

June 24, 2006

Homecoming

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 65

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Visiting a familiar and once dear place after a long absence can knock the words right out of us, and in this poem, Keith Althaus of Massachusetts observes this happening to someone else. I like the way he suggests, at the end, that it may take days before that silence heals over.

Homecoming

We drove through the gates
into a maze of little roads,
with speed bumps now,
that circled a pavilion,
field house, and ran past
the playing fields and wound
their way up to the cluster
of wood and stone buildings
of the school you went to once.
The green was returning to
the trees and lawn, the lake
was still half-lidded with ice
and blind in the middle.
There was nobody around
except a few cars in front
of the administration. It must
have been spring break.
We left without ever getting out
of the car. You were quiet
that night, the next day,
the way after heavy rain
that the earth cannot absorb,
the water lies in pools
in unexpected places for days
until it disappears.

Reprinted from "Ladder of Hours: Poems 1969-2005," Ausable Press, Keene, N.Y., 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2005 by Keith Althaus. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:17 PM

June 15, 2006

Grandmother Speaks of the Old Country

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 64

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Storytelling binds the past and present together, and is as essential to community life as are food and shelter. Many of our poets are masters at reshaping family stories as poetry. Here Lola Haskins retells a haunting tale, cast in the voice of an elder. Like the best stories, there are no inessential details. Every word counts toward the effect.

Grandmother Speaks of the Old Country

That year there were many deaths in the village.
Germs flew like angels from one house to the next and every family gave up its own. Mothers died at their mending. Children fell at school.
Of three hundred twenty, there were eleven left.
Then, quietly, the sun set on a day when no one died. And the angels whispered among themselves.
And that evening, as he sat on the stone steps, your grandfather felt a small wind on his neck when all the trees were still. And he would tell us always, how he had felt that night, on the skin of his own neck, the angels, passing.

Reprinted from "Desire Lines: New and Selected Poems," BOA Editions, 2004, by permission of the author and the publisher. Copyright (c) 2004 by Lola Haskins. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:15 AM

June 14, 2006

Donald Hall

Donald Hall has been named the next US Poet Laureate. I have enjoyed the current poet laureate, Ted Kooser, and his American Life in Poetry column, which I reprint here on the blog.

Donald Hall is a New England institution, as native to New Hampshire as granite even though he was born in Connecticut and went to Harvard. There are some good Hall resources on the Web here and here.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:02 PM

June 8, 2006

The Dancer

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 63

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Remember those Degas paintings of the ballet dancers? Here is a similar figure study, in muted color, but in this instance made of words, not pigment. As this poem by David Tucker closes, I can feel myself holding my breath as if to help the dancer hold her position.

The Dancer

Class is over, the teacher
and the pianist gone,
but one dancer
in a pale blue
leotard stays
to practice alone without music,
turning grand jetes
through the haze of late afternoon.
Her eyes are focused
on the balancing point
no one else sees
as she spins in this quiet
made of mirrors and light--
a blue rose on a nail--
then stops and lifts
her arms in an oval pause
and leans out
a little more, a little more,
there, in slow motion
upon the air.

Reprinted from the 2005 Bakeless Prize winner "Late for Work", by David Tucker, Houghton Mifflin, 2006, by permission of the author. "The Dancer" first appeared in "Visions International", No. 65, 2001. Copyright (c) 2001 by David Tucker. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:01 PM

June 3, 2006

Bindweed

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 62

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Gardeners who've fought Creeping Charlie and other unwanted plants may sympathize with James McKean from Iowa as he takes on Bindweed, a cousin to the two varieties of morning glory that appear in the poem. It's an endless struggle, and in the end, of course, the bindweed wins.

Bindweed

There is little I can do
besides stoop to pluck them
one by one from the ground,
their roots all weak links,
this hoard of Lazaruses popping up
at night, not the Heavenly Blue
so like silk handkerchiefs,
nor the Giant White so timid
in the face of the moon,
but poor relations who visit
then stay. They sleep in my garden.
Each morning I evict them.
Each night more arrive, their leaves
small, green shrouds,
reminding me the mother root
waits deep underground
and I dig but will never find her
and her children will inherit
all that I've cleared
when she holds me tighter
and tighter in her arms.

Reprinted from "Headlong," University of Utah Press, 1987, by permission of the author, and first published in "Poetry Northwest," Vol. 23, No. 3, 1982. Copyright (c) 1982 by James McKean, whose most recent book is "Home Stand," a memoir published in 2005 by Michigan State University Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:33 AM

May 18, 2006

What I Learned From My Mother

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 60

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Most of us have taken at least a moment or two to reflect upon what we have learned from our mothers. Through a catalog of meaningful actions that range from spiritual to domestic, Pennsylvanian Julia Kasdorf evokes the imprint of her mother's life on her own. As the poem closes, the speaker invites us to learn these actions of compassion.

What I Learned From My Mother

I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand in case you have to rush to the hospital with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole grieving household, to cube home-canned pears and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.
I learned to attend viewing even if I didn't know the deceased, to press the moist hands of the living, to look in their eyes and offer sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.
I learned that whatever we say means nothing, what anyone will remember is that we came.
I learned to believe I had the power to ease awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another's suffering my own usefulness, and once you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself, the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.

Reprinted from "Sleeping Preacher," University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992, by permission of the publisher. First printed in "West Branch," Vol. 30, 1992. Copyright (c) 1992 by Julia Kasdorf. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:08 PM

May 11, 2006

At Twenty-Eight

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 59

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Contrary to the glamorized accounts we often read about the lives of single women, Amy Fleury, a native of Kansas, presents us with a realistic, affirmative picture. Her poem playfully presents her life as serendipitous, yet she doesn't shy away from acknowledging loneliness.

At Twenty-Eight

It seems I get by on more luck than sense, not the kind brought on by knuckle to wood, breath on dice, or pennies found in the mud.
I shimmy and slip by on pure fool chance.
At turns charmed and cursed, a girl knows romance as coffee, red wine, and books; solitude she counts as daylight virtue and muted evenings, the inventory of absence.
But this is no sorry spinster story,
just the way days string together a life.
Sometimes I eat soup right out of the pan.
Sometimes I don't care if I will marry.
I dance in my kitchen on Friday nights, singing like only a lucky girl can.

"At Twenty-Eight" by Amy Fleury is reprinted from "Beautiful Trouble," Southern Illinois University Press, 2004, by permission of the author. The poem was originally published in Southern Poetry Review, Volume 41:2, Fall/Winter 2002. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:06 PM

May 6, 2006

There is Another Way

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 58

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

A worm in an apple, a maggot in a bone, a person in the world. What might seem an odd assortment of creatures is beautifully interrelated by the Massachusetts poet Pat Schneider. Her poem suggests that each living thing is richly awake to its own particular, limited world.

There Is Another Way

There is another way to enter an apple:
a worm's way.
The small, round door
closes behind her. The world
and all its necessities
ripen around her like a room.

In the sweet marrow of a bone,
the maggot does not remember
the wingspread
of the mother, the green
shine of her body, nor even
the last breath of the dying deer.

I, too, have forgotten
how I came here, breathing
this sweet wind, drinking rain,
encased by the limits
of what I can imagine
and by a husk of stars.

Reprinted from "Another River: New and Selected Poems," Amherst Writers & Artists Press, 2005, by permission of the author. First printed in "Kalliope", Vol. XII, No. 1, 1989. Copyright (c) 2004 by Pat Schneider. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:24 PM

April 28, 2006

Coins

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 57

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Midwestern poet Richard Newman traces the imaginary life of coins as a connection between people. The coins--seemingly of little value--become a ceremonial and communal currency.

Coins

My change: a nickel caked with finger grime; two nicked quarters not long for this life, worth more for keeping dead eyes shut than bus fare; a dime, shining in sunshine like a new dime; grubby pennies, one stamped the year of my birth, no brighter than I from 40 years of wear.

What purses, piggy banks, and window sills have these coins known, their presidential heads pinched into what beggar's chalky palm-- they circulate like tarnished red blood cells, all of us exchanging the merest film of our lives, and the lives of those long dead.

And now my turn in the convenience store, I hand over my fist of change, still warm, to the bored, lip-pierced check-out girl, once more to be spun down cigarette machines, hurled in fountains, flipped for luck--these dirty charms chiming in the dark pockets of the world.

Reprinted from "Borrowed Towns," World Press, 2005, by permission of the author. First printed in "Crab Orchard Review," Volume 10, No. 1, 2005. Copyright (c) 2005 by Richard Newman. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:28 PM

At the Edge of Town

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 56

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

When I complained about some of the tedious jobs I had as a boy, my mother would tell me, Ted, all work is honorable. In this poem, Don Welch gives us a man who's been fixing barbed wire fences all his life.

At the Edge of Town

Hard to know which is more gnarled,
the posts he hammers staples into
or the blue hummocks which run
across his hands like molehills.

Work has reduced his wrists
to bones, cut out of him
the easy flesh and brought him
down to this, the crowbar's teeth

caught just behind a barb.
Again this morning
the crowbar's neck will make
its blue slip into wood,

there will be that moment
when too much strength
will cause the wire to break.
But even at 70, he says,

he has to have it right,
and more than right.
This morning, in the pewter light,
he has the scars to prove it.

From "Gutter Flowers," Logan House, 2005. Copyright (c) 2005 by Don Welch and reprinted by permission of Logan House and the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:24 PM

April 16, 2006

More Poetry Podcasts

So I remarked briefly on the poetry podcasts that Houghton Mifflin will be hosting, but of course they are not the first in the pool. I found a great poetry podcast site at the University of Chicago, which includes a favorite, C. D. Wright. Favorite line, "If I were a felon, I would be home now."

Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:06 PM

April 13, 2006

What We Need

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 55

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

A circus is an assemblage of illusions, and here Jo McDougall, a Kansas poet, shows us a couple of performers, drab and weary in their ordinary lives, away from the lights at the center of the ring.

What We Need

It is just as well we do not see,
in the shadows behind the hasty tent
of the Allen Brothers Greatest Show,
Lola the Lion Tamer and the Great Valdini
in Nikes and jeans
sharing a tired cigarette
before she girds her wrists with glistening amulets
and snaps the tigers into rage,
before he adjusts the glimmering cummerbund
and makes from air
the white and trembling doves, the pair.

From "Dirt," Autumn House Press, Pittsburgh, 2001. Copyright (c) 2001 by Jo McDougall, whose most recent book is "Satisfied With Havoc," Autumn House Press, 2004. Reprinted by permission of the author and Autumn House Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:38 PM

April 11, 2006

Poets on Poetry

Information Please has a few well chosen quotes about poetry.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:22 PM

April 9, 2006

A Few Changes

I added a few more categories, and am going through the process now of re-tagging some old entries. I now have separate categories for publishing, baseball, and poetry. They only go back a few months right now, but that will grow as I have more time to re-tag older entries. I also have a nascent category on RSS, as I expect to write more about that in the future.

UPDATE: Oops. I failed to mention an obvious thing. I have disabled trackback pings, and have decided to default to "no comments" on entries, though I will open up some entries to comments. I have been dealing with too much comment and trackback spam (and some other related abuse, such as referral spam), so I had to take a few corrective actions.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:35 PM

April 6, 2006

Tangerine

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 54

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Poet Ruth L. Schwartz writes of the glimpse of possibility, of something sweeter than we already have that comes to us, grows in us. The unrealizable part of it causes bitterness; the other opens outward, the cycle complete. This is both a poem about a tangerine and about more than that.

Tangerine

It was a flower once, it was one of a billion flowers whose perfume broke through closed car windows, forced a blessing on their drivers.
Then what stayed behind grew swollen, as we do; grew juice instead of tears, and small hard sour seeds, each one bitter, as we are, and filled with possibility.
Now a hole opens up in its skin, where it was torn from the branch; ripeness can't stop itself, breathes out; we can't stop it either. We breathe in.

From "Dear Good Naked Morning," (c) 2005 by Ruth L. Schwartz. Reprinted by permission of the author and Autumn House Press. First printed in "Crab Orchard Review," Vol. 8, No. 2. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:41 PM

Poetry Podcasts

Yes, there are. (Apparently the web site is not up yet; I will try to follow up on this.) And, yes, the title is alliteration, though a poor example it be.

UPDATE: The site seems to be up now and lists upcoming podcasts from Ron Slate, Natasha Trethewey, Michael Collier, David Tucker, and, a favorite of mine, Galway Kinnell.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:05 PM

March 30, 2006

A Pot of Red Lentils

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 53

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Writing poetry, reading poetry, we are invited to join with others in celebrating life, even the ordinary, daily pleasures. Here the Seattle poet and physician, Peter Pereira, offer us a simple meal.

A Pot of Red Lentils

simmers on the kitchen stove.
All afternoon dense kernels
surrender to the fertile
juices, their tender bellies
swelling with delight.

In the yard we plant
rhubarb, cauliflower, and artichokes,
cupping wet earth over tubers,
our labor the germ
of later sustenance and renewal.

Across the field the sound of a baby crying as we carry in the last carrots, whorls of butter lettuce, a basket of red potatoes.

I want to remember us this way--
late September sun streaming through
the window, bread loaves and golden
bunches of grapes on the table,
spoonfuls of hot soup rising
to our lips, filling us
with what endures.

Reprinted from "Saying the World," 2003, by permission of Copper Canyon Press. Copyright (c) 2003 by Peter Pereira. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:41 AM

March 26, 2006

I Shall Be Telling This With a Sigh

Happy Birthday, Robert Frost.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:25 PM

March 24, 2006

Radiator

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 52

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

What a marvelous gift is the imagination, and each of us gets one at birth, free of charge and ready to start up, get on, and ride away. Can there be anything quite so homely and ordinary as a steam radiator? And yet, here, Connie Wanek, of Duluth, Minnesota, nudges one into play.

Radiator

Mittens are drying on the radiator,
boots nearby, one on its side.
Like some monstrous segmented insect
the radiator elongates under the window.

Or it is a beast with many shoulders
domesticated in the Ice Age.
How many years it takes
to move from room to room!

Some cage their radiators
but this is unnecessary
as they have little desire to escape.

Like turtles they are quite self-contained.
If they seem sad, it is only the same sadness we all feel, unlovely, growing slowly cold.

Reprinted from "Bonfire," New Rivers Press, 1997, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1997 by Connie Wanek. Her most recent book is "Hartley Field," from Holy Cow! Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:14 AM | Comments (2)

March 18, 2006

Marching

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 51

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Walt Whitman's poems took in the world through a wide-angle lens, including nearly everything, but most later poets have focused much more narrowly. Here the poet and novelist Jim Harrison nods to Whitman with a sweeping, inclusive poem about the course of life.

Marching

At dawn I heard among bird calls
the billions of marching feet in the churn and squeak of gravel, even tiny feet still wet from the mother's amniotic fluid, and very old halting feet, the feet of the very light and very heavy, all marching but not together, criss-crossing at every angle with sincere attempts not to touch, not to bump into each other, walking in the doors of houses and out the back door forty years later, finally knowing that time collapses on a single plateau where they were all their lives, knowing that time stops when the heart stops as they walk off the earth into the night air.

"Marching," from Jim Harrison's "Saving Daylight" (2006) is reprinted by permission of Copper Cayon Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:16 AM

March 11, 2006

Against Lawn

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 50

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Thousands of Americans fret over the appearance of their lawns, spraying, aerating, grooming, but here Grace Bauer finds good reasons to resist the impulse to tame what's wild: the white of clover blossoms under a streetlight, the possibility of finding the hidden, lucky, four-leafed rarity.

Against Lawn

The midnight streetlight illuminating
the white of clover assures me

I am right not to manicure
my patch of grass into a dull

carpet of uniform green, but
to allow whatever will to take over.

Somewhere in that lace lies luck,
though I may never swoop down

to find it. Three, too, is
an auspicious number. And this seeing

a reminder to avoid too much taming
of what, even here, wants to be wild.

Reprinted from the literary journal, "Lake Effect," Volume 8, Spring 2004 by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2004 by Grace Bauer, whose new book, "Beholding Eye," is forthcoming from Wordtech Communications in 2006. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:29 PM

March 2, 2006

On A Moonstruck Gravel Road

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 49

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

This fine poem by Rodney Torreson, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, looks into the world of boys arriving at the edge of manhood, and compares their natural wildness to that of dogs, with whom they feel a kinship.

On A Moonstruck Gravel Road

The sheep-killing dogs saunter home,
wool scraps in their teeth.

From the den of the moon
ancestral wolves
howl their approval.

The farm boys, asleep in their beds,
live the same wildness under their lids; every morning they come back through the whites of their eyes to do their chores, their hands pausing to pet the dog, to press its ears back, over the skull, to quiet that other world.

>From "A Breathable Light," New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2002, and first published in Sou'wester. Copyright (c) 2002 by Rodney Torreson and reprinted by permission of the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:04 PM

February 23, 2006

Some Boys are Born to Wander

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 48

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Every parent can tell a score of tales about the difficulties of raising children, and then of the difficulties in letting go of them. Here the Texas poet, Walt McDonald, shares just such a story.

Some Boys are Born to Wander

From Michigan our son writes, How many elk?
How many big horn sheep? It's spring,
and soon they'll be gone above timberline,

climbing to tundra by summer. Some boys are born to wander, my wife says, but rocky slopes with spruce and Douglas fir are home.

He tried the navy, the marines, but even the army wouldn't take him, not with a foot like that.
Maybe it's in the genes. I think of wild-eyed years

till I was twenty, and cringe. I loved motorcycles, too dumb to say no to our son--too many switchbacks in mountains, too many icy spots in spring.

Doctors stitched back his scalp, hoisted him in traction like a twisted frame. I sold the motorbike to a junkyard, but half his foot was gone. Last month, he cashed

his paycheck at the Harley house, roared off with nothing but a backpack, waving his headband, leaning into a downhill curve and gone.

First published in "New Letters," Vol. 69, 2002, and reprinted from "A Thousand Miles of Stars," 2004, by permission of the author and Texas Tech University Press. Copyright (c) 2002 by Walt McDonald. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:26 PM

February 16, 2006

Holy Cussing

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 47

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

The poet, novelist and biographer, Robert Morgan, who was raised in North Carolina, has written many intriguing poems that teach his readers about southern folklore. Here's just one example.

Holy Cussing

When the most intense revivals swept
the mountains just a century ago,
participants described the shouts and barks in unknown tongues, the jerks of those who tried to climb the walls, the holy dance and laugh.
But strangest are reports of what was called the holy cuss. Sometimes a man who spoke in tongues and leapt for joy would break into an avalanche of cursing that would stun with brilliance and duration. Those that heard would say the holy spirit spoke as from a whirlwind. Words burned on the air like chains of dynamite. The listeners felt transfigured, and felt true contact and true presence then, as if the shock of unfamiliar and blasphemous profanity broke through beyond the reach of prayer and song and hallo to answer heaven's anger with its echo.

Reprinted from Southern Poetry Review, Vol. 43, No. 1, 2004 by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2004, by Robert Morgan, whose most recent book is "The Strange Attractor: New and Selected Poems," Louisiana State University Press, 2004. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:56 PM

February 13, 2006

Just in Time for Valentine's Day

Information Please has a great roundup of love poems on the Web. There are thousands of worthy poems for such a list, but I still go for the oldies but goodies.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:03 PM

February 12, 2006

A Haiku

I watch the sun set
as your footprints fill with snow--
gone by tomorrow.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:08 PM

February 9, 2006

Geology

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 046

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

We constantly compare one thing with another, or attempt to, saying, "Well, you know, love is like...it's like...well, YOU know what it's like." Here Bob King, who lives in Colorado, takes an original approach and compares love to the formation of rocks.

Geology

I know the origin of rocks, settling
out of water, hatching crystals
from fire, put under pressure
in various designs I gathered
pretty, picnic after picnic.

And I know about love, a little,
igneous lust, the slow affections
of the sedimentary, the pressure
on earth out of sight to rise up
into material, something solid
you can hold, a whole mountain,
for example, or a loose collection
of pebbles you forgot you were keeping.

Reprinted from the Marlboro Review, Issue 16, 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2005 by Robert King, whose prose book, "Stepping Twice Into the River: Following Dakota Waters," appeared in 2005 from The University Press of Colorado. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:15 PM

January 27, 2006

Mongrel Heart

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series. I don't mind saying that this poem reminds me of a wonderful mutt in my life.

American Life in Poetry: Column 043

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Unlike the calculated expressions of feeling common to its human masters, there is nothing disingenuous about the way a dog praises, celebrates, frets or mourns. In this poem David Baker gives us just such an endearing mutt.

Mongrel Heart

Up the dog bounds to the window, baying
like a basset his doleful, tearing sounds
from the belly, as if mourning a dead king,

and now he's howling like a beagle -- yips, brays,
gagging growls -- and scratching the sill paintless,
that's how much he's missed you, the two of you,

both of you, mother and daughter, my wife
and child. All week he's curled at my feet,
warming himself and me watching more TV,

or wandered the lonely rooms, my dog shadow,
who like a poodle now hops, amped-up windup
maniac yo-yo with matted curls and snot nose

smearing the panes, having heard another car
like yours taking its grinding turn down
our block, or a school bus, or bird-squawk,

that's how much he's missed you, good dog,
companion dog, dog-of-all-types, most excellent dog
I told you once and for all we should never get.

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Reprinted from "The Southeast Review," Vol. 23, No. 2, 2005, by permission of the author, whose newest book of poetry is "Midwest Eclogue," W. W. Norton (2005). Copyright (c) 2005 by David Baker. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:13 AM

January 19, 2006

To Play Pianissimo

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 043

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Lola Haskins, who lives in Florida, has written a number of poems about musical terms, entitled "Adagio," "Allegrissimo," "Staccato," and so on. Here is just one of those, presenting the gentleness of pianissimo playing through a series of comparisons.

To Play Pianissimo

Does not mean silence.
The absence of moon in the day sky
for example.

Does not mean barely to speak,
the way a child's whisper
makes only warm air
on his mother's right ear.

To play pianissimo
is to carry sweet words
to the old woman in the last dark row
who cannot hear anything else,
and to lay them across her lap like a shawl.

>From "Desire Lines: New and Selected Poems," BOA Editions, Rochester, NY. Copyright (c) 2004 by Lola Haskins and reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:16 PM

January 12, 2006

What Calls Us

Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.

American Life in Poetry: Column 42

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Here is a poem by David Bengtson, a Minnesotan, about the simple pleasure of walking through deep snow to the mailbox to see what's arrived. But, of course, the pleasure is not only in picking up the mail with its surprises, but in the complete experience--being fully alive to the clean cold air and the sound of the wind around the mailbox door.

What Calls Us

In winter, it is what calls us
from seclusion, through endless snow
to the end of a long driveway
where, we hope, it waits--
this letter, this package, this
singing of wind around an opened door.

Reprinted from "What Calls Us," a Dacotah Territory Chapbook, 2003, by permission of the author, whose most recent book is "Broken Lines: Prose Poems," from Juniper Press, St. Paul, MN, 2003. Poem copyright (c) 2003 by David Bengtson. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:06 PM

December 30, 2005

A Yellow Leaf

I've discussed the American Life in Poetry project before. Here is the latest installment.

American Life in Poetry: Column 40

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Arizonan Alberto Rios probably observed this shamel ash often, its year-round green leaves never changing. On this particular day, however, he recognizes a difference--a yellow leaf. In doing so he offers us a glimpse of how something small yet unexpected may stay with us, perhaps even become a secret pleasure.

A Yellow Leaf

A yellow leaf in the branches
Of a shamel ash
In the front yard;
I see it, a yellow leaf
Among so many.
Nothing distinguishes it,
Nothing striking, striped, stripped,
Strident, nothing
More than its yellow
On this day,
Which is enough, which makes me
Think of it later in the day,
Remember it in conversation
With a friend,
Though I do not mention it--
A yellow leaf on a shamel ash
On a clear day
In an Arizona winter,
A January like so many.

Reprinted from "The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body," Copper Canyon Press, 2002, by permission of Copper Canyon Press. Copyright (c) 2002 by Alberto Rios, a writer and professor at Arizona State University. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:33 AM

December 8, 2004

Ted Kooser

Ted Kooser is the new US poet laureate. This was actually announced in September, but such announcements don't make the front page, so you will forgive me for only picking up on this recently.

Ted Kooser replaces Louise Gluck, who replaced Billy Collins, a poet I have discussed here a couple of times. Like Collins, Kooser is very readable, though I find Kooser relies more on imagery and Collins relies more on story.

The press has made a somewhat big deal of the fact that Kooser is from Nebraska, and the first poet laureate from the great plains. I do think geography is a big part of Kooser's work. Consider, for example, his poem Flying at Night.

There are some nice profiles of Kooser in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Christian Science Monitor. The first two links require (free) registration.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:44 AM | Comments (1)

October 21, 2004

Everett Hoagland's "Homecoming"

Catching up on some reading, I discovered that a former professor of mine, Everett Hoagland, had published a poem sequence called "Homecoming" in UU World, which is the house magazine for the Unitarian Universalist Association. They are really wonderful, and worth a thoughtful reading or two.

There is also a brief interview with Hoagland, where he reveals something I hadn't known about him. In response to the question, "How did you become a poet?" Hoagland gives an absolutely stunning answer:

"Langston Hughes met student poets at my college, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, which was also his alma mater, and told me there were a couple things he liked about my manuscript. I took his suggestions very seriously, put them into effect, and graduated with one of two creative writing awards. So I said, you know, if this great man, this poet laureate of the Negro race, the most popular black poet who ever lived, could take my poetry seriously, maybe I should take it more seriously. "

Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:06 PM

September 2, 2004

Little Crush

You have no way of knowing this,
but I have silently catalogued
every observable, erotic detail
about you.

It begins with the wisps of brown hair
that have escaped your braid
to make little swirls on the back of your neck.
One thicker strand curves in thoughtful counterpoint
to your hooped earring.

It is a perfect day to catalog you.
It's going to be hot and humid,
and you have dressed accordingly.
The neckline of your summer dress
droops just so—to the lovely shelf
at the top of your breasts.
I could be crass and pause here,
but I won't.  It's the small things about you
that matter.  Accessories, for instance,
are everything, but sparseness is key,
so I am delighted to trace your unsleeved arm
down to three slender bands of silver
cascading around your wrist.
Perfection!

And suddenly motion—the banded wrist rises—
and your tanned fingers absentmindedly
find the thick strand and return it to the braid.
Your lips purse, you exhale slowly,
releasing the first of the day's heat,
and your wrist returns to your side.

With all the world's expectation,
my gaze returns to your braid.
I have to get off the trolley at the next stop,
but the wayward strand is already pulling free again.
There is time still, my dear,
to capture the next detail,
to record the next delicious gesture.

        — Bill Trippe

Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:43 AM

July 9, 2004

A Poem

For a Friend Widowed Young, Bringing the News to his Children

Nothing, I'm sure, prepared you
for this moment.
Not that brilliant fall afternoon
you collected my long clearing pass.
Your legs churning, blonde hair
flashing over the green.
Nor that warm summer night we picked up
the two prettiest girls in town.
I have this picture of you--
young, handsome, reverent--
candle in hand--
tending to some school ceremony.
And another, more wistful, displaying
some carefully wrought
drawing for the camera.

You had it all,
and I was thrilled you were my friend.

As you walk now into your quiet house
to greet your daughters,
how much I want all your gifts
to come together in this fragile moment.
For their little faces to look up at you
and hear some perfect words come from your mouth.

-- Bill Trippe

Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:49 PM

March 30, 2004

The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart

I have to say that I don't agree with, or perhaps understand, many aspects and details of the men's movement. Face to face with some of the practitioners, I have this vague idea I am being sold something I really don't need or want to buy. I tried mightily to read and enjoy Iron John, but simply couldn't get all the way through it. I guess on some level I am not a mythopoetic kind of guy.

But then this I found a companion to Iron John, this great anthology of poetry, The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, and I have been reading it since. This was 10 years ago. I am exaggerating of course, but only a little. This book is a constant in my reading habits. I refer to it again and again, and have recommended it (and purchased it) for more friends than any other book I know.

Simply, this is a wonderful anthology of poetry, organized thematically, for men. Many of the individual poems are brilliant, and the overall organization is intelligent and, at times, profound. As I have grappled with marriage, fatherhood, aging parents--all the trappings of midlife--this book has been a constant source of wisdom and comfort for me. Do a kind thing for yourself or for a thoughtful man in your life and buy this book.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:34 PM

a thousand furnished rooms

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