Poetry Month

Otherwise
Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

Poetry Month

The Printer's Error
Aaron Fogel

Fellow compositors
and pressworkers!

I, Chief Printer
Frank Steinman,
having worked fifty-
seven years at my trade,
and served five years
as president
of the Holliston
Printer's Council,
being of sound mind
though near death,
leave this testimonial
concerning the nature
of printers' errors.

First: I hold that all books
and all printed
matter have
errors, obvious or no,
and that these are their
most significant moments,
not to be tampered with
by the vanity and folly
of ignorant, academic
textual editors.
Second: I hold that there are
three types of errors, in ascending
order of importance:
One: chance errors
of the printer's trembling hand
not to be corrected incautiously
by foolish professors
and other such rabble
because trembling is part
of divine creation itself.

Two: silent, cool sabotage
by the printer,
the manual laborer
whose protests
have at times taken this
historical form,
covert interferences
not to be corrected
censoriously by the hand
of the second and far
more ignorant saboteur,
the textual editor.
Three: errors
from the touch of God,
divine and often
obscure corrections
of whole books by
nearly unnoticed changes
of single letters
sometimes meaningful but
about which the less said
by preemptive commentary
the better.
Third: I hold that all three
sorts of error,
errors by chance,
errors by workers' protest,
and errors by
God's touch,
are in practice the
same and indistinguishable.

Therefore I,
Frank Steinman,
typographer
for thirty-seven years,
and cooperative Master
of the Holliston Guild
eight years,
being of sound mind and body
though near death
urge the abolition
of all editorial work
whatsoever
and manumission
from all textual editing
to leave what was
as it was, and
as it became,
except insofar as editing
is itself an error, and

therefore also divine.

Poetry Month

Russian Birch
by Nathaniel Bellows

Is it agony that has bleached them to such beauty? Their stand
is at the edge of our property—white spires like fingers, through which
the deer emerge with all the tentative grace of memory. Your father

loved these trees. When you try to imagine his childhood, it is all old
footage, in a similar scheme: black and white. But he died, and all you know
is that they reminded him of home. As they remind you he is gone

to a country as unimaginable as his life before you were born, before
the woman who would be your mother lived as she does now—lost,
wandering at the edge of her life’s whitened gates.

After a storm, one birch fell in the field, an ivory buttress collapsed across
the pasture. Up close there is pink skin beneath the paper, green lichen
ascending in settlements of scales. In the dark yard it beckons you back

to snow, the static of the past—your father, a boy, speaking in a tongue
you never knew, calling down from the branches. Or the letter you wrote
to a mother you weren’t allowed to miss—black ink scrawled across

the white pulp of the page: I am very lonely without you.

Poetry Month

The Partial Explanation
Charles Simic

Seems like a long time
Since the waiter took my order.
Grimy little luncheonette,
The snow falling outside.

Seems like it has grown darker
Since I last heard the kitchen door
Behind my back
Since I last noticed
Anyone pass on the street.

A glass of ice-water
Keeps me company
At this table I chose myself
Upon entering.

And a longing,
Incredible longing
To eavesdrop
On the conversation
Of cooks.

Poetry Month

A Woman Speaks
by Audre Lord

Moon marked and touched by sun
my magic is unwritten
but when the sea turns back
it will leave my shape behind.
I seek no favor
untouched by blood
unrelenting as the curse of love
permanent as my errors
or my pride
I do not mix
love with pity
nor hate with scorn
and if you would know me
look into the entrails of Uranus
where the restless oceans pound.

I do not dwell
within my birth nor my divinities
who am ageless and half-grown
and still seeking
my sisters
witches in Dahomey
wear me inside their coiled cloths
as our mother did
mourning.

I have been woman
for a long time
beware my smile
I am treacherous with old magic
and the noon's new fury
with all your wide futures
promised
I am
woman
and not white.

Poetry Month

Ars Poetica
by Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

........ *

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

........ *

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean
But be.

Two days...

...till Poetry Month starts. I'm getting organized and I have a couple of things ready to post. Got some good ones this year!

Stay tuned...

Life is not a bowl of cherries

I am slowly discovering that one of the hardest things in life is to stand by and watch people you love suffer, or do things you don't agree with, or otherwise have life experiences that you wouldn't wish on an enemy. It goes without saying that doing this is a large part of parenting--although I've got to say that up to this point, Sparky hasn't been the biggest nightmare imaginable, just the occasional blip on the Serious Annoyance Scale--but it is true about adult family and friends too.

There is absolutely nothing I would like better right now than to be able to kneecap several people in St. Louis. One of Beast's sales accounts is with a family-owned company there, and they have got to be the most dysfunctional family and business ever. It makes my family-of-birth look like the most loving, calm, sane group of people. They seem to be basing their business style on the worst aspects of The Apprentice--the parts where Donald Trump instigates everyone to turn on each other, and the parts where he just yells at people.

The M.O. of these folks is to call Beast whenever they have a problem with what his company is selling them and holler at him. They yell about price, they yell about paying, they yell about quality, they yell about everything. NOTHING is ever their fault, it's never that they underpriced their own product, or they forgot to pay for the last shipment, or they didn't notice when things started to go bad in the manufacturing process. It's ALWAYS Beast's or Beast's company's fault. And there is never any "medium"--it's either SCREAMING or silence.

Beast spent all day today on this one account. He spent all day Friday on it too. Factor in that his sales territory stretches from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, and that he has spent 16+ hours of the last 40 he's worked on one customer...yeah.

I should, perhaps, mention that part of this current nightmare is because some of the product that Beast's company shipped should not have been sent--it was faulty, and caused the product St. Louis makes to fail their specs. So he's actually fighting St. Louis AND his own company at the same time.

To top things off, he had to close down a little earlier than usual this afternoon so he could go to the dentist to have the tooth he broke last week checked. The novacaine didn't work until he got like 4 shots, and having a temporary crown put on isn't exactly a party either (I've got 3? of them), so his mouth hurts. His back hurts from sitting in one place all day talking on the phone and dealing with emails and reports, and from the sheer tension of the day. And I think he's probably massively bummed that, while the cortisone injections he got last Tuesday really did bring him some pain relief last week, it hasn't stuck around very long at all.

Just before I shooed him upstairs after he dropped the heavy artillery meds (Percocet and Soma), he posted this to Facebook: "i am off to bed shortly - b/c this this [sic] sucks and i hate my job. loathe my job. and it is what it is." Obviously, this is not something that should be posted on Facebook, and I'm debating whether I should open his laptop and at least make that less public.

Psalm 6 has been running through the back of my mind a lot lately:

1 LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger
or discipline me in your wrath.
2 Have mercy on me, LORD, for I am faint;
heal me, LORD, for my bones are in agony.
3 My soul is in deep anguish.
How long, LORD, how long?

4 Turn, LORD, and deliver me;
save me because of your unfailing love.
5 Among the dead no one proclaims your name.
Who praises you from the grave?

6 I am worn out from my groaning.
All night long I flood my bed with weeping
and drench my couch with tears. 7 My eyes grow weak with sorrow;
they fail because of all my foes.

8 Away from me, all you who do evil

It's very Lenten. And also very much an ear-worm: "How long, O Lord, how long?!"

Really hoping that 40-year wandering-in-the-desert metaphor is just a metaphor.