Progressive Wednesday

Some grief sweeps us away.

Every year, when this day comes around, I’m at a loss for words, something I pride myself on rarely being. So, I’ll rely on one of my mentors, David Citino. This poem comes from his masterful book Broken Symmetry.

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CLOWN FISH

When the female dies,
the father of her offspring
changes sex and mates
with the nearest male.

Some grief sweeps us away.
We struggle back into
a strange new ocean,
magic with what we’ve lost.

The big three.

T.S. Eliot, overrated poet that he is, began his overrated, pedantic poem “The Wasteland” this way: “April is the cruelest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain.”

Whatever.

April holds its own in my book. While Eliot was wrong about those 30 days between March and May, I’m probably equally right about this: Monday–filled with those first eight or more hours of the work week–is the probably cruelest day. Plus, for crying out loud, could Monday Night Football have found a worse trio of announcers than Tirico, Jaworski, and Kornheiser? Maybe Greta Van Susteren, a pony, and Scott, my AAA customer service agent from the other day, would be a bit less entertaining, but it’s a tough call, and one I’m glad I don’t have to make.

So, anyway, Mondays don’t have to be so bad, and we’re here to help. I was telling someone recently that there are about three things that keep me going, and one of the big three is art, baby, art in all its permutations. Every once and a while, Monday will be a day we showcase a trio of stuff we think will do your trick, lifting spirits, eliciting a laugh, getting your head bobbing up and down to that beautiful beast called rock.

Here goes, yo:

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Up first, Jim Gaffigan, easily one of my favorite comics, doing a five minute bit on (wait for it…) Hot Pockets. Gaffigan is someone you might recognize from commercials or his frequent visits to Letterman and O’Brien, where he’s appeared over two dozen times. These days you can also check him out on the TBS sitcom My Boys.

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And here’s a poem, one that taught me that verse needn’t be cryptic, needn’t only be fascinated with trees and darkness and oblivion, needn’t be restrained as an inmate, or worse, a politician. So here’s William Matthews at some of his best:

A POETRY READING AT WEST POINT

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I read to the entire plebe class,
in two batches. Twice the hall filled
with bodies dressed alike, each toting
a copy of my book. What would my
shrink say, if I had one, about
such a dream, if it were a dream?

Question and answer time.
“Sir,” a cadet yelled from the balcony,
and gave his name and rank, and then,
closing his parentheses, yelled
“Sir” again. “Why do your poems give
me a headache when I try

to understand them?” he asked. “Do
you want that?” I have a gift for
gentle jokes to defuse tension,
but this was not the time to use it.
“I try to write as well as I can
what it feels like to be human,”

I started, picking my way care-
fully, for he and I were, after
all, pained by the same dumb longings.
“I try to say what I don’t know
how to say, but of course I can’t
get much of it down at all.”

By now I was sweating bullets.
“I don’t want my poems to be hard,
unless the truth is, if there is
a truth.” Silence hung in the hall
like a heavy fabric. My own
head ached. “Sir,” he yelled. “Thank you. Sir.”

.

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* * *

Even though New York ain’t no Georgia, there was a parade celebrating peaches in a town nearby the other day, and as my saying goes, “Everybody hates a parade.” I thought I’d close this Monday with an anti-tribute to parades (just watch the video), and so here comes Green Day kicking their Celtic-punk “Minority.” This tune’s off Warnings, an underrated album from the ’00s (not to be confused with the ’80s, the decade that music forgot).

“Your one wild and precious life.”

In the next 24 hours of so, the very extended family of Progressive Wednesday will increase by one new, gurgling, (probably crying), and beautiful member. And there are no other words I could think of that fit the occasion better than the ones in this poem by the wise and wonderful Mary Oliver. Enjoy.

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THE SUMMER DAY

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Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean–

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Like that.

For my money, Tim Seibles is one of the greatest living American poets. I’ve just recently cracked into his latest book, Buffalo Head Solos, and I wish I’d started it sooner. It’s one of those books that you realize you didn’t realize you were waiting for. Also, it must be said that his book Hurdy-Gurdy is absolutely masterful. If you’re looking for accessible, heart-aching and heart-lifting art, well, that book doesn’t make a misstep. (Just as an FYI, I’ll be reviewing Buffalo Head Solos in the not-so-distant future.)

I came across a poem of his the other day that just needed to be shared, that I think folks will be able to relate to quite easily, that jacked up the endorphins going to my head, or heart, or head-heart, whatever it is that makes us love anything in this world. And frankly, this poem is so kick-me-in-the-keister good, I wanted an excuse to type it. I hope you dig. Reading it is three minutes well spent.

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FIRST KISS

Her mouth

fell into my mouth

like a summer snow, like a

5th season, like a fresh Eden,

like Eden when Eve made God

whimper with the liquid

tilt of her hips –

her kiss   hurt like that –

I mean, it was as if she'd mixed

the sweat of an angel

with the taste of a tangerine,

I swear. My mouth

had been a helmet forever

greased with secrets, my mouth

a dead-end street a little bit

lit by teeth — my heart, a clam

slammed shut at the bottom of a dark,

but her mouth pulled up

like a baby-blue Cadillac

packed with canaries driven

by a toucan — I swear

those lips said bright

wings when we kissed, wild

and precise — as if she were

teaching a seahorse to speak –

her mouth    so careful, chumming

the first vowel from my throat

until my brain was a piano

banged loud, hammered like that –

it was like, I swear   her tongue

was Saturn's 7th moon –

hot like that, hot

and cold and circling,

circling, turning me

into a glad planet –

sun on one side, night pouring

her slow hand over the other: one first

flying like the kite of another.

Her kiss, I swear — if the Great

Mother   rushed open the moon

like a gift and you were there

to feel your shadow finally

unhooked from your wrist.

That'd be it, but even sweeter –

like a riot of peg legged priests

on pogo-sticks, up and up,

this way and this, not

falling but on and on

like that, badly behaved

but holy — I swear! That

kiss, both lips utterly committed

to the world    like a Peace Corps,

like a free story, forever and always

a new city — no locks, no walls, just

doors — like that, I swear,

like that.

How to Read Poetry Progressively

Problem:

We can only think of four:

1. You read poems somewhat regularly and want some more suggestions.
2. You dig poems when you come across them and want to come across them more often.
3. You’re terrified of poems and want some ways to ease yourself in (as with water, jumping tends to work best).
4. You hate poems and are, therefore, a deeply disturbed person, but you want to be healthy again.

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Make Progress:

If we edited Webster’s, we write this simple entry for the definition of poetry: “the art of words, baby” Okay, maybe not the “baby” (but only maybe). I’m not sure I’m the one to make the case for poetry, other than to say it helped me cope and create, taught me to trust language more instead of less, and made me more an admirer, and less an envier, of others.

On the first day of my first year at Ohio University, my professor, Joe Bonomo, put this Galway Kinnell poem on the chalkboard:

“Prayer”

Whatever happens. Whatever

what is is is what

I want. Only that. But that.

I didn’t understand it. I took it home and didn’t understand it. Only recently have I reached one possible understanding of it: poems, like prayers and even every day experiences, are beyond logic, but not beyond desire. And since that first day, I’ve craved more and more. To quote my former professor, the late David Citino, as he drove away from campus right before the close of the quarter: “Hey, Zambito! Poetry rocks, man, and don’t you forget it.” I haven’t.

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Books of Poetry:

These are our progressive must-reads:

• New and Selected Poems: Volume One by Mary Oliver should be as prevalent as the Gideon Bible. If you only read two contemporary poems in your life, we think they ought to be “At Blackwater Woods,” to celebrate in the face of loss, and “The Summer Day,” to celebrate in the face of life.
• The National Book Award-winning What Work Is, by Phillip Levine, is old school. But not in terms of form or meter or details of a dusty history. Instead, Levine’s creative work punches you in the gut, when it’s not breaking your heart, in the most lovely ways. Each poem is like a shirt collar at the end of the day: salty and honest and therefore, hopefully, American.
• John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Billy Holiday, and Marvin Gaye get a second life in Terrance Hayes’ first collection, Muscular Music. The poems here vary between accessible narratives and poems so full of linguistic harmony you wish there was a tune to go with them.
• The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World by Paul Guest, besides having the best title of any book I’ve ever seen, mixes pop culture, wisdom, and lyrical acrobatics. Where else can you read verse written from the point of view of Foghorn Leghorn next to a piece that makes love seem like the only answer? The answer to the question, of course, is nowhere but here.

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Other Poetry Resources:

• Poetry Daily posts a new poem recently published in a literary magazine or book collection every day. The work could most frequently be called contemporary free verse poetry. That’s a very academic way of saying: “It doesn’t rhyme and I can’t figure out the rhythm, but I’ll be damned if you can’t still dance to it.”
• Verse Daily does exactly the same as we’ve written above, but they’ve slightly more interesting tastes. If Poetry Daily is rock music, then Verse Daily is punk and prog and pop and rock.
• The Academy of American Poets is, for all intents and purposes, the resource for poets. But it’s also a fantastic site for poetry fanatics, aficionados, and even the casually curious. You can search the site by poet and poem. They are the organizers behind National Poetry Month (it’s April, by the way), and they provide tools for teachers who want to share poetry with their teens and wee ones.
• Simply put (which is exactly how founder and editor D.F. Tweney would want it), tiny words offers up a haiku each day, which readers can find and quickly digest using the web, cell phones, or email.
• Ted Kooser, the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2004 until 2006, set up a web resource for newspapers and general readers called American Life in Poetry. The idea behind the project was to help return poetry to the daily press, and bring verse back into the lives of everyday folks. The columns and accompanying poems are accessible, genuine, and friendly. You can read more about the project here and more about Kooser here.
  

National Poetry Month: “Jet”

As I entered manhood — I don’t mean puberty, I mean becoming an actual man — the poet Tony Hoagland was like a guide, the way Virgil served as Dante‘s guide through his masterpiece, The Inferno. I’d come across a poem here or there, and immediately, I’d photocopy the sucker and mail it to all my friends I consider brothers. I’d read his work out loud, alone in my apartment, trying, not to understand his words, but rather myself.

Tony Hoagland, like the previous poets we’ve highlighted this National Poetry Month (Ted Kooser, Mary Oliver, William Matthews, and Lucille Clifton), boasts an impressive “resume.” His third full-length book, What Narcissism Means to Me, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Book number two received the James Laughlin Award. He’s also received two (count ‘em, two) grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Foundation’s 2005 Mark Twain Award.

To me, these “statistics” are fairly meaningless because I can’t imagine going through my twenties without his verse. But I don’t think Hoagland is a “guy poet.” I think he’s a humanist, shining a light — sometimes lovely, sometimes ugly — on American men and masculinity.

Below you’ll find one of my favorite poems from one of my favorite books, Donkey Gospel. If someone were to ask me what it means and how it feels to be a man, my one word answer is “Jet.” Enjoy.

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JET

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Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth

and we soar up into the summer stars.
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish
and old space suits with skeletons inside.
On Earth, men celebrate their hairiness,

and it is good, a way of letting life
out of the box, uncapping the bottle
to let the effervescence gush
through the narrow, usually constricted neck.

And now the crickets plug in their appliances
in unison, and then the fireflies flash
dots and dashes in the grass, like punctuation
for the labyrinthine, untrue tales of sex
someone is telling in the dark, though

no one really hears. We gaze into the night
as if remembering the bright unbroken planet
we once came from,
to which we will never
be permitted to return.
We are amazed how hurt we are.
We would give anything for what we have.

National Poetry Month: “Won’t You Celebrate With Me”

I came to know the poetry of Lucille Clifton when I first started writing during high school. I came to truly appreciate the poetry of Lucille Clifton only recently.

Why? I don’t know for sure, but I think Clifton’s work benefits from a reader who has a better understanding of suffering, which is also to say, a reader who has a better understanding of joy. When I was in high school, I thought suffering was not getting to play street hockey, and I thought joy was, well, was getting to play street hockey.

Then, I thought, Why doesn’t she capitalize? And now I like to think of Clifton’s poems as little mirrors reflecting our own complex lives and, at the same time, as little windows into the congruent lives of others. And now I realize Clifton’s gift: she manages to teach without preaching; she illuminates.

And if it’s a resume you want, well, a resume she’s got: umpteen books of poetry and nonfiction, as well as 16 books for children; two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships; two Pulitzer Prize nominations; and (get this) an Emmy.

But these accolades don’t do justice to Clifton’s work, work grounded so deeply in real experience that we can’t help but nod as we let her words whirl around in our heads.

Enjoy.

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WON’T YOU CELEBRATE WITH ME

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won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.