Poetry Friday: Todd Boss

My Day-After-Thanksgivings are always busy with leftover-pie breakfast, family, turkey-sandwich lunch, family, jigsaw puzzle, dogs, family, turkey-soup dinner, etc. So I missed posting for Poetry Friday at the normal time. But since I haven't gone to bed yet, it's still Friday for me, yes, even if it's the wee (and bleary-eyed) hours of Saturday morning? Here's a poem I happened on and want to share:

The World Is in Pencil

—not pen. It’s got

that same silken

dust about it, doesn’t it,

that same sense of

having been roughed

onto paper even  

as it was planned.

It had to be a labor

of love. It must’ve

taken its author some

time, some shove.

I’ll bet it felt good

in the hand—the o

of the ocean, and

the and and the and

of the land.

                             by Todd Boss 

That is so carefully crafted. It does just what I want a poem to do, and just what I would love my poems to do: it hides the rhyme internally, subtly, and it has both gravitas and playfulness. The poet and critic Tony Hoagland, whose opinion I respect, says this of Todd Boss's second book, Pitch: "There is a rich physicality in all of Todd Boss’s poems, a reverent  gusto for representing the tactile aspects of human life. His poems are about matter in motion—apple-slices, Chopin, horses, light, and people. What makes Boss much more than a journalist is the great adroitness and physicality with which sound bounces around inside his language, in strong rhyme, all kinds of rhythm, and formal games. The poems in Pitch are never pretentious but always acrobatic, sensuous, technically inventive, muscular and fun.”

Todd Boss

 Be sure to look up Boss's first book as well - it's titled yellowrocket. Wonderful stuff.
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Poetry Friday was hosted by Carol at Carol's Corner this week.  Head over there to see what other people have posted. 

Poetry Friday: Mary Szybist, National Book Award Winner

Congratulations!

Mary Szybist, 2013 Winner of the National Book Award for Poetry

Mary Szybist was named the winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Poetry last night at a ceremony in New York City, for her second book, Incarnadine.  I watched the entire event on CSPAN/BookTV (from red carpet interviews through the actual presentation of medals) and Szybist's acceptance speech was one of the highlights of the evening. Overcome with emotion and fighting back tears, she said in accepting the award, "When I find myself in a dark place, I lose all taste for poetry." But she went on to say, "There’s plenty that poetry can’t do, of course, but the miracle is how much it can do ... how much it does do."

For those of you who don't yet know Szybist's work, which is remarkable for its intelligence, its precise focus and its heart, here's a poem for you to savor. This particular poem embodies what Szybist's best poems are all about: moments when the domestic and the spiritual overlap and set off harmonic reverberations. On the other hand, I sometimes think it's the near silence of Szybist's poems - the whispered quality - that appeals to me.

Annunciation Overheard from the Kitchen

I could hear them from the kitchen, speaking as if 

something important had happened.

I was washing the pears in cool water, cutting

the bruises from them.  

From my place at the sink, I could hear 

a jet buzz hazily overhead, a vacuum

start up next door, the click,

click between shots.

“Mary, step back from the camera.”

There was a softness to his voice 

but no fondness, no hurry in it.

There were faint sounds

like walnuts being dropped by crows onto the street,

almost a brush

of windchime from the porch—

Windows around me everywhere half-open—

My skin alive with the pitch.

                                            --Mary Szybist

Szybist has published only two books - her first, Granted, published ten years ago, and the NBA winner, Incarnadine, published this year, which (as Szybist describes it) "moves through several re-imaginings of the iconic Annunciation scene between Mary and the angel Gabriel." In his review of Granted, poet Joshua Kryah compares Szybist's work to that of John Donne, citing their similar impulse to "express spiritual ideas in physical terms," and he says that Szybist echoes "Donne’s insistence that the soul is made up of blood and bones, that 'all that the soule does, it does in, and with, and by the body.'"

The National Book Foundation has a website at which it has posted all the nominated authors reading from their work (thank you, NBF!) Here is a link to that - and if you don't have time to listen to the entire presentation (it's very long) then just catch Szybist reading one of her most haunting poems, titled "So and So Descending from the Bridge." It begins on the video at 2:00: 02, the two-hour mark (like I said, the entire evening session is long - but if you have the time to watch it all, you'll see George Packer and George Saunders and 18 other fine writers reading from their nominated books, including all the nominees for Young People's Literature - Kathi Appelt, Gene Luen Yang, Tom McNeal, Meg Rosoff, and Cynthia Kadohata, who was named the winner for her book, The Thing About Luck.)

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The Poetry Friday round-up today is being hosted by  Katya Czaja over at Write. Sketch. Repeat. Head over there to see what other people have posted.

Poetry Friday: Oaxaca!

My Poetry Friday contribution is at the end of this post (scroll down for it) but first I want to say that I'm writing this on Sunday the 19th and scheduling it to go live (hopefully) on Friday. My husband and I are on our way to Oaxaca on Tuesday the 22nd, which means that by Poetry Friday on the 25th we will be enjoying our breakfasts at the Encanto Jalatlaco (no cell phone, no television, no computer)...

Fresh fruit, fresh juice, pan dulce, churros....

...and Oaxacan chocolate!

and looking forward to the Day of the Dead celebrations at the end of the month, particularly the visit to the panteon/cemetery...

and watching the comparsas/parades throughout the city, when the skeletons take over....

 

and visiting the archaeological treasures at Atzompa...

and the paper-making factory at San Agustin Etla Center for the Arts....

 

and visiting the weaving workshops of Teotitlan...

and seeing the green pottery...and the painted alejibres...and...and...as much as we can!

In anticipation of our trip, I'll post this poem I wrote about a market I visited with my family in Tepoztlan, Morelos (originally posted on Jama Rattigan's Poetry Potluck Series 4/9/2010. ) Hope you enjoy it:

Market Day

Black avocados, yellow mangos,
bowls of menudo to start the day.
Tall, cold glass of fresh horchata,
green papayas, pink mamey,

pork pozole, pumpkin seeds,
chiltepines, round and red,
coconut juice and gold guayavas,
then the different names for bread:

little shell and little piglet,
little ear and little horn,
now a cup of spiced hot chocolate,
sweet tamal with cream and corn,

pineapple popsicles, sugar cane,
guava jelly, caramel flan,
magic powders, hot tisane, :
Market Day in Tepoztlan.

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 Poetry Friday is being hosted on the 25th by Irene Latham at Live Your Poem. Head over there for links to what other people have posted. And thanks, Irene!
P.S. Go ahead, please, and leave comments. I might not be able to approve them until I'm home on November 5th - we'll see. Thanks in advance to all who visit!

 

Poetry Friday: Edna St. Vincent Millay's Ferry Boat

I spent yesterday flaneur-ing my way through the neighborhoods of West Seattle, just looking around at houses, shops, Lincoln Park, views of Puget Sound. What I like most about that corner of Seattle (residents there feel like it's a little village, independent of the big city) are the views of the Sound, and of the ferry boats crossing from the Fauntleroy Dock over to Vashon Island.

Is there anything in the world more calming than the sight of a ferry boat sailing gracefully across water on a sunny autumn day? And then there's the long, low whistle as the ferry comes into dock - more like a moan than a whistle, really - it seems to come from way down deep. It's melancholy but dignified and industrious, that sound. And West Seattle, especially the neighborhood east of Lincoln Park, is configured perfectly for a view, with it's long, high backbone along 35th Avenue. The hillside drops westward from the there, down to the saltwater shore.

Ferry boats, ferry boats. They look like toys out there on the water, especially if Mount Rainier looms somewhere in the background.

I rode on the Staten Island Ferry once - when it still cost a nickel (it wasn't that long ago - the fare was a nickel until 1975, when it was raised to 25 cents round trip. Since 1997,  passengers ride free!)

That orange - so distinctive!

That boat didn't feel calm, probably because it was filtered through a tourist buzz ("There she is! The Statue of Liberty.") It's the ferry boat Edna St. Vincent Millay refers to in her poem "Recuerdo" - which I offer up here for Poetry Friday, in honor of crisp-as-an-apple days...with a water view. 

Recuerdo

We were very tired, we were very merry—

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—

But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,

We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;

And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;

And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,

From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;

And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,

And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,

And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;

And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,

And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

                                  

                                   by Edna St. Vincent Millay

                                   Published in Poetry Magazine, May, 1919

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The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted today by Cathy at Merely Day By Day. Head over there to see what other people have posted.

POETRY FRIDAY: Hallelujah, Alice Munro!

Alice Munro - Nobel Laureate

 A shout out to the Nobel Prize committee for bestowing the Prize in Literature this year on Canadian short-story writer Alice Munro, who said the following once about storytelling:

"A story is not like a road to follow … it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.”

Hooray, Alice Munro, and hooray, Canada! 

In Ms. Munro's honor, I'm going to post the lyrics to the unofficial Canadian national anthem, "Hallelujah," a song of Leonard Cohen's, covered by dozens of other musicians. If you've ever sung it in a group setting (as we did during a lecture once at Vermont College of Fine Arts - that was glorious!!) you'll know how mysterious, hard-hitting, prayerful and haunting it is, just like the stories of Alice Munro. Below are the lyrics, but you need to hear this song as it is sung live (that last stanza of hallelujahs!) so here is a link to k.d. lang singing it. It's my favorite version - gad, gad, gad, seriously right.

And the line in it that speaks to the writing of Alice Munro?
"There's a blaze of light in every word...."


Hallelujah

I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not somebody who has seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well, really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah

[P.S. Just want to add, for the record, that there are apparently 28 verses to this song - not sure if anyone has ever recorded all 28...? k.d. lang doesn't sing all the verses I have up in the post - if anyone hears of someone singing a much longer version, please drop me line at the email address above. I'd love to hear. For now, k.d. lang in Montreal is as close to a perfect fit (singer to song) as it gets.] 
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The Poetry Friday round-up is hosted today by Laura Purdie Salas over at her blog, writing the world for kids.  Head over there to see what other people have posted.