Poetry Friday: James Arthur

For Poetry Friday, I offer up this lovely poem by the talented young poet (and my friend, I'm happy to say - we went through the MFA program together at the Univ. of Washington) James Arthur. He read Tuesday night from his new book, Charms Against Lightning, just out from Copper Canyon Press, as part of the Castalia Reading Series at Hugo House in Seattle.

On Day and Night


And as the neighbors' guests retire, coaxing their cars
into the snow (we're gazing through the curtain
into winter's pale hub), two girls gaze up. They're all
going home, like wheels correcting
into steering hands, or drawn breath returning to the air,
but you can't come back to anywhere—there's no perfect here
and there, or now and then—but here we are,
again. A silverfish crosses the windowpane. We peer
into the street, and up at the stranded moon. White wheel,
black field. Black winter, white road. White silence,
black wind. White cars, black wires.

Just look at how he controls sound in this poem, obscuring to the reader's eye the rhymes and near-rhymes while still letting them chime in the ear. In other words, he allows readers to hear the music of the poem (air/there/anywhere, air/are, hub/up, then/again, we're/steering/here/peer, and the bookended rhyme of "retire" in the first line with "wire" in the last line - like the echo of a bell)  without it becoming sing-song.

And I simply love that ending - white/black, black/white, white/black, white/black, the slight crossing of the order of those just once, in the same way black wires seem to cross at one telephone pole and then uncross at the next as you drive down a long highway. This is what good poetry does - the words are evocative on more than one level. They paint the scene (or, in this case, possibly, photograph the scene in black and white) but they mimic the visual pattern found in the scene, as well as the rhythm of the scene - listen to the heavy syllables of those last sixteen words, like tires turning over and over as they come down a road - boom, boom, boom, boom.  In this way, form approximates content.

This is SO much harder to do than it looks - present rhythm and rhyme to a modern reader who has been trained to think formal elements are fusty and archaic - and to do it subtly. It's even harder if you're not just playing a game with the language but you're saying something meaningful, as James is, something with heart. For me, this poem fulfills Ezra Pound's mandate that a poem must appeal to sound (melopoeia), sight (phanopoeia) and mind (logopoeia.)

James Arthur is a poet to watch - just look at the high honors he's already won (taken from his website): "His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Poetry, Ploughshares, and The American Poetry Review. He has received the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry, a residency at the Amy Clampitt House, and a Discovery/The Nation Prize...He's currently a Hodder Fellow at Princeton."

Definitely look for this book - it's filled with poems that - well -I'll just admit it: that I would love to have written.
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You'll find the Poetry Friday round-up this week over at Lura Salas's blog, Writing the World for Kids.  Head over there to see what people are posting.   And just in honor of those last lines of James's poem, I'll post this black/white white/black photo of a road in winter: 

Poetry Friday: A Triptych of Tournament Poems

JUMP ROPE STEW

One, two, double-dutch stew,

cook up a kettle of skip-a-rope stew,

mulligatawny and mulligan, too,

chicken cocido and beef ragout.

Into the broth goes this and that,

spuds and turnips and bacon fat,

dumplings to the dog, carrots to the cat,

and peas to the lady with the porkpie hat.

Today I'm posting all three of the poems I've written as part of the March Poetry Madness tournament (Round One - above - and Round Two and Regional Semifinals - below.) The voting is still going on (no registration necessary - just click on "Vote") and Ed Caria (who designed the tournament) is hoping for a big surge in votes for this round of match-ups. I hope if you're reading this you'll go over and vote for your favorite. It's like a basketball tournament, but the outcome is determined not only by the skill of the players but the taste of the crowd. Some of my favorites have moved forward, other favorites have gotten clobbered, but I think all the poets are having a good time. Click here to go vote for your favorite in my current match up through Friday around 6 p.m.  - and you can vote for all the other Regional Semifinal match-ups via this page. Doesn't take long - it's good for morale - and it's good practice for next November (better choices in poems than in some of those candidates, definitely.)

Jump Rope Stew was written for Round One - the assigned word was "mulligan." When I was a kid, jump rope was a passion.

One, two, double-dutch stew....

Here are the other two poems:

Round Two - Assigned Word: "barrage"

PLAYGROUND COUNTING SONG 

One barrage, the battle’s over,

Best friends now, like cows in clover.

Kiss me quick, then chew your cud –

Rain comes down, and up comes mud.

Fee, fi -  fiddle me a song,

Everything’s right but something’s wrong.

Cows in the corn and the moon is blue –

Fo, fum, foo -  out goes you!

Best friends now, like cows in clover....

Regional Semifinals - Assigned Word: "heft"

A YEAR OF KENNINGS

Nest-chirp, feather-float, lamb-laugh, wind-waft.

Lake-lap, night-smile, flame-call, star-breeze.

Leaf-lift, mower-bite, shovel-lug, hammer-heft.

Sky-scowl, snow-show, sled-slip, face-freeze. 

lamb-laugh, wind-waft...

Kennings are an Old Norse riddle form, joining two independent words with a hyphen, making one compound word for the original word which is not mentioned (in this case Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall.)
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Poetry Friday is being hosted this week by Mary Lee Hahn, my worthy opponent for the Regional Semifinals, over at A Year of Reading. She's already put her Poetry Friday post up today (Thursday) so you'll have an extra day to vote in the March Poetry Madness tournament over there, too. I'll post this now, though here on the West Coast, it's still a few hours from Friday!  Head over to Mary Lee's site to see what other people are posting.

Poetry Friday: February, Frost, Cold Pink Ladies

As a native Washingtonian, I never thought I'd say this, but I do find myself wondering as I get older why I'm not living in a place where the sun shines more predictably. I don't mean the desert - that takes a sturdier, tougher soul than me. The sky in the desert is wide and lovely, but the land is mean. No, I like things generous: I'd love to look out and see a field of sunflowers, with blue sky overhead, instead of dormant and sad-sack Seattle in February. Maybe it's because so many friends and family have been traveling to Mexico, Hawaii, Italy this winter - I find myself dreaming of guayavas in Patzcuaro and pineapples in Kauai. I want to hold a vine-ripened tomato - the kind you find for sale in the Campo de' Fiori market stalls in Rome in June - up to my nose and just inhale the peppery smell of the vine. Sunshine, sunshine, give me some sunshine! But no....

Oh, dear.

Well, here is a little reminder from Robert Frost that cold is needed, even by the orchards that will give me some of the sun-ripened fruit I crave. Brrrrrrrrrr.....it's hard to wait. But when I bite into a Pink Lady apple in August, I'll taste February in it, won't I? And I guess Spring is not that far off.....

Almost....

Good-bye, and Keep Cold

This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark

And cold to an orchard so young in the bark

Reminds me of all that can happen to harm

An orchard away at the end of the farm

All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.

I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,

I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse

By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse.

(If certain it wouldn't be idle to call

I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall

And warn them away with a stick for a gun.)

I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun.

(We made it secure against being, I hope,

By setting it out on a northerly slope.)

No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm;

But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm.

"How often already you've had to be told,

Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold.

Dread fifty above more than fifty below."

I have to be gone for a season or so.

My business awhile is with different trees,

Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these,

And such as is done to their wood with an axe—

Maples and birches and tamaracks.

I wish I could promise to lie in the night

And think of an orchard's arboreal plight

When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)

Its heart sinks lower under the sod.

But something has to be left to God.

                                        -Robert Frost

Yes, glorious, glorious, glorious!

The Poetry Friday round-up this week is being hosted by Myra at Gathering Books. Head over there to see what other people have posted!  

And don't forget to check the other blogs I participate in - Books Around the Table (my writers group) and Write at Your Own Risk (written by faculty of Vermont College of Fine Arts' Writing for Children program.)

Poetry Friday: Atwood, Cats, Dogs, Primroses and Optimism

This poem says just about everything I felt when my husband announced, the other day, "Hey - it's February!" Well, maybe there's a little more Cat to it than would be my way - I prefer Dog. And I might not go for the part about the testicles. Or the part about eating our young. Come to think of it, this poem is a little scary. Atwood is nothing if not fierce and direct. But I'm all for those last couple of lines. One other quick thing: Primroses are showing up outside all the markets. Hooray!!



FEBRUARY 

Winter. Time to eat fat

and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,   

a black fur sausage with yellow

Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries   

to get onto my head. It’s his

way of telling whether or not I’m dead.

If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am   

He’ll think of something. He settles

on my chest, breathing his breath

of burped-up meat and musty sofas,

purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,   

not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,   

declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,   

which are what will finish us off

in the long run. Some cat owners around here   

should snip a few testicles. If we wise   

hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,   

or eat our young, like sharks.

But it’s love that does us in. Over and over   

again, He shoots, he scores! and famine

crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing   

eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits   

thirty below, and pollution pours

out of our chimneys to keep us warm.

February, month of despair,

with a skewered heart in the centre.

I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries   

with a splash of vinegar.

Cat, enough of your greedy whining

and your small pink bumhole.

Off my face! You’re the life principle,

more or less, so get going

on a little optimism around here.

Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.


Quick note for those of you who follow The Drift Record - I am part of another blog that's just started up (it's called Books Around the Table - check it out here) with Julie Paschkis, Laura Kvasnosky and Margaret Chodos-Irvine, all members of my kids book critique group (and all illustrators as well as writers - time for me to go to art school!)  We'll be posting thoughts about writing and illustrating, about critiquing, about kids books in general. Laura, Margaret and Julie P. have all contributed their first posts, and mine will be going up next Friday. Hope you will join us for conversation around the table.

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Poetry Friday today is being hosted by Karissa Knox Sorrell at The Iris Chronicles. Head over there to see what other people have posted.

POETRY FRIDAY: THE WORK OF TODD BOSS

Minnesota poet Todd Boss and his book YELLOWROCKET

 BRRRRRRR - it is cold in Seattle right now. Maybe a cold snap? Well not really, but I love the phrase "cold snap," so let's pretend. In honor of the dip into freezing temperatures, here's my contribution to Poetry Friday - Todd Boss's poem Icicles (from his collection YELLOWROCKET - see also the masterful poem One Can Miss Mountains, over at The New Yorker's web site.) I'd love to get the poetry of Todd Boss into the hands of every Senior in every high school English class in America, if only to remind them  - as they head out into the world -  that poetry can be fun, inventive, imaginative, crazy, musical and still be deeply heartfelt and smart.

ICICLES

are made of melt.
The same course
that makes them
takes them away.

They stay as long
as the temperature
lets them, and go
by the same way,

and in the same
direction. On
that intersection
their existence

hangs -- as hangs
a heart by how
and for how long
what's felt is felt.

Boss's new book, PITCH, will be released in February, 2012.

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The Poetry Friday round-up today is being hosted by Robyn Black Hood at Read, Write, Howl. Head over there to see what other people have posted.