Poetry Friday: Paul Violi

This week over at BOOKS AROUND THE TABLE I talk about making lists, and I mention a poet named Paul Violi who wrote many list-poems. Here is one of them, a parody of Christopher Smart's poem, Jubilate Agno, especially the section written for his cat ("For I will consider my cat Jeoffrey/ For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean./ For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there./ For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended. / For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood./ For fifthly he washes himself. / For sixthly he rolls upon wash....") Violi has a lot of fun in his poetry (read his "Index" or "Triptych" to confirm this - BTW: That last title is a parody of TV Guide listings.)I know this is a slightly weird offering for Poetry Friday, but I wish more people read Violi. He takes some geting used to, and he takes a sense of humor.

For It Feels Like February 29th or 30th

Paul Violi

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For we were made to reach for things.
For imagination extends life.
For our reach must exceed our grasp.
For in confinement imagination thrives.
For the Book of the Month Club selection
Has finally arrived.
For it is The Life of Jeffrey Hudson.
For it is a February Classic.
For a wondrous life he made.
For he flourished in confinement.
For he was a champion who scoffed at restriction.
For at age nine, though scarcely 18 inches tall,
He was gracefully proportioned.
For he was a page to Duke Edward.
For at a banquet he leaped out of a pie
Placed before Queen Henrietta Maria.
For she adopted him on the spot.
For he was made captain of cavalry.
For he was called Strenuous Jeffrey.
For he was tireless and heroic.
For firing from horseback
He killed his opponent in a duel.
For he was captured by Dunkirkers and imprisoned.
For upon his release
He was found to have grown taller.
For he was captured and imprisoned by Turkish pirates.
For by the time he was freed he had grown a foot taller.
For after the Restoration he was pensioned.
For as an accused conspirator in the Popish Plot
He was again imprisoned and again released.
For shortly thereafter he died
At the age of 63 at the height of 3 foot 9.

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The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted this week by Buffy at the appropriately named Buffy's Blog. Head over there to see what other people are sharing.

Poetry Friday: Time for a bit of Walter De La Mare

From time to time, I find myself longing for a taste of Peacock Pie - one of my favorite books of poetry, written by Walter de la Mare. I've posted poems from it twice here at the Drift Record, both times for Poetry Friday, once last March and once way back in September of 2008. All I need to do, when I've pulled Peacock Pie down from the shelf, is find a couch, a blanket, a mug of cocoa, and have nothing in the world to do but enjoy the moment:

Dream Song

Sunlight, moonlight,
     Twilight, starlight---
Gloaming at the close of day,
     And an owl calling,
     Cool dews falling
In a wood of oak and may.

     Lantern-light, taper-light,
     Torchlight, no-light:
Darkness at the shut of day,
     And lions roaring,
     Their wrath pouring
In wild waste places far away.

     Elf-light, bat-light,
     Touchwood-light and toad-light,
And the sea a shimmering gloom of grey,
     And a small face smiling
     In a dream's beguiling
In a world of wonders far away.

                                 --Walter de la Mare

Not sure exactly why, but the effect this poem has on me resembles the experience of eating peppermint bark candy in December - maybe because both are just a little different from the normal sweet treat: they're sugary but they have some snap, they're layered - it's that crushed-candy-cane element, unexpected - and then there's white chocolate, dark chocolate, just sweet enough.

I know, that's a weird thing to say, but the two things - a Romantic Imagination and peppermint bark candy - converge.

Walter de la Mare 1873-1956

You can learn a little more about Walter de la Mare over at The Poetry Foundation and - who knew? - at The Official Walter de la Mare Society Website.
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This week's Poetry Friday round-up is hosted by Tabatha Yeatts over at The Opposite of Indifference. Head over there to see what other people are posting.

Poetry Friday: Invictus

Nelson Mandela 1918-2013

I just heard on the news tonight about Nelson Mandela's death. During his long incarceration in various South African prisons, he is said to have recited the following poem to fellow inmates in order to share its empowering "message of self-mastery."  So I wanted to share it with you, by way of remembering Mandela's long, long struggle against apartheid.


INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

                       -William Ernest Henley


Mandela's message of reconciliation (as opposed to revenge) is one that world leaders need to be listening to, I think.

If you haven't read J.M. Coetzee's The Life and Times of Michael K., be sure to do so - short, powerful and haunting, and a good beginning point for learning more about the devastating effects of institutionalized racism, imprisonment and civil war. 
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Robyn Hood Black is hosting this week's Poetry Friday round-up. Head over there to see what other people are sharing.

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.