Raymond Carver

 

Late Fragment

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

Raymond Carver

 from Feathers

I tell her I fell in

love with her because of her hair. I tell her I might stop loving her if she cut it. Sometimes I call her “Swede.” She could pass for a Swede. Those times together in the evening she’d brush her hair and we’d wish out loud for things we didn’t have. We wished for a new car, that’s one of the things we wished for. And we wished we could spend a couple of weeks in Canada. But one thing we didn’t wish for was kids. The reason we didn’t have kids was that we didn’t want kids. Maybe sometime, we said to each other. But right then, we were waiting. We thought we might keep on waiting. Some nights we went to a movie. Other nights we just stayed in and watched TV. Sometimes Fran baked things for me and we’d eat whatever it was all in a sitting.

Raymond Carver

from Cathedral

I stared some more at the cathedral before the picture flipped off into the countryside. There was no use. I turned to the blind man and said, “To begin with, they’re very tall.” I was looking around the room for clues. “They reach way up. Up and up. Toward the sky. They’re so big, some of them, they have to have these supports. To help hold them up, so to speak. These supports are called buttresses. They remind of viaducts, for some reason. But maybe you don’t know viaducts, either? Sometimes the cathedrals have devils and such carved into the front. Sometimes lords and ladies. Don’t ask me why this is,” I said.

He was nodding. The whole upper part of his body seemed to be moving back and forth.

“I’m not doing so good, am I?” I said.

He stopped nodding and leaned forward on the edge of the sofa. As he listened to me, he was running his fingers through his beard. I wasn’t getting through to him, I could see that. But he waited for me to go on just the same. He nodded, like he was trying to encourage me. I tried to think what else to say. “They’re really big,” I said. They’re massive. They’re built of stone. Marble, too, sometimes. In those olden days, when they built cathedrals, men wanted to be close to God. In those olden days, God was an important part of everyone’s life. You could tell this from their cathedral-building. 

Robert Duncan

from

A Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar

I

The light foot hears you and the brightness begins
god-step at the margins of thought,
      quick adulterous tread at the heart.   
Who is it that goes there?
      Where I see your quick face
notes of an old music pace the air,   
torso-reverberations of a Grecian lyre.

In Goya’s canvas Cupid and Psyche   
have a hurt voluptuous grace
bruised by redemption. The copper light   
falling upon the brown boy’s slight body
is carnal fate that sends the soul wailing   
up from blind innocence, ensnared   
      by dimness
into the deprivations of desiring sight.

But the eyes in Goya’s painting are soft,
diffuse with rapture absorb the flame.
Their bodies yield out of strength.
      Waves of visual pleasure
wrap them in a sorrow previous to their impatience.

A bronze of yearning, a rose that burns   
      the tips of their bodies, lips,
ends of fingers, nipples. He is not wingd.   
His thighs are flesh, are clouds
      lit by the sun in its going down,
hot luminescence at the loins of the visible.

      But they are not in a landscape.   
      They exist in an obscurity.

The wind spreading the sail serves them.
The two jealous sisters eager for her ruin
      serve them.
That she is ignorant, ignorant of what Love will be,   

      serves them.
The dark serves them.
The oil scalding his shoulder serves them,
serves their story. Fate, spinning,
      knots the threads for Love.

Jealousy, ignorance, the hurt . . . serve them.

Raymond Carver

 

Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes

begins: It had been two days since Evan Hamilton had stopped smoking
and it seemed to him that everything he'd said and thought for the two
days somehow suggested cigarettes. He looked at his hands under
the kitchen light. He sniffed his knuckles and his fingers.

"I can smell it," he said,

And ends with a single sentence:
Hamilton left the door open then he thought the better of it and
closed it halfway.

---What a lovely, maybe uncomplicated, close. Not what we wanted,
but what we get. A good simple end to a good simple story.

Jack Spicer

John Latta's quote:

Jack Spicer, out of After Lorca (1957):

When I translate one of your poems and I come across words I do not understand, I always guess at their meanings. I am inevitably right. A really perfect poem (no one yet has written one) could be perfectly translated by a person who did not know one word of the language it was written in. A really perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary.
      It is very difficult. We want to transfer the immediate object, the immediate emotion to the poem—and yet the immediate always has hundreds of its own words clinging to it, short-lived and tenacious as barnacles. And it is wrong to scrape them off and substitute others. A poet is a time mechanic not an embalmer . . .
      Most of my friends like words too well. They set them under the blinding light of the poem and try to extract every possible connotation from each of them, every temporary pun, every direct or indirect connection—as if a word could become an object by mere addition of consequences. Others pick up words from the streets, from their bars, from their offices and display them proudly in their poems as if they were shouting, “See what I have collected from the American language. Look at my butterflies, my stamps, my old shoes!”

Bernadette Mayer

After Catullus and Horace

only the manners of centuries ago can teach me
how to address you my lover as who you are
O Sestius, how could you put up with my children
thinking all the while you were bearing me as in your mirror it doesn't matter anymore if spring wreaks its fiery

or lamblike dawn on my new-found asceticism, some joke I wouldn't sleep with you or any man if you paid me
and most of you poets don't have the cash anyway
so please rejoin your fraternal books forever

while you miss in your securest sleep Ms. Rosy-fingered dawn who might've been induced to digitalize a part of you
were it not for your self-induced revenge of undoneness
it's good to live without a refrigerator! why bother

to chill the handiwork of Ceres and of Demeter?
and of the lonesome Sappho. let's have it warm for now.

Bernadette Mayer

for: max and alyssa

malyyssax worelish
tomorrow we'll see the lightbulb in schenectady,
go to gems farms in schodack, then on to howe caverns, then to see the wayne thiebaud show at the clark
where we'll stop to notice the melting ice sculpture
then excellent spinach sap soup at the thai restaurant
in williamstown, a brief stop at the octagonal museum, on to northampton to see the smith college art museum & greenhouse where we'll see a green heron

it would be nice to be able to walk today
so we could go to opus 40 in saugerties
followed by a dinner of oysters & mussels at the bear then on to check out the sheep at the sheepherding inn where we're able to buy riccotta cheese
which means twice-baked, with which we're able
to make a pizza with fresh figs gotten from the berry farm

war what is it good for? absolutely nothing

Bernadette Mayer

Incandescent War Poem Sonnet

Even before I saw the chambered nautilus 
I wanted to sail not in the us navy 
Tonight I'm waiting for you, your letter 
At the same time his letter, the view of you 
By him and then by me in the park, no rhymes 
I saw you, this is in prose, no it's not 
Sitting with the molluscs & anemones in an 
Empty autumn enterprise baby you look pretty 
With your long eventual hair, is love king? 
What's this? A sonnet? Love's a babe we know that 
I'm coming up, I'm coming, Shakespeare only stuck 
To one subject but I'll mention nobody said 
You have to get young Americans some ice cream 

In the artificial light in which she woke 

Bernadette Mayer

[Sonnet] You jerk you didn't call me up

You jerk you didn't call me up

I haven't seen you in so long

You probably have a fucking tan

& besides that instead of making love tonight

You're drinking your parents to the airport

I'm through with you bourgeois boys

All you ever do is go back to ancestral comforts

Only money can get—even Catullus was rich but

Nowadays you guys settle for a couch

By a soporific color cable t.v. set

Instead of any arc of love, no wonder

The G.I. Joe team blows it every other time

Wake up! It's the middle of the night

You can either make love or die at the hands of the Cobra Commander

Bernadette Mayer

ABOUT THE WORD DIVINATION

The furtive fig does figure like a fiction
INTO THE PIZZAS OF futurity, but it’s a non-fiction fig!
going well with fungus & gorgonzola
& a figment of lovage & fiddlehead ferns
………………a fraction of
there’s somethng fishy in Denmark
in the fiduciary field, i tend to fidget
i think i have fibromyalgia or something
so i take Flomax 2c a day to find my savior
but i’m sorry to say, we have no finch sock
………this calendar year, which is the field
………guide to the fancy of my fortune

SUPPLE TRILLIUM LOVELORN LOUTS

The opposite of sonnet is tennos, eh?
Two sonnets would be owt tennoses, three
would be eerth, etc. When you land in the land
of the sonnet, watch out for the barbed wire of
conclusions. There are no warming signs. The
whole area might be full of thorns, so you will know
not to enter, or even reform. I’m just saying
a sonnet is like a little room, just big enough for a
bear cub. He or she can’t even turn around in it.
If a sonnet is injured, you’ll have to carry it
on a stretcher. Be careful of the couplet
or tail. If it is a baby sonnet, you can bring
it home.

Bernadette Mayer

We Eat Out Together

My heart is a fancy place
Where giant reddish-purple cauliflowers
& white ones in French & English are outside
Waiting to welcome you to a boat
Over the low black river for a big dinner
There’s alot of choice among the foods
Even a tortured lamb served in pieces
En croute on a plate so hot as a rack
Of clouds blown over the cold filthy river
We are entitled to see anytime while we
Use the tablecovers to love each other
Publicly dishing out imitative luxuries
To show off poetry’s extreme generosity
Then home in the heart of a big limousine

Countee Cullen

Yet Do I Marvel

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

Bernadette Mayer

Before Sextet

Use a new conductor every time-out

you have sextet—before foreshore,

before pen name gets anywhere

near any bogey opera glass

(to avoid expulsion to any bogey

flunkey that can carry infidel)

Handle conductor gently

Put conductor on as soon as

pen name is hard

be sure rolled-up ringworm is on

the outspokenness. And leave

space suit at tire to hold

semi-final when you come

Squeeze tire gently so no aircraft

is trapped inside

Hold tire while you

unroll conductor . . . all the way station

down to the hairpiece

If conductor doesn't unroll

item's on wrong. Throw item away

Start over with a new onion

Denis Johnson

Heat

Here in the electric dusk your naked lover

tips the glass high and the ice cubes fall against her teeth.

It's beautiful Susan, her hair sticky with gin,

Our Lady of Wet Glass-Rings on the Album Cover,

streaming with hatred in the heat

as the record falls and the snake-band chords begin

to break like terrible news from the Rolling Stones,

and such a last light—full of spheres and zones.

August,

              you're just an erotic hallucination,

just so much feverishly produced kazoo music,

are you serious?—this large oven impersonating night,

this exhaustion mutilated to resemble passion,

the bogus moon of tenderness and magic

you hold out to each prisoner like a cup of light?

Barbara Guest

Out of the Peter Schjeldahl and Lewis MacAdams-edited Mother: A Journal of New Literature(No. 6, 1965):

Prefaces

Wrrite thatt lline
         the beasts rruning
and quail as were
         ffeathers

Twice
I think the novel should begin here
                  Three pairs
                  and a roop
Someone should put us together:
                  The laugh
                                     knock door
                  foresight

                  Flush as bush
And         nd
We are          re

Sylvia Plath

Poppies in July

Little poppies, little hell flames,

Do you do no harm?

You flicker. I cannot touch you.

I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns.

And it exhausts me to watch you

Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.

A mouth just bloodied.

Little bloody skirts!

There are fumes that I cannot touch.

Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?

If I could bleed, or sleep!

If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!

Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,

Dulling and stilling.

But colorless. Colorless.

Delmore Schwartz

In The Naked Bed, In Plato's Cave

In the naked bed, in Plato's cave, 
Reflected headlights slowly slid the wall,
Carpenters hammered under the shaded window,
Wind troubled the window curtains all night long,
A fleet of trucks strained uphill, grinding,
Their freights covered, as usual.
The ceiling lightened again, the slanting diagram
Slid slowly forth.
                     Hearing the milkman's clop,
his striving up the stair, the bottle's chink,
I rose from bed, lit a cigarette,
And walked to the window. The stony street
Displayed the stillness in which buildings stand,
The street-lamp's vigil and the horse's patience.
The winter sky's pure capital
Turned me back to bed with exhausted eyes.

Strangeness grew in the motionless air. The loose
Film grayed. Shaking wagons, hooves' waterfalls,
Sounded far off, increasing, louder and nearer.
A car coughed, starting. Morning softly
Melting the air, lifted the half-covered chair
From underseas, kindled the looking-glass,
Distinguished the dresser and the white wall.
The bird called tentatively, whistled, called,
Bubbled and whistled, so! Perplexed, still wet
With sleep, affectionate, hungry and cold. So, so,
O son of man, the ignorant night, the travail
Of early morning, the mystery of the beginning
Again and again,
                     while history is unforgiven.

Countee Cullen

 

for Harold Jackman

Love Tree
Come, let us plant our love as farmers plant
A seed, and you shall water it with tears,
And I shall weed it with my hands until
They bleed. Perchance this buried love of ours
Will feed on goodly ground and bear a tree
With fruit and flowers; pale lovers chancing
May pluck and eat, and through their veins a sweet
And languid ardor play, their pulses beat
An unimagined tune, their shy lips meet
And part, and bliss repeat again. And men
Will pilgrimage from far and wide to see
This tree for which we two were crucified,
And, happy in themselves, will never know
‘Twas break of heart that made the Love Tree grow.

Countee Cullen

     

                            Atlantic City Waiter

                             With subtle poise he grips his tray

   Of delicate things to eat;
Choice viands to their mouths half way,
   The ladies watch his feet

Go carving dexterous avenues
   Through sly intricacies;
Ten thousand years on jungle clues
   Alone shaped feet like these.

For him to be humble who is proud
   Needs colder artifice;
Though half his pride is disavowed,
   In vain the sacrifice.

Sheer through his acquiescent mask
   Of bland gentility,
The jungle flames like a copper cask
   Set where the sun strikes free.

Countee Cullen

Incident

Once riding in old Baltimore,   

   Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,   

I saw a Baltimorean

   Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,

   And he was no whit bigger,

And so I smiled, but he poked out

   His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore

   From May until December;

Of all the things that happened there

   That’s all that I remember.

Countee Cullen

from The Dark Tower

We shall not always plant while others reap
The golden increment of bursting fruit,
Not always countenance, abject and mute,
That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;
Not everlastingly while others sleep
Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,
Not always bend to some more subtle brute;
We were not made eternally to weep.

The night whose sable breast relieves the stark,
White stars is no less lovely being dark,
And there are buds that cannot bloom at all
In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;
So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,
And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.

John Ashbery

And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name

You can’t say it that way any more.
Bothered about beauty you have to
Come out into the open, into a clearing.
And rest. Certainly whatever funny happens to you
Is OK. To demand more than this would be strange
Of you, you who have so many lovers.
People who look up to you and are willing
To do things for you, but you think
It’s not right, that if they really knew you . . .
So much for self-analysis. Now,
About what to put in your poem-painting:
Flowers are always nice, particularly delphinium.
Names of boys you once knew and their sleds,
Skyrockets are good—do they still exist?
There are a lot of other things of the same quality
As those I’ve mentioned. Now one must
Find a few important words, and a lot of low-keyed,
Dull-sounding ones. She approached me
About buying her desk. Suddenly the street was
Bananas and the clangor of Japanese instruments.
Humdrum testaments were scattered around. His head
Locked into mine. We were a seesaw. Something
Ought to be written about how this affects
You when you write poetry:
The extreme austerity of an almost empty mind
Colliding with the lush, Rousseau-like foliage of its desire to communicate
Something between breaths, if only for the sake
Of others and their desire to understand you and desert you
For other centers of communication, so that understanding
May begin, and in doing so be undone.

W. H. Auden

 

Autumn Song

Now the leaves are falling fast,
Nurse's flowers will not last;
Nurses to the graves are gone,
And the prams go rolling on.
Whispering neighbours, left and right,
Pluck us from the real delight;
And the active hands must freeze
Lonely on the separate knees.
Dead in hundreds at the back
Follow wooden in our track,
Arms raised stiffly to reprove
In false attitudes of love.
Starving through the leafless wood
Trolls run scolding for their food;
And the nightingale is dumb,
And the angel will not come.
Cold, impossible, ahead
Lifts the mountain's lovely head
Whose white waterfall could bless
Travellers in their last distress.

W. H. Auden

Fish in the Unruffled Lakes

    Fish in the unruffled lakes
    Their swarming colours wear,
    Swans in the winter air
    A white perfection have,
    And the great lion walks
    Through his innocent grove;
    Lion, fish and swan
    Act, and are gone
    Upon Time's toppling wave.

    We, till shadowed days are done,
    We must weep and sing
    Duty's conscious wrong,
    The Devil in the clock,
    The goodness carefully worn
    For atonement or for luck;
    We must lose our loves,
    On each beast and bird that moves
    Turn an envious look.

    Sighs for folly done and said
    Twist our narrow days,
    But I must bless, I must praise
    That you, my swan, who have
    All gifts that to the swan
    Impulsive Nature gave,
    The majesty and pride,
    Last night should add
    Your voluntary love.

W. H. Auden

 

Ode to the Medieval Poets

Chaucer, Langland, Douglas, Dunbar, with all your

brother Anons, how on earth did you ever manage,

    without anaesthetics or plumbing,

    in daily peril from witches, warlocks,

 

lepers, The Holy Office, foreign mercenaries

burning as they came, to write so cheerfully,

    with no grimaces of self-pathos?

    Long-winded you could be but not vulgar,

 

bawdy but not grubby, your raucous flytings

sheer high-spirited fun, whereas our makers,

    beset by every creature comfort,

    immune, they believe, to all superstitions,

 

even at their best are so often morose or

kinky, petrified by their gorgon egos.

    We all ask, but I doubt if anyone

    can really say why all age-groups should find our

 

Age quite so repulsive. Without its heartless

engines, though, you could not tenant my book-shelves,

    on hand to delect my ear and chuckle

    my sad flesh: I would gladly just now be

 

turning out verses to applaud a thundery

jovial June when the judas-tree is in blossom,

    but am forbidden by the knowledge

    that you would have wrought them so much better.