Washington Post Poet's Choice

Saffron · Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2008 8:53 am Post subject: 11/9/08

Poet's Choice

By Mary Karr
Sunday, November 9, 2008; BW12

In his seminal essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent," T.S. Eliot argues that only a poet's grounding in history sustains the work after the tidal upsurge of adolescent passion has receded. Jack Gilbert draws from history when he goes from a warrior's fevered heroics to the average wife's daily fidelity in "The Abnormal Is Not Courage":

The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German

tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers.

A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace.

And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question

the bravery. Say it's not courage. Call it a passion.

Would say courage isn't that. Not at its best.

Those overly punctuated lines make you stop and start, forcing you to inhabit a mind formulating an opinion, one phrase at a time. And then he delves into what he means:

It was impossible, and with form. They rode in sunlight.

Were mangled. But I say courage is not the abnormal.

Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches.

The worthless can manage in public, or for the moment.

It is too near the whore's heart: the bounty of impulse,

and the failure to sustain even small kindness.

Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of

being.

Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality.

Accomplishment. The even loyalty. But fresh.

Not the Prodigal Son, nor Faustus. But Penelope.

The thing steady and clear. Then the crescendo.

The real form. The culmination. And the exceeding.

Not the surprise. The amazed understanding. The

marriage,

not the month's rapture. Not the exception. The beauty that is of many days. Steady and clear.

It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.

In a landscape of more contemporary suffering, "A Brief for the Defense," Gilbert still insists on hope:

. . . We must have

the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless

furnace of this world. To make injustice the only

measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,

we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.

" The Abnormal Is Not Courage" is from "Monolithos: Poems 1962 and 1982" (Knopf, 1982). "A Brief for the Defense" is from "Refusing Heaven" (Knopf, 2005).

Saffron · Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2008 7:03 pm Post subject: 11/16/08

Poet's Choice

By Mary Karr
Sunday, November 16, 2008; BW12

Poetry's roots in sacred song are undeniable. Native American hunters around a fire praised the Great Spirit for sending buffalo. In other cultures, tillers of the soil begged a cloudless sky to split open and loose down rain. I would rank Robert Bly's translations of Kabir -- a 15th-century Indian ecstatic poet raised Muslim and infused with wisdom from both the Sufis and Hindus -- up there with the Hebrew Psalms and the Song of Solomon. In this poem, Kabir refers to the soul as "my inner lover":

I talk to my inner lover, and I say, why such

rush?

We sense that there is some sort of spirit that loves

birds and animals and the ants --

perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you in

your mother's womb.

Is it logical you would be walking around entirely

orphaned now?

The truth is you turned away yourself,

and decided to go into the dark alone.

Now you are tangled up in others, and have forgotten

what you once knew,

and that's why everything you do has some weird

failure in it.

When I read this poem as a young woman who didn't believe she had a soul, I felt it pierce me with its psychological acuity. Kabir lists "birds and animals and the ants" in a way that draws the eye from the soaring sky to the earth's crawly, exoskeletal creatures. In doing so, he connects a vague, blank heaven and the tiny, miraculous particular. He inspires us to re-observe the world. In the pagan, pantheistic world view, when we disconnect from nature, we unplug from the divine source. In the Judeo-Christian view, when we orphan ourselves from God, we go dark. In the psychological model, when we try to wall off our true selves or pasts, we forget who we are. Kabir always turns us to the god inside us, as in this poem:

Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.

My shoulder is against yours.

You will not find me in stupas, not in Indian shrine

rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:

not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding around

your own neck, nor in eating nothing but vegetables.

When you really look for me, you will see me

instantly --

you will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?

He is the breath inside the breath.

Bly doesn't apologize for not knowing the Hindi of the originals or the Bengali translation that inspired the Victorian English he cribbed from. "If anyone speaking Hindi would like to help me," he writes, "I'll do them over." These translations could be more accurate, maybe, but hardly more powerful.

(These poems are from "The Kabir Book" by Robert Bly. Copyright © 1971, 1977 by Robert Bly. © 1977 by the Seventies Press. Reprinted by permission of Beacon).

Saffron · Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 10:13 pm Post subject: 11/23/08

11/23/08 is missing - I will post it when I get an opportunity.

--Okay, here is the missing column.

I'm a crank whose natural sta ...
The Washington Post - Washington, D.C.
Author: Mary Karr
Date: Nov 23, 2008

I'm a crank whose natural state is ingratitude, so I need to ingest some poetry to gear up for Thanksgiving. Polish poet Adam Zagajewski's "Try to Praise the Mutilated World" is as helpful as it is moving because it acknowledges some verifiable causes of grumpiness:

Try to praise the mutilated world.

Remember June's long days,

and wild strawberries, drops of rose wine.

The nettles that methodically overgrow

the abandoned homesteads of exiles.

You must praise the mutilated world.

You watched the stylish yachts and ships;

one of them had a long trip ahead of it,

while salty oblivion awaited others.

You've seen the refugees going nowhere,

you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.

You should praise the mutilated world.

Remember the moments when we were together

in a white room and the curtain fluttered.

Return in thought to the concert where music flared.

You gathered acorns in the park in autumn

and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.

Praise the mutilated world

and the gray feather a thrush lost,

and the gentle light that strays and vanishes

and returns.

For Zagajewski, historical carnage is endured by loving those close to us ("when we were together/ in a white room"). The poem moves from large to small to large again. By contrast, in "If I May," Mississippi poet Brooks Haxton drolly springs from the worldly occasion of receiving a poetry prize to a God whose existence is -- though scientifically dubious -- praiseworthy:

I would like to thank (besides my family, you,

my teachers, friends, and readers) hydrogen

for fueling the stars without which poetry

would not exist. The sun has been the star

most crucial to my work, but distant stars

have been there for me, too, and planets, meteors,

the moon. About the moon, I'm grateful

that our boys left flags up there, and brought back

rocks and dust. I'd like to thank the dust.

The oceans may or may not have put

molecules together that first time

to form a living cell, but I would like

to thank the oceans for that dreamy look

they give us when the cameras turn toward Earth

from outer space. . . .

. . . God I want to thank

especially, if He exists, which I believe

He does. He may not. Probably not.

But I would like to thank Him. Thanks.

In this season of store-bought pies and ho-hum prayers, take these poems as genuine appetizers.

Adam Zagajewski's "Try to Praise the Mutilated World" is from "Without End" (Farrar Straus Giroux 2002). Brooks Haxton's "If I May" is from "They Lift Their Wings To Cry" (Knopf 2008).

Saffron · Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 10:13 pm Post subject: 11/30/08

Poet's Choice

By Poet's Choice
Sunday, November 30, 2008; BW12

In the Christian liturgical calendar, we're entering Advent season, the four weeks before Christmas. This year it starts on November 30. It's preceded by "ordinary time," not a period of routine, but of ordinal or numbered weeks. In Marie Howe's new collection, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, we delve into the connection between regular life and the intensified life inspired by revelation. Her "Prologue" starts in the dreary quotidian but then catapults to the least ordinary event in America's recent history: Sept. 11, 2001.

The rules, once again, applied

One loaf=one loaf. One fish=one fish.

The so-called Kings were dead.

And the woman who had been healed grew tired of

telling her story,

and sometimes asked her daughter to tell it.

People generally worshipped where their parents had

worshipped --

the men who'd hijacked the airplane prayed where the

dead pilots had been sitting,

and the passengers prayed from their seats

-- so many songs went up and out into the thinning air . . .

People, listening and watching, nodded and wept, and,

leaving the theater,

one turned to the other and said, What do you want to

do now?

And the other one said, I don't know. What do you want

to do?

It was the Coming of Ordinary Time. First Sunday,

second Sunday.

And then (for who knows how long) it was here.

In "The Star Market," Howe swings again between what's sacred and our routine aversion to suffering. While the store in her poem is crowded with affliction, its guiding star ultimately evokes the Nativity:

The people Jesus loved were shopping at The Star

Market yesterday.

An old lead-colored man standing next to me at the

checkout

breathed so heavily I had to step back a few steps.

Even after his bags were packed he still stood, breathing

hard and

hawking into his hand. The feeble, the lame, I could

hardly look at them:

shuffling through the aisles, they smelled of decay. . .

. . . I had wandered in

with the rest of them: sour milk, bad meat:

looking for cereal and spring water.

Jesus must have been a saint, I said to myself, looking

for my lost car. . . .

Howe imagines the outcasts in ancient times crawling from public baths begging for mercy. Then she asks herself -- even if Christ promised her healing -- "Could I bear the look on his face?" How often we deny each other compassion, though it's available to us daily and is the truest miracle of every faith.

"Prologue" and "The Star Market" are from "The Kingdom of Ordinary Time" by Marie Howe (Norton, 2008).

DWill · Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 8:29 pm Post subject:

Thanks again, Saffron, for posting these columns. They are truly a resource. I wouldn't be surprised if "Book World" is the only weekly mass-circulation paper to have such a column. We get selections each week from someone who knows poetry deeply and can comment on it just enough to enhance our understanding.
DWill

Saffron · Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 8:35 pm Post subject:

Saffron · Posted: Wed Dec 10, 2008 10:27 pm Post subject: 12/7/08

Poet's Choice

By Mary Karr
Sunday, December 7, 2008; BW14

Like President-elect Barack Obama, poet Thomas Lux comes from humble beginnings, born to a milkman and a Sears & Roebuck switchboard operator. In a time when the country faces so many challenges, Lux's deeply moral poems emphasize the work that we must do together. However unpretentiously one of his poems might start, it often builds to a strong emotional finish.
Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy

For some semitropical reason

when the rains fall

relentlessly they fall

into swimming pools, these otherwise

bright and scary

arachnids. They can swim

a little, but not for long

and they can't climb the ladder out.

They usually drown -- but

if you want their favor,

if you believe there is justice,

a reward for not loving

the death of ugly

and even dangerous (the eel, hog snake,

rats) creatures, if

you believe these things, then

you would leave a lifebuoy

or two in your swimming pool at night.

And in the morning

you would haul ashore

the huddled, hairy survivors

and escort them

back to the bush, and know,

be assured that at least these saved,

as individuals, would not turn up

again someday

in your hat, drawer,

or the tangled underworld

of your socks, and that even --

when your belief in justice

merges with your belief in dreams --

they may tell the others

in a sign language

four times as subtle

and complicated as man's

that you are good,

that you love them,

that you would save them again.

"Tarantulas on a Lifebuoy" is from "New and Selected Poems" (Houghton Mifflin, 1997).

Saffron · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2008 6:11 am Post subject:

Just a heads up - I've inserted the missing 11/23/08 column. You can find it in date sequence.

DWill · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2008 9:33 am Post subject:

Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns
********************************************
The sun has been the star
most crucial to my work, but distant stars
have been there for me, too, and planets, meteors,
the moon. About the moon, I'm grateful

These were great ones the poet chose. Zagajewski's (even in translation, I assume) can make your knees weak! We do need to praise the mutilated world, as he tells us. We can't truly appreciate the world unless we also recognize that is mutilated, he seems also to imply. We don't recognize what is good, or good fortune that we have, except by comparison with opposite conditions. This might be an unfortunate part of our nature, but seems inescapable.

I got a big kick out of the next poem that took such a different tone toward thanksgiving. I'd love to actually hear a speaker say, in the trite People Magazine way that has become so common, "distant stars have been there for me, too." That is a comic gem. Yet there is a serious point beneath, which is that we're in the middle of a miracle of existence.

Saffron · No Poet's Choice printed on 12/14/08!!

No Poet's Choice printed on 12/14/08!!

DWill · Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 7:56 pm Post subject:

Say it ain't so!

Saffron · Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2008 8:51 am Post subject:

Saffron · Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 8:37 pm Post subject: 12/28/08

Another week of bad news for Book World -- none published this week.

Saffron · Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 9:35 am Post subject: Jan. 4, 2009

Poet's Choice

By Mary Karr
Sunday, January 4, 2009; BW12

Pretty much any spiritual practice, whether religious in the formal sense (Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, etc.) or purely secular (counting breaths, a centering prayer), finds divinity in contemplation. To become fully alive, we must still our chaotic desires. The poems of Greek-born poet Tryfon Tolides work almost like mini-meditations, bringing us to a sweet, nameless emptiness.

Calling

Come to the point where, finally, you are lost,

wayside-sitting, wind-gazing, train-whistle-listening,

if you want to converse with the invisible presence,

continual, sustained, indwelling, be lost,

be abandoned, so that the heart, the mind, as big

as God, come to the place where you are lost,

so that all your days and the shuttering of each day's

light and the blue magnetic incomprehensible

jumping and motionless blue of twilight and the fine

blackening after, around the incomprehensible

waiting and breathing of trees with their delight-inducing

cloud-depths and freedom-shapes and darting birds,

happen in pure glory, in ineffable joy of consciousness,

so that your senses overfill to muteness,

so that mere being becomes the form of your praise.

Often, Tolides finds communion with elemental forces. In this meditation, fire not only destroys but clarifies. Time can do that, too, burning us down to a more soulful state. Here's an untitled poem by Tolides that explores that idea:

The fire is now so sweet I will not leave the room,

I have spun and spun it all day to its rightness and am

now deflatedly proud.

The heat is so steady, the small logs burn so slowly in

the stove.

They go on burning after they are burned, burned

glowing whole remnants,

After smoke, hissing, last breaths, crackles, some blue

reserve flared

From under the bark, a wind, they become x-rays of

great detail of their former selves,

brittle refinement of surface chafe and molten-like core,

more gone and more alive,

striations of woodflesh only visible in darkness, pure fuel

now

heading for the fineness of ash. I will not answer the

phone. I am waiting

only for the rain now, to seal me more perfectly. And for

nothing,

which has arrived; we'll greet the rain together. Some

sweetness, some silence,

has descended upon me and I can say: now.

"Calling" and "The fire is now so sweet" have not been published. They have been used by permission of the author.

GentleReader9 · Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:15 pm Post subject:

Saffron,

How beautiful! Do you know this poet personally, so that you were able to get permission to post unpublished poems that are so wonderful? You lucky thing! And we're so lucky to get to read them.


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