Look at Elvis, He Sold His Soul and They Crowned Him King...

I'm about to head out the door to play a show with Star Called Sun and realized I hadn't done my entry for the day. So I thought I'd find a music poem and stumbled across this in "Sweet Nothings: An Anthology of Rock and Roll in American Poetry," ed. Jim Elledge. There's some really terrible stuff in here, but this one by Thom Gunn has some fun imagery and the truly excellent line "The enthroned cannot revolt," which is just as true of Elvis as it is of Castro as it is of Robert Frost and the Sex Pistols. Once you've revolted and reached the top you're done as a rebel.


Also, I had no idea Gunn had emigrated to the US, hence my initial confusion as to whether he counted as "American" per the anthology title. I guess if you count Eliot and Auden in both English and American camps why not Gunn?

Painkillers

Thom Gunn

The King of rock ‘n’ roll
Grown pudgy, almost matronly,
Fatty in gold lame,
mad King encircled
by a court of guards, suffering
delusions about assassination,
obsessed by guns, fearing
rivalry and revolt


popping his skin
with massive hits of painkiller


dying at 42.


What was the pain?
Pain had been the colours
of the bad boy with the sneer.


The story of pain, of separation,
was the divine comedy
he had translated
from black into white.


For white children too
the act of naming the pain
unsheathed
a keen joy at the heart of it.


Here they are still!
the disobedient
who keep a culture alive
by subverting it, turning
for example a subway
into a garden of graffiti.


But the puffy King
lived on, his painkillers
neutralizing, neutralizing,
until he became
ludicrous in performance.


The enthroned cannot revolt.
What was the pain
he needed to kill
if not the ultimate pain


of feeling no pain?

Here's Why Every Day Is Mother's Day

We just watched "Away We Go" and it started me thinking about mothers. Mothers were always so much older than me, usually pretty stern, but strong and tough. (Like pioneer women or Beverly Crusher.) It seems so many of my friends and acquaintances are having children and it's both exciting and fear-inducing. It's weird to think that I'm older than my parents were when I was born - the old photographs of their '70s glory with tinted eyeglasses and demure sun dresses.


This is by Scott Cairns, a poet I'll always hold very dear. In college, he kind of became the mascot for our fledgling Dead Poets Society. We took a trip to Memphis to hear him read and it was all the joy, nostalgia, adrenaline, meditation and love you can cram into a 3-day trip , and we all dressed up in our fanciest clothes to celebrate a poet and all poets and all poetry, and we parked outside the venue as the sun went down to doze listening to Chopin's "Nocturnes" and on the drive back to school put on "Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk" and "The Complete Robert Johnson Recordings" on the stereo to cover the awestruck silence we could never name or acknowledge we felt because it would evaporate like dew on the shore of the Wolf River.


Scott Cairns taught me that you didn't have to be dead and famous to be great. The Old Masters weren't old when they made their art. Life is just as good and bad now as it ever was or will be. And life will always go on, until it doesn't. And after it doesn't, it still goes on. 


Here's one for all the mothers I know.

The Turning of Lot's Wife

Scott Cairns

Genesis 19. 23-26

First of all, she had a name, and she had a history.
She was Marah, and long before the breath of
death's angel turned her to bitter dust, she had
slipped from her mother's womb with remarkable
ease, had moved in due time from infancy to
womanhood with a manner of grace that came to
be the sole blessing of her aging parents. She was
beloved.

And like most daughters who are beloved by both a
mother and a father, Marah moved about her city
with unflinching compassion, tending to the
dispossessed as if they were her own. And they
became her own. In a city given to all species of
excess, there were a great many in agony--
abandoned men, abandoned women, abandoned
children. Upon these she poured out her substance
and her care.

Her first taste of despair was at the directive of the
messengers, who announced without apparent
sentiment what was to come, and what was to be
done. With surprising banality, they stood and
spoke. One coughed dryly into his fist and would
not meet her eyes. And one took a sip from the cup


she offered before he handed it back and the two
disappeared into the night.


Unlike her husband--coward and sycophant--the
woman remained faithful unto death. For even as
the man fled the horrors of a city's conflagration,
outrunning Marah and both girls as they all rushed
into the desert, the woman stopped. She looked
ahead briefly to the flat expanse, seeing her tall
daughters, whose strong legs and churning arms
were taking them safely to the hills; she saw,
farther ahead, the old man whom she had served
and comforted for twenty years. In the impossible
interval where she stood, Marah saw that she could
not turn her back on even one doomed child of the
city, but must turn her back instead upon the
saved.

Envious Much?

Dammit, I was going to write about Larry Levis' "Winter Stars" today but this guy beat me to the punch, and wrote it far more powerfully than I would have. My inner egotist protests, "But they're only doing a poem every week, you've got to do something ever day!" Cry to somebody who carries a hanky.


So today's post is a copout - click here to read some awesome intellectual jackass talk about a sweet poem the way I wish I would.

19 Lines

In high school I was taught that villanelles were considered "light verse" before the 20th-century - a form for slight, entertaining poems. Seems that's not strictly true - it was seen as sophomoric and overwrought, too exotic for its own good. I don't know if it really was Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" in 1952 that changed it, but if you search high and low it's still tough to find a comic villanelle.


Oh, and here's an interesting fact courtesy of Wikipedia: "The modern nineteen-line dual-refrain form of the villanelle derives from nineteenth-century admiration of the only Renaissance poem in that form: a poem about a turtledove titled 'Villanelle' by Jean Passerat (1534–1602)."


Here's a translation of that one:

Villanelle

Jean Passerat

I have lost my turtledove:
 Isn't that her gentle coo? 
I will go and find my love.


Here you mourn your mated love; 
Oh, God—I am mourning too:
 I have lost my turtledove.


If you trust your faithful dove, 
Trust my faith is just as true; 
I will go and find my love.


Plaintively you speak your love; 
All my speech is turned into 
"I have lost my turtledove."


Such a beauty was my dove, 
Other beauties will not do; 
I will go and find my love.


Death, again entreated of, 
Take one who is offered you: 
I have lost my turtledove; I
 will go and find my love.




I found this in "Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism," edited by my strictly-platonic lit-crush Mark Jarman. This is not a paragon of the form, but I'm saving Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" and Theodore Roethke's "The Waking" for another time.

Entropic Villanelle

Tom Disch

Things break down in different ways.
The odds say croupiers will win.
We can’t, for that, omit their praise.


I have had heartburn several days,
And it’s ten years since I’ve been thin.
Things break down in different ways.


Green is the lea and smooth as baize
Where witless sheep crop Jessamine
(We can’t, for that, omit their praise)


And meanwhile melanomas graze
Upon the meadows of the skin
(Things break down in different ways).


Though apples spoil, and meat decays,
And teeth erode like aspirin,
We can’t, for that, omit their praise.


The odds still favor croupiers,
But give the wheel another spin.
Things break down in different ways:
We can’t, for that, omit their praise.

Holy Versifying Poetasters, Batman!

I've been reading a lot of graphic novels checked out from the library, both of the superpowered and non-superpowered varieties. (Though I'll admit I do gravitate more towards the former.) And apparently there are one or two anthologies of "superhero poetry" out there. Anyone want to take odds on the proportion of Superman-poems to everybody-else-poems? 

I enjoy this page which dares to ask: "What is the difference between the Old English poem Beowulf and Batman?"

I also found this site that seems fascinating, and they've got a pretty cool project: replace the word "love" in poems with another word, be it "pickle" or "Batman."

On Batman

Thomas Kempis

Batman is a mighty power,
a great and complete good.
Batman alone lightens every burden, and makes rough places smooth.
He bears every hardship as though it were nothing, and renders
all bitterness sweet and acceptable.


Nothing is sweeter than Batman,
Nothing stronger,
Nothing higher,
Nothing wider,
Nothing more pleasant,
Nothing fuller or better in heaven or earth; for Batman is born of God.


Batman flies, runs and leaps for joy.
He is free and unrestrained.
Batman knows no limits, but ardently transcends all bounds.
Batman feels no burden, takes no account of toil,
attempts things beyond his strength.


Batman sees nothing as impossible,
for he feels able to achieve all things.
He is strange and effective,
while those who lack Batman faint and fail.


Batman is not fickle and sentimental,
nor is he intent on vanities.
Like a living flame and a burning torch,
he surges upward and surely surmounts every obstacle.




I've heard some argue that "Jack Bauer" would work here as well, but that guy bothers me.


Superman also bothers me. Always has. I can't say why exactly, maybe it's the getup, the slogans, the lame girlfriend, the dork disguise, the jawline, the ridiculous surfeit of ever-increasing powers, Brian Wilsoning it up in his awesome North Pole hideout, the completely absurd deus ex crapina of Kryptonite... 


It's probably all of that, but mostly I think Superman is a big, dumb jock who likes to hit stuff but it's all for the best. Even Wolverine is more vulnerable, personable and likable than that flying jackass. 


But back to the topic. Superheroes and poetry seem an unlikely mix, and there's about a million ways to do it wrong. Still, as Randall Jarrell said, "A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times." Here are two that have some nice sparks.

Becoming the Villainess

Jeannine Hall Gailey

A girl - lovelocked, alone - wanders into a forest
where lions and wolves lie in wait.
The girl feeds them caramels from the pockets of her paper dress.
They follow like dogs.


Each day she weaves for twelve brothers, twelve golden shirts
twelve pairs of slippers, twelve sets of golden mail.
She sleeps under olive trees, praying for rescue.
In her dreams doves fly in circles, crying out her name.


For a hundred years she is turned into a golden bird,
hung in a cage in a witch’s castle. Her brothers
are all turned to stone. She cannot save them,
no matter how many witches she burns.


She weeps tears that cannot be heard
but turn to rubies when they hit the ground.
She lifted her hand against the light
and it became a feathered wing.


She learns the songs of mockingbirds, parakeets, pheasants.
She wanders into the forest more herself.
She speaks of her twelve stone brothers.
There is a dragon curled around eggs. There is a princess


who is also a white cat, and a tiny dog
she carries in a walnut shell.
She befriends a reindeer who speaks wisdom. 
They are all in her corner. It seems unlikely now


that she will ever return home, remember what
it was like, her mother and father, the promises.
She will adopt a new costume,
set up shop in a witch’s castle,


perhaps lure young princes and princesses
to herself, to cure what ails her -
her loneliness, her grandeur,
the way her heart has become a stone.

The Villainess

Jeannine Hall Gailey

resembles your mother, at least around the eyes –
treacherous, limpid and seal-like.
Inevitably handsome as a lioness, she
commands ranks, smokes cigarettes,
wears fur, has sex without apologizing.
Sometimes, she looks just like you,
but with crow’s feet, more tattoos and better lingerie.

She conjures dragons or viruses,
she can lie easily to police or to you.
And you must love her, though she betrays you in a heartbeat -
you keep accepting the poisoned comb, the spinning wheel,
with open, pale hands.

Avant-Sonnet

Opening the Cage: 14 Variations on 14 Words

Edwin Morgan

"I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry." — John Cage

I have to say poetry and is that nothing and am I saying it
I am and I have poetry to say and is that nothing saying it
I am nothing and I have poetry to say and that is saying it
I that am saying poetry have nothing and it is I and to say
And I say that I am to have poetry and saying it is nothing
I am poetry and nothing and saying it is to say that I have
To have nothing is poetry and I am saying that and I say it
Poetry is saying I have nothing and I am to say that and it
Saying nothing I am poetry and I have to say that and it is
It is and I am and I have poetry saying say that to nothing
It is saying poetry to nothing and I say I have and am that
Poetry is saying I have it and I am nothing and to say that
And that nothing is poetry I am saying and I have to say it
Saying poetry is nothing and to that I say I am and have it




I can't really comment much on this. But man, if you ever want to go chasing the rabbit further down the hole than is strictly good for you, read this. 


Plus, catch my upcoming concert of 4'33 that I'll be live-podcasting along with a read-along blog of the score. It's at www.creedthoughts.gov.www\creedthoughts. (It's been my lifelong dream to marry my two first loves: avant-garde classical composition and single-camera NBC comedy. And you were all here to witness it.)


So it's about 2 months into this grand experiment and I'm almost finally caught up - a post for every day of the year so far. This seems like a good time to ask...


How'm I doing? Any thoughts on what you like or loathe? More snark? Less snark? More close readings of the text or more autobiographical hyperbolic rambling? What can I do to make you read more and by extension LOVE ME MORE?!

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Atrocities!

Vahan Tekeyan was an Armenian poet who survived the Turkish genocide of 1914 because he was away on business. He lived in exile in Cairo until his death in 1945, but he was known as "the Prince of Armenian Poetry."


I found this in a volume called "Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness," occasional poems written about historical events. Since "Twentieth-Century" is in there, you probably guessed it's mostly about wars, atrocities, pogroms, crackdowns and revolutions. 


It'd sure be nice if we didn't know what that was like, here in the futuristic 21st-century. I'm reading a few books on torture, specifically the so-called "Torture Memos" by the Office of Legal Counsel to the Justice Department which more or less authorized whatever the CIA approved as far as torture methods. (Apparently, we're the good guys until the bad guys start to look threatening.)


But this isn't a politics blog, which I'm unqualified to write anyway. It's about poetry. And this is one of the most effective things I've read in a while about the historical tragedies we lovely humans keep embroiling ourselves in.


It seems he does it by focusing on the oppressed, not damning the oppressors. It's also vague enough to apply to so many situations, but the imagery is vivid and concrete. And a well-timed plea or two to God never hurts a poem, I think. 

Prayer on the Threshold of Tomorrow

Vahan Tekeyan

Look. New sprouts push through the fields.
But which are thorns and which wheat
I do not know. Perhaps to the appetite
that is sated, all is chaff,
while to the hungry all is wheat.


Undistinguishable sounds, blows, footfalls
thud in the distance, an agonizing attack,
where he oppressed plant red
flame with their blood.
And the rains sweat and expand
into floods that shake the walls
of the oldest dams.


Lord, now is the time to send
your wisdom and kindness
to the tortured who, although
they have forgotten, need you as they hurl
themselves closer to the precipice.


Oh, God, who trimmed the wick of the mind
and poured the oil of life, do not let
your lamps be overturned.
Let them illuminate paths to your truth.


Plant love in the eyes of today's
and tomorrow's might. Do not let
their hearts close.


And do not let the hearts of the child
and the aged be strangers
to tenderness and hope.


Let the struggle of our time be short.
Let it be settled with justice


Let the fortress of egos,
that huge barricade,
crumble. And let every treasure
go to every man. Let every garden
gate be open. But let no flower be crushed.
No single branch fall.