POTD - After Mayakovksy by Denis Johnson

AFTER MAYAKOVSKY

by Denis Johnson

It’s after one. You’re probably alone. 
All night the moon rings like a telephone 
in an empty booth above our separateness. 
Now is the hour one answers. I am home. 
Hello, my heart, my god, my president, 
my darling: I’m alarmed by the alarm 
clock’s iridescent face, hung like a charm 
from darkness’s fat ear. This accident 
that was my life will have its witnesses: 
now, while the world lies wholly motionless 
and sorry in a crapulence of stars, 
now is the hour one rises to address 
the ages and history of the universe; 
I swear you’ll never see my face again.

http://bit.ly/hUfoHr Read by Ryan Scott Nance

Denis Johnson ​wrote only poems for a while, and a lot of them. His third book, Incognito Lounge, showed a voracious imagination and relentless voice. Both of these have found full expression in his Pulitzer Prize winning novel Tree of Smoke.

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More Poems of the Day​

Blog

POTD - For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry by Christopher Smart

about 5 years ago

POTD - Dire Wolf by Lucie Brock Broido

about 6 years ago

Timelapse Map​

POTD - The City by C. P. CAVAFY

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You’ll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.
Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY AND PHILIP SHERRARD

POTD - Book of Isaiah, Part I by Anne Carson

Book of Isaiah, Part I

BY ANNE CARSON

I.

Isaiah awoke angry.

Lapping at Isaiah’s ears black birdsong no it was anger.   

God had filled Isaiah’s ears with stingers.

Once God and Isaiah were friends.

God and Isaiah used to converse nightly, Isaiah would rush into the garden.

They conversed under the Branch, night streamed down.

From the sole of the foot to the head God would make Isaiah ring.   

Isaiah had loved God and now his love was turned to pain.   

Isaiah wanted a name for the pain, he called it sin.

Now Isaiah was a man who believed he was a nation.

Isaiah called the nation Judah and the sin Judah’s condition.   

Inside Isaiah God saw the worldsheet burning.

Isaiah and God saw things differently, I can only tell you their actions.

Isaiah addressed the nation.   

Man’s brittleness! cried Isaiah.

The nation stirred in its husk and slept again.

Two slabs of bloody meat lay folded on its eyes like wings.   

Like a hard glossy painting the nation slept.

Who can invent a new fear?

Yet I have invented sin, thought Isaiah, running his hand over the knobs.

And then, because of a great attraction between them—

which Isaiah fought (for and against) for the rest of his life—

God shattered Isaiah’s indifference.

God washed Isaiah’s hair in fire.

God took the stay.

From beneath its meat wings the nation listened.   

You, said Isaiah.

No answer.

I cannot hear you, Isaiah spoke again under the Branch.   

Light bleached open the night camera.

God arrived.

God smashed Isaiah like glass through every socket of his nation.   

Liar! said God.

Isaiah put his hands on his coat, he put his hand on his face.

Isaiah is a small man, said Isaiah, but no liar.

God paused.

And so that was their contract.   

Brittle on both sides, no lying.

Isaiah’s wife came to the doorway, the doorposts had moved.   

What’s that sound? said Isaiah’s wife.   

The fear of the Lord, said Isaiah.   

He grinned in the dark, she went back inside.

Anne Carson

Finals of Copa Poética this Friday Night, 8-10pm in Highland Park

This Friday, July 11th, I'll be reading alongside some of the most dynamic poets in Los Angeles for the last of the Copa Poética series, looking to capture some of the spirit and energy of the World Cup in words.

For the series, I've been writing a new form I am calling the XI (and 11-lined poem).

The most recent post over on Manipulated Bestiary (my poem a week for a year book project) is a tribute to Miroslav Klose, the player with the most World Cup goals in history who will be playing this Sunday in the finals.

XI: Klose - Die Mannschaft

The years swim back to you, brightening
your implacable wisdom with strength

Do you not stand at the edge of the sky
with your nervous arms extended invoking a personal
God to breathe a wind into your empty heart
like the rest of us? Exchanging your being with
the terrible angels wheeling overhead one exhaled breath
at a time? The winds gnaw at your face

the time you move through is the time of monument
and story, grain for grain exchanging marble for stone
we outlive our own lives in your softening cheek.

POTD - Stars by Louise Gluck

Stars

by Louise Glück

Read by Daniel Dean Demerin

I’m awake; I am in the world-
I expect
no further assurance.
No protection, no promise.

Solace of the night sky,
the hardly moving
face of the clock.

I’m alone- all
my riches surround me.
I have a bed, a room.
I have a bed, a vase
of flowers beside it.
And a nightlight, a book.

I’m awake; I am safe.
The darkness like a shield, the dreams
put off, maybe
vanished forever.

And the day-
the unsatisfying morning that says
I am your future,
here is your cargo of sorrow:

Do you reject me? Do you mean
To send me away because I am not
full, in your word,
because you see
the black shape already implicit?

I will never be banished. I am the light,
your personal anguish and humiliation.
Do you dare
send me away as though
you were waiting for something better?

There is no better.
Only (for a short space)
the night sky like
a quarantine that sets you 
apart from your task.

Only (softly, fiercely)
the stars shining. Here,
in the room, the bedroom.
Saying I was brave, I resisted,
I set myself on fire.

POTD - A Boat by Richard Brautigan

A Boat

by Richard Brautigan

Read by Brandon Jordan Brown 

O beautiful
was the werewolf   
in his evil forest.   
We took him
to the carnival   
and he started   
   crying
when he saw
the Ferris wheel.   
Electric
green and red tears   
flowed down
his furry cheeks.   
He looked
like a boat
out on the dark   
water.

Brandon Jordan Brown

POTD - To Laugh Often and Much by Ralph Waldo Emerson

To kick off National Poetry Month, we have the very talented actor Bryan Bellomo reading this amazing passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

POTD - This Azure Day by Seo Jung-ju

This Azure Day 

by Seo Jung-ju

On this blindingly azure day,
let us long for those we miss.

There, where autumn flowers sit,
green has given in to red.

Let the snow fall.
Let spring return.

What if you are alive when I die?
What if I am alive when you die?

On this blindingly azure day,
let us long for those we miss.

Translated by Chae-Pyong Song and Anne Rashid

푸르른 날/서정주

눈이 부시게 푸르른 날은
그리운 사람을 그리워하자.

저기 저기 저, 가을 꽃 자리
초록이 지쳐 단풍 드는데

눈이 내리면 어이하리야
봄이 또 오면 어이하리야

내가 죽고서 네가 산다면!
네가 죽고서 내가 산다면?

눈이 부시게 푸르른 날은
그리운 사람을 그리워 하자.

Seo Jung-ju

Poems of a Wanderer

By Midang So Chong-Ju, Chongju So, Chong-Ju So

Buy on Amazon

via Korean Poetry in Translation »

POTD - You Whose Hands Are More Innocent Than Mine by Vesna Parun

You Whose Hands Are More Innocent Than Mine
By Vesna Parun

You whose hands are more innocent than mine
and who is as wise as nonchalance
and who removes slow shadows of doubts
from his face
like the spring wind removes
shadows of clouds floating over the hill.

If your hug gives courage to the heart
and your thighs stop the pain,
if your name gives peace
to his thoughts, and your throat
a shade to his berth
and the night of your voice, an orchard
still untouched by storms.

Then stay beside him
and be more devoted than anyone else
who loved him before you.

Fear the echo approaching
the innocent love nests.

And be gentle with his dream
bellow the invisible mountain
at the edge of the soughing sea.

Walk around his coast. Be seen
by sorrowful dolphins.

Wander around his woods. Kind lizards
wont do you any harm.

And the thirsty snakes that I tamed
will be humble before you.

May the birds that I kept warm sing to you
in the nights of sharp frost.

May the boy that I protected from
stalkers on a deserted road
caress you

May the flowers that I watered with your tears
bring fragrance to you.

I didn't witness the best years
of his manhood. His fertility
I haven't received in my bosom
ravaged by looks
from cattle drivers at fairs
and from greedy thieves.

I will never take care
of his children. And the stories
that I've prepared for them long ago
I might tell, crying,
to little miserable bears
abandoned in black forest.

You whose hands are more innocent than mine
be gentle with his dream
that remained harmless.

But let me see him
his face when strange years start to come down on it.

And tell me sometimes a thing or two about him
so that I don't have to ask strangers
who find me silly, and neighbors
who pity my patience.

You whose hands are more innocent than mine,
stay beside his pillow
and be gentle with his dream!

Vesna Parun

Buy on Amazon

POTD - La Víbora by Nicanor Parra

English translation

La Víbora

by Nicanor Parra

Durante largos años estuve condenado a adorar a una mujer despreciable
Sacrificarme por ella, sufrir humillaciones y burlas sin cuento,
Trabajar día y noche para alimentarla y vestirla,
Llevar a cabo algunos delitos, cometer algunas faltas,
A la luz de la luna realizar pequeños robos,
Falsificaciones de documentos comprometedores,
So pena de caer en descrédito ante sus ojos fascinantes.
En horas de comprensión solíamos concurrir a los parques
Y retratarnos juntos manejando una lancha a motor,
O nos íbamos a un café danzante
Donde nos entregábamos a un baile desenfrenado
Que se prolongaba hasta altas horas de la madrugada.
Largos años viví prisionero del encanto de aquella mujer
Que solía presentarse a mi oficina completamente desnuda
Ejecutando las contorsiones más difíciles de imaginar
Con el propósito de incorporar mi pobre alma a su órbita
Y, sobre todo, para extorsionarme hasta el último centavo.
Me prohibía estrictamente que me relacionase con mi familia.
Mis amigos eran separados de mí mediante libelos infamantes
Que la víbora hacía publicar en un diario de su propiedad.
Apasionada hasta el delirio no me daba un instante de tregua,
Exigiéndome perentoriamente que besara su boca
Y que contestase sin dilación sus necias preguntas,
Varias de ellas referentes a la eternidad y a la vida futura
Temas que producían en mí un lamentable estado de ánimo,
Zumbidos de oídos, entrecortadas náuseas, desvanecimientos prematuros
Que ella sabía aprovechar con ese espíritu práctico que la caracterizaba
Para vestirse rápidamente sin pérdida de tiempo
Y abandonar mi departamento dejándome con un palmo de narices.
Esta situación se prolongó por más de cinco años.
Por temporadas vivíamos juntos en una pieza redonda
Que pagábamos a medias en un barrio de lujo cerca del cementerio.
(Algunas noches hubimos de interrumpir nuestra luna de miel
Para hacer frente a las ratas que se colaban por la ventana).

Llevaba la víbora un minucioso libro de cuentas
En el que anotaba hasta el más mínimo centavo que yo le pedía en préstamo;
No me permitía usar el cepillo de dientes que yo mismo le había regalado
Y me acusaba de haber arruinado su juventud:
Lanzando llamas por los ojos me emplazaba a comparecer ante el juez
Y pagarle dentro de un plazo prudente parte de la deuda,
Pues ella necesitaba ese dinero para continuar sus estudios
Entonces hube de salir a la calle a vivir de la caridad pública,
Dormir en los bancos de las plazas,
Donde fui encontrado muchas veces moribundo por la policía
Entre las primeras hojas del otoño.
Felizmente aquel estado de cosas no pasó más adelante,
Porque cierta vez en que yo me encontraba en una plaza también
Posando frente a una cámara fotográfica
Unas deliciosas manos femeninas me vendaron de pronto la vista
Mientras una voz amada para mí me preguntaba quién soy yo.
Tú eres mi amor, respondí con serenidad.
¡Ángel mío, dijo ella nerviosamente,
Permite que me siente en tus rodillas una vez más!
Entonces pude percatarme de que ella se presentaba ahora provista de un pequeño taparrabos.
Fue un encuentro memorable, aunque lleno de notas discordantes:
Me he comprado una parcela, no lejos del matadero, exclamó,
Allí pienso construir una especie de pirámide.
En la que podamos pasar los últimos días de nuestra vida.
Ya he terminado mis estudios, me he recibido de abogado,
Dispongo de buen capital;
Dediquémonos a un negocio productivo, los dos, amor mío, agregó
Lejos del mundo construyamos nuestro nido.
Basta de sandeces, repliqué, tus planes me inspiran desconfianza,
Piensa que de un momento a otro mi verdadera mujer
Puede dejarnos a todos en la miseria más espantosa.
Mis hijos han crecido ya, el tiempo ha transcurrido,
Me siento profundamente agotado, déjame reposar un instante,
Tráeme un poco de agua, mujer,
Consígueme algo de comer en alguna parte,
Estoy muerto de hambre,
No puedo trabajar más para ti,
Todo ha terminado entre nosotros.

Antipoems: How to Look Better & Feel Great

By Nicanor Parra, Liz Werner

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Amazon

The Viper

For years I was doomed to worship a contemptible woman

Sacrifice myself for her, endure endless humiliations and sneers, 

Work night and day to feed her and clothe her, 
Perform several crimes, commit several misdemeanors, 
Practice petty burglary by moonlight, 
Forge compromising documents, 
For fear of a scornful glance from her bewitching eyes. 
During brief phases of understanding we used to meet in parks 
And have ourselves photographed together driving a motorboat, 
Or we would go to a nightclub 
And fling ourselves into an orgy of dancing 
That went on until well after dawn.

For years I was under the spell of that woman. 
She used to appear in my office completely naked 
And perform contortions that defy the imagination, 
Simply to draw my poor soul into her orbit 
And above all to wring from me my last penny. 
She absolutely forbade me to have anything to do with my family. 
To get rid of my friends this viper made free with defamatory libels 
Which she published in a newspaper she owned. 
Passionate to the point of delirium, she never let up for an instant, 
Commanding me to kiss her on the mouth 
And to reply at once to her silly questions 
Concerning, among other things, eternity and the afterlife,
Subjects which upset me terribly, 
Producing buzzing in my ears, recurrent nausea, sudden fainting spells 
Which she turned to account with that practical turn of mind that distinguished her, 
Putting her clothes on without wasting a moment 
And clearing out of my apartment, leaving me flat.

This situation dragged on for five years and more. 
There were periods when we lived together in a round room 
In a plush district near the cemetery, sharing the rent. 
(Some nights we had to interrupt our honeymoon 
To cope with the rats that streamed in through the window.) 
The viper kept a meticulous account book 
In which she noted every penny I borrowed from her, 
She would not let me use the toothbrush I had given her myself, 
And she accused me of having ruined her youth: 
With her eyes flashing fire she threatened to take me to court 
And make me pay part of the debt within a reasonable period 
Since she needed the money to go on with her studies. 
Then I had to take to the street and live on public charity, 
Sleeping on park benches 
Where the police found me time and again, dying, 
Among the first leaves of autumn. 
Fortunately that state of affairs went no further, 
For one time -and again I was in a park, 
Posing for a photographer-
A pair of delicious feminine hands suddenly covered my eyes 
While a voice that I loved asked me: Who am I. 
You are my love, I answered serenely. 
My angel! she said nervously. 
Let me sit on your knees once again! 
It was then that I was able to ponder the fact that she was now wearing brief tights. 
It was a memorable meeting, though full of discordant notes. 
I have bought a plot of land not far from the slaughterhouse, she exclaimed. 
I plan to build a sort of pyramid there 
Where we can spend the rest of our days. 
I have finished my studies, I have been admitted to the bar, 
I have a tidy bit of capital at my disposal;
Let's go into some lucrative business, we two, my love, she added, 
Let's build our nest far from the world. 
Enough of your foolishness, I answered, I have no confidence in your plans. 
Bear in mind that my real wife 
Can at any moment leave both of us in the most frightful poverty. 
My children are grown up, time has elapsed, 
I feel utterly exhausted, let me have a minute's rest, 
Get me a little water, woman, 
Get me something to eat from somewhere, 
I'm starving, 
I can't work for you anymore, 
It's all over between us.

POTD - Vintage by Robert Hass

VINTAGE

They had agreed, walking into the delicatessen on Sixth Avenue, that their friends’ affairs were focused and saddened by massive projection;

movie screens in their childhood were immense, and someone had

proposed that need was unlovable.

The delicatessen had a chicken salad with chunks of cooked chicken in a creamy basil mayonnaise a shade lighter than the Coast Range in August; it was gray outside, February.

Eating with plastic forks, walking and talking in the sleety afternoon, they passed a house where Djuna Barnes was still, reportedly, making sentences.

Bashō said: avoid adjectives of scale, you will love the world more and desire it less.

And there were other propositions

to consider: childhood, VistaVision, a pair of wet, mobile lips on the screen at least eight feet long.

On the corner a blind man with one leg was selling pencils. He must have received a disability check,

but it didn’t feed his hunger for public agony, and he sat on the sidewalk slack-jawed, with a tin cup, his face and opaque eyes turned upward in a look of blind, questing pathos—

half Job, half mole.

Would the good Christ of Manhattan have restored his sight and two thirds of his left leg? Or would he

have healed his heart and left him there in a mutilated body? And what would that peace feel like?

It makes you want, at this point, a quick cut, or a reaction shot. “The taxis rivered up Sixth Avenue.” “A little sunlight touched the steeple of the First Magyar Reform Church.”

In fact, the clerk in the liquor store was appalled. “No, no,” he said, “that cabernet can’t be drunk for another five years.”

POTD - Death by Donald Revell

Donald Revell

Death

Death calls my dog by the wrong name.
A little man when I was small, Death grew
Beside me, always taller, but always
Confused as I have almost never been.   
Confusion, like the heart, gets left behind
Early by a boy, abandoned the very moment
Futurity with her bare arms comes a-waltzing
Down the fire escapes to take his hand.

"Death," I said, "if your eyes were green
I would eat them."   

For what are days but the furnace of an eye?
If I could strip a sunflower bare to its bare soul,
I would rebuild it:
Green inside of green, ringed round by green.
There'd be nothing but new flowers anymore.
Absolute Christmas.

"Death," I said, "I know someone, a woman,
Who sank her teeth into the moon."

For what are space and time but the inventions
Of sorrowing men? The soul goes faster than light.
Eating the moon alive, it leaves space and time behind.
The soul is forgiveness because it knows forgiveness.
And the knowledge is whirligig.
Whirligig taught me to live outwardly.
Shoe shop. . . pizza parlor. . . surgical appliances. . .
All left behind me with the hooey.
My soul is my home.
An old star hounded by old starlight.

"Death, I ask you, whose only story
Is the end of the story, right from the start,
How is it I remember everything
That never happened and almost nothing that did?
Was I ever born?"

I think of the suicides, all of them thriving,
Many of them painting beautiful pictures.
I think of boys and girls murdered
In their first beauty, now with children of their own.
And I have a church in my mind, set cruelly ablaze,
And then the explosion of happy souls
Into the greeny, frozen Christmas Eve air:
Another good Christmas, a white choir.

Beside each other still,
My Death and I are a magical hermit.
Dear Mother, I miss you.
Dear reader, your eyes are now green,
Green as they used to be, before I was born.

The Art of Attention: A Poet's Eye (Art Of... (Revell))

Tantivy

POTD - You Have Harnessed Yourself Ridiculously to This World by Lucie Brock-Broido

You Have Harnessed Yourself Ridiculously to This World

BY LUCIE BROCK-BROIDO

Tell the truth I told me                                When I couldn’t speak.

Sorrow’s a barbaric art, crude as a Viking ship                Or a child

Who rode a spotted pony to the lake away from summer

In the 1930s                                       Toward the iron lung of polio.

According to the census I am unmarried                And unchurched.

                                    The woman in the field dressed only in the sun.

Too far gone to halt the Arctic Cap’s catastrophe, big beautiful

Blubbery white bears each clinging to his one last hunk of  ice.

I am obliged, now, to refrain from dying, for as long as it is possible.

For whom left am I first?

                                                          We have come to terms with our Self

Like a marmoset getting out of  her Great Ape suit.

I had the immense pleasure of studying with Lucie. She has this amazing collection of porcelain figures of horses hatching out of eggs. 

She introduced me to Thomas James.  

She is lovely. 

Poets' Poem of the Day - Rules for Captain Ahab’s Provincetown Poetry Workshop by Martín Espada

This is the first in a series of Poets' Poems of the Day, suggested to me by amazing poet friends. Martín Espada was one of the poets that both Luivette Resto and Yago Cura wanted me to read. 

Rules for Captain Ahab’s Provincetown Poetry Workshop

By MARTÍN ESPADA

1.   Ye shall be free to write a poem on any subject, as long as it’s the White Whale. 

2.   A gold doubloon shall be granted to the first among ye who in a poem sights the White Whale. 

3.   The Call Me Ishmael Award shall be given to the best poem about the White Whale, with publication in *The White Whale Review.* 

4.   The Herman Melville Memorial Picnic and Softball Game shall be open to whosoever of ye writes a poem about following thy Captain into the maw of hell to kill the White Whale. 

5.   There shall be a free floating coffin for any workshop participant who falls overboard whilst writing a poem about the White Whale. 

6.   There shall be a free leg, carved from the jawbone of a whale, for any workshop participant who is dismasted whilst writing a poem about the White Whale. 

7.   There shall be a free funeral at sea, complete with a chorus of stout hearties singing sea chanteys about the White Whale, for any workshop participant who is decapitated whilst writing a poem about the White Whale. 

8.   Ye who seek not the White Whale in thy poems shall be harpooned.

 

My 5 - Portable Poetry Library - Ryan Nance

Most of my poetry library ( a library I've been very proud of) is in storage, or has been traded, gifted or lost. I've dragged it around the world with me, in cardboard boxes, plastic bins, bags. It's grown. There was a period before I first left for study in Madrid where I thought about winnowing it to the essentials. I would after all not be able to read it all, even given the chance. I ended up adding to it: new books by some of my favorite poets, old books by poets I'd never heard of. It was and is a joy to find, remember and discover new works. Like stumbling upon a neighborhood I'd never once been to before. Delicious. Full of possibility. In this period I was adding young poets ( Ben Lerner, Matthea Harvey, Tracey K. Smith [whose Life on Mars just won the Pulitzer], Christine Hume ), classmates (Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Tom Healy and Ravi Shankar), 

The Great Reduction

For a lot of reasons, having a large library, even of slim, tidy volumes, became impossible for me. Storage, display, space, time. I've reduced my library down to the ones I read. Seems a bit self-fulfilling, I know. But, I am often asked (and overwhelmed by the possibilities) for the books and poets I'd recommend people start with. This great filtering reduction of mine has made it abundantly clear.

So here are My 5 Portable Poetry Library

1  - Louise Glück

I haven't always been clear that I got much from her work. It was hard for me, with my life as my only computational material, to access her charged, urgent, masterful poetry. But their phrases and imagery, premises and tropes, have installed themselves as part of my psyche. I refer often to a line or image, find myself recommending. And have made sure that her books have continued to elude the great reduction.

If you haven't read her before I'd say that First Four Books of Poems is a good place to start. You'll find some of the more well-known poems ( Mock Orange, All Hallows). 

Her Pulitzer Prize Winning Wild Iris and her A Village Life both offer a vast country of tight, smart, surprising poems. 

Read by Daniel Dean Demerin See all 5 and links to the texts at http://bit.ly/j33tBz

---

2 - Donald Revell

Revell was a poet I first read while an undergraduate. I had had a very different expectation of what poetry could be before this period in my reading. When I was asked to respond to a poem for my grad school application, it was The Psalmist from The New Dark Ages that I wrote on. And now, 15 years later, I find poems of his I'd never met before and am relieved to find that the interest and power I'd felt then hasn't worn off. His books have also managed to find a place in my bags and suitcases as my library shrank. 

---

3 - Rainer Maria Rilke

There are a few things (books, songs, paintings, places, tidbits of knowledge) that seem to contain immense and irreducible truth in something which fits into our human scale. Rilke's 3rd Elegy from his Duino Elegies has always been one of those mysteries. I've read it to people when I am ready to sound silly in my enthusiasms. I read it and its bookmates (all phenomenal poems) over and over again. On the very first meeting of grad school first-year workshop, I was asked to name a poet I cherished and explain why it was that one that I chose. I cheated. I chose two. Robert Hass (coming up) because he helped me be a better poet and Rilke because he helped me be a better person. I heard snickers at my nearly religious reverence for these two from my classmates. Rilke never has rewarded my admiration with quotables. In fact, I realize exactly how remarkable his work with the distance I feel it is from normal speech. It isn't the sort of thing you can even try to explain to people without sounding a little kookie. So, instead of explaining, I'll hope to be able to indulge in Rilke talk with more and more people soon.

---

4 - Robert Hass

I have been prepared with a clear, emphatic answer to the often asked question: Who's your favorite poet? Robert Hass.
His works have been a consistent companion throughout my entire adult life. He has been the author of the words that soothed some of the worst hurts I've ever had to endure; the mind that has inspired the wonder and curiosity of mine that I have become so proud of, helped me formulate so much of my own framework for approaching the world. 

His poems are the poems I've read and shared, memorized and given. All 5 of his books have and will survive any poetry reduction. I have bought 5 copies of Field Guide because I keep giving it away and then needing my own copy again.

Read by Ryan Nance See all 5 and links to the texts at http://bit.ly/j33tBz

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5 - Mary Oliver

Oliver's work and words are alive with wisdom, energy and balm. I have had to keep her books around because I have needed them. And there is such reassurance that she has such an enormously large body of work, an inexhaustible fountain of some of my very favorite poetry.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver read by Devereau Chumrau http://5thingsilearnedtoday.com

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my 5 is a series brought to us from the incredibly interesting readers/friends. If you have a point of view that you want to share in your own my 5, drop us a line.

POTD - Tracks by Tomas Tranströmer

Tracks

by Tomas Tranströmer

2 A.M. moonlight. The train has stopped
out in a field. Far off sparks of light from a town,
flickering coldly on the horizon.

As when a man goes so deep into his dream
he will never remember he was there
when he returns again to his view.

Or when a person goes so deep into a sickness
that his days all become some flickering sparks, a swarm,
feeble and cold on the horizon.

The train is entirely motionless.

2 o’clock: strong moonlight, few stars.

Poetry Goes Underground - Poems on the LA Metro

On our poetry trip yesterday through the LA Metro system, we were lucky enough to have Luke Gattuso taking tome great photos. 

It was such a good day of poems and people. 

See his entire set

via Luke Gattuso

POTD - The Figurative Heart by Billy Burgos

The Figurative Heart

by Billy Burgos

We blame the heart so often.
We ask it to bear our guilt like
a wet bag of sand, then to hold
those small boxes of infatuation.

We ask the heart to lie to us
right behind the request to keep
the tune of our spirit playing on.
Yet when it lies, we blame that muscle
for each remembered deception.

At this red hour, with the darkening
city unrolling slowly like a dirty rug,
there is no figurative heart. There is
only this-and-now, the entire machine.

Even the threading of streetlights that
appear to lead off into nothingness eventually
end and come back. The night always brings back.
And maybe another -the heart only

speaks through the juried soul,
that invisible conduit that can bear nothing.
Like faith it is only an assured expectation,
something not-yet-beheld. We cannot
call it a liar, we can only call it god.
 

Catch Billy at the Poesia Para La Gente event September 7.

Billy Burgos on Writ Large Press

Eulogy to an Unknown Tree

By Billy Burgos

POTD - Traficante by Abel Salas

TRAFICANTE 

por Abel Salas

 for my brother Tony. from Chi-town

 
Because I am a smuggler
soy traficante, I deal in
illicit phraseology, I speak
in illegal tongues
I trade in mad metaphors
recently released from
straightjacket stifling.
I revel in forgotten
memory colored with
ancient glyphs and told
to me by candle-light
under cover of night
by sage poets and
truthtellers too many
are too blind or too vain
to recognize or uncover
Good morning boys and
girls, can you say Burciaga
or Anaya or Anzaldua?
If they're banning me in
Arizona it's because we're
banned from the beginning
Even baby Brown Berets
in East LA are bereft and
have been denied a
birthright writ in the blood
of prison poets like Salinas,
Sanchez and Jimmy Baca
We are born smugglers
of la palabra, predisposed
to papyrus and now grown
numb in front of television
fiction. Malverde smiles on
us nonetheless. Porque
somos traficantes y mi vicio
siempre sera la letra de la
libertad, la metáfora
desencadenada de un
pueblo equipado, armed
with untold  history and the
books they try to take, we
are the inevitable song and
lyric they will try to silence,
unable to put aside their fear
and hate, dressing it in a
need to enforce the nation's
laws and protect the borders
imposed at the barrel of a gun.
But bullets will never stop the
stampede of lyrical truth or the
blessing of a barrio bard who
took me under wing to show me
words were sacred like the sweat,
that true traficantes know routes
from underground presses to
university halls like the backs of
their tattooed hands, and we
will slang prose and poetry,
newsprint and blog until they
finally and truly reveal themselves
for the fascist, book burners they
are and will always be, knowing
deep down in their true souls that
despite Manifest Destiny, this land
is not theirs and never was.
Soy traficante orgulloso en idiomas
y sonetos, en el olor del la canción
y el canto de las flores, soy voz
y luna como baile entre mi madre
y el futuro de la tierra maya quiche
I traffic in banned books and
felonious turns of phrase, because
this is all I know.

Catch Abel in Poesia Para La Gente September 7

Corazon Del Pueblo is a volunteer-run, not-for-profit collective, and community cultural center, that promotes peace, social justice and cultural understanding through the arts, education and social action. 2003 E. 1st Street Boyle Heights, CA 90033

POTD - My Hair is a Fanatical Quill by Yago S. Cura

My Hair is a Fanatical Quill

by Yago S. Cura

The young lady said, your hair,
may I touch it? And I obliged, sort 
of swan in an injured, curtsied bow.

She pawed and graded my exquisite locks 
and confessed the purse my hair
could fetch in the black markets of the world.

I had been summoned to slay mawfuckers
with my pizazzy Powerpoint for Playas’
and now, like a genie, I could not be rebottled.

The thought of follicle bazaars in Tangiers
or the Sarajaven mob trafficking my now 
very valuable head ricocheted in my synapses tanks. 

I had been thinking of nothing lucrative at all, nothing 
like pure poetry strawberries as large as the heads of Shih Tzus 
or contraband submarines forged in the jungles of Colombia.

I had been thinking that I don’t listen to Otis Redding enough
that I take too many scalding showers and don’t leave my hair
the chance to fume the bouquet of my wholly singular odor.

And now I am finally thinking of the young lady, her fingers
comb the epicenter of my vanity, they graze my thick head

my dull, oaken dome from which spectacular beauty glows.

Catch Yago at Poeisa Para La Gente on September 7

Yago S. Cura