Poetry & Poets

I was a math major — fond of all things rational.
It was the first day of my first poetry class.
The prof, with the air of a priest at Latin mass,
told us that we could “make great poetry personal,”

could own it, since poetry we memorize sings
inside us always. By way of illustration
he began reciting Shelley with real passion,
but stopped at “Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” —
because, with that last plosive, his top denture
popped from his mouth and bounced off an empty chair.

Gertrude Stein.
We could end there.
But we won’ t.
Because we want to make meaning.
Of something.
to say something.
Of value.
In order that.
It’ s absolutely.
The professor said.
Wiggling his ears.
In a satisfied way.
And the students all said, Amen.
That’ s the way with critical acclaim.
Absolutely.
There are rooms.
There are builders.
There is a clock.
There is a cake.
There is a rope.
There is a sounding to depths.
But when she dies, what then?

Who was my teacher at Harvard. Did not wear overcoat
Saying to me as we walked across the Yard
Cold brittle autumn is you should be wearing overcoat. I said
You are not wearing overcoat. He said,
You should do as I say not do as I do.
Just how American it was and how late Forties it was
Delmore, but not I, was probably aware. He quoted Finnegans Wake to me
In his New York apartment sitting on chair
Table directly in front of him. There did he write? I am wondering.
Look at this photograph said of his mother and father.

My song has put off her adornments.
She has no pride of dress and decoration.
Ornaments would mar our union;
they would come between thee and me;
their jingling would drown thy whispers.

My poet’ s vanity dies in shame before thy sight.
O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet.
Only let me make my life simple and straight,
like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.

why am i doing this? Failure
to keep my work in order so as
to be able to find things
to paint the house
to earn enough money to live on
to reorganize the house so as
to be able to paint the house &
to be able to find things and
earn enough money so as
to be able to put books together
to publish works and books
to have time
to answer mail & phone calls
to wash the windows
to make the kitchen better to work in
to have the money to buy a simple radio

They’ re worse than weak links
in chains, which we can blame
on blacksmiths’ fire, and chinks
in armor, made by rain

of arrows. Soft spots,
those parts of us that bruise,
prove we’ re fruit that rots
as hourglasses ooze.

But I’ ve a soft spot for,
a phrase we tend to whisper,
is what we say before
we name our guilty pleasure —

the damper pedal that pounds
sonatas into mush
the critic Ezra Pound
would call, with a shudder, slush.

up a little,” he says,
shutting the rusted tailgate,
“maybe at least lean
down from your high horse
and look busy,” picking up
his work gloves and his spade.

“You’ re not the only
hick on the clock
with an education,” he says, half-
laughing, half-wheezing,
and spits, his bottom lip bulging
with a load of Skoal,“even
if you do think pretty highly
of your poetry.”

I find it helpful to imagine writing in a blizzard
with every inscription

designed to prevent snow
crystals from drifting in.

Avoid the hive mind. Go fly a kite,
raise a stained glass window in the sky.

It’ s the opposite of making love to drudgery,
what I do for a dying.

Remove the bitter sediment
trapped in the brewer. It will be new

whether you make it new
or not. It will be full of neo-

This time I’ m not going to say a thing
about deity. It’ s not the blizzard,
it’ s three days after. Trinkle from thawing
roofs, ruined crocus pronging through.
Ruin, I promise, won’ t be mentioned again.
Trees, sure, still begging in the road, split
to the bole but this isn’ t about the chainsaw.
A pruning saw will have to do. The puppets

They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
and this time they are absolutely right.

Take the night I mentioned to you
I wanted to write about the madmen,
as the newspapers so blithely call them,
who attack art, not in reviews,
but with breadknives and hammers
in the quiet museums of Prague and Amsterdam.