by Carl Dennis
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
New Poems
Gravestones
Heroic
Socrates and I
Manners
Verona
A Colleague Confesses
In Paris
Delphinium
In the Coffee Shop
Window Boxes
The Next Life
Our Death
From a Practical Reader
The Master of Metaphor
Sensible Summers
Manifesto
World History
The Actor
Dream Theory
Candles
from A House of My Own (1974)
Useful Advice
Students
Relatives
Knots
from ClimbingDown (1976)
Ingratitude
The Homeowner
The Peaceable Kingdom
Praise for My Heart
Native Son
from Signs andWonders (1979)
Listeners
Near Idaville
Carpentry
Snow
The Tree
Sunday
Grandmother and I
A Plea for More Time
The Band
from The Near World (1985)
Hector’s Return
At the Corner
The Midlands
Beauty Exposed
Captain Cook
At Home with Cézanne
More Music
What Has Become of Them
Later
Charity
Time Heals All Wounds
from The Outskirts of Troy (1988)
Heinrich Schliemann
The Promised Land
Henry James and Hester Street
Visiting a Friend Near Sagamon Hill
Twenty Years
Little League
Fear of the Dark
On the Soul
At Becky’s Piano Recital
The Circus
On the Way to School
from Meetings with Time (1992)
The Photograph
Defining Time
My Guardians
Tuesday at First Presbyterian
The Window in Spring
Haven
Adventure
The Bill of Rights
The Invalid
The Anthropic Cosmological Principle
Unfinished Symphony
Mildew
Night Walk
Infidel
My Moses
Delaware Park, 1990
Spring Letter
Invitation
No Shame
from Ranking the Wishes (1997)
Loss
Pendulum
Days of Heaven
To Reason
Cedar Point
The Great Day
Seven Days
Sarit Narai
Aunt Celia, 1961
All I’ve Wanted
Integer
Distinctions
Two or Three Wishes
Grace
Bivouac Near Trenton
Consolation
Writing at Night
As If
Starry Night
Still Life
Your City
from Practical Gods (2001)
A Priest of Hermes
Saint Francis and the Nun
Department Store
Not the Idle
Gelati
To a Pagan
History
School Days
Prophet
Delphi
Pride
On the Bus to Utica
Jesus Freaks
The Serpent to Adam
View of Delft
A Chance for the Soul
Audience
A Letter from Mary in the Tyrol
Numbers
The Fallen
Eurydice
The Lace Maker
Progressive Health
More Art
Bashō
Improbable Story
Bishop Berkeley
Sunrise
Eternal Poetry
In the Short Term
Guardian Angel
May Jen
Eternal Life
The God Who Loves You
PENGUIN POETS
Also by Carl Dennis
POETRY
A House of My Own
Climbing Down
Signs and Wonders
The Near World
The Outskirts of Troy
Meetings with Time
Ranking the Wishes
Practical Gods
PROSE
Poetry as Persuasion
PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published in Penguin Books 2004
Copyright © Carl Dennis, 2004
All rights reserved
The selections from Ranking the Wishes and Practical Gods are
Pages vii and viii constitute an extension of this copyright page.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Dennis, Carl, 1939-
[Poems. Selections]
New and selected poems, 1974-2004 / Carl Dennis.
p. cm.
ISBN : 978-1-4406-5033-8
I. Title.
PS3554.E535N’.54—dc22 2003060720
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Version_2
For Thomas Centolella,
Mark Halliday, and
Tony Hoagland
Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to the editors of the following magazines, in which poems that were later published in book form first appeared:
From NEW POEMS—American Scholar (“Socrates and I”), Atlanta Review (“Sensible Summers”), Hunger Mountain (“The Actor”), The Paris Review (“Our Death” and “Window Boxes”), Parnassus (“Dream Theory”), Poetry (“Candles,” “A Colleague Confesses,” “Delphinium,” “In Paris,” “The Master of Metaphor,” “The Next Life,” and “World History”), Poetry International (“Verona”), Salmagundi (“Gravestones,” “In the Coffee Shop,” and “Manners”), and Smartish Pace (“From a Practical Reader”)
From A HOUSE OF MY OWN, ©1974 by Carl Dennis, originally published by George Braziller—Concerning Poetry (“Useful Advice”), Ktaadn (“Students�
��), Modern Poetry Studies (“Knots”), and The New Yorker (“Relatives”)
From CLIMBING DOWN, ©1976 by Carl Dennis, originally published by George Braziller—Crazy Horse (“The Peaceable Kingdom”) and Poetry Northwest (“Native Son”)
From SIGNS AND WONDERS, ©1979 by Carl Dennis, originally published by Princeton University Press—Concerning Poetry (“Carpentry”), Laurel Review (“Near Idaville”), The New Yorker (“Snow”), Salmagundi (“Grandmother and I”), South Dakota Review (“The Tree”), and Virginia Quarterly Review (“The Band”)
From THE NEAR WORLD, ©1985 by Carl Dennis, originally published by William Morrow and Company—American Poetry Review (“Charity”), Kenyon Review (“What Has Become of Them”), The New Republic (“Hector’s Return” and “Later”), The New Yorker (“The Midlands” and “More Music”), and Salmagundi (“At Home with Cézanne,” “Beauty Exposed,” and “Captain Cook”)
From THE OUTSKIRTS OF TROY, ©1988 by Carl Dennis, originally published by William Morrow and Company—Ironwood (“At Becky’s Piano Recital”), The New Yorker (“On the Soul”), Poetry (“Fear of the Dark,” “Heinrich Schliemann,” and “On the Way to School”), Salmagundi (“Henry James and Hester Street” and “The Promised Land”), and Sonora Review (Part III of “Twenty Years”)
From MEETINGS WITH TIME, ©1992 by Carl Dennis, originally published by Viking Penguin—Agni (“Infidels”), American Poetry Review (“Unfinished Symphony”), Denver Quarterly (“Adventure,” “The Bill of Rights,” and “Haven”), Kenyon Review (“Tuesday at First Presbyterian”), Poetry (“Defining Time,” “No Shame,” “Spring Letter,” and “The Window”), Prairie Schooner (“Night Walk” and “The Photograph”), Salmagundi (“The Anthropic Cosmological Principle”), Shenandoah (“The Window in the Spring”), and Virginia Quarterly Review (“My Guardians”)
From RANKING THE WISHES, ©1997 by Carl Dennis, published by Penguin Books—Agni (“All I’ve Wanted”), American Poetry Review (“Days of Heaven,” “Pendulum,” and “Sarit Narai”), Atlantic Monthly (“Bivouac Near Trenton”), Kenyon Review (“Seven Days” and “Two or Three Wishes”), The New Republic (“Consolation” and “Grace”), The Paris Review (“The Great Day” and “Integer”), Ploughshares (“Distinctions” and “Writing at Night”), Poetry (“As If,” “Loss,” “Still Life,” and “To Reason”), and Virginia Quarterly Review (“Starry Night” and “Your City”)
From PRACTICAL GODS, ©2001 by Carl Dennis, published by Penguin Books—American Poetry Monthly (“More Art”), American Poetry Review (“Audience”), American Scholar (“Eurydice”), The Nation (“To a Pagan”), The New Republic (“Bashō,” “Bishop Berkeley,” “History,” and “On the Bus to Utica”), Pivot (“Gelati”), Poetry (“Eternal Life,” “Eternal Poetry,” “Jesus Freaks,” “Not the Idle,” “Progressive Health,” “Prophet,” “Saint Francis and the Nun,” “School Days,” and “Sunrise”), Prairie Schooner (“The Serpent to Adam”), Salmagundi (“The God Who Loves You,” “The Lace Maker,” “A Letter from Mary in the Tyrol,” and “View of Delft”), and Tri-Quarterly (“May Jen”)
I also want to thank the generous friends who gave me valuable criticism on many of these poems: Charles Altieri, Thomas Centolella, Alan Feldman, Mark Halliday, Tony Hoagland, and Martin Pops.
New Poems
Gravestones
It’s easy to mock sarcophagi for their wish to impress us,
But not the modest tablets with their brief inscriptions:
“Beloved wife,” “beloved husband,” parent or child
Or friend. One stone in Buffalo’s Forest Lawn,
Just a few steps from the grave of Millard Fillmore,
Says only, “Not here, not here,”
Under a woman’s name, no birth or death date.
Not here if you seek her spirit, seems the simplest reading,
Her spirit having ascended to its real home.
Or else the doubling of the phrase alters the mood
From assertive finality to wish, to prayer:
May her essence be active elsewhere still,
Not buried here. It’s either that or a cry of loss:
Wherever she is, she isn’t here anymore
Alive and well, casting a light around her
To restore our spirits. As for the stones too worn
To be read, their silence advises the passersby
To put away the longing to be remembered
And concentrate on the wish to lie
Calm on their deathbeds, friends and family
Pressing in close for a final blessing.
Whoever can’t witness the end, or won’t,
May visit the grave to transact some private business.
Now that you’re far away, I can forgive you.
Or now that you’re quiet you can forgive me.
Only a portion of me was turned against you.
The better portion stood in the wings beside the other,
And was just as ready to make an entrance
When the cue came and give a speech as heartfelt
As the bitter words that elbowed their way on stage.
Listen. You can sleep later. Until you help,
Sleep will never visit you anyway
If you’re still the person you used to be
And understand how much you’re needed,
How a sign from you can set me free.
Heroic
“There is no comfort in life away from people
Who care for you,” writes Minny Temple,
In 1869, from Newport, where she’s resting
After the third episode, in three days,
Of coughing blood. “Not a heroic statement,”
She adds, “I’m fully aware.”
At the age of twenty-three, “heroic” for her
Means lofty and lonely, a lone commitment
She supposes herself too needy to carry through.
Still, her passion for life as death approaches
Now seems heroic enough, her concern
With feeling deeply and thinking rightly.
“Don’t be afraid of hurting my feelings,”
She writes to her cousin Henry, who’s mentioned
How different he thinks they are, but withheld particulars,
“Though there’s no one,” she adds, “whose sympathy
Would encourage me so much as yours.”
She’s prepared to listen humbly “to the worst”
If it helps improve her fidelity to her “deepest instincts.”
Her belief that such fidelity is a high vocation
Not to be abandoned as her body abandons her
Inspired her cousin, thirty years later,
To provide a woman like her with a plot and setting
Fit for the heroine of a tragedy.
Though Minny wouldn’t have wanted to die in Venice
Away from her family, like James’s protagonist,
In a palace that suits a princess, she did want to see Europe
Before the end. Too bad no one she cared to go with
Was able to take her, or willing, though her doctor
Opined that a warmer climate would do her good.
It seems heroic of her not to have asked her cousin
And not to have blamed him for never offering.
Heroic to believe “dear Harry” a hero
For steaming off by himself toward the independence
His writing required, a mistress more demanding
Than any invalid friend, more jealous.
If he didn’t regret his choice, he still may have felt his spirit
Smaller than hers. The spirit he gives his heroine
Is large enough to forgive her friends their inconstancy.
Bereft as they leave her feeling, she spreads her wings
With a grace unstinted and unconditional
That the author knew he could not provide.
Socrates and I
Faced with his d
ecision after the assembly
Votes against him and he’s led back to his cell,
I’d have listened to his friends’ escape plan.
Still I’m glad he refuses, glad that for him
Breaking the laws of Athens,
Even when they’re applied unjustly,
Would be like breaking the hearts of parents
Who’ve never been false to their obligations.
It does me good to see him defining self-interest
As something larger than self-protection.
It makes me want to believe that if my Athens
Here in western New York, on the Niagara,
Had him arrested as a public menace,
He wouldn’t promise our Common Council
That if they released him without a trial
He’d talk from then on only with friends,
In private, as I might promise.
It’s bracing to meet a man who’s certain
There’s only one life for him, questioning everyone.
As for the afterlife, he imagines asking the dead
Just what he’s asked the living—what’s justice, what’s piety,
Who’s wise, who only seems so—though in Hades
He could talk without fear of interruption.
In that regard Buffalo’s an improvement too.
I can’t blame anyone but myself if I find no time