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American Poetry Page 25

by Bradford Morrow


  pinches the sore spot Clarity, phantom limb pain,

  cases of difficulty and crumbly hopes

  despite twenty-twenty.

  I lay down in your night soil, your leaf litter, bone meal

  your superphosphates, it was your bright idea.

  My polka dot insights on the absence or rarity

  of realism get me nowhere, and show signs of distraction.

  I had some difficulty distinguishing between varieties

  of artificial sleeping lawns.

  The why stuck like sequins about your face—

  Just forget it.

  The lower stages of your unconcern

  are stunning, detachment rips the only array I had

  cast in a frenzied outburst of

  my position in the animal series:

  unmanned, unslaked, collapsible.

  Why doe I love?

  So mine eye is enthralled to thy shape.

  III.

  On the imperfection of the peony record.

  On the lapse of time as estimated by primal scenes.

  On the endeavors of our unreasonable beauty collections.

  On the unknown worlds of eyelash varieties.

  On the flammable appearance of promises.

  On their perfect number.

  IV.

  The stag threatened us with its horns; the weasel ran away with our lunch; the wolf tore a tent to pieces, then its owner; ducks snapped at our fingers; the woodcock defended its nest; the nightingale crashed into the car window; the goldfinches made a mess of the finial; the lions caught a rabbit and fought over the remains; and the hounds chased everything in sight.

  V.

  Dabbed distilled arriving

  glossed current animal, waits

  The bearing of these three great facts—

  You suffer from overproduction.

  You’re handmade.

  A.E. could mean many things,

  which one’s to be master is all.

  (Amelia Earhart scraped the sky in a silver Electra changing her flight from west to east.)

  Raptly, assemble piecework

  Rapid increase!

  Spikelet of laziness and love

  to have the leafy facts of your unknown worlds

  which is what colors mean, and natural light.

  Ardently sweetheart

  align our miscellaneous points of correspondence:

  the blue striped shirt, unlikely details, bone horns,

  and crush the ungetatable,

  any reason for your endeavors seems true.

  He varies most

  Saturday afternoons ferns in the hair

  pulling off your Ovid T-shirt

  wet moss Sa tah lite of love

  falling backward into the bushes.

  VI.

  Early Spring stepped across the stream in rubber boots.

  I rolled the tapestry up and tucked it under my head.

  Ground-cherry landscape, emphasis Narcissus

  perceptions wave in and out, headlong date palms,

  A.E. tied with a bow.

  The fierceness of the specific, slow motion capture

  drawn to their differences and origins,

  clear you have the cruelty to be interesting.

  The burden: wild roses behind you

  display ciphers in silver yarns.

  Hectic beauty prism saturation

  stream horizon light streak

  particulars use your feathers

  veritable imperial collector

  orange curl luster

  if they were seemly to be seen.

  See here my heart,

  fringed facts,

  the sooty nose, the surface

  so round, so rare, a radiant thing

  whitewashed with expectation

  so I ate my words.

  Clatter of details asks all attention

  complex relations of plants and animals—

  Risked enthusiasm, geometrical ratios of increase

  in bold irreality. It’s easy to look at

  dark green edged with yellow, articulated leaves

  fragrant lit oval, the whole’s the hard part.

  A bark, night-silvered

  I fall victim to the symmetry of scenes

  look for you in the break in the trees.

  From Preterient

  Susan Howe

  Teachings on Style and the Flower

  In 1402, the Japanese Noh performer and aesthetician Zeami Motokiyo wrote several items concerning the practice of the Noh in relation to an actor’s age. He said a boy’s voice begins to achieve its proper pitch at eleven or twelve, only then can he begin to understand the noh.

  But this flower is not the true flower not yet.

  Irish Literary Revival

  1926. Mary Manning having wandered on the Brontë moors in Yorkshire, carries a copy of The Scholar Gypsy home to Dublin. She always takes it with her when she goes out walking. It is 1948. I am to read aloud the last three paragraphs of Wuthering Heights for the sixth grade public reading contest at the Buckingham School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The book is my mother’s choice. Poetry is our covenant. She believes tables move without contact I am skeptical. If what is present to the mind at one time is distinct from what is present in another what is belief? Hoosh. Not in the Catholic graveyard not in the Protestant one either. Bird in the hand worth two of its own emptiness. This flower, taken from a scrap of paper, is said to be the Ammellus or Italian starwort of Virgil. Long ago Ogham stones were erected to commemorate the dead in rune-like ciphers then memory for voices then the rapid movement of ballads. Nearly all go to Scotland anglicity. I have no option but to be faithful to unlucky half human half unassuaged desiring dark shade you first Catherine. Lexical attention must be guarded from the dark age of childhood though lengthen night and shorten day. You are my altar vow. This cowslip is a favorite among fairies.

  The Gate

  A double cowslip bears one flower out of another. It remains in pastures long after the grass has been eaten away a stage name under the true one

  Mind the hidden

  Dedication to M enough

  to the wood if you have

  aconite and poppy she

  said “Lie still, sleep well”

  Quiet for it is a small

  world of covered bone

  Come veil the thought of

  I shall dress primrose

  _______

  Rookh which stray

  account the dark sea-

  robber’s map rose

  of a hundred leaves

  who learns ARABY

  Even in the old story

  arrow ragged Lallah

  _______

  Boiled milk was greatly

  appreciated a step on the

  road to luxury and there

  was slim made of bitter

  potatoes broken up when

  kindly cottagers strove

  to cherish and welcome

  Patrick Brontë’s childhood

  Their guest strove well

  _______

  Homemade bread was

  fadge the raised soda

  bap or scone came later

  baked on a griddle or

  girdle while baking was

  called “harning” but

  mashing up potatoes

  in meal and flour was

  called “baking”

  _______

  Advanced from Emdale cabin

  to Lisnacreevy cottage neither

  sought nor accepted sympathy

  Hoarded his savings he didn’t

  dread hobgoblins Mrs. Gaskell

  exaggerated the facts in this

  matter as have many others

  Carried his webs to Banbridge

  Could weave and read at once

  _______

  At supper sowans fine enough to

  thread a needle the Brontë mind

  never ran smoothly his children />
  were given ghost stories monsters

  I am grateful archaeology Galway

  oral history warcry boat curragh

  When stealthy in shawl slumber

  speaking from memory set forth

  by moonlight written fact Irish

  only in name limestone traveller

  _______

  Mary Manning presents this

  book to her Dear Sister as a

  token not to be appreciated

  so must act esteem affection

  Affection take this book Dear

  to every moment she cannot

  Invisible she grows tired and

  beside vast catacomb Thebes

  _______

  Reader of poetry this book

  contains all poetry THOOR

  BALLYEE in seven notes for

  stage representation May

  countryside you reader of

  poetry that I am forgotten

  Long notes seem necessary

  Unworthy players ask for

  legend familiar in legend

  the arrow king and no king

  _______

  A character walks on thatch

  bridge across the deep stage

  Material image and her mate

  Chanting within her role she

  cannot step beyond invisible

  right foot lifted in half step

  Where is he going because this

  play is famous for April sage

  green kagota kneeling piety is

  a dominant restraint he does

  not stoop as in pitiful reign

  Noh lies in its concentration

  You child of Atsumori old cloak

  faded gown sleeve flung open

  _______

  Fabled founder in darkness

  in Greek authentic helmet

  illumination his heirs and

  assigns forever as if wives

  in themselves loosened the

  murderous shawls so they act

  astonishment but all terror

  exactly as I have written I

  am in ash blue gray Kogota

  costume till the one here who

  is the child Chorus comes in

  Now Ireland in rebellion I

  am arrived at upper memory

  eroded base on shallow step

  Seven Hands

  Cole Swensen

  THE HISTORY OF THE HAND

  Once. you said turning

  is still saying

  such theories: star bomb bird and so on equally

  convinced, we started once

  to hold

  used to mean to anoint before it meant

  to bless

  or lessen

  or whiten the sky

  “Hands appear in the earliest” (framed, sized)

  overflowing the margins. The man

  born with two left hands was born a grown man.

  The man born with his hands full of hands later died.

  There’s no mystery to this. You listened, looking down,

  counting, thinking, And?

  Assyrian hands were carved of stone.

  Egyptian hands were the point of the tale.

  The Gothic hand, like no other, launched. That of the Renaissance,

  early and late,

  fragile and breaks, a wave on light.

  Ghirlandaio had hands of willow, while

  every hand that Dürer ever drew thrived.

  Most hands are startlingly small, like eyes.

  THE HAND THAT

  The hand that thinks, that lies inside, that lines

  the moving hand; the ventricles of the thinking hand and what it thinks

  and what it sees (because it does

  Thinks: “When you tie a knot

  you can utterly forget, you can think

  (can be thinking

  of something else at the time) that the muscle is itself memory

  lives again a folded time alive I tie.

  I thought nothing of it

  then. Type. Watch what

  lives without you. To have harbored

  as mutiny that doesn’t even bother The hand

  was (once an) animal, a prior

  Architecture: Archlessly, each one.

  There’s nothing in the frame.

  There’s an empty frame on the wall.

  I love you more than that I keep thinking that

  the hand is sky

  though I’m not yet

  sure exactly how.

  THE HAND AS

  The hand began an animal and from thereon did

  some guile that soft

  plural kite

  in

  flock

  did

  herd

  who thus shard

  comes to mind first I mean, note

  the exploded

  stasis

  used to mean star

  or stop

  in every native language

  you hold it up. Stark. Startle. Arp. When you hold up your hand

  and the world stops

  and you find yourself looking at the back of your hand,

  which, the longer you look at it, looks starved.

  THE HAND DEFINED: I

  How is the We define the Where begin? an elbowful of muscle

  fine as an inner ear

  Those who say the definition of the hand begins in the shoulder say those who say (they abbreviate) (mya): between 3.9 and 4.2 Million Years Ago, Australopithecus anamemsis: To find. Fossils of the hands and feet are so much rarer than those of skulls. Refined. We’re back to the inner ear. To hold onto earth hearing

  with the fingertips all those singly

  millions of early braille, caressing a an

  armful of earth in falling

  and is still falling

  the entire

  structure of the back and shoulder

  and enormous parts of the brain.

  FAN

  Species of when, that outward

  drift, a piano under every lens.

  It was a compliment:

  the hands of a surgeon or of a violin.

  It was hot that summer and every day thereafter

  Slipped through the trees. The vanes of a fan

  are often made from

  bone she said I own this one

  of painted air of where

  was it painted where air spears

  and folds like ribs turned to leaves

  turned to sand. :the opposite of a fist

  is these hands gone up before a face. Summer gate. Sun made of gave.

  HELD

  The cup the hand becomes

  a bell

  is first a shape, then there’s something

  soft in your hand. The hand is a curved

  thing. The held being

  a function of the inverted arch

  and ease of vault

  when looking up, an immense

  Walk backward from here to the sea.

  across the street

  the hand always curves

  in the holding. The held, its own being

  a mollusk shell

  all phalanges and grippage

  Was now surrounds, what might

  be the connection between tool use, language,

  and the spiral gene determining

  twenty-one muscles set out to sea

  on a perfectly lovely day the human hand fits

  the human waist just above the hip like, you might say, a glove.

  GRASP

  As the hand carved first its arc in air

  a

  corresponding

  sweep through the

  brain

  was made aviary spaces something like

  airplane hangars in their relative dimensions

  and thus the impression of standing

  under a sky that you can see. And the supple wrist, as it turned,

  turned too in the mind and acquired
>
  All we can do, say, with the thumb and a single finger was once.

  What

  can you remember doing first thing this morning among

  answers and the liquid trees

  Who picked this

  fruit of just

  the key in the door got there by itself. The lights just grew on the

  trees.

  A Dialogue

  Susan Howe and Cole Swensen

  The following began as a dialogue around a reading that Susan Howe gave at the Centre Georges Pompidou on May 3, 2000. We would like to thank the Centre, and particularly Marianne Alphant and Hannah Zabawski, for planning and facilitating the reading. And we would like to thank Dominique Fourcade and Claude Royet-Journoud, who thought up this project and to whom it is dedicated.

  We begin mid-conversation …

  SUSAN HOWE: For instance, the Metaphysical Club—a group of people from different professions who met in Cambridge between 1871–74. They presented papers and discussed them, all very informally. Peirce, William James and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. attended meetings. Chauncey Wright, another academic reject who has almost disappeared from American intellectual history, was a key member. The term “pragmatism” was first used during these meetings. By Peirce.

  The members of the Club represented various disciplines; lines were not so clearly drawn as they are now. And the mix added richness and riskiness, as in post-Reformation thought and practice, when scientists, philosophers, lawyers, mathematicians, politicians, ministers, playwrights and poets shared ideas and discussions. Newton never considered his religious cosmology independent of his science. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, science was called “natural philosophy.”

  COLE SWENSEN: An interesting difference in social organization, as well as a different quality of curiosity—more inclusive, more voracious—a curiosity that caused things. It must have increased everyone’s awareness of connections and echoes among fields.

  HOWE: Yes. The connections I’d like to explore are with various evangelical and revivalist enthusiasms in the early and mid-nineteenth century in upper New York State. The area was so repeatedly swept by such enthusiasms that it became known as the Burned-over District. One movement was the rise of spiritualism, which in its modern form originated there in 1848.

  SWENSEN: What a year that was! It’s almost as if a year can be volatile in and of itself, and everything that passes through it, event and object alike, is magnified.

  HOWE: You are not kidding. Even in supposedly backwater places like the Genesee River Valley. I am, after all, a poet of place, and I feel this part of upper western New York State is haunted or perhaps charged.

 

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