Art and Observation – Page 29 – Bonnie McClellan-Broussard

IPM 2MXI: Don’t be Cavalier!

Or maybe you should?

“That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.”

-Robert Herrick from: To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

I have a strong memory of my Junior Year of high school, I was taking, what they called at the time, AP English or English IV. The class was taught by the redoubtable Donna Northouse who had recently received her doctorate degree (of which she was justly proud and of which I was, pure contrarian teen, deeply disdainful. I often think that if I could go back I would give myself a good smack in the head). If I recall correctly she’d done her thesis on the Cavalier Poets; I was disgusted! Poets who didn’t take poetry seriously, how dare they! Poetry was the sacred territory of unadulterated passion that poured forth directly from the heart; poetry was meant to be blood on the page, seething with raw emotion that would provoke tears and spine tingles in the reader! I wanted to go straight from Shakespeare to the real stuff: The Romantic Poets. I was so relieved when we arrived on the turbulent shores of the Mediterranean buffeted about with Byron, Shelly, and Keats:

“All my faults perchance thou knowest,
All my madness none can know;
All my hopes, where’er thou goest,
Wither, yet with thee they go.”

-George Gordon Lord Byron from Fare Thee Well

I was in love with Byron…he never revised (or said he didn’t), he was good looking, we were both born on the 22 of January! Here was the real stuff, passionate poetry with a capital “P”. From there we went on to study other literary movements and my memory becomes muddled; the image that remains is that of the Romantic Poets and those who followed rescuing me from the Cavalier Poets who were…well…so cavalier about it all!

It would be another 15 years before I came out of my swoon and discovered that there was more to poetry than fire in the blood: love, death, and hopeless despair. It would be almost that long again before I discovered that that the folds of language and the terrain of poetry were deeper than my own navel and more fascinating than the surface of my lover’s skin…

George Gordon, Lord Byron - Romantic Poet

List: I’m just the type…

I'm just the type for whom
no end is suffix (ient):
tap (drip, drip, drip)
where is the beer, the syrup, the flow in this day?
clip (ed) to the
dock 
     do I mean to to say kissed where my ship comes in
     or pinned to the dry velvet of a leaf?

finish (ed)
board (ing)
     shall I wave my handkerchief as I sail off
     or thank the landlady for lunch as I wipe my lips
     sliding my legs across the polished wood?

I must be at least two tired to get anywhere,
    looking in wonder through the iris
    that will bear
    up under
    the snow.

Lullabye

shore
me up
mother
quailing
at the term
of sleep

TENDER: for Paul Squires (in memorium)

“I miss you and I wanted to write / you a letter to tell you I miss you / but there is no silence / like hello unanswered”

Paul Squires from: “A Small Boy Holding Flowers“

TENDER

What is paid?
What is offered?
How is that spot
when pushed?
What are we looking after?

Caulonian Suite: II. Caulonia Supriore

CAULONIA SUPERIORE

for Matthew

The sky roils;

swallows knit webbed gyres

among the baroque sag of rooftops.

Across the way they’re fixing one;

new russet barrel tiles sealed over

old timber bones.

I hear a sound like the pounding

Of a battering ram or the cleaving

Of an immense stump

Contrapunted with a loud HUP.

My daughter sleeps with the abandon

of an unfettered shutter swinging in a stiff wind.

A woman in her fifties climbs the stairs

to the house where she and my daughter

were both conceived.

We regard each other with

that part of the eye

which admits an alternate aim.

The pounding stops.

The church bells go off

with the percussive invective

of a fire alarm

DANGATIDANGATIDANGDANGDANG.

They say it’s peculiar to here:

someone sounds the bell

not with the pull of a knotted rope

but with the unlevered force of arms.

This is the second in a suite of poems about Caulonia Supiore

Via Clivio

the tile lined roof on the last villa

of the petty nobles of this town

sags like the jaw line of a matron.

her voice sings out

a spinster’s peevish tweet:

“VERGOGNA! VERGOGNA!”

she:

(distant falling daughter of whatever local saint–

though aren’t we all?)

shames her poor dog.

he of:

nothing to do but go mad with barking;

jamesian psycosis

closed shutters

infinite empty rooms.

Series I : Polyvalence : context is everything

Series I : polyvalence* : context is everything

Burial at Sea

WAKE

Speaking Truth toPower/The Admonitions Scroll

STAY

CURRENT

Morning Shift

CHANGE

SIMPLE DRESS

MOVE

*pol·y·va·lent (pŏl’ē-vā’lənt)
adj.

Acting against or interacting with more than one kind of antigen, antibody, toxin, or microorganism.
Chemistry
1. Having more than one valence.
2. Having a valence of 3 or higher.

3. (fig.) having many different functions, forms, or facets.

IPM 2MX…Where have all the poems gone?

International Poetry Month 2010 is now closed. The marauding hordes left the library ablaze, the flood washed away the ashes, the caravan carrying the last copy of the precious poetry collection has vanished in the desert.

What remains is the oral tradition; I have made audio files of each poem available where the poem used to be posted. There is also the possibility that a copy of some of these works still exist in the archives of the poets themselves. Anyone who is on my e-mail list has a ‘fragment’ of each work. Perhaps, like the poems of Sappho, this is all that will remain.

I would like to extend my profound thanks to the following guest poets for their contributions:

Anonymous 21st cent. Italian Poet

Adina Richman

Jere Schaefer

Several of these poets have blogs where new poetry may be encountered. I encourage anyone suffering from poetry withdrawal to visit these sites by clicking on any of the names that appear in colour.

Thanks as well to everyone who has stopped by to read and comment on the posted work. It has been a real joy to present so much fine poetry this year. Now I have to start thinking about next year, and as my sweetheart reminded me this morning, get back to writing.

A presto!