Before the Simplon pass at the Italian-Swiss border, is a Roman bridge over the Diveria River. It’s called the “new” bridge, because it was built in 1300 c.e. to replace the previous bridge built in the reign of Emperor Augustus that was destroyed by a flood.
“Poetry gives us the opportunity to offer our observations to present and future readers, be they from the perspective of one standing on the bridge watching events or of one standing below and taking on the current. I’m looking forward to a month of editing and I know that my IPM readers are standing on the bridge waiting for the flow of poems to begin…”
So began International Poetry Month 2015 and the flow of poems was fascinating for me to edit and I hope that both Readers and Poets enjoyed getting their feet wet. I offer my most sincere thanks to the participating poets and to the more than 1000 readers who came from the United States, England, Australia, Brazil, Italy, Pakistan, Canada, Denmark, France, India, Luxembourg, Singapore, the UAE, New Zealand, Trinidad & Tobago, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Switzerland, Israel, Ghana, the Philippines, Belgium, Peru, Romania, Serbia and Portugal to read their work.
Today is the fourth of March and Spring seems only a few days away here in Northern Italy while I know those in other places are still slogging through the snow. Regardless of the temperature, here the snows have begun to melt and these poems will begin to erode away, disappearing a few at a time and leaving only the voices behind. Some you will still be able to find on the web, or in a book. Some will be gone for good. Where do we go from here? Why across the bridge and in search of new images, new experiences and new poetry. Following is an alphabetical list of the participating poets; each name is also a link to the poet’s work posted at IPM where you will find additional links to individual blogs or published works:
Some mornings when I go walking,
on my promenade sauvage,
you are my mind’s companion.
Not today, à cause de la pluie;
It was Monday that we walked together.
I said to you,
nothing of any real importance.
I pointed out a pleasing branch,
winter-bare, cracking the sky’s solid blue
into angular panes.
All the while, the curious eye of a downy woodpecker
peered at us across the top of a telephone pole.
(“Amazing that telephone poles still are,” I say.
you nod agreeably, watching the bird away.)
Houseman goes jogging by;
In my mind’s eye
he turns his head across his shoulder and
back to us in lovely iambs shouts:
“Loveliest of trees the cherry now…”
(steam rising from his mouth into the frigid air.)
I look down;
Lady Murasaki is at my elbow,
kimonos layered seventeen deep.
At her neck and sleeve
a pulsing chromatic order
from bamboo’s winter gold to white,
honors the season with
the echo of its colours.
She raises not her eyes to me.
I glimpse the iron black
of her eleventh century teeth
as she murmurs,
“Golden bamboo sighs
beneath winter’s white weight.”
Recalling to me Friday’s now absent snow.
(Matter never lost, transformed to water.)
She takes her cordial, silent leave
of me, still standing on the bridge.
I press deep-coated ribcage
against the galvanized steel
that keeps us seekers
on the middle path.
Now it holds me from falling to the street below,
leaning out to show you the galls
among my favorite live-oak’s leaves.
(you have turned from whatever personal curiosity held you back while Murasaki and I had our tête-à-tête.)
I tell you: in a housewife’s notebook
that comes to pieces in my hands, I have found
(along with a laudanum label from 1832, instructions for concocting A Paste for Cleaning Gloves, Court Plaster, and Essence for the Handkerchief,)
her recipe for SOLID INK.
It requires 42 parts Aleppo Galls to
3 parts Dutch Madder.
“Would this work,” I ask
“if we soaked live-oak galls in vinegar
and warm water?”
What could be drawn with such an ink,
bitter recriminations?
rancorous, impudent washes?
We laugh together at this unlikely experiment,
After all, the galls rest too far off the path to reach.
I leave you to work that out, bridge-bound.
Maybe you will have an answer for us tomorrow.
“A Demain.”
I smile to you and,
hands pocketed in the cold,
amble towards home.
Splash! Throw the poems out with the bath water and see what you can fish up; IPM 2015 is open for submissions. I’m late with posting the call for submissions because I’ve been immersed in reading Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames a series of entrancing social and political observations of turn of the century Paris and the rise of the department store in the guise of a romance novel. His mesmerizing descriptions of the ‘new’ architecture captures the theme of this year’s IPM perfectly:
“The iron staircases developed bold curves, multiplying the landings; the iron bridges suspended in space, ran straight along, very high up; and all this iron formed, beneath the white light of the windows, an excessively light architecture, a complicated lace-work through which the daylight penetrated, the modern realisation of a dreamed-of palace, of a Babel-like heaping up of the storeys, enlarging the rooms, opening up glimpses on to other floors and into other rooms without end.”
It’s all water under the bridge
Poetry gives us the opportunity to offer our observations to present and future readers, be they from the perspective of one standing on the bridge watching events or of one standing below and taking on the current. I’m looking forward to a month of editing and I know that my IPM readers are standing on the bridge waiting for the flow of poems to begin.
Find the submission guidelines and info about IPM HERE.
Since you died, ……….I slip sideways through ……….the plastic flow of ice, ………………..resigned, ……….to the eventuality of burial.
The glacial blocks and till ……….of time, ………………..regained.
Not quietly like Proust with ……….tisane and madelines,
but open-mouthed,
into unanchored fear.
Years ago my mother gave me this cook book. It’s a first edition from 1950 of French recipes by Mme. Germaine Carter. Of interest for the story of how it was compiled as for the recipes themselves; Mme. Carter, her husband (the British consul at Boulogne) and Mr. Rapp (British ambassador to Mexico) were interned together in Brandenburg during WWII and passed much of the time discussing French cooking and compiling this book.
Easy and delicious:
Although there are many things in this book that I will probably never make – say, Calf’s Brains with Cream Sauce or Lark Pâté – I have found that the recipe for mayonnaise is stupendous and, like the two cake recipes I use again and again, easy to follow with reliable results. First take a look:
Mme. Germaine Carter’s Gâteau à l’orange
Looks good, yes! Here’s the recipe:
4 eggs beaten 2 cups sugar 3/4 cups milk 3 cups sifted flour 4-1/2 tsp. baking powder 1 tsp. salt grated peel of 2 oranges juice of 1 orange** 1 cup butter Beat the eggs wit the sugar; add a little milk. Sift the flour wit the baking powder and salt. Add milk and flour alternately, beating well. Add the orange peel and juice of 1 orange then the butter. Beat well and pour into 2 greased loaf pans. Bake in a moderate oven (350ºF / 180ºC) for 40 min. Remove from the pan to a cooling rack.
It is in fact, as easy as it sounds. My only modifications have been to bake the whole shebang in a large sheet cake pan and to check it after 35 min. She follows this recipe with another for ‘orange syrup’ which uses the juice of the second orange, another cup of sugar and a 1/2 cup of water; however, I’ve only done that once. The cake is quite ‘orangey’ enough without and my whole family loves it ‘as is’ with no icing or with sweetened whipped cream and fresh strawberries as in the photo. It does make a lot of cake so it’s perfect for a party, the layer cake you see in the picture is what I made with the 1/3 that was left over the second day after the other 2/3’s had been devoured ;).
Hope that you all enjoy Mme. Carter’s Gâteau à l’orange as much as we do. **This is one recipe in which those beautiful Italian ‘blood’ oranges are not recommended unless you want your cake to turn a bluish-grey! The beautiful hot pink juice of these oranges is Ph reactive and will change color when it combines with the baking powder
Bonnie McClellan-Broussard 