Number 16: Amy Clampitt "The Smaller Orchid"

The Smaller Orchid

Love is a climate
small things find safe
to grow in- not
(though I once supposed so)
the demanding cattleya
du cote de chez Swann,
glamor among the faubourgs,
hothouse overpowerings, blisses
and cruelties at teatime, but this
next-to-unidentifiable wildling,
hardly more than a
sprout, I've found
flourishing in the hollows
of a granite seashore --
a cheerful tousle, little,
white, down-to-earth orchid
declaring its authenticity,
if you hug the ground
close enough, in a powerful
outdoorsy-domestic
whiff of vanilla.

-- Amy Clampitt

Hap Notes: Amy Clampitt (1920-1994) is both an inspiring story of sticking with it when you want to be a writer and an anomaly since not many poets get their start after the age of 40.

Another Midwesterner, Clampitt was born in New Providence, Iowa. Don't know where that is? It's pretty close to Eldora- does that help? (I'm teasing you. You sorta gotta be from Iowa to know where places are there, even Des Moines. I've driven the length of the state dozens of times and I have farming relatives in Eldora and I still had to look it up.) She high-tailed it out to New York after going to Grinnell College.

Without getting published for so long, Clampitt was tantalizingly close to the publishing world in New York where she worked in various "secretarial" jobs at the Oxford University Press and the Audubon Society. She also did some free lance editing. She originally wanted to write fiction although she had a bent for poetry. She published a small volume of poetry in 1974 and got a few poems published in the New Yorker. When her book, The Kingfisher, came out she got the kind of critical attention that a poet needs to establish a reputation. She was 63.

Clampitt has the most extraordinary vocabulary (with both literature and nomenclature) this side of David Foster Wallace. One should never be ashamed of reading with the help of a dictionary but in Clampitt's case it's necessary. (You'll never go wrong having a dictionary close at hand when you read poetry, ever.) She's well-read and well-versed in terms from the natural and biological world. This poem is a good example.

The poem reads beautifully regardless of whether or not you know that "du cote de chez Swann" is one of the volumes of Remembrance of Things Past by Proust. If you know this, then, it also doesn't hurt if you know that in the book "to do a cattleya [orchid]" is a euphemism with some of the characters in the book for lovemaking. And knowing these things certainly helps figure out the "overpowerings" and "blisses and cruelties" in the poem. You need to "hug" the ground to get a whiff of that delightful vanilla scent. There's something orgasmic about finding a wild orchid, too, if you enjoy looking around at the natural world and don't mind a few granite pebbles in your shoe.

I believe when she is talking about the faubourgs she means the suburbs of Paris that Proust was talking about- like the famous Rue de St. Germaine. I could be wrong, though. She might be referring to a seedier section (no pun intended.) Contrast this "glamor" of fine houses to the "out-doorsy domestic whiff of vanilla."

But, if you didn't know all those things you can still get delight from the poem, for example the "cheerful tousle" in the granite seashore. Surprisingly the little orchid does not need a hothouse in which to grow. And what does this say about love- the "climate small things find safe" and how that orchid shows up? It's a "down-to-earth orchid." I've always pictured this happening in Maine, where she used to vacation.

When a poem packs this kind of dense rich deliciousness and yet, is highly readable no matter your background, it's a little slice of sweet genius. Finding this poem is like finding that orchid.

Clampitt, by the way, was a spirited, often child-like, wise woman who never tired of looking at the sky, the trees, the birds, the ground. She was a charmingly sweet heart. You can see how she sparkles in her picture, can't you?

Here's a good Amy Clampitt quote: " I think the most precious thing I brought away with me from four years at Grinnell was the beginning of a sense of—how shall I put it?—the livingness of the past. Only the beginning of that sense—but you have to begin somewhere, otherwise it’s hard to see how the world we live in can have any meaning, and if one cannot find meaning in the world, it seems to me that living in it at all is no more than just bearable."

And part of another: "...because what I see from my own peculiar perspective, as a writer of poetry, is a conspiracy all around to stamp out the sense of living continuity, to stamp out singularity, to do away with everything that’s not a recognizable commodity, and in the process to make ordinary day-to-day living as boring as possible. That’s only my opinion, but if I didn’t hold it, I wouldn’t be a writer."

You can find more of her poetry here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/amy-clampitt

Number 15: Carl Sandburg "Arithmetic"

Arithmetic

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your
head.

Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how
many you had before you lost or won.

Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven -- or five
six bundle of sticks.

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand
to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.

Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and
you can look out of the window and see the blue sky -- or the
answer is wrong and you have to start all over and try again
and see how it comes out this time.

If you take a number and double it and double it again and then
double it a few more times, the number gets bigger and bigger
and goes higher and higher and only arithmetic can tell you
what the number is when you decide to quit doubling.

Arithmetic is where you have to multiply -- and you carry the
multiplication table in your head and hope you won't lose it.

If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad, and you
eat one and a striped zebra with streaks all over him eats the
other, how many animal crackers will you have if somebody
offers you five six seven and you say No no no and you say
Nay nay nay and you say Nix nix nix?

If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she
gives you two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is
better in arithmetic, you or your mother?

--Carl Sandburg

Hap Notes: I have a soft spot for Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) partially because he's from my neck of the woods in Illinois. He's from Galesburg, I'm from a bit further south. I cannot tell you how many times I crossed over his territory in my lifetime.

Sandburg did a little bit of everything in his youth (starting when he was 13) from milk truck driver to shoe shiner to brick layer to dish washer to farm laborer to coal-heaver to waiter to hobo to his stint in the army in the Spanish American War. His parents were poor hard-working Swedish immigrants.

Sandburg worked for the thriving Socialist party in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and did a stint as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News. He started writing poetry in college (he went to, but did not graduate from, Lombard College in Galesburg- sometime between the war and his work in Wisconsin). He was published in Harriet Monroe's highly esteemed and influential poetry magazine and started to make a name for himself with his poetry which was liberally salted with Midwestern vernacular and common sense.

Sandburg was very popular in his day for playing the guitar (he was said to be very good at it), singing, and reciting his poetry. The ladies loved him and he reputedly loved them back although he was married to Lillian Steichen (photographer Edward Steichen's sister.) He was, as we say, "full of it," and he enjoyed his celebrity when he had it. He was full of stories and homilies and jokes. He's always reminded me of my grandpa, Frank Mansfield, who was also poetically "full of it." (So I come by it both geographically and genetically.)

If you want to hear Sandburg's sonorous tones check it out here: www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/audioitem.html?id=2642. His Swedish cadence is enchanting. I believe he's reading from Cornhuskers. (And when he says "our Baltimore neighbor" he's talking about H.L. Menken, who often published him in the American Mercury.)

Critically, his Pulitzer-prize-winning biography of Lincoln is still highly regarded but his poetry is thought to be somewhat glib and simple. Well, that's true, I suppose. He's glib, yes, but when he gets it right, he soars in sections of poems like "The People, Yes." He also wrote some well-loved American "fairy tales" with his "Rutabaga Stories" and a songbook of American folk tunes. In his poetry, often his last few lines are the "punch" or the drive. I think this poem needs no comment from me- but, I love the last line most of all. Always makes me laugh. It might be worth mentioning that Sandburg was vexed by math and was not a particularly good student of it in school.

Everybody in creation knows that fog-creeping-on-little-cat-feet poem he wrote.

Once when I was driving through Galesburg in the night (around 2 a.m.) I had an impulse to stop at Sandburg's house (it's preserved by a historical society) and have a picnic with him. I had a couple of pieces of cold Kentucky Fried Chicken and some biscuits from a stop earlier in the evening (I was driving to see my mom from my home,at the time, in Minnesota) and a bottle of lemonade and a Milky Way bar. I took my little picnic and sat on the sidewalk, like a bum, outside of the white picket fence of the tiny house where he was born. The policeman driving by waved at me amicably. I suppose a woman eating chicken and sitting on the sidewalk didn't look too threatening- who knows, maybe it happens a lot. I ate, cried a little because of the strangeness of it all, got up, said goodbye to Carl and went to mom's. I still think of that picnic sometimes. (Carl didn't eat much being dead and all but I still sorta felt him there. I've never eaten a piece of chicken that tasted quite as good as the ones I ate with Carl.)

The title of this blog, is from Sandburg's poem on poetry. He says, "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits."

Here's a good Sandburg quote: "Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years."

Here's one, too: "I have often wondered what it is an old building can do to you when you happen to know a little about things that went on long ago in that building."

One more (he's irresistible) : "When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along."

Read more Sandburg here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/carl-sandburg.

Number 14: Ralph Waldo Emerson "Brahma"

Brahma

If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hap Notes: Emerson (1803-1882) probably needs no introduction. Everybody had to at least be familiar with his essays "Self-Reliance" and "Nature" when I was in school although, admittedly not everyone understood them. You know, all that "to be great is to be misunderstood" stuff. Just between you and me, I have a collection of his journal entries which I find far more readable. I do love his odd poetry, too.

Emerson was large contributor to the Transcendentalist movement, which I suppose you already know. He knew some of the brightest people of the era, Thoreau, of course, but also John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Horace Greeley, abolitionist John Brown, John Greenleaf Whitter and sculptor Daniel Chester French (the guy who later created the seated Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial) just to name a few. Emerson met Abe Lincoln, too, and was acquainted with Walt Whitman.

In the mid 1800s he started reading Vedic literature- the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita. This poem is a direct outcropping of this reading as the speaker in the poem is the Hindu god, Brahma- the creator of the universe. The colorful picture above is Brahma (and if you are wondering if he had that many heads- yeah, he did if he wanted to.)

Brahma is telling us that he is everything and that things which appear to be opposite, stem from the same source and are part of the same thing. Brahma also tells us in the poem that other Hindu gods long to live in the spirit of Brahma as do the holy men of the past. Brahmin are priests who sing hymns to Brahma. Oh, if that "red slayer" thing is unfamiliar to you, I'll simplify and say that the warrior/military caste (Kshatriya) in India was often depicted as red (fury, aggression.)

Brahma speaks the last two lines directly to us- find your way to Brahma and you will be released from the need for heaven- you will understand you are already a part of eternity. Don't believe this? Brahma says, that's alright, I created your disbelief, too. In fact, he is you. You cannot win an argument with Brahma.

So what's the point of the poem? How about this; you'll never be happy until you discover that you are part of the fabric of the universe just like everything else. Then, you will truly be everything, immortal and free. Easy to say, hard to do.

Here's that famous Emerson quote (one of many): "Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."

And here's another: "We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul."

You can find more of Emerson's poetry here: www.americanpoems.com/poets/emerson

Number 13: William Carlos Williams "The Great Figure"

The Great Figure

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
fire truck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city

--William Carlos Williams


Hap Notes: William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was a dynamo who was both a physician and a highly acclaimed poet. He was always listening, writing and absorbing as he made his daily rounds or house calls. He wanted poetry to change and he tried to drag it towards a more fluid, easier to understand medium. His influence, which came into play much later than he'd have liked, is huge. Almost everyone who has ever written one lick of poetry in America over the last 70 years owes him something. Not just published poets- everyone.

He is so beloved by readers of poetry that it's hard to understand how his verses could have been controversial or critically panned. Williams himself was a little overwhelmed by it. It all started when T.S. Eliot published that neutron bomb of poetry called The Waste Land. While Williams was writing imaginative, loosely structured sensory poems, Eliot had turned the poetry world on its ear by sending it to an academic appreciation of words.

I think of it as Eliot serving a complex fruit cup in a cut crystal dish composed of strange fruits that one eats with a filigreed silver spoon, while Williams, on the other hand, is serving you one perfect peach. Turns out, the critics liked the fruit cup and thought the peach was too simple (and yes, I am making a bit of a statement about Eliot's line in Prufock- "Do I dare to eat a peach?" Good call.) I love Eliot's work and I often think Williams a bit twee and/or confusing, but I'll defend to the death the theories of WCW. Williams told Allen Ginsburg that "Howl" should be cut by half. I agree. But I'm getting ahead of the story- sorry.

In the end, Williams was extraordinarily influential, even Robert Lowell, with his stiff early formality and later confessional style, said Williams had changed everything. If you've ever gone to a poetry slam or written a scrap of free verse you're working on the ground that Williams had to plow by himself for almost 20 years. Some of that ground has yielded perfect peaches and much of it has been sown with sour fruit but, there you have it. (And, to be fair, the ground that Eliot plowed yielded some pretty dull, soggy fruit cups, too.)

"The Great Figure" is an amazing amalgam of art and poetry. Williams was visiting the artist Marsden Hartley's studio when the fire truck went by and he wrote a quick poem about his impression. Later, Charles DeMuth painted "I Saw the Figure Five in Gold," based on the poem. The painting is a pretty good illustration of the poem and I often have to disentangle my love of the painting from that of the poem. (P.S. see the "Bill" in the painting? And the "Carlos?" I think there's a "WCW" in there, too.)

Surely you have been somewhere and seen something that, for a moment, made the whole world slow down. You heard no sound and just saw the object- maybe a scrolled letter on a sign or the curve of someone's wrist. That something, that object- strikes you with such momentary force that it is like your breath is taken away for a seond. In the poem, there is rain and there are lights and a firetruck and the "dark city," can't you see this, in your mind's eye, fleeting by you? And then hear the roar and the rumbling?

Here's where Williams is so brilliantly successful when he hits it right; you know the old saying "A picture paints a thousand words?" Well, Williams lets a couple dozen words paint a thousand pictures. How awesome is that? That's poetry muscle right there.

Here's a good Williams quote, he's commenting about The Waste Land: ""I felt at once that it had set me back twenty years and I'm sure it did. Critically, Eliot returned us to the classroom just at the moment when I felt we were on a point to escape to matters much closer to the essence of a new art form itself—rooted in the locality which should give it fruit."

You can find more Williams here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-carlos-williams

Number 12: Stanly Plumly "Still Missing the Jays"

Still Missing the Jays

Then this afternoon, in the anonymous
winter hedge, I saw one. I'd just climbed,
in my sixty-year-old body—with its heart
attacks, kidney stones, torn Achilles tendon,
vague promises of ulcers, various subtle,
several visible permanent scars, ghost-
gray hair, long nights and longer silences,

impotence and liver spots, evident
translucence, sometime short-term memory loss—
I'd just climbed out of the car and there
it was, eye-level, looking at me, young,
bare blue, the crest and marking jewelry
penciled in, smaller than it would be
if it lasted but large enough to show
the dark adult and make its queedle
and complaint. It seemed to wait for me,
watching in that superciliary way
birds watch too. So I took it as a sign,
part spring, part survival. I hadn't seen a jay
in years—I'd almost forgotten they existed.
Such obvious, quarrelsome, vivid birds
that turn the air around them crystalline.
Such crows, such ravens, such magpies!
Such bristling in the spyglass of the sun.
Yet this one, new in the world,
softer, plainer, curious. I tried
to match its patience, not to move,
though when it disappeared to higher ground,
I had the thought that if I opened up my hand—

---Stanley Plumly

Hap Notes: Stanley Plumly (born 1939) has a a way of discerning messages about life from the observance of the natural world in his daily life. We should probably all be doing this but not all of us should be writing poetry. Luckily, Plumly is. His style is natural but not ever datedly vernacular and is intelligent without being effete or condescending.

Plumly is Poet Laureate for the state of Maryland, he teaches English at the University of Maryland and his current book is a highly acclaimed biography of Keats, Posthumous Keats. He was born and raised in Ohio and his poetry often deals with his upbringing, his experiences as a youth, his relationship to his parents and the flora and fauna he grew up around and lives around now.

This poem reads very well on the surface, like I think a good poem should (that's just my two cents), but digging deeper will yield a few diamonds.

I think that cheeky jay stands for something- that young curious "supercilious" creature. How many of us are/were like that in our youth? Now look at the phrase "...I just climbed,/in my sixty year old body." The comma directs us to his list of aging woes but, remove the comma just for a moment. Aging often feels like you've recently climbed into a different body (oh, believe me it does!) The jay may mean, he says, survival and spring but implicit in this is youth. The poet says he'd almost forgotten about jays (the way he was when younger.) I'm not saying you can't take the phrase literally, I'm just throwing out some bread crumbs here.

He has a bright incisive way of describing the intelligent, quarrelsome Corvidae (the list of birds) family and it does seem as though a jay's cry makes the air clearer, shattering it like glass with their insistent voices. They are a marvel to look at, too. The one in the poem is large enough to show the "dark" adult but is still "softer" and "plainer." Now look at the title of the poem. Another couple of bread crumbs.

This poem is almost perfect in describing a very intimate and telling moment with nature. Haven't you ever wanted to hold your hand out to a wild bird? (And just as a trivial and silly aside; in the picture above Plumly just looks like a poet, doesn't he? Not the blue one, the black and white picture, although, now that I think on it, maybe the blue one does too.)

Heres a good Plumly quote on writing poetry: "Being able to speak with a certain amount of clarity what's in your mind and in your heart seems to me to be inseparable from having a happy life."

You can find more Plumly poetry here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/stanley-plumly

Number 11: Edna St. Vincent Millay "Recuerdo"

Recuerdo

We were very tired, we were very merry--

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable--

But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,

We lay on the hill-top underneath the moon;

And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry--

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;

And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,

From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;

And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,

And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl covered head,

And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;

And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and the pears,

And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Hap Notes: The life of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) is a tale about what comes of being brilliant, independent minded, opinionated and pretty in an era when you could not be all of those things and be taken too seriously for too long. It's hard for me to believe that a woman who wrote the powerful sonnets of Fatal Interview is so marginalized now. I don't believe you'll read any sonnets that show an independent woman's point of view about love that are much better.

Edna was openly bisexual, a bit free and easy (which never really hurt any male poets, I'll hasten to add) and just a little drunk on fame (and sometimes booze.) She made a big splash in the world of literature with her poem "Renascence" and praise was liberally ladled out to her. She was sort of a poster-girl for the "roaring 20s" life. And, she's written more than enough junk, in addition to her gems, as, I might add, have all poets. She also won the Pulitzer Prize so put that in the balance. She was a literary celebrity for a couple of decades starting in 1917.

However, she was one of the first to see the dangers of growing fascism in Europe after WWI (for which -no kidding- she took a lot of flak) and she was a defender of the controversial anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. Her political poetry is a tad trite and histrionic, admittedly- she can get bogged down in schmaltz. Her style of poetry is thought to be a bit stylized and musty which always frustrates me because "contemporary" poetry should not be considered good, just because it's new or different, anymore than other poetry should be dismissed because it is not.

She had what should have been a very smart marriage for a writer; she had affairs all through her married life (most notably with the poet George Dillon) but she married a man who completely adored her, worshiped her talent and took care of her until the day he died. He did not subvert her will to housework when she longed to write. Unfortunately, the rest of America wasn't particularly understanding about the life of a writer, especially a very attractive female one. She was lifted high -very high- and then cast aside. She has never regained her rightful place, to my way of thinking.

Let me get down from this soapbox and talk about the poem.

Recuerdo means "I remember" and the poet is remembering being raptly in love. They travel all night on the ferry over and over. Where else were they going to go in the early 20's- even in New York? There were no all-night diners or movie theaters. If you hung around in Central Park too long you'd be arrested for vagrancy (or, if they were physical with each other- worse.) So the lovers spend all night going back and forth on the ferry in the deep of the night. The next morning they are so full of love and richness that they give their fruit and all their money to an old woman they meet on the street. They are deliriously in love.

Surely everyone has memories of seven hour phone calls, or staying up all night talking and laughing with a new love? The poem captures it perfectly with the sing-song repetition of the first two lines of each stanza- that intoxicated way you talk when you're tired but so happy. Then each stanza explains the love-fogged details of what they did with their time. It doesn't hurt to reflect that this back and forth love isn't exactly going anywhere- Millay also knew that this kind of love is wonderful but fleeting.

I've always been starry-eyed about this poem because I remember. You probably do, too. I hope you do, anyway. Everyone should be that in love at least once.

By the way, if you are a woman and a writer, she blazed that trail for you, sister. She blazed it good and hot.

Here's a good quote from Millay: "I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes."

And another: "It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over."

You can read more of her work here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/edna-st-vincent-millay

Number 10: Frank O'Hara "Today"

Today


Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!

You really are beautiful! Pearls,

harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all

the stuff they’ve always talked about

still makes a poem a surprise!

These things are with us every day

even on beachheads and biers. They

do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks.

--Frank O'Hara


Hap Notes: Doesn't this poem make you want to run around shouting "Frogs! Rhinestones! Cherry soda! Banjos! Licorice! O Bicycles, peaches and glitter glue!" Okay, maybe it's just me that wants to do that. I'm not quite sure why O'Hara (1926-1966) picked these things but I have a few speculations.

O'Hara's writing style, as casual as it often seems, is easy to imitate but hard to equal. While he wrote personal poems, often chronicling his days, his life, his lovers, his friends, they rarely feel so personal that you can't be a part of them as you read. Sometimes reading his poetry is like talking to him on the phone, other times it's like evesdropping as he talks in his sleep or mutters to himself. I have to admit that I did not like O'Hara's poetry when I first read it, but I have fallen hopelessly in love with it as the years pass.

I am forced to (already!) take something back that I said earlier in reference to Kenneth Koch; in O'Hara's case it actually does mean something when one says that his poetry is much like abstract expressionism is in painting. Since O'Hara knew so many painters (and wrote poems about them) in his job as a writer for Art News and as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, he comes by it naturally.

This list of stuff in the poem, which first may strike you as refreshingly strange and arbitrary, is well selected. Not only does O'Hara make us appreciate these separate things in a new way by linking them up but he plays on our connotations of the words when we see them. What was the kangaroo in your mind's eye like? Were your pearls on a strand or loose? Plastic harmonica or metal? Separate white aspirin or in a bottle? He's letting the words and you do a bit of the work.

I often imagine O'Hara paging through a magazine or walking down a busy street in New York and picking these items out of ads, from book covers, articles or store windows. He's almost writing an advertisement for the words. Words that follow us to military actions (beach heads) and funerals (biers- a bier is a stand for a coffin.)

We've already illustrated how the words have meaning- think of what you saw when you read them. They really are strong as rocks- your vision of what they are is hard to change, and the phrase is almost an advertising slogan for words. "Nouns, use them all you want- they're strong as rocks! On sale now!" We appreciate that words mean something one at a time or in a list, "hard" words or easy ones, simple things and complex. And don't forget the title- Today!

I wasn't going to use this poem right away but, once I selected it, the darn thing just jumps around like trapped grasshopper until you let it out of the box. So I had to free it early.

Here's a good quote by O'Hara: "It may be that poetry makes life's nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time."

You can find more of his poetry here (although we'll see him again in the course of a year): www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/frank-ohara