Number 118: Ruth L. Schwartz "The Swan at Edgewater Park"

The Swan at Edgewater Park

Isn't one of your prissy rich peoples' swans

Wouldn't be at home on some pristine pond

Chooses the whole stinking shoreline, candy wrappers, condoms

in its tidal fringe

Prefers to curve its muscular, slightly grubby neck

into the body of a Great Lake,

Swilling whatever it is swans swill,

Chardonnay of algae with bouquet of crud,

While Clevelanders walk by saying Look

at that big duck!

Beauty isn't the point here; of course

the swan is beautiful,

But not like Lorie at 16, when

Everything was possible—no

More like Lorie at 27

Smoking away her days off in her dirty kitchen,

Her kid with asthma watching TV,

The boyfriend who doesn't know yet she's gonna

Leave him, washing his car out back—and 

He's a runty little guy, and drinks too much, and

It's not his kid anyway, but he loves her, he

Really does, he loves them both—

That's the kind of swan this is.

-- Ruth L. Schwartz

Hap Notes: Ruth L. Schwartz (born 1962) has won a dozen prizes and fellowships for her poetry but the most intriguing thing about her, save for her extraordinary verse, is that she got her Ph.D. at the University of Integrative Learning in Transpersonal Psychology (she got her B.A. at Wesleyan and her M.F.A. at the University of Michigan.) Her website explains her mission more clearly and here it is: www.heartmindintegration.com/guidance.html.

She has taught at Goddard College, Mills College California State-Fresno, California College of the Arts, Ashland University and Cleveland State University (where one assumes today's poem was observed.) She also guides would-be writers in a retreat through "Writer as Shaman" which you can find out about here: www.thewriterasshaman.com/default.html. If you want to write, just reading about the retreats can be somewhat liberating. There are also free "teleclasses" archived to enjoy.

In our poem today, Schwartz is saying something about beauty and love and our choices in life.

Here's a good Schwartz quote: "Writing has always been a way for me to grapple with life on earth, and it served me well in that capacity. But in order to create the life I truly wanted to live, I needed more. Shamanism and other mystical practices gave me the additional tools I needed to truly say Yes to myself and my life, and helped me reach a state of deep peace, freedom and possibility."

You can find more Schwartz here: www.ruthschwartz.com/

Number 117: Kenneth Fearing "Green Light"

Green Light

Bought at the drug store, very cheap; and later pawned.
After a while, heard on the street; seen in the park.
Familiar, but not quite recognized.
Followed and taken home and slept with.
Traded or sold. Or lost.

Bought again at the corner drug store,
At the green light, at the patient's demand, at nine o'clock.
Re-read and memorized and re-wound.
Found unsuitable.
Smashed, put together, and pawned.

Heard on the street, seen in a dream, heard in the park, seen
by the light of day;
Carefully observed one night by a secret agent of the Greek
Hydraulic Mining Commission, in plain clothes, off
duty.
The agent, in broken English, took copious notes. Which he
lost.
Strange, and yet not extraordinary.
Sad, but true.

True, or exaggerated, or true;
As it is true that the people laugh and the sparrows fly;
As it is exaggerated that the people change, and the sea stays;
As it is that the people go;
As the lights go on and it is night and it is serious, and just
the same;
As some one dies and it is serious, and the same;
As a girl knows and it is small, and true;
As the corner hardware clerk might know and it is true, and
pointless;
As an old man knows and it is grotesque, but true;
As the people laugh, as the people think, as the people
change,
It is serious and the same, exaggerated or true.

Bought at the drug store down the street
Where the wind blows and the motors go by and it is always
night, or day;
Bought to use as a last resort,
Bought to impress the statuary in the park.
Bought at a cut rate, at the green light, at nine o'clock.
Borrowed or bought. To look well. To ennoble. To prevent
disease. To entertain. To have.
Broken or sold. Or given away. Or used and forgotten. Or
lost.

--Kenneth Fearing

Hap Notes: If you have never read any of Kenneth Fearing's (1902-1961) poetry, it is my great pleasure to introduce you to him. His poetry is sharp, littered with advertising and literary references and muscular with irony and wit. Then, when you are reading a barbed and bitter passage, a beautiful, lyric sentence will emerge startling you with its truth, abruptly the poem will dive back into street-wise sardonic patter. I think he's incredibly under-rated. He's a thrilling read.

It's really no wonder he can thrill a reader. He wrote a bit of soft core porn and pulp fiction in his career. His crime thriller, The Big Clock, was twice made into a movie, first with Ray Milland with the original title, later as No Way Out with Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman where it was updated for the times. That book gave Fearing his only financial stability. He was a freelance writer/poet who never held a "regular" job for more than six months at a time throughout his entire life. He struggled with poverty most of his life.

Fearing was born in Oak Park, IL (Hemingway's home town) and he went to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana and later, the University of Wisconsin. In his lifetime he wrote seven books of poetry and seven works of fiction (with his own name.) He made most of his cash from his fiction and his family, who often gave him money to survive. While much of his poetry was written during the 'Great Depression', he cannot be sloughed off as merely representative of his era. His work is vibrant and sharp and witty and wise.

In today's poem we see his bright-work polished down and mysterious. What is "it"? Sometimes it seems like a person, sometimes it's something noisy, sometimes it's for a headache, sometimes it's...what? A radio? A watch? A drug? It seems to be found in a drugstore on a corner by a traffic light. Maybe it's something not so cheap, maybe it's just something we treat cheaply. And why is it called "green light" and not "red light"? I'll let you ponder this a while.

Here's a good Fearing quote: "There can be a unique exhilaration in creative writing, and it can offer the surprise of final discovery. These qualities exist in life (sometimes), and if they are not to be found in a verbal presentation of it, then the reader (or audience) has been cheated and the writer has been killing everyone's time. This excitement and surprise must be real, not counterfeit, and have in it the breath of those crises upon which most people feel their lives are poised, sometimes crossing into them, in fact, and then rarely with routine behavior, seldom with standardized results."


You can find more Fearing here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/kenneth-fearing

Number 116: James K. Baxter "Wild Bees"

Wild Bees

Often in summer, on a tarred bridge plank standing,
Or downstream between willows, a safe Ophelia drifting
In a rented boat - I had seen them comes and go,
Those wild bees, swift as tigers, their gauze wings a-glitter
In passionless industry, clustering black at the crevice
Of a rotten cabbage tree, where their hive was hidden low

But never strolled too near. Till one half-cloudy evening
Of ripe January, my friends and I
Came, gloved and masked to the eyes like plundering desperadoes,
To smoke them out. Quiet beside the stagnant river
We trod wet grasses down, hearing the crickets chitter
And waiting for light to drain from the wounded sky.

Before we reached the hive their sentries saw us
And sprang invisible through the darkening air.
Stabbed, and died in stinging. The hive woke. Poisonous fuming
Of sulphur filled the hollow trunk, and crawling
Blue flames sputtered - yet still their suicidal
Live raiders dived and clung to our hands and hair.

O it was Carthage under the Roman torches,
Or loud with flames and falling timber, Troy!
A job well botched. Half of the honey melted
And half the rest young grubs. Through earth-black smouldering ashes
And maimed bee groaning, we drew our plunder.
Little enough their gold, and slight our joy.

Fallen then the city of instinctive wisdom.
Tragedy is written distinct and small:
A hive burned on a cool night in summer.
But loss is a precious stone to me, a nectar
Distilled in time, preaching the truth of winter
To the fallen heart that does not cease to fall.

- James K. Baxter

Hap Notes: I cannot claim to be an authority on the poetry of New Zealand but I did think this poem by Baxter fits in nicely with yesterday's poem by fellow New Zealander Katherine Mansfield. James K. Baxter (1926-1972) is one of New Zealand's most colorful, interesting and (in his time) controversial poets.

Baxter was a brilliant and somewhat eccentric person who held a variety of odd jobs as he wrote and read profusely. Educated at several colleges, first at Otago University and later at Victoria University and Wellington Teacher's College, Baxter's restless spirit made him move from place to place, learning, living and, for a quite a while, drinking.

He was an ardent protester of the Viet Nam War. You probably know that Viet Nam was not a U.S. unilateral "intervention" but was done by members of the ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, U.S.) Treaty and these allies all fought in the "police action." Baxter was also passionately dedicated to bridging the gap between the native Maori tribes of New Zealand and the Pakeha (white non-Maori bloodline residents of New Zealand.) He established a commune in Jerusalem (NZ) which met with varying degrees of success. He was interested in Jung and his writing often reflects Jungian sensibilities. He had a colorful and fascinating life that I will leave you to explore online at your leisure. (As you can see from his pics, he changed a bit from life-to-life work.)

How in the world do I know anything about New Zealand poetry? Well, I don't really but I read a verse by Baxter and it stuck in my head until I found out more about him. Here's the verse, which I still think is one of the great short poems I have read:

High Country Weather

Alone we are born,
And die alone.
Yet see the red-gold cirrus,
Over snow-mountain shine.

Upon the upland,
Ride easy stranger.
Surrender to the sky,
Your heart of anger.

- James K. Baxter.

In our poem today, Baxter tells of a group of pals determined to get some honey from a hive in the low crevice of a tree. They try to smoke them out with a "bee smoker"; a firepot with bellows and a nozzle to direct the smoke, sometimes with lighted sulphur. Smoke confuses and alarms the bees (sort of like yelling Fire! in a theater) and the sulphur will kill them. Baxter equates the destruction to the battle of Carthage (in which the Romans completely destroyed the African city in the Punic War.)

The poem certainly has it's underlying symbols of what "white" societies can do to natives but it's also straight up just observing the senseless violent behavior of people not respecting the value of the natural world. The scant honey they got was either melted by the heat or contained larvae- it was a lot of destruction for little gain. As is so often the case, eh?

If this poem has piqued your interest in New Zealand's poetry or bees, here's a couple of book recommendations: The Insect Societies by Edward O. Wilson and 99 Ways Into New Zealand Poetry by Paula Green and Harry Rickets (find this at your library- it's huge.)

Here's a good Baxter quote: "When some cheese-headed ladder-climber reads a poem of mine from the rostrum/ Don't listen." (he's referring to clergy)

Baxter's poetry is not easy to find online but worth the search. You can find two here: oldpoetry.com/oauthor/show/james_k_baxter

Number 115: Katherine Mansfield "Voices of the Air"

Voices of the Air

But then there comes that moment rare
When, for no cause that I can find,
The little voices of the air
Sound above all the sea and wind.

The sea and wind do then obey
And sighing, sighing double notes
Of double basses, content to play
A droning chord for the little throats—

The little throats that sing and rise
Up into the light with lovely ease
And a kind of magical, sweet surprise
To hear and know themselves for these—

For these little voices: the bee, the fly,
The leaf that taps, the pod that breaks,
The breeze on the grass-tops bending by,
The shrill quick sound that the insect makes.

-- Katherine Mansfield

Hap Notes: Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is mostly noted for her short story work but I've always loved this poem because I like bugs so much. (Mansfield is no relation to me, I don't think, but we both use a family name as a pen-name. Her full name (before marriage) was Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp.

I like bugs, beetles, flies, creepy crawly things that others often eschew and I like the idea of them having "little voices." I know you mightn't like insects all that much but my advice to you is to make peace with them – they are the most successful species on the planet. There are 900,000 different kinds of living insects and they comprise 80 percent of the species of the world. It is estimated that at any one time there are 10 quintillion insects on the planet (that's a one with 18 zeros behind it.) They don't want to hurt you (not many of them, anyway) they just want to fly around, eat, mate and die. If they wanted to kill us off, they'd have done it by now. Just sayin'.

Mansfield isn't just talking about insects, here, anyway. She's talking about the myriad sounds the natural world makes that sometimes will break through the louder noises of life- in this case, the sound of the ocean. It's good to listen to "little throats sing." I suggest you join in once in a while. They must know something- they've been around for more than 100 million years.

Mansfield was born and raised in New Zealand though after she went to college in England she did not return much (partly because of her health). She was friends with D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. Many of her short stories were published after her untimely death at 34. Lawrence is said to have somewhat based Gudrun in Women In Love on Mansfield and Gerald Crich is also somewhat based on Mansfield's husband John Middleton Murry.

She was a brilliant modern writer, a good thinker and a talented cellist, too. She often wrote that she and D.H. Lawrence were very similar in character and they remained close friends. Both of them suffered from tuberculosis and it would take both their lives when they were still quite young. (Lawrence died when he was 45.)

Here's a good Mansfield quote: "I'm a writer first and a woman after."

and another:

"When we can begin to take our failures seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves."

You can find more of Mansfield's poetry here: www.poemhunter.com/katherine-mansfield/

Number 114: Phil Rizzuto "Reversal of Opinion"

Reversal of Opinion

And he hits one in the hole
They're gonna have to hurry.
THEY'LL NEVER GET HIM!
They got him.
How do you like that?
Holy Cow.
I changed my mind before he got there.
So that doesn't count as an error.

-- Phil Rizzuto

Hap Notes: Friends send me Holy Cow! The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto and I've been anxious to use one. Two baseball fans/writers, Tom Peyer and Hart Seely, thought Rizzuto's on-air transcripts made for poetry and they framed some of his comments as such. Rizzuto (1917-2007), or "the Scooter" is familiar to baseball fans all over even though Rizzuto was loyal to the Yankee pinstripes even in his broadcasting career.

Born in Brooklyn, Rizzuto played shortstop with the Yankees from 1941-1956. He was a color-commentator broadcaster for the Yanks from the early 60s until 1996. His colorful phrasing and Brooklyn accent made for a very textured and fun baseball broadcast. He won the MVP in 1950 as a player and as a broadcaster he teamed up with the likes of Red Barber, Mel Allen, Joe Garagiola, Tom Seaver, Billy Martin and Bobby Murcer.

Here's high praise for his playing – Ted Williams once said that the Red Sox would have won the pennants in all their playoffs in the late 40s if they'd had Rizzuto. Rizzuto was a wiry, energetic player whom the fans loved.

Rizzuto is the broadcaster who first said "Holy Cow!" on ballgames. (Much as I loved Halsey Hall credit must go to Rizzuto). He was also the baseball broadcaster on Meatloaf's "Paradise By The Dashboard Light." Rizzuto got a gold record from it.

There's plenty of stuff online on the colorful, long, rich and varied career of Rizzuto. I even think the poem/quip has more than a kernel of Zen in it.

P.S. Sorry this is so late. I forgot to push "save". Twice. It's one of those days. Time for a glass of wine, some cookies and an Amitabh Bachchan movie. Or maybe just the cookies.

Number 113: Browning, Starbuck and Bierce

Pippa's Song (from Pippa Passes)

The year 's at the spring,
And day 's at the morn;
Morning 's at seven;
The hill-side 's dew-pearl'd;
The lark 's on the wing;
The snail 's on the thorn;
God 's in His heaven—
All 's right with the world!

--Robert Browning

Pigfoot (with Aces Under) Passes

The heat’s on the hooker.
Drop’s on the lam.
Cops got Booker.
Who give a damn?

The Kid’s been had
But not me yet.
Dad’s in his pad.
No sweat.

-- George Starbuck


With a Book

Words shouting, singing, smiling, frowning—
Sense lacking.
Ah, nothing, more obscure than Browning,
Save blacking.

-- Ambrose Bierce

Hap Notes: Well, it's Saturday and back in my childhood that meant we could watch cartoons in the morning! Frankly, outside of the hour before and after school, that's the only time cartoons were on television then. Now, of course, they are on 24/7 which delights me at 3 in the a.m. but gives one pause as to who else (aside from goofs like me) is watching them. Anyway, here is the poetry equivalent of Saturday morning cartoons.

First we have the song Pippa sings in Browning's long poem about a young innocent girl and her meanderings during one day, "Pippa Passes". It's a play in verse and "Pippa's Song" is one of the most quoted passages of Browning's work. I'd be amazed if you've never heard that last verse. Let's call this the "Disney" cartoon even though Pippa's song in the poem gets more and more ironic as her day passes. (The painting is from a children's book of Pippa by Frank Adams)

Then we have our poet of yesterday, George Starbuck, in one of his "translations from the English." He takes Pippa's song, hips it up as street lingo and gives us "Pigfoot." We'll use a couple more of his "translations" later this year- they are astute and amusing. This is the Warner Brothers cartoon where the Disney cartoon is imitated and given a hip twist and a bit of ridicule.

Finally we have that curmudgeon of a journalist/writer Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913?) who gives us a pun as he takes a swipe at Browning's intensity and length. We'll call this the Tex Avery cartoon although it might be more of a Rocky and Bullwinkle moment (remember their "poetry corner"?) Bierce is not known for poetry (even though he wrote two volumes of it) but I have a soft spot for him because of his immensely clever Devils Dictionary, his extraordinary short stories and he and I share the same birthday. The question mark at his death date is just to indicate that he moved to Mexico and disappeared. It's a fascinating story I'll let you discover on your own.

Here's Bullwinkle reading Wordsworth: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv1L-8f2erg&playnext=1&list=PLDC3C98AC7F1692A5

Happy Saturday!

Number 112: George Starbuck "Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree"

Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree

O
fury-
bedecked!
O glitter-torn!
Let the wild wind erect
bonbonbonanzas; junipers affect
frostyfreeze turbans; iciclestuff adorn
all cuckolded creation in a madcap crown of horn!
It’s a new day; no scapegrace of a sect
tidying up the ashtrays playing Daughter-in-Law Elect;
bells! bibelots! popsicle cigars! shatter the glassware! a son born
now
now
while ox and ass and infant lie
together as poor creatures will
and tears of her exertion still
cling in the spent girl’s eye
and a great firework in the sky
drifts to the western hill.

-- George Starbuck

Hap Notes: It's fitting we use this poem for April Fools' day because George Starbuck (1931-1996) was, in his own lifetime, considered too clever by half and much of his extraordinary work has been dismissed as hyper-educated light verse. This is quite a shame because Starbuck knew a prodigious amount about poetry and its forms and chose to play with them with wit, whimsy and a sense of perspective. So his April Fools' joke on us all is that he was and is a verbal force to be reckoned with and his fading reputation is getting some color back again.

He was a math whiz who was accepted at Cal Tech when he was 16 and I suppose it's no shock that many musicians and poets have a talent for math. He dropped out of the math gig after two years because he wanted to write poetry. He studied at U.C. Berkley, the University of Chicago and Harvard but never got a degree in anything. He studied under both Archibald MacLeish and Robert Lowell (he was in the same class and pals with Plath and Sexton). In fact he served as a sounding board/editor for both Sexton's To Bedlam and Part Way Back and to his friend Philip Roth's book Goodbye Columbus.

Starbuck was a vivid opponent of the Viet Nam War and is responsible for making "loyalty oaths" illegal in the U.S. When the State University of New York-Buffalo asked him to sign one (in the paranoid early 60s) he took his case all the way to the Supreme Court and won.

In today's poem (a "visual" or "shape" poem, often considered "concrete poetry) Starbuck's extraordinary vocabulary bursts and pops and sizzles as it describes Christmas. Note that the tree is "potted" and he's making a comment about religion with that, too. The novelty of this poem often off-sets its brilliant wording. Maybe we'd take it more seriously if it looked like this:

O fury-bedecked! O glitter torn!
Let the wind erect bonbonbonanzas;
Junipers affect frostyfreeze turbans;
Iciclestuff adorn all cuckolded creation
In a madcap crown of horn!

It's a new day; no scapegrace of a sect
Tidying up the ashtrays playing
Daughter-in-Law Elect;

Bells! Bibelots! Popsicle cigars!
Shatter the glassware!
A son born now

Now

While ox and ass and infant lie
Together as poor creatures will
And tears of her exertion still
Cling in a spent girl's eye
And a great firework in the sky
Drifts to the western hill.

But Starbuck's shaping of the poem is integral to its meaning- even though the words are gorgeous in any form. And of course, his words belie the "potted" plant with their wild vigor. In his poem "Tuolumne" Starbuck says "I have committed whimsy. There. So be it./I have not followed wisdom as I see it."

Starbuck's brilliance is that he has hidden much of his genius behind an "antic disposition." It's fitting that on April Fools' Day we unmask the sparkling intelligence and crackling and serious vocabulary that always grins and winks at us underneath his clever wordplay.

And aren't you glad that "Starbuck" means so much more than overpriced coffee? (Well, and the Melville reference, of course.)

Here's a great Starbuck quote:

"For me, the long way round, through formalisms, word games, outrageous conceits (the worst of what we mean by 'wit') is the only road to truth.... Put another way: I have a conscious slavery to the language. The only alternatives are unconscious slavery, or the sainthood of the wholly silent."

You can find more Starbuck here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/george-starbuck