The next is by Philip Levine and his collection of poetry known as What Work Is. Philip travelled through small towns and documented the life of factory workers, coal miners, school teachers, etc to understand what work it through poetry. I have one here for school teachers in general, and the other helps you get a grip of the reality of rough living done through the palms and not the mind. It is beautifully gritty.
Please enjoy, I know it is all wordy and four poems is a big jump. Here is my advice. Read slowly. I do these once a week so give yourself a week to digest. Read a poem and then stop, don't think about it, feel about it. Like a song where you don't pay attention to the lyrics the first time around for every verse. Do the same with these poems. If they spark something in you, reread them again. Read them out loud. Let them hover on your tongue and in your heart. Then think. These people are sharing experiences with you, not lecturing you. Feel. Then think. Read them several times. Read them when you are bored of reading for class, as a respite. Let poetry be a solace like music. Trust me. It works. It doesn't take a type of person because for the first few millennia of human existence we communicated everything through poem. Everyone has poetry in them.
Rory
Love at Thirty-two Degrees
I
Today I dissected a squid,
the late acacia tossing its pollen
across the black of the lab bench.
In a few months the maples
will be bleeding. That was the thing:
there was no blood
only textures of gills creased like satin,
suction cups as planets in rows. Be careful
not to cut your finger, he says. But I’m thinking
of fingertips on my lover’s neck
last June. Amazing, hearts.
This brachial heart. After class,
I stole one from the formaldehyde
& watched it bloom in my bathroom sink
between cubes of ice.
II
Last night I threw my lab coat in the fire
& drove all night through the Arizona desert
with a thermos full of silver tequila.
It was the last of what we bought
on our way back from Guadalajara—
desert wind in the mouth, your mother’s
beat-up Honda, agaves
twisting up from the soil
like the limbs of cephalopods.
Outside of Tucson, saguaros so lovely
considering the cold, & the fact that you
weren’t there to warm me.
Suddenly drunk I was shouting that I wanted to see the stars
as my ancestors used to see them—
to see the godawful blue as Aurvandil’s frostbitten toe.
III
Then, there is the astronomer’s wife
ascending stairs to her bed.
The astronomer gazes out,
one eye at a time,
to a sky that expands
even as it falls apart
like a paper boat dissolving in bilge.
Furious, fuming stars.
When his migraine builds &
lodges its dark anchor behind
the eyes, he fastens the wooden buttons
of his jacket, & walks
outside with a flashlight
to keep company with the barn owl
who stares back at him with eyes
that are no greater or less than
a spiral galaxy.
The snow outside
is white & quiet
as a woman’s slip
against cracked floorboards.
So he walks to the house
inflamed by moonlight, & slips
into the bed with his wife
her hair & arms all
in disarray
like fish confused by waves.
IV
Science—
beyond pheromones, hormones, aesthetics of bone,
every time I make love for love’s sake alone,
I betray you.
Crypsis and Mimicry
By Katherine Larson
Crypsis for the way that things are hidden.
How certain small truths disappear against
a larger truth. The way my Cajun friend explains
bouillabaisse as the synthesis of red snapper and crab,
oysters, mussels, and crayfish. Garlic and orange
peel. Dry white wine. A fusion of the senses.
So autumn slips into the swamplands
with glossy alligator eyes. We talk of love potions
while drinking cafe noir. Powdered lizards
and tender missives scrawled with blood. How her
grandmother crushed peach seeds with stones
to draw dirt to the bottom of a pail of bayou water:
a speckled fish could flatten itself against those
sediments and simply fade away. She used to
dream there was a hole in the bucket and so the task
was never-ending. That's crypsis-
everything against intrinsic terrain dissolves in it.
Mimicry is different. It's you stroking my throat
as if I'm a bird. It's me pretending in your arms to be a bird.
I am not a bird. I remember reading how the Curies's laboratory
would glow at night; Marie
wrote of the enchantment of those luminous silhouettes.
I used to believe that science was only concerned
with certainty. Later, I recognized its mystery.
There isn't language for it -
The way I can see you when you are shining.
Our roots crypsis, our wings mimicry.
M. Degas Teaches Art And Science At Durfee Intermediate School--detroit1942
He made a line on the blackboard,
one bold stroke from right to left
diagonally downward and stood back
to ask, looking as always at no one
in particular, "What have I done?"
From the back of the room Freddie
shouted, "You've broken a piece
of chalk." M. Degas did not smile.
"What have I done?" he repeated.
The most intellectual students
looked down to study their desks
except for Gertrude Bimmler, who raised
her hand before she spoke. "M. Degas,
you have created the hypotenuse
of an isosceles triangle." Degas mused.
Everyone knew that Gertrude could not
be incorrect. "It is possible,"
Louis Warshowsky added precisely,
"that you have begun to represent
the roof of a barn." I remember
that it was exactly twenty minutes
past eleven, and I thought at worst
this would go on another forty
minutes. It was early April,
the snow had all but melted on
the playgrounds, the elms and maples
bordering the cracked walks shivered
in the new winds, and I believed
that before I knew it I'd be
swaggering to the candy store
for a Milky Way. M. Degas
pursed his lips, and the room
stilled until the long hand
of the clock moved to twenty one
as though in complicity with Gertrude,
who added confidently, "You've begun
to separate the dark from the dark."
I looked back for help, but now
the trees bucked and quaked, and I
knew this could go on forever.
one bold stroke from right to left
diagonally downward and stood back
to ask, looking as always at no one
in particular, "What have I done?"
From the back of the room Freddie
shouted, "You've broken a piece
of chalk." M. Degas did not smile.
"What have I done?" he repeated.
The most intellectual students
looked down to study their desks
except for Gertrude Bimmler, who raised
her hand before she spoke. "M. Degas,
you have created the hypotenuse
of an isosceles triangle." Degas mused.
Everyone knew that Gertrude could not
be incorrect. "It is possible,"
Louis Warshowsky added precisely,
"that you have begun to represent
the roof of a barn." I remember
that it was exactly twenty minutes
past eleven, and I thought at worst
this would go on another forty
minutes. It was early April,
the snow had all but melted on
the playgrounds, the elms and maples
bordering the cracked walks shivered
in the new winds, and I believed
that before I knew it I'd be
swaggering to the candy store
for a Milky Way. M. Degas
pursed his lips, and the room
stilled until the long hand
of the clock moved to twenty one
as though in complicity with Gertrude,
who added confidently, "You've begun
to separate the dark from the dark."
I looked back for help, but now
the trees bucked and quaked, and I
knew this could go on forever.
Coming Close
by Philip LevineTake this quiet woman, she has been standing before a polishing wheel for over three hours, and she lacks twenty minutes before she can take a lunch break. Is she a woman? Consider the arms as they press the long brass tube against the buffer, they are striated along the triceps, the three heads of which clearly show. Consider the fine dusting of dark down above the upper lip, and the beads of sweat that run from under the red kerchief across the brow and are wiped away with a blackening wrist band in one odd motion a child might make to say No! No! You must come closer to find out, you must hang your tie and jacket in one of the lockers in favor of a black smock, you must be prepared to spend shift after shift hauling off the metal trays of stock, bowing first, knees bent for a purchase, then lifting with a gasp, the first word of tenderness between the two of you, then you must bring new trays of dull unpolished tubes. You must feed her, as they say in the language of the place. Make no mistake, the place has a language, and if by some luck the power were cut, the wheel slowed to a stop so that you suddenly saw it was not a solid object but so many separate bristles forming in motion a perfect circle, she would turn to you and say, "Why?" Not the old why of why must I spend five nights a week? Just, "Why?" Even if by some magic you knew, you wouldn't dare speak for fear of her laughter, which now you have anyway as she places the five tapering fingers of her filthy hand on the arm of your white shirt to mark you for your own, now and forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment