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‘Do you write novels?’ I said.
‘Novels, Lord no,’ she said. ‘I can’t even stay married.’
Pam Houston, Waltzing the Cat
Run, don’t walk, to get a copy of Pam’s latest, Contents May Have Shifted
(via wwnorton and poetrysociety)
(via poetrysociety)
Posted on March 8, 2012 via W. W. Norton with 149 notes
Source: wwnorton
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Nothing pleases me
Nothing pleases me
the traveler on the bus says—Not the radio
or the morning newspaper, nor the citadels on the hills.
I want to cry /
The driver says: Wait until you get to the station,
then cry alone all you want /
A woman says: Me too. Nothing
pleases me. I guided my son to my grave,
he liked it and slept there, without saying goodbye /
A college student says: Nor does anything
please me. I studied archaeology but didn’t
find identity in stone. Am I
really me? /
And a soldier says: Me too. Nothing
pleases me. I always besiege a ghost
besieging me /
The edgy driver says: Here we are
almost near our last stop, get ready
to get off … /
Then they scream: We want what’s beyond the station,
keep going!
As for myself I say: Let me off here. I am
like them, nothing pleases me, but I’m worn out
from travel.“Nothing Pleases Me” by Mahmoud Darwish from The Butterfly’s Burden, translated by Fady Joudah, translation copyright © 2007 by Fady Joudah. Copper Canyon Press.
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I just talked to someone really smart! (And wrote about it on the internet… read my interview w/ Michael Robbins on BOMBlog)
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When did the poems get written?
“One of the most startling things about Frank in the period when I first knew him was his ability to write a poem when other people were talking, or even to get up in the middle of a conversation, get his typewriter, and write a poem, sometimes participating in the conversation while doing so. This may sound affected when I describe it, but it wasn’t so at all. The poems he wrote in this way were usually very good poems. I was electrified by his ability to do this at once tried to do it myself - (with considerably less success).”
“One Saturday noon I was having coffee with Frank and Joe LeSueur (the writer with whom Frank shared various apartments over the years), and Joe and I began to twit him about his ability to write a poem at any time. Frank gave us a look - both hot and cold - got up, went into his bedroom, and wrote “Sleeping on the Wing,” a beauty, in a matter of minutes.”
from Kenneth Koch’s and James Schuyler’s reminiscences of O’Hara
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I have a lot of stolen goods in the poems. So much has been stolen—women’s sexuality, our power in birthing, reverence for the earth, etc.
I am trying to steal it back.
From this amazing interview with my teacher Hoa Nguyen on Evening Will Come, a beautiful online publication I think I have raved about before…. -
More Michael Robbins!
I have few legs. I sleep on meat.
I’d eat your bra—point being—in a heartbeat.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2009/01/12/090112po_poem_robbins#ixzz1EH8GxZBx -
Hey it's Michael Robbins discovery and appreciation week! Click through for another wonder.
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Michael Robbins continues to impress! "The boys like the girls who like heavy metal", and the girls like boys who write poems about girls who like heavy metal... but don't take my word for it, click through.
My fish, fast and loose, shoot fish in a kettle.The boys like the girls who like heavy metal.On Sabbath, on Slayer, on Maiden and Venom,on Motörhead, Leppard, and Zeppelin, and Mayhem …
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I just discovered (in plain sight! in POETRY magazine! in The New Yorker! Everywhere!) a poet named Michael Robbins and I'm as enamored as if I had found him while scuba diving in a sunken ship! Click through to read some!
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I’m both a lawyer and a poetry critic, so asking me to discuss this book would seem to present an especially harmonious pairing of subject and analyst—like handing an animal cracker recipe to a zoologist-pastry chef.
From this David Orr essay which, truth be told, I haven’t finished yet. It’s long. -
My interview with Karen Emmerich is now up on BOMBlog—check it out, Karen is one smart lady!
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I know the adjective can be a nuisance, and the adverb clumsy. I’m a touch sick of the poetic inflation around prepositions. I would prefer that conjunctions were less visibly functional. Articles can clutter. The verb works the hardest. It should be the best paid. And I know the fifteenth letter O is the best word of all: O my black frying pan. O my fallen arches. O my degenerating fibroids. O what’s the point. O little man at the foot of my bed, please don’t steal my pillow.
O go read this essay by C. D. Wright. It’s just been posted on the gorgeous new website Evening Will Come, which features a new essay each month in a lovely, storybook format. -
So I went out into the street and breathed the air of Santiago with a vague conviction that I was living, if not in the best of worlds, at least in a possible world, a real world, and I published a book of poems that struck even me as odd, I mean it was odd that I should have written them, they were odd coming from me, but I published them in the name of freedom, my own and that of my readers, and then I went back to giving classes and lectures, and I published another book in Spain, in Pampola, and then it was my turn to frequent the airports of the world, mingling with elegant Europeans and serious (and weary-looking) North Americans, mingling with the best-dressed men of Italy, Germany, France and England, gentlemen whom it was a pleasure simply to behold, and there I was, with my cassock fluttering in the air-conditioned breeze or the gusts that issue from automatic doors when they open suddenly, for no logical reason, as if they had a presentiment of God’s presence, and, seeing my humble cassock flapping, people would say, There goes Fr Sebastian, there goes Fr Urrutia, that splendid Chilean, and then I returned to Chile, for I always return, how else would I merit the appellation splendid Chilean, and I went on writing reviews for the newspaper, and critical articles crying out for a different approach to culture, as even the most inattentive reader could hardly fail to notice if he scratched the surface a little, critical articles crying out, indeed begging, for a return to the Greek and Latin greats, to the Troubadours, to the dolce stil nuovo and the classics of Spain, France and England, more culture! more culture! read Whitman and Pound and Eliot, read Neruda and Borges and Vallejo, read Victor Hugo, for God’s sake, and Tolstoy, and proudly I cried myself hoarse in the desert, but my vociferations and on occasions my howling could only be heard by those who were able to scratch the surface of my writings with the nails of their index fingers, and they were not many, but enough for me, and life went on and on and on, like a necklace of rice grains, on each grain of which a landscape had been painted, tiny grains and microscopic landscapes, and I knew that everyone was putting that necklace on and wearing it, but no one had the patience or the strength or the courage to take it off and look at it closely and decipher each landscape grain by grain, partly because to do so required the vision of a lynx or an eagle, and partly because the landscapes usually turned out to contain unpleasant surprises like coffins, makeshift cemeteries, ghost towns, the void and the horror, the smallness of being and its ridiculous will, people watching television, people going to football matches, boredom navigating the Chilean imagination like an enormous aircraft carrier. And that’s the truth. We were bored.
Three amazing sentences from By Night In Chile by Roberto Bolano (trans Chris Andrews) -
Cento (from the 2009-07-16 Cable from Karl Eikenberg)
I was able to refocus the conversation
as we discussed commitment to continuing our close partnership
I outlined what the I seeking from the relationship:
meaningful progress, security, sanctuary, investment.
Karzai agreed there had been a dramatic reduction in efforts.
I welcomed such a statement, noting a recent engagement.
It was clear even at that time, trouble was brewing.
I took issue with a rather weak comment on relations,
pointed out this did not accurately reflect our robust partnership.
Five years down the road, I said, success would be defined by
villagers who would shout, “Good Morning, Sergeant Thompson,”
as in the “Golden Age” of the relationship.
UPDATE 1/9/11: This poem featured on InDigest!
(a commonplace)
