"The Plain Sense of Things" by Wallace Stevens

THE PLAIN SENSE OF THINGS

After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things. It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savoir.

It is difficult even to choose the adjective
For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
The great structure has become a minor house.
No turban walks across the lessened floors.

The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.
The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side.
A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition
In a repetitiousness of men and flies.

Yet the absence of the imagination had
Itself to be imagined. The great pond,
The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,
Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence

Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,
The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this
Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge,
Required, as a necessity requires.


Source of the text - Wallace Stevens, Selected Poems, edited by John N. Serio. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, p. 277.

TJB: What! Wally, a poet? One must have a mind of winter to conclude lack of adornment is also itself an adornment. Deft use of -i, -ee, & -ai.

"The Fury of Aerial Bombardment" by Richard Eberhart

The Fury of Aerial Bombardment

You would think the fury of aerial bombardment
Would rouse God to relent; the infinite spaces
Are still silent. He looks on shock-pried faces.
History, even, does not know what is meant.

You would feel that after so many centuries               
God would give man to repent; yet he can kill
As Cain could, but with multitudinous will,
No farther advanced than in his ancient furies.

Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?
Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?                 
Is the eternal truth man's fighting soul
Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?

Of Van Wettering I speak, and Averill,
Names on a list, whose faces I do not recall
But they are gone to early death, who late in school     
Distinguished the belt feed lever from the belt holding pawl.

Source of the text - Richard Eberhart, Burr Oaks.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1947, p. 61.

TJB: Surprise, a war poem on why wasn’t God watching. This one involves many –ent & –y rhymes, bomb-dactylics, & a smooth, famous final stanza.

"Poetry as Scholarship" by Ange Mlinko

POETRY AS SCHOLARSHIP

Hippocampus: a sea horse with a horse’s forelegs and a dolphin’s tail.  Ignis fatuus:

a phosphorescent light that hovers or flits over swampy ground at night, possi-

bly caused by spontaneous combustion of gasses emitted by rotting organic

matter—alternatively, something that misleads or deludes.  Pioneer: foot soldier.

Placebo: “I shall please.”  Standard: rallying place.

A dictionary of words from other languages with no counterpart in English

would include chreos, “the poet’s obligation to praise,” and charis, which means

“the charm specific to poetry.”  But sometimes you wanna say: Screw you,

charm! Sappho doting on her girls, I’d like a little thumos, i.e. a hoof’s kick to the

hippocampus.

I’m at the typewriter being useful, meanwhile—doctors walking freely, profess-

sors walking freely, addicts walking freely, priests walking freely! Who is as

useful as I? Larousse and Bescherelle, Roget & Webster, Liddell & Scott: I would

put them in a play, the play I don’t write, called Ignis Fatuus.

As Roussel’s putting a statue of Kant in Ejur was completely faithful to the

bizarreness of Africa, so I am obliged to find the precise correlatives to

describe the randomness of the universe, those rifts out of which the hatch-

ing of a new being, or alternatively, the brick that falls on your head alone from

the scaffolding. But it’s not even a brick, it’s the fingerprints on a brick or sec-

ond cousin to the experiments done from leaning towers, measuring the

velocity of falling objects of different weights; time loses its place, and you get

the placebo.

To be a pioneer of archaic meters, check out the newly excavated encyclopedia

of horse gaits, which metamorphoses into an ode on the mount with strophe

and antistrophe interspersed with didactic choruses, seguing into an instruct-

tion manual on the training of steeds, a pre-Socratic treatise crossed with an

Arabian libretto, a hybrid text you send out on a sojourn rather than the race-

track, communicating intelligence reports across the spice routes, ending with

the rules for a military funeral for a mule.

I was trying to describe the perfect library when I remembered that all you

need to know is its etymology, rallying place.

Source of the text - Ange Mlinko, Starred Wire.  Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 2005, pp. 42-43.

TJB: Hybrid jeremiad. In this poem about aboutness, Mlinko glides by passion versus placebo, the false fire of lexicography, & a poem as library.

 

 

 

 

"The Battle of Finnsburh," translated by X. J. Kennedy

The Battle of Finnsburh: a fragment

Original text in Old English:

                        . . . “næs byrnað?”

Hnaef hleoþrode ða,           heaþogeong cyning:

“Ne ðis ne dagað eastan,             ne her draca ne fleogeð,

ne her ðisse healle             hornas ne byrnað.

Ac her forþ berað;             fugelas singað,              5

gylleð græghama,             guðwudu hlynneð,

scyld scefte oncwyð.             Nu scyneð þes mona

waðol under wolcnum.             Nu arisað weadæda

ðe ðisne folces nið             fremman willað.

Ac onwacnigeað nu,             wigend mine,              10

habbað eowre linda,             hicgeaþ on ellen,

winnað on orde,             wesað onmode!”

ða aras mænig goldhladen ðegn,             gyrde hine his swurde.

ða to dura eodon             drihtlice cempan,

Sigeferð and Eaha,             hyra sword getugon,             15

and æt oþrum durum            Ordlaf and Guþlaf,

and Hengest sylf             hwearf him on laste.

ða git Garulf            Guðere styrde

ðæt he swa freolic feorh            forman siþe

to ðære healle durum            hyrsta ne bære,              20

nu hyt niþa heard            anyman wolde,

ac he frægn ofer eal            undearninga,

deormod hæleþ,             hwa ða duru heolde.

“Sigeferþ is min nama,” cweþ he,             “ic eom Secgena leod,

wreccea wide cuð;             fæla ic weana gebad,              25

heardra hilda.             ðe is gyt her witod

swæþer ðu sylf to me             secean wylle.”

ða wæs on healle            wælslihta gehlyn;

sceolde cellod bord             cenum on handa,

banhelm berstan             (buruhðelu dynede),              30

oð æt ðære guðe             Garulf gecrang,

ealra ærest            eorðbuendra,

Guðlafes sunu,             ymbe hyne godra fæla,

hwearflicra hræw.             Hræfn wandrode,

sweart and sealobrun.             Swurdleoma stod,              35

swylce eal Finnsburuh             fyrenu wære.

Ne gefrægn ic næfre wurþlicor            æt wera hilde

sixtig sigebeorna             sel gebæran,

ne nefre swetne medo            sel forgyldan

ðonne Hnæfe guldan             his hægstealdas.             40

Hig fuhton fif dagas,             swa hyra nan ne feol

drihtgesiða,             ac hig ða duru heoldon.

ða gewat him wund hæleð             on wæg gangan,

sæde þæt his byrne            abrocen wære,

heresceorp unhror,             and eac wæs his helm ðyrel.              45

ða hine sona frægn             folces hyrde,

hu ða wigend hyra             wunda genæson,

oððe hwæþer ðæra hyssa

Modern English translation by X. J. Kennedy:

               . . . “Are this hall’s gables burning?”

Then King Hnaef answered,      though callow in battle,

“That glow is not dawn,      nor a dragon in flight,

nor are this hall’s horns,       its high gables burning.

It’s our foes in bright armor       preparing attack

Birds shall scream, gray wolf howl,      and war’s wooden spears rattle,

shield shall stand up to shaft.      Now behold:  the moon shines

as it wanders through clouds.      Deadly deeds are to follow

from this host who hate us.      Hard struggle impends.

Awake!  Take up linden-wood shields,      my good soldiers!

Now muster your bravery,      gird up your minds

to be dauntless today      at the forefront of battle.”

Then up rose those thanes clad in gold,      strapped on sword-belts.

great Eaha and Sigeferth      strode to the door

with drawn swords, to the other door      Ordlaf and Guthlaf

did spring, and with Hengest      himself close behind.

At the sight of their foes      Guthere pled with Garulf,

“Do not rush to the fore      in the very first onslaught

on the doors of the hall      at the cost of your life,

from which powerful Sigeferth      means to undo you.”

Yet Garulf the gallant      to the hall-holders boldly

called out his demand,      “What man holds the door?”

“I am Sigeferth,” said he,      “a prince of the Secgan,

a wandering warrior      known the world wide

for my many fierce combats.      Your fate now awaits you,

my hand shall deliver      whatever you want.”

Then in the hall burst      clash and clatter of battle,

with shields shaped like ships      that a warrior wields.

The sound of swords clanging      shook planks in the floor.

Then at the door Garulf      was first man to fall,

Garulf, son of Guthlaf,      the foremost of Frisians

died surrounded by good men      while dark overhead

the black ravens circled.      Men’s blades blazed so brightly

you would think from their flash      Finnsburh were all aflame.

I have never heard tell      of warriors more worthy

than that band sixty strong      who so bravely bore

war’s brunt, nor of any      who so well repaid

those cups of sweet mead      Hnaef gave to his guards.

For five days they fought,      not a man of them toppled

but fearless, united,      held fast at the doors.

Then one warrior, wounded,      withdrew to the sidelines,

his armor in tatters,      breastplate split apart,

his helmet impaled.      And the folk’s stout defender

asked that weary warrior      how the wounded fared

and which of the young men . . .

Source of the text - The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation, edited by Greg Delanty and Michael Matto.  New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011, pp. 126-129.

TJB: Portal combat. Attuned to dialogue, battle-sound similes & the glint on arms & armor, the poet elevates his matter with pitch-perfect lines.

"Q" by Jean Day

"Tractor, Riveter" by Colin Cheney

Tractor, Riveter

My father bought Susan's tractor
     the week they had to crane
          Christmas, her golden

mare, out of the sink hole's blind
     step the beast took into the world
          of soft, bad smut

by the grain silo. The smut
     Sam's mother let him tractor
          his body through — the world

he pasted on his ceiling so as not to crane
     his neck holding himself 'til blind
          with touching — seemed golden

to me: bodies built of golden
     seal, butterfly smut
          between their legs I was as blind

to then as my father was, when the tractor
     caught a nest of sandhill cranes
          during haying, of the world

he'd ended. And I want to world
     everything beyond Neptune's golden
          ratio with ghosts of those cranes,

beatification of that smut,
     the sudden verbs of tractor
          belts & shuttling blades blind

to their aftermath. Blind,
     Gloucester renounced the world
          but couldn't leave it, just as our tractor

returns each June to wheat golden
     as before, the buzzing smut
          in sickle blades. Yamaguchi's cranes

on the Voyager record, if really cranes
     at all, still sing in the dark with Blind
          Willie Johnson in the smut

(as someone's mother, on this world,
     called it) we engraved that golden
          record with. Tonight, playing "Tractor,

riveter," the golden, blinded cranes
     become the bodies here on my screen. Smut
          this world calls it, tractor replies another.


Source of the text - Colin Cheney, Here Be Monsters.  Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2010, pp. 54-55.

Bourguignomicon: Tractor assonance; poetry as a message to alien life. S and B sounds recur throughout the poem’s languorous sentences & sestinalike triplets.

"Shakey Dog" by Ghostface Killah

SHAKEY DOG

Yo, making moves back and forth Uptown, sixty dollars

Plus toll is the cab fee, wintertime bubble goose

Goose, clouds of smoke, music blastin

In the A-rab V blunted, whip smelling like fish

From 125^th, throwin ketchup on my fries

Hitting baseball spliffs, back seat with my leg all stiff

Push the fuckin seat up, tartar sauce

On my S Dot kicks, rocks is lit while I’m poppin the clips

I’m ready for war, got to call the Cuban guys

Got the Montana pulled in front of the store

Made my usual gun check, safety off, “Come on, Frank

The moment is here, take your fuckin’ hood off

And tell the driver to stay put. Fuck them niggaz

On the block, they shook; most of ‘em won’t look

They frontin, they no crooks, they fuck up they own juks

Look out for Jackson 5-0 ‘cause they on foot”

Straight ahead is the doorway, see that lady that lady with the shopping cart

She keep a shottie cocked in the hallway

“Damn, she look pretty old, Ghost.” She work for Kevin

She ‘bout seventy seven. She paid her dues when she smoked his

Brother-in-law at his boss’s wedding

Flew to Venezuela quickly when the big fed stepped in

Three o’clock, watch the kids, third floor, last door

“You look paranoid, that’s why I can’t juks with you”

Why? “Why you behind me leery? Shakey Dog stutterin

When you got the bigger cooker on you

You’s a crazy motherfucker, small hoodie dude

Hilarious move, you on some Curly, Moe, Larry shit

Straight Perry shit, Krispy Kreme, cocaine

Dead bodies, jail time, you gon’ carry it

Matter of fact, all the cash, I’m a carry it

Stash it in jelly and break it down at the Marriott

This is the spot. You, son—your burner cocked? These fuckin

Maricons on the couch watchin Sanford and Son, passin

They rum, fried plantains and rice, big round onions

On a T-bone steak. My stomach growling, you, I want some

Hold on, somebody’s comin, get behind me, knock at the door

Act like you stickin me up, put the joint to my face

Push me in quickly when the bitch open up

Remember you don’t me, blast him if he reach for his gun”

“You, who goes there?” “Tony.” “Tony, one second, homie

No matter rain, sleet, or snow you know you ‘posed to phone me”

Off came the latch, Frank pushed me into the door

The door flew open, dude had his mouth open

Frozen, stood still with his heat bulgin

Told him, “Freeze! Lay the fuck down and enjoy the moment”

Frank snatched his gat, slapped him, asked him

“Where’s the cash, coke and the crack? Get the smoke and you fast”

His wife stood up speakin in Spanish, big titty bitch

Holdin the cannon ran in the kitchen, threw a shot, then

Kicking in the four fifth, broke a bone in her wrist and she dropped the heat

“Give up the coke!” But the bitch wouldn’t listen

I’m on the floor like, holy shit! Watchin my man

Frank get busy, he zoned out, finished off my man’s wizie

He let the pitbull out, big head Bruno

With the little shark’s teeth, chargin, foamin out the mouth

I’m scared, Frank screamin, blowin shots in the air

Missin his target off the Frigidaire, it grazed my ear

Killed that bullshit pit, ran to the bathroom butt first

Frank put two holes in the doorman’s Sassoon

“The coke’s in the vacuum,” got to the bathroom

Faced his bad moves, the big one had the centipede stab wound

Frank shot the skinny dude, laid him out

The bigger dude popped Frankie boy, played him out

To be continued . . .

Source of the text - The Anthology of Rap, edited by Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 554-556.

Bourguignomicon: Adventures in G. The story rolls skillfully like a heist film dressed up in funny details (tartar sauce; Sassoon) & unpredictable rhythms.

"What we fail to read, is reading us" by Corinne Lee

WHAT WE FAIL TO READ,
IS READING US


My gone love, there are so many paths. Blank
and mute, blind
like worms nosing loam.
Mesopotamian diviners, bewildered,
hunted wisdom by reading them—

studying entrails of sacrificed creatures,
they saw "Palaces of the Intestines"
in which gods revealed futures (both possible
and real). Pressed coil to coil, those bowels would match

cathedral labyrinth mosaics. Worn
into thin troughs by footsteps
of penitents. Mere skin separates the cool marble floors

from pilgrims' hot inner skeins. Walls
mortal depths away
from exterior wonders. Remove that sheath, and all life
becomes probe, electric:

butterflies can dip wings,
soft shards, between jumping muscles;
lovers' fingertips can trace blue veins
of bare heart. Suddenly superfluous,
the one-note melding of skin-on-skin loving,

if lips can burrow
into pearl larynxes, if two spinal cords
can braid into one rapturous,
sparking plait. That all can be, for pure love discards
the rational. (As its pursuit breeds nothing
but monsters.) So, my phantom love,

you may absorb
this without eyes,
without skin: The body
of the beloved is neither clay,
nor glass, nor granite.
Enter.


Source of the text - Corinne Lee, Pyx. New York: Penguin Books, 2005, pp. 52-53.


Bourguignomicon: Deploying an offbeat intestine-is-cathedral metaphor & other crisp image-actions, the poet imagines there’s no skin & wonders if we can.

"Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio" by James Wright

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

In the Shreve High football stadium,

I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonville,

And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,

And the ruptured nightwatchman of Wheeling Steel,

Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.

Their women cluck like starved pullets,

Dying for love.

Therefore,

Their sons grow suicidally beautiful

At the beginning of October,

And gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.

Source of the text - James Wright, Selected Poems, edited by Robert Bly and Anne Wright. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005, p. 33.

Bourguignomicon: Game planh. This pure, simple lyric characterizes football as a deep rite of father-son compassion & hinges on the essayistic “therefore.”

"Tolle! Lege!" by Kathleen Graber

Tolle! Lege!

         Here’s the spring

         And with it transmogrified

         Yataro becomes Issabo.

         —Issa

In truth, I have less faith in the gods than I do in the chair

I passed one night set out with the trash on John Street,

even though it seemed to me then to be already beyond saving

& I was too tired to try to lift it & carry it away.

Stripped of its cushions & fabric, the frame, by moonlight,

looked like some primitive technology, a fragment

of the heavy plough scientists dug from a Danish bog

& dated through pollen analysis to the 4^th century B.C.—

the wooden wheels they knew it had had having long since

turned into peat. What I know of conversion

I learned while cleaning the sticky shelves of the icebox,

a glass sheet exploding as one end hit the sink’s hot suds.

For a single moment, as fissures crackled along the body,

I held something both whole & wholly shattered,

then, form gave way, it broke a second time, & was gone.

William James loved best those changes that burst upon us.

He hardly cared that they rarely stuck or that Augustine

in the garden had been preparing all of his life to be seized.

Hearing the children chanting, pick up & read, pick up

& read, the Saint's eyes fell upon the Epistle to the Romans,

written by Paul, the one who, having seen the Savior 

revealed on the road to Damascus, left even his name behind.

Outside, men are clearing the lawns, blowing the last

of winter's leaves into copper hills before shoveling them

into the bed of a truck. They've been at it all morning,

laboring a long time to unswaddle one acre of earth.

They pass the window & everything churns, as if the room

has been swept up in a blizzard of wings. When, decades ago,

in a dilapidated tenement slated for demolition, I caught

my own reflection in a heavy mirror affixed to a wall,

I smashed it & packed my pockets with as much of myself

as I could. Later, I poured the bits into an old milk bottle

& gave my idol a battered doorknob for a head. Augustine

believed he could almost glimpse that greater kingdom

wavering before him. Aenigma, he writes, suggesting the face

in the mirror, though his mirrors would have been bronze

& someone somewhere would have spent all of his days

pounding the world into something that small & shiny

& thin. And still, it is not easy to make out what is sought.

Someone somewhere is, even now, delicately turning

the maple spindles of a chair at a lathe. The landscapers

drive off & all the little houses resettle—

the way plovers in the dunes, having stood to stretch

their throats into the diffuse light of spring, ease down again

into the reeds. And so it is with the disquieted self, which,

startled almost at the start from itself, seems always now

to be awaiting its own return. The soul, Augustine reminds us,

loving itself, loves what is lost. He recalls the shepherd

who upon finding the missing lamb raises it up

& strides home happy. Mile after mile, he rejoices

beneath his burden of flesh. He bears the warm belly

across his glad shoulders. The pink mouth bleats at his ear.

Source of the text - Kathleen Graber, The Eternal City.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010, pp. 1-2.

Bourguignomicon: With exceptional clarity, this lyric bundles images to show conversion/poetry as a self-shattering, soul-finding force. Pick it up & read.