The Virtual Anthology Installment- Sixteen

Dylan Thomas "A Process in Weather of the Heart"
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-process-in-the-weather-of-the-heart/

Dylan Thomas "In My Craft or Sullen Art"
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-my-craft-or-sullen-art/

Dylan Thomas "The Hand that Signed the Paper"
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-hand-that-signed-the-paper/

 Ezra Pound,  from The Cantos: Notes for CXVII ET SEQ.
(see below)

Djuana Barnes  "Transfiguration"
(see below)

 _________________________________________________________________________

Notes for CXVII ET SEQ.

M’amour, m’amour

                 what do I love  and

                           where are you?

That I lost my center

                        fighting the world.

The dreams clash

                         and are shattered—

and that I tried to make a paradiso

                                                         terrestre.

I have tried to write paradise

Do not move

      Let the wind speak

                  that is paradise.

Let the Gods forgive what I

                      have made

Let those I love try to forgive

                   what I have made.

-Ezra Pound

 

     ***************

Transfiguration

The prophet digs with iron hands

Into the shifting desert sands.

The insect back to larva goes;

Stuck to the seed the climbing rose.

To Moses’ empty gorge, like smoke

Rush inward all the words he spoke.

The knife of Cain lifts from the thrust;

Abel rises from the dust.

Pilate cannot find his tongue;

Bare the tree where Judas hung.

Lucifer roars up from earth;

Down falls Christ into his death.

To Adam back the rib is plied,

A creature weeps within his side.

Eden’s reach is thick and green;

The forest blows, no beast is seen.

The unchained sun, in raging thirst,

Feeds the last day to the first.

-Djuna Barnes

The Virtual Anthology Installment-Fifteen

John Donne, The Holy Sonnets V, "I am a little world made cunningly"
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/holysonnet5.php

John Donne, The Holy Sonnets X, "Death be not proud"
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/death-be-not-proud/

John Donne , The Holy Sonnet XIV, Batter my heart, three-person'd God
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/sonnet14.php

Dylan Thomas "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night/

Dylan Thomas "From Love's First Fever to Her Plauge"
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/from-love-s-first-fever-to-her-plague/

The Virtual Anthology Installment- Fourteen

Ezra Pound "A Pact"
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-pact/

Ezra Pound "Alba"
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/ezrapound/12631

T. S. Eliot "Hysteria"
http://www.poetry-archive.com/e/hysteria.html

T. S. Eliot "The Hollow Men"
http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/784/

Samuel Beckett "Cascando"
http://bittergrace.wordpress.com/2007/08/07/70-favorite-poems-7-cascando-by-samuel-beckett/

The Virtual Anthonlogy Installment- Thirteen

William Butler Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium"
 http://www.online-literature.com/frost/781/

John Donne, "A Valediction of Weeping"
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-valediction-of-weeping/ 

John Donne, "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning"
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-valediction-forbidding-mourning/

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 94 "They that have power to hurt and will do none"
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/94.html

William Shakespeare, Sonnet130 "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/130.html

On Criticism: The Seal Mother Effect

At first this title may seem playfully engaging, hopefully by the end of this essay you will come to realise the onerous connotation and find its utterance as scabrous as any slew of vulgarities.

“The Seal Mother Effect” is among the most pernicious and damaging tactics in crippling the art of criticism. It begins by way of the poet’s explanation of their poem before it is read. The incident, I am bout to recount, actually occurred in one of those disastrous workshops offered on the graduate level for thriving would-be poets and barely surviving actual poets. One goes around the table and before the poem is read we are given the kernel of impetus to the attempted piece we are about to hear: “This is about my dead Mother.”. The poem goes on to speak of some bizarre fable which our would-be poet stretches to parallel to the loss of his mother to a mother’s seal’s plight (a sad occasion, I am certain, I think, though I am stifling bits of laughter at what seems to be a mockery of memoriam). At the end of the poem, the class the would-poets and poets alike are granted the floor to criticize a poem regarding someone’s dead mother. There are very few of us, if any, who take sport in openly mocking someone’s loss over a parent. Even the most hard-hearted check their tongues, waiting for a moment away from the crowd to indulge in skewering a horribly heartfelt remembrance of someone’s mother with a pantomime of beating seal pups upon the adjacent hallway’s floor. When you “seal mother” a poem you have guaranteed that any public criticism of that poem is crippled by social mores that supercede taste. This does not protect it, one must remember, from those whose courtesy extends to just out of  sight.

Currently, the most public “seal mothering” we in the poetry world have been privy to is by the newly anointed poet laureate of the United States, Natasha Trethewey. I would like to call attention to her acts of ‘seal mothering’:

In regards to her book, “The Native Guard”: “And so, for me, this was a way of trying to tell another history, a lost or a forgotten or a little-known history about these black soldiers who played an important part in American history."

Anyone willing to run roughshod over a series of poems that seek to address a grievous social injustice? No?

In regards to her book “Beyond Katrina”: "Oddly, not until after Katrina did I come to see that the history of one storm, Camille -- and the ever-present possibility of others -- helped to define my relationship to the place from which I come," Anyone willing to wade into the natural horrors of  Katrina to pick at moments of trivialization? No, well there’s more.

In regards to her writing: “I started writing poems as a response to that great loss, much the way that people responded, for example, after 9/11,” Anyone, feel comfortable co-opting a National tragedy?

She seal mothers herself in the broadest terms, defying criticism by boldly aligning herself with topics that are much too sensitive to impugn.

To me seal mothering is a cowardly approach to art and a pessimistic view of art’s consumers. It should be avoided at all costs. Furthermore, my arms are tired from flogging a metaphorical seal.

-d w Stojek

The Virtual Anthology Installment- Twelve

Emily Dickinson, "It was not death"
http://mith.umd.edu//WomensStudies/ReadingRoom/Poetry/Dickinson/it-was-not-death

John Donne,  "The Triple Fool"
"http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/triplefool.php"

Gerard Manley Hopkins, "I Wake And Feel The  Fell of Dark"
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-wake-and-feel-the-fell-of-dark/" 

Philip Larkin, "Church Going" (if only for the last stanza, which lifts the rest out of  muddle)
http://http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar5.htm/

Dylan Thomas "All That I Owe the Fellows of the Grave"
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/all-that-i-owe-the-fellows-of-the-grave/ >

Panjandrum Poetry Series: Father

Father

Not even a prayer in this wind of hollow and change,
Will down my Father's house or bring stillness to the trees,
The hands that held my hands will not build my church,
Or parish the sun in a gold gibbous case.

That heart outside my heart--a tried, winded, simple space
Where love lived low and galed inside black irises.
Stern, taciturn, and taller than pines; I stood
at one knee and waited for the oak to bend.

Unable to stand through the long blue day,
kneeling in wrested piety, I see the ignoble weep,
And learning that men are not as tall as these,
Whispering to the wind, I bring stillness to the trees.

                                       ~Marylou Canevari

The Vitual Anthology Installment Eleven

T. S. Eliot "Rhapsody on a Windy Night"
"Rhapsody on a Windy Night"

William Butler Yeats "A Coat"
"A Coat""

Charles Baudelaire "The Stranger"
"The Stranger"

William Ernest Henley "Invictus"
"Invictus"

Robert Frost "Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same"
"Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same"

Panjandrum Poetry Series: Poem, April, Time and Light

Poem, April, Time and Light
(for Lou)

We know, as lovers, the sun has many wings,

poem, April, time and light.

You fold into a touch what I saw strowing

all to be too crushed to love or plight

and yet no star is so outspread

as what you open faith and stone

what last was cold I clutch instead

the light and power that is your own

to every stint, for I've everything

that havens make and all that’s good to me,

our simple nights of homemaking,

to hold and be the love we want to be

so close I feel the time entire

when any moment I reach out of the fire.

~William Frank

The Vitual Anthology Installment Ten

Sylvia Plath "The Moon and the Yew Tree"
"The Moon and the Yew Tree"


Robert Frost "Stopping by a Woods On a Snowy Evening"
"Stopping by a Woods On a Snowy Evening"

William Empson "The Teasers"
"The Teasers"

Anthony Hecht "Claire de Lune"
"Claire de Lune"

Emily Dickinson "The Brain is Wider than the Sky"
"The Brain is Wider than the Sky"

Virtual Anthology Installment 9

E. E. Cummings "my father moved through dooms of love"
"my father moved through dooms of love"

Gerard Manley Hopkins "God's Grandeur"
"God's Grandeur"

Dylan Thomas "The Force That Through The Green Fuse"
"The Force That Through The Green Fuse"

Robert Frost "Nothing Gold Can Stay"
"Nothing Gold Can Stay"

W. H. Auden "Their Lonely Betters"
"Their Lonely Betters"

The Vitual Anthology Installment Eight

Carl Sandburg, "Grass"
"Grass"

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "In Memoriam A.H.H."
"In Memoriam A.H.H."

Anthony Hecht, "Dover Bitch"
"Dover Bitch"

Dylan Thomas, "And Death Shall Have No Dominion"
"And Death Shall Have No Dominion"

David Gascoyne, "Spring MCMXL"
"Spring MCMXL"

The Virtual Anthology Installment Seven

To begin, one of the finest introductions to a book ever committed:
Charles Baudelaire's "To the Reader"
"To the Reader"

Daryl Hine "Apollonian Epiphany"
"Apollonian Epiphany"

Sylvia Plath "Blackberrying"
"Blackberrying"

Robert Frost "Fire and Ice"
"Fire and Ice"

William Butler Yeats "On being asked for a War Poem"
" ON BEING ASKED FOR A WAR POEM"

The Virtual Anthology - Installment Six

John Donne "Go and Catch a falling star..."
"Go and catch a falling star..."

Louis MacNeice, "Snow"
"Snow"

G K Chesterton "A Ballad of Suicide"
"A Ballad of Suicide"

Dorothy Parker "A Well Worn Story"
"A Well Worn Story"

Randall Jarell "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner"
"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner "

The Virtual Antology Installment Five

e. e. cummings "Somewhere I have never traveled"
"somwhere I have never traveled"

W. H. Auden "Funeral Blues"
"Funeral Blues"

John Milton "On His Blindness"
"On His Blindness"

John Donne "The Flea"
"The Flea"

Edna St. Vincent Millay "Dirge without Music"
"Dirge Without Music"

Sharing of a failed Attempt

This is a variation on an earlier theme, yet even as I present it here it feels to be a qualified failure. The main action in the last line balances upon the word 'corpsing', which is when an actor breaks character and begins laughing. For those of you who remember, think Harvey Korman and Tim Conway on, "The Carol Burnette Show".



Death at a Social Function (an obligatory obituary)

Between St Vitus’ waltzes round the ward and a stolen glance at swollen glands,
I would have thought you passed on long ago. It pains me, though, as you lift a finger
to your lips as eavesdropping is your weakness and I it’s reluctant witness…

“Then, out of kindness, I gave her a plum and have not been rid of her since…”

“What was that slogan of the resurrectionists? ‘everybody needs some body’ wasn’t it?”

“…it was her sincerity that was vulgar. I had had delusions of slander on mind…”

“His insistence was that he was, “S-V-E-L-T-E” as if a thesaurus eliminated his convexity.”

“Should I then? Need I? Do I have to?”

“O’ no, I shouldn’t say this was the first: Death has been in my family for years,” then, but, for the roaring of the corpsing characters, it would have been silent as the dead…

is conjugate to the liminal (a poem)

…is conjugate to the liminal

Back then through Cathedral Stations; muster back through Candleford.
And the hours, the minutes that draw out each hour, absurd.
Exchange dustbin palliative for dulcet narrative;
populate by way of coulisse-whisperings and accordion-overheards, quietened,
shy of substance, yet, in their own fashion, heaven-tense- to a word.

Airstruck amidst dwindled fervor: we split Spring’s great green spokes.
One for one, we held the door and blessed the transom with formula,
with ceremony, with such mathematical precision as to be phenomena….
amphisbaena equations in low-ash , “it must consume its own smoke…”




-d w stojek

le baiser fantôme

THE VIRTUAL ANTHOLOGY -Installment four

Langston Hughes
"A Quiet Girl"

Sylvia Plath
"The Munich Mannequins"

Emily Dickinson
"A Narrow Fellow in the Grass"

William Butler Yeats
"The Second Coming"

and for our final entry of the week

Arthur Rimbaud
"Les Illuminations"

THE VIRTUAL ANTHOLOGY -Installment three

Theodore Roethke's
"The Waking"

T. S Eliot's
"The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Vladimir Nabokov's
"Pale Fire"

Andrew Marvell's
"To His Coy Mistress"

and last but not least

Ezra Pound's
"In a Station of the Metro"

THE VIRTUAL ANTHOLOGY -Installment two

d w, here again with installment two of the virtual anthology:

X. J. kennedy's
"Nothing in Heaven Functions as it Ought"

Sei Shonogan's
"The Pillow Book"

Robert Frost's
"Acquainted with the Night"

Peter Handke
"The Song of Childhood"

William Empson's
"Let it Go"

addressed by the emblematic moon...

THE VIRTUAL ANTHOLOGY -Installment one

I have found myself washed upon the island of Manhattan with much less room than Prospero had for his library. A simple 'drats' will not do... By way of solution I would like to offer 'The Virtual Anthology', a selection of poems that will, weekly, grow. Some will be more less popular, but these are the hors d'oeuvres I have cobbled into a meal. ~ d w Stojek

Geoffrey Hill's
"Ovid in the Third Reich"

Stevie Smith's
"Waving Not Drowning"

Hart Crane's
"Chaplinesque"

Andre Breton's and Phillipe Soupault's
"The Magnetic Fields"

and the final entry for today is W H Auden's,
"In Praise of Limestone"

A Simple Introduction

So , here I am quite late to the show. Dear readers, of this blog, til now you have had William Frank's unadulterated Graces, but now I have finally committed to this thing called "blog". Such an awful word, really... Will have to work on that, won't we? It fits that my first entry will include my latest poem:


paperpink; paperwhite

…this morning I left you this note, for fear of waking you,
on a slip of pink paper
that curled up, as it was torn from a greater whole,
“because I wanted to kiss your foot, so delicate, as it dangled (so delicate)
off the bed,
but did not for fear of waking you…”

~~~~~~~~~


…and you should know that I thought of you this afternoon,
despite the hectic traffic of the pending trays, the careful crediting
and debiting in bilateral accounts…

And my sole regret was that the flowers I left with you were only half as lovely you…


~~~~~~~~~~


Thank You,
d w Stojek

Panjandrum Poetry Series: Time of Gallesbee Run

Time of Gallesbee Run

The moon bets on the racing horses,
the love of a woman goes home
because he's fond of all things courses
and she with the stars sees none.

Tickets blow round all things lost
and I lean on the rail for the sky,
the dawn has the fire that the wheel downcast
and while I wage rush by.

Aft round the bend and larking behind
with the color and horns of the meet
the Gate now closed the ruin and blind
all speed with the run and the fleet
into the silence of the street,
the snowfall of the night.

~William Frank