jimthompson.org » Poetry

They’re Singing on Strawberry Fields Tonight

Jim — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 01:27:19 +0000

I’ve never been a big Beatles fan; that whole phenomenon occurred a bit before my time. But I remember what happened on this day twenty-five years ago. I remember it as one of those mileposts along the way of my youth, like the day Reagan was shot, or the day we lost Challenger. I remember the news that next morning, of how Mark David Chapman, clutching a copy of The Catcher in the Rye, stood outside the Dakota and gunned down down John Lennon. I remember it as a national event. I remember it as an act of pointless, needless destruction. Most of all, I remember how it affected the people around me. In the next issue of Seed magazine, on the last page, we published a poem: short, poignant, and personal. To this day, I still hear its last line in my head whenever I hear Lennon’s name:

8 December 1980 / 10:55 PM
Jim Barber

Black-poised, waiting:
Spitting fire across a gulf.
The blood on that sidewalk will never dry
As fears and dreams
Rise from the concrete soul of the Dakota.

The teletypes convulse with the news
That stuns like a sledgehammer.
You’re on five of my radio stations:
Why does death make us realize what
We conveniently ignore in life?
Sons without fathers,
Wives without husbands,
Lives without music:
All these things from the miracle of modern weaponery.
You saw revolution for what it was
And believed that love could change the world.
Look what the world did to you.
G’bye, mate…

Poem for 30 April 2005: The Red Wheelbarrow

Jim — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 15:23:39 +0000

A bookend for the end of the month: another poem that I understand much better now than when I first read it:

The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

One way to observe National Poetry Month is to start a poetry reading group.

Poem for 29 April 2005: Rain

Jim — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 12:36:23 +0000

Rain
Edward Thomas

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.

One way to observe National Poetry Month is to subscribe to the Academy of American Poets’ newsletter.

Poem For 28 April 2005: One For Kay’s Birthday

Jim — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 01:20:45 +0000

Once upon a time, back when we were in school at Auburn, Wendy gave me a Sandra Boynton card that looked something like the one you see here. On its cover are animals arranged in four rows:

On the first row are a hippopotamus, a bird, and a pair of effiminate sheep. On the second row; these animals were repeated, though somewhat rearranged. On the third row, one of the sheep is gone, and in its place is a reindeer. The final row has the same animals as the first two.

The inside of the card reads

Hippo birdie two ewes
Hippo birdie two ewes
Hippo birdie deer ewe
Hippo birdie two ewes

It’s one of my favorite birthday cards ever, and I think it’s fitting to remember it on a day that is both a National Poetry Month day, and a birthday.

The card is also my favorite Boynton card. (I like Boynton. Her stuff is funny, typically includes clever wordplay, and is cute without being too cute.) As it turns out – according to the Boynton web site – this is also one of Sandra Boynton’s most popular cards ever.

Happy birthday, Kay!

(Almost forgot: one way to observe National Poetry Month is to sign up for a poetry class or workshop in your area.)

Poem for 27 April 2005: Chicago

Jim — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 12:14:29 +0000

Chicago
Carl Sandburg

   Hog Butcher for the World,
   Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
   Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
   Stormy, husky, brawling,
   City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
   have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
   luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
   is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
   kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
   faces of women and children I have seen the marks
   of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
   sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
   and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
   so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
   job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
   little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
   as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
         Bareheaded,
         Shoveling,
         Wrecking,
         Planning,
         Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
   white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
   man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
   never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
   and under his ribs the heart of the people,
               Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
   Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
   Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
   Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

One way to Observe National Poetry month is to write a letter to the post office asking for more poet stamps.

Something Cool For National Poetry Month

Jim — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 13:08:51 +0000

Here’s something I learned about through the Flickr blog: a fascinating experiment in poetry. Somehow, the result is disappointing, probably because it’s fairly bland compared to the art on all the preceding pages. Try it and see what you think.

Poem for 26 April 2005: Drones and Chants

Jim — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 01:13:50 +0000

Drones and Chants
Norman Finkelstein

In memory of Armand Schwerner

All night long they turned the wheels,
picked up the sound and passed it on

All night long we listened to the music,
all night there was thunder among the hills

All night and day the words were spoken,
each word inscribed and traced to its origin

All night and day the words were sung,
picked up, inscribed, and passed along

So as forever to be forgotten,
rising and breaking against the air

The sound floated above the valley
like mist gathering over deep pools

The mist rose above the trees in the valley,
blooming into emblems of silence

Emblems of mist and emblems of trees,
cast forever into the pools of night

The instruments were gathered up from the pools
and all night long they turned the wheels.

One way to observe National Poetry Month is to add a line of verse to your email signature. Not a bad idea. I used to have a line of verse in my signature: “…flinging magnetic curses…” Just that.

Poem for 25 April 2005: In back of the real

Jim — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 23:05:23 +0000

In back of the real
Allen Ginsberg

railroad yard in San Jose
              I wandered desolate
in front of a tank factory
              and sat on a bench
near the switchman’s shack.

A flower lay on the hay on
              the asphalt highway
—the dread hay flower
              I thought—It had a
brittle black stem and
              corolla of yellowish dirty
spikes like Jesus’ inchlong
              crown, and a sailed
dry center cotten tuft
              like a used shaving brush
that’s been lying under
              the garage for a year.

Yellow, yellow flower, and
              flower of industry,
tough spiky ugly flower,
              flower nonetheless,
with the form of the great yellow
              Rose in your brain!
This is the flower of the world.

One way to observe National Poetry Month is to start a notebook on Poets.org.

Poem for 24 April, 2005: One More From the Japanese

Jim — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 03:59:18 +0000

I just love these short Japanese poems. This one also out of One Hundred More Poems From the Japanese:

The lower leaves of the trees
Tangle the sunset in dusk.
Awe spreads with
The summer twilight.
-Sone No Yoshitada

One way to observe National Poetry Month is to start a commonplace book. I have a commonplace book – I keep it in a wiki in a hidden part of jimthompson.org; many of the poems I’ve been posting here are entries in my commonplace book.

Poems for 23 April 2005: Three More From the Japanese

Jim — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 05:01:12 +0000

Last Saturday’s selections were from a volume of short poems translated from the Japanese by Kenneth Rexroth. Today three more Japanese translations, from a second volume called One Hundred More Poems From the Japanese, also translated by Rexroth:

On the Eastern horizon,
Dawn glows over
The fields, and when
I look back I see
The moon setting in the West.
       -Hitomaro

Everybody tells me
My hair is too long
I leave it
As you saw it last
Disheveled by your hands.
       -Lady Sono No Omi Ikuha

In the dusk
The road is hard to see
Wait ’till moonrise
So I can watch you go.
       -Oyakeme

One way to observe National Poetry Month is to buy a book of poems for your local library.