"All of it."

Met with my prelim (and likely [?] dissertation) adviser for coffee yesterday afternoon and had a sprawling conversation about poetic form & structure, David Wojahn's Gulf Coast interview, the Greeks & Horace, and "Tradition and the Individual Talent," among other subjects. Below are a couple of poems that came up, poems that we decided "work how a poem should."


A Stubborn Ode

All of it. The sane woman under the bed with the rat
that is licking off the peanut butter she puts on her
front teeth for him. The beggars of Calcutta blinding
their children while somewhere people are rich
and eating with famous friends and having running water
in their fine houses. Michiko is buried in Kamakura.
The tired farmers thresh barley all day under the feet
of donkeys amid the merciless power of the sun.
The beautiful women grow old, our hearts moderate.
All of us wane, knowing things could have been different.
When Gordon was released from the madhouse, he could
not find Hayden to say goodbye. As he left past
Hall Eight, he saw the face in a basement window,
tears running down the cheeks. And I say, nevertheless.

Jack Gilbert
from The Great Fires







Prayer to the Good Poet

Quintus Horatius Flaccus, my good secret,
Now my father, a good man in Ohio,
Lies alone in pain and I scarcely
Know where to turn now.

Fifty years he worked in that bitter factory.
He learned how to love what I found so ugly.
Ugliness. What is it? A bitter
Taste of one body.

Now, if I ask anything, I would ask you
How to gather my father to your bosom.
He knew, after all, how to love Italians.
Others said dagoes.

One good friend of mine, Bennie Capaletti,
Told me how in a basketball game, one person
Called him a dirty guinea, and Bennie
Did not even slug him.

Quintus Horatius Flaccus, my good secret,
Bennie Capaletti had the fastest
Hands in that fast Ohio Valley.
He could have killed him.

More than love, my father knew how to bear love,
One quick woman a dark river of labor.
He led me and my two good brothers
To gather and swim there.

I still love the fine beauty of his body.
He could pitch a very good Sunday baseball.
One afternoon he shifted to left hand
And struck out three men.

Every time I go back home to Ohio,
He sits down and tells me he loves Italians.
How can I tell you why he loves you,
Quintus Horatius?

I worked once in the factory that he worked in.
Now I work in that factory that you live in.
Some people think poetry is easy,
But you two didn’t.

Easy, easy, I ask you, easy, easy.
Early, evening, by Tiber, by Ohio,
Give the gift to each lovely other.
I would be happy.

Now my son is another poet, fathers,
I can go on living. I was afraid once
Four loving fathers meeting together
Would be a cold day in hell.

Quintus Horatius Flaccus, my good father,
You were just the beginning, you quick and lonely
Metrical crystals of February.
It is just snow.

James Wright
from Above the River







Other Jack Gilbert @ Against Oblivion:
"Married"
"Doing Poetry"
"They Will Put My Body Into the Ground"
"Not Part of Literature"
"Duende"
"Failing and Flying"


Other James Wright @ Against Oblivion:
"Hook"
"A Blessing"
"Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry, I Walk Toward an Unused Pasture and Invite the Insects to Join Me"
"Northern Pike"
"Having Lost My Sons, I Confront The Wreckage Of The Moon:
Christmas, 1960"
"To the Muse"