Are You Hungry?

Prepping for a lecture:
"The Hungry Reader at the Feast"
Nov. 18, 2011.

"Hail Muse, Etc.": Poems as Prompts II

Here are a few of the poems I have in mind for that introduction to how poetry works. Read aloud, of course, and with appropriate emotion and emphasis. (It's a little like karaoke, but better.)

EPIGRAM. Engraved on the Collar of a Dog

Which I Gave to His Royal Highness

I am his Highness’ dog at Kew:

Pray tell me sir, whose dog are you?

--Alexander Pope (1737)

(Kew= one of the royal palaces)

IN A STATION OF THE METRO

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

--Ezra Pound (1916)

YOU FIT INTO ME

you fit into me

like a hook into an eye

a fish hook

an open eye

--Margaret Atwood (1971)

CONQUEROR

Huge leaps. Epic soarings of the head.

He glowed within, without. Born to conquer.

“You look fragile,” she said.

--Brendan Kenneally (1999)

THIS LIVING HAND

This living hand, now warm and capable

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb,

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood

So in my veins red life might stream again,

And thou be conscience-calmed. See here it is—

I hold it towards you.

--John Keats (1820)

MARKS

My husband give me an A

for last night’s supper,

an incomplete for my ironing,

a B plus in bed.

My son says that I am average,

an average mother, but if

I put my mind to it

I could improve.

My daughter believes

in Pass/Fail and tells me

I pass. Wait ‘til they learn

I’m dropping out.

--Linda Pastan (1978)

I'm also considering getting into how poetry works by using and abusing some pieces from various rock & roll songs:

Love is a rose, but you better not pick it;

It only grows when it’s on the vine.

A handful of thorns and you’ll know you've missed it:

Lose your love when you say the word “mine.”

--Neil Young

She calls me baby

She calls everybody baby

It’s a lonely old night

Ain’t they all?

--John Mellencamp

When I said that I was lying I might have been lying.

--Elvis Costello

“What is your destiny?” the policewoman said.

--Elvis Costello

And finally . . .

I light your cigarettes

I bring you apples from the vine

How quickly you forget

I run the bath and pour the wine

I bring you everything that floats into your mind

But you don’t’ bring me anything but down . . . .

--Sheryl Crow

P.S. I'll probably only have 30 minutes to spare for this "introduction," so I'm just going to do what I can with what feels best in the moment. I may start from the last of these pieces and work upwards, emphasizing voice, characters, and the dramatic situations that are unfolding. (And, actually, I have another two or three pages of handouts, just in case I need them. Frankly, I'm hoping to start some conversations that will continue beyond the official meetings . . . . Oh, and do apples even grow on vines? Sheryl Crow, c'mon. A favorite mistake? I enjoy your music, but how can I believe the speaker of "Anything But Down"?)

Literature Club: Poems as Prompts

Carl Rakosi’s “The Experiment with a Rat”:

The Experiment with a Rat

Every time I nudge that spring

a bell rings

and a man walks out of a cage

assiduous and sharp like one of us

and brings me cheese.

How did he fall

Into my power?

Selections from Jim Harrison & Ted Kooser’s “Braided Creek.” This volume of poetry began as pieces included with letters or simply mailed to each other and subsequently gathered together without noting who wrote which.

On every topographic map

the fingerprints of God.

As a boy, when desperate I’d pray with bare knees

on the cold floor. I still do,

but from the window I look like an old man.

Mouse nest in the toe of my boot,

have I been gone that long?

The pigeon

has swallowed a fountain!

Listen!

With her brush, the artist

touches one part of her life

with another.

When a hammer sings

its head is loose.

Mirrors have always given the wrong

impression of me. So do other people.

So do I. Let’s stop this right now.

The face you look out of

is never the face

your lover looks into.

“What I would do for wisdom,”

I cried out as a young man.

Evidently not much. Or so it seems.

Even on walks I follow the dog.

What if everyone you’ve loved

were still alive? That’s the province

of the young, who don’t know it.

It’s nice to think that when

we’re fossils we’ll all be in the same

thin layer of rock.

I hope there’s time

for this and that,

and not just this.

I prefer the skyline

of a shelf of books.

Today a pink rose in a vase

on the table.

Tomorrow, petals.

The pastures grow up

With red cedars

Once the horses are gone.

[This slim volume finishes with the last two pieces.]

From Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”:

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendos,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.

(Thanks, Jerome McGann for bringing this quotation to my attention.)