Feature, May 2001
Degrees of Affinity:
The Writing
Division, Columbia University
Editors'
Preface
Profile
of The Writing Division by Alfred Corn
Poems
Contributors'
Notes
"L'espoir"
(Artist:
JOVAN ZEC)
Né à Belgrade en
1943, ZEC fait ses études à l'Académie des Beaux-Arts
de Belgrade. Il soutient sa thèse de doctorat du 3e cycle sur l'histoire
de l'art moderne à la Faculté de Philosophie de Belgrade.
Carrière d'enseignement depuis 1968, plus de 45 expositions collectives
et publications de nombreux travaux sur l'histoire, la théorie et
la critique de l'art. Il vit et travaille en France. [Pour une explication
de l'oeuvre, voir en bas. Ed.]
Renseignements: http://KaraArt.com
~ + ~ + ~ + ~
The "Degrees" series began with the December 2000 issue, in which we featured "Degrees of Apprenticeship", our compilation of poems by MFA students, grads and faculty at Brooklyn College with a program profile by director, Lou Asekoff. The variety, range, and authority of its faculty and grads next to the energetic promise of its young writers made for pleasure on the e-page. But even that display could not have prepared us for the close-quarter congregation of all those lively voices: The recording session held December 18 at the KGB Bar on East 4th Street was jammed. That night showed that a seemingly defined circle of writers closely knit by shared experience in fact has powerful concentric effects which enrich an extended local community.
As this month's feature collects the work of Columbia alumni, all of them journeymen certainly, and several perhaps even masters, the focus shifts from apprenticeship to mentorship, and broadens from writer-reader to editor-disseminator. Unlike the young poets in the Brooklyn College feature whose shared experience was marked by the added commonality of time and space, many of these writers have never crossed paths. Still, akin to the vivid colors in Jovan Zec's geometric painting, they echo a primary and parallel, albeit non-intersecting, experience within a larger collective.
At the recording session at Caffè Taci on May 10, we look forward to another lively, packed house, confident that those of Columbian stripe will fully manifest the affinities of what the French call the third, thus, the highest degree.
We express our special thanks to Alfred Corn whose word served as magnet in a forcefield crowded with other attractions.
--NJ/MH
~.
~ . ~ .
The Writing Division
of the School of the Arts
By Alfred Corn
There were undergraduate writing courses at Columbia College as early as the 1920s, but it was not until Mark Van Doren taught poetry writing in the 40s and 50s that these attracted attention and admiration. Graduate writing courses began only in 1968 when Frank MacShane, a professor in the English Department, formed the Writing Division of Columbia's Graduate School of the Arts, with course offerings in poetry and fiction writing.
Under the umbrella of the School of the Arts there are several divisions, Music, Visual Art, Theater, Film, and of course Writing. Frank MacShane served as the director of that division until 1981, when Daniel Halpern assumed the post of Director. In that period, MacShane and Halpern were the only year-round faculty members. Most of the instruction was offered by adjunct professors, who, because of the large numbers of writers in New York City, were readily available. The main advantage of that system was that candidates in poetry could study with (in addition to Daniel Halpern) a wide array of some of our most prominent literary figures: Stanley Kunitz, Derek Walcott, Joseph Brodsky, Czeslaw Milosz, Quincy Troupe, and Richard Howard.
The disadvantage was that there was no continuity from term to term; as students assembled their MFA thesis (described as a publishable manuscript of poems), they had no adviser other than Halpern, who, because of teaching and administrative duties, would not have been able to devote many hours to assisting each of a dozen or more candidates developing a thesis portfolio to be submitted for the degree in a given year. Lucie-Brock Broido, currently the Director of the Poetry sector of the Writing Division, was actually a student in the MFA program in those years and has commented that students for the most part had to find their own way, without much guidance from their teachers outside the classroom. Still, many of them seemed to have managed very well, including Brock-Broido herself, Katha Pollitt, Henri Cole, Campbell McGrath, and Jorie Graham.
It was during Halpern's years that I first came to the Writing Division. In the spring of 1983, I taught a seminar on narrative poetry. Among the class members were Marie Howe, Sophie Cabot-Black, and Vijay Seshadri, all of whom have gone on to publish well-received books; and another class member, Sarah Arvio, has since become a noted translator. With absences of a term or even as much as a year or two while I held visiting posts elsewhere I've been at the Writing Division ever since.
When Daniel Halpern stepped down in 1984, Robert Towers was appointed Chair and, in that same year Richard Locke joined the faculty and initiated a degree program in non-fiction writing. In the years since, Michael Scammell and Magda Bogin have joined the permanent faculty, teaching courses both in literary translation and non-fiction. Though writing students may take courses in all three genres (and translation) offered in the Division, they must choose to specialize in either poetry, fiction, or non-fiction.
In 1989, Stephen Koch took up duties as Chair and brought about a number of changes, most important, solving the problem of continuity by arranging for long-term appointments for the faculty. It was at that point that Lucie Brock-Broido was named Director of the Poetry MFA and Maureen Howard as the Director of Fiction, with two other half-time appointees in poetry as well, Lucille Clifton and Alice Quinn. After Lucille Clifton resigned, Richard Howard was appointed a full-time member of the permanent faculty in poetry. Three years ago David Plante was appointed full-time as professor of fiction-writing, and this past year Michael Cunningham and Nicholas Christopher were appointed half-time professors of fiction. The balance of our poetry courses are taught by visiting adjuncts.
Our current Chair is Alan Ziegler, who came to the faculty when undergraduate Creative Writing at Columbia's School of General Studies was administratively joined with the graduate program several years ago. Writing, along with the other divisions of the School of the Arts, enjoys the energetic assistance of Dean Bruce Ferguson, who assumed his post in 1999.
Although the Writing Division has passed through many phases, it has kept a sense of continuity, one sign being the return of former students in the program as its current professors. Apart from Lucie Brock-Broido, these include Henri Cole and Marie Howe, who have taught as adjuncts in the program. Yet the schedule of the courses has become more definite than it was in earlier years. Incoming students (some fourteen to sixteen each year) take an introductory course designed by Lucie Brock-Broido, mapping out the general terrain of what it means to be a contemporary American poet.
In addition to taking regular poetry workshops, students enroll in special seminars, those taught every year by Richard Howard on various aspects of literary art the most popular. An unusual year-long seminar taught by Alice Quinn involves inviting each week a leading contemporary poet such as Anthony Hecht or Marie Ponsot or Billy Collins or Eavan Boland to discuss the work of a poet in the English-language tradition that they particularly admire. In this way, students get an introduction not only to important works from the past but also the contemporary poets who are carrying on that tradition.
Another unusual feature of our MFA is a course in meter, rhyme, and verse form, which I have taught each year since the requirement was introduced in 1990. (It was from teaching that course that I developed my prosody textbook The Poem's Heartbeat, used now not only at Columbia but also in writing courses at every level in dozens of programs across the country, and I owe a debt of gratitude to the Division for that.)
Finally, during their second year, students take two terms of a thesis workshop taught by Lucie Brock-Broido, during which they assemble the final thesis portfolio required for the degree. Emphasis is placed not only on the quality of individual poems but on the development of a coherent, shapely collection that might also lay the foundation for an eventual first book.
As an enrichment to regular courses, the Poetry program invites notable contemporaries for several sessions of "master classes," in which these poets discuss content and form, or whatever issues currently preoccupy them. Special programs or panel discussions with invited speakers are set up each year and held in Columbia's Miller Theater, one of the most memorable the celebration of poetry from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales staged several years ago with the joint sponsorship of The New Yorker. Recently a new series of readings by faculty members has been initiated, so that students will be able to hear, without traveling to other venues, the work of their own teachers read aloud.
The Writing Division also publishes Columbia, a lively quarterly magazine staffed by degree candidates in all three genres. It sponsors an annual prize in poetry and fiction and publishes work by celebrated authors (some of them faculty members) as well as beginners (some of them Writing Division students). Almost every year one of our graduates is named a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and thus sponsored for another two years to develop as a writer. Recent Stegners include Rick Hilles, Tracy K. Smith, and David Yezzi. As for other prizes, Jorie Graham and Campbell McGrath have both been named MacArthur Fellows; McGrath also won the coveted Tufts Prize for $50,000 a few years ago, and Graham, the Pulitzer. She is also the first Writing Division graduate to be named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Our program has a good relationship with the three main poetry organizations in New York City, the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Society of America, and Poets House. The Academy's current Executive Director William Wadsworth is a graduate (as was Henri Cole who served in the same capacity in the 1980s). Many of our students have worked part-time at the PSA, Poets House, and of course the Academy. They have also taken on jobs as interns at The New Yorker and beginning teachers at the Bank Street School.
Graduate David Yezzi, has just taken up duties as Administrative Director of the New York Institute for the Humanities, and several graduates are currently involved in publishing, for example, Katha Pollitt, who is a regular columnist for The Nation, and Ben Downing, who has recently been named co-editor of Parnassus magazine, serving with the founder Herbert Leibowitz. Both Yezzi and Downing regularly publish literary criticism in important journals such as Poetry and The New Criterion, and graduate Malcolm Farley has begun writing reviews for The New York Times Book Review. (Farley is also director of the prestigious Publishers' Triangle reading series). Daniel Kunitz, for several years Managing Editor of The Paris Review, was recently appointed Literary Editor of Details magazine. Neil Azevedo recently founded Zoo Press, which will publish new volumes of poetry. Mary Jo Bang and Timothy Donnelly are co-editors for poetry at The Boston Review, and Jeanne Marie Beaumont and Anna Rabinowitz serve as co-editors of the quarterly American Letters and Commentary.
Many of the graduates have gone on to teaching, most notably Jorie Graham, formerly on the faculty of the Iowa School of Writing and currently Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard. Campbell McGrath teaches Creative Writing at Florida International University, and Claudia Rankine teaches poetry classes and African-American literature at Barnard. Henri Cole has taught at Harvard and Brandeis.
Our graduates and even current students regularly publish in prominent magazines, and alumni continue to launch out with first and second books. Notable recent instances include Mary Jo Bang, Brenda Shaughnessy and Mark Wunderlich. Each year about fifteen new students are accepted out of about two hundred applications. Fellowship resources are limited, but the Writing Division has inaugurated a major fund-raising initiative to answer the problem of high tuition costs, and that effort is beginning to have results. There is no sense that the Writing Division is content to rest on its laurels. Instead, the coming years promise to be even better than a record that is already bright and shining.
Further information about current faculty and courses can be found on the Web at: www.columbia.edu/cu/arts/writing.
~ . ~ . ~ .
Alfred
Corn
Lucie Brock-Broido
Neil Azevedo
Jeanne
Marie Beaumont
Tina Chang
Constantine Contogenis
Sally Dawidoff
Malcolm Farley
John Foy
Emily Fragos
Tiffany Fung
Elizabeth Grainger
Rafiq
Kathwari
Dave King
Claudia Rankine
Ravi Shankar
Tracy K. Smith
William Wadsworth
David Yezzi
~
. ~ . ~ .
Suns made of thread
Spell For A Safe Journey
While love's light
galleon plows the seas,
Easter Eucharist
Witnessing resurrection
of the Christ,
A cyclic, quickening
narrative is spliced
Some media event of
the Zeitgeist?
"Thanksgiving" roughly
translates eucharist,
Seamless garment Roman
soldiers diced
For that, what finite
figure would have sufficed?
~ . ~
Lucie
Brock-Broido
To maul is to make
a massive loss
What will be taken
will be the custody
Her hair was a long
damp chestnut
And important rain.
Her body was still sticky
She was found face-up
on a cold March morning
At the zoo, crewelled
with frost marks, redolent
and significant. I
had hoped for, all that Serengeti
Than hope itself. The
excellent repair
The lions had the mastery
of me, aware
Still Life with Feral Horse
It is love and its
relinquish
On a salt marsh island
Be handled by human
And famous churlishness.
That you know how
Some Details of Hell
It is time now to turn off the devices in the wing
And run your finger along the suprasternum of
It is a time when wires & catheters marked "single use"
And sterilized, but having spent time in someone
Ruined. I was strong and could lift half
And lithe as tiny scissors used
Hell is a world of its own, with its own
Warm-blooded form like a brook mink in the clutch
Spent a moment in someone else's marrow,
Of a tea-stained bride abroad in the rain
Lady with an Ermine
In the snow, white noise, a gathering
In the keep at Castlestrange, an ermine in the shape
Oak chair, carelessly & keeping no
~ . ~
A Boy
Maybe it wasn't I who
ran away,
From the Crowd
We must expect the
one of whom we've heard
~ . ~
Jeanne
Marie Beaumont
It was a dark and stormy
night
The Project Thus Far
I made of it a rough
ball of fur, spittle, hairspray and wax.
[Jeanne Marie Beaumont's "Bonnard",
quoted on the homepage,
~ . ~
I.
I am lying in the knives.
II.
Asylum when I lived
there…
III.
Red door open.
A small cord around
my neck
Inside the exquisite
whirling
One moment after another:
IV.
A tree collapses into
the Atlantic.
The speckled egg rocks
on a shelf
My reflection is dissolving.
The butcher in the
city
~ . ~
Constantine
Contogenis
I sail when I can,
which is not an hour a week
Just because I return
to where I leave
Acting My Age
Enrolled in Emotion
School,
To gain some emotional
For mental balance,
I under-
For the tipping test,
I compose
I meet myself through
homework,
I tell my fear no werewolf
Afraid to move or not
move
For self control I
let go
For attitude, I translate
~ . ~
The Subordinating Conjunction
is a tire iron to the
knees
Although I love
you—"What?" my students know to ask,
Although I love you,
we won't speak again.
Quote—Spirituality
is the practice of opening our hearts—unquote.
Although I have forgiven
you that time
For God's sake. People
are starving in the streets.
Although I loved you,
how I was was no way to be.
The last time: a coffee
shop, Brooklyn.
Although I drove you
away—
Union Street
I'll walk where and
when I want.
Eleven o'clock by the
casket company,
The air too mild for
the month. The
Whisperin' breeze
If there's a figure
approaching,
The dog starts.
Here I am in high,
audible heels,
You never cared for
me.
~ . ~
1 – First Obsessions
The Pantheon with its
lidless oculum — more heaven-hungering ear than eye — seemed permanently
cocked for rumors of Jove’s drastic mood swings. (One morning a downpour
through the roof’s great hole had shocked us, inundating the temple’s inlaid
floor while thunder echoed through the dome, like anger feeding on itself
and swelling…) You adored the atmospherics of that space so much, you made
us visit it three times before I insisted
there were other monuments
in Rome and dragged you past the grassy barrow of the Circus Maximus, the
gap-toothed masonry in the Baths of Caracalla, and the dour unmythical
apartment complex on the Viale Aventino so we could pause for twenty minutes
in the Protestant Cemetery nearby. John Keats (an early god in my own
pantheon)
lay "writ in water"
there — at the end of a gravel path — and I wanted to offer his bitterness
(which had gnawed him like the TB that ate away his lungs and stomach)
my gauche, implausible,
imaginary rose.
2 – The Sleepwalkers
I realized I'd left
you alone too long in the graveyard and ran to find you. In my rush, I
nearly tripped over the headstone of unnamed son of Goethe’s who’d died
in 1830.
The morning shower
still dripped from the umbrella pines, and now and then the ivy shuddered
under the stray drops. An intimate narcotic stillness settled over the
low boxwood hedges, dampening the windblown cypress and hibiscus, blunting
the prickly-pear and scarlet cyclamen.
I was under the influence,
agog at the tiniest detail, muzzy-headed, half-afraid of losing you there.
Then I spotted your red mitten on the path. Beyond, you stood staring through
a breach in the Aurelian Wall. At first, I thought you marveled at the
pyramid of Caius Cestius that rose from the rutted cobbles of an ancient
street, now far below ground level. But no, you were staring
at nineteen scrofulous
cats (you’d counted every one) that circled each other warily in the surrounding
trench or sat alone, quietly, looking at nothing in particular.
3 – Where Seraphim
Making our way back
to the hotel without a map through Roman chaos — the Fiats and foreign
tourists; the schoolboys chasing soccer balls into the traffic rotary;
gelato at a crowded kiosk in the Parco della Resistenza; a fine chill rain
of early March and its empurpled oleander, already pungent in the wilds
of the Testaccio —
we felt fictitious
while we wound among the streets beside the Tiber, as if our characters
had been waylaid by a masked contessa cloaked in flyblown damasks and rotten
cloth-of-gold,
until we found ourselves
again on the Bridge of Angels, facing Hadrian’s Tomb, and you took out
your panoramic camera where seraphim on either side held tools of the Passion
aloft: a crown-of-thorns; the centurion’s spear; a sponge glutted with
vinegar and gall.
~ . ~
John
Foy
I try to think of what
I'd say
I know that if I tried
Clear headed now, with
eyes rinsed out
Ice-Chopping Tool
How unbecoming to be
envious
To Christopher
Stones and water, water,
stones
You fix a blue, absolving
eye
Could it be that you
would never stop,
~ . ~
Emily
Fragos
The good doctor Prinzhorn
says it was the patent
Have you seen my machine,
perpetually moving,
Dear Diary: Dubuffet
and Klee came last week
They smeared my orange
chalk, calculating
I am taking my pig
Rafi for a walk.
we are wind gone. We
are kingdom come.
(The Boston Review)
Logic
I started smoking again
after a long time
some envy, some fear
I could not face. Went
up so easily in my
hand, my mouth, I could
motion. It tasted bitter
and my head
to smooth forgetfulness
and warmth filled
compared to this, beautiful
darkness.
suddenly always this
powerless sweet hunger
with needle marks in
some shooting gallery,
mountain-heavy man
on top of me. It was
with books in my arms
taking notes with
packs a day. I can
feel my body collapsing
staring at me, uncovering
all my secrets
to start thinking about
stopping all over
always say: Watch out
for false highs;
hair and mouth on the
other side of the room
will seem the perfectly
right thing to do.
(The Boston Review)
~ . ~
I knew your face would
look submerged,
Your face has worn
to shininess,
They look hysterical
for you,
[Tiffany Fung's "At the Cloisters"
appears in this
~ . ~
Elizabeth
Grainger
Forget who was the
deer,
Still, the deer remembers
It was no dream:
she walked
In these woods, nakedness
breath of deer who
have lost
(Poetry)
~ . ~
Butch Purgatory
Yours is populated
by women
remarkable in that
all were once
They are your flock,
though you cannot name
pastoral.) Each appears
as you last
Inez on the stage:
one fat, one small,
Each girl knows she'll
have her turn with you
A group of thirty hold
letters (how
taped reconstructions
(six); burnt to ash
One woman trails the
lamp and cord you
Twenty file their nails
and wait. You are
(not last of your number)
play Boggle
to an egg-timer whose
sands only
~ . ~
"From: Linda@coolmaildotcom
"From: Sarah@flamemaildotcom
I float up Broadway
Had she been cooking
sole
"To: Sarah@flamemaildotcom
Today Windy Then Showers
Gold-plated heels
Calf-highs below
Flirty pleats creased
Ruby clutch releases
Wanton cornrows unbraided
Passivity
Two Birds of Paradise
He names the female
bird
Feigning sleep in his
bedroom
Perched on a branch
Fondling Sofia on the
bed
Israeli Patrols Kill
90
Mother, I'm living
in sin with an Egyptian
[Rafiq Kathwari's "What Happened
to a World" appears
~ . ~
Truthfulness has never
worked for me.
The snow—dirty old
vaudevillian—withdraws
Our argument is not
resolvable.
Green faggot bundles
of white-striped leaves: I don't
a greedy, red-leafed
summer something spreads
Christmas and August,
our family cultivates
The crocus rule their
chilly world until
My Heart Disappears
Among the Trees
I was in the shower
when I saw my heart
Where are you going,
Heart? To check
I can dry myself and
shave without my heart.
~ . ~
Claudia
Rankine
The thing in play (Act
l)
A world outside this
plot prevents our intermission from being
Still in play (Act
II)
On the street where
children now reside, the speed limit is 25.
Musical interlude (act
111)
A certain type of life
is plot-driven. A certain slant in life. A man
His song will be the
congregation of hope. He will drain his
Erland knows Liv is
as if in a sling, broken in the disappeared
He knows he too, sometimes,
is as if below, pained, non-
sweet-life-everlasting,
he is singing softly beneath his meaning
recalling, after all,
another sort of knowing because some
In mortal theater (Act
1V)
blessedly the absolute miscarries
and in its release
this birth pulls me toward that which is without
asking and borne into
residence. the life that fills fills in a world
I am.
am almost to be touching
Ravi Shankar
Carbonated gurgle of
seltzer,
Then you step in.
It's as though someone
in back yanked
The Field on the Horizon
Sitting on a wooden
bench, in the surround
And how much history
we share. Here, the living
To everyone I meet.
Yesterday we went to see
Of the Intercoastal.
I hope they don't work
The man I've almost
become is going in search
~ . ~
Tracy K. Smith
Without bothering to
dress, you emerge
I watch your body beneath
you
[Tracy K. Smith's multi-part poem,
"Brief Touristic Account",
~ . ~
William
Wadsworth
In Reykjavik that year
the bomb
They spiralled into
wind-banked heaps
blew lightly down.
Safe beside
walked out into the
light, exalted --
by autumn light, had
interrupted
went their way. That
faded shot
survive. The scene
will change. Ulysses
Grant, to say all he
privately
buried his conscience
in each glass
humiliation on." --
he lived
the scene. The bride
took off her dress
(The Paris Review)
[William Wadsworth's poem, "The Snake in the Garden
~ . ~
Hundreds of people stood . . .
Not that anyone made
it, necessarily,
or candlelit behind
an altar screen.
fracturing the unlikely
vessel,
Simply appeared (Who
knows how many weeks
long-haired, bearded
like on the Turin shroud--
And they had known
him. Perhaps it matched
in their barely hirsute
search for holiness
when nothing like himself,
in foreign clothes,
the inward search replaced
by outward show--
(The Paris Review)
Conversation of the
Pharises
Such upright citizens,
all honest Joes,
and fouled in the lines
affixing them,
A few, you say, acknowledge
Him and turn
arcana of scripture
with which to test
ourselves and those
gray priests in antique hats
that they are there
for us, to represent
After Celan
Spell for a Safe Journey
Easter Eucharist
Self-Deliverance by Lion
Still Life with Feral Horse
Some Details of Hell
Lady With An Ermine
from Witness
A Boy
From the Crowd
Chapter One
The Project Thus Far
Episodes
Zeno's Arrow
Acting My Age
The Subordinating Conjunction
Union Street
Roman Holiday
Paterfamilias
Ice-Chopping Tool
To Christopher
The Art of the Insane
Logic
Recovery
To Take Bread At My Hand
Butch Purgatory
Internet
Today Windy Then Showers
Passivity
Israeli Patrols Kill 90 Dogs in Arab Town
Crocus
My Heart Disappears Among the Trees
Intermission in Four Acts
(from PLOT)
Sublime in Passing
The Field on the Horizon
Figure Crossing Sand
Bloom's Photograph
The Graven Image
Conversation of the Pharisees
above a waste land
of ash and soot.
A tree-
high insight
holds the note the
light strikes: there
are still texts to
sing beyond
the confines of the
human.
for R.C.
Steering both night
and day toward home,
Canvas beneath the
Pleiades,
Hold to your mast
through storm and foam.
Love's freshest morning
brims and is outpoured:
What rose again again
is sacrificed.
With ours as flesh
approximates a word
Witnessing resurrection
of the Christ.
No, and no bland diversion
for the bored:
What rises rises to
be sacrificed.
Which martyrs offered,
pace
fire and sword,
To witness resurrection
of the Christ.
For, you were all
that we could not afford:
Your loss our gain,
and again sacrificed.
Attentive guests approach
the groaning board
To witness resurrection
of a Christ
Made new again because
once sacrificed.
Self-Deliverance By Lion
Of the history of
a body's history.
of soft tissue, and
astonishment.
River-pelt spilled
after an enormous
With the lilac repetitions
in her cotton dress.
By the menial and
tender of the keepers
As the retractile
dewclaws on a lion's forepaw, massive
Year, a hopelessness
of less despair
Of night fell cruel
and quickly where
Their mastery was
volitional, and fair.
I am discussing here,
A sorrel horse loosed
Pelted by high storms,
And furious. He will
not
Hands, not in this
given life
Of gratitude and tallow
lamps
I have heard tell
To kill a man.
And listen to the
rain. It is time, now, to sit still
The truth as it arches
above the viscera, and finally.
Have most certainly
been used before: cleansed
Else's heart, they
have been contaminant &
Of everything. I was
powerful and could be alive
To cut out tissue
in a human that had gone wrong.
Towns and country-side.
There I stayed beside your nearly
Of a slightly larger
animal & sat still, having
A diaphanoscope, catastrophic
as the good love
Of saxifrage and clove,
tomorrowing.
Of foxes oddly standing
still in the milk broth of oblivion.
Of an ermine animal,
but empty, slung over the carved
One warm.
young and surrounded
by young men,
sincerely hidden but
unable to abide
being outside his
ken. I watched to see
the way, difficult
to see the band
moving back over the
way we came,
tried keeping pace
with all of them.
So many left when
he was silenced
and led down, but
I strayed on, faithful,
following from shadow
to shadow,
lasting past a burgeoning
neglect,
advent of cerements.
Beyond the gray
I vanished but managed
to hang on, and
until one reached
out, I did not run away.
to really come now,
rising from God's sleep
when everything will
happen for the first time
and our children will
not remember
chaos risen from a
charismatic mouth.
We must invent our
own secret evening
full of spring, our
own collective power.
Goodness must be preserved,
and it is good
because we cannot
stop those who fea
why we must wait.
Now, we must create
public opinion, gather
in our throat
voices of our fathers
now grown faint,
our tradition of saying
what we say
in our belief and
disbelief: Crucify him!
Chapter One
in the dog's mind,
therefore
he chopped the air
into bits
and pieces with furious
barking.
Shaddup!--his master's
voice.
Sound of a tin can
tossed down
like stage thunder
and lightning
or it was the real
thing as it was
indeed a dark and
stormy--No,
the master protests the opening
cliché
so it's the writer
in the doghouse
hunching over the
full mouth of keys.
Here's the hunger
that devours all the days.
What will the mouth
say now?
Click, click, click,
click, click. . .
A dark night it was.
It truly was, but
that's not a beginning,that's
a mind
emptying itself, soul
scouring itself.
It was a white and
scary blank.
That was the truth,
but the very truth
one had to hide, was
hired to hide.
Try other keys. Three
false starts
and you could be out
for good.
The spotlight turns.
. .
"For several dark
years, I spent my nights in a doghouse."
Now a silence
in which a scent may
be picked up,
a hook may be placed
on which
the dear, rare, unsuspecting
Reader
can be hung out to
soak
on a stormy night,
at the head of a brambled
trail
with--now, who erased
the dog?--
with not even a damp
dog to lead the way.
I made of it a sheet
I kept tearing and mending, splitting and
stitching
until it were a quilted thing, a map of the intention to keep.
I made of it cheese.
I made of it a weak
tea with no legible future but strengthening
warmth.
I made of it worn
down, ie, I made of it a molehill.
I made of it a pyre,
piling dried herbs, old hymns, curled shavings
from
a wouldn't heart.
I made of it a recipe
for steadiness including the latest disruption, the
wild
oat flour, the pinch of salt.
I made of it hazard
though I meant it to be entertaining.
I made of it a scroll
that entrapped a keen disappointment exactly.
I made of it tidy
piles hankering to be categories.
I made of it a belt
of fear, tight-cinching, with a buckle that lit the
path.
I made of it porous,
impure, a poor tent for rehabilitation.
I made of it a zoo
of belongings and tended the erstwhile dust.
I made of it a hundred-button
coat and wore it to my lover's who
wept that
it was good.
I made of it a tardy
hourglass.
appears in this month's 12
section.]
Slumber
In the shallows of
piano music.
These are the elegant
decisions I make:
walking past the clapboard
houses
with my manners in
my gloves
or underneath umbrellas,
leading into the steep
violin mountains,
my childhood a darkly-lit
hallway,
a fountain in the
shape of a boy.
I always find myself
back
in the Dust Room where
my face is broken
in the reflection
of fine porcelain.
I have so many
white dresses I will
soil for no good
occasion. Common things
call to me: crickets,
at night black ducks
drowning in the weeds.
There is nothing complicated
about this
except sleep walks
to lie down
in the shape of my
body.
Existing
There were keys in
my pocket,
elaborate, gleaming
of entryways.
Hysteria dictated
my hands,
ways in which to undress:
dark, corset, lacing,
molecules
of breath floundering.
Never mind the me
making cracks in the
walls,
the smallest kind
of magic:
white flowers wrapped
in brown paper,
fly trembling on a
rift of wind.
I am taking the slowest
way out and
down, noting the wooden
bridge crossing
unmoving waters, noting
the wretched sky
I can't take my eyes
off of.
Extinction
They come from the
trees hanging,
they come cheering,
they come silent.
Swishing, swishing.
makes a kind of song
like a flute.
A flower planted inside
my mouth.
Let's say it was a
rose.
Let's say it was noon,
time to swallow a
pill, let's say valium.
there were places
to get clean.
Washing the dishes
with a rag,
washing the inside
of a brain hemorrhaging.
The whole lot of it,
sterile. Metal.
lovers visiting, animals
to be fed, a scythe
floating
on a cool ocean current.
Exiting
A black cloud rests
its enormous hand on my mouth.
as the house shifts
from the wind.
A mango-colored bird
balances on a tree limb,
water rises up the
length of bark.
The bird speaks:
ocean, lamentation,
fractal.
At the foot of the
bed,
I watch the faint
image of myself dreaming
as nightly my body
wakes to itself again.
locks his gate a final
time
and folds himself
into a stained apron.
In the afternoon,
I break the chandelier.
A glass fire breaks
out in the green room.
I fight off the desire
to flee.
Zeno's Arrow
but a day a year.
It's plenty, really.
The days come quickly,
and most every year
I make way against
the wind. The masthead
tenses, sketches lines
as high as I can see
but never flies. The
boat keeps to water,
comes about to face
the wind.
doesn't mean I contradict
the wind.
I don't believe it
takes offense. We both obey
arbitrary laws. When
tacking, we try
to keep the sail between
us but -- each time
it seems unnatural
-- the wind
can't help coming
over to my side.
looking at eyes for
a start,
I pass as a brute,
no taste
for blood, no stomach
for heart.
distance, I work for
wages
plus tips, but read
"On How to Tip"
so give more to youth,
get less for age.
and over-tip, use
book knowledge
against waitwomen
making
a living, play with
an edge.
heartfelt napkins,
leave just more than
double the tax, claim
I'm not
just a customer but
a man.
watch tapes from the
course "Terror"
-- fear meets itself
through belief
in self-evident errors.
can be in the living
room.
Fear comforts, agrees
with me,
chats about times
in the womb.
I debate within my
skin.
Conventions of realism
cock my sense of what's
sudden.
of differences between
hungers.
For meaning, I memorize
thoughts caught under
my tongue.
Cavafy, find words
to lose
cities, give words
of courage
to Antony, take long
views.
of the independent
clause.
Whereas it used to
stand up, strong, now—
buckling—it's rendered
incomplete.
having learned that's
not enough.
I make lists and do
as I'm told.
Tip the girls behind
the counter at the Tasti D-Lite.
Though they are neither
waitresses nor nice.
you kissed me and
chipped my pretty front tooth and laughed,
I wish to say in defense
of my sudden departure—
—But I've changed!
(I actually said.)
—Good. For you.
"What?" they chorus,
knowing it's not finished—
losing you has brought
me to my knees.
an unleashed dog is
pacing.
(Sing to throw them
off the scent.)
impassive Gowanus.
Whisper to my love
why shouldn't it be
you,
your radiant face?
tripping over the
bridge.
Paterfamilias
(John C. W. Foy, 1919-1997)
were you to come back
tonight,
sublunary though not
entirely terrestrial,
wanting maybe to come
home
and talk about the
howitzers,
the shelling, and
the hail.
to reach for you,
to hold you in my arms,
I'd fail the way Aeneas
did
in that pathetic underworld,
where three times
he tried
to apprehend what
he had loved,
and the has-beens
laughed by Cocytus.
by rain, no more the
fool,
I wouldn't ask you
why you'd come
or how it was contrived,
though I
would tell you all
about
Catherine and Christopher
--Christopher you
never knew.
of the rake's chatter,
the sprinkler's voice,
the broom's moderate
discourse with the dust
--all these languages
with no more choice
than I, my winter
tongue more capable
of celebrating this
environment,
the gritty ice impenetrable
to all except an edge
violent
and hard enough to
meet its object face
to face and come away
bright, unbent,
more punishing than
punished by the ice,
a season, now, to
test out temperament.
(my son, 15 months old)
--a brute piece of
planet
you can hold in your
hand
and a splash you can
bring about,
a clean hit
upon the cool and
Heraclitean.
on these elements
that figure
pleasurably in the
mind.
They've come to occupy
your time,
as much as we can
give you here
by a cognac-colored
brook that goes along
beneath a wooden plank
quietly, as it has
for years
that no one has seen
fit to count,
its current here and
now
shivered by the stones
you throw down purposefully,
like some commander
high atop
the promontory of
Chimerium.
if the pile of stones
I put
by your right hand
were always there,
and the light this
April afternoon
were not bound to
fail,
and my patience were
without end?
You, a little hoplite
throwing stones
at the brook for another
thousand years.
It's only right, only
fair
that we leave you
for a time
to your stones and
water,
your water and your
stones.
The Art of the Insane
that snapped me in
two like a twig,
that shattered my
lovely personality, so to speak.
I nod my heavy head.
whirring, breathing?
Made it out of cloth
and mud and dirt and
spit and excrement.
to copy my faces.
Eager to meet me, touching
my creatures with
their long, skinny fingers.
what they could steal...And
if anyone asks,
With her hooves of
long curls like a little girl's
mop, or Persian slippers,
excellent for flying,
without. I don't remember
why I lit up:
to the corner and
bought my brand and took it
not imagine not ever
performing this fluid
was dizzy but I kept
at it until it changed
my lungs. Fresh air
was slim and common
And gone the enormity
of quitting, how it was
so strong I wondered
how I never ended up
with dirty clothes
and dirty hair, some
easier to imagine
than me on some campus
a black felt-tip pen.
Now I am up to two
as I walk the streets.
I can feel people
in broad daylight.
Eventually I will have
again. And keep in
mind this time what they
there is another person
with your eyes
whispering hurt
yourself, starve, and it
A stone at rest beneath
its lake.
No human heartbeat
washes near,
But this is how you
wanted it:
How little did you
guess such blue
Would dress your veins
and oil streams.
Your skin an old and
weathered leaf.
Like forests all but
logged, the stems
Of waterlilies crowd
in fear,
Their shadowed pinks
are witnesses
And try to turn their
heads away.
And caught off-guard,
as if to break
Your fall with plates
of sky the size
Of one small, unframed
photograph.
The accidental moment
flashed:
Your flesh demanded
to be rinsed.
month's 12 section. Ed.]
To Take Bread At My Hand
and who the hunter with salted palm.
Forget who bent to lick,
and crouching, was transformed.
the danger and the draw of hunger -
muzzle coaxed to trusting
her body's slow advent.
here then on human legs, in form
the hunter's dreaming eyes
believed continual.
is prey. The hunter's
vision, captured,
is quick and lost in light.
What remains: the
clouding
their garment of enchantment, hair
and gowns returned to fur,
and their bare feet, to hooves.
from thirteen American
states
and two Canadian provinces,
marked by you, by
past insistence
of thigh or hand,
or, more rarely, mouth.
each pale ewe, and
move to the nudge
of your crook. (From
here their movement looks
saw her, paused when
you shut the door.
Each remembers you,
and three have played
one with uncombed
hair. Ten long-haired
cats, tails high,
navigate pairs of legs.
in time. Two art school
suicides
compare methods: Dran-O,
heroin.
prolific was your
hand!), letters:
boxed (fourteen);
beribboned, kissed (just three);
(five: someone has
collected the
debris in five identical
urns).
tied her up with,
when you were young.
She offers you a glass
of water.
Asked to dance fifty-seven
times.
You sneeze, comply,
while above this I
with your spinster
aunt and clever
grandmothers, our
counted words called out
levitate. I wait for
you to
touch me again, only
when you rise.
Dreamed about you
and Nina.
Never thought I'd
miss you.
Thanks for watering
the palm."
Bought you the perfect
sweater,
It's Cashmere, large,
maroon.
The best is yet 2B."
to tend to Linda's
palm.
Kneeling by her kitchen
island
last year I said:
"Marry me."
in tangerine juice?
"O honey. How odd.
No. For the time being."
Yearn for your hug,
luv.
"To: Linda@coolmaildotcom
Chill out. Palm alive."
on heart-shaped leaves
slim band of flesh
above naked knees
jangling of keys
in last night's storm
On the Tree of Life
Dazzle the wall above
His king-size bed
After my cousin Sofia
Heartless tease at
fourteen
I too fancy her
On a corner chaise
My fingers trembling
Above combed fringes
The male yearns for
flight
His one-eyed gaze
fixed
Upon Grandfather's
hand
The female flutters
in midair
Plumes fanning out
Brilliant madder dyes
Dogs in Arab Town
-- The New York Times, April
14, 1995
Jew raised in Paris.
We stroll in Central Park.
Gaulois, her mutt,
off the leash. Lucky he's
Not in Hebron,
where gods kill dogs for sport.
in this month's 12 section.
Ed.]
Nor summer,
bully season, when every sprig
and spore and pest
competes for life. Nature,
it seems,
grades on the curve, but stages one stately,
democratic talent
show
in spring.
and glowers
from the wings at crocus time.
I'm quarrelling with
my sister when I spot
their
citrine nibs, all neatly bound, each
in a single leaf,
like so many small
cigars.
This
is and isn't about a car and love
and temperament. For
two exhausting days
I watch
the green points test the air and then,
fanning like Floradora
girls,
divide.
plant
snow-drops, so the crocus claim the cold
earth unconcerned
with sibling rivals.
My tactic,
too. I cede the fight, the car,
the other stuff, keep
to myself.
Meanwhile,
a stealthy
thicket of roots between the bulbs,
around the succulents.
Is nature truth
or ruthlessness?
How badly do I want
to see how ugly-honest
we
can be?
some
broad and baldfaced lies, in which 'respect'
and 'love' form decorous
blooms. These always fail,
leaving
the equinoctial seasons for us
to nurse our grievances
and lick
our wounds.
a day
of sudden, shocking wilting. The earth
is warm, I peel my
shirt off as I weed.
Red leaves
cry out among the bright new shoots
of phlox. Summer is
taking off
its gloves.
Crossing the yard
in a fluorescent vest.
I wiped away a swathe
of condensation and tapped
The glass, and my
heart waved back.
The hunting/fishing
signs along the creek?
Are you walking the
old railroad track
Where there's a new
house now, with a corral
For ponies? Are you
gathering wood?
Check my profile in
the mirror, suck in my gut,
Stick out my ass.
Make coffee, dress—it's pleasant
Here with no one but
the cats, and I can get
Some reading done
before my heart bursts in again,
And stamps the mud
from the treads of its heavy-soled shoes.
Intermission in Four Acts
(from PLOT)
uninvolved—a present,
its past in the queue outside the toilet,
in each drink dulling
the room. Hence our overwhelming desire
to forgive some, forget
others. Even so, we are here and, as yet,
I cannot release us
to here, cannot know and still go on as if all
the world were staged.
Who believes, "Not a big mess but rather
an unfortunate accident
arrived us here." Our plot assumes
presence. It stays
awkward, clumping in the mouth: I shall so
want. And this is
necessary time. Only now do we respect
(or is it forget)
the depths of our mistakes. There often rises
from the fatigue of
the surface a great affection for order. Plot,
its grammar, is the
linen no one disgorges into. Excuse me.
From that which is
systemic we try to detach ourselves; we cling to,
cellophane ourselves
into man-made regulations, so neatly
educated, so nearly
laid: He maketh me to die down. But some
of us have drowned
and coughed ourselves up. The deep
morning lifts its
swollen legs high upon the stage. Some wanting
amnesia float personified
abstractions. Some wash ashore, but
not into the audience,
not able to look on. Help me if who you
are now helps you
to know the world differently; if who you are
wants not to live
life so.
Green owns the season
and will be God. A rain, that was, put
a chill in every leaf,
every blade of grass. The red brick, the
asphalt, cold, cold.
The front step, the doorknob, the banister,
the knife, the fork.
A faucet opens and the woman, Liv, arrives
as debris formed in
the sea's intestine, floating in to be washed
ashore and perfumed.
In time she opens her mouth and out
rushes, "Why is the
feeling this? Am I offal? Has an unfortunate
accident arrived me
here? Does anyone whisper Stay awhile, or
the blasphemous Resemble
me, resemble me"? Those watching
say with their silence,
That is Liv, she has styes on her eyes,
or she needs to forget
the why of some moment. She doesn't
look right. She is
pulling the red plastic handle toward her,
checking around her.
She's washing, then watching hands, feet
and shouting Assemble
me. Assemble me. She is wearing shoes
and avoiding electrical
wires, others, steep drops, forgotten
luggage. Those are
her dangers. She cannot regret. A hook out of
its eye, she's the
underside of a turtle shell. Riveted, and riven,
the others stare,
contemplating the proximity of prison to person
before realizing the
quickest route away from is to wave her on.
They are waving her
on. Liv is waved on. Everything remains
but the shouting.
A cake is cooling on a rack. Someone is
squeezing out excess
water. Another is seasoning with salt. The
blacker cat is in
heat. A man sucks the mint in his mouth. The
minutes are letting
go. A hose is invisible on the darkened lawn.
sucking his mint lozenge.
He is waiting for the other foot to
drop: his own, mind
you. In a wide second he will be center
stage.
voice to let Liv know
she cannot move toward birth without
trespassing on here:
To succumb to life is to be gummed to
the reverberating
scum seemingly arrested.
essence, the spirit
perhaps: catfoot in a moist soil, at the lowest
altitude or simply
streamside, though seeming fine.
circulatory, in an
interval, the spirit perhaps in an interval.
But then frictionized,
rubbed hard—
in the sediment of
connotation where everyone's nervously
missing, so missed.
His melody is vertical, surrendering
suddenly to outcome,
affording a heart,
remainder, some ladder
leftover, is biddy-bop, biddy-bop, and
again. His voice catches.
It feels like tenderness beckoning and
it is into her voice,
rejoicing.
comparison. in the
still water. of green pasture. Lord and Lamb
and Shepherd in all
circumstances. daylight in increase. always
the floating clouds.
ceaseless the bustling leaves. we exist as if
conceived by our whole
lives—the upsurge. its insides. in all
our yesterdays. moreover
without synonym. I
labor. this is the applause. This—mercy
grown within complexity.
and in truth these lies cannot be
separated out: I see
as deep as the deep flows. I am as willing
as is recognized.
~ . ~
Sublime in Passing
(after Raymond Chandler)
Dishrag snap inside
the abscess
Of each pilsner glass,
the barkeep's
Broken whistle as
he folds napkins
Into triangles --
such subtle ado
Resolves into bergs
of anticipation
As night shatters
serenity, draws us in,
Erratic as meteors.
I order a Scotch
On stones, slouch
towards sloppy
Jabber down the rail:
one a few stops
Short of lit cradling
his boilermaker
As if sprouted from
the wooden stool.
The emergency brake
on the joint, lurching
The hum to a halt.
The barman hangs
In mid-polish, the
drunk swivels
Without swallowing,
spittle dribbling
Down-chin, and for
a flash, all sounds
Ebb, as when a conductor
skims a gaze
Across the pit, taps
on the music stand,
And holds two hands
poised in the air.
So I sit wide-eyed,
holding in breath.
It's not until you
famously take a booth
That the dive once
again expands.
Of foliate faces,
palmettos that fantail in midair,
Shivering leaves all
wrapped in the bright shroud
Of early afternoon,
I'm thinking of you my dear,
Is done in the present
tense, away from city teeth,
Daily irritants, a
pace that insures even lounging
Is stressful. Here,
I can't help telling the truth
The manatees, and
instead saw mounds of rubbish-
Soda cans, used oil-filters,
moldy paperbacks-
And two locals casting
a line into the polluted rash
At Shell's Seafood,
where we ate last night.
Have you been happy?
I suppose that with a wick
I've melted away what
wax we had. Now with a net
Of the man it seems
I'm becoming. Can we follow
Each other through
these changes? Ahead, a stretch
Of loam -- hard to
tell if it's in bloom or fallow.
Figure Crossing Sand
from the mouth of
our tent,
your head with its
black curls,
your arms flickering
with shadows
as the muscles steady
you, first one leg
and its strong foot,
then the other. You pause a moment,
an ancient sprinter,
before rising.
for the twenty strides
it takes to reach the sea,
and by the time you
dive beneath the surface
and come up beside
me,
my black trunks and
black top
are knotted into a
tight ball, which we hold
between us so it does
not sink.
appears in this month's 12
section. Ed.]
Bloom's Photograph
talks failed, but
we survived among
the sweet dead leaves
that lay along
the esplanade before
Grant's Tomb.
between the benches
and the faded
grass; the season
escalated
elsewhere, but here
the clever hopes
each other, we were
reading James Joyce
when across the street
a white Rolls Royce
pulled up outside
a church. A bride
as if the future,
gowned in white,
had made a sudden
promise in spite
of Reykjavik. This
vision, gilt
Molly Bloom's adulteries,
had stopped the fading
of the leaves,
until the newlyweds
abruptly
of Mrs. Bloom her
husband keeps
adulterates this bride:
one sweep
of the wind and the
greenest leaf does not
Grant, in the heat
of battle, was known
to sit absorbed, cool
as stone,
composing letters
home to Mrs.
believed was going
up in smoke.
Puffing on a cigar,
he soaked
the fields with blood
in Tennessee,
of whiskey, and finally
told Lee
at Appomattox that
victory
was sad -- he did
"not care to pass
without illusions.
So grant us all
another cold and golden
fall,
and knowledge as to
how to leave
that night while gangs
of boys played ball
against the mausoleum
wall.
We shut the book on
Molly's "Yes."
Considers Daphne", appears in this month's 12 section. Ed.]
in the courtyard of a Post Avenue
apartment building to see . . .
whether a bathroom window
shimmered with the image of
Jesus Christ or was just smudged.
--The New York Observer
inlaid with enamel,
cast in gold;
not painted like an
ornament
It surfaced in the
most mundane of spots,
at an ordinary hour,
squibs of light
a window--not stained
or even leaded--
just a pane of unimportant
glass.
it went unnoticed?
Was it always so?):
the all-familiar image
of the Christ--
reflecting on the
crowd that heard and came,
doubtless, to divine
the glory there.
the drawings in some
illustrated text,
the pictures children
seldom get beyond
(I was one
of those). Or was it nearer
to the revelation
witnessed on the road,
he showed himself
to several of his flock?
"Some people need
a sign," the pastor said--
as, overhead, high
clouds betrayed the forms
of a whiskered face,
an anvil, mountain, cow.
after Rembrandt's "Hundred Guilder
Print"
these legal men sketched in at left
so sparingly they
almost blanch from view;
how they huddle,
dull to radiance
oblivious to Christ's light caught
across their faces,
like a harrowing
of their tight circle,
as they natter on.
intently or with skepticism
intact--still, they
have understood more than
their purblind fellows,
who, while arguing
the man, have left off noticing
what even children
and the sick see plainly.
And we are quick
to read the gulf between
(aligned instead with the heroes),
and wise to the fact
of their ignorance,
though we, like them,
have missed the central point:
those from whom the truth's been held,
the more bemused,
who lord the blameless life,
its sureti