Day Twenty One - Taxi by Elise Paschen

TAXI

Why don't we cruise

Times Square at noon

enjoy the jam

I'm not immune

to your deft charm

in one stalled car

I'd like to take

you as you are

---Elise Paschen

TAXI by Elise Paschen

Before anything else, our first impulse is to understand. In our search for answers, we often carry our own baggage with us and put it to work. With our baggage in tow, we attempt to find depth, or create depth where it doesn't exist. What a mistake this can be! Because we want something more, something more literary, something more high brow and challenging, we miss out on the art right before our eyes. It's like showering the prom queen with attention, but ignoring the girl-next-door who's loved you forever.

Taxi by Elise Paschen is a perfect example of a small, but powerful poem that loses some of its truth and beauty when we try to read more into it than actually exists. In this poem, Paschen has fun with words and their sounds. There are rhymes and slant rhymes all in a neat package of eight lines, each containing four syllables. Paschen establishes pace very deliberately with the structure and she's chosen. It's a single image of the poet and a friend, or presumably a lover, in a midday Times Square traffic jam that sets the poem in motion. There's irony in the poem rumbling to life with a traffic jam. But the traffic slows the outside world so that the world inside the car takes center stage. Paschen takes this deliberate moment to highlight that she is "not immune / to (your) deft charm / in one stalled car." She knows it is charm and there could be pretense behind it, but she also knows that it works on her. In fact, it works so well that she understands herself and what she wants. She'd "like to take / you as you are." Yes, this poem has clever line breaks and a fun rhyme scheme. I could break these down and show how Paschen creates something truly great in the short course of eight lines, but sometimes you just have to pause, take a breath, and remind yourself not to complicate a piece of art that is already great without me and my baggage.

Day Twenty - R&R By Brian Turner

R & R

The curve of her hip where I’d lay my head,

that’s what I’m thinking of now, her fingers

gone slow through my hair on a blue day

ten thousand miles off in the future somewhere,

where the beer is so cold it sweats in your hand,

cool as her kissing you with crushed ice,

her tongue wet with blackberry and melon.

That's what I’m thinking of now.

Because I’m all out of adrenaline,

all out of smoking incendiaries.

Somewhere deep in the landscape of the brain,

under the skull’s blue curving dome—

that’s where I am now, swaying

in a hammock by the water’s edge

as soldiers laugh and play volleyball

just down the beach, while others tan

and talk with the nurses who bring pills

to help them sleep. And if this is crazy,

then let this be my sanatorium,

let the doctors walk among us here

marking their charts as they will.

I have a lover with hair that falls

like autumn leaves on my skin.

Water that rolls in smooth and cool

as anesthesia. Birds that carry

all my bullets into the barrel of the sun.

---Brian Turner

R&R by Brian Turner

Everyone needs something to look forward to, a proverbial light at the end of the tunnel that keeps us focused and fuels us through our most challenging moments. Goals are what make the process worthwhile. For a soldier, like Brian Turner, the lack of a goal can be deadly. Without opportunities, possibilities, and the joyous love waiting at home, soldiers might be overtaken by the darkness around them. The rest and relaxation that Turner describes in R&R might be an illusion, but some illusions are necessary to the preservation of reality.

In a quiet moment away from the dangers and rigors of combat, the speaker in Brian Turner's poem R&R thinks of "the curve of her hip" where he'd "lay his head" and "her fingers / gone slow through (his) hair." The curve of his love's hip could just as well be the curve of his gun handle, but he needs an outlet from the violent world he resides in. That outlet, even though it's "ten thousand miles off in the future somewhere," is a peaceful place that resembles a utopian reward "where the beer is so cold it sweats in your hand, / cool as her kissing you with crushed ice, / her tongue wet with blackberry and melon." Turner's outlet is familiar, refreshing, and sweet, but he only seeks the outlet because he's "all out of adrenaline, / all out of smoking incendiaries." Crashing from his rough current reality, he seeks a comfortable place in a previous world that he hopes to visit again in the future.

Turner can thread images of joy together, but even he acknowledges they are "somewhere deep in the landscape of the brain." They are figments, but somehow they seem so real. In fact, they are imbued with such reality that Turner must confront the idea of lunacy. He knows how it looks and declares "And if this is crazy, / then let this be my sanatorium, / let the doctors walk among us here / marking their charts as they will." He doesn't care how it looks and he doesn't care if he truly is crazy because this diversion from the pain of his real, war-torn life is the key to his survival. It is the R&R that allows Turner to so beautifully tell the world, and remind himself, that he has "a lover with hair that falls / like autumn leaves on (my) skin." She is the goal, the reason, the reward. She...and the water...and the sun...and the world where evil can exist, but where beauty, truth, hope, and love are prone to "roll in smooth and cool."

Day Nineteen - Goose Population Gains High Level by Ogden Nash

GOOSE POPULATION GAINS HIGH LEVEL

Headline (New York Times)

Besides pollution and erosion

We now must face a goose explosion.

A glut of geese can play the devil

With national life on every level,

Especially in politics,

Where geese and government intermix.

This solemn thought I introduce:

The higher the level, the bigger the goose.

---Ogden Nash

Goose Population Gains High Level by Ogden Nash

Oh, how I chuckle nearly every time I read an Ogden Nash poem. It's often a challenge to fuse poetry with humor, but Nash embraced the challenge and made a fairly successful career out of witty words. Of his many worthy poems, I chose this one from Nash because I share his strong dislike for geese. Having worked at golf courses growing up, I've had my fair share of run-ins with these evil creatures. The angry hiss of a hard charging goose is one of the more aggressive displays I've seen in my life. Not only are geese mean, territorial animals, but they seem to procreate disproportionately and they have a propensity to poop everywhere. With those character traits in the back of his mind, Nash constructs a fitting metaphor between our political leaders and geese. Admittedly, I don't have much to say about this poem from a technical perspective, but I still think it's a fabulous poem and funny detour during this National Poetry Month. In fact, I bet you'll think of this poem the next time you step into a pile of slimy, sticky dark green goose poop.

Day Eighteen - Poetry 180

A few years back, Billy Collins devised a rather simple, yet wholly substantive way to reintroduce poetry to the mainstream. He looked at the public school calendar and realized there are approximately 180 days in the school year. At that point he set about collecting 180 poems to be read (some of them aloud) in classrooms by students on a daily basis. The poems would need to be humorous, interesting, intelligent, touching, and fun; after all, they would be for a very difficult audience of school aged children and teens. Collins collected a diverse set of poems into his first collection for Poetry 180. It is a stunningly addictive book that I would recommend to any poetry lover. Collins followed this first collection up with a second 180 poems to use in the classroom. Speaking of the classroom, I have used Poetry 180 with students and have noticed it to be quite engaging and stimulating. Students seem to respond to the relevance of the poems Collins has selected; instead of flowery, archaic verse, Poetry 180 delivers the in-your face modernity that students need to find poems to be real. If that isn't enough motivation for you, then I'll mention this: many of the poems featured on this blog over the last four years have come from the Poetry 180 collections. I encourage all of you to check out Poetry 180, and those of you who are teaching I would advise you to find a way to include it in your classrooms. You'll thank me, and Billy Collins, later!

http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/

Day Seventeen - Rain by Claribel Alegria

RAIN

As the falling rain

trickles among the stones

memories come bubbling out.

It's as if the rain

had pierced my temples.

Streaming

streaming chaotically

come memories:

the reedy voice

of the servant

telling me tales

of ghosts.

They sat beside me

the ghosts

and the bed creaked

that purple-dark afternoon

when I learned you were leaving forever,

a gleaming pebble

from constant rubbing

becomes a comet.

Rain is falling

falling

and memories keep flooding by

they show me a senseless

world

a voracious

world--abyss

ambush

whirlwind

spur

but I keep loving it

because I do

because of my five senses

because of my amazement

because every morning,

because forever, I have loved it

without knowing why.

Rain by Claribel Alegria

Isn't it funny how rain stirs memories and gives us reason to pause and think. We've had torrential storms here in the Washington D.C. area these last few days, yet I've found time to open my windows and sit in the dark silence listening to the clip clap of heavy raindrops thumping the ground. I'm left, like Claribel Alegria, thinking and sifting through the memories that "come bubbling out." The "pierced temples" that Alegria speaks of are not so much an immediate pain, but more so a tunneling into the past that we hold in our fragile minds. In these gentle containers of time gone by, we carry "tales of ghosts." For Alegria the ultimate tale is when she learned her beloved was leaving forever. This pain reminds her that "a gleaming pebble / from constant rubbing / becomes a comet." In this example that serves as a much larger metaphor for what happens in life, the pebble is striped of it's gleam and beauty by the constant pressure and pain, only to find new life in a form of even greater beauty, strength, and rarity. The trade off is that the comet can't be touched, can't be predicted accurately all the time, and is perfectly distant in it's beauty, almost as a mythical creature is. A transformation like this is bound to remind Alegria, and all of us readers, that memories point out what we don't want to acknowledge about the world: that it can't be figured out. The "senseless world" is "abyss / ambush / whirlwind / spur," it's a place of confusion, disillusionment, and longing. Still, the world, with all its faults is also spread full with goodness, with reasons for holding those memories that can unlock our pasts we would rather keep hidden. Alegria enumerates these reasons the world is good when she closes the poem by saying "but I keep loving it / because I do / because of my five senses/ because of my amazement / because every morning, / because forever, I have loved it / without knowing why." The world eludes our understanding, even though the rain stirs memories and begs us to find purpose and clarity in our past and present. We may continue to seek understanding and we may continue to be frustrated as our quest leads us to dead ends, but there is a greater message. Do not lose the love of life, do not forget to greet each day with your senses that make something like rain so enchanting and mesmerizing, do not lose the ability to be amazed, do not lose the fresh starts of new days, and do not lose the past, even if it is tinged with pain, because all is prelude to now, and now you are ready to live.

Day Sixteen - Rememberance

Time heals most wounds, but it leaves a sliver of what existed before the pain. Tragedies come in all shapes and sizes, impacting individuals and whole nations worldwide, regardless of class, race, religion, and any other classification you can produce. No one survives a tragedy unscathed; all of us with some connection---even a thin, seemingly minor connection---are left to cope with the silence of lost voices, the vibrant lives so abruptly and unfairly taken from us. It doesn't help to wonder what could have been and there's only little comfort in remembering what was. The only positive we can take from tragedy is the rising triumph of the human spirit. Together, we acknowledge our sorrow and pain, but we also acknowledge the selfless strength of character our community possesses. Why am I offering this treatise on rememberance and tragedy? Because four years ago today a horrific tragedy occurred at Virginia Tech, my beloved alma mater, my favorite place on this planet, and the community that I most identify with. Today, I'm remembering the 32 lives that were taken violently and senselessly from our community and our world. I'm also remembering the triumph of the human spirit that circulated amongst us Hokies and all who joined us in support and prayer.

Here's a reposting of Dr. Giovanni's galvanizing chant poem that still shatters, then builds me back up every time I read or hear it.

WE ARE VIRGINIA TECH

We Are Virginia Tech. We are sad today and we will be sad for quite a while…We are not moving on. We are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly. We are brave enough to bend to cry. And sad enoughto know we must laugh again. We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it. But neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS. Neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory. Neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water. Neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy. We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open hearts and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibilities.

We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness. We are the Hokies!

We will …prevail! We will prevail! We will prevail! WE ARE VIRGINIA TECH!

---Nikki Giovanni

Day Fifteen - Pablo Neruda's Nobel Lecture

As we reach the middle of National Poetry Month 2011, I figured some words from the legendary Pablo Neruda might be a nice halfway marker. 1971 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, a cancer stricken Neruda accepted his prize in Stockholm, but would die a short time later. Here are some of Neruda's words delivered during his Nobel Prize lecture. Few poets have enjoyed the process of writing and helping others to delight in words as much as Pablo Neruda. Let's see what he had to say...

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I did not learn from books any recipe for writing a poem, and I , in my turn, will avoid giving any advice on mode or style which might give the new poets even a drop of supposed insight...Because in the course of my life I have always found somewhere the necessary support, the formula which had been waiting for me, not in order to be petrified in my words, but in order to explain me to myself..."

"And I believe that poetry is an action, ephemeral or solemn, in which there enter as equal partners solitude and solidarity, emotion and action, the nearness to oneself, the nearness to mankind, and to the secret manifestations of nature."

---Pablo Neruda