A Poem A Day, Week Two

The Old Gumbie Cat - T.S. Eliot (Tuesday)
I memorized this poem in sixth grade when I found it in a book of Eliot's collected works, just because I liked it. This stood me in good stead when a couple months later one of my teachers assigned everyone to memorize and recite a poem I was already prepared. I would like to note that I memorized this poem years before it was set to music, while a couple of my classmates just recited songs.


The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T.S. Eliot (Wednesday)
The same person who wrote cat poems for children also wrote this and Murder in the Cathedral! I read this poem over and over in college, and used a few lines as an epigraph for a short story I wrote for a class, and I'm still sympathetic to Prufrock's paralysis, wanting to urge him to break out of it.


Funeral Blues - W.H. Auden (Thursday)
Gareth reads this poem at the funeral of the title in Four Weddings and a Funeral. After I saw this film, I went to the library to check out an Auden poetry collection because this poem wasn't in my Norton Anthology. They were all gone, and the library whom I spoke with said it was because of the movie. I found it in an anthology of modern English poets, and copied it onto a piece of paper which I keep tucked into the appropriate place in my Norton's.


Foxtrot Fridays - Rita Dove (Friday)
No matter what else is going on, dancing makes me happy.


The Waking - Theodore Roethke (Saturday)
My favorite part of the day is the first few minutes after getting in bed, feeling the mattress absorb the energy of my body. I also enjoy the first few minutes of waking, when I'm just conscious enough to realize I'm awake but not conscious enough to move and start waking in earnest.

O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie - Philip Appleman (Sunday)
When I worked at the drug treatment program, I participated in a discussion with my coworkers about what it would be like if all the jerks were suddenly nice one day, and all the nice people acted like jerks, sort of giving them a taste of what it was like to deal with them. This is the sort of thing you think about when you're surrounded by people going through withdrawal. When I was withdrawing from Vicodin after the car wreck, I was probably a jerk. I know that when I was awake, I felt irritable.


The Green Street Mortuary Marching Band - Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Monday)
I always think it's fun to recognize locations in cities I read about or see in movies. I wonder if anyone has jazz funerals in San Francisco anymore.

Words And Ideas

I checked out a book titled Good Poems, edited by Garrison Keillor as part of my Read A Poem A Day plan for April. Because Keillor is so funny about being an English major and a reader of literature, I thought I would read the introduction. This, despite always being reminded of the scene in Dead Poets' Society in which Robin Williams' character tells the students to rip the introduction out of the poetry textbooks because it's "excrement."


But you know, I read the intro and I really like what Garrison has to say. He says that this book consists of "poems that somehow stuck with me and with some ofthe listeners. Stickiness, memorability, is one sign of a good poem. You hear it and a day later some of it is still there in the brainpan." I find that poems I read years ago are still in my head; some of them sound familiar to the point of being half-memorized.


In this book I found two poems with the same title. One of them is my favorite poem, and one of them was totally unfamiliar to me. They are so similar in meter but so different in subject, and I got a big chuckle out of Erica-Lynn Gambino's, which has an epigraph of "for William Carlos Williams."

This Is Just To Say

I have just
asked you to
get out of my
apartment

even though
you never
thought
I would

Forgive me
you were
driving
me insane

Forty and Flirty

Flirting is like Potter Stewart's definition of pornography: I know it when I see it, but I can't describe it. It's the intention behind the actions more than anything else.


Some friends and I were discussing whether a guy at the Barnes & Noble was flirting with one of the people in the group. She said that she couldn't tell whether the guy at the counter was trying to let her know he liked her and not just the movies she'd selected. Was it flirting or just really friendly customer service? Since none of us had been there, of course, we advised another few rounds of movie purchases with perhaps some book and music discussions thrown in. With more data, we think we'll be able to figure it out.


That led to a discussion about all the times each of us had been someplace, like a grocery store, where we left wondering if the counter person/checker/barista was flirting. A friend asked me last night if the checker was flirting with her when she said, "Have a good night, love" and all I could think was, "Well, what was the tone when she said it? How was she looking at you?" and "Was she from the U.K.?" I got carded one time when I thought the person bagging groceries was flirting with me. I was so discombobulated by the possibility that I was being flirted with that I was totally confused when the checker asked me for my ID. If I had been the checker, I wouldn't have accepted it, I was acting so weird.


These days I don't get flirted with very often in stores of any kind. I think this might be because a lot of people in retail are all still in their 20s and now I'm much older than they are. In fact, I think I do most of my flirting with Zirpu, which doesn't really count, and with JR, which also doesn't really count. I also know that sometimes I say things to people that could be construed as flirting when I'm not flirting: If someone is wearing something that looks really good, I'll smile and say so. Sometimes I realize that they might be wondering what my intention is.


That's what is behind flirting: Intention. And that's what makes flirting so exciting: You don't exactly know who intends what - sometimes, anyway.

A Poem A Day, Week One

A Supermarket in California - Allen Ginsberg (Tuesday)
This poem starts, "What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman. . ." In college I wrote a poem honoring Ginsberg that started, "What thoughts I have of you tonight, Allen Ginsberg. . ."


What I Learned Today - Billy Collins (Wednesday)

"no matter what the size the aquarium of one's learning,
another colored pebble can always be dropped in."

I snatched this book on my way out the door, knowing I wouldn't be home again to search more leisurely. I would have titled this blog "Another Colored Pebble" if I'd read this 16 months ago.


Warning - Jenny Joseph (Thursday)
If you know this poem, you probably know it by its first line: "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple." A few months ago I was in a diner with friends and a nearby ten-top was filled with women at least in their late '60s wearing purple pajamas and red hats. How cool is that?)


You Came Too - Nikki Giovanni (Friday)
If there were a poem about how I met Zirpu, this would be it.


Phenomenal Woman - Maya Angelou (Saturday)
I had the opportunity to read this at a party honoring two friends who are marrying different men in a couple weeks. At the end of the party, someone said that she's always loved that poem since she first heard it in middle school. I wish I had heard it - and internalized it - in middle school.


The Gnashlycrumb Tinies - Edward Gorey (Sunday)
Zirpu purchased this at our favorite bookstore today and I read it to him in the car. Written in couplets, I read the first line and most of the second for each letter and he filled in the last word. We laughed as I showed him the illustrations at stop signs.


Limited - Carl Sandburg (Monday)
Where are we going, and how are we getting there? Sandburg tells us, gently.

Wow, literature!

I'm so digging this read-a-poem-day thing!


I'm actually reading much more than just one poem a day, since it's just the natural thing to read a few of the poems around the selected work. I'm also discovering poetry is everywhere: "Warning" posted on the restroom wall at the Pacific Center; a recording of Robert Kennedy reciting from an ancient Greek playwright. Bink has suggested two poets to read, Samuel Green and Theodore Roethke. I'm looking forward to both!


I was at the library yesterday in search of Carl Sandburg and was able to tell two reference librarians about my project. They knew it was National Poetry Month, and they didn't seem to think it was an eggheaded pretension to read a poem every day. Talking to them was like having a conversation with Mrs. P or anyone else who used to hang around a college English department. I did not feel like a nerd.

Saint Stupid's Day Parade

Someday I will participate in this, though I can't imagine when I will ever work in SF again, or when I might have an April Fool's Day off.

Saint Stupid's Day Parade

It warms my little teenage hippie heart to know that people occasionally mock the single-minded pursuit of financial gain.

Good Morning

This is one of my favorite poems. Reading it is nothing like hearing it.




I'll admit I don't totally get this poem. There's whole sections of it I don't really understand, which is why I like to hear the cadence of Maya Angelou's reading. When I read it I distract myself by trying to figure out every word. You'd think after fifteen years I would have made some progress - but I haven't worked on it that much. I love the last verse, though.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, and into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.