—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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Sonnets
July 24, 2010
Austin MacRae
LIBRARY LOVERS
She devours Steel, and he L’Amour.
She leads him to the fiction, where they part
for different shelves. He’s eager to explore
the tough ol’ west, and she the tough ol’ heart.
They meet me at the desk with separate piles.
Unthinkingly, I mix the books together.
I sense his wave of nervousness. She smiles
and quickly sorts the titles out. “Nice weather
today,” she says. He slides his pile away,
averts his eyes, and waits for her to pull
out bags. “Let’s eat at Lou’s,” I hear her say.
She grabs his arm and leads him, tote bag full
of cowboy stories swinging at his heel,
his sidearm holstered by her whim of steel.
—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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July 17, 2010
Jeff Knight
KNIVES OF THE POETS
The philosophers keep hammering, each
to each. Editors choose scissors. Critics
fancy the blunt: crowbars, mallets, and such.
Poets like knives. It starts at about six
in a fury of initials, hearts, and
arrows jack-knifed into the flesh of trees
(ash, sometimes; mostly elders). Understand
that aimless whittling comes next, and will lead
to the real work: Dr. Williams and his
scalpel, Anne Sexton’s special set of trick
knives, complete with weighted hafts and circus
music, William Blake’s cutlass, red and slick
as paint that paints demons. Parry, jab, thrust.
The world is our whetstone. We shall not rust.
—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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July 13, 2010
ANY HACK CAN CRANK OUT A HUNDRED SONNETS
Any hack can crank out a hundred sonnets
if he has to; all you have to do
is set up your metronome and start typing,
taking dictation from the day’s small gifts,
whatever presents itself in the street
or dredges itself up from memory
or dreams itself out of your transcribing hand.
It’s an insidious form, because it’s almost
easy, leading you by the wrist through rules
and rhythms as old as the English language
translated down the ages in idioms
transformed by time and driven by dying breaths.
It gives you a false sense of what you meant
when the closing couplet clinches your argument.
—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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___________
Stephen Kessler: “When I started writing poems in earnest, as a teenager, I had no use for free verse, but the formal structures and rhythms of English poetry—especially that of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats—provided the models for my own earliest efforts. In time I became more ‘contemporary’ in my approach to form, opening up to more unpredictable lyric structures, but my ear had been trained to hear rhythm and rhyme in a way that continues to serve me more than 40 years later. These sonnets were written during what could be called a cool-off lap after translating about 70 sonnets by Borges for his complete sonnets, to be published in 2010 by Penguin. While they are not formal sonnets in the strictest sense, I think they are close enough to give an illusion of sonnetude.” (web)
July 3, 2010
Michelle Bitting
SILENCE TOOK MY TONGUE WHEN MY BROTHER WENT
Silence took my tongue when my brother went
away, now words are skittery rabbits: soft,
furry lumps huddled in my throat’s dry den.
I wait for him at breakfast where the clock
clicks its mean teeth, wait for him to tease me,
please Lord, anything, but his empty chair
staring back: a hard, narrow beast. Scary
to know one hundred sixteen children there
and then not. Scary the ambulances,
lights that would not end, turning the street blue.
Now I won’t leave Father’s side; who knows when
earth might tumble open, swallow him, too?
You know the queen flew here; kneeled down and prayed,
left a fancy white wreath on brother’s grave.
—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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July 1, 2010
COVER TO COVER
Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the
collector’s passion borders on the chaos of
memories.
—Walter Benjamin
I don’t collect them. They just accumulate,
Tower higher into shoddy columns,
Climbing weirdly like crystal formations
Or pillars of coral. The thought of their weight
Crushes, their coarse traffic of wars I’ve thumbed
Through, their long summers and snow. They weigh tons.
They slide onto the stove, under the fridge,
Into the tub. They prop open windows,
Serve as coasters. They have traveled with me
And slept beside me. They fashion a bridge
To vanished rooms, sorrows, and suns. Lord knows
Why I haul them from city to city.
I slip them together like bricks. They become a wall,
My greed, my fears, everything, nothing at all.
—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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__________
Ernest Hilbert: “Among the many childhood memories that strike me from time to time is one of a small, inquisitive boy scaling a tall bookcase as if it were a ladder or a canyon wall, to reach something, though the object of his adventure may never be known or fully understood. I was the boy, of course, and my mother would routinely lift me off before I fell and hurt myself or brought millions of words down in a fatal avalanche. My father, the first in his family to attend college (on the GI Bill), was an avid reader of everything from espionage novels to Pepys’ diaries and The Waste Land. As a result, I came of age in a modest home with an incredible wealth of books, quite literally thousands of them. As I grow older, more and more volumes gather about me as well, like barnacles on the hide of an aging gray whale. I feel an intense animal affection for the books I’ve read, but I also experience their incredible weight as if it were on my very back. How many things do we actually hold in our hands, feel in so many ways for so long before relinquishing? I use books to help me remember my life, to give that life fuller sense and broader contour. In a way, I still climb that bookshelf, reaching for whatever is to be found on a higher shelf. How can anyone stand to let books go? I can’t, and so we have my humble poem on the subject.” (web)
June 29, 2010
BACKWARD SONNET FOR A FORWARD THINKER
“If only I knew now what I’ll know soon,”
he likes to say. His office is immune
to order, his lab the opposite. His team
built a molecular machine that walks
on strands of DNA. His childhood dream
was to become a poet. He gives talks
on nanosystems every fall—the hall
is packed. “Old ends demand new means,” he starts
(his intro doesn’t change). “The past’s a wall
between the present and the future.” Charts
and tables, fluctuating year to year,
support his points. He’s photographed for Time.
He whispers to machines that can’t (yet) hear:
turn right, turn left, step back, walk sideways, climb.
—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
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__________
Caitlin Doyle: “When I pass the playground on my way to work, I hear children singing jump-rope songs and chanting ring around the rosy, pocket full of posy. When any member of my family drops an Alka-Seltzer into a glass of water, he or she can’t help bursting into song, just for the joy of saying the words: Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is! These are the reasons I love poetry. Its roots lie in our basic human need for sonic pleasure, for repetition and variation, for sounds that stick in the ear. I write because I hope to lodge a few memorable lines in the reader’s mind.” (web)