James Tate

Teaching the Ape to Write Poems
by James Tate

They didn’t have much trouble
teaching the ape to write poems:
first they strapped him into the chair,
then tied the pencil around his hand
(the paper had already been nailed down).
Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder
and whispered into his ear:
“You look like a god sitting there.
Why don’t you try writing something?”

 

Possibility is what jumps out at me in this poem. Teaching an ape to write poetry? It sounds absurd, and yet when i read the poem, it makes perfect sense.  At first the ape is a beast, but in order to write poetry the Doctor tells him to be more like a god. Constantly man is in a struggle between being a beast and a god, and he is typically somewhere in between which is when he is a man.  When we write poetry, we are no longer a beast that is not in control because we are the writer; the poem is in our hands. Transcending the physical world of being, writing poetry is spiritual in that it is not being, but a re-presentation of our being.  I think we all have a part of the ape in us (after all, something like 98% of our DNA is exactly the same); we can all rise above that beastlike nature within us and rise to be something greater. Transcend, Transcend!

Frank Bidart

Herbert White

“When I hit her on the head, it was good,

and then I did it to her a couple of times,-
but it was funny,-afterwards,
it was as if somebody else did it…

Everything flat, without sharpness, richness or line.

Still, I liked to drive past the woods where she lay,
tell the old lady and the kids I had to take a piss,
hop out and do it to her…

The whole buggy of them waiting for me
made me feel good;
but still, just like I knew all along,
she didn’t move.

When the body got too discomposed,
I’d just jack off, letting it fall on her…

-It sounds crazy, but I tell you
sometimes it was beautiful-; I don’t know how
to say it, but for a minute, everything was possible-;
and then,
then,-
well, like I said, she didn’t move: and I saw,
under me, a little girl was just lying there in the mud:

and I knew I couldn’t have done that,-
somebody else had to have done that,-
standing above her there,
in those ordinary, shitty leaves…

-One time, I went to see Dad in a motel where he was
staying with a woman; but she was gone;
you could smell the wine in the air; and he started,
real embarrassing, to cry…
He was still a little drunk,
and he asked me to forgive him for
all he hadn’t done-; but, What the shit?
Who would have wanted to stay with Mom? with bastards
not even his own kids?

I got in the truck, and started to drive,
and saw a little girl-
who I picked up, hit on the head, and
screwed, and screwed, and screwed, and screwed, then

buried,
in the garden of the motel…

-You see, ever since I was a kid I wanted
to feel things make sense: I remember

looking out the window of my room back home,-
and being almost suffocated by the asphalt;
and grass; and trees; and glass;
just there, just there, doing nothing!
not saying anything! filling me up-
but also being a wall; dead, and stopping me;
-how I wanted to see beneath it, cut

beneath it, and make it
somehow, come alive…

The salt of the earth;
Mom once said, ‘Man’s spunk is the salt of the earth…’
-That night, at that Twenty-nine Palms Motel
I had passed a million times on the road, everything

fit together; was alright;
it seemed like
everything had to be there, like I had spent years
trying, and at last finally finished drawing this
huge circle…

-But then, suddenly I knew
somebody else did it, some bastard
had hurt a little girl-; the motel
I could see again, it had been

itself all the time, a lousy
pile of bricks, plaster, that didn’t seem to
have to be there,-but was, just by chance…

-Once, on the farm, when I was a kid,
I was screwing a goat; and the rope around his neck
when he tried to get away
pulled tight;-and just when I came,
he died…
I came back the next day; jacked off over his body;
but it didn’t do any good…

Mom once said:
‘Man’s spunk is the salt of the earth, and grows kids.’

I tried so hard to come; more pain than anything else;
but didn’t do any good…

-About six months ago, I heard Dad remarried,
so I drove over to Connecticut to see him and see
if he was happy.
She was twenty-five years younger than him:
she had lots of little kids, and I don’t know why,
I felt shaky…
I stopped in front of the address; and
snuck up to the window to look in…
-There he was, a kid
six months old on his lap, laughing
and bouncing the kid, happy in his old age
to play the papa after years of sleeping around,-
it twisted me up…
To think that what he wouldn’t give me,
he wanted to give them…

I could have killed the bastard…

-Naturally, I just got right back in the car,
and believe me, was determined, determined,
to head straight for home…

but the more I drove,
I kept thinking about getting a girl,
and the more I thought I shouldn’t do it,
the more I had to-

I saw her coming out of the movies,
saw she was alone, and
kept circling the blocks as she walked along them,
saying, ‘You’re going to leave her alone.’
‘You’re going to leave her alone.’

-The woods were scary!
As the seasons changed, and you saw more and more
of the skull show through, the nights became clearer,
and the buds,-erect, like nipples…

-But then, one night,
nothing worked…
Nothing in the sky
would blur like I wanted it to;
and I couldn’t, couldn’t,
get it to seem to me
that somebody else did it…

I tried, and tried, but there was just me there,
and her, and the sharp trees
saying, ‘That’s you standing there.
You’re…
just you.’

I hope I fry.

-Hell came when I saw
MYSELF…
and couldn’t stand
what I see…”

 

Wow. so this poem was one of  the picks for the National Book Critics Good Reads, 2008, and my initial reaction was just that i was really disturbed. this guy seems like a creepy killer pedofile!!  I think that it is a good poem, but it makes me wonder whether there is a level deeper to this poem beyond the fact that it is a truely gruesome and terrible sexual assault/murder story.  i think there is an incredibly interesting psychological perspective to the killer in this poem, mainly how he rationalizes the killings and the fact that he seems to blame his father for his ways.  this raises so many questions, like how do you justify something like this and can people truly be that insane?  it really can be scary to think about. 

concerning the poem structurally, the one major thing i noticed was that it was easier for “Herbert” to rationalize his kililngs when nature was “flat, without sharpness, richness or line,” and when “the nights became clearer,” he could no longer ignore what he was doing, i.e. “nothing in the sky/ would blur like I wanted it to.”  While Herbert takes out his anger towards his father through killing and raping these women, he does not seem as insane at the end of the poem because he KNOWS that he should not be doing this anymore.   So why does he do it anyways?!? Well we could ask the same thing of Adam, why does he take the apple when he knows not to? Herbert and Adam are both expelled, Adam is driven out of the Garden of Eden, and Herbert is no longer in his perfect sick little world; he is in hell. maybe it is temptation? curiosity? sin?

There are many questions and explanations that this poem raises, but the one that is most important to me is that terrible killings like this happen every day, so what can we do to stop them? I was up at an orientation session today and we were actually talking about sexual assault and how it starts with the “initiator” and how we need to be proactive to not only protect ourselves from being a target, but also to stop these people before they start.  Maybe if these criminals had psychological help when they were younger or before they became out of control in order to understand and deal with their violent emotions and feelings, perhaps poems like this one would not be so realistic.

Adrienne Rich

Prospective Immigrants Please Note
by Adrienne Rich

Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.

If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.

Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.

If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily

to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely

but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?

The door itself
makes no promises.
It is only a door.

This was by far my favorite of the Adrienne Rich selection I looked through. The idea of possibility really intrigues me, opening a new door to the future. While Rich’s poem can certainly relate to immigrants around the world, I think this forces us to see ourselves as immigrants in our everyday lives, especially since Rich often addresses the audience as you, it is as if she is speaking directly to me.  I’m not sure how much this relates, but I literally just got off the phone with one of my friends who is on the verge of breaking up with her boyfriend that she has been with for a year and a half and it reminded me of this poem and how our choices, big and small, affect us forever.  You may want to stay in a situation because it offers security and safety, but what if something bigger and better is just a door away? And what if there is a door, but nothing behind it? It reminds me of a television game show, where you have 3 doors and the money is behind only one of them.

So I guess in the end it is what you want, Rich does not tell us whether to go through or not–the choice is ours. Adam and Eve made a choice, our parents make choices, we make different choices every day–whether they are for good or bad is based on your perception.  But why not take the chance? “The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all.”

Elizabeth Bishop

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

 

This poem kind of irked me. It really made me think about the concept of loss itself. I really feel like I don’t live my life to its fullest, as this poem say–every day we lose we don’t get back. “Lose something every day. Accept the fluster/ of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.”  Bishop begins by describing things that can be lost and found again, basically things that are more inconsequential material things like a door keys, a watch, a house. But the end is the real clincher, the loss of an other.  Something you can’t get back.

 

We all deal with loss in different ways. Some people cry, some get angry, some block it out.  But we all have an “art” to loss, if you want to call it that. Generally, we are fairly predictable and have the same reaction to loss, thus our art is mastered. But never does Bishop mention that losing something or someone is easy, just that its “not too hard to master.” 

 

What about life? Is Bishop suggesting that we live to lose? After all, we all die eventually — we experience loss and mourning for others and eventually we are lost too. wooo depressing!!!  However, Bishop makes a difference in the fact that losing some things is just part of life, whereas losing someone is more of a disaster.  Is loss the One Art that we all must learn to master before we are lost too?

 

And I did not understand the (Write it!) part, why did Bishop choose to word it like that?

Gerald Manley Hopkins

Spring and Fall: To a Young Child

MARGARET, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie.
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

It was incredibly difficult for me to pick a poem of Hopkins to analyze because his work can be so deep and full of meaning that it can be easy to overlook something that is important.  When I asked someone about a good Hopkins poem, she immediately responded, “Oh definitely Spring and Fall!!” and began reciting it line by line. For a rather short poem, this speaks volumes.  From its easy to understand ryhme scheme to something as simple/complex (depending on how you look at it) as word choice.  To get a different perspective than the ones i had already heard, i searched online for the meaning of this poem.  One thing that struck me was on Sparknotes actually, and that is Hopkins choice of the work Fall over Autumn.  Clearly a loss of innocence kind of poem, using Fall in the title immediately sets up the audience for the emotional complexities of the seasons.   Indeed, in the fall we feel light and “springy,” whereas Fall has an entirely different conotation, which is also different from that of Autumn.  Autumn suggests different colored leaves and the harvest (to me at least), while Fall sounds negative and a downward trend towards winter (death).  Something as simple as one word can make such a difference, which is why I think interpretting poems in your own personal way is so critical.. so here is what I came to by the end of the day today. =P

This may sound a little off topic but whatever. Today I was taking this personality test and figuring out how i view the world and how the world views me.  Apparently I am an Extroverted (vs. Introverted), iNsightful (vs. Sensor), Feeling(vs. Thinking), Perceptive(vs. Judgemental) person.  So i read the whole profile thing and whatnot, but what surprised me was one thing that said something like I want to change the world and make a difference, but when I get old i will realize that it’s not possible and become bitter.  Much more eloquently stated and neutral, but to that effect.   I often think about this alot tho as a young person, can one person really make a difference?  Am i just wasting my time?  This poem reminds me of that feeling.  The feeling of losing that protective barrier, whether it’s your childhood fantasies or exposing your dreams and goals, you feel like you are thrown into this hostile place, aka the real world.   And through this realization, we tend to self-reflect on ourselves, which then makes us think about our mortality. I start by thinking, How much time I have, and then realize how much time i am Wasting by sitting around contemplating it!!  I know I have not really analyzed this poem a lot through how it means, but i think different lines, words, and phrases have different levels of importance to different people. Although we are “mourning for Margaret,” in the end I believe that we are really mourning for ourselves, our loss of innocence, faith, and even our own life.  in a sense, we are Margaret.

woo depressing. but being the “sappy optimist” that i am, don’t the seasons all come and go? they are cyclical; just because it is fall does not mean that spring will not return.  We can regain our inner child, revive our faith, believe in an afterlife.  why waste your life mourning over all this, when you could just as easily be enjoying life as much as possible?  hmm. hope that made as much sense to you as it did to me. =)

Frank O’Hara

Ave Maria

Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies!
get them out of the house so they won’t know what you’re up to
it’s true that fresh air is good for the body
but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images
and when you grow old as grow old you must
they won’t hate you
they won’t criticize you they won’t know
they’ll be in some glamorous country
they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey

they may even be grateful to you
for their first sexual experience
which only cost you a quarter
and didn’t upset the peaceful home
they will know where candy bars come from
and gratuitous bags of popcorn
as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it’s over
with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg
near the Williamsburg Bridge
oh mothers you will have made the little tykes
so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies
they won’t know the difference
and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy
and they’ll have been truly entertained either way
instead of hanging around the yard
or up in their room
hating you
prematurely since you won’t have done anything horribly mean yet
except keeping them from the darker joys
it’s unforgivable the latter
so don’t blame me if you won’t take this advice
and the family breaks up
and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set
seeing
movies you wouldn’t let them see when they were young

When I was younger, one of my friends had parents who would not let them watch rated R movies whatesoever; something that I found strange because that was never an issue at my house.  As a parent, I can only imagine how dificult it must be to know when to draw the line and when to let your kids go out on their own.  How to be a person they can trust and talk to like a friend, but still someone who can “protect” them.  However, we cannot always be protected, and everyone has that classic loss of innocence moment– all that is different is how and when it happens.
In a way though, I don’t really like the tone of this poem all that much.  Maybe it’s just my interpretation, but it sounds like you should let your children run wild and do whatever they want so they don’t hate you.  I mean, you need to let your kids make their own mistakes, but what about the children, what if they are not ready for what the world really is?  Do we just throw them to the wolves and hope for the best?? 

I guess it is for the best because I do not think children should be sheltered in their rooms/yard from the outside world; it’s like censorship on a different level.  Perhaps if every child had a supportive family to come home to after the movie, they could deal with such an experience better because they would have someone to talk to, someone to ease the transition.  Maybe what bothers me in this poem is that there does not seem to be that supportive family, the tone is: get your kids out of the house for yourself and so that they won’t be mad at you for not letting them go (which sounds like an excuse to get them out of the house to me).  I am still largely undecided, should we just let kids go off on their own, protect them to a point, wait til we think they are ready?  Hopefully someday I will have an answer I fully believe in.

     

Poetry by me & for me

After writing on Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem, I was reminded of this poem that I wrote last year for english class.  I don’t know why I stopped writing my own poetry, maybe it was a phase. Hopefully someday I will do it more often again.

A Sister’s Wish

In the picture on the wall your smile remains;
Dressed in your football jersey without a care.
Back when only on the field you felt pain
And everyone thought you’d always be there.

You were gone before I was even born,
Life stolen from you in a foreign land.
Without you here our family is forever torn.
I grasp for distant memories like tiny grains of blowing sand.

I wish I had gotten to know you
As a brother and eventually as my friend.
Your grave is all that’s left to speak to
But granite won’t help the hole in my heart to mend.

I plant a flower by your grave stone,
And I slowly trace you name with my finger
As I wonder about the brother I’ve never known,
I head to the car while my father lingers

To bow his head as the clouds crowd the sky
As raindrops fall and tears mist in both our eyes.

A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow. And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole,
When the night had veiled the pole:
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

-William Blake

Although this poem could apply to seemingly anyone, since mostly everyone has someone they do not like, its meaning is beautifully woven throughout the poem and brings the poem to a deeper level beyond just an argument with a friend or foe.  This is a work that makes a complex emotion like anger more tangible to try to comprehend.  Personally, I don’t like being in fights with people because it’s so much work when you could just tell them what is wrong, which makes both lives easier.  However, if left to fester and grow, the anger just multiplies and gets worse.  The imagery used is spectacular, Blake superbly completes the metaphor of anger as a tree because every time we cry or lie about our feelings we are just enabling the problem to get larger.  And eventually, this poisonous tree will produce fruit that can kill; anger left too long can result in violence. 

In addition, this work is one big biblical reference!  Anger (wrath) is one of the seven deadly sins, a sin that man tries to resist but cannot.  Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we often give into our emotions and desires before we think of the consequences.  In a way, we now are almost like the snake because we know the apple is bad and yet we let the person take it anyways.  Then the foe is forever expelled from the garden (since they are dead) and we are just as guilty.  Darn human nature!!!  Why waste your life hating someone when you would both be better off giving each other a chance?  If we were all more consciously understanding and empathetic of each other, I think the world would be much better off.  There are so many people who I could not stand, but I decided to try and get to know better instead of judging them.  And now they are some of my very best friends.  okay, i’m done ranting haha. almost.

Foes can be turned into friends, you just need to be mature enough to embrace your differences and learn from each other.

Lorna Dee Cervantes

To My Brother
and for the lumpen bourgeoisie

We were so poor.
The air was a quiver
of thoughts we drew from

to poise, unsaid  
in the ineffable
world we lived in.

Sun, scarcely a penny
in that dreary setting,
every night gave up

to a smog-strewn avalanche
of searchlights, crossing
the heavens, a bicker

to buy a new used car,
a four-door sedan, a six
month guarantee. I worked

the years through, thought
I could work my mind’s way
out of there, out of needing

a dime bag of uppers for the next
buzzing shift. We paid our bills.
We were brilliant at wishing.

Our dreams wafted over the sullen skyline
like crazy meteors of flying embers:
a glow in the heart all night.

“To My Brother” from Emplumada, by Lorna Dee Cervantes, © 1982. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260.
Source: Emplumada (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982).

What a life.  I cannot imagine living like Cervantes describes! The scary part is that this is a reality for so many people.  Although many say that money isn’t everything, it can really be difficult to be optimistic when you are poor or broke because every single day is such a struggle.  This whole poem is quite dark and depressing until you reach the very last stanza.  Dreams “like crazy meteors of flying embers: /a glow in the heart all night.”  I can admit it, that made me smile.  I felt like a sappy romantic/optimist, but really who wouldn’t?  Despite all the adversity and problems with drugs and poverty, all hope is not lost.  Instead of going off on a tangent about faith, hope, dreams, Beatles music, The Pursuit of Happyness, or Barack Obama I will just briefly say something I have believed for awhile.  Anything is possible. If you can envision your goal, you are capable of reaching it.  The road may be winding and difficult, you might lose sight every now and then or get pulled in another direction, but if you can continue to hold fast to that dream you will get there.  Never give up.  The sun may set, all may be dark, but the sun always comes back up, there is always light at the end of the tunnel. 

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”

“Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.”-Henry Ford

“Hold fast to your dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.” -Langston Hughes

  

Yusef Komunyakaa

Facing It

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn’t,
dammit: No tears.
I’m stone. I’m flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way–the stone lets me go.
I turn that way–I’m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet’s image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I’m a window.
He’s lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.

 The title of this poem reminds me of a class I am currently taking, Facing History and Ourselves.  The stark contrasts in this poem, past vs. present, white vs. black, and stone vs. human are what really bring this poem to life.  Having visited the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC, I have felt the great magnitude and power it exhibits and cannot even begin to imagine looking at the wall as somone who served in the war.  Yusef seems like he has been avoiding the wall for quite some time and now that he is there he is the wall as he embodies its qualities.  The last few lines are very interesting because there is a big distinction between Yusef and this woman with her son.  While they are separate from the wall and merely reflect in it, Yusef does not have this option as his “black face fades,/ hiding inside the black granite.”  To me it seems like the saddest part of this poem is that Komunyakaa will never be the same again, for right now he can barely even maintain his own existance as the war experiences have scarred him.  This really left me feeling pretty depressed, I wish that war did not have to happen; I understand the motives behind it(sometimes), but it really is the most immature way to deal with our problems– i hope someday the US and other countries will realize this as well.