Five poems to make you swoon
For National Poetry Month, selections from new books by Anne Carson, Charles Wright and others.
April 14, 2000
Sumptuous Destitution
from "Men in the Off Hours"
By Anne Carson
Knopf, 192 pages
"Sumptuous destitution"
Your opinion gives me a serious feeling: I would like to be what you deem me
(Emily Dickinson letter 319 to Thomas Higginson)
is a phrase
You see my position is benighted.
(Emily Dickinson letter 268 to Thomas Higginson)
scholars use
She was much too enigmatical a being for me to solve in an hour's
interview.
(Thomas Higginson letter 342a to Emily Dickinson)
of female
God made me [Sir] Master -- I didn't be -- myself.
(Emily Dickinson letter 233 to Thomas Higginson)
silence.
Rushing among my small heart -- and pushing aside the blood --
(Emily Dickinson letter 248 to Thomas Higginson)
Save what you can, Emily.
And when I try to organize -- my little Force explodes -- and leaves me bare and charred.
(Emily Dickinson letter 271 to Thomas Higginson)
Save every bit of thread.
Have you a little chest to put the Alive in?
(Emily Dickinson letter 233 to Thomas Higginson)
One of them may be
By Cock, said Ophelia.
(Emily Dickinson letter 268 to Thomas Higginson)
the way out of here.
A Winter's Tale
from "Unarmed and Dangerous: New and Selected Poems"
By Wyatt Prunty
Johns Hopkins University Press, 224 pages
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Also Today
Fools for love
In a new book, some great poets admit their humble, schmaltzy, love-struck poetic beginnings.
By Melanie Rehak
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for Ian
Silent and small in your wet sleep,
You grew to the traveler's tale
We made of you so we could keep
You safe in our vague pastoral,
And silent when the doctors tugged
Heels up your body free of its
Deep habitat, shoulders shrugged
Against the cold air's continent
We made you take for breathing.
Ian, your birth was my close land
Turned green, the stone rolled back for leaving,
My father dead and you returned.
Police Sift New Clues in Search for Beauty
from "A Taxi to the Flame"
By Vickie Karp
University of South Carolina Press, 90 pages
-- headline in the New York Post
Outside the precinct, the continents sway
In a monster wind.
A cat snoozes on a humidifier
In the corner of the squad room,
Her unfettered breath keeping time
With the office clock.
Her favorite cop glares at
The barracuda faces of wanted men
Posted in a row on the wall, their beauty
Clearly drained off, but to where?
"I did it and I'm glad," says the first face.
"I did it and I'm glad," says the next.
The Public Defender chews his lunch thoughtfully,
as if feeling for nails with his teeth.
All morning and afternoon,
He and the rookies plowed through fields
Of bluish data,
Each in his own way,
The P.D. has fears of dying, of rescuing
A maiden who crushes him with her weight and terror.
He keeps one eye on the door,
The pale glue of a tear idling beneath his lid.
Through the glass partition
To the captain's office, someone mutters
"I know it's here somewhere ...
I saw it, for Chrissake!"
While slowly, against the breakers,
Evening sets sail on the East River
With its freight of passions,
As, uptown in Helsinki, her evidence
Burning gaily in the handsome fireplace,
Beauty reads her mail.
And in Caracas
Beauty plunges her hand into a book
As if to read it by touch.
And in a murky corner of Antwerp
Beauty unwraps
A heart-round box of chocolates,
Each one the dark shape of a hill,
And in Irkutsk
Beauty, bending to tie a shoe,
Lifts up her head expectantly.
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