A snowy day in Utah: perfect for poetry

March 8, 2008 Happy Birthday to Law Professor ML Lantzy of Syracuse University!

A snowy Saturday here in Utah! A fine and dandy day to read some delightful poetry. I have three excellent poems lined up. One by an eminent poet and two by friends.

The first is a C. K. Williams' poem, "The Singing." He gave me permission to quote his poems on my blog and website while I drove him to the airport after this year's Palm Beach Poetry Festival in Delray Beach. Hearfelt thanks! Yes, I am blessed! And what's more I have his voice in my ear when I read his work--this too, is a blessing. Here is his wonderful poem from the collection of the same title, for which he won the National Book Award.

THE SINGING

by C. K. Williams

I was walking home down a hill near our house on a balmy afternoon
under the blossoms
Of the pear trees that go flamboyantly mad here every spring with
their burgeoning forth

When a young man turned in from a corner singing no it was more of
a cadenced shouting
Most of which I couldn't catch I thought because the young man was
black speaking black

It didn't matter I could tell he was making his song up which pleased
me he was nice-looking
Husky dressed in some style of big pants obviously full of himself
hence his lyrical flowing over

We went along in the same direction then he noticed me there almost
beside him and "Big"
He shouted-sang "Big" and I thought how droll to have my height
incorporated in his song

So I smiled but the face of the young man showed nothing he looked
in fact pointedly away
And his song changed "I'm not a nice person" he chanted "I'm not
I'm not a nice person"

No menace was meant I gathered no particular threat but he did want
to be certain I knew
That if my smile implied I conceived of anything like concord
between us I should forget it

That's all nothing else happened his song became indecipherable to
me again he arrived
Where he was going a house where a girl in braids waited for him on

the porch that was all

No one saw no one heard all the unasked and unanswered questions
were left where they were
It occurred to me to sing back "I'm not a nice person either" but I
couldn't come up with a tune

Besides I wouldn't have meant it nor he have believed it both of us

knew just where we were
In the duet we composed the equation we made the conventions to
which we were condemned

Sometimes it feels even when no one is there that someone something
is watching and listening
Someone to rectify redo remake this time again though no one saw nor
heard no one was there

~~Now here's award-winning poet Elaine Winer's poem, "The Dark Room" (forgive any errors in line breaks or spacing!)

THE DARK ROOM

by Elaine Winer

The safe-light leaks moist red into the darkness.

Bach sings his magic hills, the door says

Keep Out. Balancing light and time, strengthening

solutions, patience, love of solitude; but in the end

one must become a swimmer somersaulting

beneath clear green water.

We'd spent the week in Marrakash,

Mother,my three sisters, and I.

At dawn a driver came

to take us to the airport in Rabat.

The night was cold,

charcoal palm trees sketched against

a star-punched paper.

"You have time to see the Camel Souk," the driver said.

"But your mother and crippled sister should wait

inside the car with me. Camels and horses

ridden to show their speed and strength can be dangerous."

So Mother and Nonnie

walked with us only as far as the stone wall

that encircled the souk.

I had the driver take this picture there,

we five posed against the rough stone wall,

a family. Nonnie can barely hold up her head;

she died with Mother six months later,

but you can see the camera loved her eyes.

Caught in the flash they're slightly bugged,

the lashes long and thick. Behind her

a boy's head projects above the wall,

one arm flung high. Nonnie's laughing,

although she never walked into the souk,

never passed through that opening on her crooked legs

but turned back to the car to wait with mother

while we three went on alone.

We entered inside the wall as the sun rose.

The enclosure held night to wall's height,

a great cup filled to the brim with dark water

while all above it glittered; I loaded my camera

with black and white film and snapped

items of extreme romance, a flashing eye,

a flowing mane, camels standing on three legs,

the fourth bent back and tied; boys galloped

bareback, djellabas folded beneath slender legs.

The drumming of oiled hooves raised volcanoes

of white dust that towered in the dawn-fresh air.

Animals ran at us, a dangerous thunder we ran

blindly to escape. The sun plunged daggers of light

into our frightened eyes. The stout smooth men,

buying and selling, laughing at foreign women,

had the air of doing God's work in the cold Moroccan dawn.

I place this negative into the enlarger's carrier

and turn the timer to fifteen seconds.
That black dawn diamonds the darkroom

briefly, then fades, leaving only the safe-light

filtered through red glass,

the sound of dripping water and Bach.

I transfer the paper to the developing tray.

Nonnie's eyes meet mine, blooming

coins of light and warm black lines.

Her face ripples as though the water

were a chiding hand. Her mouth's not right.

The first prints never are.

I change to a smoother paper and reset the timer.

The second photo lurches into being

like a shocked breath. It grows in increments.

No matter how I try, I never see

the exact point in time when the picture deepens

and comes together, when crawling lines create

a nose, a mouth, a wall. There is a moment in the darkroom

when the ability to see what was really happening

opens like an eye in darkness.

Leaning over trays,

images crawl into your soul

so black, so blackly beautiful,

so strongly, richly black; against it

eyes flare across the field like tiny spotlights,

like sequin-threaded moonlight, and everywhere

those rising towers of pale dust.

The sun hammered everything that rose

above the night, and so I didn't see

half-shadows crow-clumping across the field.

I need the strongest whites the paper holds

to fight those chilling, those prophetic shadows.

Back in the car I said

It wasn't much. And I said,

the field's too rough. And I said,

we'll come back some day.

You'll see it next time.



Next we have "Your Voice" by Marie Lovas, a burgeoning poet. This poem recently appeared in Driftwood.

Your Voice
by Marie Lovas

Hypnotic …
the smoky timbre
smooth,
warm

as flowing
syrup,
scented of musk,
of sleep.

I hear you
though
you’re not here,
like morning fog
your voice seeps
into the labyrinth
of my mind,

my dreams.
Always there.

I await your return
to hear your voice,
to take me where the stars
kiss the dripping dawn.

Goodnight.
I beg you,

talk to me in dreams,
seduce me with your voice
as you fill my body
and soul with rapture.