Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center

Congratulations to Louise Glück!!!

Summer in a Small Town by LINDA GREGG When the men leave me, they leave me in a beautiful place.... It is always late summer. When I think of them now, I think of the place. And being happy alone afterwards. This time it’s Clinton, New York. I swim in the public pool at six when the other people have gone home. The sky is gray, the air hot. I walk back across the mown lawn loving the smell and the houses so completely it leaves my heart empty. ***** from ALL OF IT SINGING: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS by Linda Gregg. Published by Graywolf Press, 2008.

Elegy For the Poet Charles Moulton by PETER EVERWINE When we were last together, you read me your latest poem from a sheaf... of hand -scrawled pages, dog-eared and rolled together by a rubber band. You didn’t ask me to look at it. We both knew why: I thought a catfish had a better grasp of English spelling; you thought my soul had narrowed from too many years in a classroom. Yours was a freedom one might envy, listening to your drawl of gravelly music, that wild guffaw when a line pleased you. I have a photo of you, taken on some mountainbig grin, arms held out wide, you’re dancing a jig buck-naked in your broken boots and there’s so much joy in your grizzled face I have to turn away. You look like you’re getting ready to fly. ***** from Listening Long And Late, University of Pittsburg Press 2013

The Blue Robe by WENDELL BERRY How joyful to be together, alone As when we first were joined... In our little house by the river Long ago, except that now we know Each other, as we did not then; And now instead of two stories fumbling To meet, we belong to one story That the two, joining, made. And now We touch each other with the tenderness Of mortals, who know themselves: How joyful to feel the heart quake At the sight of a grandmother, Old friend in the morning light, Beautiful in her blue robe! ***** from New Collected Poems, Counterpoint Press 2012

Chaplinesque by HART CRANE We make our meek adjustments, Contented with such random consolations... As the wind deposits In slithered and too ample pockets. For we can still love the world, who find A famished kitten on the step, and know Recesses for it from the fury of the street, Or warm torn elbow coverts. We will sidestep, and to the final smirk Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us, Facing the dull squint with what innocence And what surprise! And yet these fine collapses are not lies More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane; Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise. We can evade you, and all else but the heart: What blame to us if the heart live on. The game enforces smirks; but we have seen The moon in lonely alleys make A grail of laughter of an empty ash can, And through all sound of gaiety and quest Have heard a kitten in the wilderness. ***** From The Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose of Hart Crane, Anchor Books, Doubleday and Company, 1966.

The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog by ALICIA OSTRIKER To be blessed said the old woman... is to live and work so hard God’s love washes right through you like milk through a cow To be blessed said the dark red tulip is to knock their eyes out with the slug of lust implied by your up-ended skirt To be blessed said the dog is to have a pinch of God inside you and all the other dogs can smell it ***** The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog from THE BOOK OF SEVENTY, by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, 2009.

Primavera by LOUISE GLÜCK Spring comes quickly: overnight the plum tree blossoms,... the warm air fills with bird calls. In the plowed dirt, someone has drawn a picture of the sun with rays coming out all around but because the background is dirt, the sun is black. There is no signature. Alas, very soon everything will disappear: the bird calls, the delicate blossoms. In the end: even the earth itself will follow the artist’s name into oblivion. Nevertheless, the artist intends a mood of celebration. How beautiful the blossoms areemblems of the resilience of life. The birds approach eagerly. ***** from A VILLAGE LIFE by Louise Glück. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.

[anyone lived in a pretty how town] by E. E. CUMMINGS anyone lived in a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down)... spring summer autumn winter he sang his didn’t he danced his did. Women and men(both little and small) cared for anyone not at all they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same sun moon stars rain children guessed(but only a few and down they forgot as up they grew autumn winter spring summer) that noone loved him more by more when by now and tree by leaf she laughed his joy she cried his grief bird by snow and stir by still anyone’s any was all to her someones married their everyones laughed their cryings and did their dance (sleep wake hope and then)they said their nevers they slept their dream stars rain sun moon (and only the snow can begin to explain how children are apt to forget to remember with up so floating many bells down) one day anyone died i guess (and noone stooped to kiss his face) busy folk buried them side by side little by little and was by was all by all and deep by deep and more by more they dream their sleep noone and anyone earth by april wish by spirit and if by yes. Women and men(both dong and ding) summer autumn winter spring reaped their sowing and went their came sun moon stars rain ***** Source: Complete Poems 1904-1962 (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1994)

The Secret of You by MICAH DANIELS Last night I asked my mother to cornrow my hair A skill I had been practicing since last summer... But always ended with a tumbleweed excuse of a braid My black has always resided in braids In tango fingers that work through tangles Translating geometry from hands to head For years my hair was cultivated into valleys and hills That refused to be ironed out with a brush held in my hand I have depended on my mother to make them plains I am 18 and still sit between my mother’s knees I still welcome the cracks of her knuckles in my ears They whisper to me and tell me the secret of youth I want to be 30 sitting between my mother’s knees Her fingers keeping us both young while organizing my hair I never want to flatten the hills by myself I want the brush in her hand forever ***** Copyright 2020 by Micah Daniels. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 5, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.

And what if the wilderness... by ROSS GAY And what if the wilderness perhaps the densest wild in there thickets, bogs, swamps, uncrossable ravines and rivers (have I made the metaphor clear?) is our sorrow? Or, to use Smith’s term, the ‘intolerable.’ It astonishes me sometimes no, often how every person I get to know everyone, regardless of everything, by which I mean everything lives with some profound personal sorrow. Brother addicted. Mother murdered. Dad die...d in surgery. Rejected by their family. Cancer came back. Evicted. Fetus not okay. Everyone, regardless, always, of everything. Not to mention the existential sorrow we all might be afflicted with, which is that we, and what we love, will soon be annihilated. Which sounds more dramatic than it might. Let me just say dead. Is this, sorrow, of which our impending being no more might be the foundation, the great wilderness? Is sorrow the true wild? ***** From THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS, Ross Gay, published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Some Things I Like by LEMM SISSAY I like wrecks, I like ex-junkies, I like flunks and ex-flunkies,... I like the way the career-less career, I like flat beer, I like people who tell half stories and forget the rest, I like people who make doodles in important written tests, I like being late. I like fate. I like the way teeth grate, I like laceless shoes cordless blues, I like the one-bar blues, I like buttonless coats and leaky boats, I like rubbish tips and bitten lips, I like yesterday’s toast, I like cold tea, I like reality, I like ashtrays, I write and like crap plays. I like curtains that don’t quite shut, I like bread knives that don’t quite cut, I like rips in blue jeans, I like people who can’t say what they mean, I like spiders with no legs, pencils with no lead, Ants with no heads, worms that are half dead. I like holes, I like coffee cold. I like creases in neat folds. I like signs that just don’t know where they’re going, I like angry poems, I like the way you can’t pin down the sea. See. ***** Lemm Sissay, from the book, LISTENER, published by Canongate, read on Poetry Unbound by Padraig O’Tuama

The Small by Theodore Roethke The small birds swirl around; The high cicadas chirr;... A towhee pecks the ground; I look at the first star: My heart held to its joy, This whole September day. The moon goes to the full; The moon goes slowly down; The wood becomes a wall. Far things draw closer in. A wind moves through the grass, Then all is as it was. What rustles in the fern? I feel my flesh divide. Things lost in sleep return As if out of my side, On feet that make no sound Over the sodden ground. The small shapes drowse; I live to woo the fearful small; What moves in grass I love The dead will not lie still, And things throw light on things, And all the stones have wings. ***** From THE COLLECTED POEMS OF THEODORE ROETHKE Anchor Books, 1975.