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American Life in Poetry: Column 230

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

It’s been sixty-odd years since I was in the elementary grades, but I clearly remember those first school days in early autumn, when summer was suddenly over and we were all perched in our little desks facing into the future. Here Ron Koertge of California gives us a glimpse of a day like that.

First Grade

Until then, every forest
had wolves in it, we thought
it would be fun to wear snowshoes
all the time, and we could talk to water.

So why is this woman with the gray
breath calling out names and pointing
to the little desks we will occupy
for the rest of our lives?

"The Angel's Game"

It's got me hooked...145 pages since I awoke.

My mojito patch with rose at my now former residence. (I will return to harvest when I go back and get my bike and Weber grill.)

I think the author took an extended holiday from the blog. The book meme tag from facebook had me returning to some familiar haunts. This is one of my favorites.

One Art

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.

by Elizabeth Bishop

Unfriendly Skies

If I recall Loudon debuted this song when he played at the Englert. A friend just sent me the link and I had to share.

Eurotrash Guy

I found this a long time ago on the web. I am putting the only version I could find up here. Where is my Eurail Pass?

Calexico-El Gatillo

I really need to see these guys again soon. A friend just saw them up in Minneapolis with the Decemberists. Jealous!

"Wilco will love you baby..."

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"Papa Was Rodeo"

Nouvelle Cuisine

photo ©2009 geoff stamp (from File)

I was browsing the new poetry shelf at library and found a few worth taking a deeper look at. One was Denise Duhamel's most recent, Ka-Ching!, and a book on how to write poetry, Ordinary Genius by another favorite poet of mine, Kim Addonizio. The third was a collection of recent poems from Tin House literary magazine. I hope to keep this blog a little bit more up to date and will post a few of the poems I like as I come across them..

For local Iowa City denizens there there should be a good turnout at Kandy Land tomorrow (Fri) night for several local bands including Liberty Leg. See you there.

Jay Bennett

I ganked this video from I AM FUEL blog. Jay was a crazy freak but he was all about the music. He played here in town a couple years back.

A Belated Memorial Day Tribute

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Untitled Poem [“Speciously individual ...”]

Speciously individual
like a solid piece of spit
floating in a cuspidor
I dream of free bravery
but am a social being.
I should do something
to get out of here
but float around in the culture
wondering what it will grow.

by Alan Dugan

I found this on Poetry Foundation website. It fit my mood at the time.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

I was listening the bonus cd from Bob Dylan's new album. The cd is an entire show from Bob's XM radio show Theme Time Radio Hour. It is great to hear Bob introduce some of the more obscure tracks that he clearly loves. One of the songs was Sister Rosetta Thorpe and Bob suggested to You Tube her and check it out. So I did.

Beautiful without Money

Flowers in the yard before the winds came and beheaded them all.

Another poem from Poetry Daily, as N.P.M. winds down. I have to brag about some scores made at the book store in the public library. I found The Oxford Book of American Poetry for three bucks and a signed copy of T.C. Boyle's Drop City (endorsed to Ed). Although an unsigned Boyle might be a rarer find in this town.

Beautiful without Money

Suddenly fatigued among French
women in the Roman

Empire rooms of the museum,
I fall out of circulation

on a bench. Bronze
heads, helms, a Byzantine

spoon, sixth century, engraved,
attributed to Virgil: O handsome

youth, do not believe too much
in beauty; you cannot be

beautiful without money ... women fall,
tucking skirts, onto my bench,

being suddenly flesh and scent,
and do not speak to me.

T. Zachary Cotler

The Paris Review
Spring 2009

“Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?"

Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave
your house or apartment. Go out into the world.

It's all right to carry a notebook but a cheap
one is best, with pages the color of weak tea
and on the front a kitten or a space ship.

Avoid any enclosed space where more than
three people are wearing turtlenecks. Beware
any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks
across the muffled tennis courts.

Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.
And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle
where a child a year or two old is playing as his
mother browses the ranks of the dead.

Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.
The title, the author's name, the brooding photo
on the flap mean nothing. Red book on black, gray
book on brown, he builds a tower. And the higher
it gets, the wider he grins.

You who asked for advice, listen: When the tower
falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud everybody
in the world frowns and says, "Shhhh."

Then start again.

Ron Koertge
from Fever, 2006
Red Hen Press

This is from the Poetry 180 website hosted by The Library of Congress started by Billy Collins while he was Poet Laureate.

Hold Steady Live

Since I missed the show here in town I will have to settle for this new live album.

"This is a collection that seeks to mark how women poets made a poetry that, in two decades, altered the face of American poetry forever.... A new language began—not a language that was linguistically new (although there are scholars who make that argument), but a language new to them. New to us, I should say, because in the process of speaking what was hidden, we began to identify with one another as women, to become a 'we.'"—Honor Moore



This is the latest volume that I received from the Library of America's American Poets Project. Poetry Daily is highlighting this volume by reprinting the entire introduction by Honor Moore on its website as a weekly prose feature as part of its National Poetry Month celebration.

Poem-A-Day

Goldfish Are Ordinary


At the pet store on Court Street,
I search for the perfect fish.
The black moor, the blue damsel,
cichlids and neons. Something
to distract your sadness, something
you don't need to love you back.
Maybe a goldfish, the flaring tail,
orange, red-capped, pearled body,
the darting translucence? Goldfish
are ordinary, the boy selling fish
says to me. I turn back to the tank,
all of this grace and brilliance,
such simplicity the self could fail
to see. In three months I'll leave
this city. Today, a chill in the air,
you're reading Beckett fifty blocks
away, I'm looking at the orphaned
bodies of fish, undulant and gold fervor.
Do you want to see aggression?
the boy asks, holding a purple beta fish
to the light while dropping handfuls
of minnows into the bowl. He says,
I know you're a girl and all
but sometimes it's good to see.
Outside, in the rain, we love
with our hands tied,
while things tear away at us.

by Stacie Cassarino

From the Poets.org website celebrating National Poetry Month. I am little behind in reading them. An email delivery option is also available. Not be confused with Poetry Daily which has its own thing going on.

Where the Wild Things Are

I really dig the Arcade Fire tune too.

"Sit, Ubu, Sit"

A toy that S. bought for her nephew. The cats were wary at first but since it did not chase theme around the house and try to eat them like the last dog that they saw did they ignored it.