January 2020 – Page 2

What If…?

poetry poetry prompts reading poetry writing inspiration

A lot of good poetry comes from a simple question that’s been in your toolbox since childhood: “What if…?

There’s no end to playing this game, sometimes playful and sometimes serious. I often wonder, for instance, what if women ruled the world? Would it be safer? Saner?

My answer always seems to be yes, that the world would suffer much less ego and stupidity because of the switch, but you can’t be sure until the answer is test-driven. I’m heading to the dealership now.

Kevin Young plays the game in his poem “Negative.” He takes the concept of black and white and reverses it in interesting ways. The results—which tell us something about race—are striking, and one thing you always like to see from your poetry is “striking.” See if you agree:

Negative
Kevin Young

Wake to find everything black
what was white, all the vice
versa—white maids on TV, black

sitcoms that star white dwarfs
cute as pearl buttons. Black Presidents,
Black Houses. White horse

candidates. All bleach burns
clothes black. Drive roads
white as you are, white songs

on the radio stolen by black bands
like secret pancake recipes, white back-up
singers, ball-players & boxers all

white as tar. Feathers on chickens
dark as everything, boiling in the pot
that called the kettle honky. Even

whites of the eye turn dark, pupils
clear & changing as a cat’s.
Is this what we’ve wanted

& waited for? to see snow
covering everything black
as Christmas, dark pages written

white upon? All our eclipses bright,
dark stars shooting across pale
sky, glowing like ash in fire, shower

every skin. Only money keeps
green, still grows & burns like grass
under dark daylight.

As a writing prompt, it’s both simple and audacious. You can even make a list to choose from before diving in. Go ahead. Pick up a pencil and pull out some paper: “What if…?”

To Bee or Not To Bee

poetry reading poetry

The January 2020 issue of Poetry opens with three Christian Wiman poems, the third, “Even Bees Know What Zero Is,” being a prime example of what Tony Hoagland heralded as voice breaking all the rules because it can.

This is poetry dotted with throwaway phrases like “Which reminds me,” “come to think of it,” and “by the way.” Your high school poetry teacher would have fits, but hey, if an established poet (and one-time editor of Poetry magazine, for you conspiracy theorists) can play fast and loose with language (not to mention libraries and the Dewey Decimal system), you can too.

It all ends with a playful series of metaphors and a play on the poet’s name. This after a conversational style studded with all manner of sound devices. It’s the type of poem that beguiles some and horrifies others, depending on your poetic affiliation. See where you fall:

Even Bees Know What Zero Is
Christian Wiman

That’s enough memories, thank you, I’m stuffed.
I’ll need a memory vomitorium if this goes on.
How much attention can one man have?
Which reminds me: once I let the gas go on flowing
after my car was full and watched it spill its smell
(and potential hell) all over the ground around me.
I had to pay for that, and in currency quite other than attention.
I’ve had my fill of truth, too, come to think of it.
It’s all smeary in me, I’m like a waterlogged Bible:
enough with the aborted prophecies and garbled laws,
ancient texts holey as a teen’s jeans, begone begats!
Live long enough, and you can’t tell what’s resignation, what resolve.
That’s the bad news. The good news? You don’t give a shit.
My life. It’s like a library that closes for a long, long time
—a lifetime, some of the disgrunts mutter—
and when it opens opens only to an improved confusion:
theology where poetry should be, psychology crammed with math.
And I’m all the regulars, searching for their sections
and I’m the detonated disciplines, too.
But most of all I’m the squat, smocked, bingo-winged woman
growing more granitic and less placable by the hour
as citizen after citizen blurts some version of
“What the hell!” or “I though you’d all died!”
and the little stamp she stamps on the flyleaf
to tell you when your next generic mystery is due
that thing goes stamp right on my very soul.
Which is one more thing I’m done with, by the way,
the whole concept of soul. Even bees know what zero is,
scientists have learned, which means bees know my soul.
I’m done, I tell you, I’m due, I’m Oblivion’s datebook.
I’m a sunburned earthworm, a mongoose’s milk tooth,
a pleasure tariff, yesterday’s headcheese, spiritual gristle.
I’m the Apocalypse’s popsicle. I’m a licked Christian.

Resolved: I’ll Read These Three Books First

blathering comma mine opinion poetry

2020

Another day, another decade. Let’s hope we can see more clearly, it being 2020 and all. Vision, should be the theme. We all need a vision. Then practical ways to achieve them.

Me, I’m starting philosophical this year. First, the newest translation of Sun-Tzu’s Art of War because it’s as much about life as war. Nobody told me as much until I recently read an essay about it. So now I need to read a book about war and filter out all the war parts. Don’t worry. I have experience. I read Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

Then I’ll be reading my first Alan Watts. The Wisdom of Insecurity. Given goings on in the world these past three years, I’ve been feeling more and more insecure, so I figure I’d better nip that in the bud and mine some wisdom while I’m in the cave of my discontent.

Watts’ book comes highly recommended. It is also informed by Buddhism, and I’ve been finding Buddhism more and more informative of late. To start, the Four Noble Truths.

And why not? Truth is in trouble these days, as is being noble in any way. One needs to fight back, make these ideas part of one’s vision.

Finally, the third book I’ll kick off the new, visionary year with will be quite old. How old? This old, to be exact. That’s right. Stoicism via Seneca. It seems this philosophy and this philosopher’s time has come, so I’ll begin by digging a little deeper and shielding myself from the insecurity and wars that 2020 might bring (but hopefully will not).

It’s a start, anyway. After that, I’ll map out new reading plans, but January resolutions are always easiest if they involve reading and the magic number of three.

Don’t believe me? Give it a go yourself. Pick your first three books of the year. Buy or borrow them from the library, then show yourself how easy these New Year’s resolutions are to keep.

Trust me. You’ll look back with 2020 vision and be glad you did.