Ken Craft

718 posts

Erin Go Bragh (And Other Words to Raise Your Ire)

poetry

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, which can only mean three things: William, Butler, and Yeats. (You were expecting corned beef, potatoes, and beer?)

One of my favorite lesser-known W. B. Yeats poems is the sonnet “Never Give All the Heart,” which was introduced to me via a Chieftains album (I think there are 573, so don’t ask me which one). Unlike Yeats’ more familiar works, this poem does not demand the experts’ attentions so much or wind up on many syllabi, but I like its homespun lesson and how it speaks to and from the young:

Never Give all the Heart

Never give all the heart, for love

Will hardly seem worth thinking of

To passionate women if it seem

Certain, and they never dream

That it fades out from kiss to kiss;

For everything that’s lovely is

But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.

O never give the heart outright,

For they, for all smooth lips can say,

Have given their hearts up to the play.

And who could play it well enough

If deaf and dumb and blind with love?

He that made this knows all the cost,

For he gave all his heart and lost.

Lesson #1, lads? Passionate women won’t give you a second thought if your love is taken for granted. No, “everything that’s lovely is / But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.” Maybe one of my favorite lines of all time because I like its feel on the tongue and even better on the the ears.

Plus, “delight” is one of those words poetry’s Praetorian Guard has forbidden poets like me to use. Screw ’em. I have and I will.

Back to never giving all (key word) of your heart: When it comes to love, you have to be a cool cat. You can’t play your part very well “If deaf and dumb and blind with love.” Alliteration. Polysyndeton. But really, who marks such rhetorical flourishes when letting lines like that wash over them?

And the final rhyming couplet of the sonnet? It establishes this particular rube’s expertise. Who could write such a brief lesson on love but one who learned the hard way, one who “gave all his heart and lost”? Better to keep a small part of your love to yourself.

Giving it all to another person like a lovesick fool will leave you bereft if the relationship hits the shoals. Protect yourself, then. Love the next one 90% — 91, tops. That way you’ll have something to hold on to if she leaves.

Romantic with a capital “R”? I’ll say. But in my day, I have always leaned this way.

As for the Chieftains, I did a little I-Tube, YouTube, we all Tube research and found it was none other than Brenda Fricker and Anúna that put the 1904 poem to song.

Erin Go Bragh, is all I can say.

“The Comfort of Being Strangers”

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The word “lovely” is old-fashioned and antiquated. Still, I consider it an old stand-by when referring to poems that successfully dance on the edge of abstraction and sentiment.

Abstraction and sentiment, you see, live on the precipice. One false move and over they go, much like Wiley Coyote with his lead parachute manufactured by Acme. My hat’s off, then, to poets who take risks, and one who engaged in risky business early and often is Mark Strand. As a for instance, let’s read together:

The Night, the Porch
Mark Strand

To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting
For something whose appearance would be its vanishing —
The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,
Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells us as much, and was never written with us in mind.

If poetry is the art of stating truths we hold to be self-evident — only in a manner we’ve never seen before — then Strand is your man. For a dark poem, “The Night, the Porch” is deceptively light.

For starters we have that “nothing” in L1, the one we learn by heart by staring at. It’s the same nothing we’re all being swept into, according to the speaker, once our brief terms here are done.

What really gets me is the “crux / Of the matter,” defined here as “the comfort / Of being strangers, at least to ourselves.” I had to mull on that one for awhile. How is there any comfort in being a stranger to yourself? But then I recalled the words of the prophets: “But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” (St. Bono) and “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” (St. Henry David). Surely that “stranger” is the construct we always hoped we would be.

And so we wait. And wait. For something as subtle as the sound of leaf fall. For something “whose appearance would be its vanishing,” which is a roundabout way of saying something both impossible and impossibly lovely.

Why is the impossible so alluring, you ask? Perhaps it is akin to hope. Perhaps it is one of the things that keeps us going in life. At the end of his book, The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway has Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes — lovers doomed to never love — look each other in the eye and agree on this sentiment: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Yes, it is, no matter what “it” is. And acknowledging as much is like learning from a book that was “never written with us in mind.”

We just think it was, as is our prerogative.

Marking Up and Analyzing Poetry: Beginner Activities

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Teaching poetry can be tricky business. By middle and high school, many students have lost their taste for it. When teaching poetry, my hope is to bring the fun back—the same joy that made Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss a treat when students were younger.

I use a routine when students are just beginning to practice the unwinding of poetry’s mysteries. Students like structure–something concrete to hold onto–until they’ve built more confidence and become more adept at analysis on their own.

My routine goes like so:

1. I hand out a poem and a template (attached below this introduction).

2. I read the poem aloud not once but twice to emphasize the importance of multiple readings.

3. I ask students to silently read it a third time before they begin to individually mark the poem up using the bullet points on the template (note that looking up any unknown words–-whether done by the teacher to start or individually by students–is a must).

4. Once everyone has completed instructions in the template, I read the poem aloud AGAIN just before students form groups to share highlights of their mark-ups and the thesis statements they came up with (as if they were going to write a literary analysis of their own on the poem, although they are not–- that’s for later).

5. I instruct students to write a NEW thesis statement after discussion, one cobbled together by the group, one based on new realizations from their conversation, one that may be a composite of their individual ones or something completely novel.

6. Students write their group theses on the board OR share them with me on the computer (I use Google docs) so I can put them on the SMARTBOARD screen for all to see.

7. Each group challenges weaknesses in other group’s theses, and groups either defend or concede points. This is less intimidating than you think because it is the work of GROUPS and not individuals.

8. After the activity, a final thesis is agreed upon by all the students in the room and written on the board by the teacher, who may encourage further changes or not as he or she writes by saying, “But what about…?” and/or “Does this statement apply to ALL of the poem or only part of it?” And so forth.

9. At this point, in the practice phase slated for numerous weeks, an essay is not written. This activity is meant to encourage fun through repetition and a combination of individual and group work. You may do it once or twice a week, counting on it to fill up an entire class if done right (assuming 45-60 mins.).

10. The eventual goal? Students marking up poems on their own and writing their own thesis and essay for a grade. Teachers often move to this phase too soon. Using the template and many poems as practice leads to greater success.

Below, you will find

a simple template for poetry analysis
four poems I have used successfully in the classroom along with my own “Teacher’s Notes” and comments about instruction
a list of 18 other poems I have used from Lost Sherpa of Happiness and The Indifferent World (I created this exercise before the release of my third collection, Reincarnation & Other Stimulants)

Please note that this template can be used with any poems in your classroom. If you have a textbook, however, do not be shackled by it. There’s too much great poetry around. Find good poems that you are passionate about. Write your own, even! (Trust me when I say the kids will love poems written by their teacher.)

Special note: If students have written their own poems, they, too, can be used for this process. When students mark-up and practice a thesis statement on each other’s poems, they give it special attention and can’t wait to read the work of classmates who have read and thought about their work.

In fact, it’s better yet if they know in advance that the poems they write will be used for this purpose. Think of it — THEIR writing important enough to be analyzed!

Name: ___________________________________________

Marking Up Poetry for Understanding

Poem: ___________________________________________ Author: __________________________________

Directions. Listen as your teacher reads the poem aloud twice. Then read the poem on your own, silently, marking it up by underlining key words or lines and adding annotations in the margins with the following prompts in mind:

First highlight or circle any word you are not sure of, look it up with a dictionary (online or book), and write the meaning that best fits the context.
Note connections you make to yourself, other works of literature, the world.
Write questions near parts you do not understand. Then, after the question, write an educated guess as a possible answer to your own question.
Circle examples of imagery (the five senses) and, in the margins, note possible moods these sensory details trigger.
Note any other poetic elements you’ve discussed in class. How do they contribute to the poem’s mood and meaning?
Zig-zag underline any cool words or lines, then note in the margins why you like them so much. How many of them are examples of figurative language or unusual word pairings?
Does the poem take a “turn”? If so, draw a bold line where you see a sudden shift in direction and, in the margins, write, “Before the poet was talking about…, but now the poet is talking about….”
Important lines are often found near the end of a poem. Draw an arrow to the line or lines you believe are most important, then write, “This is important because….”
Look back at the title after completing your mark-up. Near it, write, “The title is important because it’s not just what the poem’s about, it also hints at….”
In the white space below the poem, write a thesis statement. For multiple practices, use the following basic formula:

In “______ Title_______,” ______ Poet’s Name_____ (action verb in the present tense followed by one or more literary devices) to show that ____________(lesson about life that does its best to avoid clichéd statements) __________.”

Note: This formula has four key elements: the title in quotation marks (because poems are short works), the writer’s name, a topic, and an opinionated stand on that topic—one that someone could reasonably argue for or against.

After individual mark-ups, work with a group by sharing your thoughts first and co-writing a thesis statement together second. Beneath the thesis, make a list of textual evidence you would use to prove your argument against doubters in the classroom.

This form can be used for multiple practices, but eventually will become the basis of an analysis of a poem you choose or your teacher assigns. Good luck and have fun!

Dog Religion

by Ken Craft

Each morning he rises and bows

before me—parable of humility,

maw yawning, paws splaying.

The hollow rattle of dry meal

raining on his aluminum bowl

pops his ears. Every day,

novelty in the ritual of repetition;

every day, the Pavlovian ear perk.

Like heartbeats and bad breath,

autonomous tail and tongue.

Just so.

Waiting for me

to move, he approaches the orb

demurely, noses in, crunches the bland

and the brown. That lovable greed.

Those stained, pacifist teeth.

He feeds, license and rabies tag

keeping time at bowl’s edge. And always,

in the end, one dry kibble

is left in a bowl cirrus-streaked

with spit: his offering

to the food gods, his prayer

answered each miraculous day.

Passenger Seat, Route 1A

By Ken Craft

My God, the boxes:

trailers and double-wides,

the ranches and the shacks,

the sheet-clotted windows, open

doors gagging up

one-armed dolls

and stained

blankets pregnant with rain

and mildew. Post-apocalyptic

lawn mowers

abandoned mid-swath

lean against berms of tall grass

thick with the thrum of crickets

and August.

But the boxes most of all!

The pennants at the ends

of their dirt driveways

proclaiming cottage industries:

OPEN flags, once-colorful,

Once-waving, now limp and anemic

with sun and years.

The hand-painted signs

spelling Wild Maine Blueberries

or Tourmaline Here or Camp Firewood $5

in crooked letters.

And I think, with my brow

against air-conditioned glass,

my God, can they get out?

Can they escape? Are they happy?

It’s only when we hit

the pothole and I bump

my forehead that I remember

the moving box I am in.

My God.

Escape Plan

By Ken Craft

“This is us,” he’d say, pointing at the boxed red “x”

above our room number, “but if there’s a fire, you sure

as hell won’t have any red arrows along the hallway

carpet. You’ll have that bath towel you just

wrung water out of over your little head. You’ll be

on your hands and knees like you just found God.

And you’ll have darkness and smoke with screamers

tripping over your body. But you’ll be following the way.

The way you’re going to memorize right now: left twice

around two corners to the stairwell door. And, if that’s

not hotter than a cannon, you’ll push it open.

Only then will you stand like a goddamned ghost

under your towel, hold the stair railing if you can, and run

down those stairs like each step’s a wrapped gift

of years, because each one brings you closer to this exit”

(his stubby finger finds the bold, diagrammed frame

of a ground-level door), “to the fire trucks and flashing lights,

to the big sound of engines and sirens. Outside’ll be the smell

of soot and the glow of fear on all those fire-lit faces

watching this place go up. But that’s not important.

You’ll be gulping the biggest mouthfuls of smoke-ringed stars

and night-fresh air you’ve ever swallowed, and you’ll be grateful.

Damn grateful, because it’s not always the fire, it’s the CO2!

Understand? You visualizing good, like I told you?”

And then, like every first hour in every hotel, I took a white

towel, dry for the drill, and draped it over head and back. Like

a fallen angel, wings clipped by dread’s shears, I crawled

down the hallway’s edge, feeling the clench of my eyes

squint their smoldering embarrassment as other guests

walked by, feeling the hot whites of my father’s eyes

watching from behind.

Simplicity

By Ken Craft

When you’re broken,

find your Henry David

and simplify. Reach

back, grasp your younger

hand, squeeze and hold

until your palms’

warmth mingles.

Together, walk the woods,

smell distant rain

as it rides westerlies

bareback and brazen.

Forget time. Keep going

through yellow birch and red

maple till you discover

an unmapped pond, sit on

a shoreline boulder,

feel the chill itch

permeate to your skin.

Follow the exhaling water

rings when a smallmouth

kisses the surface simply

because it exists, waiting

to be marred with life.

Even fish sense there is

another side, near yet far,

alluring yet fatal,

with many years to gasp and gulp

at the gilled wonder

of it all.

Teacher/Author’s Notes

These poems are suitable for upper middle school and high school students. The presence of a few “mature” words in some simply seals the deal on poems being realistic and true to life. I read as if these words are insignificant, and if they are to me, they are to the students. It’s understood between us. We both are fully aware of the world out there. It is what it is, and we collectively know that.

“Dog Religion”

The “turn” in this poem comes at the end with these lines:

…And always,

in the end, one dry kibble

is left in a bowl cirrus-streaked

with spit: his offering

to the food gods, his prayer

answered each miraculous day.

The poem celebrates the sheer joy for life embodied by dogs. Although the “food gods” is a joke (and a true story about my own dog!), it’s really meant to show how lucky we are and how grateful we should be for what we have. We provide for our pets, but there are many in this world who provide for us, too. Do we take them for granted?

The poem also features use of the dash for importance, of what follows, good vocabulary words: an allusion to a Russian physiologist (Ivan Pavlov with his famous “conditioned response” experiment with bells and dogs), effective repetition, figurative language, and hyphenated adjectives.

After reading this and marking it up for thesis purposes, I have students write about a pet they own or wish they owned, using many of the same poetic elements seen here. Animals, wild and domestic, are a good inspiration for writing.

“Passenger Seat, Route 1A”

The “turn” in this poem comes at the end with these lines:

It’s only when we hit

the pothole and I bump

my forehead that I remember

the moving box I am in.

My God.

Students pick up on the disparity between the poem’s narrator – a passenger in a car passing impoverished areas of Maine – and the scenes viewed outside the window. What they are less likely to see is the significance of the word “box,” which links car to trailers and hints at the similarities between rich and poor and middle class and in between. The “box” is symbolic of the ultimate box we will all share, a coffin. Death does not care about class or wealth, in other words. That said, I count it a success when students find the thesis in class differences and how the narrator has an “epiphany” of sorts, understanding his similarities with all humanity. NOTE: If a poem about death is too much of a downer for you or your students, take a pass on this one.

“Escape Plan”

The “turn” in this poem comes at the end with these lines:

And then, like every first hour in every hotel, I took a white

towel, dry for the drill, and draped it over head and back. Like

a fallen angel, wings clipped by dread’s shears, I crawled

down the hallway’s edge, feeling the clench of my eyes

squint their smoldering embarrassment as other guests

walked by, feeling the hot whites of my father’s eyes

watching from behind.

Students are drawn to the literal in this poem, often lauding the father for coaching his son for safety purposes. If they don’t on their own, encourage them to consider the boy’s point of view, however. Compliment the students who circle the word “embarrassment,” as this is more about an authority figure who oversteps bounds and abuses his “powers” to a point where it is beyond the pale. It can be paired with many other poems where power (by teacher, coach, commander, older sibling, parent, etc.) is abused.

“Simplicity”

The “turn” in this poem comes at the end with these lines:

Even fish sense there is

another side, near yet far,

alluring yet fatal,

with many years to gasp and gulp

at the gilled wonder

of it all.

Count it a win if students focus on “another side, near yet far / alluring yet fatal” and see that this is simply a poem celebrating life and acknowledging that death is a part of it and nothing to be feared. Celebrate the “many years to gasp and gulp / at the gilled wonder / of it all,” then. This poem is influenced by the Buddhist philosophy, which encourages both awareness of our mortality and emphasis on the here and now, the present moment. This poem, then, is a celebration of present moments, and a call for all humans to keep in touch with their inner youth.

FINAL NOTE TO FELLOW TEACHERS: If you like lesson plan ideas and want to show it by helping me with the costs of running this site (no, it’s not free), click over to the BOOKS page and purchase one of my poetry collections. Every little bit helps — honest! Thanks.

Bad Mood, Good Poetry

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Sometimes, when your mood shifts south, you need to pull it back. Sometimes reading certain poets helps with that–the task of settling yourself, of reeling your rogue moods back in.

For what is this mood, anyway, to think it can wrench you apart, then reunite you in its way at its bidding? Something worth resisting, that’s what. If not, it will make like a squatter and move in for good, taking over your spirit.

So today, being one of those days when my mood is getting ideas, I pulled out Galway Kinnell’s Mortal Acts, Mortal Words and reread two of his mortal poems. The simplicity of eating blackberries. The uncanniness of marital love. Cool, crisp, Vermont poetry. For when your mood’s thinking of going south and you need to show it who’s boss.

Blackberry Eating
by Galway Kinnell

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched or broughamed,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry eating in late September.

After Making Love We Hear Footsteps
by Galway Kinnell

For I can snore like a bullhorn

or play loud music

or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman

and Fergus will only sink deeper

into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,

but let there be that heavy breathing

or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house

and he will wrench himself awake

and make for it on the run—as now, we lie together,

after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,

familiar touch of the long-married,

and he appears—in his baseball pajamas, it happens,

the neck opening so small he has to screw them on—

and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,

his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.

In the half darkness we look at each other and smile

and touch arms across this little, startlingly muscled body—

this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,

sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,

this blessing love gives again into our arms.

The Poetry of Trains

Lost Sherpa of Happiness poetry

Maybe it’s all those movies we watched as kids. Lovers parting or greeting at train stations. Murders on the Orient Express. Windows and windows of blurry landscape, all to the comforting rumble of the tracks and the horn.

It came back to me while reading Faith Shearin’s poem, “The Sound of a Train.” It seems there’s more than you think in this simple sound. It seems to harbor certain common desires of leaving, starting over, finding dreams we have long given up on.

The Sound of a Train
by Faith Shearin

Even now, I hear one and I long to leave
without a suitcase or a plan; I want to step
onto the platform and reach for
the porter’s hand and buy a ticket
to some other life; I want to sit
in the big seats and watch fields
turn into rivers or cities. I want to eat
cake on the dining car’s
unsteady tablecloths, to sleep
while whole seasons
slip by. I want to be a passenger
again: a person who hears the name
of a place and stands up, a person
who steps into the steam of arrival.

The lines that most resonate? “I want too…buy a ticket to some other life,” and “I want to be a passenger / again… a person / who steps into the steam of arrival.”

At some point most everyone asks themselves questions like these: What happened? Exactly when was I separated from my life’s dreams? How did I get here, and how do I get out of here?

A train, of course. It is a metaphor for escape, much more intimate with the land and its fast-moving hopes than a plane. It takes time, is patient, affords its passengers plenty of time to ruminate on the future (as opposed to the past). It offers the comfort of a ticket pressed hard between thumb and finger, a ticket stating, “I am a passenger.”

Somehow, because of all of this, and because the myth of trains as saviors is just that—a myth—trains have come to be associated, in some minds, with sadness. When I hear the horn of a train, it brings to mind the call of a loon. Elongated, eerie, sad. “What went wrong?” I might ask myself. “Why haven’t I gone places? When did I get stuck in one place, one life, like this?”

My train poem, then, speaks to some of these bittersweet sentiments. I wrote it for my second book, Lost Sherpa of Happiness:

Morning Train
by Ken Craft

Outside before the day
breaks with joy, the first sound I hear:
dark whistle of the Ashland train.

It speaks of paths
overgrown, people stepped past,
dreams diagnosed as sleep.

The fading climbs inside me, curls
a last bend, settles soft in memory’s slow.

I walk on without it, with it within,
my ribs its worn tracks, my heart its worn rumble.

The Importance of Titles and Endings

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Titles are important, even more so when they harbor deeper meaning. The word “terminal” in the poem “At the Terminal,” for instance. Innocently, it’s an endpoint to a flight, a place where employees transport you and your possessions. More innocently still, it’s your own demise, which is about as terminal as you can get.

Patricia Hooper’s poem has it both ways. It might strike younger readers as odd, however. Perhaps it’s only the Boomers and the Great Generation (as they are now called) who remember a time when husbands and wives flew separately. For the children, you see. Just in case. Because flying wasn’t as safe as it is deemed to be now.

The end lines, like the title, are equally important to the poem’s message. They serve as the “terminal” of the poem. And here, thanks to “arc of absence, blinding space” they work overtime, too, as all blue-collar words should.

Read it but repeat after me: Flying is safer than driving. The only thing you’ve got to lose is control of the wheel.

At the Terminal
Patricia Hooper

Remember how we took those separate flights
imagining the worst: our plane gone down,
our children young, alone? I’d leave an hour
before you, wait to meet you at your gate,
or you’d go first, arrive and rent a car,
then meet me at the exit. In between,
blue emptiness, our lives suspended where
clouds stacked themselves between us: you on earth
and I already gone. Or else I’d stand
on solid ground and watch you disappear—
my heart, my shining bird!—a streak of light,
a flash of wing, then nothing. Only one
of us, one at a time. And whether I turned
back to the concourse or pulled down the shade
over the brilliant window, belted in
above the tilting tarmac, I rehearsed
this hour, ever nearer, when the planet
would hold one or the other, and you’d watch—
or I—the earth receding, or look up
into the arc of absence, blinding space.

Suicide Is (Supposed To Be) Painless

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I just completed a poem about suicide. Well, tangentially about suicide. It’s about people who talk about suicide. (But as we all know, talking about suicide is a red flag that friends and family should pay attention to.)

Anyway, I shared my new draft with a fellow poet for feedback. Yes, I got my critique, but as occasionally happens, I also got a “this reminds me of” connection, which reminds ME of the fact that all writers, dead and alive, are part of a great, ongoing conversation, only the dead ones’ talking has to come in the form of words frozen in the amber of time.

In this case, the connection that my friend immediately thought of was Tony Hoagland’s poem, “Suicide Song.” Now here’s the thing about sending the author of a newly-minted poem a long-ago published poem to read. It creates unfair comparisons. Just when a writer’s feeling good about himself and his new poem, toiled over for 14 versions before being ready for a reading–BAM!–said writer gets hit upside the head with a finished product on the same topic, one that sings like a nightingale beside his newly-minted croaking crow. Caws for concern, I assure you.

But still, you have to admit, no matter what the situation, reading a good poem is inspiring, not only as a reader but as a writer. So come along, readers. Take a look-see not at MY suicide poem-in-progress (for that you’ll have to wait), but at the recommended Hoagland song of long ago:

Suicide Song
by Tony Hoagland

But now I am afraid I know too much to kill myself
Though I would still like to jump off a high bridge

At midnight, or paddle a kayak out to sea
Until I turn into a speck, or wear a necktie made of knotted rope.

But people would squirm, it would hurt them in some way,
And I am too knowledgeable now to hurt people imprecisely.

No longer do I live by the law of me,
No longer having the excuse of youth or craziness,

And dying you know shows a serious ingratitude
For sunsets and beehive hairdos and the precious green corrugated

Pickles they place at the edge of your plate.
Killing yourself is wasteful, like spilling oil

At sea or not recycling all the kisses you’ve been given,
And anyway, who has clothes nice enough to be caught dead in?

Not me. You stay alive you stupid asshole
Because you haven’t been excused,

You haven’t finished though it takes a mulish stubbornness
To chew this food.

It is a stone, it is an inconvenience, it is an innocence,
And I turn against it like a record

Turns against the needle
That makes it play.

The poem, despite its heavy topic, takes a whimsical turn when Hoagland tells us that “dying you know shows a serious ingratitude / For sunsets and beehive hairdos and the precious green corrugated / Pickles they place at the edge off your plate.” A lovely particular, that. Saved by corrugated pickles!

Funnier still is the self-admonishment that follows the rhetorical question “And anyway, who has clothes nice enough to be caught dead in?” The answer: “Not me. You stay alive you stupid asshole / Because you haven’t been excused.”

Hoagland may be talking to himself or to someone else, but either way, poetry is a conversation, remember. He’s talking to everyone who reads his words. And if would-be suicides read them and chuckle and say to themselves, “He’s right, I need help and I’m going to get it,” so much the better. We chalk up another to the power of poetry.

“Forgive Me, Mother, for You Have Sinned”

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Confessional mode. Like the first-person point of view in general, it is often welcomed by readers because they like to feel like confidantes. They also like to know that they are not the only ones.

The only ones what, you ask? It doesn’t much matter, I answer. The only ones with family trouble, marriage trouble, parenting trouble, love trouble, self-confidence trouble. There’s trouble in River City, all right, and the river flows under the good ship Readership.

For fraught poetry, you need go no further than Louise Glück, who takes a scientist’s eye (and even makes it part of this poem!) to her own life, then shares hard results with the poetry-reading world. Here, with “Brown Circle,” she overlays her own upbringing with the upbringing of her son.

Brown Circle
Louise Glück

My mother wants to know
why, if I hate
family so much,
I went ahead and
had one. I don’t
answer my mother.
What I hated
was being a child,
having no choice about
what people I loved.

I don’t love my son
the way I meant to love him.
I thought I’d be
the lover of orchids who finds
red trillium growing
in the pine shade, and doesn’t
touch it, doesn’t need
to possess it. What I am
is the scientist,
who comes to that flower
with a magnifying glass
and doesn’t leave, though
the sun burns a brown
circle of grass around
the flower. Which is
more or less the way
my mother loved me.

I must learn
to forgive my mother,
now that I am helpless
to spare my son.

It takes no small amount of bravery to write “I don’t love my son / the way I meant to love him.” People think those things but don’t say them.

Of course, we must realize that narrator and poet are not always the same voice. Thus, it is easier to express thoughts as a writer, knowing that you are impersonating a character of your own construction.

The other wonder is this: Is Mom alive reading poems like this? Some writers don’t worry so much about family reactions (see Karl Ove Knausgaard of My Struggle fame). Others would do well to.

Either way, though, there’s no denying the slight sensationalism offered by writing in the confessional mode, whether it’s a case of “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned” or “Forgive me, Father, for they have sinned….”

Readers like reading about sin. It distracts them from their own. It keeps their own company.

The Poem Outside Your Window

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Occam’s Razor is a philosophical principle that even laymen like me can understand: When given competing theories, side with the simpler one until proven wrong.

At times, in an effort to be novel and upset the apple cart I featured in Ecclesiastes (where it intones, “There is nothing new under the sun”), poets get overly complicated with ideas, styles, and wordplay.

Egads, man. Just look out your window, why don’t you? Jane Kenyon, who had a bird feeder outside her New Hampshire window, did exactly that. The poem “At the Feeder” cuts clean and simple, each stanza a blend of description and simile for familiar birds: Chickadees, Evening Grosbeaks, Bluejays, Nuthatches, and Slate-Colored Juncos.

There’s even a first-stanza treat for poets: the nostalgia of getting replies from poetry journals via snail mail. (As Orwell would say: Such, such were the days!)

So instead of the all-too commercial line, “What’s in your wallet?”, let’s shift today to “What’s outside your window?” Chances are, it’s a poem in hiding. You know, like those old Highlights for Children drawings with hidden images. The ones you had to circle with a crayon or pencil while you waited for the dentist to scare the hell out of your mouth.

At the Feeder
Jane Kenyon

First the Chickadees take
their share, then fly
to the bittersweet vine,
where they crack open the seeds,
excited, like poets
opening the day’s mail.

And the Evening Grosbeaks—
those large and prosperous
finches—resemble skiers
with the latest equipment, bright
yellow goggles on their faces.

Now the Bluejay comes in
for a landing, like a SAC bomber
returning to Plattsburgh
after a day of patrolling the ozone.
Every teacup in the pantry rattles.

The solid and graceful bodies
of Nuthatches, perpetually
upside down, like Yogis…
and Slate-Colored Juncoes, feeding
on the ground, taking only
what falls to them.

The cats watch, one
from the lid of the breadbox,
another from the piano. A third
flexes its claws in sleep, dreaming
perhaps, of a chicken neck,
or of being worshiped as a god
at Bubastis, during
the XXIII dynasty.

"At the Feeder" Jane Kenyon

Where Nocturnes & Aubades Meet

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Notice how, as readers, we naturally take the unfamiliar and make it familiar? It’s hardwired, and one of the many reasons readers like to read.

Take nocturnes. I associate them with classical music, but according to Edward Hirsch’s A Poet’s Glossary, “The nocturne became a European musical type in the nineteenth century, a pensive, moody instrumental piece especially suitable for playing at night, and thereafter poetic nocturnes evoke the melancholy feelings or tonalities of piano nocturnes.”

So, yes, there’s a line to be drawn between classical music and poetry, but the nocturne as a poetic genre predates this angle, going all the way back to John Donne in 1633, when he wrote “A Nocturnal upon S. Lucy’s Day, being the shortest day.” (Great title, John.)

For a modern take on the genre that stands opposite to aubades (“a dawn song expressing the regret of parting lovers at daybreak,” according to Hirsch, Romeo, & Juliet… the famous law firm), let’s look at Irish poet Eavan Boland’s poem by that name. As you read, keep the noise down. It’s late!

Nocturne by Eavan Boland

After a friend has gone I like the feel of it:
The house at night. Everyone asleep.
The way it draws in like atmosphere or evening.

One-o-clock. A floral teapot and a raisin scone.
A tray waits to be taken down.
The landing light is off. The clock strikes. The cat

comes into his own, mysterious on the stairs,
a black ambivalence around the legs of button-back
chairs, an insinuation to be set beside

the red spoon and the salt-glazed cup,
the saucer with the thick spill of tea
which scalds off easily under the tap. Time

is a tick, a purr, a drop. The spider
on the dining-room window has fallen asleep
among complexities as I will once

the doors are bolted and the keys tested
and the switch turned up of the kitchen light
which made outside in the back garden

an electric room—a domestication
of closed daisies, an architecture
instant and improbable.

Here’s the thing: As a reader, I’m a horrible audience for this piece. I read it and think: “Ah. Nocturne as ode to late night. Written for night owls by a night owl.”

But as a reader, I have innate strategies that work without my even knowing it. The poem’s speaker likes the feel of “The house at night. Everyone asleep,” and I identify, even though I am reliably the first person asleep in my household and always have been, barring the years when my kids were very young.

Foreign as the concept of the nocturne is, however, my inner reader flips the narrative. It reads, “The house before dawn. Everyone asleep.” Ah. Now that’s a house I know. A pensive and moody time that evokes “melancholy feelings or tonalities.”

Do you think cats don’t “come into their own” and become “mysterious” at 4 a.m., too? I wouldn’t know, having little congress with cats over the years, but I know that dogs are a different breed at that hour, as is the lighting, as are my feelings both when reading and writing. It’s a magical time with richer possibility than other times of the day.

And so, it’s enough. My unconscious, mental “switch” conveniently expands inexperience to encompass experience, a trick that writers and readers count on for both tea and sympathy.

And you know what? It’s darkest before dawn, meaning I can flip a switch and create “an electric room” outside, too. Just like that.

So go ahead. Write a nocturne just after you’ve written an aubade, no matter which you’re familiar with. Opposites attract, and your readers will adjust.