You Drive Me Crazy (9 page)
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth
it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners
the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water
I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days
FRANK O'HARA
Earthly Love
Conventions of the time
held them together.
It was a period
(very long) in which
the heart once given freely
was required, as a formal gesture,
to forfeit liberty: a consecration
at once moving and hopelessly doomed.
As to ourselves:
fortunately we diverged
from these requirements,
as I reminded myself
when my life shattered.
So that what we had for so long
was, more or less,
voluntary, alive.
And only long afterward
did I begin to think otherwise.
We are all human—
we protect ourselves
as well as we can
even to the point of denying
clarity, the point
of self-deception. As in
the consecration to which I alluded.
And yet, within this deception,
true happiness occurred.
So that I believe I would
repeat these errors exactly.
Nor does it seem to me
crucial to know
whether or not such happiness
is built on illusion:
it has its own reality.
And in either case, it will end.
LOUISE GLÜCK
The Journey
Anghiari is medieval, a sleeve sloping down
A steep hill, suddenly sweeping out
To the edge of a cliff, and dwindling.
But far up the mountain, behind the town,
We too were swept out, out by the wind,
Alone with the Tuscan grass.
Wind had been blowing across the hills
For days, and everything now was graying gold
With dust, everything we saw, even
Some small children scampering along a road,
Twittering Italian to a small caged bird.
We sat beside them to rest in some brushwood,
And I leaned down to rinse the dust from my face.
I found the spider web there, whose hinges
Reeled heavily and crazily with the dust,
Whole mounds and cemeteries of it, sagging
And scattering shadows among shells and wings.
And then she stepped into the center of air
Slender and fastidious, the golden hair
Of daylight along her shoulders, she poised there,
While ruins crumbled on every side of her.
Free of the dust, as though a moment before
She had stepped inside the earth, to bathe herself.
I gazed, close to her, till at last she stepped
Away in her own good time.
Many men
Have searched all over Tuscany and never found
What I found there, the heart of the light
Itself shelled and leaved, balancing
On filaments themselves falling. The secret
Of this journey is to let the wind
Blow its dust all over your body,
To let it go on blowing, to step lightly, lightly
All the way through your ruins, and not to lose
Any sleep over the dead, who surely
Will bury their own, don't worry.
JAMES WRIGHT
Three Times My Life Has Opened
Three times my life has opened.
Once, into darkness and rain.
Once, into what the body carries at all times within it and starts
to remember each time it enters the act of love.
Once, to the fire that holds all.
These three were not different.
You will recognize what I am saying or you will not.
But outside my window all day a maple has stepped from her leaves
like a woman in love with winter, dropping the colored silks.
Neither are we different in what we know.
There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip of light
stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor,
or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
Decade
When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.
AMY LOWELL
This Is Just to Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Life Is Motion
In Oklahoma,
Bonnie and Josie,
Dressed in calico,
Danced around a stump.
They cried,
‘Ohoyaho,
Ohoo’…
Celebrating the marriage
Of flesh and air.
WALLACE STEVENS
A
NNA
A
KHMATOVA
(1889–1966): Russian lyric poet whose work includes
Evening, Rosary
, and
White Flock.
M
ARGARET
A
TWOOD
(1939–): Canadian novelist and poet. Her second book of poetry,
The Circle Game
, won the Governor General's Award in 1966. She lives and writes in Toronto.
B
HARTRHARI
(570–651): Hindu philosopher and poet-grammarian, author of the Vakyapadiya (“Words in a Sentence”), regarded as one of the most significant works on the philosophy of language.
K
ATE
B
INGHAM
: Her first novel,
Mummy 's Legs
, received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. She lives in London.
E
LIZABETH
B
ISHOP
(1911–79): Highly regarded American poet who won every major poetry award in the United States, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She served as chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1966 until 1979.
L
OUISE
B
OGAN
(1897–1970): Influential American poet who won the Bolligen Prize in 1955. She wrote poetry criticism for
The New Yorker
magazine for thirty-eight years.
C
AROLYN
C
REEDON
(1969–): Creedon's poems have been included in the Best American Poetry series. She is currently an Ada Comstock Scholar at Smith College.
E. E. C
UMMINGS
(1894–1962): Influential American poet know for his experimental, playful style.
S
ILVIA
C
URBELO
(1955–): Cuban-born poet who now lives in Tampa, Florida. She is the author of two collections of poetry,
The Secret History of Water
(Anhinga Press) and
The Geography of Leaving
( S i l v e r f i s h Review Press).
E
MILY
D
ICKINSON
(1830–86): One of the nineteenth century's greatest poets, Dickinson lived quietly at home in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her lawyer father. Only seven of her approximately one thousand poems were published during her lifetime.
J
OHN
D
ONNE
(1572–1631): British author of religious poems and essays as well as erotic love poetry.
M
ARK
D
OTY
(1953–): Contemporary American poet who has won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize. His most recent work is
Murano: Poem.
He lives in New York City.
G
AVIN
E
WART
(1916–1995): British comic poet, his works include
The Young Pebble's Guide to His Toes.
He also edited the
Penguin Book of Light Verse.
L
OUISE
G
LÜCK
(1943–): Former poet laureate of the United States, whose collections have won both the Pulitzer Prize (1992) and the National Book Critics Circle Award (1985).
D
ONALD
H
ALL
(1928–): Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Hall was a National Book Award Nominee in 1956 and 1979. He lives in New Hampshire.
J
ANE
H
IRSHFIELD
(1953–): American poet who studied at the San Francisco Zen Center for eight years. She has translated several collections of Japanese poetry. Her latest works include
The October Palace, The Lives of the Heart
, and
Given Sugar, Given Salt.
S
AM
H
OLTZAPPLE
(1965–) lives and writes in New York City.
M
ARIE
H
OWE
(1950–): American poet and editor who currently teaches at Columbia University. Her poetry collection
The Good Thief
(1988) was chosen for the National Poetry series by Margaret Atwood.
L
ANGSTON
H
UGHES
(1902–67): The most important writer of the Harlem Renaissance, he published ten books of poetry, including
Montage of A Dream Deferred.
He lived in New York City.
J
ANE
K
ENYON
(1947–95): She published four volumes of poetry, including
Constance
(1993). She lived at Eagle Pond Farm in New Hampshire until she died of leukemia in 1995.
E
THERIDGE
K
NIGHT
(1931–1991): Knight began writing poetry while he was incarcerated at Indiana State Prison. His book
Poems from Prison
received great critical acclaim in the United States.
K
IM
K
ONOPKA
lives in New Mexico and France. Currently she is living in Bordeaux, where she works as an art model, repairs Harley Davidson motorcycles, and is writing her first novel.
P
HILIP
L
ARKIN
(1922–85): Highly influential British poet whose collections of poetry include
The Less Deceived
and
High Window.
J
AMES
L
AUGHLIN
(1914–1997): American poet and publisher. He founded the publishing house New Directions, through which he released some of the best experimental and avant-garde writing of the past fifty years.
D
ORIANNE
L
AUX
(1952–): Born in Augusta, Maine, Laux has been widely anthologized and received the Pushcart Prize in 1986. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Oregon.
L
I
-Y
OUNG
L
EE
(1944–): Chinese American poet who was born in Indonesia. He is the author of
The City in Which I Love You
and
Book of My Nights.
R
OBERT
L
OPEZ
(1975–) and J
EFF
M
ARX
(1970–): New York composers and lyricists who rocketed to fame for their Tony Award–winning Broadway musical,
Avenue Q.
A
MY
L
OWELL
(1874–1925): Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, into a prominent New England family. A collection of Lowell's work, published posthumously as
What's O'clock?
, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
K
ATHARYN
H
OWD
M
ACHAN
(1952–): Prolific poet whose work has appeared in numerous literary publications and more than fifty anthologies and textbooks. A teacher of creative writing and women's studies at Ithaca College, she lives in Ithaca, New York, with her husband, the poet Eric Machan Howd, and their two children.
K
ATHERINE
M
ANSFIELD
(1888–1923): New Zealand writer who became a member of the Bloomsbury literary group in London. Known for her brilliant short stories, she also wrote poetry.
C
HARLOTTE
M
ATTHEWS
(1966–): Matthews's chapbook,
A Kind of Devotion
, is forthcoming from Palanquin Press. Her poems have appeared in the
Mississippi Review, Tar River Poetr y, Sou'wester, Meridian, Poet Lore, Potomac Review
, and
Eclipse.
Her manuscript
Green Stars
was named a finalist in the National Poetry series competition. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
M
ARK
M
C
M
ORRIS
(1960–) has published in many journals, and his poetry has been widely anthologized. His latest book is
The Blaze of Poui.
He is currently an assistant professor of English at George town University in Washington, D.C.
P
ABLO
N
ERUDA
(1904–73): Nobel Prize–winning Chilean poet. He received the Lenin Peace Prize in 1953.
F
RANK
O'H
ARA
(1926–1966): O'Hara worked at the Museum of Modern Art in New York for most of his life. He published his first volume of poems,
A City in Winter and Other Poems
, in 1952, and over the course of his life he published five more collections.
S
HARON
O
LDS
(1942–): Often described as a confessional poet, Olds won the National Book Critics Circle Award for
The Dead and the Living
in 1983. She teaches poetry at New York University and Goldwater Hospital.
D
OROTHY
P
ARKER
(1893–1967): Journalist, humorist, and a founding member of the famous Algonquin Round Table. Her collections of poetry include
Enough Rope, Sunset Gun
, and
Death and Taxes.