BOB HICOK'S NEW BOOK
http://www.amazon.com/Words-Empty-Full-Pitt-Poetry/dp/082296077X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267647164&sr=8-2
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Mehr Licht by Tim Dlugos
Mehr Licht
were the last words
of Goethe on his
deathbed as the darkness
closed around him.
But Mayor Licht
was also the chief
executive of Providence,
Rhode Island in the early
Eighties. I’m dreaming
of the best political
commercial of all time—
Weimar in the 1830s,
Goethe gasping “Mehr licht,
mehr licht”—and suddenly
Mayor Harry Licht of Providence
appears to pump the paw
of the poet, and save the day.
Monday, March 01, 2010
Seventh Avenue - Mark Halliday
SEVENTH AVENUE
by, Mark Halliday
Late Tuesday afternoon the romantic self weaves
up Seventh Avenue amid too many lookers, too many
feelers: romance hates democracy;
how can you be so great and golden inside
if your trunk is shouldered among other trunks
block after block, block after block--
you can't help glimpsing an otherness in others
that is not just surface: they ache,
their aches ache away north and south all Tuesday
in murmurous torsos like yours . . .
What apprehension blossoms even now in Manuel
shifting steaks at the ten-foot grill of Charley O's
beneath the towering chef's hat they make him wear?
When I was twenty I'd have written
that he was only thinking of Cadillacs and sex;
now I'm afraid he's just as worried as I am
about love vs. lesser things and the point of it all.
Manuel, stay there at the sizzling grill till midnight
and then just drink or sleep, man,
don't write poems--
do me that favor. It's loud enough already
out here on Seventh Avenue with that cat's boom box
and these three giggle girls being Madonna together
and that guy hawking wind-up titans wielding laser lances.
Who's Wordsworth for any extended period on Seventh Ave?
In this pre-dusk traffic you catch the hint
that Manuel and thou if seers at all are seers only
for seconds--now the steak, taxi, buttocks, headline
and wallet resume their charismatic claim to be what counts.
Soul on Seventh is a sometime on-off quick-flip thing . . .
What I want is a poem long as Seventh Avenue
to sprinkle gold on every oppressed minority,
every young woman's subtly female hips,
every sad and suspicious American face
every sad and suspicious American face
and the quiddity of every mud-tracked pizza shop;
proving, block after block, stanza by stanza
that I'm not just one skinny nervous pedestrian
that I'm not just one skinny nervous pedestrian
but the one who matters because he sees and says.
I want that. The Avenue grins and says
"You want, that? How does it feel to want?"
"You want, that? How does it feel to want?"
A Brief for the Defense - Jack Gilbert
A Brief for the Defense
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
-Jack Gilbert
Envoy by, Maurice Manning
Envoy
by, Maurice Manning
Man who believes television
is the mouthpiece of the devil,
seeks female with similar views.
Attention all ladies who like
biscuits: man has gristmill
and two or three acres of wheat.
Are you a woman cast out from society?
Man with thirty-seven acres
and big muscles can provide refuge.
Would like to find sober woman (beer okay),
interested in pick-up trucks, old-time
Gospel music, buffalo trails.
Grown man who likes red dogs
and skipping rocks, hoping against
hope some woman likes same.
Man who lives several hundred
years in the past would like to find
woman zealous for spinning wheels.
Eccentric (?) gentleman (negotiable)—
tinker/farmer searching the heavens
for the true spark of love (breast-size unimportant). Please.
by, Maurice Manning
Man who believes television
is the mouthpiece of the devil,
seeks female with similar views.
Attention all ladies who like
biscuits: man has gristmill
and two or three acres of wheat.
Are you a woman cast out from society?
Man with thirty-seven acres
and big muscles can provide refuge.
Would like to find sober woman (beer okay),
interested in pick-up trucks, old-time
Gospel music, buffalo trails.
Grown man who likes red dogs
and skipping rocks, hoping against
hope some woman likes same.
Man who lives several hundred
years in the past would like to find
woman zealous for spinning wheels.
Eccentric (?) gentleman (negotiable)—
tinker/farmer searching the heavens
for the true spark of love (breast-size unimportant). Please.
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