Dancing With A Purple Thumb
Chris tells me she thought of both Diane and me when she read Love Song: I And Thou (below). I believe it mostly reminded her of me. Last night after reading the poem, I dreamed I built a second story addition onto my friend Rob’s ranch-style house. He lives in a three story Colonial, so go with the dream here. When I finished with the stud framing, and had yet to sheath the house in plywood, I stood back to look at my creation. To my dismay, the blowing wind was shaking the house as if an invisible giant were trying to dislodge dinner. I worried about the wind toppling the house once the walls were completed. Anxious to mend my mistake, I thought maybe I can’t nail one floor on top of another without some kind of massive vertical beam connecting the two floors. As with my last house dream, I mostly felt dread.
What Chris sent, she excerpted from an article entitled A Little Anthology of Love Poems, by Robert Pinsky. Had I read the entire piece I might have dreamed different (thanks Apple).
Pinsky offers a rich collection of non-traditional love poems, most of which I find unsettling and/or difficult to grasp. It hammers home, though I read (compared to most men with blue eyes in their fifties who are not poets) a lot of poetry, my likes are pretty darn narrow.
I couldn’t warm up to Her Triumph by Yeats, and I didn’t agree with Pinsky’s interpretation of Mock Orange, a poem I know well, by Louise Gluck, until Diane tutored me. I got hung up on
ìsealing my mouth,
the man’s paralyzing body-
I did love the final two poems, especially this one by William Carlos Williams:
The Act
There were the roses, in the rain.
Don’t cut them, I pleaded.
They won’t last, she said.
But they’re so beautiful
where they are.
Agh, we were all beautiful once, she said,
and cut them and gave them to me
in my hand.
I might ask Chris: For a lover of rhyming poems … .
Pinksy:
Another tradition of love poetry celebrates the beloved with a kind of inverse compliment. Shakespeare says his mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun, and that black wires grow on her head; Shakespeare’s contemporary Michael Drayton begins a sonnet, “Three sorts of serpent do resemble thee.” That sort of compliment-by-complaint was already a conventional move when Shakespeare and Drayton were writing. It compliments the loved one by crediting her with a sense of humor, an appreciation of irony, and the ability to see through trite praises.
Something of that courtly reverse praise caps a contemporary poem I like, by the late Alan Dugan:
LOVE SONG: I AND THOU
Nothing is plumb, level or square:
the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
any other piece without a gap
or pinch, and bent nails
dance all over the surfacing
like maggots. By Christ
I am no carpenter. I built
the roof for myself, the walls
for myself, the floors
for myself, and got
hung up in it myself. I
danced with a purple thumb
at this house-warming, drunk
with my prime whiskey: rage.
Oh, I spat rage’s nails
into the frame-up of my work:
it held. It settled plumb,
level, solid, square and true
for that great moment. Then
it screamed and went on through,
skewing as wrong the other way.
God damned it. This is hell,
but I planned it, I sawed it,
I nailed it, and I
will live in it until it kills me.
I can nail my left palm
to the left-hand crosspiece but
I can’t do everything myself.
I need a hand to nail the right,
a help, a love, a you, a wife.
Pinsky covers some ground there — despite Mike’s understandable antipathy for a phrase here quoted from it, don’t miss the caustic, wholly unromantic “Mock Orange” from the article here linked.
Comment by paramour — February 13, 2005 @ 5:06 pm
I read Mock Orange and hated it (what a surprise). I never like Louise Gluck — poet laureate shmoet laureate, she’s one depressing woman. But I loved The Act, it was my favorite in those included and the one I would give to my valentine. Over margaritas at Sierras. And it doesn’t even rhyme.
Comment by sender — February 13, 2005 @ 5:07 pm
Sender, how about this one by Louise?
Midnight
â€
Speak to me, aching heart: what
Ridiculous errand are you inventing for yourself
Weeping in the dark garage
With your sack of garbage: it is not your job
To take out the garbage, it is your job
To empty the dishwasher. You are showing off
Again,
Exactly as you did in childhood–where
Is your sporting side, your famous
Ironic detachment? A little moonlight hits
The broken window, a little summer moonlight,
Tender
Murmurs from the earth with its ready
Sweetnesses–
Is this the way you communicate
With your husband, not answering
When he calls, or is this the way the heart
Behaves when it grieves: it wants to be
Alone with the garbage? If I were you,
I’d think ahead. After fifteen years,
His voice could be getting tired; some night
If you don’t answer, someone else will answer.
Comment by michael — February 13, 2005 @ 5:38 pm
Or this one:
A Fantasy
â€
I’ll tell you something: every day
people are dying. And that’s just the beginning.
Every day, in funeral homes, new widows are born,
new orphans. They sit with their hands folded,
trying to decide about this new life.
Then they’re in the cemetery, some of them
for the first time. They’re frightened of crying,
sometimes of not crying. Someone leans over,
tells them what to do next, which might mean
saying a few words, sometimes
throwing dirt in the open grave.
And after that, everyone goes back to the house,
which is suddenly full of visitors.
The widow sits on the couch, very stately,
so people line up to approach her,
sometimes take her hand, sometimes embrace her.
She finds something to say to everbody,
thanks them, thanks them for coming.
In her heart, she wants them to go away.
She wants to be back in the cemetery,
back in the sickroom, the hospital. She knows
it isn’t possible. But it’s her only hope,
the wish to move backward. And just a little,
not so far as the marriage, the first kiss.
Louise Gluck
Comment by michael — February 13, 2005 @ 5:56 pm
Or please visit this small corner of Mike’s and my magnus opus https://mainecourse.com/poem%20html/poembase.html and click on Rainy Morning (then read the rest while you’re there, if you’ve a mind to).
Comment by occasional admirer — February 13, 2005 @ 7:14 pm
Midnight and Rainy Morning more of the same from her. Actually, Rainy Morning I had to read and re-read, which makes reading it a job. (But Rain, listed on your site, is lovely.) These two I read and understood…Midnight being just so negative. At least A Fantasy brought a tear to my eye, but why did she have to call it “A Fantasy”? It’s also depressing but evocative enough for me to relate. My Valentine, when he buys me coffee, always pulls the plastic cover back for me before he hands it to me to drink. I find it to be just the sweetest gesture…why can’t she write a poem about those moments…they all seem to involve an achy or otherwise endangered heart. Maybe I’ll write a poem about my coffee valentine. Stay tuned…
Comment by sender — February 13, 2005 @ 7:30 pm
And I’ve been hoping all day someone would ask what Diane taught Michael so that I wouldn’t have to expose my ignorance here.
Comment by hoping — February 13, 2005 @ 8:54 pm
Mi gawd! All you bloggers are totally amazing. I thought, mistakenly, that I was somewhat literate until I had the pleasure of meeting you through this medium. You are all superb teachers and I thank you. La Senora Vieja
Comment by Helen — February 14, 2005 @ 9:40 am