Two For Tuesday - I'm Back....

Louise Bogan : Poet Laureate : 1945-1946

The Frightened Man


In fear of the rich mouth
I kissed the thin,--
Even that was a trap
To snare me in.
Even she, so long
The frail, the scentless,
Is become strong,
And proves relentless.
O, forget her praise,
And how I sought her
Through a hazardous maze
By shafted water.


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from Body of this Death: Poems (1923)

Love That Dirty Water...

Poetry in Vitro - Vol 4, No. 1

Just Suppose

That words have lost their cognitive significance.
That what is spoken registers
as the burble of roiling waters.
That what is written appears a cross-
hatching background to the visual stimuli
that scrapes the retinal dreams of social upheaval.

I have scored silence on three fronts

I have spilt principal on guilty pleasures.

I have built means out of jelly-bean sprigs.

Scream that lofty scream,
but leave my welcome mat unturned

Leave this place – my place – my private place.
I have run out of things to say.


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The Day the Music Died

On February 3, 1959, a small-plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, United States killed three American rock and roll musicians: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, as well as the pilot, Roger Peterson.

Flight arrangements were made with Roger Peterson, 21, a local pilot who worked for Dwyer Flying Service in Mason City, Iowa. A fee of $36 per person was charged for the single engine Beechcraft Bonanza B35 (V-tail), registration N3794N (later reassigned). The Bonanza could seat three passengers in addition to the pilot.

Richardson had developed a case of the flu during the tour and asked one of Holly's bandmates, Waylon Jennings, for his seat on the plane; Jennings agreed to give up the seat. When Holly learned that Jennings wasn't going to fly, he said, "Well, I hope your ol' bus freezes up." Jennings responded, "Well, I hope your ol' plane crashes." This exchange of words, though made in jest at the time, haunted Jennings for the rest of his life.

Ritchie Valens had never flown in a small plane before, and asked Holly's remaining bandmate on the plane, Tommy Allsup, for the seat. Tommy said "I'll flip ya for the remaining seat." Contrary to what is seen in biographical movies, that coin toss did not happen at the airport shortly before takeoff, nor did Buddy Holly toss it. The toss happened at the ballroom shortly before departure to the airport, and the coin was tossed by a DJ who was working the concert that night. Valens won a seat on the plane.

Dion DiMucci of Dion & The Belmonts, who was the fourth headline performer on the tour, was approached to join the flight as well; however, the price of $36 was too much. Dion had heard his parents argue for years over the $36 rent for their apartment and could not bring himself to pay an entire month's rent for a short plane ride.

In 1988, Ken Paquette, a Wisconsin fan of the 1950s era, erected a stainless steel monument depicting a steel guitar and a set of three records bearing the names of each of the three performers. The monument is located on private farmland, about one quarter of a mile west of the intersection of 315th Street and Gull Avenue, five miles north of Clear Lake. A separate monument for pilot Peterson was added in 2008.

He also created a similar stainless steel monument to the three musicians located outside the Riverside Ballroom in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where Holly, the Big Bopper and Valens played on the night of February 1, 1959. This second memorial was unveiled on July 17, 2003.

*source - Wikipedia

W.D. Snodgrass (1926 - 2009)

April Inventory


The green catalpa tree has turned
All white; the cherry blooms once more.
In one whole year I haven't learned
A blessed thing they pay you for.
The blossoms snow down in my hair;
The trees and I will soon be bare.

The trees have more than I to spare.
The sleek, expensive girls I teach,
Younger and pinker every year,
Bloom gradually out of reach.
The pear tree lets its petals drop
Like dandruff on a tabletop.

The girls have grown so young by now
I have to nudge myself to stare.
This year they smile and mind me how
My teeth are falling with my hair.
In thirty years I may not get
Younger, shrewder, or out of debt.

The tenth time, just a year ago,
I made myself a little list
Of all the things I'd ought to know,
Then told my parents, analyst,
And everyone who's trusted me
I'd be substantial, presently.

I haven't read one book about
A book or memorized one plot.
Or found a mind I did not doubt.
I learned one date. And then forgot.
And one by one the solid scholars
Get the degrees, the jobs, the dollars.

And smile above their starchy collars.
I taught my classes Whitehead's notions;
One lovely girl, a song of Mahler's.
Lacking a source-book or promotions,
I showed one child the colors of
A luna moth and how to love.

I taught myself to name my name,
To bark back, loosen love and crying;
To ease my woman so she came,
To ease an old man who was dying.
I have not learned how often I
Can win, can love, but choose to die.

I have not learned there is a lie
Love shall be blonder, slimmer, younger;
That my equivocating eye
Loves only by my body's hunger;
That I have forces true to feel,
Or that the lovely world is real.

While scholars speak authority
And wear their ulcers on their sleeves,
My eyes in spectacles shall see
These trees procure and spend their leaves.
There is a value underneath
The gold and silver in my teeth.

Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives,
We shall afford our costly seasons;
There is a gentleness survives
That will outspeak and has its reasons.
There is a loveliness exists,
Preserves us, not for specialists.


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Trouble

Miles From Nowhere on a Two For Tuesday

Quotes & Quotables

“We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”


-------------------------------------------------------------------------Henry James

Playing in the Traffic

The Band

The Liminal Poet

It's no secret that I have not been writing & publishing much poetry lately. However, I'm glad to announce that my poem "My Father's Hand" which has held a special place in my heart regardless of my poetic sensibilities has found a home. Darryl Salach, editor of The Toronto Quarterly has graciously agreed to publish it in the next issue. It's a print journal that has just been started up. This is what issue one looks like:

The first issue of The Toronto Quarterly is now available through lulu.com. Please click on the link to order a copy of The Toronto Quarterly Issue 1:

http://www.lulu.com/content/3888882

There is a great interview with Hollace Metzger in our first issue. She is a talented poet/photographer and painter who left the United States, moving to Paris to find her true self. Also in this issue are poets such as John Dorsey, A.D. Winans, Penn Kemp, Geraldine Green, Desi Dinardo, R.D. Armstrong, Melanie Pierluigi, Jim Johnstone and many more. There are also music and book reviews along with samplings of photography from Tammy Hanlon and Kelly Hayner and more!

P.S.: My poem "My Father's Hand" should be appearing in Toronto Quarterly Issue 2

Poetry in Vitro - Vol 3, No. 12... (or)... Look at What my Muse Dragged in!

The Resident Poet Wears Prada

“Who is this woman with the feverish grin?”
--------------------------------------------------Unknown -- to Everyone But Me



She collects designer tissue boxes
and perfumed candle containers.
She knows Emily – fucking - Dickinson’s
Poem 54 ad verbatim and has spoken
at length on the agony of her art form.

She claims that anguish is good
medicine for the lack of creative juices.
But she wouldn’t know pathos if it came up
and bit her Pilates - perfected posterior.
Be still for her poetry is in all the right places...

The literary journal she edits is called:
The Fear of Open Spaces. Her Facebook
list of friends is a who’s who compendium
of literati – she’s well connected -
to the lack of the introspective.


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Margaret Atwood

Night Poem


There is nothing to be afraid of,
it is only the wind
changing to the east, it is only
your father------the thunder
your mother------the rain

In this country of water
with its beige moon damp as a mushroom,
its drowned stumps and long birds
that swim, where the moss grows
on all sides of the trees
and your shadow is not your shadow
but your reflection,

your true parents disappear
when the curtain covers your door.
We are the others,
the ones from under the lake
who stand silently beside your bed
with our heads of darkness.
We have come to cover you
with red wool,
with our tears and distant whispers.

You rock in the rain's arms,
the chilly ark of your sleep,
while we wait, your night
father and mother,
with our cold hands and dead flashlight,
knowing we are only
the wavering shadows thrown
by one candle, in this echo
you will hear twenty years later.



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Merry Xmas

No Time

This Ain't No Charlie Brown

Wither Whithers?

Some CPR With CCR

Should Poets Retire?

Athletes do it - and I don't mean using steroids. Professionals from most walks of life do it. So why shouldn't poets meet mandatory conditions for retirement? What if the creative spark blows out and does not rekindle in phoenix-life fashion? Might this happen at any age or is it age-specific? (Have I asked enough questions already?)

Is there an age when one's poetic acuity wanes? The mind after all, much like its fleshy counterpart declines in later years. Are some more established (perhaps over-established) poets rehashing old rhetoric - much like a one-trick pony? Difficult to say isn't it, since the creative process cannot be quantifiably studied, measured and/or defined. What triggers a creative episode in one poet might very well have no effect in another.

I had better stop thinking about this as it is over-taxing my brain and giving me migraines. I'm ready for my cup of cocoa. Just thinking out loud....