National Poetry Month

[RedRosa]

Here in the US we're in the middle of National Poetry Month, so to celebrate I'm posting this link to Ana Karina reciting lines from Paul Eluard's The Capital of Pain, beautifully filmed by Jean-Luc Godard from his movie Alphaville:

[RedRosa]

Recent poetry collections that I've read:

Everything is Returned to the Soil by Briana Munoz, Flower Song Press, 2021.

Roots of Redemption by Iris De Anda, Flower Song Press, 2022.

Twenty Pandemicals by Charlotte Innes, Kelsy Books, 2021

[RedRosa]

National Poetry Month: SF Beat poet Bob Kaufman was born on this date 98 years ago.
THE NIGHT THAT LORCA COMES
SHALL BE A STRANGE NIGHT IN THE
SOUTH, IT SHALL BE THE TIME WHEN NEGROES LEAVE THE
SOUTH
FOREVER,
GREEN TRAINS SHALL ARRIVE
FROM RED PLANET MARS
CRACKLING BLUENESS SHALL SEND TOOTH-COVERED CARS FOR
THEM
TO LEAVE IN, TO GO INTO
THE NORTH FOREVER, AND I SEE MY LITTLE GIRL MOTHER
AGAIN WITH HER CROSS THAT
IS NOT BURNING, HER SKIRTS
OF BLACK, OF ALL COLORS, HER AURA
OF FAMILIARITY. THE SOUTH SHALL WEEP
BITTER TEARS TO NO AVAIL,
THE NEGROES HAVE GONE
INTO CRACKLING BLUENESS.
CRISPUS ATTUCKS SHALL ARRIVE WITH THE BOSTON
COMMONS, TO TAKE ELISSI LANDI
NORTH, CRISPUS ATTUCKS SHALL
BE LAYING ON BOSTON COMMONS,
ELISSI LANDI SHALL FEEL ALIVE
AGAIN. I SHALL CALL HER NAME
AS SHE STEPS ON TO THE BOSTON
COMMONS, AND FLIES NORTH FOREVER,
LINCOLN SHALL BE THERE,
TO SEE THEM LEAVE THE
SOUTH FOREVER, ELISSI LANDI, SHE WILL BE
GREEN.
THE WHITE SOUTH SHALL GATHER AT
PRESERVATION HALL.

[VirgoGirl]

Born in Swansea in 1914, Dylan Thomas is the poet and writer most famous for poems such as ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night':

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.



Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.



Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.



Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.



Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.



And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

[VirgoGirl]

Dean Koontz is an author that is one of my favorites. I love his books and he always writes a poem for each and every book he publishes which is printed on the first page. My favorite book of his is "The Bad Place" and this is the poem for this book:

"Every eye sees its own special vision;
every ear hears a most different song.
In each man's troubled heart, and incision
would reveal a unique, shameful wrong.
Stranger fiends hide here in human guise
than reside in the valleys of Hell.
But goodness, kindness and love arise
in the heart of the poor beast, as well."

[RedRosa]

For National Poetry Month, some Frank O'Hara. In 1971, T.S. Eliot's onetime protégé George Barker told me this poem, a favorite of mine about Billie Holiday, was shit. It is my belief that more people continue to read O'Hara's shit than Barker's. History is funny that way.

The Day Lady Died

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me
I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness
and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it
and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

[RedRosa]

This is from Robert Lowell's last collection Day by Day. Although Lowell is not among my favorites, I think this poem is useful to other poets because it describes his method:

"Epilogue”

But sometimes everything I write

With the threadbare art of my eye

Seems a snapshot,

Lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,

Heightened from life,

Yet paralyzed by fact.

All’s misalliance.

Yet why not say what happened?

Pray for the grace of accuracy

Vermeer gave it to the sun’s

Illumination

Stealing like the tide across a map

To his girl solid with yearning.

We are poor passing facts,

Warned by that to give

Each figure in the photograph

His loving name.