Hello, my very marvelous versifiers! It is time once again for a new Word List! This time, I have liberated She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo from its 40-year snooze on a shelf of the bookcase where I like to keep all of my poetry books.
The blurb on the back reads as follows: This is not a book. It is an opening onto woman light, into hatching, into awakening. The ruined & dismembered, imprisoned, dispossessed, ride out on a bright thundering of horses in a light of illumination & love. Who touches this book touches a woman. If you want to remember what you never listened to & what you didn't know you knew, or wanted to know, open this sound & forget to fear. A woman is appearing in the horizon light. --Meridel Le Sueur.
Well all righty then. A tad overwritten & overblown & it has the weird "&'s" instead of "ands" but hey. The book itself does none of that, and yet, I have owned my copy since the 80's and have never read it through because it just does not grab me. It isn't bad, I just don't think it is all that and a strawberry milkshake. Honestly, it stopped one step short of sending me off to sleep. She somehow writes of difficult, worthy subjects without making me feel. However, I did like the ending of the title poem:
She had some horses she loved.
She had some horses she hated.
These were the same horses.
Joy Harjo is a Poet Laureate of the United States of America. (So is Billy Collins, but while he's cute and readable, I don't find him to be earth-shattering either.) But what do I know? Harjo is famous, celebrated, and enjoyed by many. To paraphrase the B52's, before I talk, I should read her book! (But I know, after compiling this week's List, that I never will. Little lending library, here we come.) Pay no attention to me, this long-haired, overfed, leaping gnome and her crackpot opinions!
My views aside, Harjo's book was just fine for compiling a word list! What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new original poem of our own. Then just link up, visit others, and then spout rot about the famous poet of your choice!
Hello my poetic posse, it is time again for a new Word List! Way back in July, when the sun was high and the sidewalk hot, our source was a volume by poet A. E. Stallings called Like. This week we return to Ms. Stallings but switch to another volume called Hapax (Hapax: once, once only, once and for all.)
I love how she expresses both prosaic and weighty ideas in a most appealing and usually rhyming style. Rhyme seems to have somehow become the red-headed stepchild of modern poetry. Free verse, blank verse, prose poetry, and the dreaded imposter that calls itself poetry but is actually just journaling have taken over, it seems to me. Do I write free verse, blank verse, and prose poetry? You bet I do, but I also love rhyme and form, all the more as I grow older. And so, A.E. Stallings delights me, much as A. E. Housman always has. All these A.E.'s!
Last time, I didn't give you any examples of Stallings' work, but this time i am going to provide two. The first is one called "Apotropaic." The title means "power to ward off evil."
Pity Evil his quaintness and old-fangled
Manners, his age, his nerves so raw that bells
And firecrackers leave him spooked and jangled.
Shy of onion, garlic, pungent smells,
His stomach thrown off by a pinch of salt,
He hankers for blandness like an invalid.
He stands on ceremony. He will halt
When not invited in. You can be rid
Of his presence by vulgarity--eschew
His curious eye by spitting, and offend
His queer aesthetics with the color blue.
Beauty attracts him. He's quick to befriend
The lucky, the talented, the heaven-sent--
At your service if not your command--
Courtly, brought close by compliment,
Bowing, with his black hat in his hand.
___
And, "Another Lullaby For Insomniacs"
Sleep, she will not linger:
She turns her moon-cold shoulder.
With no ring on her finger,
You cannot hope to hold her.
She turns her moon-cold shoulder
And tosses off the cover.
You cannot hope to hold her:
She has another lover.
She tosses off the cover
And lays the darkness bare.
She has another lover,
Her heart is otherwhere.
She lays the darkness bare.
You slowly realize
Her heart is otherwhere.
There's distance in her eyes.
You slowly realize
That she will never linger,
With distance in her eyes
And no ring on her finger.
I have tried to suss out what form the latter example is, but failed. It is similar to, but not a Kyrielle or a villanelle. In any event, I love both its depth and its workmanship. You too?
What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. It need not rhyme or use form, that is merely what I personally like about the work of A.E.Stallings. Then just link up, visit others, and then try to get some sleep, despite the Black Hat Man! This prompt remains active through Sunday.
