SPRING


The real warm weather, warblers, the sparrows
going after dryer lint. John Gallaher sent me a
suite of poems, the last 8 or so in a series of
daily poems, and almost all have a strong center,
a lot of very pleasing syntax, sentences that are
going somewhere (then sometimes don't, and sometimes
do). These eight poems were written in about three
days. He's mad, entirely mad! I took pencils
to the novel, again, and it goes to my editor
in June and then the big push (thank God Poets &
Writers published that "Look at the Big Six" in
publishing. How would we--any of us--know where to
send without them?). I've been walking, jogging,
through fields, around old giant buildings. Cabbage
butterflies are out and I gave one a ride on my
shoulder. Everyone digs on Hal Hartley, but his
dogs are a lot better than Woody Allen's dogs.
I liked No Such Thing, but admit the best thing
in it was Robert John Burke playing the monster.
Sarah Polley, despite the write-up today in The
New York Times, not so hot. She speaks like she's
reading her lines, normal for Hartley actors,
but there's no undercurrent of humor anywhere
in her performance. Anyway, the landscapes
are compelling. It's an odd story, and really never
comes together, but the social criticism in Hartley
stands there in the middle of the movie, looking
like overplayed TV commercials from the sixties,
and I love that about his movies. I watched The
Book of Life as well and my favorite part of it was
Thomas Jay Ryan (he played Henry Fool in Henry Fool)
playing the Devil. He keeps running into microphones
around the city and delivering small speeches. There's
nothing all that profound here, but the philosophical one-
liners keep coming, and it's smart, stylistically
chaotic. So there's that. The Tigers won again,
on a home run by Brandon Inge. The Detroit Lions
fans are already chanting for Matt Millen's head
(they took another wide receiver on the first round,
something that hasn't worked the last five years).
I received the new Early Poems of Franz Wright,
compliments of the author. Now I've got the original
books, the collected in Ill Lit, and this collection.
You can't have enough milk in the house, or Franz Wright's
poetry. I need to respond to a blogging tag, btw
(end of semester frenzy). I will, I will. I need to
get up to Michigan and fish Augusta Creek. Trout season
opened there this weekend. I know secrets about
Augusta Creek. L. and a canoe trip this week, followed
by serious work. I'm back to an alphabetical arrangement
of the poems in Coldest Winter . . . I've improved
a couple of stories, again (again!!). The novel, the novel,
and a possible interview at another college (I'd like to
stay in South Bend, but I'll do what I can afford--what
choice?) Re-reading Walden. Jesus, what a book.
I went to sleep at ten, woke up, now will sleep at two.
My hours are all screwed up.

What it's worth

(an Ashbery Erasure poem)


you think it's the calm
of day to day, a naïve star,

the past
the waters

not something one lives for

I ask you
who repairs the model
of our loud
white sister

we sleep to rescue no one

Yet time flew over us

sex was coming through with
the usual blossoms

I mean the father can't even wake up

ERRORS

(an Ashbery Erasure poem)


weather in boxes
lit red with snow

Carnivores, and light

winter is beyond the bed

tall and violent

i thought of your plight
cave doping
a tit of unrisen love

Flat head that fumes
desire for falling

pay her

the rope’s silence is true?

*

A new Erasure, in honor of one appearing on Verse Daily
yesterday. I've got a book's worth of them, passing forty
in number, doing more, and I'm looking to publish them in
book form. Sorry I've been so quiet--end of the term, a great
visit--reading, discussion, river-gazing--with Mr. Gallaher,
who got everyone here excited.

I will need my annual, in May, brain transplant.

I keep dreaming of roots dripping blood underground.

What's weird is it's relaxing.

Although not as relaxing as all the woodpeckers mobbing
the suet these days.

JUNK



When I get five pieces of junk mail asking me
to pay to attend various writers' conferences
what am I supposed to do? Does Robert Hass
get this stuff? Does Ted Kooser? Does
Rae Armantrout? Tell me, Greg Rappleye, do you
get piles of this stuff in your mailbox?
I'm sure there's a big, smoking machine that's
sucking up numbers and street
names out of the air, off the internet, whatever.
Add it to the spam it's a constant reminder
what a huge industry this whole writing thing
has turned into. Won't somebody go through
the list and separate those who might be interested
from those who wouldn't in a millian years
be interested? These conferences are of value
to some people. A lot of people. Send your ads
to them. I get so much junk from Mid-American
Review I stuck whatever they sent me in an envelope
and mailed it back with a message in black marker.
My apologies to the person who opens that envelope.

Thank You


"Oh thank you for giving me the chance
Of being ship's doctor! I am sorry that I shall have to refuse--"


from "Thank You," by Kenneth Koch

OUTBURST FROM A CHEMICAL SLEEP



I want a watch
made from the bones
in God's hands,
a house with a chair
nailed to the roof,
and a dame who cooks
in the flesh,
and with the shades up,
or the bet is off.

*

John Rybicki is one of our best kept secrets, king of the VERB (not so
much in this example), image after image swinging up and splitting
and propelling us forward. His lone book is from 1996, Traveling at
High Speeds, plus a chapbook. He's got a new book coming out soon,
I'm not sure when, from Triquarterly Books.

Here's another poem:

In Directions


I roll awake on the carpet over
the bones of last night's words.
Outside, kite-tailed children whip
against the air, and the day
lifts its cages off of my blood.

Yesterday I hugged my old man,
as always, for the last time,
slapping his back
as we let go, not crying
until my half-blind Charlie dog
stopped chasing my car.
He swung his nose to some shrubs,
then scratched his back against them,
letting go of me entirely.

AT SOUTH FORK CEMETERY

Henry Taylor


It had no voice, or anything like that,
as it came across a field to where we stood
cleaning up an overgrown burial ground--
a quiet whirlwind we could see was there
by leaves it spiraled higher than the trees.

It slapped a leaf or two aginst our bodies,
then wandered on across the empty road.
As if the thoughtless world were generous,
we took that quirk of air as something given,
and turned to cutting brush and righting stones.

*

I like this poem but it stinks of the Puritan.
It doesn't matter. I've liked standing, working
for the parks, watching these whorls of wind
come toward and pass through/over me better.

STUFF


Stacey Richter's "Velvet," a short story, is about
a terrier, from the dog's POV. I'm a sucker for
these. I remember loving, years ago, Shakespeare's
Dog, a novel by Leon Rooke. That was in first
person, while Richter's is in third, limited O.
Other stories in the book are strained, merely
clever, bending under the pressure of trying to
mirror human consciousness as it tries to figure
out what's true. I'm being unfair. The stories are
pretty well done, but they clunk occasionally--
a too-obvious piece of dialogue here, a character
that comes close but doesn't quiet ring true
there. "Velvet" is seamless and heartbreaking in
its quiet way. It's as much about the family as it
is about the dog, and the family suffers from the
comparison (intentionally, or by design I'd say).
If you read David Means's "The Secret Goldfish"
you've seen the dynamic. They are both journey
stories, and both are based on the human tendency
for self-absorption, resulting in neglect for the
animals.

*

Snow everywhere. I drove north through whiteouts,
snow blowing from pines. The Tigers are off to a slow
start. Poems recently taken by Blue Mesa Review
and by Temenos. Last night's movie Love, Ludlow.
Not bad, sweet. It's an old story, but the performances
were fresh.

*

A childhood friend, a man in Muskegon, called his wife,
threatened suicide by fire, then burned his house down
while he was inside it. I never thought of him as a depres-
sed sort, although he liked his pot (we all did). His wife
and two children have been left homeless. How do you
honor this, him? Obviously the pain was very intense.
Years ago this man's best friend (he lived a few houses
away) did himself in in his garage, car running. As Brigit
Kelly says in the poem "Song": "They (he) finished the
job." My mother's best friend's son shot himself behind
Pic-n-Pac. The father of my closest friend around the
time of junior high later shot himself in his back yard.
When I was in Little League there was a pitcher with a
fastball who terrified me. A few years after striking out
(I got a single once--out of six at bats), he killed himself.
All of these people lived within a few blocks of the house
I grew up in. And now all that has come back to me.
I tried to write about this in Downsides, the poem
entitled "Maranatha" for one. I don't know what to do
with the information, the dark feelings. What is it about
Muskegon, Michigan, anyway? It's true in the 70s
it had the highest unemployment in the nation (ahead of
Flint for a time), but none of these people were tied to
the car industry. There's the drugs, the alcohol. There's
the divorce. I have my own strange experiences there,
and it colors everything. The dunes at three a.m., the
outbreaks of violence, the fact that nearly every adult I ever
met there was a pathological maniac (Including teachers).
Anyway, I wrote a novel about it, or about part of it. There
is much that is beautiful about Muskegon. Good Lord.
Sorry to get heavy so close to Easter. Like I said, the
snow has fallen and there's a purity to that.

*

I fly to Atlanta to read at Clayton State University
on Thursday. I'm looking forward to that, although not
the drive into Chicago to catch a plane.

Okay. So it's snowing. A lot. It's cold. Why be
pissy about it. This is me stopping, say, in Niles,
happy to take a little walk in my new red
tennis shoes. It's Friday. GOOD Friday!
I've got my umbrella in case it rains. Hooray!
But , no. It can't rain. It's too cold. Yay!!!!!!

PIECES OF THE GLACIER

(for Jeff G., 2007)


My yellow light cried for her,
my original ambition.
It was so unlike praying with the owls.

So you sweat a little. You've got
gasoline and a cooler.
Barbed wire keeps the cattle separate from the people.

You can finagle a lesser
dream from the punishment.
It's not the last worst church standing in water.

SURROUNDED BY OCEAN



Inmates stop breathing,
a silence, a row of TVs with the sound off,
low light in the chapel.

Can't take the air with you it just knows.

And then we watched Orpheus eating cake.
He was sitting on a rock.

. . . just a new poem

FORMICA AND THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY



Put there this path,
insect-less universe. Shine where the meat won't.

A mob comes, voiced
you might wonder like crinoline?

It gets hot inside so close to the egg.

A tower where the ringing bed,
taken right off the blackboard,
promises a secular head roll.

Cheeks, mouth, perhaps teeth, jaw, chin, perhaps jewelry . . .

New star for the sun
and the many million
naked human backs

and all the effort of adapting

while still desiring birth on a flat surface.

He promised her a nipple ring.

I think most lambs smile in heaven.