The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Rune of the Finland Woman

For Sára Karig

"You are so wise," the reindeer said, "you can bind the winds of the world in a single strand."—H. C. Andersen, "The Snow Queen"

She could bind the world's winds in a single strand.
She could find the world's words in a singing wind.
She could lend a weird will to a mottled hand.
She could wind a willed word from a muddled mind.

She could wend the wild woods on a saddled hind.
She could sound a wellspring with a rowan wand.
She could bind the wolf's wounds in a swaddling band.
She could bind a banned book in a silken skin.

She could spend a world war on invaded land.
She could pound the dry roots to a kind of bread.
She could feed a road gang on invented food.
She could find the spare parts of the severed dead.

She could find the stone limbs in a waste of sand.
She could stand the pit cold with a withered lung.
She could handle bad puns in the slang she learned.
She could dandle foundlings in their mother tongue.

She could plait a child's hair with a fishbone comb.
She could tend a coal fire in the Arctic wind.
She could mend an engine with a sewing pin.
She could warm the dark feet of a dying man.

She could drink the stone soup from a doubtful well.
She could breathe the green stink of a trench latrine.
She could drink a queen's share of important wine.
She could think a few things she would never tell.

She could learn the hand code of the deaf and blind.
She could earn the iron keys of the frozen queen.
She could wander uphill with a drunken friend.
She could bind the world's winds in a single strand.

--

The O'Connor's St. Patrick's Day Party

I

All those beautiful dear faces
Seen but once a year on Yale Terrace
A magical connection wherever you turn

Poetry and music in the air
On this auspicious day
A James Joycean- William Butler Yeatsian
Occasion of hospitality so grand
Where all gathered sing
To high heaven
with a lust for spring
And a tear for dear old Ireland

And in that hour profound and yet so merry
We inherit "The Gift"
And sense the presence of the Leprechaun
and the wee Faire

The splendid declamation of young Liam
of "Emmett at the Dock"
Everyone present feeling
As to their Irish stock

II

And the ancient songs so grand
Played sublime, intricate and well
By the brave musicians of the band
A fitting prelude to the Earth
Tilting on its axis toward the sun

To climax in "The Minstrel Boy to the War is Gone"
Which lasted centuries fought hand to hand
The Foeman driven at long last from the land

We lift a glass and gaze 'round
A silence falls as we contemplate
The bravery and luck of those
Who left and sailed to this shore, to Boston
And a toast is given...

"Here's to the years we thought, perhaps, were lost.
Here's to moments of truth and to what they cost.
Here's to our friends, the precious and the few.
Here's to your fondest dreams, dear hearts,
That are destined to come true."

-- Joe Bergin

Arbor Edict

In the Arnold Arboretum,
There is never risk of tedium;
Trees and shrubs and plants galore,
Flora species by the score.
You should plan to come and meet 'em,
For Heaven's sake though please don't feed 'em!
That is someone else's chore,
Look-smell-touch but nothing more!
Do not feed 'em, do not weed 'em,
And this is crucial do not eat 'em;
We are not a smorgasbord
Or the Café Herbivore;
We are just an arboretum,
That is all I'll say no more.

--Brian Roake

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Birdwings

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you are bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralysed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

March 14, 2015: The 15th Annual!

Tip: How to Figure Out The Date Of Poetry And Stout, For Any Year:

Step 1: Find St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, on the calendar.
Step 2: Using your finger, go back from there until you get to the Saturday before St. Patrick’s Day.
Step 3: In the calendar square for that Saturday, write “Go To Poetry And Stout.”

This method works for any calendar that uses the 12-month, seven-day-per-week convention.

From "A Three Dog Life," a memoir by Abigail Thomas

When Carolina (the newest dog) arrived there was the need to establish a pecking order. For the first week it was mostly a dog version of cussing, then one afternoon Rosie and Carolina had a fight, and when it was over Carolina's ear was bitten through. As I tended to the bleeding, I realized that like it or not, I was right in the middle of a wild and natural process...

It's simpler than what humans go through. "Your voice sounds funny, are you mad at me?" a young woman speaks anxiously, cell phone pressed to ear, and I wonder how people ever manage to hook up. Dogs are never in a bad mood over something you said at breakfast. Dogs never sniff at the husks of old conversations, or conduct autopsies on weekends gone wrong. An unexamined life may not be worth living, but the overexamined life is hell. We talk too much.

--Abigail Thomas [Louise Outler]

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall

well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.


--Billy Collins

Child Development

As sure as prehistoric fish grew legs
and sauntered off the beaches into forests
working up some irregular verbs for their
first conversation, so three-year-old children
enter the phase of name-calling.

Every day a new one arrives and is added
to the repertoire. You Dumb Goopyhead,
You Big Sewerface, You Poop-on-the-Floor
(a kind of Navaho ring to that one)
they yell from knee level, their little mugs
flushed with challenge.
Nothing Samuel Johnson would bother tossing out
in a pub, but then the toddlers are not trying
to devastate some fatuous Enlightenment hack.

They are just tormenting their fellow squirts
or going after the attention of the giants
way up there with their cocktails and bad breath
talking baritone nonsense to other giants,
waiting to call them names after thanking
them for the lovely party and hearing the door close.

The mature save their hothead invective
for things: an errant hammer, tire chains,
or receding trains missed by seconds,
though they know in their adult hearts,
even as they threaten to banish Timmy to bed
for his appalling behavior,
that their bosses are Big Fatty Stupids,
their wives are Dopey Dopeheads
and that they themselves are Mr. Sillypants.

--Billy Collins [Claudia Dunne]

The City of Boston is looking for a poet. We should know someone, right?

Dear P&S friends,

It is rare that you find a job posting for a poet. While the pay isn't great, the prestige will make up for it. Please help Poetry & Stout launch its first poet to Laureate status, and pass this along to all who might be the right one!

Lulu - at Poetry & Stout 2014

The Girl from Ipanema

The Ides of March, 2014

Wouldn’t it take a certain arrogance or pride to hold a party on the Ides of March?

Or, for that matter, to attend one?

Are we too busy to heed the signs? Too unaware of portentous omens? Too lacking in simple humility?

If this were a Greek tragedy, the gods would certainly punish such hubris:

-there’d be salmonella in the artichoke dip
-the keg would run flat…or worse yet, dry
-Jerry’s falsetto during “O, Danny Boy” would shatter our windshields
-the stage, at the end of Act V, would be littered with corpses

But, then again, it is the feast of St. Patrick,
And the Irish have been beating the odds for centuries.

They majored in tragedy, minored in hard knocks.

And as a wiser poet than I once said, “I’d walk a longish road, through drear, hard rain, and fog for a well-pulled pint.”

Who am I, a New England Jew, to argue?

Was it Yates? Or maybe Brendan Behan?

Either way, it was another scribe – a Brit – who coined for us “the Ides of March.”

I first read it in the tenth-grade English class of Mr. Wills,

Who, if the bathroom stall near the library was correct, “eats pills.”

In Act I, Scene 2 of Julius Caesar, a Soothsayer – Yes, a Soothsayer; Rome was lousy with them in those days – cries, “Beware the Ides of March!”

He says it three times before exiting stage right, and we all know that bud luck runs in threes, like the number of leaves found on the much more common yet luck-less clover.

Caesar, stubborn as an Irish mule, pays no heed to the Soothsayer’s warnings.

But, this is high drama, and there are, to be sure, other signs.

Looking out on a tumultuous storm, here is Casca, a conspirator, talking to Cicero, a Senator, in Act I, Scene 3:

“Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,
I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen
The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds:
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.”

And, as if that’s not enough, here’s Calpurnia (Wife of Caesar) recounting her dream in Act II, Scene 2:

“Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies,
Yet now they fright me. There is one within,
Besides the things that we have heard and seen,
Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.
A lioness hath whelped in the streets;
And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead;
Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,
In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;
The noise of battle hurtled in the air,
Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan,
And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.
O Caesar! these things are beyond all use,
And I do fear them.”

So, let’s recount:
The heavens are raining fire and blood; ghosts and the undead are strolling about; Lions are whelping in the town square,

And what does Caesar do?

Ignores it all. He might just as well have gone to a St. Patrick’s Day party for all he cared for such superstitions.

“Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once,” he smugly answers his spouse.

“Of all the wonders that I yet have heard.
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.”

You can say that again. Sir Julius gets it in the back nine times at the start of Act III.

The moral, as my own Calpurnia would say: Always listen to the woman.

But here I stand, despite the Soothsayer’s prophesy, on the Ides of March.

What’s a Roman with an omen to do?

I could cite my Old Man, a voluntary poet in his own right, when he heard me practicing Marc Anthony’s soliloquy for Mr. Wills’ English class;

Quoth me Da: “He who drinks beer, Shakespeare.”

--Steve Hodin

Field of Vision

I remember this woman who sat for years
In a wheelchair, looking staight ahead
Out the window at sycamore trees unleafing
And leafing at the far end of the lane.

Straight out past the TV in the corner,
The stunted, agitated howthorn bush,
The same small calves with their backs to wind and
rain,
The same acre of ragwort, the same mountain.

She was steadfast as the big window itself.
Her brow was clear as the chrome bits of the chair.
She never lamented once and she never
Carried a spare ounce of emotional weight.

Face to face with her was an education
Of the sort you got across a well-braced gate --
One of those lean, clean, iron, roadside ones
Between two whiewashed pillars, where you could see

Deeper into the country than you expected
And discovered that the field behind the hedge
Grew more distincly strange as you kept standing
Focused and drawwn in by what barred the way.

-- Seamus Heaney

The Season of Too-Many-Pockets

I frisk myself, like a beat cop on a punk thief.
"Where's that wallet, you bugger? That phone, those keys?"
I maintain my innocence but I still can't find my stuff.

I'm tellin' you
It's not me that's the felon, it's this damned winter-
It's stolen my breath
It's robbed me of my now-meager dignity,
As the nose runs and the eyes stream.
It mugs me as I struggle uphill among the office towers
Assaulting me with gales thrown in my face.
It trips me up on black ice and brittle bricks of last week's slush.
It's frigid, it's snizzling, it's offering up that "wintry mix" that sounds
so much like a trendy new cocktail
But that's really only a misery-to-go.
Damn it...

I've filed a complaint you know
But I expect it won't be heard for a few more weeks.

-- Louise Outler

Get Up, Please

The two musicians pour forth their souls abroad
in such an ecstasy as to charm the audience
like none I’ve ever seen before, and when
they finish, they rise and hug each other,
and then the tabla player bends down
and touches the feet of the santoor player in an obvious gesture

of respect, but what does it mean? I don’t find out
until the next day at the Econolodge in Tifton, GA,
where I stop on my way home after the concert
and ask Mrs. Patel, the owner, if she has ever heard
of these two musicians or knows
anything about the tabla and the santoor and especially the latter,

which looks like the love child of a typewriter
and a hammered dulcimer only with a lot of extra wires
and tuning posts, and she doesn’t seem to understand
my questions, though when I ask her about one person touching
the other’s feet and then bend down
to show her, she lights up and says, "It means he thinks the other

is a god. My children do this before they go off
to school in the morning, as though to say, 'Mummy,
you are a god to us,’" and I look at her
for a second and then surprise us both when I say, "Oh, Mrs. Patel!"
and burst into tears, because I think,
first, of my own dead parents and then of little Lakshmi and Padma

Patel going off to their classes in Tift County schools,
the one a second-grader who is studying homophones
(“I see the sea”) and the other of whom is in the fourth
grade, where she must master long division with
its cruel insistence on numbers lined
up under one another with exacting precision and then crawling

toward the page’s bottom as you, the divider, subtract
and divide again and again, all the while recording
on the top line an answer that grows increasingly
lengthy as you fret and chew the tip of your pencil
and persevere, though before they grab
their books and lunch boxes and pile onto the bus, they take time

to touch Mrs. Patel’s feet and Mr. Patel’s as well,
assuming there is such a person. Later my friend
Avni tells me you touch the feet of your elders
to respect the distance they have traveled
and the earth they have touched, and you
say “namaste”not because you take yoga at that little place

on the truck route between the t-shirt store
and the strip club but because it means “I bow
to the light within you,” and often the people being
bowed to will stoop down and collect you as if to say
"You too are made of the same light!"
Reader, if your parents are alive, think of them now, of all the gods

whose feet you never touched or touched enough.
And if not your parents, then someone else.
You know someone like this, right? Someone who belongs
to the "mighty dead," as Keats called them.
Don’t you wish that person were here now
so you could touch their feet and whisper, "You are my god"?

I can’t imagine Keats saying, “You too are made
of the same light,” though I can see him saying,
as he did to Fanny Brawne, “I have been astonished
that Men could die Martyrs for religion—I have
shudder'd at it—I shudder no more—I could
be martyr'd for my Religion—Love is my religion—I could die for that—

I could die for you.” My own feet have touched
the earth nearly three times as long as Keats’s did,
and I’m hardly the oldest person
I know. So let this poem brush across the feet of anyone
who reads it. Poetry is
my religion—well, I wouldn’t die for it. I’d live for it, though.

-- David Kirby

Grandpa Harry's Poem and Young Harry's Prose