Salamanders

Mingus at the Showplace

I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen,
and so I swung into action and wrote a poem,

and it was miserable, for that was how I thought
poetry worked: you digested experience and shat

literature. It was 1960 at The Showplace, long since
defunct, on West 4th St., and I sat at the bar,

casting beer money from a thin reel of ones,
the kid in the city, big ears like a puppy.

And I knew Mingus was a genius. I knew two
other things, but they were wrong, as it happened.

So I made him look at the poem.
“There’s a lot of that going around,” he said,

and Sweet Baby Jesus he was right. He laughed
amiably. He didn’t look as if he thought

bad poems were dangerous, the way some poets do.
If they were baseball executives they’d plot

to destroy sandlots everywhere so that the game
could be saved from children. Of course later

that night he fired his pianist in mid-number
and flurried him from the stand.

“We’ve suffered a diminuendo in personnel,”
he explained, and the band played on.

The Storm

Now through the white orchard my little dog

Romps, breaking the new snow

With wild feet.

Running here running there, excited,

Hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins

Until the white snow is written upon

In large, exuberant letters,

A long sentence, expressing

The pleasures of the body in the world.

Oh, I could not have said it better myself.

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