Song of a Reformed Headhunter

I Do, I Do In me (the worm) clearly is no righteousness, but this— persistence             H.D., “The Walls Do Not Fall” I’m eating my way through the books of dead women poets— Aemilia Lanyer’s garden where Eve is blameless the robin-eye in Elizabeth Bishop Phillis Wheatley’s bird- of-paradise the swart swan song by Marianne Moore Anna Wickham’s strangled cry the tunes of Li Qingzhao Annie Finch, not the American anthologist, the Countess of Winchilsea the living are eaten too Elisabeth Bletsoe’s Sherborne Woodcock, Pied Wagtail, Starling Molly Peacock Rita Dove And one born in Ghana whose name is a birdcall Ata Ama Aidoo

(Image from the Peabody Essex Museum) Pilgrim Flask Here we have thirst And patience, from the first —Marianne Moore, “An Egyptian Pulled Glass Bottle in the Shape of a Fish” Ming Dynasty export to Catholic Spain, which rode the longest overland trade route to come to rest on its one spreading foot, the floral sprays ringed by a dotted chain, the coat of arms a country’s bold motive— ferrying spices from the Philippines, harvesting silver from Peruvian mines— this bottle makes a bloody wedding gift. Take it, my sister, take it. Marriage has traded what is here for what will be amidst the fears of crooks and banditry, and molded, for a few, a golden age with massacre, disease, prison and rape, yet keeps a promise intact in full view. A dream of milky white and cobalt blue, this old dispenser gives an older shape. Inflated goatskin on a twist of twine, it saved a restless man dying of thirst. For the faithful, the clay ampulla nursed the holy olive from the ...

For the Massachusetts Poetry Festival (next Saturday, people, in Salem), I have been asked to write an ekphrastic on an artefact from the Peabody Essex Museum. I wrote on this blue and white porcelain flask. (Image from the Peabody Essex Museum website ) Pilgrim Flask Here we have thirst And patience, from the first —Marianne Moore, “An Egyptian Pulled Glass Bottle in the Shape of a Fish” Ming Dynasty export to Spain, which sailed or rode the longest overland trade route to come to rest on its one spreading foot, on a sideboard or centre mantelpiece, the coat of arms a country’s golden age, silver harvested from deep American mines, spices ferried back from the Philippines, this bottle makes a beautiful wedding gift. Please take it, sister, though it’s eight years late. I could not give it earlier. Away from home, I was studying to be a poet. Angry, too, when your faith didn’t accept the fact that I am gay. Time has returned material fact back to a means of ...

What Are Years Indeed      in its surrendering      finds its continuing —Marianne Moore, “What Are Years”      Seventeen cherry trees on fire, a man’s red hair,      but they are not men and these are springtime leaves and flowers, not flames, indifferent to guilt, insensible to innocence, going softly when their time is up.      What is mortality?      What is eternity?      More representative the cherry branches in      a glass vase, cut but alive, their slashed stems sipping water, their tight royal velvet buds— so many—unfolded in a pink faint, clawing the air for air, more      rage-rousing, by far      more courageous, are,      as is their true support, not roots, but a table      made from cherry wood and fought for, with blind patience and wordless skill, a pedestal tr...

Marianne Moore in Japan The weak overcomes its      menace, the strong over-      comes itself. —Marianne Moore, “Nevertheless” I don’t think I would like you very much, Marianne Moore, if we should meet in a beach resort or poetry workshop. It is unladylike, you advised Miss Bishop, to write water closet . She ignored you and now the student is far more popular. She has vulnerability on her side, and the times are partial to helplessness, after wars, pandemics, home foreclosures. What do you have? Another armored animal. See what I mean? How does a reader get close to such glittering finish, how does a lover who will smudge? It’s not sexy to be counting syllables beneath the breath when you can write up ( write it! ) a disaster. Still, I would like to know what you make of the earthquake in Japan, the epicenter at Fukushima prefecture, when shells broke up and we are shown up to be soft through and through. Would you cry with us, castig...

Most art shows stroke the museum-goer to a climax. Chaos & Classicism , at the Guggenheim, ends differently. Not in an anti-climax, but rather in a depressing one. After displaying beautiful classicizing works by the likes of Dix, Picasso, Balthus and Léger, the show leaves the rotunda and enters a room titled "The Dark Side of Classicism."  It is filled with paintings, murals and sculpture inspired by Fascism, depicting muscular warriors and heroic horsemen. At the end of the room plays the film of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, in which the Discus Thrower comes alive as a German triathlete. The art is bad, but therein lies my dissatisfaction with an otherwise enlightening show. The equation of bad art and bad idea is too easy. It would have been far more interesting, far more complicating, to show beautiful art done by bona fide Fascists. Do such works exist? Can they? Also saw two small sculptures by Spanish sculptor Pablo Gargallo, who appears in Marianne Moore...

TLS July 9 2010 from J.P.E. Harper-Scott's review of Roland John Wiley's Tchaikovsky , and Adam Zamoyski's Chopin: Prince of the Romantics : Very touching are Tchaikovsky's letters to his brother Modest in 1876, which show him racked by his urge to perform sexual acts that he admits are contrary to his Christian belief. "Buggermania," he writes. "forms an impassable gulf between me and most people." Admitting to thoughts of joining a monastery, Piotr implores his brother, whose sexual interests were similar, to exercise control over himself. Some of the letters are more explicit than others. of Josef Kotek, fifteen years his junior, he writes,  When he caresses me with his hand, when he lies with his head inclined on my breast, and run my hand through his hair and secretly kiss it . . . passion rages within me with such unimaginable strength . . . . Yet I am far from the desire for a physical bond. I feel that if this happened, I would cool towar...