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Apologies to Yeats!

The Karen and Nin Show

Karen Schubert and I are the featured readers today at Shawnee State University for the release party of their Women’s Center journal, Tapestries. We love to read together, so we're pretty excited.

I haven't had the chance to hear Karen read for a while. She's such a talented reader and poet. Here's a taste:

The rest of Karen's poem can be read here:

Karen's blog is In This Light.

I am not absolutely certain what I will be reading, but I promised to read a few from The Book of Orgasms. A few years ago, I announced at a reading that there would be no more orgasms and that I meant it. The audience was really unhappy with me.

The Fiddler from the Boonies

The Fiddler of Dooney
by W.B. Yeats

WHEN I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Moharabuiee.

I passed my brother and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer;
I read in my book of songs
I bought at the Sligo fair.

When we come at the end of time,
To Peter sitting in state,
He will smile on the three old spirits,
But call me first through the gate;

For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle
And the merry love to dance:

And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With ‘Here is the fiddler of Dooney!’
And dance like a wave of the sea.

Two Legs . . .

I was having trouble drawing legs with my mouse. Not a problem I have with a pencil, but . . .
So I thought this one up to test out some legs.

Torso of Marilyn Monroe

Apologies for this one. But it is what I always think of when I read . . .

Archaic Torso of Apollo
by Rilke

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

I Caught This Morning Morning's Millions

A child said, What Is an Ass

She Walks in UGG Boots

In snowy climes with starless skies . . .

(Apologies. I am still thinking about the maven.)

The Maven

The Woman Not Taken

Love Comics

I used to love to read love comics. And somewhere along the line, poetry merged with love comics in my brain . . .

When I visit poetry classes of any age, from middle school on up, I am tempted to bring along a few love comics as a kind of illustrated text for some of the poems I know I will be reading . . .

Who said clouds are lonely?

I wandered o'er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of nimbostratus clouds . . .

When we had to memorize this poem in 5th grade, I asked if Wordsworth lived in a dry climate when he wrote this poem.

Ah well. It's the second wettest year here in NE Ohio. And by the end of the month 2011 might be in first place . . .

I mean to say, we are having cloud cocktail parties, cloud conventions, cloud Occupy-Youngstown seasons . . .

And my dogs hate it!

The Poet's Café

If one eats too often here, she will be framed with a fearful symmetry . . .

My Last Lunches

What is the deal with food photography lately? I was in this coffee shop the other day, and this couple was busy photographing every item of food on their plates. And it was not exactly exciting food. Just black coffee, sandwiches, pie . . . What do they do with the pictures? Put them on the wall?

Hey, look, this is what I ate last night! And this was lunch! But wait, don't go. You haven't seen breakfast yet.

Song of Yourself

Because I could not stop for Sex

Do not blow gentle . . .

Another album of poetry my parents bought when I was in grade school had a scratchy recording of Dylan Thomas reading "Do not go gentle into that good night." Unlike the Dickinson album, this one was a very powerful reading, almost sermon-like. It reminded me of the Baptist preacher we sometimes heard on the radio and giggled about . . . I would make up parodies, or almost parodies of the opening . . . Any command could become a parody.

Do not pick your nose or wipe on your sleeve
blow, blow into a handkerchief

Do not dip the pitchfork gently into the dung
stab it
and hurl it upon the heap

My 2 First Parodies

I think the first parody that ever occurred to me was the top one, a response to an album of Emily Dickinson poems that my mother purchased and played for us when we were in grades school. It was horrible . . . This woman with a sickly sweet voice, much like a female Mr. Rogers, recited Dickinson's poems. After listening to the record a few times, I turned to my sister and said, I think I want to throw up! Do you?

The second is a parody of Dickinson's "I'll tell you how the sun rose/ A ribbon at a time. The steeples swarm in amethyst, the news like squirrels ran./ The hills untied their bonnets . . ."
The parody came to mind when I was in high school- with my mother for one of her weekly visits to the beauty parlor. I remember thinking of the steeples of curlers in Aqua Net, the mouths ran and ran, their heads in bonnets . . .

Those were the days of sets, perms, and big hair.

Parodies again

I drew these for the Best American Poetry blog for the week I blogged with Nicole Santalucia. I posted them a bit ago, but I thought I would post them here again. I love parodies.