Here's a new poem, quite unlike what I normally write -- but I've begun to explore the genre between prose and poetry. I appreciate any feedback you all care to offer.





Boston Marriage

Beside the hydrangeas, we grew hostas
that thrived in the shadows and damp,
formed a lush shoulder to the heart-shaped leaves.

We kept a Norwegian
Elkhound we named Tania.

Widowed, he took me with my own
lacks and longings as his daily companion.
He, much older than I, understood.

We shared radio broadcasts
of Dvorak, Prokofiev, Bartok,
Shostakovich, our love
of orchestrated discord.

I took care and he took care,
took time, measure, though granted
not sharing our most intimate strengths
and weaknesses, that give and give.

On a block of working families broken
and mended and managing in their own ways,
we handed candy to witch and fairy maid,
arrived at garden parties bearing dolmades
rolled in leaves from the neighborhood grapevine.

Every marriage is contract, expanse,
spoken of or not, from dowry to consent,
eloped or staged, urine test
to shotgun, dreamed of or dreaded,
from pillowtalk to bent knee,
arranged, disarrayed, settling,
rash with passion.

Women like me, we couldn’t even jump
the broom like slaves. Spinstered yes,
or convented, bearded or lone, but to love
another woman openly was an impossibility
made more dear by that. I was no flapper
nor revolutionist. From Corfu in ’44 to this place,
I hid my affairs as I could, and under such,
they dwindled, ended, in a pattern like fallen leaves.

I met him in my long past ripeness
and so we set up house, in a strong Victorian ,
catalpa in the backyard, a quiet life
with breaks of broken music.
 

And when after seventeen years together,
he was struck and dragged by that car,
snatched from my clasped hand on our evening
constitutional, I could do nothing at all
but watch him thump and shred along the road
until the very end of our life together,
feel the sudden true bereavement of a wife.

Greg Fraser: Permission the First

Hi everyone,

I'm going to be a father in three days--my daughter Sasha and son David arrive on Friday by scheduled C-section. Over the past few weeks, I've been working on a series of drafts, all of which contain the word "First" in the title, and all of which constitute some inaugural communication with my kids. There's "Pardon the First," "Wish List the First," "Invitation the First," and so on. I randomly picked the following draft from the lot, and look forward to hearing your thought.

Take care,
Greg

Permission the First

You who come naked as rain may push
for the blood-stained light, may pass feet
first through the oldest gate, and start to process
the mother tongue, in which I can count to ten.

Soon, the full moon waves its flashlight
on patrol. Boys reach down their pants
to fondle pistols. Soon comes the gossip
of salt. Don’t shy now from leaving behind

the inner sea, dark and rippled like bark.
Go ahead and scream your hungers, ills.
You needn’t behave in the silent way
dust erects its empires. Wake us, soil

and soil, storm. Memory is the wet nurse
of time, feeding and caressing. You have no
hour, no blame. So press against the future,
permeable and opaque as a window screen:

you can’t punch your hand through yet.
I have put away the metronome
with its wagging finger. I have locked up
April and give you May, the most permissive.

You are released to become the student
underlining textbooks, the broom pusher
or the mattock--whatever your ultrasonic
heart desires. Forget your bones and muscles

wrapped in a Caucasian flag of surrender.
Just forge with reason as your anvil, nonsense
your hammer, unaware that one dark
breath makes of glass a mirror, unaware

God knows us, stumbling through
doorways, down stairwells we don’t see,
while every stain in the end gets burned away.
Far-off cities rock at anchor. You may

visit every one. The poplars nod assent.
Your dead Uncle Jon says travel, as he himself
could not. Hear the crunch of tires
on gravel, living rooms choked with laughter.

You will not be punished for feeling
heat’s collisions. I have slid my hands inside
my pockets and will make no threats, not before
your forearm dreams a thicket in its crush

of sleep, before curses on the ear like rabbit
punches, complaints about the dollar’s edge--
hatchet sharp. There are those obsessed
with power, those with love. Later,

you’ll discover which you are. You will
come to your senses, like all the rest,
too late, and regret proposals made
in loneliness and haste. For now,

befriend the split-eyed house cats
I myself refuse to trust. Soon you will
partake of platters, garish with beet
salad, purple cabbage, the fried nests

of potato latkes. For now, you are invited
to lurch like a seal, to fan the rumors
of your royal birth. And if you like,
my live one, feel free to call me “Papa.”

Thirty-two Statements About Writing Poetry

by Marvin Bell

1. Every poet is an experimentalist.

2. Learning to write is a simple process: read something, then write something; read something else, then write something else. And show in your writing what you have read.

3. There is no one way to write and no right way to write.

4. The good stuff and the bad stuff are all part of the stuff. No good stuff without bad stuff.

5. Learn the rules, break the rules, make up new rules, break the new rules.

6. You do not learn from work like yours as much as you learn from work unlike yours.

7. Originality is a new amalgam of influences.

8. Try to write poems at least one person in the room will hate.

9. The I in the poem is not you but someone who knows a lot about you.

10. Autobiography rots.

11. A poem listens to itself as it goes.

12. It's not what one begins with that matters; it's the quality of attention paid to it thereafter.

13. Language is subjective and relative, but it also overlaps; get on with it.

14. Every free verse writer must reinvent free verse.

15. Prose is prose because of what it includes; poetry is poetry because of what it leaves out.

16. A short poem need not be small.

17. Rhyme and meter, too, can be experimental.

18. Poetry has content but is not strictly about its contents. A poem containing a tree may not be about a tree.

19. You need nothing more to write poems than bits of string and thread and some dust from under the bed.

20. At heart, poetic beauty is tautological: it defines its terms and exhausts them.

21. The penalty for education is self-consciousness. But it is too late for ignorance.

22. What they say "there are no words for"--that's what poetry is for. Poetry uses words to go beyond words.

23. One does not learn by having a teacher do the work.

24. The dictionary is beautiful; for some poets, it's enough.

25. Writing poetry is its own reward and needs no certification. Poetry, like water, seeks its own level.

26. A finished poem is also the draft of a later poem.

27. A poet sees the differences between his or her poems but a reader sees the similarities.

28. Poetry is a manifestation of more important things. On the one hand, it's poetry! On the other, it's just poetry.

29. Viewed in perspective, Parnassus is a very short mountain.

30. A good workshop continually signals that we are all in this together, teacher too.

31. This Depression Era jingle could be about writing poetry: Use it up / wear it out / make it do / or do without.

32. Art is a way of life, not a career.

Marvin Bell's "32 Statements About Writing Poetry" is reprinted from the Commemorative 2002 issue of The Writer's Chronicle, copyright © 2002 by Marvin Bell.

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