Ode to Chocolate by Barbara Crooker

I hate milk chocolate, don't want clouds
of cream diluting the dark night sky,
don't want pralines or raisins, rubble
in this smooth plateau. I like my coffee
black, my beer from Germany, wine
from Burgundy, the darker, the better.
I like my heroes complicated and brooding,
James Dean in oiled leather, leaning
on a motorcycle. You know the color.

Oh, chocolate! From the spice bazaars
of Africa, hulled in mills, beaten,
pressed in bars. The cold slab of a cave's
interior, when all the stars
have gone to sleep.

Chocolate strolls up to the microphone
and plays jazz at midnight, the low slow
notes of a bass clarinet. Chocolate saunters
down the runway, slouches in quaint
boutiques; its style is je ne sais quoi.
Chocolate stays up late and gambles,
likes roulette. Always bets
on the noir.


"Ode to Chocolate" by Barbara Crooker, from More. © C&R Press, 2010. Reprinted with permission


                                           Editor: Kathleen Jones

Since Janis Freegard’s post about her poetry in the new Iron collection of humorous verse, I’ve been thinking of the way we always seem to value ‘serious’ poems more than humorous ones in critical terms and often anthologise them as children’s poetry or talk about ‘light’ verse. This is rather sad, because a lot of wonderful poetry remains neglected.   So I decided to post something at the un-serious end of the spectrum this week and I hope you don’t think I’m too frivolous!

I chose ‘Ode to Chocolate’ because I needed cheering up and I love chocolate - always reach for it when I’m down, but it has to be dark ...... I think the poem somehow gets the essence of the taste of chocolate onto the page - as well as its sensuality and how it makes you feel. Which is quite an achievement. There aren’t too many good poems about food - Pablo Neruda’s ‘Ode to Salt’ perhaps.  There’s also a wonderful poem about eating an avocado - but I couldn’t track it down.

Barbara Crooker is one of the older American poets - a late starter in the publishing stakes, who has won a considerable number of awards for her poetry. She’s an accomplished technician, though I sometimes find her poems just a bit too ‘cosy’ for my taste. I was tempted to post ‘Meditation in Mid October’ because it isn’t and it fitted the season, but thought that the subject, the approaching death of a friend, was just a little bleak.

It has been a challenge for me to read Barbara’s poetry - one that has taken me out of my comfort zone for a number of reasons, one of them being that her work - though not overtly religious, seems to rise organically from deeply held beliefs which are anathema to me. But being a Humanist has never stopped me loving the poetry of John Donne, or T.S. Eliot, or Gerard Manley Hopkins. Then I realised that, when it came to modern poetry, I was choosing the work of poets as I would friends - because we’d got lots in common and understood each other, and this isn’t always a good thing. Being among strangers with different opinions is challenging and very stimulating.

So, last year I set myself the task of reading a new poet every month, and I’ve become aware that there are hundreds and hundreds of poets out there in the world - many of them really good poets - whose work is completely unknown to me. In England we read poetry in a little bubble - mainly British or Irish - some European in translation - some international ‘greats’ like Pablo Neruda or Les Murray - but we rarely interact with the ordinary, everyday poetry of other countries.

Most contemporary Australian, New Zealand, Canadian or American poets are unread here. That, I think, is one of the best things about the Tuesday Poem blog - it can provide a link between islands of culture and showcase poetry that comes from very different directions.

Kathleen Jones is this week's Tuesday Poem editor. She lives in England's Lake District but divides her time between the UK, NZ and Italy. She has published ten books including six biographies and a collection of poetry. Her latest biography, ˜Katherine Mansfield: The Storyteller' was published by Penguin NZ in August. Kathleen is currently a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. She blogs here. 


For more Tuesday Poems, click on the Tuesday Poets in the sidebar. 

The Time of the Giants by Anne Kennedy

3.

Moss picked her way

over the mosaic of strange things away from his bed and

buttoned herself out the door

while he was in the bathroom without saying goodbye.

Why? Because

goodbye seemed like an apple i.e. needing a lot of

explaining.

She walked along the street feeling new-born, stretched

to let in light.

The bark on the trees was rougher in the palms of her hands.

She carried

his weight in her backpack, his words as loose change

in her purse

his essence in a thermos for comfort and emergencies.

She noticed

she could see sideways. Cars approaching. The ghost

that she always knew

lived in the passage. I knew it. As a child rasping to bed

she'd open her eyes

as wide as possible to let in all the possible light

and the ghost in

but the moment she felt it passing (not dying, passing

as ghosts do)

she'd blink and the ghost would be gone. The others

(the living, Mum, Dad etc)

in the light of the living room as if etched on a jug

would call out

See? It was nothing, there is no ghost and look back

at the TV.

Now Moss is wide open and the ghost

is physical

you can reach out and touch it like this table this chair.

While she was out

a furniture truck came and moved her into his body.

In her room you can see

the marks on the wall where the furniture stood for so many

years. Years.

I first started reading Anne Kennedy's poetry while researching long narrative poems in New Zealand poetry. “Read Kennedy,” other writers told me so I went to the library and took out The Time of The Giants (2005), Kennedy's second collection of poetry. The Giants is a long narrative poem set over 114 pages and eighteen sections or chapters. Each chapter is itself split into sections and the resulting structure resembles of the fractal growth of a fern frond: the long form is a stem from which branches of poems grow.

The poem follows Moss, a young woman giant, who is trying to hide her substantial size from her lover Paul, a normal sized man. The poem/section above is part of chapter nine and occurs just after Moss and Paul have spent their first night together. Of the book Kennedy has written, “[it] reconfigures myth in a contemporary setting. As the descendent of Irish immigrants to Aotearoa/New Zealand, I am interested in where and how diasporas find us today.” The poem does feel like a modern day myth that is lyrical, funny, and quietly satirical of modern etiquette. It also does an excellent job of balancing the imagery and tone of a myth with a contemporary setting and voice. According to the NZ Book Council, Kennedy was once a piano teacher and a music librarian which explains her attention to sound and the alternating long / short line form that repeats its rhythm and ties the poem together. Another extract from the poem can be found here.

As well as poetry Anne Kennedy also writes fiction, autobiography and screenplays, and is the co-editor for the online journal Trout. She has collected a fair few awards such as the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award, the ICI Award and Kennedy was also the Literary Fellow at the University of Auckland. She lives in Honolulu and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Hawai'i.

This week's Tuesday Poem editor is Sarah Jane Barnett, a writer and reviewer living in Wellington. Sarah is currently working on a creative PhD at Massey University that looks at the way the human/nonhuman relationship is portrayed in contemporary poetry. You can check out her blog at http://theredroom.org.

For more Tuesday Poems from the rest of the Tuesday Poem community browse our live blog roll in the sidebar – if the header says ‘Tuesday poem’ you know there’s a poem in there somewhere!

Compasses: A Triptych by Nancy Mattson

1.

Blake drew Newton naked, every muscle
tense, seated on a rock, hunched over
the paper world unscrolling at his feet,
inscribing limits with his compasses
like God in Milton’s paradise.

2.

Rodchenko photographs his wife,
Stepanova, working at her table,
a pair of compasses in one hand,
thumb and forefinger twirling the pivot,
eyes intent on the interlocking spheres
of her textile design. The universe
is new from skin to sky. Hand-rolled,
a cigarette rests on her bottom lip.
The ash drops, she smiles and blows it away.
Seed fluff, time flake, off to the past.

This is no lady painter of aquarelles,
she’s a maid’s daughter, Varvara Stepanova,
calls herself ‘Varst’ and she can do anything:
boil pitch or potatoes, build sets for plays,
shoot billiards, dance tangos, make zaum
poems in syllables, grunts and blobs of paint.

Varst is sewing canvas overalls,
her fingertips tough as thimbles. Bites the needle,
spits a smoke ring through its eye, pulls
a thread into a V, cuts and knots it.

Varst sneers at fine art,
slaps the heads off chrysanthemums,
uses her brain like a weapon, wages war
on the object, publishes manifestos, critiques
all ‘isms’ and the artists who deliver them,
writes in her journal with a steel nib,
nails their quirks and egos.

Rodchenko snaps the circle in groups, pairs
and singles, but his wife is his favourite
subject. Never object. She gazes away
from the lens as she points a blade,
arm-length, at six of her collages.

Her self-portrait mocks the easel: forehead
a cross-hatch in blue paint, mouth a scowl
of black X’s. She caricatures herself,
her husband too, as clowns
with elbows and pantaloons.

3.

Never since John Donne has it been so true
as it is with this pair who stride
with equal steps into the Revolution:
If they be two, they are two so
as stiff twin compasses are two.

© Nancy Mattson

First published in Artemis (United Kingdom). Republished on the Tuesday Poem Hub with the permission of the poet.

About the Poem:

"Compasses" is inspired by photographs of Stepanova by her husband, Rodchenko, as well as by her own art and excerpts from her journal – all in Amazons of the Avant-Garde, eds. Bowlt & Drutt, London, Royal Academy of Arts, 1999. I was transfixed by the early 20th century Russian women artists in that exhibition and have nearly completed a book about them and their milieu. To my great surprise, my Finnish great-aunt who emigrated to Soviet Karelia in the 1930s, and was lost in 1939, has now popped up in the poems, insisting that her voice be heard. —Nancy Mattson

About Nancy Mattson:
Nancy Mattson is an ex-patriate Canadian poet, now resident in London. I met Nancy Mattson in 2008, when she and her husband, Mike Bartholomew-Biggs, also a poet, were resident in Christchurch for several months and appeared as guest poets as part of the Canterbury Poets' Collective annual Autumn Season of Poetry Readings at Madras Cafe Bookshop.

At that time, Nancy was already working on her forthcoming collection, working title Finns and Amazons, of which Compasses: A Triptych forms part—and was particularly struck by both the poem's emotional power and also by the strength of the historical narrative, translated into the personal portrait of Varst, Vavara Stepanova, and Rodchenko.

Nancy began writing poetry in 1977 after completing her MA in English Literature at the University of Alberta. Her poetry, non-fiction and reviews have been published in Canada, the US, the UK, Ireland and Finland in magazines, anthologies, the odd scholarly journal, a printed encyclopaedia and a couple of parish newsletters.

In 1982 she edited and co-authored a history book which provided the inspiration for her first collection, Maria Breaks Her Silence (Regina: Coteau, 1989), based on the life of a 19th century Finnish woman who emigrated to Canada. This was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for best first book of poetry in Canada. Adapted for the stage as Lye Soap and Dancing Cows, it was also broadcast on CBC Radio.

Her second full collection is Writing with Mercury (Hexham: Flambard, 2006), with cover art by Elaine Kowalsky. Nancy is also one of five poets featured in the anthology, Take Five 06, edited by John Lucas (Nottingham: Shoestring, 2006). The poems in these two volumes are set in contemporary England, Canada, Finland and Italy and use memory, myth, history and family stories to create a rich linguistic and cultural texture.

Nancy is pleased to be one of 20 writers selected by Dr. Beth L. Virtanen to appear in Finnish North American Literature in English: A Concise Anthology (Edwin Mellen Press, 2009) and her work has appeared in many other anthologies.

---

This week's Tuesday Poem editor Helen Lowe is a novelist, poet, interviewer and lover of story from Christchurch New Zealand. Her first novel, Thornspell, is published by Knopf, USA and her second The Heir of Night is just out with HarperCollins, USA, and Little, Brown in AU/NZ. Helen has also had both poetry and short fiction published, broadcast and anthologized in New Zealand, Australia and the United States.

For More Tuesday Blog Poems from the rest of the Tuesday Poem community browse our live blog roll in the sidebar – if the header says ‘Tuesday poem’ you know there’s a poem in there somewhere!

Two Photographs by Geoffrey Lehmann

TWO PHOTOGRAPHS (1970s)

by Geoffrey Lehmann

My sister took two photographs I love,

Both indoor colour shots with yellow filter,
Of father tinkering with a radio
Glittering with tiny lights upon a table.
Wrapped in a hairy old brown dressing-gown
In heavy yellow light he sits and listens
To ancient earphones plugged into the set,
And in the next he has the earphones off,
And sits, a puzzled frown upon his forehead,
A man of seventy with kindly lines
Upon his weathered face, a youngster trying
To probe the age-old whistling of the ether,
The moans and crackles of the distant stars.
How young your face, old man, how young the hand
Of love that made the camera shutter click.

I came across this poem in the 1970s when I was teaching at Melbourne State College (it’s in the old Penguin ‘Australian Voices’ anthology, which is full of treasures). I’ve frequently returned to the poem over the years, always delighting in the way it captures and develops its imagery with such emotional precision and immediacy. And this year I contacted Geoffrey Lehmann to ask for permission to use it on the Tuesday Poem blog. He wrote back saying this:-

“I'm glad you like ‘Two Photographs’. You mention coming across it in the 1970s, which means you came across the correct version. When I prepared a "Collected Poems" (1997) I rewrote a lot of poems, usually improving them considerably, so much so that my editor whom I had asked to compare the old and new versions gave up comparing them. But I wrecked ‘Two Photographs’ by leaving out the last two lines. Sometimes one can get too precious and afraid of frank emotion and this was such an occasion.”

And a day later, when I was still thinking about what he’d said, and rather shocked at the idea of publishing the poem without its utterly necessary last two lines, Geoffrey Lehmann wrote to me again.

“I’ve just taken another look at the revised 1997 version and the opening is better than the 1970’s version which overdoes the use of the word “love” which should have been saved up to the end. I've now combined both versions, the opening of the 1997 version and the end of the 1970s version to get what I think is the right balance. If it is of any interest please feel free to use both of these emails. The photographs were slides as the later version states. My sister died 4 years ago and I have a collection of her slides of family members which were quite remarkable in their naturalness.  

The version with this email is therefore the definitive version and not likely to change.”

So here is the final, revised, definitive and author-approved version of the poem. He’s right, of course: I was unwilling at first to give up allegiance to the 1970 version, but this one does work better.

TWO PHOTOGRAPHS (2010)

by Geoffrey Lehmann

My sister took two slides with yellow filter,
Of father tinkering with a radio
Glittering with tiny lights upon a table.
Wrapped in a hairy old brown dressing-gown
In heavy yellow light he sits and listens
To ancient earphones plugged into the set,
And in the next he has the earphones off,
And sits, a puzzled frown upon his forehead,
A man of seventy with kindly lines
Upon his weathered face, a youngster trying
To probe the age-old whistling of the ether,
The moans and crackles of the distant stars.
How young your face, old man, how young the hand
Of love that made the camera shutter click.

Geoffrey Lehman is currently completing a 1,100 page anthology for the University of New South Wales Press (‘Australian Poetry since 1788’) but when he’s finished that he’s going to look for the slides that inspired the poem. And if he finds them, he’s promised to send me digitised versions of them. I’ll let you know ...

This week’s Tuesday Poem editor is Belinda Hollyer, a New Zealand writer and anthologist living in London. She doesn’t write poetry – she thinks it’s far too difficult – but details of her other publications can be found on her website and blog (where her Tuesday Poems reside.)

For more Tuesday Poems from the rest of the Tuesday Poem community browse our live blog roll in the sidebar – if the header says ‘Tuesday poem’ you know there’s a poem in there somewhere!

After Tomato Picking by Maria Garcia Teutsch

In fourth grade

I picked tomatoes

to make money.

The night before, we packed

our lunches with anticipation

and American cheese sandwiches.

We left at dawn with the sun

slithering across the desert,

twisting the horizon into slivers of gold.

The drive out to the farmland

was filled with yawns and coffee.

I leaned against my brother and dozed.

On our way we passed farm workers,

their painted signs blurring by.

I catch one word, strike.

My brother yells, Viva la Raza

but don't yet know what it means.

He raises his chin and smiles.

In the field the smell

of disturbed earth and sweat mingles

with the sound of giggles

from my sister's friends.

I stand in between rows,

a bucket full of green tomatoes

too heavy to lift, my brother

carrying it to men sitting

in precious shade.

We left as soon as the thermometer

moved above 100.

The others stayed.

This poem is a true account of Maria Garcia Teutsch's short time she spent working in the fields. Maria currently teaches in Salina, California, in the US. This area is commonly known as the 'salad bowl of America' and many of her students have long histories of field work. Plenty of them have parents who make their living in the fields. This poem has emerged from her inspiration and humble appreciation of their daily work. For me, as this weeks editor, I was immediately drawn to this poem of Maria's as it possesses such a strong grounding in the landscape. The social conditions intertwined with the act of 'tomato picking' appears to emanate naturally and effortlessly from this powerful and nostalgic evocation of the journey and the landscape.

Maria Garcia Teutsch is editor-in-chief of Ping Pong Journal of Art and Literature published by the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, California. She teaches poetry and creative writing at Hartnell College in Salinas, California. This is also where she edits the Homestead Review which is now in its 10th year of publication.

For more words, visit her blog: mariateutsch.blogspot.com or her webpage: marialoveswords.com

This week's editor is Elizabeth Welsh, an Auckland writer and Katherine Mansfield scholar. Her blog is here. And remember to visit the live blog roll in the Tuesday Poem sidebar for more Tuesday Poems.

My Soul's Companion by Doug Poole

(painting by Penny Howard)

I

Entering the estuary Oyster Catchers & Red-billed Gulls swirl overhead then reel away. Estuaries expansive shadows green- ochre saltwater dappled with sunlight reflects the mangrove arbor. Miromiro dart unseen into the mangroves. Piwakawaka song; a sense of being observed. Creek bed swells then grimaces with the tide. Land crabs scuttle for shelter as the flat floods. High on the bank amongst the Mangrove arbor rests the soul courier: Rienga to Hawaiki; soul companion of Te Tagata Whenua.

II

The souls last footfall, the journey to Reinga. The tears of Te Whanau;. The wailing dirge of the Karanga. The first fall of rain on the skin of Te Whanau. The soul & the Kōtuku journey to Reinga, to She whose name shall not be said; She that will keep our soul. Maui, would have cheated but for her comeuppance. Kōtuku is the great one passing, the heart knows. The last of a generation passing through Miru to Her open arms.

III

Okarito Lagoon, Waitangituna Stream meanders through a Kahikatea swamp. Black bill & green skin the nubile birds. Males showboat on platforms, nuptial plumes flaring. Neck erect, clacking bills for consideration. Engaged she entwines her wings, neck, bill, with his; lovers hold close. Preening an act of love.

IV

Nests built of fern and sticks amongst the Kahikatea arbor. In the crowns of tree ferns. Feathers crowned the heads of chiefs. Victorian modiste took the Kotuku to near extinction. Fashioning hats from nuptial plumes. Once worn as adornment, highly prized & pure. Your grace rare but hardly demure.

V

O my soul’s companion, before I depart, I shall watch the falling tears mingle with grandchildren’s laughter.

O my soul’s companion, Follow the river to boat housed memories, the sails melody; the sounds of life: prow cutting salt water.

O my soul’s companion, let me walk in the last light, my grandmother’s land, hand in hand with you. One last sunset with you.

O my soul’s companion, In the falling light you rest your sorrow laden head. the match head moon burnt for such a short time.

before sunrise, I will breathe on your neck.



This wonderful poetry-prose cycle is by Doug Poole, an Auckland poet of Samoan and European descent. The image is by Penny Howard, Doug's artistic partner who is of Maori (Ngapuhi) and European descent. The coupled painting and poem were part of a recent exhibition, Parlour Birds, looking at inherited memory and narrative using the metaphor of Victorian living room furniture.

I love this work for many reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, my reaction is visceral: the words are full and rounded, images that can be felt ("the first fall of rain on the skin"), smelt ("the match head moon burnt"), absorbed ("the prow cutting salt water"). I read this work after returning from a trip to Okarito Lagoon, one of the last sanctuaries of the Kotuku (white heron) - where my partner proposed to me. So it's probably not surprising that my first reaction was so strong! But even now, when some of that new emotion has faded, I find this work still speaks to me, on many levels.

It's the multilayering of the poem which is another delight. Like Penny's exquisite paintings, this poem moves between spiritual and legendary references, darting like the piwakawaka between life and death, love and selfishness. This poem brings to life the forgotten legends, suggesting that in our daily lives there is an echo of the past, a sense of timelessness. It's a solemn poem at times, but that is balanced by its lyricism and moments of joy.

Finally, as I know Doug and Penny personally, it's a privilege to witness the maturing of a collaboration now spanning over three years and at least three shows plus a number of publications. The exploration of Penny's Maori and Doug's Samoan heritage and their shared European ancestry has been fruitful indeed. If you haven't yet come across their work, consider yourself introduced - and watch out for more in the future.

This week's Tuesday Poem editor is Renee Liang, an Auckland poet. Some of her poetry (and various other rants) can be found on her blog Chinglish. For more Tuesday Poems from the rest of the TP community enter our live blog roll in the sidebar. 

The Year of the Elephant by Michele Leggott

did you feel that    she puts his hand

on her belly    the baby has woken her

with its kicking and when she comes back

to bed the feet pound up and down

making bumps in the tight drumskin    they laugh

not long now    if they have the dates right

William for a boy    Isabella for a girl

d i d  y o u  f  e e l  t h a t    the telegraphist

in Wellington taps out the words mid-message

in eight seconds    the earthquake hits

the south as they arrive    shocks travelling

northeast to southwest on a transverse

that can be plotted with some accuracy

when the reports are collated    and added

to the waves that rushed into Lyttelton

Okains and Pigeon Bay the day before

starting in the early hours and getting bigger

through to noon    the last and most destructive

at Pigeon Bay rising seven feet

above the spring tide mark    no lives lost

but wreckage and silt observed far out to sea

and the Stormbird driven offcourse

by such a strong current that it was impossible

to make headway against it    twelve hours later

bores ran up several rivers on the West Coast

and travellers going by Cobb’s coaches

along the beach    saw the tide rush very far back

and come up again in very high rollers

yes this is the geologist speaking

offering a comprehensive explanation

for the propagation of events

of a truly plutonic nature    he also knows

about the stranding of a ziphid whale

probably Berardius arnuxii    near New Brighton

and about the death of an elephant

some months earlier from eating Coriaria

at Waitaki while being brought overland

for exhibition on the plains    it fed four hours

amongst the herbage and afterwards

went to a neighbouring creek    Haere ki te moana

and had a long drink    in turning back

the animal began to reel    fell on the ground

and died after three hours

it would seem from this instance

that the poison must be very virulent    the bones

are being cleaned and sent to Wellington

where Dr Hector and his assistants

will articulate them for display    the munificence

of the Hon J McLean MLC in securing

the carcase and arranging the gift

is gratefully noted    the owner was paid £2

did you feel that    Isabella jumping

in utero as the vast soul

dips its wings going north    some manta

out there in the dark and she

a subduction of the Pacific plate

or a minute in the arc of the spring horizon

I chose this poem - which Michele sent to me a day or two after Mary asked me to edit this Tuesday's post - because it is so timely, an earthquake poem set in Canterbury, circling around the great human tremor where we all begin. It speaks of birth, our entry point into these unstable elements of land sea and sky, earth air and fire. The images are so apt this week just gone, given the tectonic birth pangs we are going through, shock by shock, in an edgy week of long labour.

Here, from a Christchurch Press review, is what I said of Mirabile Dictu - Michele's seventh volume of poems (2009), in which this one appears.

"She is surely a poet's poet: more accessible here than in her earlier work certainly but, sadly, destined it seems, to be appreciated by a tiny minority of the nation's readers. 

This is not because there is nothing here for them - here is life in all its fullness, if you have learned to speak the language. These new poems contain some of her greatest lyrical flights, set down in broken strips of reportage, in dreamlike sequences, touching every aspect of a tactile world where light is fading as the poet's own eyesight fails, and her white walking stick appears as a character both in her life and, volubly, in the poems."

I concluded that "for those who wish to discover where New Zealand poetry has been, and where it might be heading, Leggott's work is a rewarding start line".

Michele Leggott, during her 2007-2009 tenure as New Zealand's Poet Laureate. Image: National Library of New Zealand/Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa.

"The Year of the Elephant" is published on Tuesday Poem with the kind permission of the author and Auckland University Press. This week's Tuesday Poem editor, Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, is a poet from Christchurch, New Zealand. Visit his Tuesday Poem September Quake on http://paparoa.wordpress.com/ , and the other Tuesday Poets using our blog list.



Postscript: There is a faultline of earthquake poems on Tuesday Poem this week! Check out:  Jeffrey Paparoa Holman's September Quake, Seattle Poet T Clear's post Earthquake, with Forty Pianos by Tom Porter, piano tuner; Boston Poet Melissa Green's  Christchurch as seen from the Nortern Hemisphere and Wellington Poet Mary McCallum's Earth.  No doubt there will be others. 


Claire Beynon (TP’s co-curator) says on her blog about the way Tuesday Poem has come together this week:  “Together, we find the words we need to make sense of our world.  Today, it seems to me something new and different is unfolding... we're building a composite; a communal poem composed of many parts. What a privilege. Thank you all.” 

The Poet as Absent-minded Neuroscientist: The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin & Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Our thoughts go out to the people of Canterbury in the aftermath of Saturday's 7.1 earthquake - especially to our friends and family and fellow Tuesday Poets. With the knowledge that you're all safe, may the spirits of poetry fly to your comfort and carry your minds away from any troubles you face.

Lines from Philip Larkin's "The Whitsun Weddings" and Vladimir Nabokov's "Pale Fire"

Here's Larkin's narrator in "The Whitsun Weddings" (you can listen to the entire poem here):

At first, I didn't notice what a noise

The weddings made

Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys

The interest of what's happening in the shade,

And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls

I took for porters larking with the mails,

And went on reading. Once we started, though,

We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls

In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,

Here's Nabokov's fictional poet John Shade, from "Pale Fire" (from the novel Pale Fire):

When inspiration and its icy blaze,

The sudden image, the immediate phrase

Over the skin a triple ripple send

Making the little hairs all stand on end...

...And while the safety blade with scrape and screak

Travels across the country of my cheek...

Dressing in all the rooms, I rhyme and roam

Throughout the house with, in my fist, a comb

Or a shoehorn, which turns into the spoon

I eat my egg with. In the afternoon

You drive me to the library. We dine

At half past six. And that odd muse of mine,

My versipel, is with me everywhere,

In carrel and in car, and in my chair.

In previous posts we've discussed the song of poetry, its music, its efforts to capture and preserve unique specimens of perfect beauty. Now we can look at where it lives (in shadows, sidelong glimpses, midge-like sparks of memory) and how it's found, allured, gently caressed, almost never coming when it's called (see my post on poets and their cats). In the above excerpts, notice how both narrators -- composing some of the most beautiful lines in English -- present themselves as engaged in the mundane activities of ordinary life: Reading, in the case of Larkin's narrator. Shaving, in the case of John Shade.

The sort of shaving commercial which appeared around the time Nabokov was writing Pale Fire.

Marvelous illusions. Joyce's nail-paring. In fact, these poems were more likely constructed out of intense, agonizing, jackhammering desk-work (or podium-work, in Nabokov's case), but the special effect is one of detachment, absent-mindedness. A uniquely artistic pairing: blind-spots to the outside world coupled with a most vivid spotlight on the musings of our brain.

We've already heard Jonah Lehrer's take on Proust (see his book, Proust was a Neuroscientist), how the greatest of French novelists discovered the importance of smell, taste and our present mood upon our recollections (we can add madeleines-and-tea to reading, shaving, the bowel movement of Leopold Bloom, etc) -- but Larkin and Nabokov, as shown above, deserve honorary chairs amongst the emerging bio-poetic panel of brain scientists: mainly for their insights into the idea that the most unexpected and brilliant poetic sprites of fancy often come to us when we're occupied with the most familiar, the most routine.

Obligation touches genius "like a scourge of scorpions," writes Coleridge; and yet in my view, meditation, in the monkish sense (obligatory musing, you might say), is just as unlikely to produce a great poem. Reading, shaving, showering, smoking, driving a car -- the auto-pilot activities of the everyday, according to scientists such as Rebecca Saxe of MIT and Randy Buckner of Harvard, may be the true handmaids of our genius. At such times, they've noted, certain regions of the brain, including, for example, the right temporal parietal juncture (responsible for our imagining what other people are thinking) kick into action, indeed, appear to take on a life of their own, rummaging through the past like kids in a costume-trunk and performing for us fanciful skits about the future.

Traveling through time, designing and preparing for imaginary futures -- a human survival trait, no doubt. Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that, in moments of mind-block, you turn to a Gillette Mach3 Turbo or a Silk-Effects for Women to find your muse -- although who knows? I'm simply suggesting that the narrator of a poem or novel will often appear more alive to us, more real to us, if his or her mind wanders (like ours, like everyone's) during moments of daily habit; and that this quality of an absent-minded exterior combined with a radiant, boundless interior is what makes poems like "The Whitsun Weddings" and "Pale Fire" such extraordinary works of art.

Zireaux is an Auckland-based novelist, poet and playwright. For Zireaux' other Tuesday Poems please visit ImmortalMuse.com, and in the live blog roll in the sidebar there are more Tuesday Poems.

'The Moonmen' by Anna Livesey

On the last night the moonmen came.
We woke at an unaccustomed time and knelt by the window.
The moonmen pushed lines out in front of them,
they marked off their territories with orange markers.
The moonmen made a regular thud thud like a generator.
They walked in spaces we were used to seeing cordoned off.
It was a strange light the moonmen moved in -
a greeny glow they brought themselves, a glow that reflected
off their white suits and off the shiny visors curving stiffly
across the front of their heads.
We were leaving in the morning and so we said
'the moonmen need not concern us', and
'we will pack up the kitchen and say goodbye to the cat'.
Still, it was a funny thing they came at just that time -
I thought perhaps they were acting something out for us
while we crouched below the windowsill
and our knees grew tired and stiff.


From 'the moonmen' (VUP, 2010)



This poem has such a strong sense of mystery, but remains grounded in the real world with references to the cat, kitchen and windowsill - the solid reality that protects the poet from the 'green glow' and deliberate yet dream-like motions of the moonmen. I don't know what's happened here - it could be as simple as roadworks or as devastating as nuclear war - but the image of the crouched observers and their apparent relief at the presence of the moonmen (are they here by coincidence or necessity?) is such a perfect note to end on.

Anna Livesey's first collection of poetry, Good Luck, was published by VUP in 2003.

This week's editor is Wellington poet and teacher Saradha Koirala whose first collection Wit of the Staircase (Steele Roberts) was published in 2009. Saradha has a Nepali father and Kiwi mother who, she says, encouraged her to get out of sticky situations with wordplay and well-timed wit. 

Visit her blog, and then take time to visit the other Tuesday Poets on our live blog roll. 

This poem is published with the author's permission. 

'Time' by Ursula Bethell

‘Established’ is a good word, much used in garden books,

‘The plant, when established’ . . .

Oh, become established quickly, quickly, garden

For I am fugitive, I am very fugitive – – –

Those that come after me will gather these roses,

And watch, as I do now, the white wistaria

Burst, in the sunshine, from its pale green sheath.

Planned. Planted. Established. Then neglected,

Till at last the loiterer by the gate will wonder

At the old, old cottage, the old wooden cottage,

And say ‘One might build here, the view is glorious;

This must have been a pretty garden once.’

From a Garden in the Antipodes (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1929)

This poem is very representative of Ursula Bethell, (1874-1945), New Zealand’s foremost garden poet. She knew first-hand the enjoyment and satisfaction of digging the soil, of cultivating and tending to plants. But it was more than practical or aesthetic. Her interest was driven by a sense of the enormity of time and space. Her poems have the backdrop of the sublime. She stops gardening work every now and then to look at the mountains, serene and timeless, backdrop to her labour.

A contemporary, D’Arcy Cresswell, said, ‘New Zealand poetry wasn’t truly discovered until [she], "very earnestly digging”, raised her head to look at the mountains.’ For a brief spell – ten years - the serenity and comfort of Rise Cottage on the Port Hills above Christchurch inspired Bethell to create many fine poems.

Cresswell’s comment must be seen in the context of the time (late 1920s). Most of her contemporaries tended to the sentimental or bombastic nationalism. Unlike many of her generation she searched for meaning and identity in New Zealand. The tensions between her English origins and her antipodean existence were resolved by her stewardship of her small spot of soil. Unfortunately, when her companion, Effie Pollen, suddenly died, her ‘small fond human enclosure’ was destroyed and her poetic voice became silent.

The poem is aptly titled ‘Time’, which has been a poetic theme down the decades. Sometimes it’s the enemy. Keats’ ‘when I have fears that I may cease to be’ springs to mind. But he’s a Romantic. Bethell’s a convinced Christian. Unlike Baxter or Hopkins her poems are not about spiritual wrestling. They rest in a certainty I envy but do not possess. Time is usually approached metaphorically. The rise and fall of nations is one way. More common is the human life span – Shakespeare’s seven ages of man from ‘As You Like It’ from ‘mewling and puking infant’ to adult who procreates, plans, works hopes, prays and fights before the person fades away ‘sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything’. 

This process makes room for new generations – the continuity of the species, the rule of nature. The seasons are another obvious measurement of time. Bethell in this poem uses the garden to present the passage of time. I love the use of the word ‘fugitive’. It’s so apt. It puts us in our place. Then the lovely ‘ripeness is all’ of the white wisteria in the sunshine. And so to the abandonment and the suggestion that someone else will restart and remodel the garden. All in good time!

Is this a New Zealand poem? I think the last line indicates it is. It’s a pioneering land – deserted houses and gardens. It’s also a very Canterbury poem representing the values of my upbringing. Time has moved on since Bethell wrote it; but it still rings bells in my soul.

More on Bethell here. 

This week's editor Harvey McQueen is a New Zealand poet and memoirist whose work - including This Piece of Earth: A Life in My NZ Garden (Awa Press) - often focuses on domestic life and the pleasures of a garden. He is also the editor of innovative poetry anthologies. A retired teacher, Harvey blogs regularly including a poem every Tuesday.  

More poems from our Tuesday Poets are in the live blog roll in the sidebar.