here was an old woman tossed up in a basket,
Nineteen times as high as the moon;
Where she was going I couldn’t but ask it,
For in her hand she carried a broom.

“Old woman, old woman, old woman,” quoth I,
“Oh whither, oh whither, oh whither so high?”
“To brush the cobwebs off the sky!”
“Shall I go with thee?”
“Aye, by-and-by.”

Stop one heart from breaking. Ease one life the aching or cool one pain. Or help one fainting robin unto his nest again.

What’s the billing code for that?

everything is permitted
absolute freedom of movement
that is, without leaving the cage
2+2 doesn’t make 4:
once it made 4 but
today nothing is known in this regard

— Nicanor Parra, “Watch Out for the Gospel of the Times”

Powell’s Books has a Poetry Madness bracket online to determine the Best Poet of All Time. Unfortunately, along with some really obvious omissions, they don’t understand the concept of seeding, so while minor poets face off in a number of first round matchups, there are inexplicable heavyweight pairings like T.S. Eliot vs. Emily Dickinson . . .

We must make do with today’s
Happenings, and stoop and somehow glue together
The silly little shards of our lives, so that
Our children can drink water from broken bowls,
Not from cupped hands

— Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, “Aubade”

• “Aubade” by Philip Larkin
• “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” by William Butler Yeats

Coursera‘s been around long enough now that some classes are being offered for a second time, including a couple that I’ve taken and recommend:

• Modern & Contemporary American Poetry, taught by Al Filreis at Penn
• Social Network Analysis, taught by Lada Adamic at the University of Michigan

• “Fisherman” by Kurt Brown
• “George Gray” by Edgar Lee Masters
• “The Panther” by Rainer Maria Rilke

Jack Gilbert was an American poet. He died last week. There’s a poem of his that I like called “Failing and Flying.”

The last couple of weeks in ModPo, we’ve been reading “Language Poetry” and aleatory poetry, including the work of Ron Silliman, Lyn Hejinian, Bob Perelman, Charles Bernstein, Jackson Mac Low, Jena Osman and Joan Retallack.

I have to admit it all seemed lazy to me. The reader has to do all the work. (See below for a differing opinion.) I didn’t like any of the poems enough to share one, so here instead are the lyrics to Randy Newman‘s “Marie”:

Randy Newman at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You looked like a princess the night we met
With your hair piled up high
I will never forget
I’m drunk right now baby
But I’ve got to be
Or I never could tell you
What you meant to me

I loved you the first time I saw you
And I always will love you Marie
I loved you the first time I saw you
And I always will love you Marie

You’re the song that the trees sing when the wind blows
You’re a flower, you’re a river, you’re a rainbow

Sometimes I’m crazy
But I guess you know
And I’m weak and I’m lazy
And I’ve hurt you so
And I don’t listen to a word you say
When you’re in trouble I just turn away
But I love you

I loved you the first time I saw you
And I always will love you Marie
I loved you the first time I saw you
And I always will love you Marie

If that isn’t poetry, I don’t know what is.

Here’s what ModPo professor Al Filreis says about aleatory poetry:

So this kind of writing, I want to emphasize, has rigor and it has intention at the level of design. It’s not easy, it’s not facile and it’s not to be confused with improvisation and indeterminacy and even random or arbitrary are the wrong words to describe it. Many, as I’ve said, resist it. Many find no beauty in it. . . . Why should I waste my time, it doesn’t mean anything. Well, I have so many things to say in response to that and gosh, I’m not even sure where to start, but I’ll give it a try.

Well, here’s one thing: when I think about how much of my time I spend, my own time, how much time I spend and waste really, watching and listening to things that make a whole lot of conventional sense but ultimately don’t mean anything. Where normally meant statements are empty and useless and unbeautiful, I figure that I owe it to those who seek a significant alternative, the time of day. Maybe they’re telling me to relax. Maybe they’re telling me let down my guard. I’m always, I seem to be always on guard for meaning in meaninglessness. Maybe I should let down that guard and maybe I should hear the music in the apparent dissonance and discordance of my world. And maybe the discovery of sense in language that was not intended at the level of the sentence or of the phrase makes that sense all the more powerful. And maybe when words formed through quasi non-intentional chance operations produce something “accidentally” lovely (I’ve got air quotes around the word accidentally), when that loveliness is accidental, I’ll be all the more astonished at the beauty that’s just out there, that’s ambient in our language and just waiting to be rearranged.

Bernadette Mayer’s Writing Experiments

My favorite poem of the week — again from Modern & Contemporary American Poetry – was “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” by Bernadette Mayer, especially the final image of the stressed-out new mother reading The Wild Boy of Aveyron, about a feral child raised by wolves.

I’ve been reading a lot of poetry as part of the Modern & Contemporary American Poetry class on Coursera.

One of the things I like about the class is that the video lessons are done a little differently than other Coursera classes I’ve taken. Rather than recorded lectures, the videos consist of the instructor, Al Filreis, leading a small group of Penn students in close readings of selected poems.

Anyway, here are a few of my favorites so far:

• I dwell in Possibility by Emily Dickinson
• Tell all the Truth but tell it slant by Emily Dickinson
• The Brain within its Groove by Emily Dickinson
• Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams
• This Is Just To Say by Willim Carlos Williams
• A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsburg
• Lines for an Abortionist’s Office by Ruth Lechlitner
• Incident by Countee Cullen

These next two, both by Richard Wilbur, I want to single out as being particularly exquisite and heartbreaking:

• The Death of a Toad
• Cottage Street, 1953

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
     beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

— Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

Emily Dickinson was good but Walt Whitman would have kicked her ass in a poetry slam.

O generation of the thoroughly smug
   and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
   and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
   and do not even own clothing.

— Ezra Pound, “Salutation”

I’ll read one [Emily Dickinson] poem every few months — and if it’s one of those baffling ones, that’s all it takes to humble me into putting reason back in the tool box, and sitting still until a more appropriate tool presents itself.

— Bonnie Nadzam

Five little monkeys jumping on the bed.
One fell off and bumped his head.
Mama called the Doctor and the Doctor said,
“No more monkeys jumping on the bed!”

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.
There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

— Howard Nemerov