Like Him (Aaron Smith)

Like Him by Aaron Smith.

I am always a little in awe of narrative poems like this. Because even though I see it there on the page and hear it when as I read it aloud, I still marvel that this everyday speech about common emotions and relations can somehow be a poem.

I like how this poem talks about fathers/sons and maleness. There is such a current of anger tinged with sadness through it.

Favorite line: "like him, like men: / the meanest guy wins, don't ever apologize."

Chirality (Rae Armantrout)

I had to look up the meaning of the title of today's poem by Rae Armantrout (neat last name). It's a chemistry term meaning 'handedness' - like the symmetry observed between your right and left hand. A pairedness.

This poem, with its small stanzas, asks unanswerable questions. Perhaps, the chirality is between the question and its answer. You can ask an open ended question, but the answer may have nothing to do with the question.

Similar as to how your reflected right hand is not your right hand - the mirror, instead, shows a different image - your left hand -- a question with chirality is one that leads on and on to new topics and answers and doesn't really seem related to the original question at all. Perhaps, poetry is often like this too. When writing a poem, you often end up in a place you didn't expect at all.

Favorite line: "If I didn't need / to do anything, / would I?"

Light (An Ars Poetica) (Michael Cirelli)

The more I read this poem by Michael Cirelli (who bizarrely does not seem to have his own website - the link is to a blog posting of his), the more I like it. The title bugs me with its parenthetical. I don't want the explanation. The poem is incredibly strong. It's streaming and yet so obviously skilled, perfectly plotted.

I don't get the many proper nouns - "Basquiat", "SAMO", "Nonna", "Wylie Dufresne", "Viscusi", but I find that in poetry I often don't get every word, so I'm okay with that and I won't be turning to Google.

I love what it says about poetry - that it's different each similar act, that it's a comfort and that it's a portal into relationships and families and God and that art has the conflicts between artistry and commercialism and sentimentality and the mundane near its center.

I think this poem is a fantastic ars poetica. It contains essays worth of thought. So glad I found this.

Favorite line: "We all do the same ol’ same ol’ same. / (Some don’t.)"

Basquiat

Driving and Drinking [North to Parowan Gap] (David Lee)

Today's is a poem by David Lee.

There is a whole range of poems that begin like this - with literal directions on how to get somewhere or do something. I like that the directions lead to a reminiscence of N's first bout of drunkenness.  It's often like that, isn't it? One thing simply leads on to another. It's just as the last line in the poem says: "any time you find a trail off a branch / you follow it . . . "

Favorite line: "and he knew but I didn't"

Advice to Passengers (John Gallaher & G. C. Waldrep)

Advice to Passengers by John Gallaher & G. C. Waldrep.

From the title, you at first think that the people are on an airplane, perhaps a boat or maybe a train, but then as you read you get the sense that these passengers have died and that they are transitioning.

I simply love the last couplet: "Don't forget to thank them / for their time." Wow. It's such a grand thought - encapsulates all of life and gives a small hope that when you have died at least someone may thank you for your life. It's really very good advice.

I am puzzled how this poem has two authors. What were their roles? Did different people write different stanzas? Did one have the idea and the other the words? I just don't see how a poetic collaboration like this would work. A poem's shared byline - I've never seen that before.

Favorite line: "Don't forget to thank them / for their time."

Autumn (T. E. Hulme)

I like the images in this poem by T. E. Hulme. (Also of note -- the great number of poems titled 'Autumn' on poets.org - why does no one use 'fall'??)

I haven't looked to see about the poet yet (who I've not heard of), but just from reading the poem I bet the poet is from many generations back. "With white faces like town children" - I mean, really? Only a socially tone deaf statement like that could equate things celestial with race. Dumb!

Anyways though, the images (well most of them) in this poem are pretty good. I love this one which is my favorite line today:

Favorite line: "And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge / Like a red-faced farmer"

A Dream Within a Dream (Edgar Allan Poe)

A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe.

It's an Inception poem!

I like the rhyme - almost all couplets, but there is a triplet in each stanza (though in different lines). I also like the despair at the end of the second stanza. The fear of unknowing. Oh God, what if it is just a dream within a dream? One of Poe's scarier themes, neh?

Favorite line: "O God! can I not save"

Gone (Lia Purpura)

I like the tone of today's poem by Lia Purpura. It confronts an immense topic (fear of death/the afterlife) with such simple, conversational phrasing. She explains her opinion exactly and without a wasted word.

The last line is fantastic. It brings the topic from the didactic to the deeply personal. Such a blow of an ending. "I can't get over this." Death, thinking of death, thinking of your legacy. Maybe the "this" is both death and the poem itself.

Favorite line: "It’s that, when I’m gone, / (and right off this is tricky) / I won’t be worried / about being gone."

Amour Honestus (Edward Hirsch)

Amour Honestus by Edward Hirsch.

This is such a fun poem to read. It's a ghazal (rhymes and repetition). It's set during medieval times and is about love. Perhaps, it is a bit vexing that in all forms of love there are such hellish difficulties. Is it really that bad? This poem seems to say that honest love is complicated, difficult and entrancing. That it is hellish yet compelling. 'Suppose that's apt.

Favorite line: "Why bring it up? Just for the hell of it."

A Negro Love Song (Paul Laurence Dunbar)

A Negro Love Song by Paul Laurence Dunbar.

[A conversation after I read this aloud to my husband]

"You like it?"

"Huh?"

"The poem I just read."

"Wasn't really listening. Do you?"

"Well, um... I like the refrain - the "jump back, honey, jump back" part."

"Yeah, I did like that."

"But the rest of it - the story is kind of basic...."

"Yeah, just a 'She's so pretty. I like you. - Oh, I like you, too'- kind of thing."

"Exactly, the poem's story doesn't grab me. The dialect in it is accomplished, I guess, but aggravating in its 1800s-ness. Plus, it made it so slow to read. Having to figure out what each dialect word was."

"But that one line was pretty sweet."

"Yeah, totally made it."

Favorite line: "jump back, honey, jump back"

Some Things Don't Make Any Sense at All (Judith Viorst)

Another one by Judith Viorst!

I read this expecting a turn like in the first poem of hers I read. But while the twist in the earlier one was pure fun, this one is funny, yes, but in a devastating way.

N thinks the birth of his brother is like the end of the world, but I guess the humor comes from knowing that he'll get over his shock and embrace his new role as brother. But it's still devastatingly hilarious and shocking - his perfectly legitimate question in the face of all that accurate evidence.

"Some things don't make any sense at all." Some times all you say is Wah!!

Favorite line: "My mom just had another baby / Why?"

In the Memphis Airport (Timothy Steele)

In the Memphis Airport by Timothy Steele.

Ah man, I was hoping, from the title, to get a whiff of my home state, but the scene in today's poem could be in any airport anywhere. The poem does nice things with the confluence of birds and planes of nature and built environments of art and technology. The language is pretty pedestrian. Super ABABCDCD rhyme scheme though.

Favorite line: "treating bags / Like careful ornithologists, / Branded with destination tags."

treating bags Like careful ornithologists, Banded with destination tags. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19290#sthash.2zdUzOyN.dpuf

Fifteen, Maybe Sixteen Things To Worry About (Judith Viorst)

Fifteen, Maybe Sixteen Things To Worry About by Judith Viorst.

Hee! At first, this poem struck me as boring and bit annoying. The "worries" seemed stupid and gratuitous. The parentheticals annoyed me. The language wasn't special and I couldn't really relate since the poem seemed written decades ago. But then with the turn in the last stanza, everything cleared and this formally groan-inducing poem seemed bright and cutely clever.

So no, I don't love it, but the ending surprised me and made me laugh. So it's pretty alright with me.

Favorite line: "I maybe could run out of things for me to worry about."

I maybe could run out of things for me to worry about. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15725#sthash.ir76FHCd.dpuf

A Hand (Jane Hirshfield)

A Hand by Jane Hirshfield.

This poem is delightful. The images and ways she uses to describe something so common as a hand are thrilling in their unexpected turns. The long list of what a hand is not heightens its mystery and keeps it from the everyday. A neat trick.

I almost wish the last two lines, of what a hand is, were expanded like the rest of the poem. After describing what a hand is not, I wanted to know more of how she would describe what a hand is. I guess I mean, I liked the tone of this poem and simply wanted it to continue.

Favorite line: "star of the wristbone, meander of veins"

star of the wristbone, meander of veins.

The Balloon of the Mind (W.B. Yeats)

The Balloon of the Mind by W.B. Yeats.

This short poem contains a pair of fantastic images. "The balloon of the mind" is such a great, concrete way of describing thought. The interplay between the "balloon of the mind" and the "narrow shed" where it must end up is such a masterful image for describing how thoughts become actions or a product (but what a sad treatment the corporeal gets - ugh, a narrow shed). Still, what a neat poem.

Favorite line: "Hands, do what you're bid."

For the Man with the Erection Lasting More than Four Hours (John Hodgen)

God, this poem. John Hodgen has taken an ad which is a cultural joke, a national snicker, and turned it into a poem that contains more innuendos than most middle school boys can come up with. It's funny. It's ridiculous. It makes me groan with its constant obnoxiousness.

I wonder if it's in some formal poetic structure. There is some end-rhyme and a lot of internal rhyme, but I can't figure out what form it might be (if it is one).

The poem is fine. It's clever, but it's also kind of a one-off. Perfect for its moment, but too light to be substantial or lasting.

Favorite line: "He's got his own anchor."

He's got his own anchor.

At a Dinner Party (Amy Levy)

Okay, wow. I was going to say that this poem by Amy Levy is cute with its rhyme/and sing-songy meter. It seems a bit obvious and disrespectful to refer to LGBT dinner guests as "fruit and flowers". But then I saw when looking for a poet bio that this poem/poet is from the 1800s!

Suddenly, the meter/rhyme makes sense and the language is not so trite, but pretty darn brave for the time - as was the subject matter. I had no idea of this poet, but it's cool to think that she was writing about pretty modern topics at such an early venture.

Favorite line: "could one expect / So dull a world to know?"

could one expect

    So dull a world to know?

Archaic Torso of Apollo (Rainer Maria Rilke)

I was really looking for a short, sweet poem that I could sum up in a quickly worded paragraph and call it a night. And when I found this poem by Rainer Maria Rilke I thought I'd found just that. I was going to mention how I was certain the named poet was female (I mean, Maria?) and then I was going to go on about how this sonnet is an ekphrasis. How you get a good sense of the power of the statue and how even the unfinished can have such great power. I had it mostly written in my head by the time I was more than half done reading it. And then, he had to go and show what a masterful poet he is by not only nailing an ekphrasis, but a modern sonnet as well by including that killer of a turn.

And I mean wow! The last two lines shocked me. They broke me from my placid reading and made me stutter ..... what the what was I just reading?!? I quickly restarted.

This poem is fantastic. It's technically impeccable. It's cool and statuesque in the first 12 lines. It mirrors its subject. But then with the last two lines, it turns. Not only the poem, but the whole subject. It's not truly about the statue of Apollo. It's about you, the reader. You see the art. Well, the art sees you right back - "for here there is no place / that does not see you."

An ekphrasis poem is about you. Any poem is about you. Any art's subject reflects you. "You must change your life." You must. Art depends on it.

Favorite line: "You must change your life."

Life is Fine (Langston Hughes)

When you are happy, sing out! When you are feeling gleeful, everything seems a song. It's like that in today's poem by Langston Hughes.

It has a beat and a cadence like a song - it even has a chorus. And is that, where it's in italics, a spoken interlude? Haha. This poem has so many common song attributes.

I like the message of the poem, as well. That life is meant for living (by definition, no?), so ignore all your troubles and get on with it and live. Cuz, after all "Life is fine!"

Ooh, and that reminds me of that other quote: "While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness is not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful." (attributed to H.G. Wells)

Since his claim that "life is fine!" seems a little screeched and not 100% genuine, it comes across as pretend. However, what's truly wrong with that? After all, life must be lived, so why not be cheerful about it.

Favorite line: "So since I'm still here livin', / I guess I will live on."

As You Never Bothered to Return My Call (August Kleinzahler)

As You Never Bothered to Return My Call by August Kleinzahler

I enjoy this poem. Its cadence - its long, prosaic flow. Its conversational tone and obviously young man pining and a little hurt point of view. It's an idyllic confessional - that sounds like it could be something you heard someone say at a bar - but only do on tv shows or in the movies. It's too polished for real life.

The syntax. The occasional ellipses -- that strikes me as very 20-something as well. And the dropped line at the end adds a meaning and a sadness to the final word that wouldn't have been there otherwise.

I like this poem which is rooted in time - not a particular decade, but in a common era of life.  Your first real love that ends.

Favorite line: "the first one, the best one, the 1954 one"

the first one, the best one, the 1954 one,