Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), one of the “greats” of American poetry, was friends with William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore and E.E. Cummings, among many others – and his day job was being a vice president at the Hartford Insurance Company. His achievements went largely unrecognized, however, until the year before his death, when he published his Collected Poems. He won the Pulitzer Prize for that work, and was offered a faculty position at Harvard – which he turned down because he would have had to give up his job at the Hartford.

Almost 30 years ago, a friend gave me a copy of Collected Poems. and I was astounded. I still have that copy on my bookshelf, and I will periodically open it and just sit while I read from it. And I’m still astounded. Library of America published an edition of all of Stevens’ poems and prose in 1997.

Stevens is sometimes loosely grouped in the triumverate of great Modern poets, the others being T.S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats. Yet his poems, particularly the early ones, show the influence of the English Romantics and the French Symbolists.

Stevens composed his poems while commuting to and from work, and in the evenings. For National Poetry Month, here are three of them.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Man Carrying Thing

The poem must resist the intelligence
Almost successfully. Illustration:

A brune figure in winter evening resists
Identity. The thing he carries resists

The most necessitous sense. Accept them, then,
As secondary (parts not quite perceived

Of the obvious whole, uncertain particles
Of the certain solid, the primary free from doubt,

Things floating like the first hundred flakes of snow
Out of a storm we must endure all night,

Out of a storm of secondary things),
A horror of thoughts that suddenly are real.

We must endure our thoughts all night, until
The bright obvious stands motionless in cold.

The High-Toned Old Christian Woman

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That’s clear. But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began. Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.

Postings and News Updates:

Maureen Doallas, who follows all things art, culture and poetry, recommends checking into the blog site 37 Days, which is written by writer and poet Patty Digh. Lots of cool stuff there.

On Friday I linked to a poem by Marcus Goodyear, “Yet Another Heresy,” and then TweetSpeak co-editor L.L. Barkat wrote a poem in response, “Note to the Shepherd.”

Friday’s Poem a Day from the Academy of American Poets was “Lost” by Stephen Dobyns, from his Winter’s Journey.

Derek Walcott published his first poem at age 14 in 1944 (entitled, appropriately enough, “1944,”); had self-published two volumes of poetry by age 19; and received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1992. He was born in St. Lucia in the West Indies, been active in the theater (acting, directing, producing, playwriting), and currently divides his residence between New York City and St. Lucia.

Among other honors and accolades, he’s received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant; a Royal Society of Literature Award; the Queen’s Medal for Poetry; and an honorary membership in the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Here’s what the poet Joseph Brodsky had to say about Walcott’s work: “For almost forty years his throbbing and relentless lines kept arriving in the English language like tidal waves, coagulating into an archipelago of poems without which the map of modern literature would effectively match wallpaper. He gives us more than himself or ‘a world’; he gives us a sense of infinity embodied in the language.”

For National Poetry Month, three by Derek Walcott:

Blues

Those five or six young guys
lunched on the stoop
that oven-hot summer night
whistled me over. Nice
and friendly. So, I stop.
MacDougal or Christopher
Street in chains of light.

A summer festival. Or some
saint’s. I wasn’t too far from
home, but not too bright
for a nigger, and not too dark.
I figured we were all
one, wop, nigger, jew,
besides, this wasn’t Central Park.
I’m coming on too strong? You figure
right! They beat this yellow nigger
black and blue.

Yeah. During all this, scared
on case one used a knife,
I hung my olive-green, just-bought
sports coat on a fire plug.
I did nothing. They fought
each other, really. Life
gives them a few kicks,
that’s all. The spades, the spicks.

My face smashed in, my bloddy mug
pouring, my olive-branch jacket saved
from cuts and tears,
I crawled four flights upstairs.
Sprawled in the gutter, I
remember a few watchers waved
loudly, and one kid’s mother shouting
like “Jackie” or “Terry,”
“now that’s enough!”
It’s nothing really.
They don’t get enough love.

You know they wouldn’t kill
you. Just playing rough,
like young Americans will.
Still it taught me something
about love. If it’s so tough,
forget it.

Midsummer, Tobago

Broad sun-stoned beaches.

White heat.
A green river.

A bridge,
scorched yellow palms

from the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.

Days I have held,
days I have lost,

days that outgrow, like daughters,
my harbouring arms.

A City’s Death by Fire

After that hot gospeller has levelled all but the churched sky,
I wrote the tale by tallow of a city’s death by fire;
Under a candle’s eye, that smoked in tears, I
Wanted to tell, in more than wax, of faiths that were snapped like wire.
All day I walked abroad among the rubbled tales,
Shocked at each wall that stood on the street like a liar;
Loud was the bird-rocked sky, and all the clouds were bales
Torn open by looting, and white, in spite of the fire.
By the smoking sea, where Christ walked, I asked, why
Should a man wax tears, when his wooden world fails?
In town, leaves were paper, but the hills were a flock of faiths;
To a boy who walked all day, each leaf was a green breath
Rebuilding a love I thought was dead as nails,
Blessing the death and the baptism by fire.

You can also hear Derek Walcott recite one of his poems, “A Lesson for This Sunday.”

Postings and News Updates:

The Academy of American Poets has a gallery for all of the posters it’s produced for National Poetry Month, going back to 1996.

The Academy also has a pretty cool “poetry map,” or “Poem on the Range” – where you can map places in the United States via iconic poems and a multitude of links. I clicked on Missouri and found everything from famous poets born in Missouri (from Maya Angelou and Howard Nemerov to Eugene Field) to literary journals, small presses and poetry-friendly bookstores.

“Yet Another Heresy,” poem written by Marcus Goodyear for National Poetry Month.

The International Arts Movement is recognizing National Poetry Month by publishing a poem a week from InsideOut: Poems by L.L. Barkat (one of TweetSpeak’s editors).

The Poem A Day for yesterday was Gerald Stern’s “Kissing Stieglitz Good-Bye.”

Billy Collins served as U.S. poet laureate for two terms (2001-2003), and New York state poet from 2004-2006. He’s published 12 books of poetry and edited three others. The New York Times has called him “the most popular poet in America,” and he’s something rather odd in publishing circles – several of his books of poems have become bestsellers, including Ballistics: Poems (2008).

The word “ballistics” is the study of the dynamics of projectiles, which we might more associate with Miami CSI or Law and Order, but Collins associates it with something else – books. From the title poem:

“When I came across the high-speed photograph
Of a bullet that had just pierced a book –
The pages exploding with the velocity –

I forgot all about the marvels of photography
And began to wonder which book
The photographer had selected for the shot…”

He goes on to speculate which book it might have been – one by Raymond Chandler, “where an extra bullet would hardly be noticed,” or a work of medieval literature, or a biography of Joan of Arc. Drifting off to sleep, he realizes that the “executed book” was a collection of poems written by someone he doesn’t like.

That’s vintage Collins: a slightly off-center curiosity; a playfulness that often ends in seriousness; and a writing style that is immediately accessible.

He considers everyday things, like birds, and everyday feelings and experiences, like tension, despair, separation and aging. Here’s “A Dog on His Master:”

As young as I look,
I am growing older faster than he,
seven to one
is the ratio they tend to say.

Whatever the number,
I will pass him one day
and take the lead
the way I do on our walks in the woods.

And if this ever manages
to cross his mind,
it would be the sweetest
shadow I have ever cast on snow or grass.

Humorous, straightforward, simple – yet with a depth below the simplicity. That’s Billy Collins, and that’s Ballistics.

Related post: International Arts Movement has reposted an audio interview with Billy Collins from January 2009.

Postings and News Updates:

The Poem A Day from the Academy of American Poets is “Nox,” by Anne Carson, and it’s a kind oftwo-media poem.

InfoPlease has a special feature for National Poetry Month – a collection of links about William Shakespeare, including links to the full text of his sonnets.

Family Education has a “Name the Poet Quiz,” which provides lines from a poem and three choices for the author.

Mona Van Duyn (1921-2004) received numerous prizes, accolades and recognitions, including becoming the first woman to be named U.S. poet laureate (1992-1993). Her book of poems Near Changes (1990) received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Van Duyn once said, “I believe that good poetry can be as ornate as a cathedral or as bare as a pottingshed, as long as it confronts the self with honesty and fullness. Nobody is born with the capacity to perform this act of confrontation, in poetry or anywhere else; one’s writing career is simply a continuing effort to increase one’s skill at it.”

For National Poetry Month, three by Mona Van Duyn:

Earth Tremors Felt in Missouri

The quake last night was nothing personal,
you told me this morning. I think one always wonders,
unless, of course, something is visible: tremors
that take us, private and willy-nilly, are usual.

But the earth said last night that what I feel,
you feel; what secretly moves you, moves me.
One small, sensuous catastrophe
makes inklings letters, spelled in a worldly tremble.

The earth, with others on it, turns in its course
as we turn toward each other, less than ourselves, gross,
mindless, more than we were. Pebbles, we swell
to planets, nearing the universal roll,
in our conceit even comprehending the sun,
whose bright ordeal leaves cool men woebegone.

from Endings

Setting the V.C.R. when we go to bed
to record a night owl movie, some charmer we missed
we always allow, for unprogrammed unforeseen,
an extra half hour. (Night gods of the small screen
are ruthless with watchers trapped in their piety.)
We watch next evening, and having slowly found
the start of the film, meet the minors and leads,
enter their time and place, their wills and needs,
hear in our chests the click of empathy’s padlock,
watch the forces gather, unyielding world
against the unyielding heart, one longing’s minefield
laid for another longing, which may yield.
Tears will salt the left-over salad I seize
during ads, or laughter slow my hurry to pee.
But as clot melts toward clearness a black fate
may fall on the screen; the movie started too late.
Torn from the backward-shining of an end
that lights up the meaning of the whole work,
disabled in mind and feeling, I flail and shout,
“I can’t bear it! I have to see how it comes out!”
For what is story if not relief from the pain
of the inconclusive, from dread of the meaningless?
Minds in their silent blast-offs search through space–
how often I’ve followed yours!–for a resting-place.
And I’ll follow, past each universe in its spangled
ballgown who waits for the slow-dance of life to start,
past vacancies of darkness who vainglory
is endless as death’s, to find the end of the story.

Letters from a Father

Ulcerated tooth keeps me awake, there is
such pain, would have to go to the hospital to have
it pulled or would bleed to death from the blood thinners,
but can’t leave Mother, she falls and forgets her salve
and her tranquilizers, her ankles swell so and her bowels
are so bad, she almost had a stoppage and sometimes
what she passes is green as grass.There are big holes
in my thigh where my leg brace buckles the size of dimes.
My head pounds from the high pressure.It is awful
not to be able to get out, and I fell in the bathroom
and the girl could hardly get me up at all.
Sure thought my back was broken, it will be next time.
Prostate is bad and heart has given out,
feel bloated after supper. Have made my peace
because am just plain done for and have no doubt
that the Lord will come any day with my release.
You say you enjoy your feeder, I don’t see why
you want to spend good money on grain for birds
and you say you have a hundred sparrows, I’d buy
poison and get rid of their diseases and turds.

News Updates and Postings:

Even the canine corps is getting into National Poetry Month. “Firty Goodness,” a poem from Elvis, who belongs to Lorrie at Grow Up Deep.

Yesterday’s Poem A Day from the Academy of American Poets: “The Apple Trees at Olema” by Robert Hass, taken from his The Apple Trees At Olema: New and Selected Poems.  

Poets.org has launched a poem flow app for iPhones.

If you see any poems you like, or if you have written any you’d like us to link to, drop the link in the comment section and we’ll feature it the next day.

Edgar Lee Masters (1868 – 1950) is best known for his famous book of poetry, Spoon River Anthology (1916), in which 244 voices speak of all the passion and tedium of life,and often death. Visiting Spoon River is to visit a poetic graveyard to read the headstones.

Masters produced far more than this work. He wrote 12 plays, 21 books of poetry, six novels, six biographies (including one of poet Vachel Lindsay, featured here yesterday) and numerous other works. He was also an attorney.

Spoon River was loosely based on the small town where he lived in Illinois. And the residents of the area never forgave him.

For National Poetry Month, three of the “headstones” from Spoon River Anthology:

Spoon River Anthology
By Edgar Lee Masters

Amanda Barker

Trainor, the Druggist

George Trimble

You can read the entire work online at Bartleby’s.

Postings and News Updates:

“Resort,” a new poem about the creepiest hotel you ever saw, by Marcus Goodyear for National Poetry Month.

“The Windhover”, a sestet by Gerard Manley Hopkins, is featured at the Guardian.

The Poem A Day for yesterday from the Academy of American Poets is “Inheritance” by Daniel Johnson. 

Sunset: St. Louis
By Sara Teasdale

Hushed in the smoky haze of summer sunset,
When I came home again from far-off places,
How many times I saw my western city
  Dream by her river.

Then for an hour the water wore a mantle
Of tawny gold and mauve and misted turquoise
Under the tall and darkened arches bearing
  Gray, high-flung bridges.

Against the sunset, water-towers and steeples
Flickered with fire up the slope to westward,
And old warehouses poured their purple shadows
  Across the levee.

High over them the black train swept with thunder,
Cleaving the city, leaving far beneath it
Wharf-boats moored beside the old side-wheelers
  Resting in twilight.

From Flame and Shadow (1920) by Sara Teasdale

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
(In Springfield, Illinois)
By Vachel Lindsay

It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down,

Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.

A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.

He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
He is among us: — as in times before!
And we who toss and lie awake for long
Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.

His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings.
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not why,
Too many homesteads in black terror weep.

The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now
The bitterness, the folly and the pain.

He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn
Shall come; — the shining hope of Europe free:
The league of sober folk, the Workers’ Earth,
Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.

It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,
That all his hours of travail here for men
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?

Poetry News and Postings:

For its Poem-A-Day, the Academy of American Poets posted “Small Talk” By Eleanor Lerman, taken from her book The Sensual World Re-emerges: Poems.

New spring poetry books are listed at the Academy’s web site, poets.org.  The sheer number is overwhelming.

Erin Kilmer, who blogs at Together for Good and is one of our regular contributors to the poetry jams on Twitter, has started a poetry blog, Together for Good Poetry.

Poets Marie Ponsot and Edward Hirsch talk to the Wall Street Journal about poetry and National Poetry Month (video).

Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper continues her series on state poet laureates with a post on Ruth Stone, Vermont’s poet laureate.

If you have a poem or know a good resource or like a poetry site, drop the link in the comments and we’ll feature it the next day.

Nancy Rosback is one of our regular contributions to the (approximately) twice-a-month poetry jams on Twitter. She lives in Oregon, where she and her husband Peter operate Sineann Wines. Her blog is Poems and Prayers, where she posts some of the simplest, and most profound, poems around, about faith and hope and even everyday things like soap. Here are three of them.

Chew on This

where does greed
come from
to want
more
than need
it’s an evil
seed that grows
planted with the
hands of fear
and fed by pride
oh yes
who has followed
that golden carrot
that elusive tomorrow
Lord
give us this day our
daily
bread
enough is enough
for today
…

On Top of the World

on
top of the world
at
the edge
of a country
exposed
to
an expanse
of blues
where
time is told
by
the sun’s path
across the sky
by
the changing tide
one can
be

Liquid Soap

setting a fire
in the big black stove
she went outside
to the pump
lifting the handle
up and pushing
it down with
a determined rhythm
the water
gushed out
and filled the
metal bucket
enough
for making breakfast
and washing dishes
it would take a few
more buckets full
to heat
for laundry
.

(Poems copyright 2010 by Nancy Rosback. Used with permission.)

(Photograph: “Green” by Nancy Rosback. Used with persmission.)

Poetry News and Postings:

As part of National Poetry Month, the Academy of American Poets is sponsoring “Poem in Your Pocket Day” on April 29.

Yesterday’s Poem A Day from the Academy was “Gold River” by Catie Rosemurgy, taken from her collection entitled The Stranger Manual.

Scholastic has a National Poetry Month page for teachers, with all kinds of suggestions for poetry in the classroom.

Accredited Online Colleges has posted its list of the “100 Best Poetry Blogs.” TweetSpeak Poetry wasn’t included; just wait until next year.

Patti Digh has posted a poem entitled “Invocation” by Marilyn Hacker and an accompanying painting for National Poetry Month.

We hop back across the Atlantic to England for one of the Great War poets who died during that conflict in Europe. Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915) died in World War I, not from a war wound but from sepsis as the result of an infected mosquito bite. 

Brooke was connected to the Bloomsbury Group (Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf, among others) as well as several poetry groups in pre-war Britain. After suffering some kind of emotional collapse, he traveled to the United States and Canada, writing travel articles for the Westminster Gazette, and then returned home via the South Seas, where it was rumored he fathered a child with a Tahitian woman. Back in Britain, he was introduced to Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, and joined the Royal Navy. It was while his ship was on its way to what became the Battle of Gallipoli that he contracted sepsis.

He wrote some beautiful poems over approximately a 10-year period before his death. Here are two of them.

The Way That Lovers Use

The way that lovers use is this;
They bow, catch hands, with never a word,
And their lips meet, and they do kiss,
– So I have heard.

They queerly find some healing so,
And strange attainment in the touch;
There is a secret lovers know,
– I have read as much.

And theirs no longer joy nor smart,
Changing or ending, night or day;
But mouth to mouth, and heart on heart,
– So lovers say.

Beauty and Beauty

When Beauty and Beauty meet
All naked, fair to fair,
The earth is crying-sweet,
And scattering-bright the air,
Eddying, dizzying, closing round,
With soft and drunken laughter;
Veiling all that may befall
After — after –

Where Beauty and Beauty met,
Earth’s still a-tremble there,
And winds are scented yet,
And memory-soft the air,
Bosoming, folding glints of light,
And shreds of shadowy laughter;
Not the tears that fill the years
After — after –

Poetry News and Postings:

The Seattle Times is celebrating National Poetry Month with a Twitter poetry contest. (Thanks, Maureen Doallas, for the tip!)

Poetry on the Move – Laura Boggess at The Wellspring – includes her poem “Uncommon Currency.”

L.L. Barkat checks out some advice on how to write a poem.

Just a sentence and some words – the Random Act of Poetry at The High Calling Blogs.

The Poem A Day from the Academy of American Poets yesterday was Derek Wolcott’s “In the Village” from White Egrets. Wolcott won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992.

And check out Susanne Barrett’s “April Fool’s Day” in the comment section of the previous post here.  We’ll directly to her original post as soon as her new blog site is up.

National Poetry Month is on, and we continue to celebrate it. L.L. Barkat created a cool badge (see the column at the right or the post below this one), and people (and poets) are starting to drop links in the comments.

Here’s one by Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886). Dickinson was a prolific poet, yet fewer than a dozen of her almost 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime. Apparently, her poems didn’t fit the style and tastes of her time, but they surely fit the time that came after and our own time.

From the Chrysalis
By Emily Dickinson

My cocoon tightens, colors tease,
I’m feeling for the air;
A dim capacity for wings
Degrades the dress I wear.

A power of butterfly must be
The aptitude to fly,
Meadows of majesty concedes
And easy sweeps of sky.

So I must baffle at the hint
And cipher at the sign,
And make much blunder, if at last
I take the clew divine.

From Time and Eternity by Emily Dickinson

Here’s another poem you might enjoy: “Shooting Crank” by Lance McKnight.

Subscribe to Poem a Day for April from the Academy of American Poets. The one for yesterday was “A Story” by Philip Levine, taken from his News of the World.

Drop a link to your poem or one by someone else or a poetry site you enjoy online, and we’ll call it out in the next post.

April is National Poetry Month in the United States and Canada, and what better way to start the celebration with a poem from the Mother Country. Our goal is to post at least once a day during April with poems, articles, reviews and a couple of giveaways. (Note that I said goal; I didn’t say absolute commitment.)

Please feel free to post links to your poems and online resources for poetry in the comment section. Whenever possible, I’ll report them in the main body of the text. And keep an eye on Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper; she’s going to be celebrating National Poetry Month, too, including a couple of cool giveaways.

Update: L.L. Barkat lists her Top 10 Poetry Picks at Seedlings in Stone.

Also, if you like, grab our Celebration Button…

<a href="http://tweetspeakpoetry.com/blog"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4056/4481475301_5742e73037.jpg" width="220" alt="National Poetry Month at tweetspeak" /></a>

To Some Ladies 

By John Keats

What though while the wonders of nature exploring,
   I cannot your light, mazy footsteps attend;
Nor listen to accents, that almost adoring,
   Bless Cynthia’s face, the enthusiast’s friend:

Yet over the steep, whence the mountain stream rushes,
   With you, kindest friends, in idea I rove;
Mark the clear tumbling crystal, its passionate gushes,
   Its spray that the wild flower kindly bedews.

Why linger you so, the wild labyrinth strolling?
   Why breathless, unable your bliss to declare?
Ah! you list to the nightingale’s tender condoling,
   Responsive to sylphs, in the moon beamy air.

‘Tis morn, and the flowers with dew are yet drooping,
   I see you are treading the verge of the sea:
And now! ah, I see it–you just now are stooping
   To pick up the keep-sake intended for me.

If a cherub, on pinions of silver descending,
   Had brought me a gem from the fret-work of heaven;
And smiles, with his star-cheering voice sweetly blending,
   The blessings of Tighe had melodiously given;

It had not created a warmer emotion
   Than the present, fair nymphs, I was blest with from you,
Than the shell, from the bright golden sands of the ocean
   Which the emerald waves at your feet gladly threw.

For, indeed, ’tis a sweet and peculiar pleasure,
   (And blissful is he who such happiness finds,)
To possess but a span of the hour of leisure,
   In elegant, pure, and aerial minds.

From Poems 1817 by John Keats