read a good poem: gloss of the past

there is such a terrific tyranny of pink in the city these days, but this bough in madison square park might be my favorite...

© anita aguilar

***

Gloss of the Past


Pink Dawn, Aurora Pink, Misty Pink, Fresh Pink, Natural Pink, Country Pink, Dusty Pink, Pussywillow Pink, Pink Heather, Pink Peony, Sunflower Pink, Plum Pink, Peach of a Pink, Raspberry Pink, Watermelon Pink, Pink Lemonade, Bikini Pink, Buoy Buoy Pink, Sea Shell Pink, Pebble Pink, Pink Piper, Acapulco Pink, Tahiti Beach Pink, Sunny Pink, Hot Pink, Sizzling Pink, Skinnydip Pink, Flesh Pink, Transparent Pink, Breezy Pink, Sheer Shiver Pink, Polar Bare Pink, Pink Frost, Frosty Pink, Frost Me Pink, Frosted Pink, Sugarpuff Pink, Ice Cream Pink, Lickety Pink, Pink Melba, Pink Whip, Pinkermint, Sweet Young Pink, Little Girl Pink, Fragile Pink, Fainting Pink, Helpless Pink, Tiny Timid Pink, Wink of Pink, Shadow of Pink, Tint of Pink, Shimmer of Pink, Flicker of Pink, Pink Flash, E.S. Pink, Person-to-Person Pink, City Pink, Penny Lane Pink, Pink Paisley, London Luv Pink, Pretty Pink, Pastel Pink, Pinking Sheer, Pink Piqué, Pink Silk, Plush Pink, Lush Iced Pink, Brandied Pink, Sheer Pink Champagne, Candlelight Pink, Fluffy Moth Pink, Softsilver Pink, Pinkyring, Turn Pale Pink, A Little Pink, Pinker, Pinkety Pink, Heart of Pink, Hug that Pink, Passionate Pink, Snuggle Pink, Pink-Glo!, Happy-Go-Pink, Daredevil Pink, By Jupiter Pink, Stark Raving Pink, Viva La Pink. 


 - David Trinidad, via the poetry foundation

read a good poem: today (and happy spring)

the first day of spring, 2012.

nyc

***

Today

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

--Billy Collins, via the poetry foundation

art seen: linda stojak

on view at the stephen haller gallery, as part of the paper rocks scissors group exhibit, linda stojak's haunting and stunning self-portraits, including:

untitled, 2000

oil on paper

26¼ x 41¼ inches

untitled, 2000 (detail)

oil on paper

26¼ x 41¼ inches

untitled, 2000 (detail)

oil on paper

26¼ x 41¼ inches

***

and...because you know i can't resist the experiment of pairing visuals and verse :

Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed

Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the wound
In the throat, burning and turning. All night afloat
On the silent sea we have heard the sound
That came from the wound wrapped in the salt sheet.

Under the mile off moon we trembled listening
To the sea sound flowing like blood from the loud wound
And when the salt sheet broke in a storm of singing
The voices of all the drowned swam on the wind.

Open a pathway through the slow sad sail,
Throw wide to the wind the gates of the wandering boat
For my voyage to begin to the end of my wound,
We heard the sea sound sing, we saw the salt sheet tell.
Lie still, sleep becalmed, hide the mouth in the throat,
Or we shall obey, and ride with you through the drowned.

--Dylan Thomas via the poetry foundation

***
paper rocks scissors is on view at the stephen haller gallery through march 31, 2012
542 west 26th street (between 10th and 11th avenues)
gallery hours: tuesday - saturday 10am - 6pm

read a good poem: what we want

i liked everything about her: the pose, the patterns...

union square, nyc.

feb 23, 2012

© anita aguilar

***

and: i hope you like this poem (it took a lot of reading to find this one tonight)

***

What We Want

What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names--
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.

-by Linda Pastan, via the poem hunter

read a good poem: lilac sunday

at la closerie des lilas, may 29, 2011.

oh, it's like fate. or internet voodoo.

the very day after i post about la closerie des lilas, the writer's almanac delivers a poem about...lilacs. does that seem like an amazing coincidence to you, too?

in any case, it's my excuse to post one more photo of a sweet older couple (and share more sweet words).

***

lilac sunday

Let us agree to meet
here some winter
when the park

gates are locked,
and the arches thinned
of their vaulting green

to climb the wall,
thaw the icicles
and watch the rain

like flowering
cherry and lilacs
that kissed your hair;

some winter
when the fog is heavy,—
to return to this light.

--Diana Der-Hovanessian, via the writer's almanac

***

ok, one more:

"He looked very fine, Marshal Ney in his top-boots, gesturing with his sword among the green horse-chestnut leaves."

--E. Hemingway, "The Sun Also Rises"

photo: may 23, 2011

read a good poem: here

at the opposite end of the day....

nov 24, 2011

©anita aguilar

There is nothing concrete to grasp in
looking into the morning sky

The evidence of red-eye
flights east a plane drawn line presents

is not a wheelbarrow solid enough
dependency as day and night

carry in coming and going
You don't see the poem

saying anything you can't see in it
White dashes of contrails'

seemingly unmoving streak towards sunrise
disquiet the pale otherwise

unpunctuated blue of dawn
breaks it off Here is that silence

--by Ed Roberson via poets.org

read a good poem: the white

These are the moments

before snow, whole weeks before.

The rehearsals of milky November,

cloud constructions

when a warm day

lowers a drift of light

through the leafless angles

of the trees lining the streets.

Green is gone,

gold is gone.

The blue sky is

the clairvoyance of snow.

There is night

and a moon

but these facts

force the hand of the season:

from that black sky

the real and cold white

will begin to emerge.

--Patricia Hampl via the writer's almanac

photos © anita aguilar

read a good poem: pleasures

pleasures

I like to find
what's not found
at once, but lies

within something of another nature,
in repose, distinct.
Gull feathers of glass, hidden

in white pulp: the bones of squid
which I pull out and lay
blade by blade on the draining board—

tapered as if for swiftness, to pierce
the heart, but fragile, substance
belying design. Or a fruit, mamey,

cased in rough brown peel, the flesh
rose-amber, and the seed:
the seed a stone of wood, carved and

polished, walnut-colored, formed
like a brazilnut, but large,
large enough to fill
the hungry palm of a hand.

I like the juicy stem of grass that grows
within the coarser leaf folded round,
and the butteryellow glow
in the narrow flute from which the morning-glory
opens blue and cool on a hot morning.
(via the poetry foundation)

***

if you like grass and posies and "urban jungles," maybe you'll like some of the shots from the high line.
(a sure sign that i've lived in ny too long--i got snap happy for GRASS.)

what i envisioned for each shot was a little more remarkable than what i caught. sort of frustrating. i almost didn't post them here. but the poem reminded me of what i loved about being there on saturday, and what i loved on sight.

the appeal of some things are obvious: a tall stalk with lavender buds, standing strong against concrete and broken glass, or the wild way a sunflower sweeps across a small plot--lazy, but like it owned the place. i liked that the planting is an attempt to force a bit of symmetry, but that much of it is left to grow in its own raggedly beautiful way. i like the thicker, more exotic and fragrant brush of the south end. all the dark greens and deep purples. but maybe more than anything i like the feeling of remembering, rediscovering beauty, every time i'm there. it's hard to not want to try to capture that, and take it home with me.

so while maybe no individual shot is strong enough to stand on its own, perhaps --perhaps-- as a collection, they give you a good view.

and maybe you'll want to head over there, too.

read a good poem: the antilamentation

"regret nothing."

***

nyc, jan 2010.

photo © anita aguilar

***

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not
the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, not
the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punch line, the door or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the window.
Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation.
Relax. Don't bother remembering any of it. Let's stop here,
under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

--dorianne laux via the writer's almanac, march 7, 2011

read a good poem: april rain song

park ave. april 19, 2010.

Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night—

And I love the rain.

--langston hughes via the poetry foundation

read a good poem: cher

this seems right for a saturday night.

i sort of love 70s cher. i used to want her hair. (maybe still do.)

(come to think of it, i have this outfit...)

via curtis publishing

Cher

I wanted to be Cher, tall
as a glass of iced tea,
her bony shoulders draped
with a curtain of dark hair
that plunged straight down,
the cut tips brushing
her nonexistent butt.
I wanted to wear a lantern
for a hat, a cabbage, a piñata
and walk in thigh-high boots
with six-inch heels that buttoned
up the back. I wanted her
rouged cheek bones and her
throaty panache, her voice
of gravel and clover, the hokum
of her clothes: black fishnet
and pink pom-poms, fringed bells
and her thin strip of a waist
with the bullet-hole navel.
Cher standing with her skinny arm
slung around Sonny's thick neck,
posing in front of the Eiffel Tower,
The Leaning Tower of Pisa,
The Great Wall of China,
The Crumbling Pyramids, smiling
for the camera with her crooked
teeth, hit-and-miss beauty, the sun
bouncing off the bump on her nose.
Give me back the old Cher,
the gangly, imperfect girl
before the shaving knife
took her, before they shoved
pillows in her tits, injected
the lumpy gel into her lips.
Take me back to the woman
I wanted to be, stalwart
and silly, smart as her lion
tamer's whip, my body a torch
stretched the length of the polished
piano, legs bent at the knee, hair
cascading down over Sonny's blunt
fingers as he pummeled the keys,
singing in a sloppy alto
the oldest, saddest songs.

by Dorianne Laux via the writer's almanac

it pains me to post this without knowing who the photographer is...if i find it, i'll fix this.

cher, 1975.

via the way of love

read a good poem: marginalia

a few of mine...

i was never rebellious enough, as a kid, to write in textbooks or library books. i disliked having to use books with other people's scrawl. it was distracting and messy and "wrong." but once i transitioned from borrower to owner, i blitzed mine-- i was a single- and double- underliner, a multi-color highlighter, a circler of proper names and places. i made written notes, too.

i went through some of my books during a holiday weekend at home last year, the ones i've kept from college (constitutional law books, mostly) and the years immediately afterwards (erratic fiction choices, overwhelmingly). highlighting is a sin against books, isn't it? the garish neon has barely faded. the school notes were actually sort of impressive. (will i ever think that rigorously again?)

the personal notes reveal exactly how i was at the time--searching and sad and solitary. i don't mind reading them now but would feel shy if others did, too. it's the reason i eventually stopped making notes and took to dog-earing "meaningful" pages instead.

i thought those folds would be a good guide, that re-reading entire passages, even many years later, would trigger memories, like a snapshot. but judging by my attempts last week, it's a very imperfect technique. i still haven't figured out the connection to neruda's sonnet no 7. and i'm seriously wondering why i liked ask the dust at all? but there are a few pages (didion essays, other poems) that are imprinted forever.

maybe that's the way it should be after all.

***

i looked for "marginalia" after reading this interesting nytimes piece.

it's a good one, i think.

but i am probably predisposed to like any poem that includes the words "egg salad."

hope you like...

***

Marginalia

--Billy Collins

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

via billy-collins.com

read a good poem: on the origin of things

take off, 1956.

oil and enamel on canvas

helen frankenthaler

take off (detail) ...

taken at the metropolitan museum of art, dec 3, 2009

photo © anita aguilar

***

On The Origins Of Things

Everyone knows that the moon started out

as a renegade fragment of the sun, a solar

flare that fled that hellish furnace

and congealed into a flat frozen pond suspended

between the planets. But did you know

that anger began as music, played

too often and too loudly by drunken performers

at weddings and garden parties? Or that turtles

evolved from knuckles, ice from tears, and darkness

from misunderstanding? As for the dominant

thesis regarding the origin of love, I

abstain from comment, nor will I allow

myself to address the idea that dance

began as a kiss, that happiness was

an accidental import from Spain, that the ancient

game of jump-the-fire gave rise

to politics. But I will confess

that I began as an astronomer—a liking

for bright flashes, vast distances, unreachable things,

a hand stretched always toward the furthest limit—

and that my longing for you has not taken me

very far from that original desire

to inscribe a comet's orbit around the walls

of our city, to gently stroke the surface of the stars.

--by Troy Jollimore via poets.org, february 8, 2010

read a good poem: voyage

l'evasion de rochefort. edouard manet (1832-1884). circa 1881. oil on canvas.

***

I feel as if we opened a book about great ocean voyages
and found ourselves on a great ocean voyage:
sailing through December, around the horn of Christmas
and into the January Sea, and sailing on and on

in a novel without a moral but one in which
all the characters who died in the middle chapters
make the sunsets near the book's end more beautiful.

—And someone is spreading a map upon a table,
and someone is hanging a lantern from the stern,
and someone else says, "I'm only sorry
that I forgot my blue parka; It's turning cold."

Sunset like a burning wagon train
Sunrise like a dish of cantaloupe
Clouds like two armies clashing in the sky;
Icebergs and tropical storms,
That's the kind of thing that happens on our ocean voyage—

And in one of the chapters I was blinded by love
And in another, anger made us sick like swallowed glass
& I lay in my bunk and slept for so long,

I forgot about the ocean,
Which all the time was going by, right there, outside my cabin window.

And the sides of the ship were green as money,
and the water made a sound like memory when we sailed.

Then it was summer. Under the constellation of the swan,
under the constellation of the horse.

At night we consoled ourselves
By discussing the meaning of homesickness.
But there was no home to go home to.
There was no getting around the ocean.
We had to go on finding out the story
by pushing into it—

The sea was no longer a metaphor.
The book was no longer a book.
That was the plot.
That was our marvelous punishment.

--by tony hoagland via the writer's almanac

read a good poem: silence

at joseph leonard...jan 30, 2010

photo © anita aguilar

There is the sudden silence of the crowd
above a player not moving on the field,
and the silence of the orchid.

The silence of the falling vase
before it strikes the floor,
the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.

The stillness of the cup and the water in it,
the silence of the moon
and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.

The silence when I hold you to my chest,
the silence of the window above us,
and the silence when you rise and turn away.

And there is the silence of this morning
which I have broken with my pen,
a silence that had piled up all night

like snow falling in the darkness of the house—
the silence before I wrote a word
and the poorer silence now.

--billy collins, via the poetry foundation

read a good poem: depression glass

photo © anita aguilar

Depression Glass

It seemed those rose-pink dishes
she kept for special company
were always cold, brought down
from the shelf in jingling stacks,
the plates like the panes of ice
she broke from the water bucket
winter mornings, the flaring cups
like tulips that opened too early
and got bitten by frost. They chilled
the coffee no matter how quickly
you drank, while a heavy
everyday mug would have kept
a splash hot for the better
part of a conversation. It was hard
to hold up your end of the gossip
with your coffee cold, but it was
a special occasion, just the same,
to sit at her kitchen table
and sip the bitter percolation
of the past week’s rumors from cups
it had taken a year to collect
at the grocery, with one piece free
for each five pounds of flour.

--by Ted Kooser via the poetry foundation

read a good poem: chaplinesque

fdr drive. nov 21, 2010. © anita aguilar

***

the resonant, true (and not outrageous) thing i read yesterday about the wikileaks:

The quality of the conversation is determined by the level of trust.

(via david brooks)

i spent part of last evening, then, reading poems on the idea of trust.

but i eventually found my way here (not sure what it may mean to you, but hope you like it)

****

Chaplinesque

We make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

--Hart Crane (via the poetry foundation)

read a good poem (or two): "as" and "apostrophe to the apostrophe"

it's picture/poem time again.

i haven't taken a single photo this week--so i went to the old hard drive to see what there is to work with. here's today's:

i've never been sure about this picture, but i liked something about the window setup (at a men's retail clothing store in nolita) immediately as i strolled by. i like the uneven edges of the cross, staked behind the little desert plant, though the crack in the glass adds the real interest.

in searching for a poem, i avoided anything about "a cross" -- not interested in that kind of deep, for here and now. but i looked for poems about signs, symbols.

this one is clever and nice and even if it doesn't work here, i hope you like reading it.

"apostrophe to the apostrophe"

small floater, you stay above the fray,

a wink at nothing's nod, a raised brow

watching p's and q's, a selfless mote

between I and m, a little horn of plenty

spilling plurals, disdaining the bottom line.

unlike your twin relatives—groupies of wit

and wisdom, hangers on in the smallest talk—

you work alone, dark of a crescent moon.

laboring in obscurity, you never ask why,

never exclaim, never tell anyone where to go.

caught up between extremes, you are both

a turning away and a stepping forth,

a loss and an addition. you are the urge

to possess everything, and the sure sign

that something is missing.

--by eric nelson, via the poetry foundation

***

this is an excerpt from one i found last night.

had a change of heart about offering this one, in part because i just don't get it. but like these lines.

"as"

...as cathedral gives way to cavern

and cookie cutter gives way to cookie

and the rookies give way to the All-Blacks

and the shad give way to the smoke shed

and the roughshod give way to the Black Horse avern

that still rings true

despite that T being missing from its sign

where a little nook gives way to a little nookie

when I give way to you...

***

(you know he got me with "cookie" and "nookie," right?)

***

read the full poem, "as" by new yorker poetry editor, paul muldoon...and if you're like me, you'll be googling finn maccool, i am curious (yellow) and (blue), and all-blacks.

and looking up what a hummock is (a knoll).

if you get it all, please share

***

happy friday

read a good poem: waving goodbye

the lovely natalia vodianova in "brief encounter."

photographed by annie leibovitz for vogue, feb 2010 issue.

i have this thing about goodbyes-- not just the breakup goodbye or the big bon voyage.
sometimes the common ones get to me.

i'll go a few extra blocks out of my way to walk a friend to her subway stop or the bus station.

there have been times, after having friends over after a party or a visit, when i'm not quite ready to close the door. literally. i'll tiptoe out into the hallway, peek my head around the corner for a quick chat, until the elevator picks them up.

i've been known to stand a bit too long on the platform.

maybe hang on a little tighter and linger a little longer than i should.

i suppose i'm greedy for extra moments?

***

i read this poem for the first time many months ago and remembered it today.
"this small flag" leaves me on the brink every time, "when the space gets too large for words."

i hope you like it.

***

Waving Goodbye


Why, when we say goodbye
at the end of an evening, do we deny
we are saying it at all, as in We'll
be seeing you, or I'll call, or Stop in,
somebody's always at home? Meanwhile, our friends,
telling us the same things, go on disappearing
beyond the porch light into the space
which except for a moment here or there
is always between us, no matter what we do.
Waving goodbye, of course, is what happens
when the space gets too large
for words – a gesture so innocent
and lonely, it could make a person weep
for days. Think of the hundreds of unknown
voyagers in the old, fluttering newsreel
patting and stroking the growing distance
between their nameless ship and the port
they are leaving, as if to promise I'll always
remember, and just as urgently, Always
remember me. It is loneliness, too,
that makes the neighbor down the road lift
two fingers up from his steering wheel as he passes
day after day on his way to work in the hello
that turns into goodbye? What can our own raised
fingers do for him, locked in his masculine
purposes and speeding away inside the glass?
How can our waving wipe away the reflex
so deep in the woman next door to smile
and wave on her way into her house with the mail,
we'll never know if she is happy
or sad or lost? It can't. Yet in that moment
before she and all the others and we ourselves
turn back to our disparate lives, how
extraordinary it is that we make this small flag
with our hands to show the closeness we wish for
in spite of what pulls us apart again
and again: the porch light snapping off,
the car picking its way down the road through the dark.

-by Wesley McNair via The Writer's Almanac, April 29, 2010.