The last few days I have been suffering from a summer cold. I know it’s not summer yet, but the temperature has been hot. During that time, I was reading a manically humorous detective novel written in the 1940s and finally quit as I was two-thirds of the way through. What I picked up next was a collection of 40 disturbing poems by a Hungarian poet who committed suicide by throwing himself under a train in 1937.
It’s not that I’m addicted to gloominess, but I am after all a Hungarian myself. So it must be something in the blood. Here is the title poem from the collection I read:
Perched on Nothing’s Branch
I finally arrive at the sand’s wet edge, look around, shrug
that I am where I am, looking at the end. A silver ax strokes summer leaves. Playfully.
I am perched solidly on nothing’s branch. The small body shivers to receive heaven.
Iron-colored.
Cool shiny dynamos revolve in the quiet revolution of stars. Words barely spark from clenched teeth.
The past tumbles stonelike through space, blue time floating off without a sound. A blade flashes, my hair—
My mustache is a full caterpillar droopong down my numb mouth, my heart aches, words are cold. There’s no one out here to hear—
Another poet whose work I enjoyed at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival was Oakland poet Kim Addonizio. I remember attending one of her readings back when the L.A. Times Festival was held at UCLA. The following poem is from her collection entitled Exit Opera:
This Too Shall Pass
was no consolation to the woman whose husband was strung out on opioids.
Gone to a better place: useless and suspect intel for the couple at their daughter’s funeral
though there are better places to be than a freezing church in February, standing
before a casket with a princess motif. Some moments can’t be eased
and it’s no good offering clichés like stale meat to a tiger with a taste for human suffering.
When I hear the word miracle I want to throw up on a platter of deviled eggs. Everything happens
for a reason: more good tidings someone will try to trepan your skull to insert. When fire
inhales your house, you don’t care what the haiku says about seeing the rising moon. You want
an avalanche to bury you. You want to lie down under a slab of snow, dumb as a jarred
sideshow embryo. What a circus. The tents dismantled, the train moving on,
always moving, starting slow and gaining speed, taking you where you never wanted to go.
This past weekend was the annual Los Angeles Times Book Festival, in fact its 30th anniversary. I attended both days, listened to a number of poetry readings, and picked up some interesting books (as if I needed more). I liked the poems of Louise Mathias that she read from her collection, the hauntingly named What If the Invader Is Beautiful. Here is one of her intriguing desert poems:
Bombay Beach
You know someone, somewhere. A collection of knives, linoleum, unfortunately.
There’s a room now in the chest, Comprised of a secretive clock—
clock in, clock out. The blonde
unfastens the strap, sorry human noise
divorced of song, unlatched now in the palms,
cocaine and ridicule, but also, love, also.
Below is a picture I shot at Bombay Beach, on the polluted shore of the Salton Sea, when my brother and I visited last year.
He died in Baden Baden, Germany at the age of 28—one of the most underrated of American poets, short story writers, and novelists. Granted, most of us have read The Red Badge of Courage in high school, but some of his lesser-known works are even better, such as this poem:
A Man Said to the Universe
A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.”
Too short? Here is another one of my favorites:
I Saw a Man Pursuing the Horizon
I saw a man pursuing the horizon; Round and round they sped. I was disturbed at this; I accosted the man. “It is futile,” I said, “You can never —”
“You lie,” he cried, And ran on.
The illustration above was taken from the Poetry Foundation’s website.
Chilean Writer and Poet Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003)
It’s a pity that Roberto died so young! Only fifty years of age! Over the last ten years he has brought so much enjoyment to me with his novels, stories, and poems. Here is one of his poems of which I am particularly fond:
The Memory of Lisa
The memory of Lisa descends again through night’s hole. A rope, a beam of light and there it is: the ideal Mexican village. Amidst the barbarity, Lisa’s smile, Lisa’s frozen film, Lisa’s fridge with the door open sprinkling a little light on this disorganized room that I, now pushing forty, call Mexico, call Mexico City, call Roberto Bolaño looking for a pay phone amidst chaos and beauty to call his one and only true love.
Walter Scott himself was no Lochinvar. At the age of two, he had polio and was lame for the rest of his life. Somehow, his fertile brain made up for his physical weakness, and in his sixty-one years poured out an almost endless stream of poems, novels, poetry, plays, and non-fiction, including perhaps the greatest literary journals ever written. Here is one of his much anthologized poems. You may have read it in school, but look at it again from the point of view of the poet’s superhuman sense of energy and ease.
Lochinvar
O, young Lochinvar is come out of the west, Through all the wide Border his steed was the best; And save his good broadsword, he weapons had none, He rode all unarm’d, and he rode all alone. So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.
He staid not for brake, and he stopp’d not for stone, He swam the Eske river where ford there was none; But ere he alighted at Netherby gate, The bride had consented, the gallant came late: For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.
So boldly he entered the Netherby Hall, Among bride’s-men, and kinsmen, and brothers, and all: Then spoke the bride’s father, his hand on his sword, (For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word,) “O come ye in peace here, or come ye in war, Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?”—
“I long woo’d your daughter, my suit you denied;— Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide— And now am I come, with this lost love of mine, To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine. There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far, That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar.”
The bride kiss’d the goblet; the knight took it up, He quaff’d off the wine, and he threw down the cup. She look’d down to blush, and she look’d up to sigh, With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye. He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar,— “Now tread we a measure!” said young Lochinvar.
So stately his form, and so lovely her face, That never a hall such a galliard did grace; While her mother did fret, and her father did fume, And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume; And the bride-maidens whisper’d, “’Twere better by far To have match’d our fair cousin with young Lochinvar.”
One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear, When they reach’d the hall-door, and the charger stood near; So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung, So light to the saddle before her he sprung! “She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur; They’ll have fleet steeds that follow,” quoth young Lochinvar.
There was mounting ’mong Graemes of the Netherby clan; Fosters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran: There was racing and chasing, on Cannobie Lee, But the lost bride of Netherby ne’er did they see. So daring in love, and so dauntless in war, Have ye e’er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?
British Writer and Poet Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)
I am only now beginning to appreciate the work of Walter de la Mare. As the Poetry Foundation entry on him states, “His complete works form a sustained treatment of romantic themes: dreams, death, rare states of mind and emotion, fantasy worlds of childhood, and the pursuit of the transcendent.” Here is one of my favorite poems of his:
Music
When music sounds, gone is the earth I know, And all her lovely things even lovelier grow; Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees, Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies.
When music sounds, out of the water rise Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes, Rapt in strange dream burns each enchanted face, With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place.
When music sounds, all that I was I am Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came; While from Time’s woods break into distant song The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along.
I would like to carefully read several poems a week. And then re-read them until I can wring every particle of sense out of them. A good one to start with is W. H. Auden’s “At Last the Secret Is Out.”
At Last the Secret Is Out
At last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end, the delicious story is ripe to tell to tell to the intimate friend; over the tea-cups and into the square the tongues has its desire; still waters run deep, my dear, there’s never smoke without fire.
Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links, behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks, under the look of fatigue the attack of migraine and the sigh there is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.
For the clear voice suddenly singing, high up in the convent wall, the scent of the elder bushes, the sporting prints in the hall, the croquet matches in summer, the handshake, the cough, the kiss, there is always a wicked secret, a private reason for this.
I think we underestimate the poems of Edgar Allan Poe. Here’s one of his best, on the subject of life being but a dream. “Deceptively simple?” you might ask. Perhaps, but that is their strength.
A Dream Within a Dream
Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow — You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand — How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep — while I weep! O God! Can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?
Tarnmoor 
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