Skip to main content

TWO JULY POEMS

 
TWO JULY POEMS
 
1.
 
I forget the July hammer
of sun each year building
my boat of wavering sleep
as heat swims on air
to reach a beached tree;
no crash of bird or rose
sinks this high hammock
sol makes just with itself;
only nature is artificer
enough to change a world
by degrees, as instant as
weather which is creation
of new terms to live on.
I drift for once with dry book
as a child aloft on poetry;
summer is its own genre,
shaded garden in a library
heart borrows from a shelf
then keeps forever forgotten;
parted early brightness years
the loan we cannot return.
 
 
2.
Speaking to themselves
what we call flowers
what we see as colours
know their requirements
so act accordingly at night
and dawn, mid-summer
or when frost comes on;
nothing we say is meant
as rain to feed their stamens,
pistils, buds or leaves; bright
petals lure in what needs
nectar, their vines explore
smart like the digital world;
connection is nature’s word;
we learn the language of them
then arrogate our names for
their complete extensions of
baroque entanglements above
human orders or ideals of love.
 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".