Month: May 2006

Once More The Round

A favorite poet, Stanley Kunitz died Sunday.

One of the highlights of my college years was hearing Kunitz read at the University of Washington the year Roethke died. The next day I went to the UW bookstore and bought his book of poetry. I’ve been buying them ever since.

I’ve discussed this poem before when I discussed his collected poems, as it ends the collection. Somehow is seems even more appropriate today:

TOUCH ME

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that’s late,
it is my song that’s flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it’s done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

Livesay’s Love Poems

Considering that two of my favorite Livesay’s poems from the collection 15 Canadian Poets x 3 were love poems, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that some of my favorite poems in her collected poems are also love poems, though I didn’t find any I like more than “The Unquiet Bed“ and “Sorcery.“

Another of my favorites is “Aubade�

Not what you are
but what you are to me:
a stranger who’s at home
inside my eyes
shoots rainbows
down my spine
laughs at my absurd
long second toe
and wags the world away
upon my tongue.
You are the one
who when I leap to leave you
for the sun
can pull me back to bed:
“Woman, Woman, come.’

It’s lines three and four that initially grabbed me, but I think true love is best shown in the kind of intimacy where one “laughs at my absurd/ long second toe.�

Which is not to say that that kind of intimacy isn’t also intertwined in the sexual intimacy of that last line.

Livesay‘s best poems are seductive without begin pornographic as in “Let Your Hand Play First:�

Let your hand play first
fanning small fires
over the arms, the breasts
catching responses all along the spine
until the whole body flowering
‘s enveloped in one flame
that shudders wildly out
to meet your thrust —

Then burn, my fire
burn with a flame so tall
it unshape the shaping clouds
unearthly move the sphere

Pimping Dreams of Riches for Everybody

When I hear Democratic legislators pandering to voters on the price of gasoline, I remember why I don’t really consider myself a Democrat despite the fact that I vote almost exclusively for Democrats and only give money to Democratic candidates.

However, I’m not naive enough to go along with Democratic politicians who suggest the solution to high gasoline prices is to investigate whether big oil companies are gouging the public. Of course they are, that’s why Exxon earned record profits last year and could afford to send their CEO off with a 400 million retirement bonus. I doubt, though, they’re going to be found guilty of illegally fixing prices — though I‘ll admit I never thought Enron fixed prices on electricity the way they did.

The American voters don’t really want to solve the gasoline crisis. Instead, they want to continue driving gas-guzzling SUV’s and oversized Pickups and pay $1.50 for a gallon of gas. Heck, if they were as old as I am they’d be demanding $.32 a gallon gasoline.

Politicians get elected by maintaining the illusion that Americans can have everything they want and more without paying a price. History would seem to tell us otherwise, but Americans are more interested in building a glorious future than in learning from the past.

Little wonder that someone as savvy as Clinton chose Fleetwood Mac’s upbeat “Don’t Stop“ thinking about tomorrow as his theme song rather than Bruce Cockburn’s melancholy :

CANDY MAN’S GONE

Sun climbs toward high noon,
Glints metallic off the bowl of the spoon
Sliding through the air toward parted lips
Watch the expression when the straight taste hits
Face crumples, tongue’s quickly withdrawn
I hate to tell you but the candy man’s gone

Oh sweet fantasia of the safe home
Where nobody has to scrape for honey at the bottom of the comb
Where every actor understands the scene
And nobody ever means to be mean
Catch it in a dream, catch it in a song
Seek it on the street, you find the candy man’s gone
I hate to tell you but the candy man’s gone

In the bar, in the senate, in the alley, in the study
Pimping dreams of riches for everybody
“Something for nothing, new lamps for old
And the streets will be platinum, never mind gold”
Well, hey, pass it on
Misplaced your faith and the candy man’s gone
I hate to tell you but the candy man’s gone

even though Cockburn’s song is probably a more accurate description of our current situation.

Do you think a politician could really be elected by telling the truth? Do you think Gore purposely didn’t discuss the environment during his presidential campaign because he knew he could never be elected by telling the truth about hard environmental choices Americans face in the future, a future that might be closer than most of us want to admit?

Do you think part of the reason the American people refuse to face the problems that confront us is because politicians have always been elected by “pimping dreams of riches for everybody?� Would you rather believe someone who tells you everything is alright, or, at least will be alright if you vote for him, or one who warns that hard choices await us if he’s elected?