phillip crymble

History On a gray evening Of a gray century, I ate an apple While no one was looking. A small, sour apple The color of woodfire, Which I first wiped On my sleeve. Then I stretched my legs As far as they’d go, Said to myself Why not close my eyes now Before the Late World News and Weather.

Charles Simic, from Austerities (1982)

August 7 65 the wind an ocean so the trees make it fire ages of burning in sight it's a huge globe light down in the sand to the grass each leaf silence from one to others

A birthday poem by Larry Eigner, born August 7, 1927.

I'll have to remember that one. My dad always used to tell us to expect no more from a pig than a grunt.

The Recognition You put on my clothes and it was as though we met some other place and I looked and knew you. This is what we keep going through, the lyrical changes, the strangeness in which I know again what I have known before.

Another by Wendell Berry, this one from The Country of Marriage (1973).

A Poem of Thanks I have been spared another day to come into this night as though there is a mercy in things mindful of me. Love, cast all thought aside. I cast aside all thought. Our bodies enter their brief precedence, surrounded by their sleep. Through you I rise, and you through me, into the joy we make, but may not keep.

Wendell Berry, born on this day in 1934

SONNET All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now, and after this next one just a dozen to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas, then only ten more left like rows of beans. How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan and insist the iambic bongos must be played and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines, one for every station of the cross. But hang on here while we make the turn into the final six where all will be resolved, where longing and heartache will find an end, where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen, take off those crazy medieval tights, blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.

Another from Phillis Levin's Penguin Book of the Sonnet (2001), this one by Billy Collins.

YouTube video by Dead Poets Reading Series Phillip Crymble reading Edip Cansever, Dead Poets Reading Series, June 7, 2020

For anyone interested, @deadpoetsreading.bsky.social invited me to read and discuss "Table" back in 2020:

SUNDAY NIGHT IN SANTA ROSA The carnival is over. The high tents, the palaces of light, are folded flat and trucked away. A three-time loser yanks the Wheel of Fortune off the wall. Mice pick through the garbage by the popcorn stand. A drunken giant falls asleep beside the juggler, and the Dog-Faced Boy sneaks off to join the Serpent Lady for the night. Wind sweeps ticket stubs along the walk. The Dead Man loads his coffin on a truck. Off in a trailer by the parking lot the radio predicts tomorrow's weather while a clown stares in a dressing mirror, takes out a box, and peels away his face.

Dana Gioia

Table from the Turkish of Edip Cansever A man filled with the gladness of living Put his keys on the table, Put flowers in a copper bowl there. He put his eggs and milk on the table. He put there the light that came in through the window, Sound of a bicycle, sound of a spinning wheel. The softness of bread and weather he put there. On the table the man put Things that happened in his mind. What he wanted to do in life, He put that there. Those he loved, those he didn't love, The man put them on the table too. Three times three make nine: The man put nine on the table. He was next to the window next to the sky; He reached out and placed on the table endlessness. So many days he had wanted to drink a beer! He put on the table the pouring of that beer. He placed there his sleep and his wakefulness; His hunger and his fullness he placed there. Now that's what I call a table! It didn't complain at all about the load. It wobbled once or twice, then stood firm. The man kept piling things on.

Reminded, today, of this Richard Tillinghast translation

So glad it found you.

Is this a poem you encountered in Larry's class? One of the workshops?

I don't know it, and as you say, it may not be hers. Pastan tends to favour first-person lyric address, so it would be unusual for her to write a poem with characters. It's possible, though.

1936, Upstate New York In rural America, or the country as we called it, we rented a room for the summer in the Schmidt's farmhouse with flowered curtains at the shiny windows and spotless, tilting wooden floors. And the smell of cow drifted through our room like sweet smoke, and every morning I helped to gather eggs, pale as seashells from their nests in the barn. At night through the walls the muffled sounds of German came from a staticky radio, and each noon the tin mailbox waited to be filled - a hungry mouth, its red flag upright in stiff salute. I drank milk straight from the pail, my top lip mustached in creamy white, and when my mother saw the swastika on an envelope on the kitchen table, she packed up fast, and we returned to the steamy city.

Linda Pastan

Mine too. Found out recently that she was romantically involved with America's Gerry Beckley in the early 80s.

MY FATHER, CUTTING AN APPLE Not in half, but wedge by wedge with a paring knife, cupping a crisp Gala in his palm, snagging the blade through skin, slicing pieces for us kids huddled around cable TV's laugh track. Giving it away, left only with the core, which he'd sliver into thin slices and mouth off the blade.

Bren Simmers

Really need to make a point of stopping by Forest Hill cemetery one of these days. Great score on the Ginsberg record!

Nice touch squeezing Day by Day into the third stanza as well. Some great Easter eggs in this poem for those in the know. Have you ever read James Atlas's account of his time as a student in Lowell's undergraduate seminar? So great. The Iruña scene is gold.

Great piece. You ever read Maxine Kumin's "Coming Across: Establishing the Intent of a Poem"? So good.

Thanks to @robmclennan.bsky.social for the chance to think about this very good question.

Ha! Amazing.

ROBERT LOWELL (1917- ) When Robert Lowell was a freshman at Harvard and candidate for the Advocate's literary board, he was asked to tack down a carpet in the sanctum and when he was finished, told that he needn't come around any more. Since then he has been better received. Lord Weary's Castle, his second collection of poetry, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. Life Studies (1960) won the national book award, and Imitations (1962) the Bollingen Prize for translation. His latest book is For the Union Dead, which was welcomed with great enthusiasm in England and America. The following Imitations are taken from the Robert Lowell Issue which the Advocate published in 1961.

Received a particularly infuriating rejection yesterday. On an unrelated note, here's a passage from The Harvard Advocate's centennial anthology describing how Robert Lowell was treated by the literary board when he was an undergraduate.

Fair. That Piper Laurie scene's stayed with me since I first saw it. Great mirror account. You clearly know what you're talking about.

Better than this one?

"Father Fled North" by Nicholas Selig, in the new issue of @eventmags.bsky.social.

great poem

So sorry, Ian.

preach

High praise. Looking forward to digging in over the weekend.

Nice.

Ahem