Enemy of Entropy

In honor of National Poetry Month, the Academy of American Poets has been sending out a poem a day via email to subscribers. I’m enjoying them, but one of them just…

Have you ever found the form of a poem to be so weird that it gets into the way of the meaning? I’m finding that to be the case with “Ferrum” by M. NourbeSe Philip. I did get the words, but the format was so distracting as to make reading a chore, rather than a pleasure.

I wanted to do something different for today’s Thing-a-Day, and I signed up to be part of Live Readings a while back but hadn’t recorded anything yet, so I’m posting this is both (all three?) places.

“What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why (Sonnet XLIII)”
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

From Collected Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Music is “Celebration” by Mark Heimonen from the Podsafe Music Network

For my Sam

A Marriage
You are holding up a ceiling
with both arms. It is very heavy,
but you must hold it up, or else
it will fall down on you. Your arms
are tired, terribly tired,
and, as the day goes on, it feels
as if either your arms or the ceiling
will soon collapse.

But then,
unexpectedly,
something wonderful happens:
Someone,
a man or a woman,
walks into the room
and holds their arm up
to the ceiling beside you.

So you finally get
to take down your arms.
You feel the relief of respite,
the blood flowing back
to your fingers and arms.
And when your partner’s arms tire,
you hold up your own
to relieve him again.

And it can go on like this
for many years
without the house falling.

From Against Romance: Poems by Michael Blumenthal, Penguin Books, 1988

I started this post on September 7, the day after the grand lady moved on to find out what’s next. I find myself certain that she wasn’t afraid, that she looked forward to a reunion with her husband Hugh and others who had gone before. And yet I, who never even met her in person, was too upset to finish the post or even look at it again for two months.
(Continue Reading …)

The Armful
For every parcel I stoop down to seize
I lose some other off my arms and knees,
And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns,
Extremes too hard to comprehend at once.
Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
With all I have to hold with hand and mind
And heart, if need be, I will do my best.
To keep their building balanced at my breast.
I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
Then sit down in the middle of them all.
I had to drop the armful in the road
And try to stack them in a better load.

By Robert Frost