|
FREE BOOKS
Public schools, libraries, shelters, civic organizations,
senior citizens' groups, and others providing community
services may request a donation of books from The Word Works.
To find out more, please send a letter describing your organization
-- your membership, customer constituency, policies, and
goals. Include a statement about how you believe we can
help you meet your goals.
In 2000-2001, The Word Works donation project was funded
in part by the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities,
and the National Endowment for the Arts. During that time,
Word Works gave books in the Washington DC area to over
50 public and private high schools, to several homeless
shelters, and the DC Jail.
Address inquiries to: The Word Works, ATTN: Book Donations,
P.O. Box 42164, Washington, DC 20015.
OUT-OF-PRINT BOOKS
Back to Top
HICKEY, THE DAYS
Dr. J. H. Beall is the author of the Word Works book Hickey, The Days, published in 1980. He has read his poems at the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Martin Luther King Library, among other places, and has published poems in a variety of magazines. He has also been featured on Grace Cavalieri's The Poet and the Poem at the Library of Congress. One of his poems, "Easter", was set to music by a Russian composer, Leonid Timoshenko, and submitted to Radio Moscow, winning the Foreign Service Prize for the Best English Language poem put to music by a Russian composer. An early version of the manuscript for Hickey, The Days was a finalist in the Houghton-Mifflin New Poets Series. In addition to being a poet, Dr. Beall is an astrophysicist, holding the degrees of B.A., M.S. and Ph.D., all in physics. He is a member of the faculty of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, a senior consultant to the Space Sciences Division at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. and a Senior Affiliate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Science at George Mason University. Dr. Beall's second book of poetry, entitled Republic, will be published by Toad Hall Press in August 2010. It will also be published in an Italian translation later in the fall of 2010.
Of his book, Hickey, The Days, he says that it is "a reflection about the ways of the world." He drew influences from both ancient sources, such as the archaeological work in Corinth, and ideas of technology and modernity, to reflect on the possibility for hope and transcendence. His poem, "What The Astronaut Considers The Evening Before A Flight" is set forth here.
What The Astronaut Considers The Evening Before A Flight
.......Well, now. She is a beautiful
woman and you are an astronaut, and
tomorrow when the engines light
they may light the wrong way
.......or the hairline crack or weakness
in the steel the inspector yawned over
may blossom in the guts
of the combustion chamber and death
.......will blossom for you, an orange flower,
and you will fall instead of being
driven up like the other times,
a fist like god's shoving, accelerating
.......you up and up into the careless blue
of less and less air fading into purple,
the deepest darkness and stars. Rocketry
is not as careless as it seems.
.......She is quite beautiful. She is
naked, sleeping on your bed, your semen in her
doing whatever it does afterward,
the sperm wiggling up, looking
.......for a ripe egg. You are careful,
though. You have made love once already
and you think you should maybe do it
again because it's going to be a long
.......flight, nights waking from the dream
about falling, awake and falling still,
always falling. You pull yourself out
of the cover that holds you, floating
.......to get the book, and read. Your light
casts its warm cone on the page before you.
You touch your hand to the cold window.
You think you feel the heat from tiny stars
.......imbedded in black glass. She is sleeping.
The night bugs make their tinny sounds
so much like the hiss in the radio when no one
transmits. It is the whisper of stars.
.......She floats through this sound, sleep
is her ship that rockets her sometimes, now
turning, now a frown, now silent. Floating
now or perhaps dreaming of the fall.
.......The cat makes its happy mutterings lap
about her ears. She hears the ocean.
She is a sailor now. She is in you as much
as you are in her. Years have done this.
.......The tracks intertwined. The times
you sleep together all there, tugging.
The kindness and the anger. You distort
each other's worlds. This gravity makes
.......your orbits very close. You dance now.
One swings the other, pushes, thrusts
or pulls, coming, coming very close.
These movements form eccentric orbits
.......of the heart. What more can one
say? She is warm and beautiful
and her mass draws you nearer.
In the distance, through the dark,
.......still an extension of the earth's
dark meanings, the rocket
begins to take on fuel.
© Copyright James Beall--from Hickey, the Days
Back to Top
LOVE-IN-IDLENESS
John Bradley is the author of four full-length books of poetry, and the editor of three more books. Love-In-Idleness was the recipient of the 1989 Washington Prize. He first received an NEA Fellowship for poetry in 1987, and was again the recipient of the fellowship in 2007. He also received an Illinois Art Council grant for poetry in 2000. He was awarded a Pushcart Prize in 2008 for the poem "On Hearing a Recording of the Voice of Walt Whitman" from his collection, Terrestrial Music. His poetry and prose has been featured in Blue Mesa Review, Caliban, Ironwood, Lake Effect, Luna, Pemmican, Quarter After Eight, The Prose Poem: An International Journal, Redactions, and Turnrow, among other journals. A collection of his prose poems, You Don't Know What You Don't Know, came out this year. He is now working on a manuscript of poems related to our nuclear history: "I'm fascinated by the secrecy shrouding this history, as well as by the general lack of interest most people have in this part of our culture," he explains. He currently teaches composition at Northern Illinois University.
Love-In-Idleness was inspired by a number of Italian writers--Carlo Levi, Cesare Pavese, Dino Campana, and Rocco Scotellaro. Mr. Bradley was also influenced by Italian films that deal with living under Fascism. He says: "I wondered what it would be like for a poet to live under Mussolini and to oppose him and Fascism, and the Roberto Zingarello poems were a way of entering into this world." The selection from the book is "A Few Things You Should Know About Roberto".
A Few Things You Should Know About Roberto
Roberto means, Hey you!
And, Everybody, shut up.
And, THIS DOOR IS A PUBLIC EXIT.
And, Poverty is the smell of the death of six o'clock.
And, In your cranium's darkness, the coconut
white of a cactus flower.
Down the basement, doors lean about
like men in a bread line.
This is where Federico came to hide, in '36.
I rip a page from my pocket Bible,
But Jesus said unto him, Follow me,
and let the dead bury their own dead,
and roll a cigarette with it.
Federico necks with his red guitar
while he plays his "Song While Hiding From Fascists."
..........Steer me in the direction of the moon, any color moon.
.............Plant in my hand a knife, hard steel, hard wood.
.............Who is it, my friend, who is my enemy?
.............Blindfold me so I may see him.
.............Tie it to my hand, the knife, so as to gore him.
.............Are you, my friend, my enemy?
The basement goes dark.
Some black dog flops down against the basement
window, stealing our light.
Tell me, amigo, Federico asks, like a voice
from a Spanish ballad, of your beloved.
Tell me, I reply, of Andalusia.
Roberto means, The milkweed down by the pumphouse.
And, I don't know, comrades.
I just don't know.
And, sometimes, Scram.
Roberto means, My mother slept with a crucifix
beneath her pillow, when she was pregnant,
so her son would be strong.
And, Love is not enough.
Nothing is ever enough.
Roberto means, I'm sick to death
of so much Roberto.
And, I want to be hemlock
so you can, finally, sleep.
But mostly it means, My mother
had one good thing happen to her
during this life, and it had to be
me, it had to be me.
© Copyright John Bradley --from Love-In-Idleness
Back to Top
THE WAY WATER RUBS
STONE
Christopher Bursk is the author of six books, most recently
The One True Religion and Cell Count.
Bursk is a winner of NEA, Guggenheim, and Pew Fellowships.
He teaches at Bucks County Community College, and as a volunteer
at the Bucks County Correctional Facility. The Word Works
published The Way Water Rubs Stone. This book,
which won the Washington Prize, includes the poem, "Trial
and Error", set forth below.
Trial and Error
It's not even been a week since the operation.
Most of my body is water
like a planet. It'll take a while to exhaust me
of all life-bearing seed.
Loving this boy undressing by the creek, my son,
his helpless, foolish belly,
his small buttocks,
my three-year-old daughter's toes, so white and huge
in the water, she cries out,
I imagine one more child
conceived just before the last sperm swims free.
At night, when my wife touches me, I almost believe
the dark universe is flowing
under me, around me,
and I am lifting with its high tide
like that small, perfect ship Eden, rigged
and set afloat in time.
I am riding with a wave to its crest.
I've never understood why the God of the Bible
was so impatient with Adam.
I want another son or daughter,
a stowaway, a mistake,
a child with thin wrists and weak eyes
and surprising strength
in the ankles, a fast runner,
a boy or girl so beautiful
I might trust again
in her immortality, in his. Unlike God,
with none of His premeditated designs on the world,
His permanent dissatisfactions,
I'd welcome a little carelessness in a son,
a daughter's wild curiosity,
these children tearful and stubborn after falling
from a recklessness
that returns them over and over to one more
brave try.
© Copyright Christopher Bursk -- from The Way Water
Rubs Stone
Back to Top
Grace Cavalieri is a poet, playwright, and fiction writer. She is the author of 19 books of poetry, the most recent Sounds Like Something I Would Say (2010). She has had numerous plays produced throughout the country and has written texts and lyrics for opera, stage, and film. For twenty years, she produced and hosted a weekly radio program, THE POET AND THE POEM, for public radio via Pacifica and WPFW-FM in Washington, DC. Among the many honors Grace has received are the Pen-Syndicated Fiction Award, the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Silver Medal, and awards from the National Commission on Working Women and the American Association of University Women. Most recently, she has received the 2005 Bordighera Poetry Award for the book Water on the Sun, a 2006 Paterson Prize for Poetry for What I Would Do For Love, the 2009 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence for Anna Nicole: Poems, and the 2010 Poet Laureate's Award for Poetry. She recently finished teaching a playwriting course in West Virginia, and is beginning work on her 2010-2011 public radio series.
Three of her collections of poetry have been published by The Word Works. Her first two, Swan Research, published in 1979, and Creature Comforts, published in 1982, featured poems about relationships. She narrowed with the publication of Pinecrest Rest Haven in 1998, into relationships in the aged. In the book, Mr. and Mrs. P are in a rest home and no longer remember they are married. They fall in love and hate every day. The book is "inspired from having to settle my mother-in-law into a rest home in Florida in the 90's," Ms. Cavalieri says. Her poem "How to Obtain" from Creature Comforts, the title poem from Swan Research and "In the Pinecrest Rest Home" from Pinecrest Rest Haven are set forth below.
How To Obtain
lt'll happen when you least expect it
Turning on its socket toward you
On its edge through air to meet you
Gleaming, when you least think it will happen
When you are lifting your leg like a
Stripper, the stocking shining and bright
Something will come your way -- right then
When the priest
Puts a small sun on your tongue
When it is high holiday
When the chicken is cut in half
And a green wilderness pops out
You will notice it
You will start seeing it
One day it'll finally
Come to you, payment in full
The way we mark our calendars
With different days or
The way we want to share a sound
The publicity subcommittee will reach out
To you before you know it
One morning when it seems they won't look at your cooking
And then at night they can't praise your food enough,
It'll come to you the way the songs we sing ourselves,
Humming under our breath, always tell the truth
When the moon goes down
When you're playing crazy eights
When you're telling a friend what you think
Or at the moment right before you call out the police
Or before your worst fear attacks you, working
Its buttocks like a brown horse
Before the spoon sinks into the jelly dish
While the sun is still on your sleeve
As the dog moves from under the window
In a flash
In a kiss
In the distance between further and farther
The payoff will come to you saying
Something that cannot be learned
Quick as a twig
Crisp as a two dollar bill in the jewelry box
Shot through the heart with self knowledge
Before you can say Bobolink, Yellow Warbler
Violet green swallow, you will know it
You always knew it
The inside person and the outside person
Become the same
Like an immigrant traveling wrinkled and free
You will show them what you need
And tell them what you want
And of dying you will say
"Is this all there is to it"
You'll have known it all the time.
© Copyright Grace Cavalieri --from Creature Comforts
SWAN RESEARCH
Swan Research
1.
Swan research does go on
For all the swans care.
Not knowing this
Is best for swans.
For to want something
And not get it,
I wouldn't wish this
For a swan
or anything like a swan
2.
1 sleep
Like a starting horse
At a race
Whose name is fire and who sleeps.
How can I explain
I have lain
This whole day
Upon my bed
Like any other slab of marble
Lucky for you
You cannot see
The things
Behind my bones
3.
1 realize I have
Limited intelligence
I can only sing
And talk
To God,
The returns are not great.
The rice pot
Which boils over
Overcomes the fire,
What difference
Does it matter
If I inspire
Or what I say.
What I do is folklore,
The near danger of enchantment
Is folklore
4.
Loneliness which is
Exorbitant-
I wish
We were
On a road of blue,
I would dance on a blue road.
It's best to be a dancer
If you are alone,
The requirements are great
Oh great
But at least you can bow
One
Foot
In
Front
Of
The other
You can wear pink crochet
In two layers
You can take off your shoes
With great dignity
And various colors
5.
When I was ten
Someone said
Bring back the change,
Did they think
I'd spend it.
They
Who knew how to have skin
And I didn't?
This fine line
Of speculation
Runs down my arm
To a pen which writes
Don't handle the merchandise.
The meaning
Of all those messages is
Power
And
If I were any more obedient
I still would not
Have
More of that to give you
6.
Amphibians
Go back to the water to mate
Where real giants still
Exist, wandering among
The dinosaurs.
You warn me
Not to get my hopes up.
I won't.
Trust
Is nothing but
A custom, a
Perfect head leaning on a perfect
Arm, unbending.
Our deities choose us, she thinks.
Some have even photographed them.
Strange wonderful creatures,
Like lizards
You can count on
7.
Your hand inside
The curve
Where bone used to be,
A great tenderness
At large
And it is raining.
Water breaks
Rocks
Fills the ocean
And sand the buckets
Before all this wind
8.
Once you are in the rapids
The river takes over,
You must
Respect the river.
Only the walls remain
Water
Sculptured by rock.
© Copyright Grace Cavalieri --from Swan Research
PINECREST REST HAVEN
ATTENTION: Limited copies of this book were made available in 2011. Buy now.
In the Pinecrest Rest Home
...............................In the Pinecrest Rest Home
Mrs. P doesn't know her husband,
Mr. P doesn't know his wife,
but there they sit in the morning sun
waiting to be noticed.
Inwardness is not what God wants
so she adjusts her chair
and moves to where he sits looking at
the center of the rose - examining it for origins.
They introduce themselves, each day,
shy at first, careful so as not to harm.
Leisure and light favor them.
They both like cats.
Both agree it doesn't mean
that's all there is to value. Oh no -
And so the conversation grows. He
plucks, from time to time, some petals -
pulls them off. Infidelity is absence
of desire. This, unspoken, but they seem
to know to stay away
from others walking by. The ground shifts
beneath their feet when names are called. It scares them.
Giving up a fixed view, they think of each other at
night while lying on their separate beds. They
wonder about their strange talks, having the same memories.
© Copyright Grace Cavalieri --from Pinecrest Rest Haven
Back to To
FAMILY AND OTHER
STRANGERS
Shirley Cochrane is a poet and fiction writer. She
has had three books of poems published: Burnsite
(Washington Writers' Publishing House), Letters to
the Quick/Letters to the Dead (Signal Books, Chapel
Hill, N.C.), and Family and Other Strangers
(The Word Works). The major theme of this latter book
is family ties vis-a-vis mysteries, separations, and losses.
Death is a strong element in these poems--and the coming
to terms with grief. Place--whether city, small
town, or country--anchors the subject matter and gives it
bounds. And hope lights up the darker landscape.
The poem, "Bibliophile", from this book is set
forth below.
Bibliophile
Because when it came, that fire,
I rejoiced that the boys all
got out alive, their scant scars
and even the dog that ran back
burnt offerings I could afford
to give the conflagration god;
and because I saw it as symbol
of that other fire I could not
put out and finally succumbed to ---
the books of my father seemed
hardly worth the grieving.
But now, these ten years after,
I want them all back-- notes
and interlinear glosses, spidered
marginalia, his cartoon of Mother
the day she bobbed her hair.
I want the leather bindings,
marbled end papers, uncut
pages of obscure editions
holding their secrets fast, want
them with a child's fierce greed.
For each thing lost or burned
or thrown away too soon, I wrap
a tight fist around another:
the Indian head pennies
my Uncle George hoarded,
the Mercury dimes Anna
his wife would sweeten
with Horn and Hardart sugar
even the stamps bringing
1940 letters from Japan.
© Copyright Shirley Cochrane --from Family & Other
Strangers
Back to Top
<
BERTA BROADFOOT
AND PEPIN THE SHORT: A MEROVINGIAN ROMANCE
ATTENTION: Limited copies of this book were made available in 2011. Buy now.
Barbara Goldberg is the author of six books of poetry, three
in Hebrew translation. She is the first winner of the Washington
Prize for an individual poem. Berta Broadfoot
and Pepin the Short: A Merovingian Romance
was published by The Word Works in the United States, and
simultaneously in Canada by the Porcupine's Quill.
Her most recent book, Marvelous Pursuits,
won the Violet Reed Haas Award (Snake Nation Press, 1995).
Goldberg has also edited, with the Israeli poet Moshe Dor,
two anthologies, the latest being After the First
Rain: Israeli Poems on War and Peace, with a foreword
by Former Prime Minister Shimon Peres (Syracuse University
Press in collaboration with Dryad Press, 1998). She is the
recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment
for the Arts, three individual artist's grants from the
Maryland State Arts Council, as well as the Emily Dickinson
Award and the Armand G. Erpf Award from the Translation
Center, Columbia University. She has also twice won
the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project Award, was the 1998-1999
Poet-in-Residence for Howard County, Maryland, and her work
has appeared in such magazines as Poetry, The Paris Review,
and Harvard Review.
The subject of Berta Broadfoot relates to
an event that transpired in eighth-century France -- the
marriage of Princess Berta of Hungary to Pepin the Short
of France. The story concerns an evil servant,
Margiste, who substitutes her own daughter in the bridal
bed. Margiste orders Berta to be slain in the woods.
The heart of a wild boar is brought back to Margiste as
proof of Berta's death. For seven years, Pepin is
unaware of the hoax. Berta's mother, Queen Blanchflor
of Hungary, has a disturbing dream, after which she travels
to see her daughter and discovers the ruse at once on seeing
the imposter's feet. Margiste is burned at the stake.
Pepin and Berta are reunited and become the parents of Charlemagne.
The selections from the book include "Margiste Protests"
and "The Soothsayer Is Summoned To Interpret Blanchflor's
Dream".
Margiste Protests
If I were a man they would sing
of my daring, call me Margiste the Bold.
No lioness did more for her cub. Gladly
I'd give my scarlet hose for a song
of my daughter, Aliste of the Narrow Feet.
Instead they sing of Bert aus Grans Pies,
Bertha Broadfoot, Berta the Debonaire.
Why should she have been Queen of France,
were both girls not blonde, not fair?
Both dimpled, both winsome, both mantled
with golden hair? Both sired by Hungarian
King Floire? (His wife, Blancheflor, so noble,
so pure, she always gave to a fault to the poor.)
Berta was Highborn, Aliste a mere serving girl.
Yet for eight years she played Queen to Pepin
the Short. He was well-satisfied.
My cousin Tibert (incompetent dolt)
swore that Berta was slain. I piss
on Berta! I piss on her big feet! Fooled
by a pig's heart! Burned for bearing a girl
with narrow feet! I don't care a mint leaf
what Pepin calls me now (‘old hag, the Antichrist’).
He once covered my daughter from evening till dawn.
Let them kindle for me a great fire with thorns!
The Soothsayer Is Summoned To Interpret Blancheflor's Dream
i. The Dream
In this dream the dreamer knows
she is dreaming. Holds a wide-
toothed comb in her hand. Soft
thump at door. Enter a bear.
She pulls comb through dark fur.
Strong odor of musk, honey,
cloves. Dreamer sings lulla,
lullaby, go to sleep my plump
sweet. Bear sucks on paw.
Paw becomes raking claw.
Tears cheek, rips right arm,
begins to gnaw at dreamer's
rib-cage. Scatters bones on floor.
Dreamer finds mirror. Torso
a carcass. Right arm dangles
from its socket. Face half-
gone. Bear sees bear. Mirror
mirror. Bear bear. Thump thump
ii. The Interpretation
I bind phylacteries with ribbons
to my arms, with cords to my legs.
Combine letters of dreamer’s name.
I climb to the rooftop, pay heed
to the direction of smoke. Examine
the excrement of a cat. Study
the sky. Make note that moon
in fourth quarter. Omen of death.
Comet appears in sign of Scorpio.
Open book at random. Scrutinize
all data. Interpretation: extreme
danger to dreamer's daughter. Long
voyage required. Dreamer pulls hair
in lamentation. There is no pleasure
to such work.
© Copyright Barbara Goldberg from
Berta Broadfoot and Pepin the Short: A Merovingian
Romance
Back to Top
BLAMELESS
LIVES
Elaine Magarrell, author of two books of poetry, On
Hogback Mountain and Blameless Lives,
has published work in hundreds of journals and texts. Her
most recent publications appear in "Coal City Review"
and "Passager". She is a retired teacher and lives
in Washington, D.C., with her husband Jack. They have been
married for more than 50 years.
Elaine Magarrell's poems bring an uncommon sensibility to
the commonplace; husbands, wives, old boyfriends, children.
Gossip and whimsy formalizes into wisdom. The selections
from the book include "Anniversary Poem" and "Brain
On Its Own".
Anniversary
Poem
Suppose, that time I got mad
and ran away
to Grinnell, I had not come back, but took a room
over Surley's Bar and Grill, so lonely
I befriended the mice, confiding in them
my advanced ideas on family life as they listened
attentively at the cold air register. I might have
worked at flattening burgers, been satisfied to switch off
lights after the last farmer said goodnight and adjusted
his seed-corn cap, revved the pickup, drove home
to a sleeping wife. Then, up the unvarnished
steps, I'd peel open a can of anchovies, hog
the whole bottle of Chardonnay, reheat Kentucky Fried
over a hot plate. Memorize Dickinson.
I'd give it up late on a narrow cot, pile my coat
on my feet instead of wedging them
between your thighs. You would raise the children
single-handed for a week or so
and then find someone-a match for you
at tennis. An enthusiastic sailor.
A no-nonsense woman, not necessarily
a mistake. And one day you would recognize me
in Grinnell. I'd be stopping the door
of the bar with my hip while I mopped up.
You'd grab my wrist. "Is this the best
job you could find?" We would experience
that old sense of electrification, all
the elapsed days spilling over,
and we would disappear into the bar. Surley
would set them up, and you'd show me
photographs of our beautiful grownup children.
The Brain on its
Own
It was the brain's idea to leave
the body. Finally it could forget
the conundrum of marriage, the need
to be close and the need to be separate.
It would jet to Paris, maybe shop
for an outrageous thesis. But without
the body it could only dream of pleasure-
the brain was denied the special dispensations
of sex. Weather ceased to be an event.
How it longed for the hair's experiments.
The brain was bored. Given another
chance, it would squander every thought
on the flesh. It sought out the body,
serene in a bubble bath. The body
was stiff having danced all night
without feeling self conscious.
And it was in love with another body.
© Copyright Elaine Magarrell-- Blameless Lives
Back to Top
edited by Betty Parry
The Unicorn and the Garden is a collection
of poems and prose by writers who participated in the Poetry
and Literature Series at the Textile Museum, located in
Washington, D.C. from 1973 to 1975. According to Betty
Parry's introduction to the book, "[t]he rationale
for the series was to pay homage to poetry in its many forms
throughout history." Most of the poems in the
book were read in performance. Twenty-four programs were held over two years, including such writers as Allen
Ginsberg, Galway Kinnell, Eugene McCarthy, and many others.
LINDA PASTAN
Linda Pastan has published 10 volumes of poetry, including
Heroes in Disguise (Norton, 1991) and An
Early Afterlife (Norton, 1995). PM/AM
was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1982, and
The Imperfect Paradise was a finalist for
the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She was Poet Laureate
of Maryland from 1991-1995 and was on the staff of the Bread
Loaf Writer's Conference for 20 years. Carnival
Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998 was published
by Norton in the Spring of 1998 and was a finalist for the
National Book Award. The poem, "A Short
History of Judaic Thought in the Twentieth Century"
from the anthology The Unicorn and the Garden
is set forth below.
A Short History of Judaic Thought in the Twentieth Century
The rabbis wrote:
although it is forbidden
to touch a dying person,
nevertheless, if the house catches fire
he must be removed
from the house.
Barbaric!
I say,
and whom may I touch then,
aren't we all
dying?
You smile
your old negotiator's smile
and ask:
but aren't all our houses
burning?
© Copyright Linda Pastan --from The Unicorn And The
Garden
Back to Top
ELISAVIETTA RITCHIE
Elisavietta Ritchie's In Haste I Write You This Note: Stories
& Half-Stories was a winner in the Washington
Writers' Publishing House's premiere fiction competition,
(2000). Flying Time: Stories &
Half-Stories (1992 & 1996) includes four PEN
Syndicated Fiction winners. Among her poetry collections
are: In the Folds of Abandoned Clothes: Thrift Shop
Poems (2000); The Arc of the Storm
(1998); Elergy for the Other Woman (1996);
Tightening the Circle over Eel County (won Great
Lakes Colleges Association's 1975-76 "New Writer's
Award for Best First Book of Poetry"); Raking
the Snow (won Washington Writer's Publishing House
1981-82 competition); two novellas-in verse Timbot
and Wild Garlic: The Journal of Maria X.
She also edited The Dolphin's Arc: Endangered
Creatures of the Sea. Her website is www.elisavietta.com
Elegy for the Other Woman
May her plane explode
with just one fatality.
But, should it not,
may the other woman spew
persistent dysentery from
your first night ever after.
May the other woman vomit
African bees and Argentine wasps.
May cobras uncoil from her loins.
May she be eaten not
by something dramatic like lions,
but by a wart-hog.
I do not wish the other woman
to fall down a well
for fear of spoiling the water,
nor die on the highway because
she might obstruct traffic.
Rather: something easy, and cheap,
like clap from some other bloke.
Should she nevertheless survive
all these critical possibilities,
may she quietly die of boredom with you.
© Copyright Elisavietta Ritchie--from The Unicorn And
The Garden
Back to Top
Roland Flint was the author of many books, including his
last collection of poems, Easy: Poems
(L.S.U. Press 1999). Other works include
Resuming Green: Selected Poems, 1965-1982
(1983); Sicily (1987); Stubborn
(1990); Hearing Voices (1991); Pigeon
(1991); and Pigeon in the Night
(1994). He was a former Poet Laureate of Maryland,
and received numerous honors, including honorary degrees
from N.C. Wesleyan College and his alma mater, the University
of North Dakota. He died January 2, 2001.
And Morning In
On fence post the rooster simply
saying to the sun our father
hello old cock I'm up again
and so are you
© Copyright Roland Flint--from The Unicorn And The Garden.
Also, Copyright ©
1975 Reprinted from And Morning, Dryad Press.
Poem Beginning & Ending O
for the cast & crew of "The Exorcist"
0
it was wonderful when
the movies (the makers) came to school,
o it was ivy xmas beverly all the way,
yes it was fibre glass and many special lights,
central casting at the Marriott Motel,
and yes sir starlets like Danish pastry frosted,
still glamorous, still cinemamorous
beneath the layers, and layers,
and when they closed the streets with a
"sizable cash donation,"
to the DC police club for delinquent boys,
and when, for scholarships in a
"large but undisclosed amount,"
they bought the campus -- yard, lock,
and flying buttresses -
when they screwed the virgin blondes
for bit and two line speaking parts,
did another take on day,
and had the campus clergy
saying mass and eating Christ on cue 0
(and when we saw at last how much we loved it - we loved
it)
it was then we knew
they really know
what dreams are all about
© Copyright Roland Flint--from The Unicorn And The Garden.
Also, Copyright ©
1975 Reprinted from And Morning, Dryad Press
Turn
When I lie under the tall trees
at this time of year,
no leaves yet but the buds ready to break,
when the separate winds make whole branches
move drift return sway,
I see every possible thing is here,
from the first stir of creation
to the slow unwinding hieratic floods,
branches the shapes of grief or expectation,
infantile and ancient in the same knot,
branches naked as roots.
And I dream the branches into roots -
turn the worlds around,
try to imagine in what underground sea,
in what floating skies of humus
the rooted branches drift, dreaming,
into what clouds of anthracite they stare,
the sea weed branches waved into the nitrogen silent water.
It makes me believe again
in mirror versions of the universe -
somewhere another poet writing this,
lying on his back facing the lovely
unchanging secret at the center,
wondering the other world, dreaming
his dream of me.
© Copyright Roland Flint--from The Unicorn And The Garden.
Also, Copyright ©
1975 Reprinted from And Morning, Dryad Press.
His Oyster
He lives in Washington, DC, and he goes all the way
to Georgia by car, passing through Virginia, North Carolina,
South
Carolina, then through part of Georgia on his way down to
Savannah, then he goes by bus through Savannah to Vernon
View, then he goes by boat across bays and inlets and sounds
of the Atlantic to Ossabaw Island, then he goes by station
wagon to the main house, then he goes by pick-up truck with
Mr. Jimmie Willard Perkins (nicknamed Middleton) to a tidal
river to fish two hours for trout, with no luck, then he
goes
by foot, with Middleton, one mile down-river through the
woods to an oyster bed Middleton knows about, and there
he
finds an oyster - or a hard, gray-brown shell, covered with
little
stones and carbuncles that looks like it could be an oyster.
He knows there is something in it he wants: an oyster.
He takes a razor-sharp knife that has come from Sweden for
this
(via Sears in DC, trips to Maine, Vermont) and he tries
to
open this thing which has the brave angry face of a petrified
knish. It will not open. He takes a stone and taps easy,
then hard, on the base of the handle, trying to drive it
into
oyster - it doesn't work, the oyster slips away, sideways,
he
tries again and fails again, and then he blows up, and puts
it
on a big flat rock and pounds it with a stone, just trying
to
smash it, and that doesn't work, and he picks the sonofabitch
up and throws it down as hard as he can and he thinks well
now would be a goddamned good time for a miracle, for it
to roll over and just open slowly and teach him something
about the futility of violence, the shame of pride, the
pride
of anger, the surprise of faith where not to knock by Christ
is open wide. Instead it stays tighter than a bull's ass
in
fly-time, teaching him the horseshit of inwit, the agenbite
and
fuck you of fantasy, and the true kryptonite hardness of
an
oyster you can't have even if you're Clark Kent and have
driven 600 miles to get it. Middleton spits some Honey-cut
and says, "ats fuckin oyrsters."
© Copyright Roland Flint--from The Unicorn And The Garden.
Also, from Dryad magazine
Copyright © 1977 by Roland Flint.
IN SOLITARY AND OTHER
IMAGINATIONS
John Pauker, is an internationally known American poet,
a playwright, a fashioner of fiction, an editor, critic,
and translator from many languages. Before his death,
he described himself as "a propagandist for truth,
beauty, goodness, and love." He attended Yale
University, where he won numerous awards for literary excellence,
and graduated with high honors. Three volumes of Mr.
Pauker's verse have been published in the United States,
one in Iran, two in India, and a book in France. His
play entitled "Moonbirds" was produced on Broadway,
and his translation of The Dukays, a Hungarian
novel, was for six months a nationwide bestseller in the
U.S.A.
His poems "Surprising Poem", "Ill Poem",
and "Penal Poem" from the book, In Solitary
And Other Imaginations, are set forth below.
Surprising Poem
I looked, and looked again. There were no people.
The people had disappeared. The people were gone.
But the things they had created were still there,
A suit of clothes and a gown walked arm in arm
With a dog at the end of a leash. The dog was there
And snarling. In the street, vehicular traffic
Flowed as usual but without drivers or riders.
Inside buildings, doors opened and closed.
Cigarettes smoked, telephones rang, receivers
Slammed as usual, and on television
Something of all this showed, but without people.
--The fifth of scotch went on diminishing.
Electric razors razed and revolvers fired
As Usual. The things went through their paces
And seemed to be enjoying themselves hugely.
I longed to look in a mirror but did not dare.
Ill Poem
The ills of a poet are dull and routine affairs:
Neglect, misunderstanding.
To liven his life, let's kick a poet downstairs
And hear his head crunch on the landing
Penal Poem
Of all wrongdoing, to be born is worst.
I sentence you to 60 years of life
With time off for good behavior.
© Copyright John Pauker --from In Solitary And Other
Imaginations
Back to Top
THE END OF THE
HAND
Paul Revenko Jones continues to spend his time rebuilding pianos, sailing his
28' boat "Pianoforte," and studying aikido, though
he calls himself, "not quite yet a beginner."
In the forward to his book the end of the hand,
Karren Alenier described the book as a "man's literature
that takes responsibility for its sexual differences and
its difficulties in dealing with the opposite sex."
She goes on to say, "[l]ike an ancient technician,
Jones builds a quiet but formidable pyramid of passion.
To appreciate the tenderness of the work, every stone need
be examined in its relationship to the next."
Jones' book includes the poem, "the end of the hand",
set forth below.
the end of the hand
the end of the hand
for sure
is in the pocket,
touching of hair,
brushing of teeth,
shuffling of cards,
worried fingers
spread at the temple.
the hand that
holds the soil that
pots the plant,
alone at night
turns down the spread,
clasps the other
to still the tremble.
© Copyright Paul Revenko Jones --from The End Of The
Hand
Back to Top
THE BRANCH OF FIRE
Edward Weismiller, a Rhodes scholar and twice Guggenheim
Fellow, is the author of three collections of poetry. His
first collection, The Deer Come Down, was
chosen for publication in the Yale Series of Younger poets
in 1936, when Weismiller, then just 21, was a junior in
college. No younger person has ever won the prestigious
Yale Series competition. His second collection, The
Faultless Shore, was published by Houghton, Mifflin
in 1946. The Word Works published his most recent collection,
The Branch of Fire in 1980. Weismiller's novel,
The Serpent Sleeping, based on his experience
in counterespionage in World War II, was published by Putnam
in 1962; it is to be reissued in late 1997 by London publisher
Frank Cass in the series "Classics of Espionage".
His poem "Carpentry", set forth below, is from
The Branch Of Fire.
Carpentry
Sibylle, my dear, what ramshackle old
Houses we are, a wall somewhere
Always falling in, the roof
Recommencing to leak.
Tears, maybe.
All I can say is that old things are
What mostly I care about now: the wry
Body, a few
Old friends, and tentatively
God
Also old.
To you one need say nothing
Resolute. But to God I say
Sir: there is a wall that--
She stands for us.
Sir, let us get out the hammers
Of lightning and love.
© Copyright Edward Weismiller --from The Branch Of Fire
Back to Top
IN PRAISE OF SECRECY
Mac Wellman, poet, playwright, and novelist, has published
three collections of poetry, two novels, and a number of
plays. He has received numerous honors, including both NEA
and Guggenheim Fellowships. In 1990 he received an Obie
(Best New American Play) for Bad Penny, Terminal
HIP and Crowbar. In 1991 he received another
Obie for Sincerity Forever. In 1997 he received a Lila Wallace--Reader's
Digest Writers' Award. His poem, "Secret Expedition
to the South in Search of the Perfect Woman", set forth
below, is from In Praise Of Secrecy.
Secret Expedition To The South In Search Of The Perfect Woman
I want to see the world through your eyes,
How music gathered you up and brought you here,
How the Fly was chatting to the Other Bug...
I want you to know what I am doing when I practice myself,
How I resemble you by virtue of loving you,
What small anguish it takes to make up some monster,
And I am sick to death of this double death:
How trivial the distance is, this endless toiling by the
river.
So I am going to steal you away...
It will all happen like clockwork: the guards
Gagged, the old Enchanter enchanted,
And the two of us whistling
Through the cornfield like smoke, feeling what we feel.
I'll tell you what the Fly said to the Other Bug.
Larks will be cruising the tree-tops there.
Some delectable fruit will be dangling there...
My secret wish is secret but it involves
You, and that's all I'm saying...
I can chop wood, am in excellent health, as of
This writing, and can write my name.
I am going to learn your secrets!
I am going to steal you away!
© Copyright Mac Wellman --from In Praise Of Secrecy
Back to Top
SPINOZA'S MOUSE
Dr. George Young has been writing and publishing poems in both literary magazine and medical journals for upwards of 25 years. The Word Works published his first book of poems, Spinoza's Mouse, in 1996, after the manuscript was awarded the Washington Prize. He has one other published of poetry, a chapbook titled Creating The Universe, and his poems have been featured in three anthologies of poetry specifically written by physicians, as well as two Word Works anthologies, Winners, A Retrospective of the Washington Prize, and Cabin Fever: Poets at Joaquin Miller's Cabin, 1984-2004. After retiring from medical practice in 2002, Dr. Young continued to pursue what he calls his two passions: "birds and words". He is working on publishing a second full-length book of poetry, and also has a chapbook coming out titled The Bird of Paradise, which is being published by the University of Wisconsin at Madison Library Series. Recently, he has read poems for high school english classes and for medical students at the University of Colorado, and had several letters to the editor published in Poetry Magazine.
Dr. Young says of Spinoza's Mouse: It "is composed of accessible poems about famous historical figures: philosophers, artists, musicians, writers, doctors; as well as about some of my own patients, and about my love of the natural world. I am not formally religious, but do consider myself a humanist and a "Spinozaist" (if there is such a word)." His poem "A Letter to William Carlos Williams" is set forth here.
A Letter to William Carlos Williams
We know, Doctor Williams, you and I,
as we go
from patient one to next,
thumb the rumpled charts, cough
nervously and look away from worried eyes,
what
we will see--
what is, is, and it is
just this: the
truth
of blood and flesh we wrestle with:
sheer, brute, singular,
wounded--
ourselves.
© Copyright George Young--from Spinoza's Mouse
Back to Top
|
