< C CONTENTS Foreword: Four Incarnations ---Kissing The Dancer =66rom _Kissing The Dancer & Other Poems_, 1964 Uncle Dog: The Poet At 9 The Kite Kissing The Dancer Marriage=20 What It Was A Walk In The Scenery Lost Umbrellas By The Swimming Chicago's Waldheim Cemetery I Have Just Bought A House Scenes From A Text Emu: A Lecture For Voices; For Stereo Attic By The River Mothers-In-Law Nightgown, Wife's Gown Socrates At The Symposium (Sonnet For Two Voices) Barbecue Chicago All For A Day=20 ---Thousand-Year-Old Fiancee =20 =66rom _Thousand-Year-Old Fiancee & Other Poems_, 1965 Hello Poem Movies: Left To Right Arrival At Jim McConkey's Farm Holding Hands Thousand-Year-Old Fiancee People Coming Out Of People Halsted Street, Chicago Chicago Public Library ---Satires The New YorkTimes Book Review American Heritage Suds In Terrycloth--Mr. & Mrs. The Very Air He Breathes Nine-And-A-Half Times Report From The Front --- Five Iowa Poems =66rom _Five Iowa Poems_, 1975 Iowa City, Iowa Iowa Iowa Writers' Workshop--1958 Impossible Hurricane Loss-Of-Name Poem --Honey Bear On Lasqueti Island, B.C. =66rom _Honey Bear On Lasqueti Island, B.C.,_ 1978 Honey Bear Bear Mother Bear Mother In The Kaleidoscope Gull, Clam--Wham Float House Cooking For My Son, Michael ---Movies: Left To Right =66rom _Movies: Left To Right_, 1983 Blind Poet Mr. Amnesia Yaddo Personal Stress Assessment --Half A Life=D5s History =66rom _Half A Life's History, Poems New & Selected,_ 1983 Half A Life's History Returning To Live In 1860 Scarf Gobble Wallow Inventory Statement Of Poetics Or Goodbye To Myself ---Poet Santa Cruz =66rom _Poet Santa Cruz_, 1985 A Monk On The Santa Cruz Mountains Castroville, California (Sonnet)=09=09 Li Po The Emperor, A Villanelle II ---New Releases=09 Clancy The Dog Scarlet The Parrot Alfa The Dog Three Roberts Basketball's The American Game Because It's Hysterical Hannah On My Way To The Korean War Continuous Topless Strippers Sausalito Ferry Poem ---Four For Love 108,000 Ways Of Making Love Kiss Bite & Moo Softly Jealousy For Gloria On Her 60th Birthday 34 Poets Named Robert Acknowledgments [see final section] > FOUR INCARNATIONS Born on the Jewish North Side of Chicago, bar mitzvahed, sailor, amnesiac, university professor (Cornell, Iowa, Connecticut College), newspaper editor, food reviewer, father of five children, husband to four wives, my writing career has been described by critic Virginia Lee as a "long and winding road." 1. Switchblade Poetry: Chicago Style I began writing poetry in Chicago at age 15, when I was named corresponding secretary for a gang of young punks and hoodlums called the Semcoes. A Social Athletic Club, we met at various locations two Thursdays a month. My job was to write postcards to inform my brother thugs--who carried switchblade knives and stole cars for fun and profit--as to when, where and why we were meeting. =09Rhyming couplets seemed the appropriate form to notify characters like lightfingered Foxman, cross-eyed Harris, and Irving "Koko," of upcoming meetings. An example of my switchblade juvenilia: The Semcoes meet next Thursday night=20 =09at Speedway Koko's. Five bucks dues, Foxman, or fight. =09Koko was a young boxer whose father owned Chicago's Speedway Wrecking Company and whose basement was filled with punching bags and pinball machines. Koko and the others joked about my affliction--the writing of poetry--but were so astonished that they criticized me mainly for my inability to spell. 2. Sailor Librarian: San Diego At 17, I graduated from high school, gave up my job as soda jerk and joined the Navy. The Korean War was underway; my mother had died, and Chicago seemed an oppressive place to be. =09My thanks to the U.S. Navy. They taught me how=20 to type (60 words a minute), organize an office, and serve as a librarian. In 1952 I served in Korea aboard a 300-foot long, flat-bottomed Landing Ship Tank (LST). A Yeoman 3rd Class, I became overseer of 1200 paperback books, a sturdy upright typewriter, and a couple of filing cabinets. =09The best thing about duty on an LST is the ship's speed: 8-10 knots. It takes approximately one month for an LST to sail between San Diego and Pusan, Korea. In that month I read Melville's Moby Dick, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Thoreau's Walden, Isak Dinesen's Winter's Tales, the King James Version=20 of the Bible, Shakespeare's Hamlet, King Lear, and a=20 biography of Abraham Lincoln. =09While at sea, I began writing poetry as if poems, to paraphrase Thoreau, were secret letters from=20 some distant land. =09I sent one poem to a girl named Lorelei with whom=20 I was in love. Lorelei had a job at the Dairy Queen. Shortly before enlisting in the Navy, I spent $15 of my soda jerk money taking her up in a single engine, sight-seeing airplane so we could kiss and--at the same time--get a good look at Chicago from the air. Beautiful Loreli never responded to my poem. Years later, at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, I learned that much of what I had been writing (love poems inspired by a combination of lust and loneliness) belonged, loosely speaking, to a tradition--the venerable tradition of unrequited love. 3. Mr. Amnesia: Cambridge In 1962, after ten years of writing poetry, my book, _Uncle Dog & Other Poems,_ was published by Putnam in England. That was followed by two books from Cornell University Press, _Kissing the Dancer_ and _Thousand-Year-Old Fiancee_. Then in 1966, I was invited to do 14 poetry readings in a two-week stretch at places like Dartmouth, Amherst, and the University of Connecticut. =09The day before I was scheduled to embark on the reading series, I was hit by a speeding MG in Cambridge, Massachusetts. =09I lost my memory for a period of about 24 hours. Just as I saw the world fresh while cruising to a war zone, so I now caught a glimpse of what a city like Cambridge can look like when one's inner slate, so to speak, is wiped clean. 4. Santa Claus: Santa Cruz In December, 1985, recently returned to the U.S. after some years in Canada, a free lance writer in search of a story, I sought and found employment as a Rent-a-Santa Claus. Imagine walking into the local Community Center and suddenly, at the=20 sight of 400 children, feeling transformed from one's skinny, sad-eyed self, into an elf--having to chant the prescribed syllables, "Ho, Ho, Ho." =09What is poetry? For me, it's the restrained music of a switchblade knife. It's an amphibious warship magically transformed into a basketball court, and then transformed again into a movie theater showing a film about the life of Joan of Arc. It is the vision of an amnesiac, bleeding from a head injury, witnessing the play of sunlight on a redbrick wall. =09Poetry comes to a bearded Jewish wanderer, pulling on a pair of high rubber boots with white fur, and a set of musical sleigh bells, over blue, fleece-lined sweat pants. It comes to the father of five children bearing gifts for 400 and, choked up, unable to speak, alternately laughing and sobbing the three traditional syllables--Ho, Ho, Ho--hearing at the same time, in his heart, the more plaintive, tragic--Oi vay, Oi vay, Oi vay. UNCLE DOG: THE POET AT 9 I did not want to be old Mr. Garbage man, but uncle dog who rode sitting beside him. Uncle dog had always looked to me to be truck-strong wise-eyed, a cur-like Ford Of a dog. I did not want to be Mr. Garbage man because all he had was cans to do. Uncle dog sat there me-beside-him emptying nothing. Barely even looking from garbage side to side: Like rich people in the backseats of chauffeur-cars, only shaggy in an unwagging tall-scrawny way. Uncle dog belonged any just where he sat, but old Mr. Garbage man had to stop at everysingle can. I thought. I did not want to be Mr. Everybody calls them that first. A dog is said, Dog! Or by name. I would rather be called Rover than Mr. And sit like a tough smart mongrel beside a garbage man. Uncle dog always went to places unconcerned, without no hurry. Independent like some leashless Toot. Honorable among scavenger can-picking dogs. And with a bitch at every other can. And meat: His for the barking. Oh, I wanted to be uncle dog--sharp, high fox- eared, cur-Ford truck-faced With his pick of the bones. A doing, truckman's dog and not a simple child-dog Nor friend to man, but an uncle traveling, and to himself-- and a bitch at every second can THE KITE I still heard Auntie Blue after she did not want to come down again. She was skypaper, way up too high to pull down. The wind liked her a lot, and she was lots of noise and sky on the end of the string. And the string jumped hard all of a sudden, and the sky never even breathed, but was like it always was, slow and close far-away blue, like poor dead Uncle Blue. Auntie Blue was gone, and I could not think of her face. And the string fell down slowly for a long time. I was afraid to pull it down. Auntie Blue was in the sky, just like God. It was not my birthday anymore, and everybody knew, and dug a hole, and put a stone on it next to Uncle Blue's stone, and he died before I was even born. And it was too bad it was so hard to pull her down; and flowers. KISSING THE DANCER Song is not singing, =09the snow Dance is dancing, =09my love On my knees, with voice =09I kiss her knees And dance; my words are song, =09for her I dance; I give up my words, =09learn wings instead We fly like trees =09when they fly To the moon. There, there are =09some now The clouds opening, as you, as we =09are there =09=09Come in! I love you, kiss your knees =09=09with words, Enter you, your eyes =09your lips, like =09=09Lover Of us all, =09words sweet words =09learn wings instead. MARRIAGE I lie down in darkness beside her, this earth in a wedding gown. =09=09Who, what she is, I do not know, nor is it a question the night would ask. I have listened-- =09=09The woman beside me breathes. I kiss that, a breath or so of her, and glow. =09=09Glow. Hush now, my shadow, let us... Day breaks-- =09=09depart. Yes, and so we have. WHAT IT WAS What it was, was this: the stars had died for the night, =09and shone; and God, God also shone, up, straight up, at the very top of the sky. =09=09 =09=09=09The street was one of the better suburbs of the night, and was a leaf, or the color of one in the moonlit dark. =09=09=09She, my mother, went to the window. It was as late as night could be to her. =09=09She looked at the wind, still, the wind, =09=09=09...never having blown. And in the morning, now, of sleep the stars, the moon and God =09=09=09began once more, away, =09=09=09into the sky. --And she, my mother, slept... in her window, in her sky. A WALK IN THE SCENERY It is there. And we are there. In it. Walking in it, talking, holding hands. The nickel postcard--the glossy trees; the waterfalls, the unsuspecting deer. A scene shot from a car window: a slowly moving car, with many windows, and a good camera. And we are walking in it. We tell ourselves, quietly, perhaps screaming, =2E..quietly, "We are walking in it." And our voices sound, somehow, as if we were behind windows, or within. We embrace, and are in love. The deer that we are watching, at the same time (through cameras, binoculars, eyes...) are so perfectly wild, and concerned --with the scene they are, their glossy fate silence, Nature, their rotogravure pose-- that they remain, not watching; rather, staring away from us, into the earnest, green and inoffensive trees. LOST UMBRELLAS She enters a room exuding displeasure, =09strewing bits of string, grievances, =09bottlecaps,=20 =09=09hairnets, =09law books, =09like largess to all corners. =46rom the seams of her change purse =09leak =09Travelers Cheques, photos of used-car salesmen =09(dear brothers-in-law), strychnine, =09ragged old horoscopes and gifts of broken glass. Daughter to the planet Saturn, mother to my wife-- Her courtiers, we direct her, mix martinis for her find causes for her, lost umbrellas =09and car keys even at the gates of hell. BY THE SWIMMING By the swimming the sand was wetter the farther down you dug; I dug: my head and ear on top of the sand, my hand felt water... and the lake was blue not watching. The water was just waiting there in the sand, like a private lake. And no one could kick sand into my digging, and the water kept going through my fingers slow like the sand, and the sand was water too. And then the wind was blowing everyplace, and the sand smelled like the lake, only wetter. It was raining then. Everybody was making waxpaper noises, and sandwiches, kicking sand and running with newspapers on their heads. Baldmen and bathinghat-ladies, and nakedpeople. And all the sand turned brown and stuck together hard. And the sky was lightning, and the sun looked down sometimes to see how dark it was and to make sure the moon wasn't there. And then we were running: and everybody was under the hotdog tent eating things, spitting very mad and waiting for the sky, and to go home. CHICAGO'S WALDHEIM CEMETERY We are in Chicago's Waldheim Cemetery. I am walking with my father. My nose, my eyes, =09left pink wrinkled oversize =09ear my whole face is in my armpit. We are at the stone beneath which lies my father's mother. There is embedded in it a pearl-shaped portrait. I do not know this woman. =09I never saw her. I am suddenly enraged, indignant. I clench my fists. I would like to strike her. My father weeps. He is Russian. He weeps with =09conviction, sincerity, enthusiasm. I am attentive. I stand there listening beside him. After a while, a little bored, =09but moved, I decide myself to make the effort. I have paid strict attention. I have listened carefully. Now, I too will attempt tears. =09They are like song. They are like flight. I fail. "...I HAVE JUST BOUGHT A HOUSE" DEAR GEORGE--George, I have just bought a house, an eighty-seven room house. Also, a twenty-one room house. And many little houses. And eighteen trailers, and nineteen cars (six with beds in them); and wives for all the rooms, the trailers the little houses, and the six cars with beds in them, =09...and they all love me, all my wives love me. They do, George. They write to me. Every day. They write to me. And they are perfect, concise and beautiful letters. They say-- Yes, and they say it eighty-seven times. And then sign their names. I taught them how, =09=09=09=09=09=09George, myself. How to read and write. How to-- in houses. How to love, and how to write perfect, concise and beautiful letters. Yes, and how never to die. How to live forever, for me, for me, even though I will die. And how to make me feel as if I won't, even though I will, will feel as if I will. And they are very good at it. =09=09=09Anyway, they are all pregnant, George, =09=09=09all my wives are pregnant. Even the parakeets. Because some of them are parakeets. And some are goldfish, =09=09=09silverfish, ants rats, goats, skunks... =09and all have borne me children, parakeet, silverfish, ant, rat =09goldfish children. =09And I'm happy, George. I like marriage, really like it. Wives, =09=09=09bedbugs and getting mail every day. And I feel I have a place to go. It feels good. =09The only trouble is I don't have any money, or even any silverfish or rats or bedsheets a newspaper, or a place to go. I mean, why don't I, George? =09I live alone in an old upright typewriter, =09with but one dog and two cats to work to cook, to drink beer with me. It's sad, George. We cry ourselves to sleep. We are so alone.=20 Now and then Dog sings to us-- =09Woof, woof. =09Pale cats, pale man =09you shall have houses, =09you shall have wives; =09night falls =20 =09Woof, woof. =09Beer for you, milk for you, =09sleep for you, dreams for you. =09Sleep my children, =09sleep my children, =09sleep. Woof, woof. It is a lovely song, George, and Dog sings it well. =09We sleep. =09Witches, nightmares big as houses, wives warts, mushrooms, =09they are all there is. Night-things. Things-- =09pressing all the keys around us. Wanting what? To kill us, to put us into jail. =09Dog, Dog barks, he barks songs at them. They type Death onto his back, onto his tail, his ears, his tongue. =09Fleas and lice! We dance to avoid the keys. We do not dance well. We are typed into dreams, into wives. Into mansions and swans. =09Old bedsheets, Death-sheets, =09=09bedbugs =09pushcarts and poems. SCENES FROM A TEXT "Several actual, potentially and/or really traumatic situations are= =20 depicted on these pages." =09--Transient Personality Reactions to Acute or Special Stress (Chapter 5). Photo II The house is burning. The furniture is scattered on the lawn (tables, chairs TV, refrigerator). Momma-- there is a small, superimposed white arrow pointing at her--is busy tearing out her eyes. The mute husband (named, arrowed) stands idly by, his hands upon his hips, eyes already out. The smoke blankets the sky. And the scene, apart from Momma, Poppa, the flames... could be an auction. Friends, relatives neighbors, all stand by, reaching, fighting for the mirrors, TV, sunglasses; the children, the cats and speechless dogs. EMU: A LECTURE FOR VOICES; FOR STEREO Three-toed, one-headed, its wings the size of chicken-feet--and largest (next to the ostrich) of all existing birds... the emu stands, colossal, ratite six feet high =09its god enplumaged, dark hidden in the dismal, drooping, soft brown hair. =09Its hips, hump, its bulge, perhaps of flightlessness, or sky--appear as speed; the stunted cause, the befeathered, round sloping, still embodiment of speed. =20 The emu runs, swoop-skims, a two-shanked one-humped, egg-hatched camel: the bird most like a camel. =09Avoiding deserts however, the emu inhabits open fields and forests where, keeping in small companies, it feeds on fruit (of the emu tree), herbage and roots... now and then booming, with subsequent, and peculiarly hurried efforts, at breeding. =09Extinct, in Tasmania on Kangaroo, King and Wing Islands, the bird is found, and in small numbers, in Southeastern Australia. =09=09=09IT BREEDS Its nest, as if it had been rolled in and humped (in reverse), is a shallow sandy, green-egg-filled pit, the eggs of which, all nine (to thirteen), are incubated by the cock, an earnest, familial type of ostrich. =09The young, at birth, bear thin length-striped down, are wattleless, and walk; cursed, crane-necked, blank, dull adult-eyed baby, camel, ostrich-ducks... =20 =09in file swift, point-beaked, =09mothered, three-toed, one-headed --an image, but for the stripes (and down), of itself, in age. =09Its booming note, god and size, are at rest in it, in its conspicuous state of egglessness. It screams, booms, bounds =09...BECOMES IMMENSE, FLIES extinct, shaggy, stripeless (in age) =09FLOATS its head in the camel clouds, the hump the bulge, the sandlessness that is God. ATTIC BY THE RIVER I walk by the used river each day =09past an old attic (no house, the attic only beech trees growing through it) in a field. The river smells of barges, rotting timbers =09waterskiers' boats, lovers the very sun upon it. Rivers age in Connecticut, grow feeble, irritable and complain like old women. The charred attic, too, =09complains bears ill-will toward people, =09weeps and cries, and talks aloud on certain evenings =09to the sea. MOTHERS-IN-LAW Married twice now, I've had two mothers-in-law. One visited us and required, upon departure, the services of three gentlemen =09with shoehorns to get her back into her large black Studebaker. =09The other, Momma-law the Present, is (with the exclusion neither =09of that other, =09my wives =09nor the fathers-in-law =09of either marriage), that Studebaker. NIGHTGOWN, WIFE'S GOWN Where do people go when they go to sleep? I envy them. I want to go there too. I am outside of them, married to them. Nightgown, wife's gown, women that you look at, beside them--I knock of their shoulder blades ask to be let in. It is forbidden. But you're my wife, I say. There is no reply. Arms around her, I caress her wings. SOCRATES AT THE SYMPOSIUM Sonnet For Two Voices Of Love, my friends (after such sophistry and praise as yours), may one presume? Well, then, let me begin by begging Agathon: Good sir, is not your love a love for me? And not a love for those who disagree? Yes, true! And what is it that Love, again, is the love of? Speak! It is the love again of "Socrates." Love then, and the Good, are me. Explain! Is Love the love of something, or the love of nothing? Something! Very true. And Love desires the thing it loves. Right. Is it, then, really me whom you adore? Or is it nothing? O Socrates, it's you! Then I am Good, and I am yours. Agreed! BARBECUE --For William Dickey I They were spraying Pepsi and moth-juice on the fire. The mosquitoes, lawn flies and moths dove, flashed and were painlessly consumed. There was applause=20 =09=09=09...we entered. And while my wife was kissed, they clapped me on the back. They wanted to know that I was there. And then I kissed them down their throats, choked and knew that they were there. And after I had kissed those who had kissed my wife, and after they kissed me, we sprayed one another, scratched and dove after the moths. We flashed, painlessly, and emerged to munch the ashes, coals to sip moth juice, lemon juice and gin. And (again) we clapped one another laughed, kissed, sipped, puffed and swallowed cigarettes. II The cat-girl would not believe in it and crouched there pained, purring with the pups; (their tails were remarkably alike and neither pronounced upon events with them.) From time to time they'd lick one another, or the cream dip, but otherwise were still =09...though one of the pups had tried the fire, and the cat-girl =09sleekly swallowed gin. III Someone found Lil, the wife of no one, buried beside the spit. She wanted a martini; we obliged, and then reburied her. =09=09 Bernie dove in after the moths only to be buried, topped, beside the spit. IV The sky was rainbow strips of chrome, clouds and the sun, the great, archetypal Ford: pork-sauced and on the suburban spit of heaven. =09=09And Lil's angel waved free, fulfilled and married now, to chrome =2E..sipping gin and tonic. =09=09=09=09We all stared, climbed upon our spit, and then dove in after the moths. =09=09=09--The fire attained to Lil. The fire was a Ford, without chrome, pure as gin, as cream dip, moths or spray, death and we sang to it: its attaining to heaven, to Lil, to space, ourselves and the archetypal Ford. =09=09=09=09 In the other distance, in the space the consuming that is east, the night beyond where the moths take form, beyond what we flash for when we die, =09=09=09=09we sense the white-walled dawn, time and tomorrow's Ford. =09 There was Mars, the suburban star of barbecue. V The party had somehow failed. The cards-- and there was Rummy, large as Lil, four'd the evening star. It was time for gin and time for light! =09=09=09No one would admit that he was there; we hid in front of one another's wife. The women hid beside the flames, the way they flickered through their eyes. I kept trying to put my tongue into their cards, into their eyes, ears throats, between their teeth; but theirs were there between mine. I bit them. And they cried with half their tongues =09=09=09munching diamonds and spades. And the bushes had begun the moon, ending "gin," martinis and marriage. Suddenly the women screamed. The moon burst through, revealing their husbands, the pup-girl themselves. The bushes became the lawn; the night, the earth; and the moths, the sun. The men became their wives; and the wives became the men, for the most part re-marrying themselves. The men were asleep beside their wives, smiling, spitted, still illicit. --Morning. My wife and I sipped gin. I was Bernie, and she the moths. =09=09=09=09 CHICAGO There are many underground things in cities, things like sewers, that run for miles, lengths and widths, across cities, under all. Then there are the basements of large stores, houses and hotels, and often these basements run for twenty feet and more out, around the buildings; and coal, garbage and all kinds of food are sent up and down into the basements, or out, from the side- walks and the alleys and streets, by chutes, corrugated elevator- stands, iron platforms, sewertops =2E..round, rectangular or square. And these metal things in the sidewalks, streets, are always rather warm; and in the winter, to comfort and unbitter their sittings, haunches and tails, and to avoid the asphalt ice and cold, cats and dogs, stray squirrels and so forth, come at night and from miles around, rest and together partake. =09=09=09=09And from some distances, they and their live optic green, brown congregations of eyes appear as islands, still yellow large, oval, gray or opalesque. And no dog bites no cat, nor squirrel, and all is quiet, idle, until the sun comes up and chases them out of the night, off the warmth and good of the sewers to their parts and tails. Then without a look at the sun, itself, they run, trot walking, no, no business into the snow. =20 ALL FOR A DAY All day I have written words. My subject has been that: Words. And I am wrong. And the words. =09I burn three pages of them. Words. And the moon, moonlight, that too I burn. A poem remains. But in the words, in the words, in the fire that is now words. I eat the words that remain, and am eaten. By nothing, by all that I have not made. ---from _Thousand-Year-Old Fiancee & Other Poems_ HELLO POEM Hello wife, hello world, hello God, I love you. Hello certain monsters, ghosts, office buildings, I love you. Dog, dog-dogs, cat, cat-cats, I love you. Hello Things-In-Themselves, Things Not Quite In Themselves (but trying), I love you. River-rivers, flower-flowers, clouds and sky; =09the Trolley Museum in Maine (with real trolleys); airplanes taking off; airplanes not taking off; airplanes landing, =09I love you. The IRT, BMT; the London subway (yes, yes, pedants, the Underground) system; the Moscow subway system, all subway systems except the Chicago subway system. Ah yes, I love you, the Chicago El- evated. Sexual intercourse, hello, hello. =09Love, I love you; Death, I love you; =09and some other things, as well, I love you. Like what? Walt Whitman, Wagner, Henry Miller; =09a really extraordinary, one-legged Tijuana whore; I love you, loved you. =09The Reader's Digest (their splendid, monthly vocabulary tests), Life and Look... =09handball, volleyball, tennis; croquet, basketball, football, Sixty- nine; =09draft beer for a nickel; women who will lend you money, women who will not; =09women, pregnant women; women who I am making pregnant; women who I am not making pregnant. Women. Trees, goldfish, silverfish, coral fish, coral; =09I love you, I love you. MOVIES: LEFT TO RIGHT The action runs left to right, cavalry, the waterskiers-- then a 5-hour film, The Sleeper, a man sleeping for five hours (in fifteen sequences), sleeping left to right, left to right cavalry, a love scene, elephants. Also the world goes left to right, the moon and all the stars, sex too and newspapers, catastrophe. In bed, my wives are to my left. I embrace them moving left to right. I have lived my life that way, growing older, moving eastward-- the speedometer, the bank balance architecture, good music. All that is most real moves left to right, declares my friend the scenarist, puffing on a white cigar, eating The Herald Tribune, the New Republic. My life is a vision, a mechanism that runs from left to right. I have lived badly. Waterskier, I was until recently in the U.S. Cavalry. Following that I played elephant to a lead by Tarzan. Later, I appeared in a film called The Sleeper. Till today, standing on the edge of things, falling and about to fall asking, Why? I look back. Nowhere. Meanwhile, one or more wives go on stilts for the mail. ARRIVAL The light goes out, the dark comes down, small cries, low murmurs of foxes. A light descends on the trees, whitish like what they themselves give off. Watching it, I am moved to prayer, to the crying out of titles of certain poems, the names of God, my own name. It takes shape before me. It is the night's name, my wife's name. In motion, in one another's arms, we arrive somewhere where none of this is so. AT JIM McCONKEY'S FARM All is quiet and we lie here numbed. There is motion, rough-winged barn swallows and clouds. Butterflies loop around one another suggesting bows, configurations of a knot. Both of us lose interest. The corrugated galvanized roof of a 100-year-old barn refuses light. The sun comes off it in unexpected intensities. The fields and hills form a backdrop to this. Cicadas and song sparrows. The landscape rolls, my eyes roll with it. Uneasily at first, unexpectedly it comes over me that no one will ever not love here. The new clothespins, the look of light on the line. Old barns. Orchards. The John Deere harvester. I am overwhelmed by the complexities of skunk cabbage. =09=09It is warmish. The breeze pleases me. Everything is dry. We stand and walk around in the day. We walk out to the barn with the corrugated top. Hours later we drink beer and ponder the hollows under stars. I have no thoughts whatsoever. I glance at her and embrace her, but have nothing to say. Implausible phrases, song titles, cliches-- =09=09they come haltingly to mind. Then the few convictions I have done well by. We hold hands and walk around there. No debts. No debts. Twelve years of manuscripts. We can go in or out. At this moment, for this day even, we have belonged here. How did it happen? What have we affirmed? We kiss the one star's lips. And always, married still =09=09we move on. HOLDING HANDS Always I am leaving people, missing them, going out to them and loving them; holding hands, doing turnabout, ah, going to movies with them, clowning reverential, an enthusiast--for what? The certain good of sleeping with them, holding them, climbing into their bellies. I am present in them, approving their skins, most foolish hopes, warmest impulses =09and the loss of vanity, the presence of which-- and all is lost. =09Huge stars are falling, great owls circle above us. We sit here in wonderment-- =09Is there anyone anyone anyone has not been with? The truth is, nothing else matters. You are, I am, he is. The world will please come to order. Be seated. Hold hands. No it won't. No it won't. Don't be scared. Cover up my love, we will all of us never not be in you, my love love's there first. THOUSAND-YEAR-OLD FIANCEE We are alone, Death's thousand-year-old fiancee and I. The thing suggests itself to me. I step onto the front parts of her feet, and stand like that facing her saying nothing. In moments I lose twenty pounds and sweat. My nose =09bleeds. It occurs to me I may never before have acted out of instinct. We do not embrace. She is in her middle sixties, with varicose veins, whitish hair and buttocks as large as Russia. Things come off of her in waves, merriment, exuberance, benevolent body lice, hundred-year-old blackheads. I kiss her hives. I lick her nose that shows she drinks bottles and bottles of Fleischmann's every day. I am standing there in my Jewish hair facing her with my life. Knock, knock. It is Death in spats and a blue business suit. I stand there in my Jewish hair facing him. He is very still, grinning, grayish, bemused. Pretty soon I begin to scream. All night I scream. Yeah. After a while I go under and kiss her ass. It takes a bit. Fathers and sons, I am up to my knees in the moon. Kiss this ghost she says of a certain light. I plunge my tongue into it to the ears. Madam, I say, astounded, choking, feverish, I have not as yet had you. Have me, she says. Under my foreskin there is a star, whole constellations. Goddamnit, I am not=20 speaking to you here of sex! Kiss me here, she says. Kiss me there. Stars, ghosts and sons, =09=09winged, we are all of us winged-- =09=09the one thing there is of us. Death, you old lecher, I affirm you, I confront you with my balls. I revere dead fish and sunken submarines, the little red schoolhouse and the American way. Let us in fact join hands with the universe. Death, I have news for you. I climb into your young fiancee eleven times a night. There are signs that she is pregnant. Death, there is nothing I will not love. PEOPLE COMING OUT OF PEOPLE Rings coming out of rings, =09four and then eight-- you reach for one, the man says, and you have two. That is the way rings give birth to rings. Once speaking of cups he cried, Each is within the other, each is linked to each. All that he did bore witness to this. "You are pop art," said his woman. Marriage is like that. What is virtue? Reach for one and you have two. Weariness, that is also a truth. All conditions are truths. Claim only those you've a mind to. All things, all truths are gifts. The man who dreamt of playing magician reaching for goblets, chalices, cups one and then within it its mate, or linked by the handles, by rims, like women within women the metaphysics of sex. That too is a question-- the man reaching, =09all that he wants, doubles. That is the way rings give birth to rings and that is what if not a truth? (again) cups within cups, people within people out of love, out of need, out of want. HALSTED ST., CHICAGO It is Chicago, it is Chicago I am trying to plug in, my finger in my navel, in Halsted Street with holes in it; an electric light socket, =09buzz, buzz-- I want very badly to plug in. I put my left forefinger in my ear, and my other forefinger, I put that exactly on the nose =09between the eyes of Little Orphan Annie, who appears daily =09(twice daily, in fact) on the back pages of the Chicago Tribune. I can't stand holes. I kiss people when they talk, or put my finger in. Also railroad tracks. I walk on them. One day it rained. I walked for fourteen hours. I walked all the way north to Wisconsin. And it is true, it was good to learn: If people see that you care for them they do not mind your plugging in. Coming home, no one on the bus minded =09my plugging in. I plugged in to their buttonholes =09and shoes =09(the shoelace eyes in them). I came back strong, I came back with all my fingers =09and my toes too, back once and for all now. I unscrewed the telephone. I put my fingers in. Click, click, the operator. I stammered out my message, my latest coming, deepest feelings, vibrations, revelations... A failure to understand me. Anger on my part. And a new urge to plug in. The bent coin release, the holes in urinals, God's left eye, heaven too, outer space the ionosphere, the stratosphere =09the Milky Way =09and Universe in general. CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY I am downtown. I am wearing sunglasses, =09phony nose, and big inch-and-a-half-long =09false teeth. I have them jammed on over my other teeth. I have the look of unabashed stupidity. People comment on it. Some hoodlums jeer at me,=20 =09throw rocks at me. It is raining. Also, it is snowing. There are carols. It is December, =09late December, nearly Christmas. Old men and women are huddled in the corridor of the Chicago Public Library. I go there and huddle too. I keep on my sunglasses and nose. People like them. They admire them. Then they look at me. They look closely, and huddle against me. They pick my pockets, =09my pubescent blackheads, my father's watch chain. One of them, a dwarf, takes me by the hand. We go walking, just the two of us. After a while, we begin to fly. We fly very slowly and low and toward the Lake. And then back. I fall asleep. I have bad dreams; I awaken-- Waldheim Jewish Cemetery, the Outer Drive, stainless steel florist shops, the traffic lights, red, amber and green. I enter off Montrose Avenue. Slowly, slowly I begin the long swim =09to Michigan. SATIRES THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW =09Sunday, March 18, 1962 This critic in bed with this poet, in bed with this female writer =09of scenarios, O General X., O General Y., =09beneath the bed, but in it nonetheless, =09Dr. Spock, Dr. Edward Teller, proud father of the H-Bomb, I see you there... you are there too, reviewed by RAND, planting mushrooms in the chamber pot. =09O Dr. Strontium, O Folk Medicine =09encyclopedias of saleable wars, =09picture books of extinct everything, =09aphrodisiacs, erotica-- Historians embracing historians, novelists embracing novelists, their hands in one another's crotches, pens in one another's pockets; =09books in one another's books. =09O hold me, hold me close, I want to sleep there too, where the warmth is, where the money is, =09aura of martinis. Reserve a bit of sheet=20 for me, I want in, I want in with the New English Translation of the Bible, Writers' Workshop teachers O and all the others of America's O charming, honey-fingered men of letters. AMERICAN HERITAGE This, O my stomach, is a painting of the Civil War. Look--Antietam. All over there are dead, noble Northern, noble Southern, dead. One, no, no, several wear beards. They are all General Ulysses S. Grant beards, noble, truly noble beards. The Union side, O my soul, see them! All, all of them waving, resembling, bearing the name Walt Whitman. They are all on horseback, all with maps and swords, banners and copies of last Sunday's New York Times Book Review watching through binoculars, writing letters, keeping journals, reading Leaves of Grass... And there is Barbara Frietchie. Hi, Barbara. Barbara's pregnant. She is soon to be the mother of Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Carl Sandburg. This is an historical moment, very historical. You can feel it and read about it, too (and General Stonewall Jackson, Clare Booth Luce, Robert E. Lee =09and many others), in American Heritage, edited by Bruce Catton, with whose kind permission I herewith reprint this painting. =09*=09*=09* Song: "There's No War Like Civil War" O the Civil War's the only war, the only war, the only war; the finest war, yes, the noblest most unforeign war, the finest only noblest most unforeign war that ever I did see. (Chorus, etc.) =09 "SUDS" IN TERRYCLOTH--MR. & MRS. Ahh, froths she, her soapchip teeth to Mr. Terry S. She like he is in her "clean clear through" (and deodored, too!) bathrobe. Raising her FAB right arm, one hand against the armpit And the other at her wrist, he gnaws and drools into the terrycloth. Ahh, cries she, her teeth and tongue at him. She seems pleased. He grins and glistens from his eyes. He licks her then, up And down her spine, Ahh! licked-lipped, she runs her tongue... "Dazzling white (to be sure), but something more. It's as if "Suds and sunlight had combined to Terry swiftly, agilely through "And up and down her robe. No wonder he can't keep his tongue away!" Ahh! Its thick, soft white nap outdates all dulling soapscum cleanliness. Nor is his robe without its attractions. She sniffs his bushy belt. He reddens, Froths into the air, and slaps his little webbed feet hard upon the floor. She spreads her robe to him; and he, his to her. She moistens him And he, her. Bursting from within their pelts, teeth bubbles suds, ahh-- "THE VERY AIR HE BREATHES" She lies upon a tawny mat of effluence--and leopard spots. And he (he's hers and she knows it!) Can but barely be seen, crouched and to the left of her. One ear, an eyebrow, and a bit of cheek are all that show of him. The caption (again) suggests that it is fun (fabulous fun) being female At a time like this! And, indeed, it looks like fun. Her eyes are huge and subtly closed as leopard spots; and her lips are spread. She is, in fact, a deodored leopardess about to take the male. But again, the caption: You are the very air he breathes (the male is hard upon her). She appears to be undisturbed by this; and with both shaved armpits bared, she arches For him. One is inclined to think of her as being altogether without fear; she smiles, And takes the male. Neither deodorant, nor effluence, could do more. She smiles, and she lies there, the very air he breathed. NINE-AND-A-HALF TIMES They had killed Momma's brother Johnny nine-and-a-half times in the war. There wasn't hardly anything left when he got home: of Johnny or of Momma. I mean he came home without his arms, without his ears, without his brains, or hair; without his loving everyone, =09=09and women =20 that made Momma mad. He didn't like love no more, or Momma, and he had been married in between all the times he was killed. Nine-and-a-half times! And Momma had cried and cried and said it was like his being killed. The Army and President Roosevelt, General Eisenhower... =09=09They were all sorry, and Momma ate the letters and the envelopes; the telegrams, and then Johnny; the Purple Heart, the White Heart, the gold star, Daddy & all of Johnny's wives. And Momma was all that there was left.=20 REPORT FROM THE FRONT All over newspapers have stopped appearing, and combatants everywhere are returning home. No one knows what is happening. The generals are on long distance with the President, a former feature writer for the New York Times. No one knows even who has died, or how, or who won last night, anything. Those in attendence on them may, for all we know, still be there. A few speak compulsively, telling too much, having sat asleep in easy chairs. All over newspapers have stopped appearing. Words once more, more than ever, have begun to matter. And people are writing poetry. Opposing regiments, declares a friend of mine, are refusing evacuation, are engaged instead in sonnet sequences; though they understand, he says, the futility of iambics in the modern world. That they are concerned with the history and meaning of prosody. That they persist in their exercises with great humility and reverence. ---from _Five Iowa Poems_ IOWA CITY, IOWA "Some years the ground pulls harder--" He mounts his tractor. There are creatures in trees whose names I do not know. There are others in procession before us. Pigs the size of buffalo. Cattle the tails and markings of horses. Iowa. What am I doing in Iowa? Ann lies in the sun. Dozing. Depressed. Stripping, rising on my hind legs, hairy, cloven-footed, Centaur, I declare myself: Centaur. Then chicken. Then horse. Bull. Then pig. She too: Centaur. Then chicken. Horse. Bull. Then pig. Let us plant our dreams. Write them down and plant them. Plant sugar cubes. Make love. Then dig it up, turn it over and plant the ground, that ground we made love on. What will grow there? Rhubarb. A peach tree. The ground holds me as I make love to it. How is it birds no longer fly? Horses only. The entire state of Iowa. What about deities, these deities that eat your brains? And why anyway should I mind that? I am busy planting my brains. I will harvest them remind me please before leaving. The time has come. O look Centaur Snowing Your eyes your eyes they touch me. I have been asleep. Does it hurt? IOWA What a strange happiness. Sixty poets have gone off drunken, weeping into the hills, I among them. There is no one of us who is not a fool. What is to be found there? What is the point in this? Someone scrawls six lines and says them. What a strange happiness. IOWA WRITERS' WORKSHOP--1958 --For Paul Engle Seated, against the room, against the walls legs extended, or under chairs iambs, trochees & knees... we surrender, each of us, to the sheets at hand. The author swallows his voice. Still "Page two." Page one is saved for the last. "The poet has here been impressed by the relationship=20 between blue birds and black. In the octet we note the crow. And its iambic death." "On page three, The Poet Upon His Wife, (by his wife) we note the symbols for the poet: the bird in flight, the collapsing crow, the blue bird... Note too the resemblance between sonnets." We vote and stare at one another's crow. Ours is an age of light. Our crows reflect the age, Eisenhower-Nixon colored stripes, rainbow-solids, blacks & whites. Ruffling their wings, Mezey, Coulette, Levine =09refuse to vote. "Page four, Apologies to William S. apologies, our third sonnet..." And those who teach, who write and teach, the man at hand, apologize for themselves, and themselves at hand. "Poets buy their socks at Brooks & Warren, like DuPont, like Edsel, like Ike." Anecdotes, whispers, cliques whispering, then aloud into prominence. Brooks & Warren, DuPont, Edsel & Ike. Order is resumed. "We have been here, now forever. From the beginning of verse." One has written nothing, and it is inconceivable that one would, or will ever write again. A class has ended. They pass by, gazing in. The poets gaze out, and grin. They gaze out, and through the electric voice, the ruffled sonnet sheets that stare against the faces staring in. "Page one." Walled-in glances at the author. And then the author disappears, the poem anonymous. Voice. Voices. There are voices about it: anonymous. The self. A sonnet's self... The room is filled with it. It is a bird. It sits beside us and extends its wings. Mezey hits it with his elbow. The bird shrieks and sprawls upon the floor. We surrender We surrender to its death. The poem breathes, becomes its author and departs. We all depart. And watch the green walls take our seats. Apologies. Brooks & Warren. DuPont. Edsel & Ford. IMPOSSIBLE HURRICANE LOSS-OF-NAME POEM The fields planted. Tractors=09Wooden clothespins rising. Parched. Brown. Plows and houses. Rising. Rainbow. It ends or begins or starts. Is it walking or is it skipping? It rides above the fence. If I dig a hole will I find a poem? A pot of unicorns? A herd of leprechauns? I ask. The rainbow has already moved. Seven miles in the soft light. A field filled with cows. The hurricane approaches. There are funnels filled with butterflies. Dust that is the rain. Thunder. Trees. The grass. The wind walking. Phosphorous. The rain. The noiseless. Wind. Explodes. I am lying in the sun only there is none. I am being blown away=09only the moon rises=09which is the sun? Evening. There is none. Red. Parched brown. Plows and houses. Hurricane. Hurricane. My name has been blown away. O name poor name, will the rain care for you as I have cared for you? Will the wind devour you, knock your head against a tree? Already I have forgotten. Can a young man named... live happily in a hurricane? Will his house and woman and poems blow away? Once they have blown away. Twice. Already. That the house and the woman and the unnamed man have their tongues in one another's mouths, can they go on like that? Funnel, stars, butterfly, wind. The noiseless Yes, they can. ---from _Honey Bear On Lasqueti Island, B.C._ =09 HONEY BEAR She is a Russian honey bear with very strong soft brown arms. Hugging her is at once a feat of strength, and an act of gentle surrender. One cannot hug the honey bear with only half a heart. It's all or no honey bear. There's a snap and vibrancy to her kisses Pucker and snap--audible across a field of wild black berries. Honey bear loves fresh cream and wild berries of all kinds French cheeses and homebaked bread. She is earth tremors in the garden, laughter in the flower beds rough brown honey bear pulling weeds. Her feet, large, perfectly =09proportioned =09are powerful as angel wings. A pale blue light surrounds her toes as she waltzes By the clover and the mint. Lighter than air, heavier than a bear. Clear-skinned lady O fairest of the fair I bow to my honey bear. BEAR MOTHER =09Mystery. Familiarity. Moving together of bodies. The dance of mouths, hands, bellies and tongues lightly touching =09knees and hairs and milky toes. =09*=09*=09* Black bear mother with magic eyes and dancing feet crouching, squatting giving birth dropping a single cub the cub grunting, sticky, moaning. BEAR MOTHER IN THE KALEIDOSCOPE Her lips are kindly and full. Her eyes are blue, mouth like pale cherries =09ripe on trees =09with snow. She appears without clothes =09or fur in a white velvet tent on an enchanted island. She's a white hummingbird at the float house in the evening circling clockwise round the fire. =09*=09*=09* Dark goes into light. Dark is a black cord on a silver needle drawn by a bear through a cave =09shining =09glistening in the dripping darkness reflecting fire. =09*=09*=09* In our boat at night-- with herself as passenger-- we navigate =09over rocks, submerged, undiscovered islands, moons like gigantic human eyes, lunar gardens and small mansions, wooden houses =09floating =09in the sea. GULL, CLAM--WHAM Gull flies up in the air with a clam drops it on the rocks crack, bam, wham goes the clam And, as it doesn't open, gull flies up with it again. And again drops it =09on the rocks plop, bop, and wham again. This time the clam opens and the gull feasts. Gull flies up the channel =66rom west to east, then back again down the same channel. Hot summer's day. Sun coming down. A little breeze, out on the rocks crack, bam, wham =09goes the clam While we in our float house lean out, looking to the east and the mud flats filled with clams. Walking out with shovels, digging =09for clams. Gulls to the east of us gulls to the west gulls, gulls, clam bam wham gulls, gulls, wham bam clam. Clambake, clambake get yourself a clam to bake. Clambake, clambake crack, bam, wham goes the clam. Clambake, clambake gull, clam--wham. Clambake, clambake gull, clam--wham. FLOAT HOUSE COOKING-- WRITTEN WHILE SLOSHED ON LASQUETI ISLAND, B.C. --For Maureen & Jerry Curle Standing up to the knees in water, he squeezes a little lemon onto the vegetables being sauteed In butter on a wok as he stands in water in front of a Coleman stove resting on a rock. The rice is steaming and the tea is brewing the oysters are stewing and about cooking like this =09there is no fooling Around, silly as it may be standing in up to the knees pressing the garlic, opening =09the teas being knocked over by the tide, The main hazard of cooking on a float house. O friends, forgive the cook if, eating and enjoying this dish, you feel A little seasick or uneasy queasy in the tummy. Be assured, dear hungry friends, it is not my cooking And it is no blow to my pride to freely admit the saltiness of the rice is owing =09to its falling into the sea because of the tide, you see-- not me. FOR MY SON, MICHAEL Lasqueti Island, B.C. Washing dishes in the darkness with a hose, I spray off the few =09remnants of spaghetti onto the oysters In their beds below. Inside the single room there is no running water-- =09only the green hose on the deck of our floating home. We secure the lines, bathe and sing. I reach out in the darkness hearing my son brushing his teeth to borrow his toothbrush. I cannot find my own: it is tasting =09my fourteen-year-old son's mouth inside my mouth. Then we find more dishes And, as the moon rises and the lines =09go tight, continue scrubbing and drying silverware and plates, =09two dishwashers reading braille, =09mad beachcombers in the night. ---from _Movies: Left To Right_ BLIND POET --For Marcie She has braces on her teeth and wears a blue and orange plaid cotton shirt: One of fourteen students Wiggles, chatters, finds her way into her friends' poems. Straightens her back like a pianist readying herself for a performance. Sitting upright, intent she completes, aloud, ahead of the others Their own, half-formed images. "Damnit, Marcie, whose poem is this?" They squirm, they squabble, and defer. Composing herself,=20 both hands moving smoothly Over an embossed, a braille keyboard of otherwise blank pages, she reads =46rom a manuscript of dots. First a lyric she has just written And hastily transcribed--before class-- and another, "Wishing You Were Here." Like a passenger waking aboard a crowded ferryboat on a frozen lake My voice lost in the voices of the others, I cry out "Hey, you prodigy ferryboat Captain, inventor in the night, "Who's writing this anyway?" MR. AMNESIA Even an amnesiac remembers some things =09better than others. In one past life I was a subway conductor for the Chicago subway system. In another I was--Gosh, I forgot! Anyway, some years ago, I was run over by a sports car. Ever since that time I find I cannot go more than a few days without leaving my body at least briefly and then coming back to it. Again and again. I can't seem to stay in Chicago or in any city, for that matter, and in one body, for very long. I once wrote a forty-nine line poem made up entirely of first lines, forty-nine beginnings. "Forty-nine Beginnings" it was called. I once met a young mother who had gone fishing with her two children. Coming up from the bottom of Lake Michigan, I got tangled up in their lines And they pulled me out and saved my life. The woman was my wife and the children were =09my children. "Making love, it's always as if it were happening "For the first time," I said after ten years of marriage. "When a woman chooses an amnesiac as her husband, she has to expect things like that," she laughed. "Still, there's a lot to be said for ten years of foreplay." An Instructor in Modern Poetry, I once lectured For four weeks as if each class was the first class of a new year. When the genial Chairman, manifesting polite alarm, Visited my classes, the occasion of his being there gave me the opportunity to teach as if those classes, too, were new classes. Promoted, given a raise, a bonus and a new two-year =09=09contract, even I was confused. Each class I taught became one in an infinite series of semesters, each semester Lasting no more than fifty minutes. I don't know about you, but I hardly unpack and get ready for this lifetime and it's time To move on to the next. I've been reincarnated =09=09three times, and am forty-nine years old and I don't even know =09=09my own name. History is just one of those things You learn to live without. I live in a city the entire population of which is made up of amnesiacs so for the first time in three lifetimes I feel at home. YADDO I'm at Yaddo sheltering myself from the drizzle =09standing under a tree reading Philip Roth's The Great American Novel waiting for my friends Joe and Carol Bruchac to arrive with four friends from Canada who are in Saratoga Springs, New York, to give a poetry reading, Bruce Meyer, Richard Harrison, Robert Lawrence =09and Ross Leckie, when up pulls this big shiny car which I approach smiling thinking it's Joe and Carol, but it's not, it's Burns International =09Security Services, Inc. and the man wants to know if Yaddo has anything more than "internal security." =09"I'm John Weidman," he says. "You must be a writer." "Yep." "What's your name?" "Sward, my name is Robert Sward, like greensward." "Oh," he says, disappointed he doesn't know any of my books but still impressed to be meeting a Yaddo author. I should have said, "My name is Philip Roth, John, and this is my new book, =09The Great American Novel, but as usual I think of things like that =09too late. "Look," he says, handing me his business card, =09J.W. Weidman =09Security Sales Consultant, "Mention my name in your next book, okay?" PERSONAL STRESS ASSESSMENT =09=09(Found Poem) =09"Make a list of all the life events that =09apply to you...then add them up with =09the points assigned." To be married and moderately unhappy is less stressful than to be unmarried and male and over 30. To be happily married counts for "0" points. If your spouse dies that counts for 100 points. 63 for going to jail. 73 for divorce. Divorce is more stressful than imprisonment. Getting married is 3 points more stressful than being fired. Marital reconciliation (45 points) and retirement (also 45 points) are only half as stressful as the death of your spouse. Minor violations of the law: 11 points. Trouble with the boss: 23. Christmas: 12. But sexual difficulties are less stressful than pregnancy (40 points versus 39). A mortgage over $10,000 is worse than a son (or daughter) leaving home. Trouble with your in-laws is as stressful as "outstanding personal achievement" which is only slightly more stressful than if "wife begins or stops work." Are you very happy and well-adjusted? 0 points. Very angry, depressed or frustrated? 20 points. Conclusion: With 25 points or more, "you probably will feel better if you reduce your stress." =66rom _Half A Life's History, Poems New & Selected_ HALF A LIFE'S HISTORY (Excerpted from The Jurassic Shales) =09Scenario: An amnesiac wakes one morning =09in London, England, in bed with two women. In the =09process of recovering his memory, he goes back in =09time 160 million years to the Jurassic geological =09period to find his true original parents, the first =09of the flying dinosaurs. The narrator is himself =09a flying dinosaur, and The Jurassic Shales ends =09with his being united with his father and mother. Here I am writing to you half a life's history "A horse which throws the dreamer to the ground." I am homesick and America has had a nervous breakdown. I am taking shaman lessons and studying Karate. My greatest complaint (you've offered to help) is amnesia. Do you believe in transmigration of the soul? Yes, I do too. But what if it can happen not only when one dies, but =09several times in an afternoon? And I'm sure it's not properly amnesia I am speaking of. I go out of my body, I come back in. I say amnesia because sometimes when this happens =09I forget just who I am. I've been doing this, I believe, with some regularity for =09 a quarter of a million years. I'm doing it more =09 and more frequently now because I'm unhappy.=20 =09 Even the light depresses me. That is, the light =09 on Oxford Street, 6 PM on a Sunday. The light =09in Bloom's. The light in Wimpy's. I haven't seen =09light like this since the Middle Ages of the Animals. We drink, we smoke, we go to parties. Friday night=20 =09we went to the dullest party in 3,000 years =09in Bayswater off the Moscow Road. I thought the whole time of algae, worms, =09primitive brachiopods, molluscs, crustaceans, I thought of my mother and those birds with the hollow =09bones. I am in the library at Swiss Cottage =09eating chocolates in the children's room What am I reading? Probably I have gone mad. I am reading up on the eohippus, the first true =09archaic horse. I identify. Those horses were no larger than dogs. =09I'm a dog and interested in horses that were once my own size. Why? I don't know why. Yes, I do. It's because =09I feel I was once (also) a wooly rhinoceros. That I am at this moment a wooly rhinoceros. Anyway, I am no longer incapacitated by my erotic =09fantasies. I am devoting my whole attention to insects, geology, etc. Each morning I have friends come in to read me my =09biography and my passport. Then I know who I am. Then I can pay attention =09to what needs to be done. Who are these people anyway? They think they speak English, =09but I don't understand a word they say. My only reason for coming was to learn Karate with Kanazawa, =09who has left for Germany. Oh, I've just gone out of my body and now I'm back. What is happening in America where, I am convinced, =09in my previous existence, I was a Confederate =09soldier killed in action, 186-? Well, it doesn't matter. I'll find out soon enough and probably =09know anyway if I'd only think about it. Before I was born, my mother who is the Mother of fire, =09gave birth to fire. Then to the Sabine women =09and my sister. My father, who has an upright tail, practices and earns his living =09in Chicago. That he is a Rosicrucian and I am not is no obstacle. We have made our peace, and increasingly-- I might say this is a love poem for my father. A love poem for =09the seven maidens with the heads of snakes. Half a life's history. RETURNING TO LIVE IN 1860 Good morning, 1860. Good morning. Good morning, Dr. Whimsy. Good morning. Good morning, Beauty. Truth. Queen. Helicopter karma machine. Industry. Business machines. Computers. Simplicity. Can I have just an hour with the milkmaid? I want to get back right away then to waging =09the Civil War. What instructions are there? Has the Queen left a note? Can I play Lord Shepperton's =09harmonica? Women being mediums for all I know and for all =09I will ever know (How can I know that, how =09can I assign myself--?) I want another hour with the milkmaid and the Queen =09to read me her diaries and to instruct me =09in every extreme action of which she knows anything. I want to know the bounds of things and sense, =09and how to cleanse myself. Is there any peanut butter? What incredible sticky things are there to eat =09this century? When did they invent icecream? Anyone carrying on like this is carrying on =09for a reason. What is the reason? Where is the child? But perhaps being forty years before them, I can =09become both my parents' parents. Has that been done before? And what if they've gone back forty or even =09sixty years. What if they're at this moment in the process =09of becoming their own parents? When will they get to me? When will it be my turn? I'd like to be present and film my own birth, to come out with a camera and to be obstetrician, =09my waiting father and Director =09at the same time. I'd like in fact to be my mother, giving birth =09to an obstetrician-Director-my-waiting =09father and a movie camera. And to come out with on my wrist a wrist-sized washingmachine, etc., so I could be =09immediately fully independent. A stove. Hi-fi. =09A library. A hospital with my own =09doctors. And a complete set of in-laws. The question most on my mind: Where do women come from? Women come right out of the head of the male god. Either that or out of the earth--or things about=20 the earth. People here, there, everywhere, both ears against it. Listen. Everybody. Alright, we're listening. Who are these women with? Where do they come from? How do they get that way? The Bride is with-- the Queen is with-- What about Cassandra? What about Hera? Are things complementary in more ways even =09than one suspected? When what happens and what you do =09are the same thing how is it possible to speak of loving someone or =09wasting time? I want a banana. I want a tangerine. I want to rim the most beautiful woman in Manhattan, =09Kansas. What about Jesus Christ? Where is there a tape =09of him laughing? In sex, I've found, in loving the discovery is the cleansing. I want to swallow it down. The only sadness is loving AND NO ILLUMINATION. Beauty is wallowing. Loving is practice. A man having been with a woman, the woman has =09always been there. Has the man always been there? =46rom SCARF GOBBLE WALLOW INVENTORY How hungry and for what are the people this season =09predicting the end of the end of the end of I've only just come home after having been away The world sends its greetings and the greetings =09send greetings Hello goodbye, hello goodbye There are greetings and gifts everywhere Children screaming and feeling slighted The next minute we're walking along canals =09on the planet Mars Twenty minutes later we are earthworms in black =09leather jackets, our pockets filled =09with hamburgers, Voyage to the moon. All I am really hungry for is everything The ability to hibernate and a red suitcase going off =09everywhere Every cell in your body and every cell in my body is =09hungry and each has its own stomach Are your cells eating my cells? Whose cell is the =09universe, and what is it sick with, if anything? Is the universe a womb or a mouth? And what is hunger, really? And is the end of the world to be understood in terms of =09hunger or gifts, or the tops of peoples' heads =09coming off? The most complex dream I've ever dreamed I dreamed =09in London. It involved in its entirety taking one bite of an orange. =09*=09*=09* "What do you want to be when you grow up?" she says. I'm nearly sixty. I want to be hungry as I am now and a pediatrician. The truth is I'm 45 and hungrier than I was when I was =0920 and a sailor. I'm hungry for icecream made with icecream and not =09chemicals or artificial spoons. I've never been so hungry in my life. I want one more bacon-lettuce-and-tomato =09sandwich, to make love and kiss everyone I know goodbye. Tomorrow at half past four we will all four-and-a-half =09billion of us walk slowly into orbit. If only one can do this breathing normally, and not trip =09on one's breath or have stomach cramps or clammy =09hands or hysterical needs or a coughing fit or the wish =09to trample or stomp someone, but stepping peacefully There is ALL the time in the world There is ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD There is all the time in the world. =09=20 STATEMENT OF POETICS or "GOODBYE TO MYSELF" I wrote for myself for people. I've changed. I've changed since I began writing I write for myself. I believe more than ever in music, in the sound, however gotten, of music in people's poetry. Rhyme more than ever. Talk people talking, getting that into one's poetry that=20 is my poetics. Love hate lies laughing stealings self-confession, self-destruction get them all get them all down. No one has to read them. No one has to publish them. I am more and more for unpublished poetry. That is why I have a pseudonom that is why I now publish poetry. To control the view. To hell with the Business of Anthologies. To hell with Anthologies. To hell too with the way I taught poetry in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. One way and another I have written angry poetry for twenty years. Now I want music only and the sounds of people. I want poems that sing and can use the word heart and self-confession and incorrect grammar and the soils and stains of Neruda and Lorca and Kabir and Williams and Whitman and Yeats. Forty-four years old. Stands on his head ten minutes daily morning breakfast, supper. Writing less and less. Evaporating into the air feet first. I won't ever die. I'll simply stand on my head and disappear into the air just like that. I don't believe in imagination. The prairies as a landscape are imagination. Just as England is, as a landscape, a failure of imagination. Africa is imagination, India is reaching even further than that. And that is why I will go to India which I will in seven days time. So this is a time capsule in case anyone is interested and in case I never come back. This is a statement of poetics written as "Goodbye to myself." =09Goodbye for =09now, goodbye =09goodbye goodbye =09to myself, =09goodbye goodbye =09for now =09goodbye myself, =09goodbye for =09now goodbye. =20 ---from _Poet Santa Cruz_ A MONK ON THE SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS --After Ts'en Ts'an They say there is a monk on the Santa Cruz Mountains, his white robes floating, three hundred feet beneath =09the sky. A barefoot, thousand-year-old, =09chocolate-colored genie who has not spoken in three lifetimes. His matted, ankle-length hair housed =09a family of scorpions. Now, small children approach him, dance and whirl about with his walking stick which once separated two demons in a death struggle. CASTROVILLE, CALIFORNIA--A COFFEE SHOP CUM ART GALLERY IN THE ARTICHOKE CAPITOL OF THE WORLD Sonnet O thistle-like artichoke in the place of glory. Green peppers: four lushly framed nudes staring down on us with a kind of greasy grace. Purple and green eggplants like immodest prudes. And apples of heroic size, left to right like paintings of smugly pompous ancestors. Broccoli plus pale mushrooms in the moonlight, whitely bulbous omniscient lecturers On the care and curatorship of fruit and vegetables which play more a part in our lives than the sad-eyed, ruling dupes who clutter up our walls displacing fruits. I never did before, but now I will: I sing, dear friends, of brave plain Castroville. LI PO (c. 700-760 A.D.) --after Robert Payne's The White Pony Tall, powerfully built with a loud screeching voice and bright, hungry tigerish eyes, his black hair flowing over his shoulders. The high heavenly priest of the white lake with murderers and thieves for ancestors. Musician, swordsman and connoisseur of fine wines, =09a drunk, a murderer-- Mr. Fairyland, Mr. Landscape of an =09impossible flowering. He was called a god in exile, the great phoenix whose wings obscure the sun. "I am strong enough," boasted this poet, "to meet ten thousand men."=20 Li Po who, at death, was summoned by angelic hosts, who rode off on the backs of dolphins and, led by the two children of immortality, entered the celestial palace in triumph.=20 THE EMPEROR A villanelle =46rom The Way And Its Power The world as seen in vision has no name; call it the Sameness or the Mystery or rather the "Darker than any Mystery." Fan Li who, offered half a kingdom, stepped into a light boat and was heard from no more. The world as seen in vision has no name. An empty vessel that one draws from without its ever needing to be filled. The name- less, the darker than any Mystery. Can you love people, rule the land, yet remain unknown? Play always the female part? The world as seen in vision has no name. Rear them, feed them, but do not lay claim. He who in dealing with the empire, darker than any mystery, Regards his high rank as though it were his body, is the best person to be entrusted with rule. The world as seen in vision has no name; call it the Darker than any Mystery. =09II New Releases CLANCY THE DOG --For Claire He is so ugly he is a psalm to ugliness, this extra-terrestrial, short-haired midget sea-lion, snorts, farts, grunts, turns somersaults on his mistress' bed. She calls him an imperfect Boston terrier, part gnome, part elf, half something and half something else, 180,000,000-year-old Clancy with his yellowy-white, pin-pointy teeth and red, mis-shapen pre-historic gums. Clancy has no tail at all and doesn't bark. He squeaks like a monkey, flies through the air, lands at six every morning on his mistress' head, begging to be fed and wrapped not in a robe but a spread. Tree frog, wart hog, ground hog, "Clancy, Clancy," she calls for him in the early morning fog, and he appears, anything, anything, part anything but a dog. SCARLET THE PARROT Scarlet perches on the office windowsill shrieking, hollering, barking Like a dog. She knocks her mottled beak against the warehouse window And tries to open the metal hook and eye latch. There are parrot droppings on the telephone and Scarlet has eaten Part of the plastic receiver. The parrot slides like a red fireman With yellow and blue feathers up and down the cord, =09holding on With her beak, maneuvering gracefully =09with her claws. When I approach she calls, "Hello, hello..." Walks up my trouser leg holding on with her macaw's beak. I feed the bird Oranges and pears, almonds and sunflower seeds. I swivel my head round and round in imitation of her neck movements. "What's happening?" she asks, and again, "What's happening?" "Hello, cookie. Yoo-hoo... Can you talk, can you talk?" she asks Chewing for several minutes, finally swallowing =09a leather button Off my green corduroy jacket, threatening, ready to tear my ear off, Biting if I place my finger in her mouth. Her tongue is black And her beady eyes piercing like an eagle's. She wants a response, tests my reactions. Tenderly the parrot walks up my corduroy jacket, sensually restraining her claws. I'm aroused. When a dog barks, she barks too: Rrf, rrf. Casually, a relaxed but authentic Imitation. "Hello, darling," she breathes, looking me in the eye knowing I know If it pleases her she might bite my ear off. "Yoo-hoo, yoo-hoo, now you say something," she says. ALFA THE DOG It isn't enough that when I go off for three weeks to an artists' colony and phone home the first thing my wife tells me is there's a new addition to the family, a seven- month-old poodle named Alfa and that Alfa has papers, an honest-to-God pedigree that includes not only aristo- cratic ancestors, but recent appearances in "The New York Review of Books" and a novel published by Houghton- Mifflin. And when I am somewhat less than ecstatic, my wife asks me to at least say a few words to the new addition, and puts on Alfa the dog. "Speak, Alfa, speak," I hear her say. And Alfa who is, by all accounts, loyal and obedient, a noted storyteller, intelligent and amusing as Oscar Wilde, refuses to speak, to bark, or make some witty remark like, "What's the weather like in Saratoga?" All I hear is Alfa's low doggy breathing and the tinkle of the elegant silver bell on her collar. My wife comes back on and says, "I have an idea. You bark into the phone. Alfa will answer back." Well, it's only costing a dollar ninety-five a minute and good-natured soul that I am, devoted to my wife, guilty at running off for three weeks, I put myself into it, throw back my head and howl, barking, yowling, yipping like a real dog--a dog without papers, a dog with fleas, a dog like one of those mutts I knew growing up in Chicago, and this happening, of course, on the public pay phone at Yaddo, the "artists' heaven," what the New York Times calls the Harvard of Artists' Colonies. Looking up, sure enough, I see one of America's more distinguished composers with his mouth open, his pipe falling to the floor, waiting in line, no doubt, to speak to his wife and children and his cats and dogs. "Well, darling," I say, "we've been talking for twenty- five minutes. This is going to cost a fortune." At that moment, Alfa decides she wants to make her presence known to all concerned, and she begins barking into the phone, answering me in kind, responding yip for yip, and yap for yap, lest there be any doubt in anyone's mind as to who it is I have been speaking, me to Alfa the dog, Alfa the dog to me." THREE ROBERTS =46rom heart to heart =66rom brain to brain =66rom Robert to Robert Robert Zend phones Robert Sward. Ring, ring. "Robert, this is Robert." "Is this Robert?" "This is Robert, Robert." "Yes, Robert?" I say, "This "Is Robert, too." "Ah, excuse me, I need to find a match," Says Robert Zend putting down the telephone and rummaging for matches, Granting me, a non-smoker, the status of accessory to his addiction. All this occurring a few seconds into an otherwise scintillating conversation. "I had a very pleasant afternoon while reading your poems,"=20 Margaret Trudeau once remarked About Zend's book, From Zero To One, and I can fully understand her saying that. Zend translates serious things into funny things and funny things Into serious things. He also translates himself into other people, and Other people into himself-- and where does one of us end and the other begin? And where does Zend begin and where do I zend? I mean, end? And what about Robert Priest? Is he a visible man, an invisible man? Or the man who broke out of the Letter X? Is he a spaceman in disguise? A blue pyramid? A golden trumpet? A chocolate lawnmower? An inexhaustible flower? Or a reader who escaped =46rom some interstellar library? Rock Musician in residence at the University of the Moon? And meanwhile Robert Zend looks into his mirror and sees not Zend But Chicago-born Uncle Dog; Half a Life's History; Mr. Amnesia; Mr. Movies: Left To Right; Mr. Transmigration of the Soul; the poet as wanderer; a forty-nine-year-old human violin... Robert Zend the Nomad gazing in like an acrobat at the window in the sky. Ring, ring. "Robert, this is Robert." "Is this Robert?" "This is Robert, Robert." "Yes, Robert," I say speaking to my friend Robert One, "This is Robert Two." Roberts... Robertness... Three Knights of a Roberthood. BASKETBALL'S THE AMERICAN GAME BECAUSE IT'S HYSTERICAL "Basketball's the American game because it's hysterical," says Lorrie Goldensohn as the players and coaches come off the bench and the crowd is on its feet yelling and the Knicks are ahead 97-95 with just over three minutes to go in the fourth quarter and Perry hits from the side and Lorrie's husband, Barry, comes downstairs with a bottle of scotch and a guide to English verse. "Unless there is a new mind, there cannot be a new line," he reads refilling our glasses. "Without invention the line will never again take on its ancient divisions..." All evening we have been watching the New York Knicks battling the Boston Celtics and having a running argument about free verse, traditional rhyming poetry, syllabic verse ("what's the point in counting for counting's sake?"), the critic Hugh Kenner, John Hollander's Rhyme's Reason, the variable foot and the American idiom.=20 "In and out by Williams," says the announcer, "he's got a nose for the basket." The crowd is on its feet again, roaring. "We know nothing and can know nothing but the dance, to dance to a measure contrapuntally, Satyrically, the tragic foot," Barry continues. The Celtics race down the court. "Talk about the green wave coming at you." Bird hits and the Celtics even the score. "Basketball's the American game because it's like the variable foot," says Lorrie, "it's up in the air all the time. It's quick and the floor is continually moving and there's this short back and forth factor." "What I like best about the game," I say, "is shutting my eyes and tuning out the announcer and hearing Barry read and arguing about poetry and drinking and listening all the while to the music of seven-foot black herons in gym shoes, ten giant gazelles, the stirring squeak of twenty over-size sneakers on the varnished floor, a floor which has been carefully and ingeniously miked in advance for sound." HANNAH Her third eye is strawberry jam has a little iris in it her eyelids =09are red she's sleepy =09and the milk =09has gone down =09the wrong way. I've just had breakfast with the smallest person in the world. ON MY WAY TO THE KOREAN WAR... --For President Dwight Eisenhower On my way to the Korean war, I never got there. One summer afternoon in 1952, I stood instead in the bow of the Attack Transport Menard, with an invading force of 2,000 battle-ready Marines, watching the sun go down. Whales and porpoises, flying fish and things jumping out of the water. Phosphoresence-- Honolulu behind us, Inchon, Korea, and the war ahead. Crewcut, 18-year-old librarian, Yeoman 3rd Class, editor of the ship's newspaper, I wrote critically if unoriginally of our Commander-in-Chief, Mr. President, and how perplexing it was that he would launch a nuclear-powered submarine while invoking the Lord, Crocodile Earthshaker, Shiva J. Thunderclap, choosing the occasion to sing the now famous Song of the Armaments, the one with the line "weapons for peace": =09O weapons for peace, =09O weapons for peace, =09awh want, awh want =09more weapons for peace! At sundown, a half dozen sailors converged on the bow of the ship where, composed and silent, we'd maintain our vigil until the sun had set. Careful to avoid being conspicuous, no flapping or flailing of the arms, no running, horizontal take-offs, one man, then another, stepped out into space, headed across the water, moving along as if on threads. After a while, I did the same: left my body just as they left theirs. =09In-breathe, out-breathe, and leave, =09in-breathe, out-breathe, and leave. =09Leave your body, leave your body, =09leave your body, leave your body, we sang as we went out to where the light went, and whatever held us to that ship and its 2,000 battle-ready troops, let go. So it was, dear friends, I learned to fly. And so in time must you and so will the warships, and the earth itself, and the sky, for as the prophet says, the day cometh when there will be no earth left to leave. =09O me, O my, =09O me, O my, =09goodbye earth, goodbye sky. =09Goodbye, goodbye. CONTINUOUS TOPLESS STRIPPERS --For Jim Belisle An eight-speaker sound system, two continuous topless strippers, Elvis Presley singing Early Morning Rain. Everyone loves television. And because the management doesn't want to offend anyone's tastes by omitting So important an element in the desired sensory mix-- "The lowest common denominator "Creates an art form," my friend mutters into his beer-- the five foot by seven foot color TV Is seen on stage backing up the strippers, the TV little more than a concentration of bright flashing lights which, On closer examination, turn out to be the Six o'clock Evening News. "Some damned half-deranged diplomat, "Portfolio this, portfolio that, is dithering about something or other somewhere or other for no reason that neither you nor I "Nor anyone else has any idea." My friend orders another, and I order another. The announcer, meanwhile, is selling hangover Or headache pills and the difficulty we all have on occasion of falling asleep or eliminating properly or what happens when we drink too much =09coffee And that and everything else at last dissolves the dancers achieving what appears, in fact, to be a new breakthrough In negotiations, winning in the ovation that follows their performance Not only our freedom but the release and freedom of all hostages. SAUSALITO FERRY POEM "Okay, we're here! Stop scribbling," she shouts back at me climbing down the iron ladder expecting me to follow. The boat goes sailing off to Tiburon, me with one-half a new poem standing waving at her from the railing. "Pink light round your white body, your blue eyes flashing," I sing into the wind. "What's that you're saying? I forgot to get off? It's all over now between us? "All I care about is poetry? O listen, my love, just listen. You know that's not true. I know you'll like this one, these lines written exclusively for you." FOUR FOR LOVE 1. 108,000 WAYS OF MAKING LOVE Her lips are full, magenta-red =09in color-- Bare-chested, she wears a yellow silk =09loin cloth. I cup my right hand =09under her blue chin and bend to kiss her, encircling her waist with my left arm. Her back to me, she turns Strings of pearls, lion-claw necklaces and rubies and gold round her neck. Her skin is dark, =09dark as the skin of the blue god. She has thick, reddish-brown hair =09and brown eyes. She's wearing garlands =09of fresh wild flowers, gold rings on every finger, =09red and golden bangles carved like serpents round =09both ankles. I stroke her pearly, iridescent thighs, tenderly smacking =09as she tenderly slaps and smacks me back, Our bodies etched with scratches =09of our sharp nails =2E..hooting and chirruping with the brazen nightbirds gazing in at us =66rom half-open windows and doorways Framed by purple, green, red-pink twilit bougainvillea. She presses her big toe =09and also her next to biggest toe, and the toe =09next to that, and all her other toes, high up into my crotch =09as I gently guide her with my hand. I enter her with my mouth =09and she with her mouth does the same as I enter her from the front =09and behind, even as she lowers herself onto my body, even as I rise to pull her =09to me. Mirrors installed in the ceilings and walls =09illustrate what we dedicate ourselves to: Making love in 108,000 ways all at the same time. 2. KISS BITE AND MOO SOFTLY --Muse voice is loved woman mumbling. Going shopping with the muse you come away buying the right things: rare books and cashmere pullovers for him, silk dresses, a gold and amethyst necklace for her. =09Her skin fair and fine as the yellow lotus, eyes bright as orbs of a fawn, well-cut with reddish corners. Bosom hard, full and high, neck goodly shaped as the conch shell. Love seed. Kama salila, the water of life. Swan-like giat. Note of the Kokila-bird. Kisses don't interrupt sentences. =09Sleeping her arms fall into the same position =09as the Statue of Liberty. 3. JEALOUSY She buys a green corduroy jacket with a velvet collar and a label that reads =09Crazy Horse But tries it on first in the fitting room where I pull her to me, reaching up =09under her blouse, nuzzling her breasts, stroking her back, kissing her ears, sucking on her earlobes, My hands jealous of my lips, my lips jealous of my hands I tell her of my jealousy, and she confesses to an urge to call me on the phone at that time of the afternoon when I'm likely to be at home. She becomes annoyed =09at my unfaithfulness, that instead of being there to answer the phone I lie beside her, =09stroking =09exploring our lips joined, until at last rolling together on the fitting room floor-- "I want to speak with you," she breathes, "and have you all to myself, I want to hear you call for me and moan. Lover, oh lover," she sighs at last "I want to call now and tell my lover, =09oh, my lover, oh, my lover." 4. FOR GLORIA ON HER 60TH BIRTHDAY, OR LOOKING FOR LOVE IN MERRIAM-WEBSTER "Beautiful, splendid, magnificent, delightful, charming, appealing," =09says the dictionary. And that's how I start... But I hear her say, "Make it less glorious and more Gloria." Imperious, composed, skeptical, serene, lustrous, irreverent, she's marked by glory, she attracts glory "Glory," I say, "Glory, Glory." "Is there a hallelujah in there?" she asks, when I read her lines one and two. "Not yet," I say, looking up from my books. She protests, "Writing a poem isn't the same "As really attending to me." "But it's for your birthday," I say. Pouting, playfully cross, "That's the price you pay when your love's a poet." She has chestnut-colored hair, old fashioned Clara Bow lips, moist brown eyes... =09=09arms outstretched, head thrown back she glides toward me and into her seventh decade. Her name means "to adore," "to rejoice, to be jubilant, to magnify and honor as in worship, to give or ascribe glory--" =09my love, O Gloria, I do, I do. 34 POETS NAMED ROBERT =20 1. Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, Robert Service... Yes, I met Robert Frost and Robert Lowell and Robert Creeley, and= =20 Robert Duncan and Robert Mezey, Robert Bly and Robert Peterson,=20 appeared in A Controversy of Poets, An Anthology of=20 Contemporary American Poetry edited by Robert Kelly, but not=20 in New Poets of England and America edited by Robert Pack,=20 admire the work of Robert Bridges, Robert Browning, Robert Burns,= =20 Robert Dana, Robert Finch, Robert Graves, Robert Hass, Robert=20 Herrick, Robert Hogg, Robert Huff, Robert Lax, Robert McDowell,=20 Robert McGovern, Robert Peters, Robert Pinsky, Robert Southey, and= =20 Robert Louis Stevenson, and even performed in taverns and coffee=20 houses in London, Ontario, and in Toronto at Major Robert's=20 Restaurant--near the intersection of Major and Robert Street--with= =20 Canadian poets Robert Priest and Robert Zend, the three of us, billed= =20 as the Three Roberts, dedicating our readings to CBC Radio's Robert= =20 Weaver and Robert Prowse, to the literary critic Robert Fulford, with= =20 half a dedication to my friend John Robert Colombo, and to Robert= =20 Service. 2. "I'm not going to go on like this..." But as each of my four wives explained, patiently or otherwise, over= =20 a period of three decades, "Robert, it doesn't pay. Robert, there's = no=20 future in it. I'm not going to go on like this..." and "Robert, doe= sn't it=20 depress you to go into libraries and see all those poetry books by al= l=20 those other writers named Robert, even the ones not named Robert,= =20 that practically no one on earth is going to read?" "Well, yes, it's= true=20 it doesn't pay. And it's true there's no future in it. And it does= =20 depress me that practically no one in America wants to read poetry,= =20 and that's why I taught for fourteen years and even took a job=20 writing software user manuals. But then, unable to let go of what I'= d=20 done for 35 years, resigned in order to go back and write some more= =20 poetry. =20 "And today I think of you as I re-read this morning's mail. =20 "Three letters. One from Robert Priest, the Canadian poet. He write= s=20 of the death by drowning of the poet Robert Billings, and the deaths= =20 also of poets b.p. nichol, Gwendolyn MacEwen, and Milton Acorn. =20 And Earle Birney, he says, who, at 75 was seen by the editor of New:= =20 American & Canadian Poetry in a Toronto rainstorm in the throes of= =20 love running up Yonge Street bearing flowers for his 35-year-old= =20 sweetheart; Birney who, at 79 fell out of a tree from which he'd been= =20 trying to dislodge a kite, and who, not long after, recovering from a= n=20 injured hip, resumed cycling on a regular basis at breakneck speed= =20 through a North Toronto cemetery; Birney, he says, alive and in his= =20 80s, has visitors who read him his poems, poems that, when Birney= =20 hears them, with impaired memory, he enjoys, though he is unable to= =20 understand he is the author of those poems. =20 "Letter #2: Nicky Drumbolis, proprietor of a Toronto bookstore,=20 writes that his rent has gone up $700. a month, that he must give up= =20 the store, and that he is "earnestly clearing stock for the big move.= " "And the publisher of my last book writes that he has become part= =20 owner of Omega Apparel, a business to which he now devotes all his= =20 time. He's not publishing any more poetry by anyone these days,=20 only neckties." =20 3. "Robert, this is Robert. Is this Robert?" I drift off at my computer and dream of Robert Zend, whose heart=20 gave out four years ago, and of Robert Priest and Earle Birney, and i= n=20 the dream I see myself reading my favorite Birney poems to Birney, =09=09"I met a lady=20 on a lazy street hazel eyes and little plush feet =20 =09=09"her legs swam by like lovely trout eyes were trees where boys leant out..." =09=09(From The Hazel Bough)=09=09 =09=09 and he is lucid as my father before his heart stopped at 82, and just= =20 before I wake, Birney tells me I am a cross between Halley's comet= =20 and Rip Van Winkle the way I go off to England, France, Mexico,=20 Canada, and then, years later, return, meeting the sons and daughters= =20 of the people, of the Roberts, for example, I once knew, and that tha= t=20 is what poems are supposed to do, and that I have been living more= =20 like a poem in a sense than a man with his feet on the ground, and= =20 that in the time that remains I should be living more like a man with= =20 his feet on the ground and less like a poem. =20 4. Flashback - The man in the cellophane pajama bottom 6 a.m. I'm getting dressed to drive over Highway #17 to Palo Alto. = =20 Half asleep, naked, I am pulling on my trousers. It's still dark and= ,=20 switching on the light, I see they are not trousers at all, but=20 cellophane pajama bottoms... regenerated cellulose, like what=20 smokers tear off packages of cigarettes. Late for work, walking down= =20 the front steps of our house, heading for the car with a tea kettle t= o=20 boil water, I think better of it. "Today I'm going to stay in Santa Cruz and boil water at home." Handing me a cup of tea, reaching for the massage oil, helping me off= =20 with my thin, transparent pajamas, my love murmurs softly, "You=20 can boil water and write pot boilers right here." 5. How to be a millionaire "How come the millionaire owner of a newspaper got by paying me-- and two other editors--$1700. a month to write, edit, take=20 photographs, create captions, lay out and produce three separate=20 editions of the rag by ourselves, working up to 19 hours a day?"=20 "Because really successful entrepreneurs know how to screw=20 people and make them like it," says my love. "That's how you make= =20 money in America." Smart woman. And next she informs me she's fed up with my lavish,= =20 celebratory love poems: =09...Her skin =09fair and fine as the yellow =09lotus, eyes bright as orbs =09of a fawn, =09=09...Bosom hard, =09full and high... She wants tougher poems, she says, poems about the wrinkles on her= =20 face, the imperfections of her character, her crossness, her bluntnes= s,=20 her imperiousness, impatience, her struggle to lose rather than to= =20 gain weight. I'm puzzled. How can I write about her wrinkles if I= =20 can't find any? Or her crossness when she is so seldom cross? Or he= r=20 weight, when it doesn't bother me at all? Then, softening, remarking= =20 how my poverty makes her feel young ("It's as if we're in our=20 twenties and just starting out"), she inspires me to make money. "I'll make lots of money," I promise, "and I'll do it without screwin= g=20 people. And to prove it, I'll start now, just as soon as I finish th= is=20 poem." ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following=20 publications for permission to reprint many of the poems in this book:=20 Airon 9 (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Ambit (London), Antioch Review, = =20 Approach Magazine, Arts In Society (Madison, Wisconsin), The Activist= =20 (Oberlin College), Artes/Letres Dialogs (Mexico City),=20 Beloit Poetry Journal, Best Articles & Stories, Carleton=20 Miscellany, Center (New York), Chelsea Review (New York),=20 Chicago Review, Epoch (Cornell University), Contemporary=20 Verse Ii (University Of Manitoba, Canada), Cross Canada Writers=20 Quarterly (Toronto), Denver Quarterly, Descant, El Corno=20 Emplumado (Mexico City), Epoch, The Etruscan (New South Wales,=20 Australia), Exposicion Exhaustiva De La Nueva Poesia Galeria=20 (Montevideo, Uruguay), Equal Time (New York); Extensions (New=20 York), The Fiddlehead (New Brunswick), From A Window (Tucson), Galley= =20 Sail Review, Greenfield Review (Greenfield Center, New York), Hawaii= =20 Review (Honolulu), Hudson Review, The Humanist, Inkstone (Bowling= =20 Green, Ohio), The Iowa Review, Karaki (Victoria, B.C.), Kayak (Santa= =20 Cruz), Malahat Review (Victoria, B.C.), The Martlet (Victoria, B.C.),= =20 Massachusetts Review, Matrix (London), Michigan Quarterly Review, Mt.= =20 Shasta Selections (Mss), The Nation, New Mexico Quarterly, New=20 Orleans Poetry Journal, New Work #1; The New Yorker, The New York= =20 Times, The North American Review, Northern Light (University Of=20 Manitoba), The Northstone Review (Minneapolis), The Paris Review,= =20 Pearl (Denmark), Penny Poems, Perspective (St. Louis), Poetry Chicago= ,=20 Poetry Toronto, Poetry Australia, Poetry Northwest, Prism=20 International (Vancouver, B.C.), Quarterly Review Of Literature,=20 Rampike (York University), The Santa Cruz Sentinel, Shenandoah, Stone= =20 (Ithaca, New York), Signal Hill Broadsides (Victoria, B.C.), Tambouri= ne=20 (St. Louis), Transatlantic Review (London, England), Tri-Quarterly= =20 (Evanston, Illinois), Tuatara (Victoria, B.C.), Ucsc Student Guide (S= anta=20 Cruz), Waves (Toronto), West Coast Works (Vancouver, B.C.), Wild Dog,= =20 Zahir (Portsmouth, New Hampshire).=20 Some of these poems have been recorded by Western Michigan=20 University's Aural Press (1005), the Library of Congress, and=20 National Public Radio (New Letters On The Air, University of=20 Missouri). Others have appeared in the following anthologies: A Controversy Of= =20 Poets, An Anthology Of Contemporary American Poets; The Chicago=20 Review Anthology; The Contemporary American Poets: American Poetry= =20 Since 1940; Heartland: Poets Of The Midwest; Inside Outer Space;:New= =20 Poems Of The Space Age; Illinois Poetry; Inventions For Imaginative= =20 Thinking; Lighthouse Point: An Anthology of Santa Cruz Writers;=20 Midland: 25 Years Of Fiction And Poetry; New Yorker Book Of Poems; Th= e=20 Now Voices; Oxford Book Of Light Verse; Penguin Book of Animal=20 Poetry; Riverside Poetry III; Silver Screen: Neue Amerikanische Lyri= k;=20 Some Haystacks Don't Even Have Any Needle; Sports Poems; The=20 Practical Imagination; The Space Atlas; Tesseracts: Canadian Scienc= e=20 Fiction; The Treasure Of Our Tongue; The Voice That Is Great Within U= s;=20 To Say The Least, Canadian Poets From A To Z; and Where Is Vietnam?= =20 American Poets Respond. R.D. Brinkmann and Peter Behrens translated some of these poems into= =20 German in a volume titled Silver Screen, Neue Amerikanische Lyrik,= =20 Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Koln. Others were translated into Spanish by= =20 Madela Ezcurra and Eduwardo Costa and appeared in AIRON 9, Buenos= =20 Aires, Argentina. =20 I wish to thank the Djerassi Foundation, the Edward MacDowell=20 Association, Yaddo, the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County, the Jo= hn=20 Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Canada Council for=20 affording me an opportunity to complete this book.=20 (Back Cover Copy.) FOUR INCARNATIONS:: NEW & SELECTED POEMS 1957-1991 POEMS BY ROBERT SWARD =D2Here is Robert Sward, now in his fifties, still fresh,=20 ingenuous, and funnier than ever. His life=D0and what a life=D0is= =20 an open book. You can read all about it here. What=D5s more,=20 you will want to call your friends and read poems to them=20 over the phone. I know, I=D5ve done it.=D3 =D0Carolyn Kizer "With this selection from the dozen volumes of verse he has=20 published in the last 25 years, Robert Sward proves himself=20 to be one of this country's finest poets--and surely the one=20 most neglected..." --Earle Birney "Like other good works of art, these poems have the air of=20 having been made for people rather than for other artists."=20 --William Meredith Uncle Dog & Other Poems "...a poetry of surprise, of=20 individuality, often of bitter fun." --Judson Jerome, The=20 Antioch Review Kissing The Dancer "... fierce, new-minted and convincing...=20 he has a voice and a range." --New York Times Book=20 Review Thousand-Year-Old Fiancee "... In the animal poems there is=20 a bravery in the face of our limitations, a warmth for our=20 absurdities." --Carleton Miscellany Honey Bear on Lasqueti Island, B.C "... The book is a=20 celebration... Sward's poems are deceptively simple paeans=20 to his life and love." --Pacific Northwest Review of Books Half-A-Life's History "... The poems of sexual and family=20 love are among the most satisfying in the collection... The=20 poems have intelligence, taste, inventiveness...." --The=20 Toronto Star BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Born in Chicago in 1933, Robert Sward is the winner of a=20 Guggenheim Fellowship, and Lucille Clifton selected Sward=D5s=20 =D234 Poets Named Robert=D3 as the 1990 winner of the Villa=20 Montalvo Literary Arts Award. He has taught at Cornell=20 University, the University of Victoria, B.C., and the Iowa=20 Writers=D5 Workshop, and currently teaches for the=20 University of California Extension in Santa Cruz.=20 C Other books by Robert Sward Poetry: Advertisements, Odyssey Chapbook Number One, 1958 Uncle Dog & Other Poems, 1962 Kissing The Dancer & Other Poems, Introduction by William Meredith,= =20 1964 Thousand-Year-Old Fiancee, 1965=20 Horgbortom Stringbottom, I Am Yours, You Are History, 1970 Hannah's Cartoon, 1970 Quorum/Noah (With Mike Doyle), 1970 Gift, 1971 Five Iowa Poems, 1975 Cheers For Muktananda, 1976 Honey Bear On Lasqueti Island, B.C., 1978 =20 Six Poems, 1980 Twelve Poems, 1982 Movies: Left To Right, 1983 Half-A-Life's History, Poems New & Selected, 1983 The Three Roberts, Premiere Performance, 1984 =20 (Featuring Robert Priest, Robert Zend, and Robert Sward) The Three Roberts On Love, 1985 The Three Roberts On Childhood, 1985 Poet Santa Cruz, Introduction by Morton Marcus, 1985 Fiction The Jurassic Shales, A Novel, 1975 Family, with contributions by David Swanger, Charles Atkinson, Tilly= =20 Shaw, 1994 A Much-Married Man, A Novel, 1995 Non-fiction The Toronto Islands, An Illustrated History, 1983 Edited by Robert Sward Vancouver Island Poems, An Anthology, 1973 Emily Carr: The Untold Story, 1978