founded in 1912 by harriet monroe May 2011 &/5.$%$ ). "9 (!22)%4 -/.2/% volume cxcviii t number 2 CONTENTS May 2011 0/%-3 kay ryan 103 All You Did Linens The Obsoletion of a Language dana gioia 106 Pity the Beautiful Special Treatments Ward sasha dugdale 110 Dawn Chorus Asylum franz wright 114 Our Conversation james arthur 116 The Land of Nod fanny howe 117 What Did You See? stephen yenser 120 Preserves Psalm on Sifnos Wichita Triptych josh wild 124 Self-Portrait after Paul Morphy’s Stroke sophie cabot black 125 The One Turn That Makes the New World Dominion Over the Larger Animal Bird Left Behind tess taylor 128 Elk at Tomales Bay malachi black 130 From “Quarantine” wendy videlock 132 The woman with a tumor in her neck sarah lindsay 133 Hollow Boom Soft Chime: The Thai Elephant Orchestra Without Warning mark irwin 136 Poem Beginning with a Line by Milosz # /--%.4 clive james 139 Product Placement in Modern Poetry robert archambeau 150 The Great Debate: Progress vs. Pluralism carolyn forché 159 Reading the Living Archives: The Witness of Literary Art letters to the editor 175 contributors 180 Editor christian wiman Senior Editor don share Associate Editor fred sasaki Managing Editor valerie jean johnson Editorial Assistant lindsay garbutt Reader christina pugh Art Direction winterhouse studio cover art by art chantry “A Portrait of Video Art Pioneer and Fluxus Member Nam June Paik,” 1986 0/%429-!'!:).%/2' a publication of the POETRY FOUNDATION printed by cadmus professional communications, us Poetry t May 2011 t Volume 198 t Number 2 Poetry (issn: 0032-2032) is published monthly, except bimonthly July / August, by the Poetry Foundation. 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A higher pin cannot be set. Nor can you go back. You hadn’t even known the face was vertical. All you did was walk into a room. The tipping up from flat was gradual, you must assume. +!9 29!. 103 Linens There are charms that forestall harm. The house bristles with opportunities for stasis: refolding the linens along their creases, keeping the spoons and chairs in their right places. Nobody needs to witness one’s exquisite care with the napkins for the napkins to have been the act that made the fact unhappen. 104 0/%429 The Obsoletion of a Language We knew it would happen, one of the laws. And that it would be this sudden. Words become a chewing action of the jaws and mouth, unheard by the only other citizen there was on earth. +!9 29!. 105 dana gioia Pity the Beautiful Pity the beautiful, the dolls, and the dishes, the babes with big daddies granting their wishes. Pity the pretty boys, the hunks, and Apollos, the golden lads whom success always follows. The hotties, the knock-outs, the tens out of ten, the drop-dead gorgeous, the great leading men. Pity the faded, the bloated, the blowsy, the paunchy Adonis whose luck’s gone lousy. Pity the gods, no longer divine. Pity the night the stars lose their shine. 106 0/%429 Special Treatments Ward i So this is where the children come to die, hidden on the hospital’s highest floor. They wear their bandages like uniforms and pull their iv rigs along the hall with slow and careful steps. Or bald and pale, they lie in bright pajamas on their beds, watching another world on a screen. The mothers spend their nights inside the ward, sleeping on chairs that fold out into beds, too small to lie in comfort. Soon they slip beside their children, as if they might mesh those small bruised bodies back into their flesh. Instinctively they feel that love so strong protects a child. Each morning proves them wrong. No one chooses to be here. We play the parts that we are given — horrible as they are. We try to play them well, whatever that means. We need to talk, though talking breaks our hearts. The doctors come and go like oracles, their manner cool, omniscient, and oblique. There is a word that no one ever speaks. $!.! ')/)! 107 ii I put this poem aside twelve years ago because I could not bear remembering the faces it evoked, and every line seemed — still seems — so inadequate and grim. What right had I, whose son had walked away, to speak for those who died? And I’ll admit I wanted to forget. I’d lost one child and couldn’t bear to watch another die. Not just the silent boy who shared our room, but even the bird-thin figures dimly glimpsed shu±ing deliberately, disjointedly like ancient soldiers after a parade. Whatever strength the task required I lacked. No well-stitched words could suture shut these wounds. And so I stopped ... But there are poems we do not choose to write. 108 0/%429 iii The children visit me, not just in dream, appearing suddenly, silently — insistent, unprovoked, unwelcome. They’ve taken o≠ their milky bandages to show the raw, red lesions they still bear. Risen they are healed but not made whole. A few I recognize, untouched by years. I cannot name them — their faces pale and gray like ashes fallen from a distant fire. What use am I to them, almost a stranger? I cannot wake them from their satin beds. Why do they seek me? They never speak. And vagrant sorrow cannot bless the dead. $!.! ')/)! 109 sasha dugdale Dawn Chorus March 29, 2010 Every morning since the time changed I have woken to the dawn chorus And even before it sounded, I dreamed of it Loud, unbelievably loud, shameless, raucous And once I rose and twitched the curtains apart Expecting the birds to be pressing in fright Against the pane like passengers But the garden was empty and it was night Not a slither of light at the horizon Still the birds were bawling through the mists Terrible, invisible A million small evangelists How they sing: as if each had pecked up a smoldering coal Their throats singed and swollen with song In dissonance as befits the dark world Where only travelers and the sleepless belong 110 0/%429 Asylum For Marina You say the old masters never got it wrong, But when Goya painted the death of the imagination It was a lost dog against a usurious yellow sky And the dog, a hapless creature who had drawn itself Ten miles on two legs, stared in amazement To see the man who once fed him from his plate Reduced to this. So I felt this week, the vile soil and everything upon it — The beggar guest kicked from the table Before his own dog, and even the honest unpicking Of art performed nightly and in seclusion. Like any Penelope my armor is resignation Although I thought I would lift the bow myself And draw. By the morning he is gone And what to make of this? The prostitutes hang from a beam like mice The suitors are piled unburied in the yard. And some say that it is now much better And others, that it is worse. So order was restored I stared in amazement Perhaps Akhmatova was right When she wrote who knows what shit What tip, what pile of waste Brings forth the tender verse Like hogweed, like the fat hen under the fence Like the unbearable present tense 3!3(! $5'$!,% 111 Who knows what ill, what strife What crude shack of a life And how it twists sweetly about the broken sill: Pressingness, another word for honeysuckle But housewives? Has poetry Ever deepened in the pail Was it ever found in the sink, under the table Did it rise in the oven, quietly able To outhowl the hoover? Does it press more than the children’s supper The sudden sleepless wail? Did it ever? It lives. It takes seed Like the most unforgiving weed Grows wilder as the child grows older And spits on dreams, did I say How it thrives in the ashen family nest Or how iambs are measured best Where it hurts: With the heel of an iron On the reluctant breast Of a shirt? 112 0/%429 michael blann There was a hush, then Michael Blann Stepped out onto the stage.