October 2014
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
founded in 1912 by harriet monroe October 2014 FOUNDED IN 1912 BY HARRIET MONROE volume ccv • number 1 CONTENTS October 2014 from THE POetry REVIEW don share 3 Introduction leontia flynn 4 Gerard Manley Hopkins kathryn simmonds 5 In the Woods Elegy for the Living mir mahfuz ali 8 MiG-21 Raids at Shegontola colette bryce 9 Helicopters liz berry 10 Scenes from “The Passion” ... Scenes from “The Passion” ... ruby robinson 14 Undress My Mother matthew francis 16 Ant julian stannard 18 Burlington Arcade Napoli hugo williams 20 Notes from Dialysis POEMS caleb klaces 25 Moths hannah lowe 26 Genealogy High Yellow claire trévien 28 The Evening After tim wells 29 The Coriolanus Effect Out of the Blue john wilkinson 32 Schlummert Ein pascale petit 34 Black Jaguar with Qaui ... david harsent 35 From “A Dream Book” Tinnitus: May, low skies ... Tinnitus: January, thin rain ... james brookes 38 Eschatology, Piscatology rory waterman 39 The Avenue Pulling Over to Inspect a Pillbox ... Over the Heath sophie collins 42 Healers martin monahan 44 The South Transept Window ... sam riviere 46 The Expendables 2 Solitaire In Praise of the Passivity of Paper D.F.W. frances leviston 51 Trimmings toby martinez de las 54 Triptych for the Disused ... rivas amy key 57 How Rare a Really Beautiful ... Announcement and Next Steps david wheatley 60 An Execration kathryn maris 62 Singles Cruise The X Man john greening 64 Heath XXIX COMMENT colette bryce 69 Omphalos todd swift 72 Four Englands contributors 85 announcement of prizes 88 Editor don share Art Director fred sasaki Managing Editor sarah dodson Assistant Editor lindsay garbutt Editorial Assistant holly amos Consulting Editor christina pugh Design alexander knowlton cover art by paul hornschemeier “Postcards from Moritz the Cat,” 2011 POETRYMAGAZINE.ORG a publication of the POETRY FOUNDATION printed by cadmus professional communications, us Poetry • October 2014 • Volume 205 • Number 1 Poetry (issn: 0032-2032) is published monthly, except bimonthly July / August, by the Poetry Foundation. Address editorial correspondence to 61 W. Superior St., Chicago, IL 60654. Individual subscription rates: $35.00 per year domestic; $47.00 per year foreign. Library / institutional subscription rates: $38.00 per year domestic; $50.00 per year foreign. Single copies $3.75, plus $1.75 postage, for current issue; $4.25, plus $1.75 postage, for back issues. Address new subscriptions, renewals, and related correspondence to Poetry, po 421141, Palm Coast, FL 32142-1141 or call 800.327.6976. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, IL, and additional mailing o∞ces. postmaster: Send address changes to Poetry, po Box 421141, Palm Coast, FL 32142-1141. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2014 by the Poetry Foundation. Double issues cover two months but bear only one number. Volumes that include double issues comprise numbers 1 through 5. Please visit poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/submissions for submission guidelines and to access the magazine’s online submission system. Available in braille from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Available on microfilm and microfiche through National Archive Publishing Company, Ann Arbor, MI. Digital archive available at jstor.org. Distributed to bookstores by Ingram Periodicals, Ubiquity Distributors, and Central Books in the UK. from THE POEtry REVIEW don share Introduction Harriet Monroe’s vision for Poetry was transatlantic: prior to its founding she wrote to over fifty poets, American and British, to solicit support. Ezra Pound responded from London predicting, paradoxically, a renaissance in American poetry, which he and Monroe effected with his work as our first (and so far only) foreign correspondent — and the publication in 1915 of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” by T.S. Eliot, also living in England. Is it a coin- cidence that in the year of Poetry’s founding another recipient of her letter, the similarly named Harold Monro, started The Poetry Review there? Its aim, like ours, was to help “poets and poetry thrive” and to be open to “all schools and groups of poetry, not merely the fashion- able or metropolitan.” A century on, the two magazines, as well as British and American poetry, have grown closer and yet more distinct, as do most siblings over time. On the one hand, the Internet has made it easier than ever to discover poetry from another country, no matter where one lives. On the other, it often seems that American and British poets are writing in different languages, and for their own respective national audiences. As a result, an exciting or well-known poet on one side of the ocean may remain quite unknown on the other. Yet I wouldn’t suggest that there should be a convergence of our poetries, but rather of readers. In 1923, Monroe took her first vacation from editing Poetry by go- ing on a five-month trip to England and beyond. She met such poetry luminaries as Edith Sitwell, Richard Aldington, Arthur Waley — and Monro. In my own travels I met Maurice Riordan, who became editor of The Poetry Review around the time I was named editor of Poetry. We have conspired to inaugurate regular exchanges for our respective readers. Earlier this year, Riordan published a selection of work from our pages; this month we return the favor. And the work from The Poetry Review that follows is but the jewel in a crown: I’m devoting this issue to poetry from the United Kingdom, something we’ve not done for a decade. It’s a work in progress: entirely selected from unsolicited submissions, it is not meant to be comprehensive, or representative. Rather it is serendipitous and eccentric, like our magazines, like travel, and like poetry itself. DON SHARE 3 leontia flynn Gerard Manley Hopkins At the mention of Gerard Manley Hopkins, my mild-mannered father — tender, abstracted — would exercise the right to revert to type. That is to say: devout; that is, proscriptive. He would rather we did not so bandy the good Jesuit’s name about in talk of “gay this” and “gay that” — just as he would rather my sister did not, from the library, request “sick” Lolita. Like tars on a stage deck, yo ho, we roll our eyes. Somebody snaps on the poisonous gas-fired heater — and I put off a year or two the hypothesis I’ll form, with a wave, to provoke him to these wobblers that all in such matters swing from pole to pole; as Hopkins was wont (his muse being bi[nsey] po[p]lar[s]) to swing from joy’s heights, alas, to the abyss and for whom the mind had “mountains; cliffs of fall.” • “O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap May who ne’er hung there.... ” Who’s not known the hell that fashions itself from the third night without sleep — the third or the fourth — in whose black margins crawl shrill horrors, and where breathless, poleaxed, pinned — as though in the teeth of an outrageous gale — the mind — sick — preys upon the stricken mind. And “worst, there is none” — no none — than this wild grief: Citalopram-wired. Our sweating selves self-cursed. Oh, “Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?” as Hopkins wrote — but, far gone, at its worst it’s her first form I want. Please stroke my hair. It’s alright now. I’m here, I’m here. There, there. 4 POETRY kathryn simmonds In the Woods The baby sleeps. Sunlight plays upon my lap, through doily leaves a black lab comes, a scotty goes, the day wears on, the baby wakes. The good birds sing, invisible or seldom seen, in hidden kingdoms, grateful for the in- between. The baby sleeps. Elsewhere the Queen rolls by on gusts of cheer — ladies wave and bless her reign. The baby frets. The baby feeds. The end of lunch, a daytime moon. The leaves are lightly tinkered with. It’s spring? No, autumn? Afternoon? We’ve sat so long, we’ve walked so far. The woods in shade, the woods in sun, the singing birds, the noble trees. The child is grown. The child is gone. The black lab comes, his circuit done. His mistress coils his scarlet lead. Kathryn SIMMONDS 5 Elegy for the Living We wash up side by side to find each other in the speakable world, and, lulled into sense, inhabit our landscape; the curve of that chair draped with your shirt; my glass of water seeded overnight with air. After this bed there’ll be another, so we’ll roll and keep rolling until one of us will roll alone and try to roll the other back — a trick no one’s yet pulled off — and it’ll be as if I dreamed you, dear, as if I dreamed this bed, our touching limbs, this room, the tree outside alive with new wet light. 6 POETRY Not now. Not yet. Kathryn SIMMONDS 7 mir mahfuz ali MiG-21 Raids at Shegontola Only this boy moves between the runes of trees on his tricycle when an eagle swoops, releases two arrows from its silver wings, and melts away faster than lightning. Then a loud whistle and a bang like dry thunder. In a blink the boy sees his house roof sink. Feels his ears ripped off. The blast puffs up a fawn smoke bigger than a mountain cloud. The slow begonias rattle their scarlet like confetti. Metal slashes the trees and ricochets. Wires and pipes snap at the roots, quiver. The whirling smoke packed with bricks and cement, chicken feathers and nigella seeds. When the cloud begins to settle on the ground, the boy makes out buckled iron rods.