Theory & Safari: April 2011

Thursday, April 28, 2011

3 Tubes of Charles Bukowski

Friday, April 22, 2011

4 Tubes of 13th Century Sufi Poet Rumi, Read by Translator Coleman Barks

'What Do Women Want?' by Kim Addonizio

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16213

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

'Frog and Toad Confront the Alterity of Otherness' by Dean Rader

The sun was hot in the sky

like a muffin in a bright blue tin.

The day was just the day.

The wind was nothing more

than wind, the leaves were leaves

and kept on being leaves.

Frog, however, wondered why

he was Frog and Toad was Toad.

Frog knew who he was,

but this strange morning

he feared he was the wrong one.

His skin felt too clammy,

his eyes too bulgy.

Even his pajamas seemed

that of another creature.

Everything was wrong:

the trees overhead; the birds in them.

Toad, on the other hand,

woke up troubled by how

different he was than Frog.

To him, Frog, was wholly

unknown and unknowable.

The yellow flowers outside his window,

the waterbirds down by the lake

that arrived only in winter,

the dreams of alligators and snakes

that swam through his sleeping,

all made more sense to him

than this Frog in his threadbare

suit and flappy feet.

How odd they both wanted to fold

into the foreign skin of the familiar,

inhabit the Frog and Toadness

of the other—

It is Toad who will understand

to love the unknown is to say yes

to the ineffability of difference.

And Frog shall find himself

stunned with a recognition

that to love the miasma of mystery

is to say yes to sorrow,

yes to the presence of absence,

yes to the chance that alethia

may never rise out of the pond.

Frog makes Toad some toast

with strawberry jam.

He waddles across the room,

sets down the plate,

pours Toad a cup of coffee.

The sun is hot in the sky

like a scone on a sky blue table.

Toad looks over at Frog.

Good old Frog, he thinks.

That bastard knows I hate toast.

Toad spreads the jam like a man

might smooth mortar on a brick

for which there is no building.

Thank you, he says,

Thank you Frog.

(from his book Works and Days, Truman State University Press, 2011)

Dean Rader's 10 Greatest Poets Project for the San Francisco Chronicle was covered by The New Yorker and the New York Times.

'Self Portrait: Rejected Inaugural' by Dean Rader

The land was land before we were us.

Our regret, freshly cut, clumps in the front yard.

History, memory’s buttonhole, needs a new suit:

Its shoes, scuffed and spit-shined, wait by the door.

We wear ourselves as though it means something,

As if identity’s moustache and glasses were made

To order. We are who we show others we

Should be, at least this is what we told

Ourselves as we dragged our whiteness across

The plains. We are what God wants us to be,

At least, this is what God told us as we dragged

Our blackness along the field. We are what

Our treaties say we are, at least this is what

Our fathers told us as we dragged our redness

Into the forests. As we did that first day,

We walk out onto the yard in our bare feet.

Today, though, we keep the mower in the

Garage. It’s raining and it is going to rain.

Today, we wait for the sun, sky’s

Only coin, to drop itself into the slot

Of America’s phone: we ask who might

Answer when the other millennium

Calls to check in. We reply as we did then:

Look in your window. We are whomever

We are when we answer that phone. We are

What we say into the silence on the other end.

We are, as we always have been, the little chain

That dangles from mercy’s bulb. We are,

As we always will be, the bulb at the end

Of conquest’s wire, at least that’s what

The soldier told us as we touched the switch.

We are what we say we might be. We are

Neither invention nor anodyne. As we

Walk across the yard, we say to ourselves:

We are what God asked us to be,

But we know that’s never been true.

We are who we ask to be us.

(from his book Works and Days, Truman State University Press, 2011)

'Talking Points [Love Poem]' by Dean Rader

• And the way the light crawls up the side of the sky at dawn;

• the room [the sky] when you open the curtains after a long morning in bed;

• the sun splashing on the sheets [a bowl of lightning];

• a flame: your face: the palms of Jesus in an El Greco painting;

• and the way the stars in their wool coats shine inward;

• the time I drew back your blouse [&] [kissed the light of your skin]

• the light crashing down your spine;

• the light curving [off] the curve of your hip;

• the light from the _____, the light in your mouth;

• the light on your body that says [this way]

(from his book Works and Days, Truman State University Press, 2011)

Three poems from Works and Days are nominated for Pushcart Prizes.

'A Geneology of Unfinished Love Poems' by Dean Rader

[elegy]

I don’t know

what the dead

_____ about love,

if, for instance,

they remember it

the way an amputee

recalls a missing _____—

a necessary part

of the body found

only in a memory

of _____ slick

in water, hot

over flame, delicate

on thigh, in a mouth—

or if the ____ is just sorrow.

[comedy]

Your eyes are so _____.

There is no way

they can be glass,

though the left one

is always a bit

off center.

I wonder if your body

is already on the lookout

for the first _____

of my ear hair.

Your feet are so _____,

I don’t care that they’re webbed.

You’re my duck.

My beautiful little duck.

You can’t imagine the ways

I want to _____ you quack.

And then there is your _____.

_____!

I really like it.

In fact, I wish

I could carry it

around in my knapsack.

I’d _____ it the way

an archeologist

handles a sacred vase,

the way a cop grabs

the most dangerous felon.

I’d handcuff it to my belt loop.

I’d wear it like it was

Two loaded _____.

[haiku]

With the _____ union

even holy men forget

it is God they _____

[epistolary]

Dear _____,

I want to _____ for lying to you about that Home Ec. teacher. She meant nothing to me. And I need to come clean about the trapeze artist, the pool boy, your _____. What was I thinking?

I hope you realize that I have forgiven you for pushing me into the _____ of that classics scholar. She’s ancient history. That’s a little joke, but I’m not joking about how ____ I feel: Your cousin Sophie. Really … my mistake.

And about the palm reader. All she did was _____ my hand. Honest. But when she traced the creases, the narrow _____ on the map of the future world, she made me think: I want to know you the way she knows these lines. I want you to _____ me the way she knows how to lie.

(from his book Works and Days, Truman State University Press, 2011)

'How to Buy a Gun in Havana' by Dean Rader

First, never say the word gun.

Or pistolero or buy.

Talk instead about platanos. And smile.

You’ll know the bodega;

it’s the one in Los Sitios with the wooden

parrot clipped to the wire on

the left side of the door. When the wind

springs up off the sidewalk,

the parrot bobs slightly, banging its crimson

head against the building’s wooden slats.

Go inside. On the far wall above the shelves

of candles and tilty stacks of shirts,

you’ll see the blackboard. It’s the

same in every store: an inventory

of frijoles negros, arroz, and leche de coco,

menued in chalk. You will

scan the inventory for platanos, hoping

they are in stock. You never know.

You will have brought with you

a pouch of powdered milk. Inside

will be powdered milk and eight hundred

fifty Euros. No dollars. No sterling.

The pouch will be glued shut. No tape. No

staples. You will, as you do with

your wife, your children, your boss, barter.

There is no baby formula in Cuba;

no cow’s milk. You will hand over

the pouch and ask for platanos.

It is said that at a similar bodega in Vedado,

you look the man behind the counter

in the eye. But here, you are supposed to settle on

the framed photo of the Catedral

de San Cristobal nailed to the wall above

the shirts. The woman will place the

platanos in a plastic bag. You will take them.

You will not say thank you.

No one knows the precise chain of events,

not even you, because, as you are told,

you turn away. You walk over to the shelves

next to the old Coke cooler and ruffle

through Frisbees, pantyhose, and postcards of

Che playing golf in army fatigues.

By the time you are finished, your bag of

platanos will feel heavy. At that point,

you walk out of the store, and out

of Los Sitios, and make your way to

the Malecón, and you gaze at the lovers lounging

on the wall and you stop

for mango ice, and you ask yourself,

as you have done with everything

meaningful in your life, what happens now?

(from his book Works and Days, Truman State University Press, 2011)

Works and Days is a finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters First Book Prize.

'The Poem You Ordered' by Dean Rader

Once upon a time, you ordered a poem. You were considering throw pillows, a new ferret, or a hatchet, but a poem had been on your mind for months. You were finally ready to pull the trigger.

As for the details, you were certain what you wanted: something longer than a hammer; simpler than Soduko. On the pull-down menu, you selected quatrains but then, after much deliberation, you changed your order to couplets. You paid extra for the stirrups, the tattoo but said no to the eye patch, the hammock, and all warranties.

You were tempted to ask for rhyme (it was included), but in the end, you declined. For you, it was all about story, and you worried rhymes wouldetract from the poem’s flow. If it contained people, all the better: you preferred a tailor, the Russian woman from the bakery down the street, and your grandfather on your mother’s side. But, you said to yourself, who gets everything?

As for the title, you chose the option Surprise Me.

Most of all, you thought, the poem would have to be about mercy, which

would, of course, encompass loss. It must address war, and it must be open

to closure. You didn’t need controlling metaphor, and you had no interest in splurging for metonymy.

There is no anticipation like waiting for the poem you ordered to arrive.

When the poem you ordered ambled up the walk, you were caught off guard by the limp but nothing else—not its body cleaved in two, not the cowlick, not the delicate accretion of its form. You asked for this poem because for you, beginnings are never enough. It has always been about the ending.

To the window, foggy with your breath, you admit that you were never actually surprised by the limp. You knew the gun in the poem’s pocket was loaded, and you knew where it was going. You had, after all, ticked the box marked bullet.

(from his book Works and Days, Truman State University Press, 2011)

Dean Rader is a finalist for the Poetry Society of America's Louis Hammer Award (judged by David Lehman.)