James Wright and Mary Oliver

Continuing a look at James Wright's classic volume The Branch Will Not Break, here is a poem of a revelation in reverse, if you will:

Depressed By A Book Of Bad Poetry, I Walk
--Toward An Unused Pasture And Invite
-----------The Insects to Join Me

Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone,
I climb a slight rise of grass.
I do not want to disturb the ants
Who are walking single file up the fence post,
Carrying small white petals,
Casting shadows so frail I can see through them.
I close my eyes for a moment, and listen.
The old grasshoppers
Are tired, they leap heavily now,
Their thighs are burdened.
I want to hear them, they have clear sounds to make.
Then lovely, far off, a dark cricket begins
In the maple trees.

James Wright

I have spent a good deal of time reading boatloads of Mary Oliver lately. She is the next poet we will be covering in the 3 Poems By discussion group at my place of employment. Though she undoubtedly would have done Wright's poem very differently, the method, the tone, and the sentiment might be remarkably similar. Oliver is all about observation, musing, and revelation (and, occasionally, transcendence).

All of that may be found in the following, though the order is decidedly different. Here is a description by Oliver, complete with grasshopper, of exactly what Wright is doing after being disgusted by that bad poetry:


The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

best,
Don

Jack Gilbert, Risking Delight

Jack Gilbert is one of America's finest living poets. Mary Karr highlights his work in her Poet's Choice column this week, which is laudable.

However, though the excerpt from "A Brief for the Defense" she chose is salient if brief (in part the same excerpt that appears on the Gilbert page at poets.org), overall it really does not do proud an under-appreciated poet like Gilbert. Here is the poem in its entirety:




A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our loves because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine. The -----Bengal tiger-would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit that there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Jack Gilbert

One can empathize with Karr and her limited number of column inches, yet still ...

For those unfamiliar with Gilbert, here's a few more.


best,
Don