Category: Carolyn Forche

Tuesday (Grumpy) Musings

Here is the fall poem of the week. This will be the last one, and then I’m going to start moving into winter…

Thanksgiving

In every room. encircled by a name-
less Southern boy from Yale,
There was my younger sister singing a Fellini theme
And making phone calls
While the rest of us kept moving her discarded boots
Or sat and drank. Outside, in twenty-
nine degrees, a stray cat
Grazed our driveway,
Seeking waste. It scratched the pail.
There were no other sounds.
Yet on and on the preparation of that vast consoling meal
Edged toward the stove. My mother
Had the skewers in her hands.
I watched her tucking skin
As though she missed her young, while bits of onion
Misted snow over the pronged death.

Louise Glück
_______________________________________________________________
Today has been a killer day. I stayed up too late last night watching some low budget horror movie on AMC. I think it was called Return to the House on Haunted Hill or something equally terrible. As a result of staying up too late, I went to bed late and woke up too early, and that has resulted in me being cranky throughout most of the morning. I started to recover during my creative writing class, which I love. Today we talked about Carolyn Forché and Maxine Kumin. I have them reading The Things They Carried for next week and then we’re moving into poetry.

______________________________________________________________________

Wednesday Musings

This story is unfortunate and it annoys me.

Here is the poem. You decide.

Education for Leisure

Today I am going to kill something. Anything.
I have had enough of being ignored and today
I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day,
a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets.

I squash a fly against the window with my thumb.
We did that at school. Shakespeare. It was in
another language and now the fly is in another language.
I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.

I am a genius. I could be anything at all, with half
the chance. But today I am going to change the world.
Something’s world. The cat avoids me. The cat
knows I am a genius, and has hidden itself.

I pour the goldfish down the bog. I pull the chain.
I see that it is good. The budgie is panicking.
Once a fortnight, I walk the two miles into town
for signing on. They don’t appreciate my autograph.

There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio
and tell the man he’s talking to a superstar.
He cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out.
The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.

~Carol Ann Duffy
_____________________________________________________________________

I don’t think I agree with the first line of this article. I mean, how else do you explain political poetry? As a rebuke I give you one of my favorite political poems:

The Colonel

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistolon the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man’s legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.
~Carolyn Forché

_____________________________________________________________________

I am weary this afternoon. I taught two comp courses back to back this morning and it always puts a strain on my voice. My morning classes are a touch more apathetic then my afternoon class, so I’ll have to adjust my teaching method a bit.