EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY ~

The Goose-Girl



Spring rides no horses down the hill,

But comes on foot, a goose-girl still.

And all the loveliest things there be

Come simply, so, it seems to me.

If ever I said, in grief or pride,

I tired of honest things, I lied;

And should be cursed forevermore

With Love in laces, like a whore,

And neighbors cold, and friends unsteady,

And Spring on horseback, like a lady!


("Goose-Girl" relates to the Brothers Grimm)
Millay wrote the poem in 1920.





from Fatal Interview (1931)



      L.


The heart once broken is a heart no more,

And is absorbed from all a heart must be;

All that it signed or chartered heretofore

Is cancelled now, the bankrupt heart is free;

So much of duty as you may require

Of shards and dust, this and no more of pain,

This and no more of hope, remorse, desire,

The heart once broken need support again.

How simple 'tis, and what a little sound

It makes in breaking, let the world attest:

It struggles, and it fails; the world goes round,

And the moon follows it. Heart in my breast,

'Tis half a year now since you broke in two;

The world's forgotten well, if the world knew.

__________________


Edna St. Vincent Millay
Selected Poems, annotated edition
edited by Timothy F. Jackson
introduction by Holly Peppe
Yale 2016

An exquisite collection, nicely annotated throughout with steward-care from Holly Peppe in the introduction. 

Perhaps the finest collection yet to present the poet, or to be re-acquainted.

WALK TO THE BARN ~

Walk To The Barn

All of life, even the mountains

Around him are changing.

Yet he walks twice each day

To the barn up the wide gravel drive,

No more cattle inside.

His slow and steady pace

Pays respect to the surrounding pasture,

The ring of woodland and evening birds.

What once made him prosperous

Is now gone, except for what he loves —

His wife, old dog, farm buildings and land.

He leans open the heavy sliding barn door,

Steps out of view.

At The Country Wedding

They don’t tinkle

Champagne glasses

With their spoons here

And only the old folks

Are sitting down.

A country western group

Has lugged its equipment upstairs,

And later today and into the evening

This young married couple

Will learn the sweet

And rotten joys

From the masters of it —

Dancing fathers and mothers,

Lonesome aunts and yodeling uncles.

But for the moment

Paper plates are heaped with

Homemade ham, biscuits and beans

And all a few people want

Is a kiss,

So tapping on the side

Of a beer bottle with a knife

Quiets the whole grange hall down

Into love.

Hunter

Late in the afternoon

This farmer drove his tractor

Across the river, broke open the thin ice,

Put out salt in the bare ground mowing

And if you looked, you could find his

Red jacket working behind the trees.

That night edges of the river froze again.

Big bright stars burned cold over the hills.

I was carrying in cookstove wood

For the next morning

When the gunshot shook down valley,

Then back up.

Two days later a farm dog

Held the deer’s head

Where he lay down

Chained to the barn.



___________________

Bob Arnold
WHERE RIVERS MEET
(Mad River Press)

SWING< SWING< SWING < (1936) ~

written and composed by Louis Prima

Benny Goodman on clarinet

Gene Krupa on the drums
Harry James is also in there with the big band

the rest stays in your head

and body

THE LOST NERUDA POEMS ~

1.



I touch your feet in the shade, your hands in the light,

and on the flight your peregrine eyes guide me

Matilde, with kisses your mouth taught me

my lips came to know fire.

Oh legs bequeathed the creaminess of perfect

oats, the battle spread,

its heart a meadow,

when I pressed my ears to your breasts,

my blood pounded out your Araucan syllable.





11.



If they put

a boat

near a Chilean,

he jumps in,

he exiles himself

and is lost.

The rich man

heads to Vesuvius,

and won't face

the maternal

heights, the high

Andean flame,

he flies to Broadway,

to the Mayo Clinic,

to the Moulin Rouge,

the poor

Chileno, with his only

shoes

crosses into Neuquen, the

forsaken territories of Patagonia,

he likes the lunary

shorelines of Peru,

he sets his hunger down

in Colombia,

migrates as he can,

changing stars like shirts,

the Chilean

is a crazy woman

with mutinous eyes,

an amiable heart, sky-blue skin

or he's the traveling salesman

with his wine, guitars,

water pipes

or he could be the sailor

who gets married

in Veracruz and never comes back

to his island,

to his fragrant oceanic Chiloe.





16.



Spring day,

a long Chilean day,

a long green lizard

lazing

on the amphitheater of snow

facing the navy blue.

Sun and water against

your green skin,

the resuscitated land

breathes behind your shield,

nodding off,

you lose your grip

but recover,

the pollen

stains you

red,

the cicadas

buzz by,

a bird

aims its bill at you,

you go on fully alive,



a fragrant

green creature

with a golden tail,



you give

and take sustenance,



you sing

and we sing of you,

sleepy

clear day

and you aren't even aware

that meantime

yellow beetles

are scrambling

up your head,

and violins

are taking wing

in your wind,

you don't know

who dies today,

you don't recognize

the mourners

trailing the cortege,

you don't know, can't conceive

of those evicted from their homes

last night, the woman

who lost her job,

the ring

slipping from the fingers

of the mother

as it clangs in the pawnbroker's drawer

like a lost cricket dying,

at ease

among so many

births,

the hub

of germinations,

attentive

in the wispy

spring of Chile,

you take it easy,

superb,

the sea's froth

like a sacred robe

nears and falls back

from your body,

and

the sky crowns you,

the ocean's chorus

etches into stone the song

of your praises,

among spiny thorns

of the cactus, the corolla burns,

the world is born again.



In the motherland of Chile

in spring

the voice,

the irregular theogony,

a bright abundance,

from green days lazing in the snow,

I draw out

this one day,

its face to the sea salt.



_________________________

P A B L O     N E R U D A
F O R R E S T    G A N D E R


Then Come Back
The Lost Neruda Poems

Copper Canyon Press 2016

FAREWELL SCOTTY MOORE ~

NY TIMES ~ SCOTTY MOORE

I've been building all spring & summer, head in the clouds,

and missed this great musician's passing. . .

VOYAGER ~

Ecco, 2016

Russell Banks' new book of travel writing is a very strange bird of a book. Somehow he attempts writing about island hopping through the Caribbean with his fourth wife (Chase Twichell) while reflecting on all his other marriages. It started out quite irritating, hopeless, and then by his extreme determination to keep to it I started to side with him and ended up enjoying the fuzzy-wuzzy long piece. The second part of the book are the money pieces he cranked out for magazines and they read with a certain drone, although make no mistake about it, Banks writes well, even if he tries to prove to himself (unfortunately for us) that he remains a mighty mouse. Perhaps a craftsman would have taken a hold of that fuzzy-wuzzy long piece and hammered out a 150 page volume of classic iron. 
Then I believe we would have an original book.

CLASSIC - GEORGE JACKSON ~

Here is a replica of my worn-torn many decades owned copy of George Jackson's classic volume of correspondence from Soledad Prison, once upon a time. I have it in my library right next to the large volume of letters from Yeats, invaluable, which Ted Enslin asked to borrow once and I mailed it to him in Maine and Ted took his time, and then Ted mailed it back. We all used to share books that way.

I don't run across Jackson's book of letters all that often in original cloth bound with tattered cover

so I keep it close, but gladly share it with you now. Jackson in chains, carrying a message in his hands.

S O L E D A D     B R O T H E R

SATIE SLOWLY ~

JEAN GIONO ~

J E A N     G I O N O

"All of Man's mistakes arise because he imagines that he

walks upon a lifeless thing, whereas his footsteps

imprint themselves in a flesh full of vital power."

H I L L

(New York Review of Books, 1929, 2016)

HEREABOUTS ~

Prize

Away from the road,

Off into the high edge

Of a field, unless I

Looked carefully you

Would never have been seen

Picking wildflowers

Growing in folds of sunlight

Among the tall grass.

Each snipped by hand

At the same height, then

Gathered inside a pail

Of shallow water.

The world seems weightless

Watching you work,

If this is work —

You call it a prize

Saved for the last

Hour of the afternoon,

Taking away what this

Plot of land has to give —

Flowers for the kitchen table,

Brightened windowsills.

Day and Night

How often have we

Stepped together into water —

You left your clothes on the rocks

And shivered your way to me,

Said it was freezing as I thought

Of the mountain stream filling this

Clear basin of evening light, and how

Swallows showed us the angles of the sky

Far above barbed wire and pasture heat

Which we came down from after work

Smelling lilac in the breeze —

And it was the long blonde hair you shook

Out of a blue bandana and later braided

That had me remember the day and night.

Hands

He was the first

One ever to show

Me anything, and

Make sense, about

A garden. When he

Called me down into

The fenced half-acre

I walked through the

Wire gate and found

Him shoulder high

In the early morning

Blossom of peas.

And snapping a pod

Open, with the same

Hands that cut timber,

Mended fence and

Milked cows — who

Came in here every

Morning before he

Went off to chores —

He put everything

Into my hands

When he said,

Now taste this.

Hereabouts

                

                        for Jim Koller

The town is acting proud,

Even a photograph in the newspaper,

Everyone I talk to hereabouts

Has something to say about

The bear that was shot nearby.

I haven’t really pinned down

Where it was killed, but one

Mile between us and the radius

Of the valley seems a fair account.

That would include across the river,

Up the incline of timber to

Owl’s Head Range, where three winters

In a row we would hear probably

The same bear rumbling around

In this box of territory left to roam.

Funny noises he makes, hoots

And barks, moans with long silence.

We listened. No better than

The next guy, just listened

To a sound you don’t hear

Too much of any longer hereabouts.

Like the golden eagle over

West River last spring, ice going out

I stood there where I was working,

Chain saw shut down quiet,

Watching the bird float above the day —
You miss it when it’s gone.

_____________________

Bob Arnold

WHERE RIVERS MEET