Pike's Peak: 1957

          Pike's Peak: 1957

There was the week my mother drove from Texas
to Colorado with her parents, her sister
on the jump seat in the back of the station wagon
the trunk itself bountied full of sunflowers
my child mother picked roadside wrought with ants that crept
from the petals but how could she know?
She never saw them.

When they got to Pike's Peak her mother swam the lake
in a swimsuit pink and faded, hair slicked back
against her head, face washed free and eyelashes
invisible blonde and newborn.

Small waves splashed stones as she climbed
from the water, towels quickly in her hands
on her children, and sometimes my mother remembers
how later she wanted to see her, the woman
from the water again just dripped
just bright, just blurred in the sun
so fresh and vibrantly rendered.

Andrea Spofford
The Pine Effect

---

Pike's Peak: 1957
Andrea Spofford

what it means

A daughter is telling a story her mother told her about a trip her mother took. 

We have moments where we see the world in a completely new light.  Seeing her mother emerge from the lake is such a moment:

from the water again just dripped
just bright, just blurred in the sun
so fresh and vibrantly rendered.

why I like it

I know this moment of suddenly seeing someone you love and who is so familiar in a new light.  It's magic.  I also like the secrets in the poem.   We know the ants are a problem, but we don't know what happened.  I like how this moment is in such liminal space--between states, between one view of the mother and another, between the water and the land.

I feel like there's a second story this poem hints at: what does it mean that the mother told her daughter this story about her childhood? what does that tell us about the current relationship?  I appreciate the layers in this poem.

craft

Spofford is good at turning nouns into adjectives or verbs.  In this poem, "bountied," is her made up word that works so well.  I definitely need to try out this technique.

It's hard to pick the right details and depth with which to tell a story.  In this poem, each stanza is its own close-up of a small moment that add up to the larger whole.  It makes me wonder whether the author started with a much larger story and narrowed down or invented from a bare outline. 

The Five Stage of Grief

The Five Stage of Grief
 

The night I lost you
someone pointed me towards
the Five Stages of Grief
Go that way, they said,
  it's easy, like learning to climb
stairs after the amputation.
And so I climbed.
  Denial was first.
I sat down at breakfast
  carefully setting the table
  for two. I passed you the toast---
you sat there. I passed
you the paper---you hid
behind it.

Anger seemed more familiar.
I burned the toast, snatched
the paper and read the headlines myself.
But they mentioned your departure,
  and so I moved on to
  Bargaining. What could I exchange
for you? The silence
after storms? My typing fingers?
  Before I could decide, Depression
came puffing up, a poor relation
  its suitcase tied together
with string. In the suitcase
were bandages for the eyes
and bottles of sleep. I slid
all the way down the stairs
feeling nothing.
And all the time Hope
  flashed on and off
in defective neon.
Hope was a signpost pointing
straight in the air.
  Hope was my uncle's middle name,
he died of it.
After a year I am still climbing, though my feet slip
on your stone face.
The treeline
has long since disappeared;
  green is a color
I have forgotten.
  But now I see what I am climbing
  towards: Acceptance
written in capital letters,
a special headline:
  Acceptance
  its name is in lights.
I struggle on,
  waving and shouting.
Below, my whole life spreads its surf,
  all the landscapes I've ever known
  or dreamed of. Below
  a fish jumps: the pulse
in your neck.
Acceptance. I finally
  reach it.
But something is wrong.
Grief is a circular staircase.
I have lost you.

Linda Pastan
The Five Stages of Grief

Linda Pastan, "The Five Stages of Grief" from The Five Stages of Grief, published by W.W. Norton & Company. Copyright ©1978 by Linda Pastan. Used by permission of Linda Pastan in care of the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, Inc. (permissions@jvnla.com) and not to be used elsewhere for any other purpose.

---

The Five Stages of Grief
Linda Pastan

what it means

Pastan is elucidating Kubler-Ross' five stages of grief.  She gives little vignettes to show the experience of each one.

Grief is never ending.  Grief will surprise you with its powerful return.

why I like it

I have been a Pastan fan all my adult life.  I love her straightforward tone and language and how she takes on painful topics.  I got to hear her read last month, and this is one of the poems she read, so when I was looking through her collected works, which I bought of course, this one jumped out at me because I could see and hear her reading it.

As the Poetry Foundation says, "Since the early 1970s, Pastan has produced quiet lyrics that focus on themes like marriage, parenting, and grief. She is interested in the anxieties that exist under the surface of everyday life." http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/linda-pastan Me too.

craft

I love how she takes the same small scene--breakfast-- and resets it for the first few stages of grief.  And the last and first line pretty much the same, that circling back.  The last line surprised the heck out of me. 

This is Your Body Speaking (ii)

           This is Your Body Speaking (ii)

It is impossible, you think, to identify
anything in this nearly all-black
celluloid of your guts. You think back
to tenth-grade biology, but can recall
only the stench of formaldehyde,
the serene look upon the piglet's face.
You think you recognize the white tines
of ribcage, the twin kidneys, the long
crinkled streamer of small intestine.
but on a large slab of gray, you see
the white mass -- which you do not
recognize from any diagram --
round and obvious as the moon,
and somehow, whatever it is,
know it can shift the tide inside of you,
send everything swaying in its pull.

Lisa Mangini
Bird Watching at the End of the World

---

This is Your Body Speaking (ii) 
Lisa Mangini

what it means

A person is looking at an x-ray or some other picture of her internal organs.  At first she recognizes nothing.  Then the shapes start to match up with organs she learned about in 10th grade biology, and eventually she sees a mass which should not be there.

The moment you realize you have an invader in your body, that disease is in control.

Is it better to know or not know the secrets of our bodies?  This speaker comes to a slow revelation and knows her life will never be the same both from the disease and from knowing about it.

why I like it

I like that I did not know where the poem was headed.  When the speaker says the celluloid was nearly all black, I believed her.  I thought, maybe it's going to be a poem about our disconnect with the medical establishment.  Then when she sees the shapes, I thought, oh now we are about the power and limits of memory, and I'm going to stop and admire the parallel between her on the slab and the serene look on the piglet's face.  Then the poem surprises me again with the last turn.

craft

I went to a talk recently about the importance of turns in a poem.  I often do it by switching worlds--suddenly there's a fish, a tangerine!  She does it by staying in the same world and seeing more.

I've also been thinking a lot about how to books together, and I am intrigued by repeated titles to keep a theme flowing through the book.  You don't have the book in front of you (and perhaps you should), but Mangini also gives us "This is Your Body Speaking" i and iii.

Pelicans Appear

 Pelicans Appear

The three of us walk
the secluded beach in Manzanilla,
breaking our U.S. routines
of coffee and work and dinner and email and TV
for this trusting blue sky
that just last night held millions of stars
whose constellations
we guessed at from the rooftop;
clinking margaritas,
the smell of lime in the air,
this crashing ocean is so loud
we have to shout to hear one another,
and then mid-sentence we grow quiet
as a group of pelicans appear,
riding the top of the long waves,
wings beating a slow rhythm,
the air their highway, their trail,
as they rise slightly, then dip, their bellies
barely above the crest. They pass without
acknowledging us, as they should,
in their business of flying, and yet for us,
they are all we know in this moment.

Yvonne Higgins Leach
Another Autumn

---

Pelicans AppearYvonne
Higgins Leach

what it means

A group of Americans on vacation in Mexico stop talking to notice a flock of pelicans.

We can be arrested by beauty.  We should let ourselves be arrested by beauty.

The natural world does not need us, but we need it.

why I like it

This poem reminds me of Mary Oliver, a poet who acknowledges the sanctity of the natural world, but with a light touch.  I feel like I am in this moment with the speaker and am given the opportunity to also put aside business, margueritas and loud conversations where we try to out talk the natural world and instead let myself be silenced by it.

craft

Did you notice it's just one sentence?  I felt the push of it first, how the images kept coming and then I went back figured out how she did it.

I also like the parallel between their business talk at the beginning and the pelican's business at the end.

 I really like the line "barely above the crest. They pass without" how it creates a meaning different then the sentences the phrases came from.  "To pass without," it is a transcendent moment.

The Robot Scientist's Daughter [ villainess]

The Robot Scientist's Daughter [ villainess]

makes the perfect villainess. The impling can already
assemble solar coils and silicon chips, so make way.
In her hands a piece of paper becomes a bird,
a stack of metal a monster.

She grew up playing chess against the computer,
making aliens stick out their tongues.
She knows the click of the Geiger counter
better than her own heart, which moans
and swings unlike any machine.

She grew up with a string of undifferentiated dogs,
each slighter smarter than the last, each with its tongue
lolling to the side. They all looked exactly
like TV's Lassie, and they were all named Lassie.
We suspected them to be prototypes,
becomes of the spontaneous combustion.
There were always men in black,
always the clicking on the phone line,
and the badges we knew weren't to be trusted.

Like a game of chess, the making of bombs is delicate,
requires planning to assemble and disassemble.
What they sowed in the ground isn't gone;
it's in the mouths of their children when chew
the weeds. Their children grow reedy
and anemic, their needy fists clenching,
skipping grades and affronting the public.
Any day now. We're watching.

Jeannine Hall Gailey
The Robot Scientist's Daughter

---

The Robot Scientist's Daughter [ villainess]
Jeannine Hall Gailey

what it means

The Robot Scientist's Daughter is a book about the nuclear waste clean-up at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories in Tennessee.  I know (because Gailey tells us in the introduction to the book and the other poems create a bit of a narrative) that Gailey's father was robot scientist working on the clean-up.  The family was a different class than their Appalachian neighbors but just as likely to be poisoned by the nuclear waste.

This poems holds these tensions.  The robot scientist's daughter is strange to the people of the community, has dangerous powers, and perhaps their fears of the men in badges gets displaced onto her.  On other hand, she's eating the poisoned grass too, and she might get what's coming to her for being so dangerous as to skip a grade.  The town is waiting for its revenge.

It's dangerous to be different.

Nuclear waste crosses class lines.

In this myth the villainess is also a victim.

why I like it

I probably picked this poem, of all the poems in the book, for that crazy word "villainess." Galley actually has a book called Becoming the Villianess, so she must like the word too. I'm also tickled by the word "undifferentiated."  Poetry rule #26, the fewer syllables per word the better.  I love it when poets break the rules, and it works.

I like the surreal dropping into the middle of the poem.  Oh those dogs?  They spontaneously combusted.  That line made me laugh out loud, and the subject matter--people dying of nuclear waste poisoning--not so funny.

But mostly I like this poem for how it addresses really hard political topics like the class differences in the United States and the fall out from nuclear waste and I still want to read it for the imagery and tone.

craft

I am fascinated by the change of person in the poem.  It's all third person--she did this, she did that--until the comment about the dogs:

We suspected them to be prototypes,
becomes of the spontaneous combustion.

I don’t know if it's the angry townspeople who are now speaking, the mob assembling, or the daughter speaking out, trying to understand her own life.  I'm leaning toward the former because of the last line: Any day now. We're watching.

I like how the "we" suddenly draws the reader in closer, ratcheting up the tension.

  Buy her book at May Apple Press

"When There's Just One of You Left"

"When There's Just One of You Left"

she says, "I'll call every day," a daughter
you wouldn't want to do without. Lately,

I'm worried by all sorts of questions, but
she says, "One at a time, daddio, breathe

in, breathe out," which I do so there's no
need for the little brown sack to breathe

into, CO2 to the rescue. My father would
rush me to the shower, steam up the whole

house till my lungs relaxed and the house
could return to its normal tensions. He who

had saved me lay dying in a modern spital
whose doctors refused him more morphine.

Along came the daughter you wouldn't want
to do without, by then a doctor herself: "At 93

gentlemen, my grandpa's not likely to become
addicted, now is he?" I'd wanted to slap them silly,

might have if she hadn't just entered, a serious look
in her eyes. For the most part she does everything

in silence, before she sets to work to right another
wrong. It is now very late, and it's better to cut this

short. If you come this way, you'd do well to let her
have a look at you. Meanwhile, the best of health!

Stuart Friebert
On the Bottom

---

"When There's Just One of You Left"
Stuart Friebert

what it means

An aging father is talking to his daughter about his worries.  She comforts him.  He then remembers how his father took care of him when he had an asthma attack and how his daughter took care of his father when he was in the hospital.  He suggests that the reader let her take care of them as well.

A father is proud of his daughter.

It's ok to let yourself be dependent on and trust your children.

Your children will be there for you.

Your children have skills you do not.

why I like it

This poem ripples like bamboo in the wind.  The speaker is old and almost dependent on his daughter, then he's a child dependent on his father, then he's middle-aged and so proud and grateful to the daughter who can help with his dying father.

I love how this poem tells such a complete and complex story.  I love the cheerful voice of the poem.  And to be fair, dear reader, I love this poem because my friend and mentor Stuart wrote it and I can just hear him twinkling away all through it.

craft

I appreciate how the couplets match the father/daughter relationship and also hold a steady beat as this poems slips around time.

Ooowee, this poem is a lesson in line breaks.  Look at this one: 

you wouldn't want to do without. Lately,

So, of course, these are parts of two different sentences, but given a meaning as a line they imply that there were times the speaker could do without the daughter, but things have changed. 

Or this one:

in her eyes. For the most part she does everything

I'm getting this incredible image of a very internal daughter who does everything with her eyes.  I love how the line breaks push against some of the meanings of the sentences.

All the Sharp Things

All the Sharp Things

First the obvious, the paring knives, the set of steak knives in their burnished box, the long serrated knife for slicing bread, the stubby one not good for anything but butter. And after that, he finds her sun-nosed pliers, her Phillips-head. Even the sewing scissors left open hear a spool of thread. Even the porcupine of a pincushion. And other things that never seemed as shrill before--he lays them out, each one a gift she cannot couch, so close the colored pencils, keys, tweezers from the lighted vanity. Wait long enough and anything takes on a sheen of sharpness. Mustn't leave her hands untied. She could stare the whorl from fingertips. Cut him with her eyes.

Jehanne Dubrow
The Arranged Marriage

---

All the Sharp Things
Jehanne Dubrow

 what it means

All the sharp objects have to be taken away because this woman might attack her husband.

Actually, the meaning of this poem depends a lot on context. In the poems leading up to this one, the woman has been attacked, though it's not clear whether it's by a husband or not.  I feel like this is a moment in a longer story where we are seeing the woman's power emerging and the man overreacting.  But, if the poem were standing alone, you could easily think this woman was crazy and a danger to the world. 

why I like it

Dubrow is my new favorite poet.  I love what she does with story telling.  I like that this poem is part of longer narrative.  This poem's dual sense of menace, that we don't know whom to believe, gives the poem a terrifying energy.

craft

That long list of sharp objects at the beginning before you have any idea why they matter and then the slow turn when "he" finds the next set of objects.  I am fascinated by how this story slowly is revealed.  Of course, the small concrete objects.  There are no metaphors in this poem, no line breaks; its power comes from what is not said.

Rummaging

Rummaging

She spends days rummaging
in that big black purse,
as if she's poking into dark
water, and coming up
with Kleenex, a wallet, I.D.s
she doesn't recognize.
She keeps finding and finding
the silver key marked
with red nail polish
so that she knows it goes
to the front door. Each time
she says, I'll have to mark
the front door key. All day,
she fingers the few small,
shiny things she's dredged:
freshman year, when the boys
elected her most popular
Radcliffe girl; her wedding day
and the rabbi's fishy eyes.
She worries odds and ends
to luster: a single earring;
a broken hearing aid; Anna,
Alex, Elad and those other two
great grandchildren whose names
she sometimes knows. She drags
the bag everywhere, even
as it empties of all but a few
glimmers, slippery to catch.

Susan Cohen
Throat Singing

---

Rummaging
Susan Cohen

what it means

 An old woman who has lost a lot of memory rummages through her purse.

The purse is a metaphor for her memory and she has trouble finding anything in it.

Memory can glimmer, and it can be slippery to catch.

why I like it

I think this poem treats a difficult and painful subject--aging and memory loss--gracefully.  The woman's experience both in what she can find, and can't, comes to life for me.  I believe this character and care about her.

craft

I like how finding and finding really means losing her ability to hold on to objects and memories.  Nice tension between what is spoken and what is understood.

I love the turn in this poem.  It's all in one small setting--a woman going through her purse and then suddenly the shiny things are her past and we are time shifting fast through young adulthood back into old age.