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* two years of the influence

José Angel Araguz 4 Comments

The two year anniversary of the Influence is here and I must admit: it snuck up on me.

I had all these great ideas about what to do (party hats! balloons! poems recited inside of a cake!), but then life kinda kept happening.

As life happened, so did the Influence, though, which is the goal ultimately.

The life of a blog is like the life of a flag: as long as the wind keeps up, the colors keep flying.

This week’s poem “Lives of the Poets” by Kim Addonizio (fresh out of the latest issue of Poetry magazine) is apt for our little celebration.

When I started this blog, I was happy to have it become a reader’s blog, a place for me to share the poems that were rockin’ my world at the time. It has been a pleasure to see the readership of this blog grow. Thank you to each of you who drops by.

I hope to continue sharing the highlights of the life of this poet and that it may mean something to the life of the poet in you.

* two years makes me this happy *

* two years makes me this happy *

Lives of the Poets – Kim Addonizio

One stood among the violets
listening to a bird. One went to the toilet
and was struck by the moon. One felt hopeless
until a trumpet crash, and then lo,
he became a diamond. I have a shovel.
Can I turn it into a poem? On my stove
I’m boiling some milk thistle.
I hope it will turn into a winged thesis
before you stop reading. Look, I’m topless!
Listen: approaching hooves!
One drowned in a swimming pool.
One removed his shoes
and yearned off a bridge. One lives
with Alzheimer’s in a state facility, spittle
in his white beard. It
turns out words are no help.
But here I am with my shovel
digging like a fool
beside the spilth and splosh
of the ungirdled sea. I can’t stop.
The horses are coming, the thieves.
I still haven’t found lasting love.
I still want to hear viols
in the little beach hotel
that’s torn down and gone.
I want to see again the fish
schooling and glittering like a veil
where the waves shove
against the breakwater. Gone
is the girl in her white slip
testing the chill with one bare foot.
It’s too cold, but she goes in, so
carefully, oh.

***

Happy flagging!

Jose

* organizing the world with Donald Justice

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

This week’s poem “Bus Stop” by Donald Justice rounds out the recent syllabic kick on the Influence.

I recently read an illuminating essay by Justice where he breaks down some of the thinking that went into the poem, both the conceptual thinking and the structural.

He describes walking his dog around his neighborhood in California around the same time when people would be coming home from work. His sense of the memory is that everything was already there for the poem, the world of it just had to be organized.

I remarked to someone just this week that Justice’s work always surprises me. An undisputed technical master, he makes you forget all about technique by earning such moments as the one below where he fills a line with: Black flowers, black flowers.

* whatcha waitin' for *

* Bus Stop with Chola *

Bus Stop – Donald Justice

Lights are burning
In quiet rooms
Where lives go on
Resembling ours.

The quiet lives
That follow us—
These lives we lead
But do not own—

Stand in the rain
So quietly
When we are gone,
So quietly . . .

And the last bus
Comes letting dark
Umbrellas out—
Black flowers, black flowers.

And lives go on.
And lives go on
Like sudden lights
At street corners

Or like the lights
In quiet rooms
Left on for hours,
Burning, burning.

***

Happy burning!

Jose

* photo by Craig Carlson found here.