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I'm going back and rereading the poetry books that initially excited me about the written and spoken word. First up, Mark Doty's Atlantis. This is the second of probably three interactions about how my response to this book changed over twenty years. The first one is here. Rebuilding Atlantis At Twenty-Nine
1. The Shape Of Things The subject of the night's workshop is line breaks and how they shape the way the reader interprets the poem. I hate American waterfall tercets. In fact, all unnecessarily shaped stanzas detract from my interest in what a poet is trying to say. I understand they think it looks pretty. It gives me a headache. I still love Mark Doty's work even if I don't like how it's laid on the page. 2. Emerald Legacy If you look closely at this handful of sand Turquoise and emerald Sapphire and crushed pearl All this silt All this emerald Sand is only brown from a distance Shattered rocks Crushed coral Once royal and thriving Now loose foothold for children to build into wet castles Everything beautiful looks plain from a distance There is nothing alluring when the polish has been ground into well grounds Emerald at fingertips So what Tiny grains of quartz small enough to sprinkle over corn flakes Beauty tastes terrible Gets stuck in teeth Opal amongst beige Everything looks so beige until you really stare Flakes of emerald sparkle through the blah There is always something living thriving despite the paper bag covering our textbook lives Always something emerald if you know how to look Not where to How to 3. Grief Is Exhausting And Everywhere I didn't see ryan's sickness until it killed him I didn't look for comfort in shoots of dune grass I didn't imagine our future coming to a point Curling to fist I didn't imagine we needed a lighthouse to protect us Shimmer of crest Agate shadows It wasn't until i had to turn around that i ever noticed the shape of my own shadow lacking his beside me
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I'm going back and rereading the poetry books that initially excited me about the written and spoken word. First up, Mark Doty's Atlantis. This is the first of probably three interactions about how my response to this book changed over twenty years. Sidenote, the title is a line from my poem, How To Survive A Sixty Hour Work Week On Just Above Minimum Wage. While it is, of course, a reference to the lost city, it is also a reference to Mark Doty's book and the time of my life when I first read it. Atlantis At Nineteen
1. Colorblindness Sun starved leaves A handful of wet beach ready for sculpture The color of a paper bag under transparent tape protecting textbooks from my clumsy adolescence Horseshoe crab shell All of these things we'd touched together And all i could think of when you took off your hat in your parents' basement was You have brown hair It was only in the darkness that I could realize the misdiagnosis of your hair color Two years of loving someone without noticing this basic physical trait I was still flash cards at lust Heart Sex Breath Touch At a bar with my coworkers from the Reconnaissance Faire I didn't note the leather taut atlassing the twin planets of the wax maiden as the exhaust of her day and her bourbon warmed my ear I thought why is this woman blowing in my ear? Everything so straight forward I didn't even know her name just the job she weekended for two months of the year The best part of her year when her ex took her two twelve year old sons and she dipped hands and roses into hot wax and blew hot air into the ears of nineteen year old gay boys too paralyzed to turn their heads I was of course staring at you a single row of straight white stones the lower shelf never cresting your bottom lip On the drive home you kissed your own hot air towards me without so much as leaning closer This was how I learned to love with distance 2. Strangers & Family Members Are Fiction I did not choose Mark Doty's "Long Point Light" for its language for how I would later imagine it an apt description of our relationship You liked lighthouses I was too stiff for "Homo Shall Not Inherit" The assignment read a poem to a diverse group of people ask them to tell you what the poem means Diverse on Cape Cod in 1998 meant my ashen mother my pasty boss the blanched friends of the pale children I nannied the cobweb customers at my corporate record store job my eggshell psychology classmates Diverse meant not the same age job level of education All these diverse listeners patiently described what this poem which was so obviously about how every day was a new opportunity to be honest with you and myself was so obviously about how I could see metaphor only in things you cared about All of these diverse listeners presented me with their own incorrect translations of this obvious poem Mistaking Doty's hazing and flickering as an invitation to build their own lighthouse to monument I bought whiteboard I mod podged photos of your favorite lighthouses printed out all these wrong interpretations of what was obviously our poem and threw away everyone else's truth I drew crude approximations of boats emerald fiberglass like your favorite color of seaglass polyurethaned wood like your hair silver like your car barn red like your duvet Each boat labeled with the description of an imaginary person The waves beneath them fake quotes I attributed to them each one a different way I looked at the poem except of course yours Who else had ever had an opinion that mattered? 3. There Is Never Enough Ocean I was twenty and selfish without understanding what my self was like everytwenty like everyyounglover I read Atlantis but came away with only "Long Point Light" said everything else was ocean and shimmer I had enough ocean around me enough shimmer when I tried to look to the future In college, I took a class called Poets In Massachusetts, where we studied sometimes localish poets but sometimes stretched just what it meant to be "in Massachusetts". For one of the final projects, we were asked to take a poem by an author we'd read, and ask several non-poetry readers what they thought of it. We, then, posted the answers and collage-type images onto giant whiteboards and displayed them on the walls of the classroom during the final weeks. I chose Mark Doty's "Long Point Light" from Atlantis. If I still had that stupid whiteboard, I might have cheated and posted some of the quotes here and called it a day. The project certainly created "an interaction". Instead, I've gone back to one of my favorite Doty poems, "Gross Fugue", and put my own spin on what a fugue would look like as a poem. I might come back to this poem and give it a more satisfactory ending, but I was really feeling Doty's last line There is no resolution in the fugue. The Fugue Electric, Unfinished
Adam Stone I go for three weeks without power because i will not be home for most of them and when i am home it will be daybright and the breeze keeps everything cool enough There are boats perched Obese vultures precarious in exhausted trees still dizzy from hurricane So not having power seems trivial Our house stands Our trees bereft of anything but birds and unmoored trash I have a battery powered lamp for camping but no desire to camp outside of my home Finally this little lamp has purpose Daylight is for the kayaks The rubber rafts claim the 9-5 We do not need electricity at night we have fire and all the appropriate snacks to eat like spoiled scouts The ladder to the zip line still standing though half the tree it was moored to collapsed into the climbing wall all i do is talk these days . those days . all days . but i won't bring anyone into my powerlessness . too dark . of course . too phosphorous my faults . the apartment shambled by a lack of light . piles of laundry . sleep in the daytime . talk to no one but cats . no one needs to see Cliff is the only one of us not allowed a lighter A book of matches Allowed to carry wood to the clearing but not place it in the flames When i am awake during the day i leave the house lit by the sun but barren I go off to the cofeehouses to charge my technology for the coming darkness How fortunate this hurricane in august The camp asunder The boathouse secured before the storm The canoes The kayaks The grub tubs The sunfish all safe But the windows lanced by branches and a door flown off the archery shed Cliff set fire to the fields behind our camp last summer I forgot to take my name off the account of a previous address How long until the boats collapse what's left of the trees? I never bothered to call the electric company It burned for an hour before anyone noticed Now I'm paying for it but with insomnia instead of money there was also the summer we cottaged next to our cousins until our new house was finished . a full summer of pond but no shower . minnows don't survive long as pets . flushing because at least running water if not light . but a real house just next door . also empire strikes back sleeping bag . generic flashlight . unscary ghost stories . the only jokes that stayed with me were unfunny and racist . surely someone told a joke without prejudice . lunches in the gazebo . a terrified parakeet . watching dragonflies fuck . ghost stories in the empty cottages . canada geese alarm clocks . big hiss . no electricity but access to a motorboat . jet skis . too young to waterski . cookouts on the other side of the lake . people who used the word cottage to describe houses bigger than any i've ever lived in . Cliff never told me Raking the branches off the beach how the fire smelled Every mattress seems alive with crumbs why he did it Plastic over windows when it's too dark to examine even though we shared a tent Paid overtime for Insomnia because of clean-up crew He didn't want witnesses even The satisfaction of too much darkness after the fact a job must done |
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