VRZHU bullets of pure love

Please proceed to http://www.emster.com/prufrock/ and read the following

"Maggie Foote and I were having some beers at Maggie’s in Westminster, MD. We were talking about a similar project we’d done years ago, where 13 writers made art in response to each of the stanzas of Wallace Steven’s poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. She said, “We should do it again. We should do it for Prufrock.”

I is the wonderful, fierce poet  Barbara DeCesare. It is the exhibit, the telos of Ms. DeCesare’s Prufrock Project, which, those lucky enough to visit:

The YorkArts Gallery
10 North Beaver Street
York
PA
(717) 848-3200
info@yorkarts.org

can behold as:

The Prufrock Project Mini Exhibit

from:

November 16 to November 28, 2009

with an opening reception on November 21, 2009 @ 6:00 pm to celebrate:

over forty artists and writers from your neighborhood across the globe contributing to York’s Prufrock Project—each creating art based on stanzas from T. S. Eliot’s famous poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” This image-packed poem is transcribed in art to create a meditation on its various elements.

Visit http://www.emster.com/prufrock/ for more information.

AND featuring the art of two of Vrzhu Press/Beothuk Books’ beloved authors: Kim Roberts (The Kimnama) and Dan Vera (The Space Between Our Danger and Delight).

NEWS ON THE MARCH!!!

NEWS

For those of you who live in the immediate area of Washington, D.C. (motto: Visit Washington! It’s a *Capitol* offense!), Kay Ryan will be kicking off her second term as Poet Laureate with a reading at the Library of Congress on October 21, 2009.

I encourage you to attend this reading if you have a chance, whether you are a writer or not, and, if you are a writer, whether you find Ryan’s poems congenial or not.

As it happens, the online journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, has just put up an issue on the U. S. Poets Laureate, aka The Consultant in Poetry aka Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, that last being the current official title, courtesy of, no doubt, The Department of Redundancy Department.

The issue is guest-edited by Vrzhu Press’ own unindicted co-conspirator, Dan Vera. Nice Work, Dan. And a tip o' th' hat to editor-in-chief Kim Roberts, a noted Vrzhu Press author.

MORE NEWS

Upcoming (imminent!) Vrzhu author Carol Guess, who we are just crazy about, is a featured writer over at the Genpop Books, where you can read four of her wonderful prose poems, a form of which she is a master.

Also don’t forget Carol’s book, Timberbox Lawn, is available from Rose Metal Press, one of the hottest new presses around (along with, e.g., Big Game Books, and No Tell Books).

TRANSLATION

Here, from that aforementioned issue of BPQ, is nice tidbit on translation from Grace Cavalieri and Joseph Brodsky:

Cavalieri: How much are we missing? We see and hear English translations of your poems and some are called brilliant in any language.

Brodsky: You can’t say you are missing much. You can’t say you are missing the prosody of another language. You can’t miss the acoustics of another language. The original is rooted in the euphony of the Russian language. That of course you can’t have and you’re not missing it. You can’t miss something that you don’t know.

Cavalieri: We can get a good lyrical poem anyway that is matchless.

Brodsky: That’s what it is if it works in English. You have to be a judge of solely how it is in English.

Cavalieri: We shouldn’t feel we’re getting only ninety percent of something which is absolute.

Brodsky: You get a poem in English, good or bad. You can’t fantasize about what it’d be like in the original.

That seems like one of the more reasonable remarks about the fraught issue of translating poetry.

Also I suggest giving serious consideration to Brodsky's advice to write your Nobel Prize acceptance speech NOW, "just in case."

Our History and a Gem from Our Vaults - A Vrzhu Classic Reprint

Many of you know of VRZHU as a hip purveyor of poetic treasure and cutting edge "content" as evidenced from our splendid books and our frequent contributions on the internets.  We're proud of that.

But our history is more storied than this.  Indeed, VRZHU Press as it is known today is just the most recent incarnation of what began in the 1500s in the tiny German town of Bad Muskau on the Polish border.  Originally known as Veröffentlicher von Versionen die Schäferhund Eingeweiden (loosely translated as "Publishers of Versions of Sheepdog Entrails"), much of its early history was lost in a tragic fire in 1816.  Indeed what little we know about VRZHU's first three centuries are based on what was written down by the survivors based on their memory of the records destroyed in the fire and the oral history of earlier publishers still living at the time.  While we concede that these testimonies are suspect, they are sadly all we have to go by.

The story that has come down to us is that the founder, one Leopold Fuhrwerk, was an itinerant poet who carried his books by cart, selling and reading village to village through German Silesia (then part of the Habsburg Monarchy).  He seemed successful, but at some point Fuhrwerk's more satiric work caught the attention of the authorities who did not look kindly on his more pointed policial commentary.  His quatrains about the "poofiness" of Archduke Rudolf pantaloons not only proved the big hit poem of 1568, it also threatened Fuhrwerk's safety. Sadly the quatrains about the young future Holy Roman Emperor were lost in the fire of 1816, but they proved scandalous enough to lead to Fuhrwerk's banishment from Silesia.  

Fuhrwerk resettled in Geneva where he died in 1629 from a case of faulty leeching.  

The bitter irony of Fuhrwerk's death is not lost to us.  You see, in an attempt of broadening the press's offerings, Fuhrwerk had just published the German edition of William Harvey's groundbreaking treatise  Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus which disproved the practice of leeching and bloodletting.  His death reminds us of the importance of trusting what we publish.

His family continued publishing and took the operation in different directions.  The next two centuries saw the growth of what we now know as VRZHU Press -- the name was mercifully shortened from Veröffentlicher von Versionen die Schäferhund Eingeweiden upon Fuhrwerk's move to Geneva.  They specialized in devotional poetry and, most successfully, wartime pamphletry.  

It is this latter work which is of note, as the press seemed to go where the work was, and in some cases operated as a proto-Hearstian fomentor of conflict.  In 1673 VRZHU opened presses in Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm and began publishing pamphlets that many historians credit for the start of hostilities that led to the bloody, and pointless, Scanian War of 1675.  The war lasted four years; during which VRZHU profited from the publication of humorous treatises attacking the intelligence and eating habits of the enemy.  What is of interest is that what VRZHU published in Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm was all the same, except for the change in nationality: the Danish and Norwegian pamphlets were scurrulously anti-Swedish, while the Swedish pamphlets were fiercely anti-Danish and Norwegian.  Extant pamphlets from this period include the Swedish pamphlet "What Peril Lies in the Danish Lutefisk Brine!" and the Norwegian pamphlet, "The Crown Lies Crooked on Princess Ulrike Eleonora's Head."  Both published by VRZHU Press and going through multiple printings.

It was a regrettable chapter in the history of the press.   But this being a particularly contentious century in European warfare, it was also a very long chapter.  Historians believe the press responsible for egging on 1683's Franco-Spanish War of the Reunions, agitating both the Austrian and Ottoman empires into 1716's Austro-Turkish War, and bullying France disastrous entry into 1748's Second Carnatic War, and 1762's Spanish and Portuguese War. 

Such agitations could not go uncontested and reached a frenesí when VRZHU's Madrid director,Gustav Pohleur was sentenced to death for publishing a pamphlet on the zoological parentage of the Infanta Maria Josepha.  Her father, the Spanish King Charles III, was not amused and had Pohleur put in stocks, and then condemned to death after a thorough clinical entrail deciphering.

The press' century of war-related endeavors were put to an end by Fuhrwerk's great, great, great grandson, Michel Le Caretier (who Francified the family name open moving operations to Paris in 1753).  In the aftermath of their wartime publications, the company's fortunes were vast, but its political position precarious after Pohleur's public trial and execution. Having made a fortune of ridiculing the culinary customs, hygienic habits, and questionable ancestral roots of most of Europe's nations and their aristocratic houses, Le Caretier had the good sense to move operations to the American colonies, opening businesses in New York and Philadelphia.  Le Caretier (now operating as "Michael Carter") returned the press to its poetic roots and established itself as the home for the voices of American poetry.  This is the inheritance we look forward to sharing with you in future installments.  The earlier history is largely regrettable, although it allows us the shabby comforts of our architectural déshabillé.

We're lucky and proud, especially in these days of publishing industry contraction and meltdown, to benefit from such a long and storied past, albeit little known to the outside world.  As a limited release publisher of poetic disquisition and arcana approaching its fifth century of productivity, we're blessed with a remarkable archives of material from our publishing forebears. 

However in the hurly burly of our current projects we rarely have the opportunity to explore the lares and penates of our inheritance.  So, we build that time into every meeting we have.

Yesterday during a rainy day conclave at VRZHU's Southeastern Regional Headquarters, we took some time to go through our voluminous archives.  Now the VRZHU Archives archives are immense and due to the economic downturn we have had to lay off about three quarters of our staff.  That staff included three interns and a chihuahua.  So after feeding little Fallstaff, we settled into about two hours of cobweb clearing and were delighted to find this gem from VRZHU Press's 1886 publication Pastures of Poetic Anthems and Descants of Delectation.  The work was a huge success of the year and served as the requisite anthology for two generations (copies fetch a pretty sum online and in antiquarian bookstores).  Here is Horace Bowleshare's gripping Ode from this collection.

To A Plum-Pudding

Shall fumes of haggis fill Apollo’s nose?
    Of “country messes” shall the Muse be fain?
    And thou, consummate compoud, thou remain
But them (too rare) of culinary prose!
Spheroid oblate, whose microcosm shows
    Choice gifts of nature from her triple reign
For Art’s deft hands to mingle and constrain,
Till round thy “spotty globe” blue ether glows.
    Salt, sugar, suet, flour and eggs and spice,
Citron’s green masses, raisin’s sanguine crowd,
Milk, cognac, lime-juice; minor dainties which,
    Though not essential, are exceedingly nice—
Sweet may be other cates (sic), but thus endowed,
O well-yclept plum-pudding, thou art rich.

Poem Infestation - a Vrzhu Reprint

We here in the research arm of Vrzhu Press are working [tirelessly] to improve the lot of poets, and consumers of poetry alike.

However.  Bethatasitmay. We also recognize that sometimes poetic efforts, effluvia and extravasations are not wanted or desired.

As such, one of the R&D efforts here in the warrens and catacombs of the VRB is to assist those for whom poetry is not an occasion, but a nuisance.  Here is a short summary of our initial research and a peek at one of our many products in continuous development.

Poem Infestation

Poems are among the most difficult household pests to control. Except for submission periods when they may migrate from place to place,  poems spend their entire life inside buildings. Usually they are found in libraries, bathrooms and bedrooms. They can be carried into homes in shopping bags, backpacks, furniture and pet foods.

Poems are one of the most disagreeable literary genres that may invade homes. While it is not true that an unkept home will cause a poem infestation, there is indeed a strong correlation between sanitation and poems once an infestation gets started.  The presence of poems often causes serious mental anguish for some homeowners. Poems often associate themselves with teenagers and are known to be involved in the spread of negative emotions which cause mild depression, self-absorption, herbal tea drinking, and more serious melodramatic behavior. Some people appear to be allergic to poems.

The exact origin of our domestic poems is disputed, but many are European, South American and Eastern in origin and now are widely distributed throughout the country. In most areas, homeowners are commonly bothered by five different categories of poems: confessional, experimental, accessible, surreal (which has a subcategory, deepimage), and nature poems, which are more at home outdoors but can also get into the house.

Species

The American poem may grow from one to several hundred pages. It can be identified by its normal markings: ragged, sloppy right margins and, frequently, a body segmented into “stanzas.”  There is not much reliable information about any one poem’s lifespan, which nonetheless seems to be highly variable: from a few minutes to many years or stretching cycles of years.

Oriental poems, or haiku, are uniform and small in appearance, no more than seventeen syllables long when full-grown and are easily recognized by their short lines, though mutations are possible. The haiku seems to be equally at home inside human habitation and outdoors, where they can be found near ponds or blossoms or other similar areas.

The European poem is larger, usually darker, but vary greatly in appearance and pronunciation. The European poem is quite active and can easily migrate throughout communities thus becoming a major pest, however, it seems to only truly thrive in the presence of American poems, a symbiotic relationship our poentomologists have termed “translation.”  Even so, a troublesome infestation can develop rapidly after the chance introduction of just a few individual poems. It is an unsettled question whether the South American poem, whose habits and behavior are almost identical to the European, is a subspecies, or is an entirely different species.

Another poem sometimes found invading the home is the Woodsy poem. This species lives outdoors and is not as fast nor as wary as its house-dwelling relatives. They may wander into buildings in wooded areas, or may be brought into the house under false pretenses. The males of this species (garysnyderus) are long-lived and have a rough appearance. The females (maryoliveria) are much more reclusive but probably more widespread.

Integrated Poem Management

It is easier (and less costly) to prevent poems from entering a structure than it is to get rid of them.  They can be discouraged from invading buildings by sealing cracks and crevices in foundations and outside walls. Careful inspection of all anthologies and omnibus selections is essential, as poems have been known to hide within large tracts of prose.

Carefully inspect all incoming books, magazines, and junk mail for the presence of poems or references to them.

Control

Unfortunately no method for controlling poems has proven universally successful. We here in the Vrzhu Research Bureau are working on a safe, convenient method of eliminating poem infestations when they occur.

Vrzhu claims no expertise in reviewing or criticism—we lack the necessary competence and nerve to accomplish anything in this area, and we are awed by a critic’s ability to discern, distinguish and apply hermeneutical apparatus in the destructing of creative works.

Bethathowsoever, once in a great while, a work (other than ones we have published, which are brilliant and unsurpassed) crosses our mahogany desktop here in the Research Bureau that we find so radical and original and groundbreaking that we are compelled to comment, if only to bring it to the attention of our vasty multitude of readers (104 hits in the last seven days alone!).

A work recently set before us can, I believe, accept the mantle of epic without so much as a blush, and meets our criteria for comment, being unique from several perspectives:

1. That it is a breakthrough work in a little known or appreciated genre.

2. That it combines visual artistry with post-lyrical writing such that both are so closely bound that neither could exist without the other—only together do they constitute meaning. This is so unprecedented a feat that comparisons with other, faux-similar, works—the collaborations of Susan Bee and Charles Berenstain, or the environments and compilations of Arakawa and Gins—are feeble at best.

3. That the work itself represents the next step beyond collaboration. The book was created by a collective—no individual or group of individuals takes credit as the author(s). It harks back in this sense to the medieval guilds whose productions were both anonymous and exquisite (note: There are some possible clues folded into the text itself that may identify members of the collective, at least visually. However, these are so integral to the work as to be opaque to any possible definite identification or biographo-interpretation).

If anything, the apparent methodology reminds us of nothing so much as some of the cinematic collectives of the 20th century: Chris Marker and Société pour la Lancement des Oeuvres (SLON), the films of Vertov and company, or the various technician/artists who produced Citizen Kane under an elaborately fictional persona they created known as Orson Mercutio Welles. However the work before us even more fundamentally erases the distinction between the individual and the group, the group and its productions. One could designate the whole enterprise (the book with its visual/written axes, and the “creators” of the book) as “Static Cinema,” to semi-coin a term.

[Editorial correction: It has been brought to our attention that we misspelled one of the individuals in this post. The corrected phrase should read “..the collaborations of Susan Bee and Charles Bernstein.” Mr. Bernstein is in no way related to the avant garde experimentalists Stan and Jan Berenstain. Vrzhu regrets the error.]

Enough preamble. It would be impossible to do justice to the whole work, its gestalt, without many hours, nay, months, of deliberation, research and analysis. Instead here is a tentative commentary about some of the sections in this sui generis miesterstuck.

There are threaded and woven themes and leitmotivs throughout the work. These predominate one section and show up sporadically (though not, it seems, randomly) in other movements within the work. The book as a whole opens with a long, finely wrought and subtle section on themes of containment and enclosure. Other themes tentatively identified are closure, imperatives, the seal, and there are indirect references to articulation, the concept of “safeness.”

But the opening section established a rigorously controlled poetic, wherein small and continual variations accumulate. The written to visual ratio fluctuates through the work but here in the beginning, text most strongly asserts it hegemony. The written portion seems to based on an Olsonian “open field” of projected verse, but mutated into a matricial truth-function that constrains the page and the expressible materiality within the page’s “horizon.” This “grid” contains the text even as it releases it to the reader/viewer as participant, and becomes a subspecies of its genetic ur-lyric: intrajected verse. Could the matrices that enclose and free the text be here at the inception because of the etymology of matrix as “brood animal, womb (‘All that openeth the matrix is mine’ - Exodus xxxiv.19)?”











This transitions into a epithelium on the instrumentality of aporia, here signified under the rubric “that which seals.” Note the “impulse” sealer—which undoubtedly functions as both Lacanian superego (the psychical agency constructed around residual fantasies of the Oedipal father’s access to the sovereign jouissance of the mother's body denied to the child) and instinct-jailing civilization (where the subject {text} must bear up vis-à-vis the condition of being a castrated animal forced to pursue its desire on 'the inverted ladder of the signifier', within the phallic order of its society’s big Other) which, ironically, requires “less pressure to activate.”










After the monochromatic permutations of the long opening section (akin to perhaps an overture?) the next sections build to an exhuberant climax (“Je suis un petit mort.”) that is part Jenny Holzer, part Kafka, part heterotopic JoJo the dog-faced boy.















Another section which struck us was one that alludes to the unique human “being-at-hand” here shown as articulation, but, significantly, covert articulation concretized by the glovedness of our interpenentration with the thing-world.


















One final preliminary prolegomena: imbedded in and as part of the visual text are “people.” Could these function as both markers and as hints to the multidentities of the author(s)? Perhap only in a combinatorial construct where Art is also Artist, the self-created creator who becomes her own creature (created) collapsing that which knows (sapiens) into that which guards (canis).












Vzhu salutes the Uline collective for this tantalizing and depthless work of art.

Hope for a Cure Vocal-based Morphometry Reveals Excess Poetic Matter Concentration in Patients with Graphic Poetical Dysplasia

Many patients with graphic poetical dysplasia (GPD) continue to write poems after treatment. The usual explanation for the poor outcome is the presence of residual poetical fluids missed by the pre-suction imaging investigation and therefore not leeched during treatment. We apply a vocal-based morphometry (VBM) analysis to the metaphoric resonance imaging (MRI) scans from patients with GPD and aurally detected GPD to investigate whether (a) VBM is able to detect ego-matter concentration (EMC) abnormalities in patients with GPD, and (b) whether the extent of EMC abnormalities in these patients can be renormalized using aural and critical self-feedback procedures.

Abnormal areas detected by VBM can possibly correspond to mild malformations of poetical development. GPD is a developmental malformation of the right margin cortex that is now recognized as one of the leading causes of drug-resistant poetomania. Noninvasive methods show the presence of lyric cortical thickening, alterations in the pentametric and ABAB patterning, blurring between metaphor- and simile -matter transition, and elongation of the subcortical ego image tapering towards often interminable recitational ventricles.

Carefully designed protocols can detect subtle reality lesions that will not be identified by routine evaluation. Although the diagnosis of GPD has improved, the reasons that many patients do not become poetry-free after poetic fluid reduction are still largely unknown. One possible explanation it that reality lesions in these patients are just the "tip of the iceberg" of a more pervasive dysplastic egomorphing.

Vocal-based morphometry (VBM) is a technique that uses automatic reclassification of poetry “output” with an aurally normalized feedback to reify the dormant critical response function of the patients.

Vocal-based morphometry Although we received an overwhelming numbers of samples (“review copies”) for use in normative structuring, we decided to use our own template to overcome (a) differences in form and school, (b) inhomogeneities in open field scansion, and (c) differences in the demographics of our population (slamist, flarfetics, snarkitudinism, emo, beatic, fugue-state quietude, post-avantilepsy). Poetic images and the template were convolved with an isotropic gluckian kernel (IGK) of 8 mm and were used for optimizing the nonlineation normalization of raw padding-stripped images. Finally, the images were convolved with an IGK of 10 mm to minimize ginsbergal interindividual exapansibility. This smoothing renders poetic-matter concentration normally distributed, enabling us to apply standard attention-span parametric mapping techniques.

We also were concerned that the differences in GPD between patients could be an effect of the younger age of some patients, even though all patients fell within two degrees of the mean age of attainment (MFA, and BA). To address this issue, we randomly selected three normal writers (essayist, short storyist, journalist), and the images from each one of these were compared with the mean imagism of the patients by using the standard analysis of covariance with age as nuisance factor.

RESULTS

VBM was able to detect a distinct poetic overproduction in each patient. 91% of the patients showed excess of publication and lack of empathy for reading attendees. In 82% of the patients this matched the area of significant EMC excess. In 64% of the patients, EMC excess extended beyond the area of poetic production faculties into post-reading behavior and casual anti-empathic ego-centering.

Among the patients who showed areas of increased EMC, the cluster size of the EMC excess in the region corresponding to ability ranged from 40 to 1,046 units of professional recognition.

DiSCUSSION

Clearly VBM is a crucial and effective tool in detecting GPD. However, the feedback part of the system showed varying degrees of effectiveness. How much of this is due to the restructuring of the poetic matter content, and how much to the impermeability of the poetic ego cannot be determined without a further refinement of our present techniques.

Until then such egomorphic poetry excesses are liable to be pervasive in the poetry world. But with vigilant diagnosis and aggressive treatment this scourge may one day be no more of a threat than small pox or overacting.

NaPoWriMo: Day 5

The Grief of Achilles
by Dan Vera

When Achilles awoke to discover
what had transpired
he was tested and failed
and fell inside his grief,

Outraged the Gods into fury
by the levels of his vengeance.
What is missing from the story
is the source of his rage,

The grief that metastasizes into darkness.
So the poets now can write of him as
going overboard for his drinking buddy,
Compare him to a racist dragging his victim
over the streets of the pestilent city,

Can make Hector the innocent and Achilles
a monster who has no reason for going insane.
But the lilac eye reads the story
and sees the mad grief of a lover

who made promises
who lived with the express understanding
that in the afterlife they two would
drink from the golden chalice together.

Patroklos, the form of his life,
put on Achilles' golden armor
the skin of his protection
and fought in his name,

Was pierced and killed in his name.
Consider the depths of his loss.
Not to excuse the madness
but to understand what drove him over

That line that exists for all of us
when what we most adore is taken.

NaPoWriMo: Day 3

Reflex  by Dan Vera

They will all return with the bones
that produced them.
But for a little time
a testament remains.

Miklós, they could not silence
you in an earthen grave.
We found you and the tiny book
inside the lining of your coat.

I think of you on days like this
when the light is gray
and my mind is jumbled
with what matters least.

You are standing there exhausted
stealing moments in the dark
to write the most important things
all in the face of approaching death.

Perhaps it is the reflex of our state
to know what comes and still insist
on recording what must be found.

Review of Dan Vera's The Space Between Our Danger and Delight

Colin Kelly has posted a review of Dan Vera's The Space Between Our Danger and Delight over on his blog, Modern Confessional, and included a poem from the collection, Father's Day for Gay Boys. TSBODAD was published by Vrzhu's fraternal twin press (or younger sibling press?), Beothuk Books.  Thanks, Collin, you are the soul of generosity!  T. S. Bodad?

Hayden Carruth dead at 87

Sad news.  A great one passes.

http://www.vpr.net/news_detail/82282/

Poet Hayden Carruth dies Tuesday September 30, 2008

Hayden Carruth, the Pulitzer prize-winning poet who lived in Vermont in the 1960s and 70s, has died at his home in New York state.

He won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Award for Poetry for his book, "Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey."
Carruth published more than 30 books and was known for his poems about the people and places in northern Vermont.

In 1973 he received the Governor's ward for excellence in the arts from the Vermont Council on the Arts. He also received the Vermont Governor's Medal.

In 2002, a series of celebrations around the state honored his work.

Lois Eby, a longtime friend, said at the time that Carruth had a special richness of interest, a gift for language and a sense of humor that were all apparent in his poems.

He was 87.

Addeddum: Here are some additional obits and tributes

New York Times

Harriet (Poetry Foundation blog)

American Academy of Poets

Metafilter

Syracuse.com (great picture)

Washington Post

Verse

A review of Toward the Distant Islands

Can anyone give me a sense of his tenure as editor of Poetry? 

Here are a couple poems by Hayden Carruth:

Agenda At 74
Hayden Carruth

Tap barometer, burn trash,
put out seed for birds, tap
barometer, go to market
for doughnuts and Dutch
Masters, feed cat, write
President, tap barometer,
take baby aspirin, write
congressmen, nap, watch
Bills vs. Patriots, tap
barometer, go to post
office and ask Diane if
it's cold enough for her,
go to diner and say "hi,
babe" to Mazie, go to
barber shop and read
Sports Illustrated, go
home, take a load off,
tap barometer, go to
liquor store for jug
(Gallo chablis), go
home, pee, etc., sweep
cellar stairs (be careful!),
write letter to editor,
count dimes, count quarters,
tap the fucking barometer . . .



Prepare
Hayden Carruth

for Joe-Anne McLaughlin Carruth

"Why don't you write me a poem that will prepare me for your
death?" you said.
It was a rare day here in our climate, bright and sunny. I didn't feel like
dying that day.
I didn't even want to think about it -- my lovely knees and bold
shoulders broken open,
Crawling with maggots. Good Christ! I stood at the window and I saw
a strange dog
Running in the field with its nose down, sniffing the snow, zigging and
zagging,
And whose dog is that? I asked myself. As if I didn't know. The limbs
of the apple trees
Were lined with snow, making a bright calligraphy against the world,
messages to me
From an enigmatic source in an obscure language. Tell me, how shall I
decipher them?
And a jay slanted down to the feeder and looked at me behind my glass
and squawked.
Prepare, prepare. Fuck you, I said, come back tomorrow. And here he
is in this new gray and gloomy morning.
We're back to our normal weather. Death in the air, the idea of death
settling around us like mist,
And I am thinking again in despair, in desperation, how will it happen?
Will you wake up
Some morning and find me lying stiff and cold beside you in our bed?
How atrocious!
Or will I fall asleep in the car, as I nearly did a couple of weeks ago,
and drive off the road
Into a tree? The possibilities are endless and not at all fascinating,
except that I can't stop
Thinking about them, can't stop envisioning that moment of hideous
violence.
Hideous and indescribable as well, because it won't happen until it's
over. But not for you
For you it will go on and on, thirty years or more, since that's the
distance between us
In our ages. The loss will be a great chasm with no bridge across it
(for we both know
Our life together, so unexpected, is entirely loving and rare). Living
on your own --
Where will you go? what will you do? And the continuing sense of
displacement
From what we've had in this little house, our refuge on our green or
snowbound
Hill. Life is not easy and you will be alive. Experience reduces itself to
platitudes always,
Including the one which says that I'll be with you forever in your
memories and dreams.
I will. And also in hundreds of keepsakes, such as this scrap of a poem
you are reading now.

"Prepare" is from Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey: Poems 1991-1995,
available from Copper Canyon Press