29/12/2019

Marie Ponsot : 18 Poems





Private and Profane

From loss of  the old and lack of  the new
From failure to make the right thing do
Save us, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
     From words not the word, from a feckless voice
     From poetic distress and from careless choice
     Exclude our intellects,  James Joyce.
From genteel angels and apostles unappalled
From Hollywood visions as virgins shawled
Guard our seeing, Grünewald.
     From calling a kettle an existential pot,
     From bodying the ghost of  whatever is not,
     John save us, O most subtle Scot.
From pace without cadence, from pleasures slip-shod
From eating the pease and rejecting the pod
Wolfgang keep us, lover of God.
      Couperin come with your duple measure
      Alter our minds against banal pleasure.
Dürer direct with strictness our vision;
Steady this flesh toward your made precision.
     Mistress of accurate minor pain,
     Lend wit for forbearance, prideless Jane.
From pretending to own what we secretly seek,
From (untimely, discourteous) the turned other cheek,
Protect our honor, Demetrius the Greek.
     From ignorance of structural line and bone
     From passion not pointed on truth alone
     Attract us, painters on Egyptian stone.
     From despair keep us, Aquin’s dumb son;
     From despair keep us, Saint Welcome One;
     From lack of despair keep us, Djuna and John Donne.
That zeal for free will get us in deep,
That the chance to choose be the one we keep
That free will steel self  in us against self-defense
That free will repeal in us our last pretense
That free will heal us
      Jeanne d’Arc, Job,  Johnnie Skelton,
      Jehan de Beauce, composer  Johann,
      Dark  John Milton, Charter Oak  John,
Strike deep, divide us from cheap-got doubt;
Leap, leap between us and the easy out;
Teach us to seize, to use, to sleep well, to let go;
Let our loves, freed in us, gaudy and graceful, grow.
 








Anniversary

The big doll being broken and the sawdust fall
all scattered by my shoes, not crying
I sit in my dark to discover o failure annulled
opens out in my hands a purse of golden
salvaged sovereigns, from floors of seas culled.

The dancing doll split in an anguish and all
the cords of its elegant limbs unstrung; I
stumble whistling; the bones of my skull
marvelously start to sing, the whole shell
of myself invents without peril and contains a court aubade.

I hid the dovesmall doll but something found it. Frightened
I gave the fire what was left. Surrounding, it mulled
dulcet over the melting jeweled two blue eyes.
That night our hearth was desolate, but then its stones
sprung flowered and the soaring rafters arched.

Now all the house laughs, the sun shouts out clearly: dawn!
the sea owes us all its treasures; under the soft the riotous
explosion of our waking kiss or gift, a stone plucked or shorn
free of gravity falls upward for us, slow, and lies there, quietly.














A visit



"Fine bitches all, and Molly Dance . ."  Djuna Barnes

Come for duty's sake (as girls do) we watch
The sly very old woman wile away from her pious
And stagger-blind friend, their daily split of gin.
She pours big drinks. We think of what
Has crumpled, folded, slumped her flesh in
And muddied her once tumbling blood that, young,
Sped her, threaded with brave power: a Tower
Now Babel, then of ivory, of the Shulamite,
Collapsed to this keen dame moving among
Herself. She hums, the plays with used bright
Ghosts, makes real dolls, and drinking sings Come here
My child, and feeling it, dear. A crooking finger
Shows how hot the oven is.

(Also she is alive with hate.
 Also she is afraid of hell. Also, we wish
 We might, illiberal, uncompassionate,
 Run from her smell, her teeth in the dish.)

Even dying, her life is in her.  We stand stock still
Though aswarm with itches under her disreputable smiles.
We manage to mean well. We endure, and more
We learn time's pleasure, catch our future and its cure.
We're dear blood daughters to this every hag, and near kin
To any after this of those our mirrors tell us foolishly envy us,
Presuming us, who are young, to be beautiful, kind, and sure.


 

Anti-Romantic 


I explain ontology, mathematics, theophily,
Symbolism and Aristotelian logic, says the tree.

I demonstrate perspective's and proportion's ways.
I elucidate even greyness by my greys and greys and greys.

Gravity's laws, the four dimensions, Sapphic imagery,
Come from contemplating me,
Says the tree.

I perfectly exhibit the functions of earth and air:
Look up, at and through, my branches, leaved, budded, or bare
Laid in their luminous degrees against lustrous infinity:
Your seeing relates you to all of space, through me.
Here's aesthetics, too. No sight's nearer to perfectly fair.
I am mediate and immediate, says the tree.

I am variable, exquisite, tough,
Even useful; I am subtle; all this is enough.
I don't want to be a temple, says the tree.
But if you don't behave, I will be.








For Elizabeth Bleecker Averell, D. 20 June 1957 



Abrupt as that blessing gesture you always made
When we met or went our ways, you've bravely fled
Lonely as ever, and no more than usual afraid,
Beyond us, Elizabeth, abruptly dead.

 Outside, bird-sharp songs sprinkle the sea-green grass;
Small-leaved trees sparkle with birds in June light, in sea air.
 You're not kneeling here. This is your Requiem Mass.
We kneel. You triumph. Your absence strains our sight.
Even later, your sons, even grown, won't know how fair,
How tall as bridal, vivid, their young young mother was.

Your hard grace, your handsome, hurt-taught
Body that made much of much delight,
Your flashing, sun-bound head,
With you, are dead.

In life you were merciful, loved
All degrees of subtle enemies, I
Among them who, sure I loved you, did
Not cherish you, and so now cry.

Elizabeth, who living was courteous, was merry day by day,
Glorious friend, befriend me beyond death;
Show us who do not love or know love enough or go love's way
Your now love without limit, please, Elizabeth.
 









Springing

In a skiff on a sunrisen lake we are watchers.

Swimming aimlessly is luxury just as walking
loudly up a shallow stream is.

As we lean over the deep well, we whisper.

Friends at hearths are drawn to the one warm air;
strangers meet on beaches drawn to the one wet sea.

What wd it be to be water, one body of water
(what water is is another mystery) (We are
water divided.) It wd be a self without walls,
with surface tension, specific gravity a local
exchange between bedrock and cloud of falling and rising,
rising to fall, falling to rise.














Winter

I don’t know what to say to you, neighbor,
as you shovel snow from your part of our street  
neat in your Greek black. I’ve waited for  
chance to find words; now, by chance, we meet.

We took our boys to the same kindergarten,  
thirteen years ago when our husbands went.
Both boys hated school, dropped out feral, dropped in  
to separate troubles. You shift snow fast, back bent,  
but your boy killed himself, six days dead.

My boy washed your wall when the police were done.  
He says, “We weren’t friends?” and shakes his head,  
“I told him it was great he had that gun,”
and shakes. I shake, close to you, close to you.  
You have a path to clear, and so you do.



Autumn Clean-Up

There she is in her garden
bowing & dipping, reaching
stretched with her shears --
a Ceres commanding forces
no one else any more fears.

The garden's not enclosed.
It encloses her. It helps her
hold her joy. (She is
too shy for transports.)

It helps keep her whole
when grief for unchangeable reasons
waits to gnaw a tunnel in her
to run around wild in,
grinding its little teeth,
eager to begin.



Matins & Lauds

Excited as a sophisticated boy at his first
Passion of intellect, aware and fully free
Having lost title to full liberty; struck
Aware, for once, as I would always be;

It day and I still shaken, still sure, see
It is not ring-magic nor the faithing leap of sex
That makes me your woman; marks our free
And separate wills with one intent; sets
My each earlier option at dazzling apex
And at naught; cancels, paid, all debts.
Restless, incautious, I want to talk violence,
Speak wild poems, hush, be still, pray grace
Taken forever; and after, lie long in the dense
Dark of your embrace, asleep between earth and space.



Pre-Text



   (for Douglas, at one)

Archaic, his gestures
hieratic, just like Caesar or Sappho
or Mary’s Jesus or Ann’s Mary or Jane  
Austen once, or me or your mother’s you

the sudden baby surges to his feet  
and sways, head forward, chin high,  
arms akimbo, hands dangling idle,  
elbows up, as if winged.

The features of his face stand out  
amazed, all eyes as his aped posture  
sustains him aloft
                        a step a step a rush  
and he walks,

Young Anyone, his lifted point of view  
far beyond the calendar.

What time is it? Firm in time  
he is out of date—

like a cellarer for altar wines  
tasting many summers in one glass,

or like a grandmother
in whose womb her
granddaughter once
slept in egg inside
grandma’s unborn daughter’s  
folded ovaries.


 



What Would You Like To Be When You Grow Up?

1

Here I am in the garden
on my knees digging
as if I were innocent,
gloveless in island soil—
sandy, unstable,
hardly soil at all,
very sharp and mineral.

Planted to temper the heat,
this garden has trees & fruit trees.
After a stormy spring
it's a low-walled well of green
bouncing into blossoming.
Already it turns me
toward autumn crocus now in leaf,
chrysanthemum, feverfew,
white & gold after the pears drop.

It's at its best in winter,
free of me, as I imagine it-
its six wonderful places to sit
(next to the tarragon and sage,
under the dogwood for breakfast,
on a log beside the speedwell).

It has taught me
planning which is essential
is impossible.

Mistakes (bittersweet, honeysuckle)
come back every year
hugely bountiful. So do
the peonies, lilies, & daylilies,
& grandma's rampant rose.

Dear garden of my making
stuffed with my ideas & sweat,
you are reasonable.
Your pleasure
is, like me, physical.

So, behave.
I can't keep counting on my fingers
to make sure all your parts are on hand.

I head for the kitchen, to cook.
I have no other plans.

You were not what I needed after all.

2

The reason for the garden is
this rooming house, this tidy
body's heart, my minded body

where I now rent only
the attic regularly,
and the kitchen, on odd nights.

It is the shabby residence
or sidereal repeat
of recurrent astonishment.

And it has known in every room
the othering bliss of child,
my child, each child different
for each other's sake, each
blessing me blind,
tenant & ceaseless & tiresomely
teaching me
relentlessly
to reach joy by choosing
to love. I so choose, I think.

Only the rich can choose to be poor.
There must be something I can do.

I think I've got whatever I need
in the overhead compartment.











Northampton Style

Evening falls. Someone’s playing a dulcimer
Northampton-style, on the porch out back.
Its voice touches and parts the air of summer,

as if  it swam to time us down a river
where we dive and leave a single track
as evening falls. Someone’s playing a dulcimer

that lets us wash our mix of dreams together.
Delicate, tacit, we engage in our act;
its voice touches and parts the air of summer.

When we disentangle you are not with her
I am not with him. Redress calls for tact.
Evening falls. Someone’s playing a dulcimer

still. A small breeze rises and the leaves stir
as uneasy as we, while the woods go black;
its voice touches and parts the air of summer

and lets darkness enter us; our strings go slack
though the player keeps up his plangent attack.
Evening falls. Someone’s playing a dulcimer;
its voice touches and parts the air of summer.





Old Mama Saturday

   “Saturday’s child must work for a living.”

“I’m moving from Grief  Street.
Taxes are high here
though the mortgage’s cheap.

The house is well built.
With stuff to protect, that
mattered to me,
the security.

These things that I mind,
you know, aren’t mine.
I mind minding them.
They weigh on my mind.

I don’t mind them well.
I haven’t got the knack
of  kindly minding.
I say Take them back
but you never do.

When I throw them out
it may frighten you
and maybe me too.

                 Maybe
it will empty me
too emptily

and keep me here
asleep, at sea
under the guilt quilt,
under the you tree.”
















Pathetic Fallacies Are Bad Science But


     On reading Susanne K. Langer’s Mind


If  leaf-trash chokes the stream-bed,
reach for rock-bottom as you rake
the muck out. Let it slump dank,
and dry fading, flat above the bank.
Stand back. Watch the water vault ahead.
Its thrust sweeps the surface clean, shores the debris,
as it debrides its stone path to the lake,
clarity carrying clarity.

To see clear, resist the drag of  images.
Take nature as it is, not Dame nor Kind.
Act in events; touch what you name. Abhor
easy obverts of natural metaphor.
Let human speech breathe out its best poor bridges
from mind to world, mind to self, mind to mind.

Yet, I admit the event of the wood thrush:
     In a footnote Langer (her book rapids-clean
     like the spring-water aired over sleeked rock)
     says she witnessed an August bird in shock
     when a hawk snatched its mate. It perched, rushed
     notes fluting two life-quotas in one flood,
     its lungs pushing its voice, flushing the keen
     calls, pumped out as the heart pumps blood,
     not in twilight or warning but noon & wrong,
     its old notes whistled too fast but accurate.

I read this drenched in bird-panic, its spine-
fusing loss all song, all loss; that loss mine
awash in unanswered unanswered song.
And I cannot claim we are not desolate.









Imagining Starry


The place of language is the place between me

and the world of presences I have lost

—complex country, not flat. Its elements free-

float, coherent for luck to come across;

its lines curve as in a mental orrery

implicit with stars in active orbit,

only their slowness or swiftness lost to sense.

The will dissolves here. It becomes the infinite

air of imagination that stirs immense

among losses and leaves me less desolate.

Breathing it I spot a sentence or a name,

a rescuer, charted for recovery,

to speak against the daily sinking flame

& the shrinking waters of the mortal sea.







 





Thank Gerard

Cascade: rain torrential rain
waterfalls down our stone facade.

Our fields lately fire-parched
now glossy cross the flat rise
you ploughed earlier. The whole
length of one sillion-streak gleams

Gerard

cut-stroke the sillion the gash
we have in mind is your mind
         lifting muck-life
turned sunstruck to each side
silvershot at low sunset after the rain
every drop cataract
is not this the rain
you and I have longed for.

God to you
       hold him close-folded
       above his sillion
       Loft him Halo him
       Prize him high, pen in hand
       his two uprooted feet
       flailing awkward rain-streaked

       below his healing blooded knees.




Out of Water

A new embroidery of flowers, canary color,
                        dots the grass already dotty
                        with aster-white and clover.

I warn, “They won’t last, out of water.”
The children pick some anyway.

In or out of  water
children don’t last either.

I watch them as they pick.
Still free of  what’s next
            and what was yesterday
they pick today.







Among Women
 

What women wander?
Not many. All. A few.
Most would, now & then,
& no wonder.
Some, and I’m one,
Wander sitting still.
My small grandmother
Bought from every peddler
Less for the ribbons and lace
Than for their scent
Of sleep where you will,
Walk out when you want, choose
Your bread and your company.

She warned me, “Have nothing to lose.”

She looked fragile but had
High blood, runner’s ankles,
Could endure, endure.
She loved her rooted garden, her
Grand children, her once
Wild once young man.
Women wander
As best they can.

 









Marie Ponsot was born in Queens, New York, on April 6, 1921. She received a BA from St. Joseph’s College for Women and an MA from Columbia University. On a trip to Paris soon after World War II, she became friends with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the founder of City Lights Books. He published Ponsot’s first poetry collection, True Minds (City Lights Pocket Bookshop) in 1956.

While in Paris, Ponsot met the painter Claude Ponsot, whom she married. Together, they had seven children, whom she raised alone after their divorce in 1970. During this time, she also translated over thirty books from French to English.

Twenty-five years after the publication of True Minds, Ponsot published her second book, Admit Impediment (Alfred A. Knopf), in 1981. Since then, she has written several books of poetry: Collected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2016); Easy (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009); Springing: New and Selected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002); The Bird Catcher (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; and The Green Dark (Alfred A. Knopf, 1988).

On the importance of poetry, Ponsot said, “There’s a primitive need for language that works as an instrument of discovery and relief, that can make rich the cold places of our inner worlds with the memorable tunes and dreams poems hold for us.”

About her work, poet and critic Susan Stewart has said:

What she has written of her relation to the night sky—‘it becomes the infinite / air of imagination that stirs immense / among losses and leaves me less desolate’—could be claimed by her readers as a description of her own work, which pulls us always to forms of thought and attention that surprise and enlarge and cheer us.

In a New York Times review, Dinitia Smith writes, “A Marie Ponsot poem is like a little jeweled bracelet, carefully carved, with small, firm stones embedded in it. Her subjects are domestic life, marriage and sometimes swimming.”

Ponsot taught at Beijing United University, Columbia University, New York University, the Poetry Center of the YMHA, and Queens College. Her honors include the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 2013 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the Shaughnessy Medal of the Modern Language Association.

Ponsot served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2010 to 2014. She lived in New York City. She died on July 5, 2019.



PoetsOrg





More Poems here : 

 Poetry Foundation    







Also of interest  :

Undersung  : Marie Ponsot : Wandering Still. By Julie Larios. Numéro Cinq , January  2014.

 
Two interviews:

Marie Ponsot with Sally Dawidoff and Jean Gallagher. The Brooklyn Rail , October 2008
 

Between Riddle and Charm.  By Anna Ross . Guernica,  July 15, 2010




Remembering the life and poetry of Marie Ponsot. By Benjamin Ivry. America Magazine ,  July 16, 2019

Collected Poems by Marie Ponsot.  Reviewed by Sarah Kafatou. Harvard Review online,  September 17, 2019.
























































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