Fairchild, B.H. (ed.);
Ploughshares Spring 2008
Emerson College, 2008 Paperback
ISBN 9781933058092
topics: | poetry | anthology | usa
As I was leafing through the enormous piles of 1$ books outside the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan, I chanced upon this magazine, and in it, on Bruce Bond's Ringtone. A bit more riffling found Elizabeth Bradfield' Phrenology (just the conception is worth it, though isn't as stark and startling). At 1$, of course, I bought the book (or magazine?) Maybe it is a law of expectation. In the end, most of the poems didn't seem that strong - but on the whole it had a far higher than average incidence of good poems. Ploughshares is one of America's leading literary magazines, there is only so much good poetry coming out, really fresh. After I'd typed in Ringtone, I realized that almost all the poems are available at http://www.pshares.org/issues/issues.cfm?intissueid=126
As they loaded the dead onto the gurneys
to wheel them from the univesity halls,
who could have predicted the startled chirping
in those pockets, the invisible bells
and tiny metal music of the phones,
in each the cheer of a voiceless song.
Pop mostly, Timberlake, Shakira, tunes
never more various now, more young,
shibboleths of what a student hears,
what chimes in the doorway to the parent
on the line. Who could have answered there
in proxy for the dead, received the panic
with grace, however artless, a live bird
gone still at the meeting of the strangers.
http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmarticleID=8830
#roustabout
I was twenty-two, pretty maybe. It was a small town county fair: hot dogs, freak show, cotton candy, and heavy wheels laden with light, all tuned to the gaudy air. The Octopus—remember that one? Eight arms like extended girders, the thing was a metal Shiva juggling worlds: a cup spun at the end of each madly oscillating arm, every cup overfull of squealing kids or lovers drunk on the whip-sharp unexpected torque toward the expected rapture. He was maybe twenty, bare-chested, tanned and gleaming in the southern September night, a kind of summer in the lights that played across him as he pulled levers set to arm the bright contraption with speed and plunge, with whirl and rise. His hair was almost red in the lights’ translation. Not many riders yet, when suddenly he leapt onto one of the metal arms in its low sweep and rose with it. And laughed. I thought it might be for me, this showing off. He jumped onto the next arm as it rose, went up with it, then landed easy on the ground. He vaulted the lowered ones as they went by, stepped up again, and down again, then ducked under so a steel arm grazed his cap. How long ago it was. How long did I stand and watch that wild control before I turned to find my husband and child? He’s likely dead now, or deep asleep in some wine-dark room, some ragged dream. I think no golden years follow that life, though I can still see him shining new against black sky and turning stars— chancing it, taking on the monster, winning, dancing it.
Were the earth a skull, the lump at its base would read to Victorian doctors as amativeness: connubial love, procreative lust. And where the peninsula stretches up toward Patagonia a smidge of philoprogenitiveness, parental love, a fondness for pets and the generally helpless. Jules Dumont d’Urville, man of his times, had his own skull mapped before sailing to map earth’s southern blur. Were the earth a skull and someone with knowledge laid hands on it, felt topography for expression of its psyche, would this answer what questions are asked in slog and observation, in sample and ice core? Sub-Antarctic islands bulge at the spot of combativeness: self-defense, a go-to disposition and love of debate. Aimentiveness at South Africa and New Zealand: appetite, an enjoyment of food and drink. Jules was pleased with what the doctor found, felt himself seen truly. But what judges our human descriptions of place? Weather? Lichens? The transitory animals that touch upon it? Were the earth a skull, were its bones shaped by humors, were understanding so palpable, so constant.
Pressed between print, haunting gutters, we traded closeness for dialogue and plot, dropped concordantly to sleep not long before dawn, hardbacks propped on our chests like tents on a plain in Cooper. Wingless, piscatorial, we dined on starches and molds, slid into cracks, crevices, bathtubs on occasion. Troubled to escape their slick, enameled palisades, we chose the horizontal: Leaves of Grass in lounge chairs by the pool, Ginsberg on blow-up rafts. Our rooms, bibliographic amphitheaters, thronged with titled spines. The Odyssey, The Frogs, Collected Verse of John Crowe Ransom. We burrowed in Woolf, gnawed Updike and Austen, all of whom declared, The first sorrow can be lifted but not hauled off— a theme we paid too little notice, paying ransom to it, as we were, for and with our lives. During famine, we attacked the leatherware: fine-bound collector’s copies. Naturally, we considered children nymphs, creatures of liquid and myth. A decade’s passed since last we kissed. Were we mistaken to embrace, or simply overtaken by aversions to the real? One time, in a viscid afternoon no one but us recalls, I climbed the broken back of a sweet-gum tree while you snapped photos, unmindful of your thumb obscuring the lens. One can block a part of the heart, you know. You know, Lepisma saccharina, sweet tooth, old friend of sizing and glue. Thankfully, the damage we did, commensurate with our kind, was slight—minor foxing of silks and rayon. Yet I sometimes think we might have flourished had we canoed the Susquehanna, or submitted to the balms of church. Studious, antennae raised, we sought protection in exacted meaning, forced our minds to mind and called the act reflection. It didn’t help. Lost in leitmotifs, humidities of simmering conflict, we came to begrudge the characters we consumed—their crafted shapeliness, perfect aim at fate. Who could blame us in our supple exoskeletons, lank appendages? We had to part. Like every paradise, ideal companionship exists purely on the page, is the page. Here. For old times. Feed on this.
1. Once more. My obligation to my mind requires that I speak in the only way it understands.—This time, of the oldest tree remembered, the garden oak in its mysterious well which utters still, each spring—after winter and all its snows—new branches, and on them leaves. Then flowers—and, then its proper seeds, each acorn in a cup, each also an oak to be remembered, an oak in just such a remembered garden as this one is. Sit down with me. I have more to say... And there is honor in finding the words. 2. NOTE! I am not a speaker of your kind. No one you hear is a speaker of your kind. The first poet I knew, my only master, was not human, not a speaker of our kind. Honor is repeating words good enough— mute, eloquent, and true—as uttered by the garden oak, rooted in its mysterious well, when the wind rose up and the oak uttered words, and taught. Whatever I may have said to you, or to another (it’s now fifty years of saying), whatever in or around the words seems for a moment true, is of no account unless 3. you hear the oak say it too. Such is the way, reason of rememembering. Listen! It is not I who speak. You do not attend to me, alone. Above us both, above each one, the master of winters rooted in a mysterious well, makes words known.—Something knocks at the window. It is thought of the world without intention, without naming and without a name, or the idea of name. Now it is brought to mind— enormous sway, without love or intention to love. All my life, I sit in the shadow of the oak, spectator of its changes—and the weather. 4. Come out with me and feel the enormous sway of one will that’s free. Although dark and rain shroud body and soul. Although you are weary and cold as hell, be patient with my words and sing along with me. I am like you. You are like me—on the same road—and each of us has a story. We are not free. Nor are we slaves. We are not lost. Not found. There is a tree we know—the two of us— the garden oak, rooted in a mysterious well. Under that tree, master of seasons, sit down a moment. Consider. Then go your way.
We’ll never know for sure now, you in your garage with the motor on and the tailpipe clogged and the door closed, three days before the trial. Your wife found you after she found the note, and this morning the numinous beauty of low fog in our field has taken on a strange gloom, a lone deer grazing there with an alertness that you must have had many days of your life, lest you be caught. For twenty-five years we knew you to be a man who could charm a room, yet stand up at a faculty meeting and press an argument, not back down. When we dined with you, you loved to tell us all the places you’d been. How stupid of you to allow your computer to be repaired, the hard facts on the hard drive— all those boys, girls, this other life. What brilliance, though, to have concealed it for so long. And how nearby desperation always must have been. I’ll remember your face now as a thing with a veil, what I so admire in poker players. You were not one of those. When word first got out, we called you, said we were there for you. In our minds you remained a friend. We didn’t call again. When does a friend cease being a friend? After which betrayal, yours or ours? Or do we just go on in the muck and the mud holding ourselves up the best we can? That’s what we’re asking ourselves, the fog lifting a little, the newspaper with your photo in it open on our table.
INTRODUCTION B. H. Fairchild Introduction 7 EDITOR PROFILE Rebecca Morgan Frank About B. H. Fairchild 192 FICTION Barbara Dimmick Honeymoon 46 Christie Hodgen Tom & Jerry 68 William Lychack Stolpestad 105 Maile Meloy Agustín 125 Gerald Shapiro Mandelbaum, the Criminal 153 NONFICTION James Brown Missing the Dead 22 Alexis Wiggins Unanimal 180 POETRY Betty Adcock Roustabout 11 [she remembers a worker at a country fair, I was twenty-two, pretty maybe. It was a small town county fair: hot dogs, freak show, cotton candy, he was showing off on the giant wheel - was it for her? the southern September night, a kind of summer in the lights that played across him as he pulled levers set to arm the bright contraption with speed and plunge, with whirl and rise. His hair was almost red in the lights’ translation. as a twist, she has to leave "to find my husband and child".] William Baer Motes 13 ["detritus of the universe" "hovering in the shafts of the morning air" A "suffocating sea / of sunlit dust that pins him to bed." the end, with the eyes "clogged with motes", didn't work for me.] William Baer The Puzzle House 14 [ “I think you think I don’t know who you are,” she says at the window, “but I know what I know.” she no longer recognizes people, (possibly her son). She's been doing a jigsaw puzzle, of Escher's Waterfall. Clozapine and stimulants give hope, but in the end, there is no recognition.] Christopher Bakken Drunk 15 [memories of a friend who got drunk in his Impala; didn't work for me] George Bilgere Muscle 17 [memories of muscle cars, "Cougars, Mustangs, GTOs." rumbling off "for no particular reason" - When suddenly, through a dirty, underhanded trick of time, I’m turning gray at a table in front of Starbucks. Sipping a latte, talking mortgage with a woman I seem to be married to. A silly little Prius scoots by without a sound, followed by a bleak Insight. ] Michelle Boisseau Eighteenth-Century Boisseau House 18 [An old house, "snaggle-toothed shutters", shirts on a clothesline become chickens (mass or count noun?). Technically well-crafted, but the excitement is not there. ] Michelle Boisseau Monstrance 19 [MONSTRANCE = step-by-step proof <- demonstration; Good with the innovative turn of phrase "Cranky and cratered, I maneuver like a moon of bright remarks." but overall the theme does not gel that strongly. ] Bruce Bond Ringtone 20 [One of the most powerful poems in this issue; - was the U. Virginia shooting that old, or is it some other episode?] As they loaded the dead onto the gurneys to wheel them from the univesity halls, who could have predicted the startled chirping in those pockets the live cellphones, playing their favourite ringtones, provide a stark contrast to the dead being carried off.] Elizabeth Bradfield Phrenology 21 [the earth as a skull, being investigated by phrenologists] Robert Cording Gift 32 [man losing touch, under morpheme for severe back pain, still clinging onto every day as a gift.] Chad Davidson Labor Days 34 [while working at a dress outlet in a stip mall in california, his first experience of snow, or is it a flurry of pizza flyers? ] Stephen Dunn Aesthete 36 [is the wife more important than one's art collection- you wonder as a fire rages, which one to save. an interesting idea, but not as strong in the end. ] Stephen Dunn To a Friend Accused of a Crime He May Have Committed 37 [a friend and faculty colleague - has had a secret second life, and then it is found while a hard disk is being repaired. eventually commits suicide from the exhaust of his car When does a friend cease being a friend? After which betrayal, yours or ours? ] Peter Everwine Rain 39 [memories of an old camping trip with father, 60 years back, come back in the rain] Gary Fincke The Art of Moulage 40 [MOULAGE = dummy injuries, skin diseases, used in training. Starts w Joseph Towne, who was one of the early makers of moulages (was a wax sculptor) - and then to deformities from age (his father) or accidents. In the end, "our skin becomes A sieve for horror that rises through the pores."] Gregory Fraser Silverfish 42 [how can one not like a journey through books. As a silverfish, you get to roam "bibliographic amphitheaters, thronged with titled spines". You slide into "cracks, crevices, bathtubs on occasion" - the reader reconstructs a lover being hinted at - she takes photographs oblivious of her thumb on the lens (how do I know it's a woman? is it my bias that a man's less likely to do so?). En route, you get to know that Lepisma saccharina is silverfish. In the end, Like every paradise, ideal companionship exists purely on the page, is the page. Here. For old times. Feed on this.] Carol Frost Apiary XV 44 [This poem was all novel juxtapositions, all technical , "ziggurat beehive auroras" - without any substance, without any ambition to connect to the soul] Carol Frost Two Songs for Dementia 45 [I didn't get much out of this two part poem, one about a bird, and the other about a bear and honey. ] Allen Grossman The Garden Oak 54 [Come, sit down with me, in this "remembered garden", where the oak its oldest tree. Is it a love lyric, is it just words? Does it matter? Sway with my words, sing with me. Let it suffuse for a while, "then go your way".] R. S. Gwynn Body Politic 56 [a complex poem, with a rhyming pattern and interesting use of parenthetic remarks about body parts and functions. On the whole an analogy of a nation falling apart from inside - rumours, prophecies, and then a war or revolution, leading to a joyless end.] Rachel Hadas Leaning In 59 Rachel Hadas Tu Ne Quaesieris 61 Mary Stewart Hammond Facing Eternity 62 Mary Stewart Hammond Portrait of My Husband Reading Henry James 63 Sarah Hannah Some Pacific Vapor 65 C. G. Hanzlicek Dolphin Weather 66 Bob Hicok My Stab at Recruiting 92 Tony Hoagland Powers 94 Colette Inez Looking for Nana in Virginia 96 Colette Inez What the Air Takes Away 97 Roy Jacobstein Black 98 Mark Jarman Fates at Baptist Hospital 99 Mark Jarman Haiku 101 Ted Kooser 110th Birthday 102 Ted Kooser Theater Curtains 103 Ted Kooser Writing Paper 104 Jeffrey Levine A Slight Illumination, a Pacific Vapor 112 David Mason From the Anthology 113 Michael Meyerhofer The Clay-Shaper's Husband 115 Robert Mezey Long Lines, Beginning with a Line Spoken in a Dream 117 Robert Mezey The Other Tiger 118 D. Nurkse Altamira 120 D. Nurkse Bertrand de Born Smuggles a Letter Out of Hell 121 Alicia Ostriker The Husband 123 Alicia Ostriker Winter Trees 124 Alison Pelegrin Tabasco in Space 138 Catherine Pierce The Books Fill Her Apartment Like Birds 141 Catherine Pierce A Short Biography of the American People by City 142 Ron Rash Dylan Thomas 144 Ron Rash Shelton Laurel: 2006 145 Jay Rogoff Manhattan 146 Clare Rossini After a Woodcut of a Medieval Anatomy 147 Faith Shearin Each Apple 149 Faith Shearin Trees 150 Maurya Simon St. Jerome the Hermit 151 Julie Suk Flying Through World War I 182 Anne-Marie Thompson Babcia 184 David Tucker The House 185 Charles Harper Webb Three Abominations 186 Charles Harper Webb What Kitty Knows 187 Alan Williamson For My Mother 189 Irene Willis You Want It? 191 BOOKSHELF Maryanne O'Hara rev. of The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff 198 Dana Levin rev of. National Anthem by Kevin Prufer 199 Margot Livesey rev. of Every Past Thing by Pamela Thompson 201 Robert Arnold rev of. Eternal Enemies by Adam Zagajewski 203 EDITORS' SHELF Robert Boswell Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream by Connie Voisine 205 Ron Carlson A Proper Knowledge by Michelle Latiolais 205 Jane Hirshfield The Opposite of Clairvoyance by Gillian Wegener 205 David St. John Litanies Near Water by Paula Clausson Buck 205 EDITORS' CORNER The Reserve by Russell Banks 206 The Soul Thief by Charles Baxter 206 Watching the Spring Festival by Frank Bidart 206 Fire to Fire by Mark Doty 206 Hardheaded Weather by Cornelius Eady 206 Sea Change by Jorie Graham 206 Special Orders by Edward Hirsch 206 Safe Suicide by DeWitt Henry 206 The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman 206 The Kingdom of Ordinary Time by Marie Howe 206 Wrack and Ruin by Don Lee 207 The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey 207 God Particles by Thomas Lux 207 Seven Notebooks by Campbell McGrath 207 The Senator's Wife by Sue Miller 207 1940 by Jay Neugeboren 207 That Little Something by Charles Simic 207 Immortal Sofa by Maura Stanton 207 Save the Last Dance by Gerald Stern 207 Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff 207 Rising, Fall, Hovering by C. D. Wright 207 CONTRIBUTORS' NOTES Contributors' Notes 208