The idea for this blog post
came about because of the tremendous encouragement I received from posting a
poem dedicated to Mary Oliver on a social media page honoring her.
After reading the works of hundreds of poets, deciding my poems were totally out of sync, and giving up on
the genre I’d loved since childhood, I ran across a little book by Mary Oliver
with accessible poems I related to so well that I began to write again.
Naturally, I wanted to acknowledge her work, which, at the time, used the unique
format I mimicked in this poem:
Late Night with a Seasoned Poet
after reading Mary Oliver
I
cannot reach you
at five a.m. when you spring
awake to watch a summer rose
fall
into a pink-petaled
lake where fishes bloom.
I'm not a morning
person
unless a winter-
less night yawns & stretches
into dawn with jarring songs
of
owls & whippoorwills
and the charming squeak of
a bat. Outlined at dusk,
its
soaring silhouette
intersects the evening
sky, circling insects
and
other small mysteries
revealed to me before the
pink-pollen light recedes.
And
then,
everywhere,
everywhere,
black roses blossom: hybrids
cultivated from a long, wild
growing
season of the night.
Mary Sayler, from Living in the Nature Poem and A Gathering of Poems
Although he’d unfairly fallen out
of favor in the late 20th century, the work of Carl Sandburg drew me, too, because, like Mary Oliver, his poems were accessible and his metaphors apt. For example, his famous fog coming in on
cat feet resulted in this response:
Weathering Sandburg
The
fog comes in cat
fur:
pale gray Persian
with
traffic sounds
rolled
into the round
core
of a purring rug,
each
end opening to
skies
of Siamese blue.
Mary Sayler, from A Gathering of Poems
As I continued to discover
poets whose work I wanted to read more than once, poetry books by Wallace
Stevens started to appear on my bookshelves. His intriguing titles and love for
Florida (my almost-native-home) evoked this poem:
Landscape Loved by Wallace
Stevens
If
you could fly over \ yards and yards
of
green lace lining the Gulf and Space
Coasts,
you would see low-lying bands
of
land seeding the sea with pockets blue-
beaded
with water, and you’d wonder how
one
more word could fit into the shell-
shaped
pattern, hemmed with canals, and
not
unravel beneath the weight of so many
people
pushing the delicate fabric, poking
the
intricate design, picking at flaws not
found
in winter-bound spools of wool.
Mary Sayler, from Living in the Nature Poem and A Gathering of Poems
As
a writer and poetry-lover, I’ve often aspired to saying as much as possible in
as little space as possible. So, with that in mind, you can guess why Walt
Whitman’s longer-than-long poems didn’t initially appeal to me! But then, his poems
happened to be the only ones in a bookshop in the beach town where we were
vacationing for the weekend.
Reading this poet-ahead-of-his-times, I discovered
the incredible inclusiveness of his poetry. My response to him came right when
I’d found I liked reading and writing prose poems (aka paragraph poems), but the
impetus for the following poem came when I caught a glimpse of someone who looked like a
photo of Whitman.
Leaving Walt at the Mall
Coming
out of Dunkin’ Donut, I walked right by Walt Whitman without even speaking. You
know how he likes to include everyone in a conversation and can go on and on,
and I just wanted to get home before my caffeine let down. Later I felt bad
about giving him nothing more than a nod, especially since I’m sure his
driver’s license expired long ago. He’s been gone for over 100 years now and
was almost that old when he died, so I could have at least offered him a ride
somewhere, even though, by his very nature, he might not like being confined in
this little boxcar of a poem.
Mary Sayler, from A Gathering of Poems
Interestingly, a
contemporary of Walt’s, Emily Dickinson’s life and poems were almost the exact
opposite of his! While he traveled widely and embraced fully almost everything,
Emily lived a rather self-contained, reclusive life in New England where her poems resulted from penetrating observations of people. Often this included a breathless approach, dry wit,
and the musicality of ballads.
Emily Dickinson Dips Ink
The music breaks
crystal.
Shards
strike the page
with spikes and slivers.
Vermont maples
explode
red and gold
with no syrup
to make the fragments stick.
A dark stare
from a paper-white face
peers
at that bruise beneath
your left rib.
Mary Sayler, from A Gathering of Poems
While still enamored with prose
poem-writing and intent on discovering poets whose lives and cultures contrasted with my own, I ran across the sensitive, insightful, and soulful poems of Attila
Jozsef. In his poem, "The Dog, for instance, the creature and the poet morph into one. Anyway, I hope you will look up his work on the Internet and become familiar with
him and, indeed, all the poets honored in this post.
Scavengers
after reading Attila Jozsef by Attila Jozsef
Attila the Hungarian poet, I
really love you. Please
believe me before you throw
yourself beneath that
train. The fright of flying
freight crushes my reading
of your prose poems – poems
poised with insight
and odd juxtaposition. I try to
rescue the paragraphs
you pose from extermination,
reeling as I read. What
can I do but pet The Dog you
left behind, ragged and
muddy, ready to avenge your
wounds and scavenge
the pieces of God you hid in my
upper berth on this
looming train?
Mary Sayler, from A Gathering of Poems
A tragic loss for the
poetry world and for those who loved him, Jozsef committed suicide in his early
thirties. Since this month is being devoted to mental health awareness, perhaps his
work will be rediscovered. I hope so.
Around the same time I devoured
Jozsef’s poems, the poems of Marin Sorescu provided a delightful
diversion. Despite living under unimaginably oppressive conditions, Marin apparently made
the decision to write with wit and irony, rather than direct confrontation,
which kept his work publishable in his home country and, eventually, here.
Sorescu’s Core
in honor of a Romanian poet
Marin, I’ve been staring
at the painting that you did
as a cover for translations
of your poems: a bowl
of fruit, well-suited to design
the colorful plump phrases
pared to sink your teeth
into the pulp of apples,
oranges, lemons, life-sliced
and spiced and eaten with
your hands
behind your back, elbows
akimbo, juice
dripping
down my chin.
Mary Sayler, from A Gathering of Poems
Before publishing this
post, I revisited poems by these seven poets, trying to find specific hotlinks to recommend to you. The many options make me plead with you
to find and read their poems online!
Well, with five shelves at home devoted to poetry books, this post could go on and on! However, visual
problems hinder my reading, writing, and (definitely!) arithmetic as numbers
disappear and words or sentences look like they’ve been smashed by a compacter!
Nevertheless, my love for poetry hasn’t lessened, so I hope to continue with
this blog, albeit irregularly and with occasionally long gaps.
Thanks for bearing with me
all these years!
May God bless you and your
poetry adventures.
Mary Harwell Sayler ©2022
…
