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The following is a short excerpt from a much longer, and excellent poem by Sandra Agricola, entitled, "Nocturnes: The Gift of Suicide":
[...]
Indirect objects -- all of us -- of someone else's
misguided actions.
XXXXXX____
It would be pointless and tiresome to go into my personality,
my childhood, my body language. Sometimes things transpire for
no particular reason. Dams burst and engineers stand around
scratching the seats of their courduroy britches. People fall
in love with victims everyday for no apparent reason. Falling
away from someone can be understood in the same way.
XXXXXX____
[...]
"Indirect objects--all of us." Aye, and there's the rub.
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Showing posts with label Sandra Agricola. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sandra Agricola. Show all posts
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Reflections: A Hot Tip
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Do you want to make a day sometime in your hopefully not-too-distant future really worthwhile? Okay, then, here's the agenda: first, do whatever it takes to get your hands on a book entitled White Mercedes by a poet named Sandra Agricola. It won't be that easy to find the book. But the effort of finding it is part of your reward. It will be seen at the end of the day as your gift to yourself.
Okay, you have the book. So now you need to open it to the poem, "Mae West: A Masterpiece." If you have the hardback, it's on page 27.
Read it. Carefully. Thoughtfully. You'll probably want to read it again. You may then want to go into your room and shut the door and read it out loud. As you do so, you might want to imagine that you're reading it to an audience, and that the audience is as blown away by the beauty and wisdom of the poem as you were, back when you read it for the second, or third, time.
That's it. That's all there is. It's just that simple.
Now wasn't your day worthwhile? And hasn't your humanity been enhanced by the acquisition of an objective good commensurate with the vast scope of that poem's gift? You know that it has. X
For that, be grateful.
X
Do you want to make a day sometime in your hopefully not-too-distant future really worthwhile? Okay, then, here's the agenda: first, do whatever it takes to get your hands on a book entitled White Mercedes by a poet named Sandra Agricola. It won't be that easy to find the book. But the effort of finding it is part of your reward. It will be seen at the end of the day as your gift to yourself.
Okay, you have the book. So now you need to open it to the poem, "Mae West: A Masterpiece." If you have the hardback, it's on page 27.
Read it. Carefully. Thoughtfully. You'll probably want to read it again. You may then want to go into your room and shut the door and read it out loud. As you do so, you might want to imagine that you're reading it to an audience, and that the audience is as blown away by the beauty and wisdom of the poem as you were, back when you read it for the second, or third, time.
That's it. That's all there is. It's just that simple.
Now wasn't your day worthwhile? And hasn't your humanity been enhanced by the acquisition of an objective good commensurate with the vast scope of that poem's gift? You know that it has. X
For that, be grateful.
X
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Readings: more Sandra Agricola
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I think I’m in love. I’m not certain whether it’s what she says—the tough abundance of her revealed intelligence—or how she says it. Or, maybe, it’s the larger context—the vast world of her gift’s creation—the place in which her word-constructed visions are made manifest. Whatever it is that grasps me (the poet as I imagine her, gazing my way with bedroom eyes), I sit at her feet disarmed, enthralled. I have excerpted her at Rodak Riffs before; below I offer a few more passages that have had their way with me:
from “The Origin of Evening”
[…]
Ah Eve, the origin and cause of evening,
tonight you are forgiven for coming on too strong
and leaving all of us, both
the quick and the dead,
in bed alone.
[…]
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx …. Meanwhile,
God and the Devil are having their own problems.
One is bored and considers divorce,
the other is married to his job.
from “Body and Soul”
[…]
All my life I’ve tried to exchange this life
for another,
I’ve tried to inherit the Good Society—
fat lab growing old by the fire,
cypress wood and fieldstone,
Charles Dickens and lobster tails,
John Crowe Ransom with Grand Marnier.
But that’s beyond my time,
beyond my time.
from “Nocturnes: The Gift of Suicide”
[…]
Someone who once knew me said I didn’t have many friends
Because I didn’t know how to be a friend. I guess that’s right.
He's gone now, too. Maybe to prove his point, maybe coincidence.
[…]
I’m telling you all this not so you’ll go away feeling kind-hearted
and rush to the aid of some lonely bastard outside the grocery
store when his sack breaks and fifteen cans of Vienna sausage
go rolling across the parking lot. I’m telling you so you’ll understand,
when it happens to you, that time spent trying to remember
what you said or did, time spent improving your communication
skills and general attitude toward man is time wasted. Hamlet
said, ‘you would pluck out the heart of my mystery.”
What he meant was you will try to get at the bottom of a problem
by the killing the subject. The mystery, the problem, remains.
The best thing is to wait.
[...]
Ah, Sandy…I’m waiting. I’m waiting.
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I think I’m in love. I’m not certain whether it’s what she says—the tough abundance of her revealed intelligence—or how she says it. Or, maybe, it’s the larger context—the vast world of her gift’s creation—the place in which her word-constructed visions are made manifest. Whatever it is that grasps me (the poet as I imagine her, gazing my way with bedroom eyes), I sit at her feet disarmed, enthralled. I have excerpted her at Rodak Riffs before; below I offer a few more passages that have had their way with me:
from “The Origin of Evening”
[…]
Ah Eve, the origin and cause of evening,
tonight you are forgiven for coming on too strong
and leaving all of us, both
the quick and the dead,
in bed alone.
[…]
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx …. Meanwhile,
God and the Devil are having their own problems.
One is bored and considers divorce,
the other is married to his job.
from “Body and Soul”
[…]
All my life I’ve tried to exchange this life
for another,
I’ve tried to inherit the Good Society—
fat lab growing old by the fire,
cypress wood and fieldstone,
Charles Dickens and lobster tails,
John Crowe Ransom with Grand Marnier.
But that’s beyond my time,
beyond my time.
from “Nocturnes: The Gift of Suicide”
[…]
Someone who once knew me said I didn’t have many friends
Because I didn’t know how to be a friend. I guess that’s right.
He's gone now, too. Maybe to prove his point, maybe coincidence.
[…]
I’m telling you all this not so you’ll go away feeling kind-hearted
and rush to the aid of some lonely bastard outside the grocery
store when his sack breaks and fifteen cans of Vienna sausage
go rolling across the parking lot. I’m telling you so you’ll understand,
when it happens to you, that time spent trying to remember
what you said or did, time spent improving your communication
skills and general attitude toward man is time wasted. Hamlet
said, ‘you would pluck out the heart of my mystery.”
What he meant was you will try to get at the bottom of a problem
by the killing the subject. The mystery, the problem, remains.
The best thing is to wait.
[...]
Ah, Sandy…I’m waiting. I’m waiting.
X
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Reflections: Some Free Advice
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Before People Magazine and reality television, children, just about all we had, by way of socially licit voyeurism and church sanctioned schadenfreude, was Abigail Van Buren: “Dear Abby.”
Distraught, confused Americans, trying so hard to be good, but needing a wise word, blown like a kiss from the palm of a helping hand, scribbled their angst on drugstore stationary and mailed it off to Abby, each tortured soul hoping against hope that Abby would post their shame and anxiety for syndication in her daily column: instant, though anonymous, celebrity (signed “Porked in Pittsburgh” or “Hosed in Harrisburg”); posterity’s stamp of authentic existence.
By way of example, Abby once famously advised a gum-snapping adolescent female—plagued by panty-drenching lust and agonizing over whether or not she should resort to “the Pill” and submit to her boyfriend’s frantically urgent probing— that she should hold the Pill between her knees; she should preserve all that heat for a husband-to-come.
Never mind that enterprising chicks from coast-to-coast immediately launched practical experiments proving that defloration would be quite possible although one’s knees were welded together; Abby’s sardonic meme, once launched, lived on and on.
Consider, for instance, these lines from Sandra Agricola’s poem, “Nocturnes: The Gift of Suicide” included in her 1988 collection, White Mercedes:
Xxxxx We rarely give in to beauty.
Xxxxx As if we held aspirin between our legs, saving ourselves
Xxxxx for that special Beauty.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxx_______
Xxxxx Yet how quickly we spread our legs for grief.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxx_______
And that, children, is the meaning of life.
Distraught, confused Americans, trying so hard to be good, but needing a wise word, blown like a kiss from the palm of a helping hand, scribbled their angst on drugstore stationary and mailed it off to Abby, each tortured soul hoping against hope that Abby would post their shame and anxiety for syndication in her daily column: instant, though anonymous, celebrity (signed “Porked in Pittsburgh” or “Hosed in Harrisburg”); posterity’s stamp of authentic existence.
By way of example, Abby once famously advised a gum-snapping adolescent female—plagued by panty-drenching lust and agonizing over whether or not she should resort to “the Pill” and submit to her boyfriend’s frantically urgent probing— that she should hold the Pill between her knees; she should preserve all that heat for a husband-to-come.
Never mind that enterprising chicks from coast-to-coast immediately launched practical experiments proving that defloration would be quite possible although one’s knees were welded together; Abby’s sardonic meme, once launched, lived on and on.
Consider, for instance, these lines from Sandra Agricola’s poem, “Nocturnes: The Gift of Suicide” included in her 1988 collection, White Mercedes:
Xxxxx We rarely give in to beauty.
Xxxxx As if we held aspirin between our legs, saving ourselves
Xxxxx for that special Beauty.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxx_______
Xxxxx Yet how quickly we spread our legs for grief.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxx_______
And that, children, is the meaning of life.
X
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Readings: The mind and the heart plan a trip...
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Excerpted here are the central lines of poem entitled “Anna” by Sandra Agricola, from her collection White Mercedes. I find the truth-telling of these lines to be courageous. And heart-wrenchingly painful:
[…]
How do you start over?
How did second chance ever become a dignified proposal?
How there is no such thing.
There is second child, second marriage, second family,
second place. After first there is second,
as in another, as in not fresh,
not first. Not the redemptive equivalent of first.
There is first and last, first and former,
as in first and former lover. First and last lover.
There is first, lost, last chance.
And how in all this there is hesitation,
an unreliable engine
this brain—
hesitating and choking up
whenever the mind and heart plan a trip together—
past, past, past,
okay present.
How I want to take the wheel,
how the brain won’t let me.
[…]
__________________________________________________________________
[…]
How do you start over?
How did second chance ever become a dignified proposal?
How there is no such thing.
There is second child, second marriage, second family,
second place. After first there is second,
as in another, as in not fresh,
not first. Not the redemptive equivalent of first.
There is first and last, first and former,
as in first and former lover. First and last lover.
There is first, lost, last chance.
And how in all this there is hesitation,
an unreliable engine
this brain—
hesitating and choking up
whenever the mind and heart plan a trip together—
past, past, past,
okay present.
How I want to take the wheel,
how the brain won’t let me.
[…]
__________________________________________________________________
NOTE: The poem’s title is derived from the poet’s reading of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATION: The drawing is in pastoils. It has nothing to do with this post, except that it, perhaps, catches a bit the mood of the poem.
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