To all the people who keep track of this series, my apologies for not posting it last week. I've decided that in the interest of sanity I will be limiting myself to one poetry diary on Mondays rather than two. This week starts the new regime. To make up for losing the one diary I'll try to include a few more poems each week by the featured poet.
For those of you interested, the last diary in this series which can be found here. By clicking on that link, and similar links located above the fold in each diary in this series, you can track back to, and catch up on, all the great poets and poetry I've introduced here.
Today we initiate my new routine of introducing poems by only one person on Poetry Monday, and my choice this week for that singular poet is T. Birch.
More after the fold . . .
I discovered Tara Birch's work serendipitously, while looking for poems for another poet. She hasn't published much, although she does have a self-published chapbook available at
"Lulu.com" Her poetry ranges from free verse and prose poems, to more structured poems using metered verse in traditional forms. What comes through in all her work that I've seen, however, is a strong musical quality, almost song-like at times.
The first selection is from her poetry blog, The Whitetree Poems:
Herring glow after death
for a few days, when their green, pure surfaces
turn blue, and their gills red, suffused
with blood at the moment of death, searching
for oxygen among a curse of gaseous molecules
forever beyond their use.
No one knows the reason for illumination.
Alive, in their shoals, they're observed in the sun
as a white, triangular shape in motion
under the waves of the ocean.
How many eggs are laid? How many are eaten
at every stage of the life cycle? How few
avoid the waste we leave, mutating the organs
of those who survive. God loves each sparrow,
but a fish? They have no hands to pray, no wings
to soar, no throats to sing epiphanies. Life
and death are their only gifts, and, if left alone
on the killing ground, uneaten, a slender light
reminding us who has dominion.
Her next one is from the Issue 9 of
Tryst, a poem whose meaning escapes me but which I include just because I enjoy it's musical quality:
the song of loss and hope
dogwood trees snow white and pink
their petals pushed down to the grass
which cannot help but feel their weight
the dog herself cannot stand up,
because a breeze would bring collapse
beneath the clouds in half-sunlight
for when the rain's like slantwise knives,
like rusting grates, like pain enough
the curtain's drawn against the sight
and no one watches what they want
when night forgets to bring the stars
and dusk broods long on city streets
a penny please, a penny sir!
she shouts, she stops, she drags herself
when passing ears have lost their youth
distraction holds them all in place -
the girl, the dog, the rained on night
are left behind to seek themselves
to find the grass or something else
which cannot speak or hurt or spill
a drop of water from the well
And one more from Tryst, this time from Issue 5. The poem appears to be a meditation on the work of Japanese novelist and Nobel Prize winner, Kenzaburo Oe:
Leap.
Oe called it a leap
that moment when you
change without any foreknowledge
of changing
2.
I have leapt
all of my life, even
in childhood it was there
as a firm soft presence, warm and electrical
it would fire me
make me do things outside
my reality
of Church and God and parental
authority
like when I hit my brother
for his foul mouth
or became sexual
it was always a jump beyond
what I thought myself
capable
beyond past beliefs of myself
3.
it might appear bodily
in one reflex motion
or not
who can say, for it comes out
of nowhere
a new response which is unplanned,
unfamiliar
4.
it was a leap
when Oe tried to define
death for a child, his own little boy
of nineteen
death as a transition
from one place
in a life
to another place, after which some
will survive
but he failed
as his son Eeyore showed
but death isn't
our word
5.
my daughter jumps at me with all her ferocity
exposed
it is very physical
just like my son, who hugs his father
with passion and strength
and frequently
but his mother, reluctantly
(I think he's ashamed)
6.
Oe called him Eeyore
but that's not his name, he's real
as real as my son
but damaged, not whole
he was born with a growth
on his skull
like a second head
it held its own brain tissue
until surgery -
that was a leap too
7.
Blake liked to leap -
read his poetry
and see
it's all there - his body
exultant
leaping to God
or its closest facsimile
I'm not sure what Blake saw
when he sang:
That man should Labour & sorrow & learn & forget, & return
To the dark valley whence he came to begin his labours anew
but Oe did
he saw a prophecy of what he'd become
I only see death
8.
my definition
of death hasn't formed
yet
it isn't the corpses of my grandparents
carefully arrayed for a last view
though mother made me kiss her
grandfather his white
hair and white skin
made me think of a ghost but he was real
in the flesh
without a soul, she said
it was in heaven
years ago now I
know how
he abused his own daughters
and composed music
sweet tender
flowers
to his Protestant God
of the Germans
9.
think of how many people you know
the ones who have talked
to you
then imagine a million
as the multiple of that number
if you can
imagine a million
for I can't
so make it less, make it a thousand
times, a small city of people
is in that number
then think of how well you
could know them
and that is one possible example
10.
but not the only one
for what we all feel when it happens -
our movement toward something
unknown; and delicious
recklessness
and its consequence
spectacular in its excess
Here's a poem of hers I found at the poetry forum, Forbidden Story, which appears to be a commentary on Mel Gibson's The Passion:
strange days
naked they come and naked they go
and we look for his holes
ooh and awe at his sores
count all the nails
this is how the torture begins
rough cuts with hands
sharp cuts with flails
you see their minds gnaw
at the bones
at the bones
give us more
give us more
bring us dogs
with their slavering mouths
and the stink of their smells
give us whips
give us pricks
and make the blood flow
the horror it fills
is given us as our meal
this is the year and these are strange days
the garrulous apes have taken the stage
their bellies are fat
their faces are raw
and the music they play is pulled from their jaws
and the chorus replays
give us more
give us more
And finally, a prose poem, again from her blog:
Fragment of a letter, date uncertain
The prince aimed his bow high, and then exhaled letting the arrow fly straight at the moon. Did he fail? Did he succeed? No one can say. But we know this: the moon is dead. The colors we see are not the response of creative gaiety, but are deceits, tricks played by sunlight and atmospheric conditions, angles of geometry and refraction.
What did the prince believe? The tale, in whatever form it takes, refuses to tell us. It always ends with his white arrow disappearing into the darkness. Nine suns he slew, but as to the heart of his woman racing away, escaping into eternity, the legends are mute. But Yi is long dead, and the moon is still beautiful, neh? What other answer do you need, my love?
Her poems are also found in the first online edition of Tryst, where she was the issue's featured poet.
Other links to her poems online include:
An archive at Mi Poesias café café forum.
Enjoy the poetry and have a great day. See you all next week