Archive for the ‘poetry’ category

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The Dark Side of Carpe Diem – A Villanelle

December 30, 2009

In the last couple of posts, I’ve written about carpe diem, or carpe decade (using a symbolic date, such as the turn of the decade, as a goad to long delayed action).  But here’s a villanelle about the dark side of carpe diem, i.e. impatience!   A demand for action is pretty useful to impose on one’s self, but not perhaps, on someone else.

If you are interested in the form of villanelle and how to write one, check out other posts in that category from the ManicDDaily home page.

Right now

Fretful insistence marking the brow,
she pretended to ask but her tone commanded.
I wasn’t like her no way, no how,

still I’d spent the day as her little hausfrau,
wiping the dustless as she demanded,
fretful insistence marking the brow.

“That letter’s ready, could you take it now?”
“The post office’s closed.” (Take that for candid–
I wasn’t like her no way, no how.)

Besides that, I was much older now
no longer a child to be reprimanded
fretful insistence marking the brow.

“Still, take it,” she said, “take it right now.”
My heart felt her will like a bird that’s banded,
but I wasn’t like her no way, no how.

“We’ll forget it, if you don’t do it right now.”
Her right side frozen, she passed it left-handed,
fretful insistence marking the brow.
I wasn’t like her no way, no how.

All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, villanelle
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“In the Ukraine”

December 15, 2009

Here is another poem which has the dank feel of early winter.  It was written after reading about Father Desbois, a French Roman Catholic priest, who has worked in the Ukraine to document the murder of Ukranian jews during the Holocaust.  It was brought to mind today by Hanukkah (another shining of light), and the terrible news of a different priest (a Russian Orthodox priest) leading a crowd to attack  a Menorrah in  Moldava, neighbor to the Ukraine.

In the Ukraine (sixty-some years later, still finding)

Reluctant shovels prod earth;
roots grip hard; growth
took well here,  the ground
not trod by paths, boots,
only perhaps by light feet running on a dare,
and the fine dart of swallows,
a swivel of darkness against blue-violet,
evening sky;
the underdirt unfolds in webs
of stems as pale, as green, as bones;
coarse hair that might have grown too, white.
Men pause, leaning against
shovels’ long-grained necks; it feels
like gasoline coming up,
a poison surely
that must come out, that wants to come out,
still burns.
The priest extends his hand, not touching flesh or cloth–
“this was the place?”
His voice reminds them of rock–worn, smooth,
soft, hard, a color that seems to them indeterminate–
at least, they don’t know what it’s called.
Looking down from beneath wool cap, a looser collar
swallows unseen, then digs again.
Too late to bargain.
Yellowed pages rumpled
like the inside of that non-priest’s collar, the returning circle
of neck, have been
produced;  the prints of names
(letters quavering like blades of sea grass)–
the smudged “A” of
“AVRAHAM,” the terminal H of
“DEVORAH”–have been again recorded.
Dark eyes’ insistence
on having once seen, has been seen.
Burns coming up, those digging
want to spit it out
but can’t, not here.

All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson.

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Sonnet in Winter – Hospital Visit

December 8, 2009

For a change of pace, here’s a sonnet, written about a winter’s visit to a sick friend.

The sonnet follows the Shakespearean rhyme scheme, and though it tries for Iambic Pentameter, I’m not sure that attempt is truly successful.  As noted in previous posts about sonnets and formal poetry, I tend to use a syllabic rule of thumb rather than to follow strict rules of scansion.

For further explanation of the Shakespearean rhyme scheme and some approximation of the rules of meter in formal poetry, check out prior posts re poetic meter, and sonnets, and for reasons to write formal verse .  (And plenty of others – check out poetry category.)

No chance

I wanted to give her time, a summer’s day,
a perfect green blue day that I would pluck
from my summers to come, that I would lay
upon her bed, and, shimmering, tuck
around her.  It should have been an easy offer,
easy to say.  After all, the future
can’t be readily assigned; life’s coffer
holds nothing forfeit.  Tubes followed suture
to a darkness barely gowned; I searched around
my jangling brain for words, but what came out
were stones that lined her pillow, the sound
not meaning my meaning, and not about
summer days; my own fierce will to live
hoarding what I had no power to give.

All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson.

(If interested in different forms of poems–sestinas, pantoums, villanelles, and more villanelles, and even more villanelles–there are a lot of villanelles.   Really.  Check out these links, and others.  Thanks.)

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Friday Night in Winter Poem

December 4, 2009

Here is a poem written in Jaipur, India  (the “Pink City” in Rajasthan).

Jaipur

Cold inside, I foolishly drink
Two cups of strong hot tea.
Now I will sit awake all night
Thinking of you.

All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson.

(PS- shameless plug:  Jaipur is a place of elephants.  If you like elephants, check out  1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson, at Amazon, or link from home page.)

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Grandmothers – Personal Celebrities – Grandmother Poem

November 28, 2009

I realized this afternoon that it was my grandmother’s birthday.  I’d been all set to write about addiction, particularly those addictions related to celebrity (as in the pursuit of particular people,  i.e. Robert Pattinson, and the pursuit of celebrity itself,  i.e. Michaele and  Tareq Salahi.)

And then I remembered that it was November 28th and that one of my grandmothers had been born well over 100 years ago, in a year in which Thanksgiving fell on this day.

This, in my mind, is much more important than celebrity, though related too in a funny way.

Grandmothers are very special people by and large.  I understand that they can be problematic children, spouses, and parents.  But, for many, it seems, the mantle of “grandmother” works a wand-like magic that enables them to be their very best selves for very long stretches of time.  In that sense, they can be a household celebrity, at least to their young grandchildren;  those same young grandchildren have their own experience of celebrity in the unconditional specialness they are accorded by their grandmothers.  Pretty terrific.

All that said, I’ve always felt that my grandmother was particularly special, and probably her best self her whole life.  Here’s an (illustrated) poem about a day spent with her.  The drawing bears no resemblance (!), but I’m much better drawing elephants than people.

Fishing With My Grandmother (Done With Elephants)

The Time My Grandma Took Me Fishing

Reeds split for our crouch;
she parted her lap around me,
mosquito in ear, white curls
bristling my face.  Our hands laced the green
rod—it was a stick, only truly green
on the inside, like the bubble
of high grass, low crik, thick
with summer.  Safety pin
for a hook;  even she
seemed surprised when the stick jarred,
jerked the thread across the
murk, though she quickly pulled it through
my loosening grip. Both amazed as
a silver disc flashed,  shiny as
the newly bought, through
our homemade afternoon; in the bucket,
an occasional swish of rainbow
that you could only catch
if you really looked.

All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson.

(For spelling purists, “crik” should be spelled “creek”, I know.   I chose this spelling so that non-Midwestern, or Southern, readers would know how to pronounce it!)

Categories: elephants, poetry, Uncategorized
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“Black Friday” Bizarreness – Perfectionism Poem

November 27, 2009

Thanksgiving passed kind of magically.  (It helps to have daughters who cook amazingly well, and your end of the table colonized by several teatotallers and a random bottle of champagne.)

So now it’s “Black Friday.”   Mad shopping before the next day dawns.  (Isn’t Thanksgiving a time to feel blessed with what we already have?  Can’t we continue to feel blessed through a whole disgestion cycle?)

As awful as the concept is, the name is even worse:  “Black Friday” connotes (i) a Stock Market Crash, (ii) a Stock Market Crash, (iii) a Stock Market Crash.  (Also,  maybe, Crazy Eddy cavorting with scythe and death mask.)

I hate to say it, but a “successful” Black Friday feels almost as bad to me as a dismal one.  I’m all for an improved economy (and I understand that it will take a long time before our economy is not dependent on rampant consumerism), but when I read the numbers, I can’t help but thinking of trees cut down, mountains mined, oceans warmed, sweatshops sweated in; children even more cut off from non-gadget, non-plastic, forms of play; and huge, huge, garbage dumps.

I’ve always had a conflict with Christmas shopping—my sense of duty to the environment and to my children’s character (and tuition payments), coupled with the imprint of my mother, a daughter of the Great Depression–all  doing pitched battling with (i) what is expected of me in our consumer culture,  (ii) what I’d genuinely like to give, and (iii) a need to do things right, to please people, to be loved.

More on this in future posts.  In the meantime, shopping, plus Thanksgiving, plus autumnal re-thinking of life in general, brings up that age-old issue of perfectionism, and… a poem:

The Perfectionist’s Heart

The perfectionist’s heart is more than smart,
a nest of what went wrong long ago,
a litany rewritten, how we explain ourselves,
the embroidery of ‘if only’, a thread
tracking a trail as it tries to find a past
that will make this present a present, the lining silver,
turning randomness and chance to steps along a path,
a math that will equal all sides up, proof
that we have lived our lives correctly,
that for the certain values given, we came up with
the only possible solution,
and that possible means best.

All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson.

P.S.  – Speaking of consumerism:  if you are doing Christmas shopping for young childen, check out 1 Mississippi on Amazon.  I’m hoping to have my own website set up soon for discounted sales.  If you are interested in the meantime in a discount, feel free to write me at backstrokebooks@gmail.com.  (Sorry!)

Categories: Perfectionism, poetry
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Breast Exam Sonnet

November 24, 2009

American women of all ages are likely aware of a recent controversy concerning recommendations for mammograms and breast self-examination.  The new guidelines issued by the United States Preventive Services Task Force suggest that screening techniques are overused, and that testing, even self-examination, should be limited, particularly in women under 50.  The concern is that premature testing causes not only increased anxiety, but also unnecessary, and possibly deleterious, procedures and treatment.

This position runs squarely in the face of the popular view that early detection saves lives.  (It has been especially suspect in the age of health care reform.)

Although many health professionals and cancer organizations have rallied around the old pro-testing guidelines, I, for one, favor the new, since, as a general rule, I tend to avoid all contact with doctors until gangrene is setting in.  (Note to any of my children who may read this blog:  I do not advocate this course of conduct for friends and family.)

The sonnet below effectively undercuts both positions, as its subject character undertakes a cursory breast exam at a hurried moment, thus managing to maintain anxiety while also avoiding effective screening.  (I think it may be something many women manage.)

In the Stairwell

Descending the building’s stairs, she feels her breast,
fumbling beneath her bra to get to skin,
palpating (as they say) but in a mess
of here and there and not all within
the confines of an organized exam.
Silly to do it here, not time or place,
someone else might come, have to move her hand,
and yet fear seems to justify the race,
as if by checking each time it crosses mind,
especially checking fast, she can avoid
ever finding anything of the kind
that should not be found.  And so, devoid
of caution, but full of care nonetheless,
she steps slowly down the stairs, feeling her breast.

All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson

(My apologies if I’ve posted this poem before; sometimes they get a bit lost in the mix.)

Categories: poetry
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Another Villanelle – “The Nap”

November 22, 2009

Believe it or not, I have found, on this blog’s “stats,” that there are almost as many people interested in villanelles as in Robert Pattinson.  (Well, maybe not almost as many.)  Still, there is an interest.

This is fortunate for me as the villanelle form is one that I really like.  (Check out my other posts on this subject, if you would like to read explanations of the villanelle form and suggestions about how to write them.  Check these out especially if you also like Magnolia Bakery’s Banana Pudding.)

Today, I’m posting the villanelle, “The Nap,” because it it feels to me to have an autumnal aspect–after the fall, as it were.  (I was in upstate in New York when I wrote it, when the leaves were fallen, brown, and slowly drying out.)

To all those who are afraid to try writing a villanelle–you’ll see that  I cheated!  I modified the repeating lines;  in other words, I gave priority to meaning over manneristic form.   (Ha ha!)

Reading suggestion:  line breaks, in my poems at least, are not intended to denote pauses, unless there is also a specific punctuation break, such as comma or period.

Thanks as always for reading this blog.  I very much appreciate your sympathetic interest and time.  Comments are also always welcome.  Thanks again.

The Nap

Side by side, we slid to a dry, still, place.
It was not a woeful drought of age or dust,
the softer dryness of a tear-trailed face.

We never used to find this quiet space.
Any closeness quickly clambered into lust.
But side by side, we slid to a dry, still, place

where hands touched in a sweat-free interlace,
fatigue overwhelming pheromone fuss
with the softer dryness of a tear-trailed face.

Some other time we’d find that moist embrace
where pleasure mounts to such synaptic bust
I find myself side-sliding to a place

as blank as emptied well, as capsized chase.
(My brain reacts so badly to heart’s trust,
the softer dryness of a tear-trailed face.)

But today, we two, exhausted by the pace
of time and life and words like ‘should’ and ‘must’,
side by side, slid to a dry, still, place,
the softer dryness of a tear-trailed face.

 

I am submitting this post into the Gooseberry Garden’s Poetry Picnic, with the theme of love and lost love.

All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson.

Also check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson on Amazon.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, villanelle
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Veterans Day, 2009

November 11, 2009

Veteran’s Day, 2009

My father has always worn
black, army-issue, shoes,
whose toes turn up within
a few days of purchase,
something from the war,
too much forced march.

Today makes me think
of loads of turned-up toes,
curling beneath green fields,
or stock stiff still
in a sprawl of mud and camo.

My nephew talks of joining
up, practices for the test.
I don’t know what to say–
sure, if you don’t get hurt,
and no one around you either,
not even those at whom you aim
your gun.

I don’t say that.
I know people do it, maybe have to,
even my gentle father, balding
at seventeen, who marched once
twenty miles before breakfast,
shaving out of a cup at 6, and then, at Pilsen,
was issued a beer with a raw egg in it;
the man next to him, either
shaving or drinking beer, got hit, right
next to him.  And the egg, he said,
they just drank down.

All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson, 2009.

For more poems, especially villanelles about soldiers, check out posts in poetry or villanelle categories from ManicDDaily home page.

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Thankful for Courbet

November 6, 2009
courbet_baigneuses (detail)

Courbet "Baigneuses" (detail - only one baigneuse)

The combination of  day job, blog, and endless post-season baseball games, have made it difficult to do decent yoga and/or get to the gym of late.  (Hard to blog in downward dog.)   This, plus some brownies that I made for a visiting nephew, have left me feeling very chubby this Friday morning.   To compensate for those feelings, I’m posting “Courbet”, an homage to the wonderful sensitivity of  Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) to the womanly  physique.

Courbet

All I can say is that
it’s a good thing we have
museums hanging Courbets,
Rubens,
Rembrandts,
the occasional Italian,
with their depictions of swelling bellies,
dimples gathered around spines, flesh rippling
like Aphrodite’s birth foam,
the creep of pubic hair juxtaposed by coy hands
whose curved digits
pudge, slightly sunken cheeks (above, below),
spidery blood vessels
rooting beneath the patina.
All I can say, as
I catch my face in the
glass, glance down at
my folio of torso,
is that it’s a good thing.

All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson.

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