Poems on Poems

Ideas of Home

              i

Winter has landed; my boot bucks on a stone

surrounded by snow; I swear, I murmur

Oracabessa. “The rock” is what I call home,

all islanders do, and I’m in blessed Ann Arbour,

mainland, where I found safe harbour under

green sea of trees now becalmed, frosted.

Ideas of Oracabessa propel me forward

Catastrophe That Nearly Brought Down a Plane

After late-night Li Bo,

on a plane to Houston, out of sheer intumescence

I begin unravelling a sickness bag—

starting with the wired throat,

then the pleated sides, then bottom.

My finger trapezing through the waxed paper

feels like a tall-masted skiff – almost Odysseus

slicing Lake Ontario: placid like an eye

that has...

The Young Poets of Winnipeg

scurried around a classroom papered with poems.

Even the ceiling, pink and orange quilts of phrase...

they introduced one another, perched on a tiny stage

to read their work, blessed their teacher who

encouraged them to stretch, wouldn’t let their parents

attend the reading because parents might criticize,

believed in the third and fourth...

But I’m No One

for M. Maylor

Dear Anne Carson:

My friend read me the poem where your mom

said that the dead walk backwards.

You thought this myth arose from poor translation.

I can attest to your misapprehension.

My social studies teacher in grade 8, Ms. Rogers,

believed it was customary for the Chinese

to walk...

From Titian Air Vent

A work of art is a world of signs, at least to the poet’s

nursery bookshelf sheltered behind the artist’s ear.

I recall each little motto howling its ins and outs

to those of us who might as well be on the moon

illu illu illu

Beacon

A tiny artificial theater of the world. I am here to slay the

dragon in the ready-made...

From World of Made and Unmade

In my dream my mother comes with me.

We are in the meadows we call

The Flats, walking the dogs.

Walk straight past the water trough,

she says, do not engage the moss.

Go back to the top of the page,

the dream says, and leave out the suicides.

In my dream I walk and...

The Novel As Manuscript

An ars poetica

I remember the death, in Russia,

of postage stamps

like immense museum masterpieces

patchwork

wrapped in linen, tea stained,

with hemp for strapping...

these colored stamps designed for foreign places

were even printed during famine—

so when they vanished...

Poem For Duncan Campbell Scott

(Canadian poet who “had a long and distinguished career

in the Department of lndian Affairs, retiring in 1932.”

The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse)

Who is this black coat and tie?

Christian severity etched in the lines

he draws from his mouth. Clearly a noble man

who believes in work and mission. See

how he rises from...

Portrait of Alice with Elvis

Queen and King, they rule side by side

in golden thrones above the clouds.

Her giggle and wide eyes remind him

of his first young wife, and his twang

never ceases to thrill her, so different

from the prim accents of men she’s known.

She sings for him, “Hound Dog”

and “Heartbreak Hotel,” and he turns

the Mock...

11. Headwinds

When I began to write, I didn’t know

each of my words would bit by bit remove

things from the world and in return leave blank

spaces. That poems would begin to take

the place of my own homeland, mother, father,

first love, and second youth, and what I write

would fade from this world, trade its solid being

for unstable...

These Poems, She Said

These poems, these poems,

these poems, she said, are poems

with no love in them. These are the poems of a man   

who would leave his wife and child because   

they made noise in his study. These are the poems   ...

At the Centre

Today doves flew from my head

and my hair grew

the longing is gone from my body

and I’m filled with peace, perfect peace

No longer shall I speak of electrocuted poets

Where There’s a Wall

Where there’s a wall

there’s a way through a

gate or door. There’s even

a ladder perhaps and a

sentinel who sometimes sleeps.

There are secret passwords you

A Glass Tube Ecstasy

For Hugo Ball

a glass tube

for my leg       says Hugo Ball

my hat a cylinder

in blue & white

the night       the german ostriches       the sink

he pisses in

all these become his world

his dada song, begun there

holds the image

until it comes at us:

the image from its...

Thou Poem

Thou poem of lost attention and half try,

do you fear more the inner world or outer?

I do not love the self less than the others,

my name is legion and my mouth one cry.

Blank Sonnet

      The air smells of rhubarb, occasional

Roses, or first birth of blossoms, a fresh,

Undulant hurt, so body snaps and curls

Like flower. I step through snow as thin as script

Watch white stars spin dizzy as...

Poetry

I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.

   Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it one discovers that there

                   is in

   it after all, a place for the genuine.

Pale Blue Cover

In the middle of the night Matt would fly to Vancouver so he could take a walk on the sea wall the next day, then go home.

Wouldnt tell anyone, no telephone call, just run a scene through his peculiar Ontario head, no snow on that beach.

No one can imagine Matt teaching religion at...

A Virginal

No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately.

I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness,

For my surrounding air hath a new lightness;

Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly

And left me cloaked as with a gauze of æther;

As with sweet leaves; as with subtle clearness.

Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness

...

On Shakespeare. 1630

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,

The labor of an age in pilèd stones,

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid

Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame,

What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thyself a live-long monument....