The poetry world
lost some of its giants in 2015-16. On this Memorial Weekend we want to
remember them and their inestimable contributions to literature through
teaching, writing, and mentoring younger poets.
Charles Kenneth (C. K.) Williams (1936—2015) won distinction
as a poet, critic, and translator, garnering nearly every major poetry
award. Flesh and Blood won
the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987. Repair won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize
for Poetry and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was a National Book Award
finalist. The Singing won
the National Book Award in 2003 and in 2005 Williams received
the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Williams' life and poetry are the subject of
the 2012 film Tar. Of his Collected Poems (2007) Peter Campion
wrote in The Boston Globe "Like Yeats and Lowell before him, he writes from the borderland between
private and public life….[His poems] join skeptical intelligence and emotional
sincerity, in a way that dignifies all of our attempts to make sense of the
world and of ourselves. C. K. Williams has set a new standard for American
poetry."
Light
Another drought morning after a too brief dawn
downpour,
unaccountable silvery glitterings on the leaves of the
withering maples—
I think of a troop of the blissful blessed approaching
Dante,
“a hundred spheres shining,” he rhapsodizes, “the purest
pearls…”
then of the frightening brilliants myriad gleam in my
lamp
of the eyes of the vast swarm of bats I found once in a
cave,
a chamber whose walls seethed with a spaceless carpet of
creatures,
their cacophonous, keen, insistent, incessant squeakings and
squealings
churning the warm, rank, cloying air; of how one,
perfectly still among all the fitfully twitching
others,
was looking straight at me, gazing solemnly, thoughtfully
up
from beneath the intricate furl of its leathery wings
as though it couldn’t believe I was there, or were trying to
place me,
to situate me in the gnarl we’d evolved from, and now,
the trees still heartrendingly asparkle, Dante again,
this time the way he’ll refer to a figure he meets as “the
life of…”
not the soul, or person, the life, and once more the
bat, and I,
our lives in that moment together, our lives,
our lives,
his with no vision of celestial splendor, no poem,
mine with no flight, no unblundering dash through the
dark,
his without realizing it would, so soon, no longer
exist,
mine having to know for us both that everything ends,
world, after-world, even their memory, steamed away
like the film of uncertain vapor of the last of the luscious
rain.
Swedish poet, psychologist, and translator Tomas
Tranströmer (1931-2015) published 15 collections over an extensive
career. He surprised the Swedish literary community by publishing his first
book of poems, 17 Dikter (Seventeen Poems), in 1954 while a PhD
student at Stockholm University. Tranströmer wrote of the dualities of the
inner and outer worlds we each carry with us, the small moments in a life when
a window of perception magically opens. Throughout his writing career he possessed
an uncanny depth of perception, a wisdom and curiosity about the world due
perhaps to his work as a psychologist. He first corresponded with the poet
Robert Bly in 1964. They later met and Bly would become responsible for
introducing his poetry to readers of English worldwide. Tranströmer
received the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature. Read an interview with the
poet here.
National Insecurity
(Translated by Robin Fulton)
The Under Secretary leans forward and draws an X
and her ear-drops dangle like swords of Damocles.
As a mottled butterfly is invisible against the ground
so the demon merges with the opened newspaper.
A helmet worn by no one has taken power.
The mother-turtle flees flying under the water.
Track
(Translated by Robert Bly)
2 A.M. moonlight. The train has stopped
out in a field. Far off sparks of light from a town,
flickering coldly on the horizon.
As when a man goes so deep into his dream
he will never remember he was there
when he returns again to his view.
Or when a person goes so deep into a sickness
that his days all become some flickering sparks, a swarm,
feeble and cold on the horizon
The train is entirely motionless.
2 o’clock: strong moonlight, few stars.
Carolyn (C.D.) Wright was born in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas in 1949, the daughter of a judge and a court reporter. She published over a dozen books, including ShallCross (2016); One With Others (2011), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was nominated for a National Book Award; Rising, Falling, Hovering (2008); Like Something Flying Backwards: New and Selected Poems (2007); and Tremble (1996). “Poetry is a necessity of life,” Wright once said. “It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so.” She died unexpectedly at home in Barrington, RI, in January 2016.
Everything Good Between Men and Women
has been written in mud and butter
and barbecue sauce. The walls and
the floors used to be gorgeous.
The socks off-white and a near match.
The quince with fire blight
but we get two pints of jelly
in the end. Long walks strengthen
the back. You with a fever blister
and myself with a sty. Eyes
have we and we are forever prey
to each other’s teeth. The torrents
go over us. Thunder has not harmed
anyone we know. The river coursing
through us is dirty and deep. The left
hand protects the rhythm. Watch
your head. No fires should be
unattended. Especially when wind. Each
receives a free swiss army knife.
The first few tongues are clearly
preparatory. The impression
made by yours I carry to my grave. It is
just so sad so creepy so beautiful.
Bless it. We have so little time
to learn, so much... The river
courses dirty and deep. Cover the lettuce.
Call it a night. O soul. Flow on. Instead.
Read poet Ben
Lerner’s tribute to Wright here.
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