Poetics and Ruminations

Society for Calling a Spade a Spade

Dialects of the Tribe: Postmodern American Poets and Poetry, by Lewis Putnam Turco, Nacogdoches, TX: Stephen F. Austin State University Press, www.tamupress.com, 2012, 336 pp., ISBN 978-1-936205-30-1, paperback.

 

My ancient friend Pierre Bennerup of Sunny Border Nurseries in Kensington, CT, wrote me recently:

Dear Lew,

As a one time English major like myself, 'I'm sure you're also concerned with the erosion of our great language, especially with respect to these so-called millennials.

I'm therefore forming a new society called, "Let's Call a Spade a Spade." As a poet, wordsmith and avid gardener, I'd like to appoint you as a charter member. Below is a short list of just a few of my concerns:

A spade should not be called a "shovel" as I've heard much too often.

A spading fork should not be called a "pitch fork."

A trowel should not be called a "little shovel."

It also disturbs me that perfectly good words describing garden implements have been co-opted to mean other things. A spade can describe a suit of playing cards. It can also be a racial slur. A "rake" can be someone who visits a bawdy house; a "hoe" is someone who works there.*

This bastardization of our language must be stopped. I hope you'll agree to assist me in this important task.

Best regards to my friend of longest standing,

Pierre.

 

I replied,

Sure(ly), Pierre,

sign me up, but I'm afraid it's a lost cause; the language is going to change no matter what. However, I do insist upon being a curmudgeon about it.

Lew

From Wesli Court’s Epitaphs for the Poets, by Lewis Turco, Baltimore, MD: BrickHouse Books, (www.BrickHouseBooks.com) 2012, paperback, ISBN: 978-1-938144-01-1:

*R. I. P. EDWIN MARKHAM

March 23, 1852 - March 7, 1940

 

"Man with a Hoe," his greatest lay,

Means something different today.

 

Miss Pussy's Parlor Songs, Part Twelve

 

 

 

THE OUTHOUSE TRUMP BUILT

 

This is the Outhouse Trump built.

 

This is the lump of egregious dump

That flopped in the Outhouse Trump built.

 

This is the beetle that loved to Tweetle

And roll the lump of egregious dump

That flopped in the Outhouse Trump built.

 

This is the Raven that ate up the Beetle

That rolled the lump of egregious dump

Out of the leakage from the sump

That seeped from the Outhouse Trump built.

 

This is the Mooch that threw up the douche

That drowned the Raven that ate the Beetle

That rolled out the lump of egregious dump

That sweltered and stank in the rusty old tank

That leaked from the Outhouse Trump built.

 

 

HELLO, GOODBYE!

 

Was Scaramucci scary,

Or was he merely moochy?

Alas! He wasn't wary

John Kelly was too touchy,

Considered him quite douchy,

Liked roast beef rare, not sushi,

So, soon as Scaramucci

Got rid of Prince Reince Priebus

And Trump hired two-gun Kelly,

The General said, "Leave us!"

And shot Mooch in the belly.

 

 

FIRE AND FURY

 

"Mark my words, make no more threats

Or you'll be met with fire and fury,"

The Trumpster said to Kim Jong-un,

"And I will be both judge and jury."

 

 

CHARLOTTESVILLE, AUGUST 12, 2017

 

"Hatred, bigotry and violence

Exist on many sides,

And lampshades can be fashioned

From many human hides."

 

 

A BAN ON BANNON

 

"I must abandon Bannon,"

The Trumpeter announced.

"There's now a ban on Bannon --

My best ol' bud is bounced

 

"Officially," declaimed

The Donald to the world.

"A new ass will be named

And, likely, will be hurled

 

"Out the White House door

Upon some new occasion.

Scrub old blood off the floor,

For soon a fresh invasion

 

"Of Nazis, Klansmen, Skinheads

Will be ushered in

To join the bunch of pinheads

And heartless men of tin

 

"I'm trying to amass.

Bannon was a pussy,

One solitary ass,

Always Kind of wussy.

 

"But now the nation's White House

Will be well and truly named --

We've no room for a mouse.

We ought to be ashamed

 

"We didn't lay a ban on

Bannon long ago!

Come on, jump on the wagon,

Turn hard right and let's go!"

 

 

TRUMPERY

 

There's such a word as "trumpery":

"Nonsensical talk or writing,"

But how to rhyme it? Humph(e)ry

Is close, but such inditing

 

Is just a bit too clumpery --

For my taste, anyway.

It sounds somewhat too frumpery,

A clumsy way to say,

 

"Go toss it in the dumpery

And let it rot to pieces,

To slimy bits of lumpery

As quick as Hell, bejesus!

 

"Or feed it to the pumpery

So it can liquefy

And be sucked up by sumpery,

Becoming good and dry."

 

I'm turning rather grumpery

Dealing with this matter!

Let's have less Forrest Gumpery,

Less nonsense and less natter!

 

 

THE ARPAIO SONG

 

"Arpai-o, Arpai-ai-ai-o

Pardon me, but I'm sendin' you home

Sheriff Arpa-ai-ai-io,

You can' do no wrong, so I'm sendin' you home

 

"Work all night while though I'm chewin' gum

(Pardon me but he's  goin' on home)

I pardoned the sheriff, the criminal bum

(Pardoned him and I let him go home)

 

"Come, Mr. Fake News mon, call me bananas

(Daylight come and he's goin' on home)

Come, Mr. Fake News mon, call me bananas

(Daylight come an' I let him go home)

 

"Arpai-o Arpai-ai-ai-o

(Daylight come and he wan' go home)

Day, he say day, he say day, he say day, he say day, he say day

(Daylight come and he wan' go home)

 

"A beautiful bunch a'ripe banana

(Daylight come and I let him go home)

Call me the deadly black tarantula

(Daylight come and he wan' go home)

 

"It's six foot, seven foot, eight foot, bunch!

(Daylight come and he wan' go home)

Six foot, seven foot, eight foot, bunch!

(Daylight come and he wan' go home)

 

"Hey, Arpai-o Arpai-ai-ai-o

(Daylight come and he wan' go home)

Day, he say day, he say day, he say day, he say day, he say day

(Daylight come and he wan' go home)"

 

 

From MISS PUSSY'S PARLOR SONGS by Claudette McFang.

 

 

 

 

 

--

 

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Lifetime Achievement Award

Recalling Nancy Willard

 

Recalling Nancy Willard

June 26, 1936 – February 19, 2017)

 

I am deeply sad to note the death of my old friend Nancy Willard on February 19th of this year. I reviewed her first book of poems in an essay titled, ”Of Laureates and Lovers,” published in The Saturday Review, l:41, October 14, 1967. I thought that it was a fine first book, and she went on to write many more. When eventually we met, we liked each other, and we were friends until she left us this month. This is the review I wrote:

 

Nancy Willard's collection of poems, In His Country (1966), volume four of the Generation New Poets Series of Ann Arbor, is a fine first book. Ms. Willard has a mind that likes to tangle strange but relevant ideas in the skein of language, as in the first stanza of "Picture Puzzles":

 

It's because we're broken

     that we love

puzzles; pictures

     cut all askew, fifteen hundred

pieces, salvage

     of divine catastrophe.

For two dollars my mother

     buys, in good fait,

Fra Angelico's Nativity,

     incredibly cracked,

sung

     like God's defense

on a skeptic's tongue.

 

And then she unravels the strands gracefully in the dénouement. "See?" she seems to say, "This is where we were heading all the time. Everything makes sense at last."

Well, perhaps not everything, but Ms. Willard is capable of making us think so while she is performing, and that's half of art. The other half is perhaps indefinable, but one might bet she has that as well. This much is sure: Nancy Willard can build a whole poem, an unusual talent in this era of fragments and fragmented poets.

— Lewis Turco

The Golden Shovel

 

OMEN

 

The Golden Shovel Anthology

New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooka edited by Peter Kahn, Ravi Shankar, and Patricia Smith with a Foreword by Terrance Hayes, Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2017.

 

OMEN

 

By Lewis Turco

 

They were not fools: our parents always knew

The mores, ways and words of all the white

Folk that surrounded us. Even their speech

Was not beyond us – it was not the how

That we found useless, but we were never to

Become our “betters,” we could never make

Our skin turn white. We would always sing a

Song that’s black and blue; we’d always look

The way we look. We had to learn an an-

Them of our own and follow our own omen.

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Richard Wilbur on His 95th Birthday

 

RICHARD WILBUR ON HIS BIRTHDAY (1997)

Listen to Lewis Turco read his poem,  "Richard Wilbur on his Birthday."

 

Oh, if your name were only “Wilver,”

      With a v instead of b,

There would be a lot less silver

      On this head of mine. You’d see

               Brown again — some gray, at least.

               For sure, perhaps, I’d be well fleeced

 

The way I was when we were younger...,

      But you seem not to have grown old.

What’s going on, you ballad-monger?

      Who is this fellow I behold

               Now and again and here and there,

               This tall, good-looking guy with hair?

 

If my old cat saw Richard Wilbur

      I know exactly what she’d do

If she were young, too, and could still purr:

      She’d climb up in your lap and mew,

               And then she’d settle down and choose

               To await the arrival of your Muse

               (Although she’d probably spell it "Mews").

 

-- Lewis Turco

from The Formalist, viii:1, 1997, p. 37.

 

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Rhina Espaillat and her husband Alfred Moskowitz

 

NEWBURYPORT, MA: On the evening of February 27, 2016, in Newburyport, Mass., Alfred Moskowitz passed away in his home on Charron Drive, where he had lived since late 1990.

Born in the Bronx, N.Y., to Rumanian immigrants David and Mary Moskowitz, Alfred was educated in New York public schools, served as an infantryman on the European front during WW II, returned home in 1945 to attend NYU on the G.I. Bill, and went on to teach Industrial Arts in the NYC public schools for 30 years.

In 1952, he married Rhina P. Moskowitz, with whom he had two sons, and brought up a third. He took a highly active part in the formation of the United Federation of Teachers, and in demonstrations for civil rights, desegregation of the schools, and other liberal social causes. In 1990, the couple moved to Newburyport, Mass., from New York City. For many years Alfred Moskowitz was an active member of the Newburyport Art Association, and of the News & Views Club of Newburyport, among other organizations.

He is survived by his wife, son and daughter-in-law, Philip and Lauren of Georgetown; son and daughter-in-law, Warren and Lori of Ipswich; foster-son, Gaston and daughter-in-law, Colleen of New York; as well as grandchildren, Evan, Ilana, Ambrose, and Perry; brothers, Marvin and Howard; sister-in-law, Gayle; nephews, Gregg, Brad and Keith; and nieces, Janine and Diana.

FOR ALFRED MOSKOWITZ

When last I visited Alfred and his wife
We spent the evening talking about his art.
Sculpture was his passion, the largest part
Of his endeavor, his creative life.

Rhina is a writer. She and I
Became the best of friends. Her poetry
Shows readers how the heart and mind can fly
Through the Muses' ever-greening tree.

Now Alfred's mind and heart have taken wing
And she is left alone to write her songs --
She feeds them to the wind: it, too, can sing
Even when her heart breaks and belongs

To breezes in the needles and the limbs
Of brooding woodlands that can echo hymns.

-- Lewis Turco

Iowa Alumni Bookshelf, February 2016

 

 

 

The Hero Enkidu: An Epic by Lewis Turco, New York: Bordighera Press (www.BordigheraPress.org ), VIA Folios 107, 2015, 101 pp. ISBN 978-1-59954-098-6, trade paperback.

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The Green Knight and the White

The Forks in the Road, by John T. Sullivan, Jr.

With an Introduction

By Lewis Turco

        This is a book about neighbors written by a neighbor. John T. Sullivan, Jr., was born in 1947 in Oswego, New York. He graduated in 1964 from Bishop Cunningham high school; one year later my family and I moved to town where I began to teach at the State University of New York College at Oswego.

        John went on growing into his shoes while I began settling in at the College. After receiving his degrees at Syracuse University John married his wonderful wife, Charlotte, and began his family. When two of his three daughters were in high school our son, Christopher, dated the youngest, Julie, and John was elected Mayor of Oswego in 1988.

        This introduction is not the first time John has asked me to write something – the first time he did he asked me to write an inauguration poem, which I was happy to do. I recited it at his ceremony. The One-hundred signed copies printed on parchment paper were distributed as keepsakes of the Inaugural, “…which,” John wrote me, “still hopefully adorn the walls of many Oswegonians to this day (which at least mine is, and it is numbered 1)!”  The poem was also published on paper in a broadside that was circulated widely:

                                            OSWEGO

                                It lies in the curves of the lakeshore.

Across Ontario the last of the sun breathes light

           out of the horizon, turning the clouds shades

                         of red to the west. The water darkens,

                         splits over the stones where the spiders live,

                  where the gulls alight to conceive of evening.

                                Hardwoods rise on country roads, their  limbs

 

casting tall shadows into the silence deepening

           among the tumescent milkweed and the cattails.

                         A twist of goldenrod runs into fields,

                         to the apple orchard fence where ravens

                  give voice to the dark quality of waiting.

                                The cries of geese are incipient

out of the north, over the great water, the turning

 

           of another season. The thrust of wings, the high

                         call of flight before the changing wind, will

                         fall soon to Oswego's waters, send frog

                  and salmon deep, beyond ranges of color

that fades now as the light falls onto Ontario,

                         and a dream of summer settles along

                  the stone coast road like a fleet of waterbirds.

 

          Subsequently, Mayor Sullivan proclaimed me honorary Poet Laureate of the City of Oswego.   Needless to say, I was deeply honored to be asked to contribute in this way, but John soon followed up by asking me to do a harder job: correct and revise the City of Oswego Charter as Secretary of the city Charter Revision Commission. I won’t go into the particulars of all the grammatical, punctuational, and typographical errors one had to address, but they were legion.

         John Sullivan was by far the best and most active mayor the City of Oswego has had while I have been a resident. He was instrumental in cleaning up the Lake Ontario waterfront which was a shambles when my family moved into town. Wright’s Landing, the River Walk, the Town Hall center all were spruced up and turned into beautiful and livable environmental attractions.

         Not least of these innovations was Harborfest, one of Charlotte’s pet projects. It was not many seasons before this festival was attracting enormous crowds to town during the summer, and it is still doing so. But all great mayoralties must come to an end.

        John went on to become Executive Chairman of the State Democratic Party from 1995 to 1998; he was one of the founders of the Democratic Rural Conference. He served as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Watertown office from 2003 to 2007, and then he accepted a position as Deputy Inspector General and counsel for legislative matters with the state Medicaid Inspector General’s office, relocating to the Albany area where he lived in Saratoga Springs.

        During all this time John Sullivan never lost touch with his Oswego roots. He visited town often, gave programs frequently (my wife Jean and I attended one at the town library in the spring of 2015). Just after the mayoral election in the fall of the same year John’s picture appeared in The Palladium Times with the new Republican mayor, twenty-five- year-old Billy Barlowe! (Sometimes one suspects that John might carry this being a good neighbor a bit too far.) (Just kidding.)

        John kept in touch also by writing essays and articles, including the profiles in this book for various and sundry periodicals in the Albany area and elsewhere, but particularly for Oswego’s daily newspaper, The Palladium-Times. I don’t need to say more because those who enter these pages, even if they are strangers, will soon feel as though they know the City of Oswego down to its roots and have themselves become neighbors of my dear friend, John T. Sullivan, Jr.

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