Dear Lew,
What a marvelous
and poignant and endearing tribute to Pookah. I was teary-eyed at the end. I am
so glad that I got to meet him! He truly was the Greatest Cat in All the World.
I also feel honored to have my recollection of him shared. I would like to
share your tribute with the family, I may.
Owing to your great
love for cats, I would urge you to write a collection like Old Possum's Book
of Practical Cats, but Pookah
stands out so far beyond most felines, it
would be hard. Although
another book by a cat lover for the rest of us cat lovers in the stream would
be all to the good, too.
HAIL POOKAH!
Dr. Steven E.
Swerdfeger, Ph.D.
Publisher
Star Cloud Press
Steven,
I made a start on
your book of cat poems, but my heart isn't in it. I couldn't compete with T. S
Eliot anyway. I remarked to Jean on our walk today that I wondered what he
would think if he knew that his most famous work in this century is
"Cats." She said he'd likely be quite surprised. I think he'd be
something worse than that.
Lew
UNCLE LARRY
Old Uncle Larry, leery of
losing,
played with aces of
spades in the cellar,
cursing when he
lost.
His partner was a cat
that mewed at the
mice nicely,
nipping their
shoethong tails
as they scooted
gaily, without fear,
among the cardboard
bistros
Uncle Larry built.
Here a curse, there a
curse,
everywhere a
cursecurse
as the aces
fluttered loosely,
like black moons
arched
and pointed in a
single direction.
All Larry could do was
kick the cat.
That was it: a kick and a
yowl
and old Uncle Larry
on his kneecaps
cutting at the mice
with tooth and knuckle
as they scuttled by
scourging the cards.
From
the series “The Sketches,” in Fearful Pleasures:
The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007,
www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007, ISBN 978-1-932842-19-5,
jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, trade paperback, $32.95, 640
pages. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM
TIMOTHY BOURNE
1778-1839
There was an animal in the sun
and
he was black. He was the cat
who
lived with us here, in this house.
There is no danger in blackness, in
the
darkness itself, except that
it
hides itself well in shadow
and in the night so that we cannot
find
it among the trees, among
the
roots of the woods and the weeds.
There were no children here, no offspring,
no
legacy of the springtime
for
the cat to play with or my
wife to fondle, or myself to heft,
feeling
the weight of the future.
The
cat was all for each of us,
his blackness the blacker for the love
we
bore him and for the shadows
we
knew he loved more deeply than
he loved us.
We knew the cat would go
some
night. Came the morning we did
not
find him seeking sun. My wife
wept for a while. The house felt weightless
and
plundered. Dark had bolted dark,
and
blackness had contained itself.
From
the series “The Green Maces of Autumn: Voices in an Old Maine House,” in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco
1959-2007, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007, ISBN 978-1-932842-19-5,
jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, trade paperback, $32.95, 640
pages. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM
THE
ATTIC
Things,
the work of dust and summer flies, upstairs over the other rooms, lying where
they were created under the covers of trunks. The mathoms, original art of
shadows drowsing in boxes: dresses and shirts worn by the seasons at their
balls and weddings; the toys mice play with; mirrors reflecting upon solitude;
cords and scissors.
Downstairs the Inhabitant moves slowing among
orderly rooms; his wife is a comfort, his child little trouble, and the cat is
kindly for the most part.
In
the attic it is quiet; rain touches the roof and falls slowly from the eaves.
If
the Inhabitant intrudes at odd times he does not notice the machine amid the
clutter. It stands in a corner
behind a rack of clothes in shades of brown and yellow, a red flower printing
itself now and again on some fabric fading into the slanted beams.
He is
mildly surprised by the numbers of mathoms. At times it is hard to remember: a
photo in a gilt frame, a ribbon, someone's scroll.
They
are worth an hour's musing in semi-darkness, the hum of a wasp on the ceiling,
street sounds muffled. The machine is never discovered: the only mechanism to intrude — lightly, nearly beneath any threshold — is a mower in the hands of a distant neighbor.
When
the door of the mathom shop is closed and the Inhabitant leaves the print of
his footsteps for a moment on the wooden stair, things pause. There is no
movement, not even of time. The mathoms listen until, downstairs, carpets and
rugs swallow the noises of living, until the furniture absorbs motion.
Then
the machine clicks on: the clock dial begins to turn; dust feeds the cogs. It
is making things, making them slowly, out of the debris of afternoons and the
streetlamp suicides of evening moths.
It
takes forever, but the mathoms accumulate, sift into the corners like drifts,
send up an aroma as of the slowest burning — the scent of must. Under the
mathom shop the Inhabitant senses — at most, perhaps — a vague weightlessness
overhead and, now and then, the cat acts strangely.
THE
CAT
Long-haired
and black as shadow
the
cat comes to drive
a
pad of yellow foolscap
and
a ballpoint pen out
of
the Inhabitant's hands for
it
is time again to
handle
the palpable dark not
to
compose to write about
the
loom and shuttle of
shadow
moving mechanically across clock
faces
but to pass hands
lightly
down the pelt of
smooth
moments look you no
harm
is meant by this
passage
it is just that
things
were meant to be
this
way the waiting the
soft
animal with sharp teeth
and
claws sheathed lurking in
corners
will come out to
be
stroked and enjoyed for
it
is lethal but sensual
as
well and it means
no
particular ill the hour
for
striking has not arrived
it
is not the enemy
but
a familiar of houses
a
domestic that keeps accounts.
From
the series “The Inhabitant,” in Fearful Pleasures:
The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007,
www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007, ISBN 978-1-932842-19-5,
jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, trade paperback, $32.95, 640
pages. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM
TICK
I
am a cat with a tick
buried in my head. If I could speak,
I
would tell you I can feel
the insect head nestling within my
brain,
not just against the white
bone.
I can sense its mechanical
currents
buzzing in the blood,
showing the mandibles how to clench,
the
belly how to bloat, how
to make two lives one. It is not a
matter
of will for either:
It feels my claws sliding in their sheaths;
I
feel it growing stronger
on my substance.
My
master?
As he looks at us, I see our two
minds
sink into his eyes. We three
meet at the center of his thoughts. My
claws
unsheath there. The insect
bloats in dark vessels. Here is where we
shall
live together — a nest
of boxes, three separate designs,
three
steps in Becoming, a
skull within a skull within a skull.
From
the series “The Weed Garden,” in Fearful
Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007, ISBN 978-1-932842-19-5, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN
978-1-932842-20-3, trade paperback, $32.95, 640 pages. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM
"A SQUIS'D CAT" — BURTON
Louis Wain (1860-1939), a British artist, was
internationally known for his drawings of cats, characterized by their almost
human expressions and antics. In
1921 Mr. Wain suffered a brain injury in a motor accident, from which he never
fully recovered. From that time —
possibly as a result of his injury, possibly as an artistic experiment — his
cats were transformed from recognizable household pets to creatures one might
see in a nightmare. — Consuelo Reed.
Melancholy
kitty, nice pussy,
sweet pussy.
Purr in a corner; lap up your
milk. Swish your tail, lie on a rug.
Pretty
cat in a kitchen. Fur and nice
eyes
winking slowly, slowly. Go to
sleep.
Wake up, cat, your eyes are too
bright,
a little.
What dream was it that made your back
curve
that way around a queer corner?
Your
ears
perk like crooked peaks. Hackles
up,
cat; scratch the wall of your saucer.
Squis'd
cat, electrical kitten,
symmetrics
and fall apart. The paper
room will hold you in place. Triangular tongue
sharp,
not rough: Rakes the eyes, laps blackness
from
a spoon. Where do your whiskers
go? Now, cat, pussy in
a pail, snarl lines and sparks into my ear. My
eyes
wail all your pins and dots, my
tail
does flash, flails behind thy riven head.
My
bowels dissolve,
dissolve bad puss;
see,
Fyre Catte,
drink
thy
nice
Night.
From
the series “The Compleat Melancholick,” in Fearful
Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007, ISBN 978-1-932842-19-5, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN
978-1-932842-20-3, trade paperback, $32.95, 640 pages. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM
THE NAKED EYE
The
chickens grow very fast —
I
am afraid they will be so large
that
you cannot perceive them
with the naked eye when you get home.
The
flowers have reached the eaves
and
are heaving against the roof
which
has begun to buckle —
you will have to do something I fear.
We
had eggs for breakfast or,
rather,
an egg — the yellow yolk
ran
under the sideboard, and
it stayed there, refusing to come out.
The
cat walking down the stair
makes
a great noise — the banister
bulges
out as she descends.
The trees in the yard block out the sun —
we
are not sure that the sun
still
regards us in our small world
with
a great eye fully clothed
in the raiment of its rays and beams.
We
stumble in the shadows.
The
candles speak so slightly that
we
can hardly hear their words,
and the moss — the moss is at the door.
From
the series “A Sampler of Hours: Poems from Lines in Emily Dickinson’s Letters,”
in Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis
Turco 1959-2007, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007, ISBN 978-1-932842-19-5,
jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, trade paperback, $32.95, 640
pages. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM
POCOANGELINI 28
"You come walking, waltzing in slow time.
Your tongue is a red nettle
ticking my staves. You are a cat
in a harpsichord," says Pocoangelini,
"and your nails on the air's bright strings
thrum my spine's silver song.
You tickle me with tulips.
Like a gray burro
"in love with edges, I trot
a gauntlet of notes and pauses —
each with the face of a daisy —
and they ride me to where I am.
"How can the purr mate the bray?
I in my rug of years,
you in your silken mantle —
what strange ears would we beget?
"If my song wears an old blanket,
it hides young fleas.
My hoof plucks no mandolin.
Listen to this tune, hairy as a donkey."
From the
series “Pocoangelini: A Fantography” in The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco
/ Wesli Court, 1953-2004,
www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004. ISBN 1932842004, jacketed
cloth, $49.95; ISBN 1932842012, quality paperback, $26.95, 460 pages, © 2004,
all rights reserved. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM
POCOANGELINI 28
"You come walking, waltzing in slow time.
Your tongue is a red nettle
ticking my staves. You are a cat
in a harpsichord," says Pocoangelini,
"and your nails on the air's bright strings
thrum my spine's silver song.
You tickle me with tulips.
Like a gray burro
"in love with edges, I trot
a gauntlet of notes and pauses —
each with the face of a daisy —
and they ride me to where I am.
"How can the purr mate the bray?
I in my rug of years,
you in your silken mantle —
what strange ears would we beget?
"If my song wears an old blanket,
it hides young fleas.
My hoof plucks no mandolin.
Listen to this tune, hairy as a donkey."
From the series “Pocoangelini: A Fantography” in The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court, 1953-2004, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004. ISBN 1932842004, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 1932842012, quality paperback, $26.95, 460 pages, © 2004, all rights reserved. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM
CHORALE OF THE CLOCK
"Tic douloureux," pronounced tik doo-loo-roo or tik da-ler-oo in standard and colloquial English respectively, is a very painfully diseased nerve.
There was a woman on our block
(Tick, tock, the town cock crew)
And every dusk she wound the clock
With a large brass key she hid in a sock
Under the rug by the panel door.
Then she'd rinse her cup and sweep the floor,
Let out a sigh, the gray cat too —
Tock, tic douloureux.
And when the cat was gone, she'd lock
(Tick, tock, the town cock crew)
The doors, the windows, the cookie crock,
The casement of the grandfather clock.
Then she'd hide her key and go up to bed
To dream in the feathers of her bedstead,
Dark where the canopy nightbird flew —
Tock, tic douloureux.
Still, in her sleep she would mark the clock.
(Tick, tock, the town cock crew)
Every chime was a mortal shock:
A nerve in her cheek would jerk and knock;
Something or someone would begin to scream
As pain spread slowly across her dream,
And she'd start awake with the devil's ague —
Tock, tic douloureux.
All night long she would lie and rock
(Tick, tock, the town cock crew)
In a boat of shadows at Charon's dock
Hearing the shades on the far side mock,
Jeering and asking her why she stayed
So long away. "I am afraid,"
She said, "of the darkness and of you...."
Tock, tic douloureux.
"I fear the warden of my clock
(Tick, tock, the town cock crew)
May some night forget to test its lock;
The convict, discard her prison smock;
The emptiness of the time I serve
Burst the manacle of this nerve,
And the walls of my being prove untrue."
Tock, tic douloureux.
She sighed as she saw the nightbird rise;
The nerve quit jumping. She closed her eyes,
And then she lay quiet, still as the dew.
Tick. Tock. The town cock crew.
From The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court, 1953 2004, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004. ISBN 1932842004, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 1932842012, quality paperback, $26.95, 460 pages, © 2004, all rights reserved. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM
THE EUNUCH CAT
A Pantoum
She went to work until she grew too old,
Came
home at night to feed the eunuch cat
That kept the mat warm and its eyeballs cold.
She
walked, but ran to wrinkles, then to fat,
Came
home at night to feed the eunuch cat,
Then went to bed, slept dreamlessly till eight,
And
waked. She ran to wrinkles, then
to fat.
She fixed her supper, snacked till it was late,
Then went to bed, slept noisily till eight —
Must
I go on? She'll feed the cat no
more.
She fixed her supper, snacked till it was late,
Then
died at dawn, just halfway through a snore.
Must
I go on? — she'll feed the cat no more
To keep the mat warm and its eyeballs cold.
She
died at dawn, just halfway through a snore;
She went to work until she grew too old.
From The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court, 1953 2004, www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004. ISBN 1932842004, jacketed cloth, $49.95; ISBN 1932842012, quality paperback, $26.95, 460 pages, © 2004, all rights reserved. ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM
Three Books by Ruth F. Harrison
Many people seem to believe that, because I wrote The Book of Forms, I am some sort of rigid curmudgeon. Jack Foley doesn’t think so, though he thinks I am weird because, in his opinion, I like any and all forms. On the other hand, I think Jack is weird because he seems to like any and all poems by whatever poets exist.
Jack may be right about me. I do seem to like forms of any kind, as long as the poems written in those forms are well-done. My motto is, “Something said well is something well said, but something said superbly is a poem,” no matter what form it’s written in, or what mode, either prose or verse.
Case in point: Ruth F. Harrison is a vastly overlooked and underappreciated poet, as her latest book, West of 101 (Turnstone Books of Oregon, 2013), clearly shows. This first poem in the volume is, I think, magnificent:
HAVING EARS
I had forgotten silence, here
where the sea-voice, omni and present, surges,
dims, clatters, rumbles, is
first principle, the given of this assignment.
Crying, even by gulls, seems useless in
the presence of so much that is
water and salt, so much white sound.
Newborns hear that, before the mother’s voice:
what the world sounds like is compose of sea,
first sea, always sea, and over that
small tempered coos, the creak of chair, and step
of foot against this arrhythmic amnios of sound.
But I remember how, in the shadow
of some outcrop in the redrock, my ears
grew tall in that silence, swiveled
to pick op the sift and whisper of dust,
a minute tac-tac of lizard feet,
a sage-leaf’s slither, its fall. Far overhead
circled three turkey-buzzards in air so still
I heard the whisk of their wings.
Perhaps eternity speaks to
the roll and clash of surf, but
I think when the ocean has dried and gone
whatever ear remains will hear
under light wind the shift and settle of sand.
This poem is written in what many people call “free verse,” but what I call prose, because this is unmetered language (no one is counting syllables in any way), and that is the definition of prose. That it is not metered, however, doesn’t mean it isn’t rhythmic. Harrison’s ear is accustomed to the rhythms of the Pacific Ocean, and she writes her phrases and clauses in the counterpoint of the combers, tides, breakers and winds. None of these is perfectly regular, but there is an underlying regularity in the poet’s long lines. The language is beautiful, but not flowery.
A few pages farther along this poem exists in equilibrium with “Having Ears”:
A CERTAIN WEATHER
Morning brings rain and a leaden sky
and the feel of life-run-down-a-drain.
Nothing will change. Just, from on high,
morning brings rain.
Don’t tell her summer will come again.
Don’t warm her cold hands or catch her eye.
She is enwrapt in her pleasant pain.
She sits looking out, while heaters sigh.
Water oozes down her window-pane.
Her ears don’t hear what the seagulls cry –
morning brings rain.
This poem is written in verse, in a standard form, the eleven-line roundel. The refrain, which appears three times: in the first half of the first line, and as the last line of stanzas one and three. The long lines are iambic tetrameter, and the short lines are dimeter. But if one compares the meters of this poem with the rhythms of “Having Ears,” one will not find much difference because English prose is comprised of iambs (-/) and anapests (--/) primarily, and the roundel here is made up of iambs and trochees (/-) which, when they come together, can sound like this: “morning brings rain” (/- -/), which sounds and acts like an anapest in the second foot, in other words, like “the presence of so” (-/- -/) as in line six of “Having ears.”
But what do we say of this poem? What do we call it? --
Despite the shape of this poem, which suggests that it is a calligramme or “picture poem,” the major effect it has, at least on this reader, is suggestive rather than assertive, subjective rather than objective. It even has its humorous side in the wordplay “deep-pression,” and the ensuing sonic effects of the surf-hissing words “cession, cessation, and recession” spilling over each-other. Like R. S. Gwynne’s poem “Chang Eng,” about the famous Siamese twins, Ruth Harrison has invented a nonce form to express all that she has to say about her subject, which is Being, in the environment of the coastal sea. This form combines in unique equilibrium a “box” (perhaps the self?) containing the verb “be,” surrounded by sounds and scenes that outline the abode of the self and the landscape surrounding it.
If we take just these three poems, in a book full of poems just as fine, just as complexly simple, what can we deduce from them? First, that Ms. Harrison has talent. She was born with that, it cannot be gained. But skill can be inculcated, and it is perfectly clear that the poet here has studied and practiced a long time to be as capable of doing with the language pretty nearly anything she wishes to do. The third thing she has is intelligence, the ability to sense and absorb the world about here and to express it in forms that help her to do what she wants to do, whether those forms be traditional or invented, given or nonce. Perhaps this poem will illustrate how Ms. Harrison combines the old with the new; the traditional with a bit of her own invention. This piece turns on only two rhymes; it has one refrain that begins as the first line and works its way down the page to end the poem as well. In fiction we would call this a circle-back ending:
COME, COME, SPRING
The fuchsia’s hanging numb and slow
high in a pot the shadows take.
It may be May. You’d never know.
Winter persists. We had a fake
couple of days of summer’s bake.
The fuchsia’s hanging numb and slow:
Some tender leaves I watched her make
are small and bronze as if in snow.
Where are her buds, her urge to grow?
Her vines, instead of trailing, ache.
The fuchsia’s hanging numb and slow…
might as well move to Great Bear Lake.
Hang up the hose and garden rake;
brisk snow is falling. Vertigo
takes over as we watch each flake.
The fuchsia’s hanging numb and slow
I open Harrison’s second book, How Singular and Fine, (CreateSpace, 2012) to the first section, sonnets, finish one and say to myself, “What a beautiful poem!” And I read the next one — beautiful again! And again, and again…. Then I run across a poem that uses the word “infundibulum,” which I have to look up — an organ shaped like a funnel…it works! And I’ve learned a new word besides. Then I run across “despoilation” and I think, “Hah! I’ve got her now! It should be ‘despoliation’! But her spelling is right, too, according to Babylon, though not to my other dictionaries. I can’t believe it.
In the next section I read a poem titled, “Playing Ping-Pong with Donald Justice” which, it turns out, is a rewriting in verse of my prose memoir about playing ping-pong with Donald Justice at Iowa half a century ago. Ruth Harrison is a wonderful writer who is ever inventive, often as full of song as a skylark, and always interesting.
This poet’s third book, Among the Cat Tales (Turnstone Books of Oregon, 2014), will be a delight to cat lovers everywhere, of whom I am one. When I received this slim volume of poetry and cracked it open, the first item I ran into was, "What Does a Catamount To?" I never saw a pun I didn’t like. Eight of the nine lines that make up this catalog begin with a word with the prefix "cat": catastrophe, cataclysm, catatonic, catapult, caterwauling, catalog, caterpillar, and category, and the author manages to slip in catnip as well. By the time one has reached the end of the volume all these items and more have been explored and amplified in tuneful songs purrfectly illustrated with drawings by Anita Sue Andrews.
I think we ought to add a fourth element to Ruth F. Harrison’s pack of equipment. She has talent, skill, intelligence – and a great sense of humor.
-- Lewis Turco
December 20, 2014 in Books, Commentary, Criticism, Essays, Literature, Pets, Poems, Poetry, Review, Verse forms | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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