Alison McGhee's Blog, page 32

Poem of the Week, by Paul Hostovsky

The Violence of Violins

- Paul Hostovsky

It was in them, they would say.

It was what they were, what they

did. It was part of them, carved

into them like an F hole, like

a clef tattooed onto a biceps.

And there was nothing you

could say or do to change that.

It was their way. It was the way

of the world, and also of the sun

exploding a million miles away,

warming your soft cheek. Face

the music, they would say. Stop

listening with your eyes closed.

See the string tightened almost

to breaking, the bow torturing it

into song. Feel the skin stretched

over the drum so tightly it makes

your heart pound. And where

did you think it all came from,

the easy melody, the high tinkling

finery? We are hurt into beauty.

And you, up in the balcony, rising

to your feet, applauding fiercely, look

down at what your own hands are doing.

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For more information on Paul Hostovsky, please click here: http://www.paulhostovsky.com/

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First Music: Electric Light Orchestra + Jerry Jeff Walker

What was the first music you ever bought with your own money?

Jerry Jeff Walker’s A Man Must Carry On, AND the Electric Light Orchestra’s Out of the Blue (a double LP).

Both? That’s an interesting (a word which sounds better than wacko) combination.

I don’t know if you could buy two more dissimilar albums, but my taste has always been a bit scattered.

The Jerry Jeff thing was the result of these really cool kids I hung out with at Hopkins South Junior High.  A couple of them had older brothers who had introduced their younger siblings to Jerry Jeff.



Where did you buy them?

Third Stone Music in Hopkins, Minnesota, just across the street from Mr. Donut, where I had earned the money to buy them. My friend Dan and I actually bought the Jerry Jeff Walker album together:  I paid 2/3rds and kept the album; he paid 1/3rd and made a cassette tape on its first play.  The first side has a country dance song, a song about getting out of L.A., and one with a chorus that begins, “Up against the wall, Redneck Mother!”        

I bought the E.L.O. album on my own, however.  I hear some of the songs from that album on the radio today.



Any favorites?

My favorite track never got any airplay.  It’s called “Sweet is the Night,” (on side four) and each time I hear it, I think about this girl I had a huge crush on.  I actually fell for her the night before I bought the album.  I was at a school dance; it was the last night of third quarter sophomore year, and I was slow dancing with a girl I had been friends with since junior high.

I looked over and saw this other girl (who was way out of my league but still friendly to me).  She was dancing with a really, really cool Junior.  For the first time in my life, I fell in love in a moment.  I can still remember exactly what she was wearing.  I bought the albums the next morning, played them after work, and that one song hit me and I fell for it–sweetly–just like I had fallen for the girl.  Both of them still hold a certain power over me, to tell you the truth.

(John Zdrazil, Elbow Lake, Minnesota)

Poem of the Week, by Gregory Djanikian

First Winter in America

- Gregory Djanikian

I walked out into the January blizzard,

my breath froze into small clouds,

and ice was hanging from the trees.

The dunes were dreamy animals;

I heard shovels striking music.

White eyelashes, white mittens,

I thought I could become

whatever I touched.

A year before, in another language,

I held the desert in my hand,

I tasted the iridescent sea.

Now I stayed quiet, afraid

I would never see it again, the sky

shattered into a million pieces

and falling around me.

I watched my mother inside

walking back and forth in her heavy coat,

and my sister rubbing her hands

to make some kind of spark.

I could imagine furnaces rumbling

all over America, heat rising

through the vents, parching the air.

And I stayed where I was,

someplace I had no name for,

not for the snow or my standing still

and watching it fall

beautiful wreckage

deepening

with hardly a sound.

–

For more information about Gregory Djanikian, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/gregory-djanikian

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First Music: Michael Jackson, BAD

What was the first music you remember buying?

Michael Jackson, BAD. I was seven when it came out. I cannot tell you how I got the money, or where I bought it, but I know it was the first cassette tape I owned.

What do you remember most about that particular tape?

A few months after getting the cassette tape, I burned myself terribly with hot chocolate. It was so bad that I had to go to the hospital a few times a week to get the dead skin peeled. The doctors would Velcro me to a table and peel.

I would only let them do it if I had a tape player and BAD. One day during the session, the tape broke, so I made them stop until my mom got me a new tape.

This sounds horrible.

That peeling was the pits. But Michael made it bearable.

(Carrie Thompson, Minneapolis)

Poem of the Week, by Julia Koets

Paper Birds

- Julia Koets

Moths must tire of sleeping near the ceiling.

All that waiting for their wings to match

color that changes where wall folds to eave.

This afternoon I found her at the table, asleep

amongst paper, delicate as dreams, elaborate

birds made of folding, made for our ceiling.

I try unfolding one, tail and beak of pleats,

green and yellow flowers on a patch

of wing. No cuts or glue to hold to evening,

to have them flying from fishing line. Geese,

swans, a hummingbird. Window unlatched,

and wind wakes their sleeping from the ceiling.

Song of paper rustling; song of crease

and bend; song of watching

color that changes where wall folds to eave.

We fall asleep like this, a counting sheep,

a listening for paper birds, a grasping

for sounds that sleep near the ceiling,

in colors that change where wall folds to eave.

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For more information on Julia Koets, please click here: http://www.versedaily.org/2012/aboutjuliakoets.shtml

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First music: Edgar Winters Group.

What was the first music you ever bought with your own money?

The Edgar Winter Group album that featured the songs “Frankenstein” and “Free Ride.” I was in the eighth grade.

Any reaction from your parents?

My father came into the room and discovered the album cover with Edgar Winter in full glam rock mode, blindingly white bare-chested skin, over-the-top makeup, I think a feather boa or some such thing. He calmly took the album out of the cover, took a pair of scissors, and cut the album cover to shreds.

What did he do then?

He replaced the cover with another from his own collection and put a piece of white tape on it, carefully transcribing the title on the tape. Then he turns to me and says, “I know you spent your own money on this, and therefore you can listen to any garbage you want, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to have you turn to cross-dressing over your musical tastes.”

Do you remember the next music you bought?

Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. I would say at least 70% of the music I’ve bought since then has been classical.

(Tim Cook, Vermont)

First music ever bought with own money?

How old were you?

Ten, probably.

What did you buy?

Johnny Cash, at Folsom Prison. I can still see the cover and the record as it was when I bought it, still shiny and black and unscratched.

My allowance at the time was maybe $3/week, out of which I was supposed to buy school lunch. But if I made my lunch at home I could keep the school lunch money, so that’s what I did. I saved up and bought the album at a record store in Utica. It was the first music I ever bought.

Why Johnny Cash?

He was my favorite. I grew up listening to him and to the other old-school country greats: Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette. But Johnny was always front and center, for me. He still is.

Did you ever see him perform?

I did. I must have been about the same age as when I bought the album. My family and I were on one of our summer road trips – we were in Canada and we saw him at an outdoor concert in Toronto. It was night, and it poured down rain and we sat there with our jackets over our head. It poured on the stage too, and Johnny’s guitars kept getting soaked. When one got too wet he’d toss it off the stage and they’d toss him another one.

“If you all are going to sit there in the rain then I’m going to keep playing in the rain,” he said.

And he did.

Poem of the Week, by Rick Barot

Brown Refrigerator

- Rick Barot

You don’t have to understand it

but you will carry it anyway.

A couple whose baby died,

when they had to move

to another state, took the baby

from the years-long ground

and brought her with them.

They did this again a second

time, their memory always

tied to its embodiment,

new burials for an old grief.

In a short film I once saw,

ants lifted away the silver

and gold confetti from a party,

making a trail of suns

and moons on the floor.

The filmmaker must have put

something sweet on the circles,

like a painter dabbing

little points of white paint

to give highlights to an eyeball.

Some of the recipes that

a friend keeps making

go so far back in her family

the recipes are like snapshots

of villages and forests,

mountains and falling snow.

Apples and trout rise up

into the night’s constellations,

a dark without yellow stars.

What I remember of childhood

sometimes comes down

to the brown refrigerator

in our house. Its chrome

handle was always angry

with static, so that now when

I reach for the doorknob

or the gas pump, the sharp

charge on my fingers is

childhood calling its child back.

–

For more information about Rick Barot, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/rick-barot

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Poem of the week, by Helen Wickes

Single Thread

- Helen Wickes

When I was a weaver, I chose

a red silk thread to get me to the heart

of my creation and then back out,

across the loom, to whatever life was waiting.

And when you found the little red pathway,

buried between warp and woof, you were sure

you’d found a flaw. Please remember what happens

when there’s no exit. Years of breathing

wool dust, reeking of lanolin, staring into coils

of green yarn and blue—you go dumb.

You’ve heard the story a thousand times—

that trapped fox, whining and snuffling

then biting her paw

through the bone, and running off into the night.

The mind wants this: a door in the wall,

an open field, a narrow path

through the woods, an open field

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For more information on Helen Wickes, please click here: http://www.fishousepoems.org/archives/poets/helen_wickes.shtml

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Poem of the Week, by Emily Rechnitz

Wedding

- Emily Rechnitz

I stumbled in high heels

across the wood chips

of the Christmas-tree farm

to take my place with the other guests

under coarse pine boughs.

In a coned damsel cap

the bride glimmered

through the woods, materialized

at the altar microphone.

In the barbecue line

his mother whispered on my neck,

“I thought you would be the one!”

I watched the bride and groom

shake hands, stared at his profile

til it buzzed, remembering

2 a.m. behind the high school

when we rocked on a blanket

rubbing jeans into jeans

until the moon jumped and I fell

off the hill slowly, a diamond in glycerine.

I remember walking down a road to meet him,

how the air tingled, in love

with how I looked in my underwear,

dancing in front of his mirror.

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I could not find any recent information on Emily Rechnitz and her poetry – anyone out there in the know, please update me.

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