MondayPoem

Read The Poem

What is so great about this poem is the beautiful thought rendered through indelible imagery. The owl descends, “like an angel, or a Buddha with wings” then alights “like a little lighthouse.” But it is this thought of light, consuming light — “scalding, aortal light” — that, paired with the fierceness of the predator, the white-on-white landscape she has painted, haunts us with the notion that in it we are “washed and washed / out of our bones.” The visceral fierceness of the language, and the pairing of the impartial act of predator to the impartial act of death, rendered through such strong — and such cohesive! — imagery leaves a lasting impression in our minds.

What is so great about this poet is how her keen observation of nature leads to transcendence. Here, and in so many poems, she seems to get inside the natural act through her deep meditation upon the subject, and from here she is often led to a kind of universal truth. Because it is borne out of such artistic integrity, this is not prosaic, sing-song truth to be printed on a greeting card. It is the visceral, stark, abundant or spare truth of the real natural world which she replants us firmly and gratefully within.

N.B.: I am ending the MondayPoem series for now. My first intention with this series was to bring poetry to people who do not otherwise feel they “get it.” On that point of the experiment I have had few comments to encourage this pursuit. Also, I wanted to use this as a means to engage with and explore my favorite poems. But I am doing this already, without an enforced frequency (i.e. weekly), and enjoying writing about new discoveries most. Finally, perhaps most importantly, I feel that to give proper critical treatment to these works I love would require much more space and a more formal tone than I want to take on this blog. Yet skimming the surface, I find myself starting to repeat myself about certain concepts and themes. So, it was an interesting experiment, and one I enjoyed — but for now I am putting it to rest

Read the poem

What is so great about this poem is that it takes five ordinary nouns: coffee, crumb, balcony, sun, and river; and one abstract one: miracle — and weaves them in to a clever, strange sestina.

Read The Poem

What is so great about this poem is the way that it carries you along with strong, simple words and imagery, whisking you past moments of highly ambiguous meaning, delighting the senses. Having blasted our way through many of these moments with an almost nursery-rhyme use of rhythm and alliteration, we come to this spectacular moment:

When the stars threw down their spears, /
And watered heaven with their tears

Read The Poem

What is so great about this poem is the way it feels in your mouth when read aloud (try it!) and the way it delights the senses — all the while evading much in the way of prosaic meaning. Yet despite its lack of solid, linear, non-symbolic meaning, the poem is profoundly assertive. Rather than examine the lush (concupiscent, perhaps?) language elements of this poem, I would like to take a moment to talk about the line breaks, and how the few artificially broken lines in the poem serve to strengthen the simultaneous sense of certainty and delight.

Read the poem (scroll down to “Old Men Playing Basketball” at the bottom of the page)

What is so great about this poet is that he demonstrates masterful observation and insight in to the poetic musicality of mundane subjects. What is so great about this poem is that it is an excellent demonstration of Fairchild’s gift — usually applied to blue collar work — in this case applied to basketball.

Fairchild chooses moments from the language of basketball: “pick and roll”, “fake and drive” as well as shows precise details about the “old men” from the VFW that in themselves give insight into their character without having to explain much: “army fatigues”, “house shoes”, memories of drive-in theaters. This is one of the great paradoxes of art: that specificity creates universality.

Read The Poem (scroll down to the one entitled “Poem”)

What is so great about this poem is its excellent rhythm. Some of this is created through alliteration, as in the lines:

They drift about the darkening city squares
[…]
fingers feeling / familiar holes
[…]
a half-contented ghost among my guest

Read the poem

What is so great about this poet is that she can really turn a compact phrase. I have heard Emily Dickinson sneeringly called, “the undergraduate’s favorite poet” and at the same time critical giants like Harold Bloom consider her one of the greatest. Whether you think her poems are clever (in the worst sense of the word) or clever (in the best sense), the first four lines of this particular poem illustrate poetic thinking at its best.

Read the poem

What is so great about this poem is that it makes excellent use of the momentum of the English sonnet form, culminating in a beautiful pair of lines that simultaneously do and do not make sense:

I am planning to select a new poem each Monday and write about it. I figure most people could use a dose of poetry on that day more than any other in the week, and it’s high time I say more about things worth talking about. My plan is to present the poem (or a link to the poem) and then talk about what is so great about the poem and what is so great about the poet responsible. That’s all.