Transmissions from the Northern Outpost

Tag: Poetry

  • Among Things You Learn on NPR

    For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

    In the early 2000s, when this poem was written, my wife and I had gotten rid of our cable and we often listened to the radio. One of the things to which we listened regularly was National Public Radio, and you could, and still can, hear some pretty interesting things there.

    Among Things You Learn On NPR

    1.

    It's called the Dardas Mission,
    and tonight 1.4 million people,
    who signed their names on silicone paper,
    are on that mission in a capsule
    in a space probe, ready to go 
    through the comet's tail in 2006,
    and beyond, if all goes
    according to plan. 

    Astronomers theorize the comet will stay in orbit
    around the sun, or will remain
    in space, to hit a planet, or go out of the solar system,
    "which is more likely," says the optimistic
    scientist on the phone from Houston.
    20 billion years from now,
    those names etched in silicone
    will be the surviving artifacts of
    our system, he says. 

    2. 

    In Bam, at least 30,000 people die,
    but the survivors blog on
    in forums for freedom of expression.  
    "As long as media is controlled in Iran, the blog on the 
    destruction of Bam has given Iranian bloggers new impetus:
    emotions about people's death," says the sociologist stoically.
    Examples, he says, are "I can hear the voice of death, it's close 
    and whispering in my ears";
    "I don't know if I should be sad or angry,
    I don't think the regime criminals care."
    "Two bloggers even arranged to meet in Tehran," 
    he says in amazement.

    For now, the bloggers are allowed to blog
    on and on,
    undeterred.
    20 billion years from now,
    we will see where our freedom has gotten us.

    The above poem is best viewed in desktop and landscape to keep the line breaks the way I intended.

    Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “¿Que Que La Femme?” by Vincent Toro on the Academy of American Poets website, Poets.org.

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  • Continuing Granddad’s Legacy

    For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

    My Grandpa Fields listened to the radio late at night. One of the things I remember most vividly when our family went to visit him in North Carolina, usually for Christmas, was him surfing through the channels on the radio dial. I remember listening to the radio along with him from the room where I stayed. Later in high school and college, I found myself surfing the radio dial late into the night.

    Continuing Granddad's Legacy 

    I surf the AM waves
    nights after the Late Show, tune in/
    tune out women radio shrinks, traffic 
    reports, talk shows that use words like

    "premature." I always leave one ear open
    for the slap of leather against
    backboards, sneakers on wooden floors,
    the other for the Mutual Broadcasting Network

    brings you Larry King Live, 
    except come spring when both listen for 
    the pennants to unfurl for the Yanks. 
    Unrealistically I seek a voice as harsh 

    as Ella's "Basin Street Blues," silky
    as Sarah's "Always," understanding as
    Dr. Joy Brown, or contradictory as Rush
    on the FM. I will never find anything as foreign 

    as the Cuban propaganda pirate stations, 
    enticing as Texas radio there, as on the flip. 
    Like Granddad, I am learning to appreciate
    the Grand Ole Opry, yet also crave to hear

    more "race" records, bebop, the Big Beat.
    I am continuing his legacy in my own way,
    trying to pick up some whisper of
    sanity, some voice of reason to speak to me.

    Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “To the Tune of Qiu Bo Mei” by Lu You (translated from the Chinese by Shangyang Fang) on Poetry Daily.

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  • Emerald Isle

    For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

    This poem is about my other grandfather, my mother’s father, my Grandpa Fields. 

    Emerald Isle

    When Grandpa picked the dobro, he'd drift
    back to when he and Uncle Thelbert dreamed
    of making their debut at the Grand Ole Opry,
    and forward to when he and Grandma could retire,
    both move out to a beach house on Emerald Isle.
    We'd cast our lines off the side of the pier
    to catch blue fish and flounder, but once
    he hired a guide take us out in his boat to trawl
    the Bogue Banks for the larger king mackerel
    he always wanted to reel in out on the pier's end, 
    to test his line beyond its strength, 
    see if it would hold.

    Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “On Form” by Mia Ayumi Maholtra.

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  • June 10, 1979

    For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

    My Grandpa Robinson, the one referred to in the poem yesterday, died on the day after my 10th birthday. In this poem, I look back on that day.

    June 10, 1979

    Elmer and I are fishing the swimming hole
    when my father calls from the bridge above,
    "It's your grandpa," as if he was on the phone.
    I arrive at the house, am escorted to the porch
    by my uncles, who ask to see the birthday gift
    I received the previous day, my first jackknife.
    Opening it, I cut across the whorls of my thumb.
    Inside, washing the wound, red lines the yellow
    porcelain sink. Like blood from the first trout
    we cleaned, skinned together in this same sink.
    My thumb turns pale, the complexion he wears
    lying in the room next to the kitchen. I sit now
    in the recliner there, use that thumb on his diary,
    discover only weather reports in his entries:
    "warm, sunny, 70s today, wind at 8 mph
    from the NNW, 29.08 on the barometer."

    Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “Leaving the Psychologist: An Abecedarian Ekphrastic” by Griselda Y. Acosta.

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  • In The Little Village Where I Grew Up

    For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

    I grew up in a small village in northeastern Pennsylvania called Laddsburg. This poem is about its people, including my grandfather.

    In The Little Village Where I Grew Up 

    Around this corner Stu was unable
    to straighten the wheel, avoid that pole, 
    and in this very hayfield the tractor would not
    stop from popping out of gear, rolling over L.J.
    In the movies, bullets halt in mid-flight,
    seconds before they reach flesh and bone,
    but here, no one could stop the tractor trailer
    from sliding down the icy hill, careening into Mike
    and almost killing him. Here, migraines still pound,
    nitroglycerin tablets still don't change Elmer
    from what he always was, and is: a mean old cuss.
    Here, the strop with which my uncle went to hit
    my grandfather continues its descent toward him,
    and my grandfather continues to stop it and walk
    out the front door of the barn, never to return.

    The above poem is best read in desktop and landscape modes.

    Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “Sistas” by Sandra Maria Esteves on The Poetry Foundation website.

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  • On Blindness, Part II

    For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

    Like a poem I shared last week, this was written sometime when I lived at home with my parents, but after college. The title is a take-off from a poem by the English poet John Milton.

    On Blindness, Part II

    I fear losing the power of Pennsylvania Power & Light forever, 
    of never hearing another CD on the laser, or Rush on the radio.
    Up on the highway our house tonight, electric men work in the hellish glow of flares, to repair an ancient transformer.
    Their chainsaws buzz away the boughs of a nearby Norway spruce
    as if they were nothing but an obstacle to progress, the Modern. Though I no neo-Luddite who wishes Berwick's reactors to blow,
    I wonder what will happen when Great Niagara no longer churns 
    and the thousand and one rivers of Quebec give up their ghost. 
    But what their tribes lose, we gain: the power that turns on
    the tanning lamps I help to make the powder for at Sylvania,
    the bulb that brightens this desk, propels a poem beyond
    where I am almost now. No more wick, the wax exhausted.

    The above poem is best read in desktop and landscape on your browser of choice.

    Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “Stony Sleep” by Dan Albergotti from The Poetry Daily.

    Feel free to scroll back and read the other poems I’ve shared last week.

    Today’s post is also part of The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb Nance of the blog Readerbuzz.

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  • Morning Poem

    For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

    Mice was a theme to which I kept returning, as I noted first on Thursday, and I returned to it also in this poem. At the time I wrote this, I was reading a book by the contemporary American poet Robert Bly called “Morning Poems,” and so entitled it simply enough: 

    Morning Poem 

    --- for Bob and Wallace

    It's the mouse in a bag rustling
    that awakens me to this thought, 
    this thought of being unclean
    that makes me take an early ablution

    this morning. I think how
    often it's the little things waken me,
    stir my soul, the larger concepts don't
    keep me up at night as much

    as they have become a part of me.
    I am breathing, in and out.
    The soul is a vampire sucking my blood,
    I think I am drained.

    I must get back to sleep,
    a time when thoughts would not come
    as quick, as furious as they do
    now, like a mouse in a bag rustling.

    Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “For Allen Ginsburg” by Dorothea Grossman on The Poetry Foundation website.

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  • Terminal Resonance

    For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

    Today’s poem from me came after I woke up one morning with the strangest thought, one that included Wallace Stevens’ “that mouse in the wall” as mentioned yesterday:

    Terminal Resonance

    The robots have invaded the earth
    before, but we didn't know it. We were dead
    asleep like we were before the phone rang
    at two in the morning to wake us from
    our false sense of security, the comforter
    we pulled over us to quiet that mouse
    in the wall, that turns into a squirrel
    as one grows older. The mechanical sound 
    below, coming up through the pipes, 
    isn't what we thought, but something more
    diabolical at work; building what became 
    the robots, those things we most feared. 
    They wait to invade until we close our eyes,
    when we try to go back to sleep.

    Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “Ghazal Circling Fatherhood” by Carlos Andrés Gómez.

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  • The Boogeyman

    For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

    When I was a child, I awoke to the strange sight of a calf in the hallway by my bedroom. While some might think would be a moment for amusement, I thought otherwise. 

    The Boogeyman

    comes in the form of
    a calf in the hallway nudging 
    the door half-open with its nose.
    It looks in and without sound,
    just stands there and stares,
    its dark eyes reflecting
    the light bulb in the hall, nothing else.
    Years later, the boy tries to go to sleep,
    to no avail, he can't get the calf out
    of his mind, and then
    that mouse in the wall, 
    of which Wallace Stevens wrote,
    begins to nibble away at his brain,
    keep him wide awake.

    Here is the first stanza of the poem from Stevens, an early 20th Century American poet, who also like me was a native of Pennsylvania, that mentions “that mouse in the wall”:

    Cotton Mather died when I was a boy. The books
    He read, all day, all night and all the nights,
    Had got him nowhere. There was always the doubt,
    That made him preach the louder, long for a church
    In which his voice would roll its cadences,
    After the sermon, to quiet that mouse in the wall.

    — from “The Blue Buildings in the Summer Air” by Wallace Stevens

    I’d return to the theme of mice – and “that mouse in the wall” – a couple more times as you’ll see the next two days.

    Today’s poem of the day comes from Poetry Daily: “The River” by Pascale Petit.

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  • On The Frontier

    For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

    I wrote this poem at my desk in my room in the house where I grew up after I came home and lived with my parents for a few years after college:

    On The Frontier 

    Once again it is too late
    too early for me with the buzz of fluorescence
    and the perking of piped hot water
    even interrupting conversations with myself.

    Used to be a time
    when a man could whisper in his own ear,
    listen to it rise in a roar
    as if his mouth had been a seashell,

    then shape a masterpiece out of the echo.

    This one probably will work best in landscape and desktop view.

    Today’s poem for poem a day on the Academy of American Poets website is “Palazzo Tartaruga” by Mike Tyler.

    I’m also adding another from The Poetry Foundation website since I saw this after I posted: “Eros of Bathing Stimming Dancing Pacing” by Adam Wolfond.

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