Chariton Connections

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

A View of the River, for which the Review was Named
Photo by Jay Beets

My personal 40 - year old copy of first issue!
Cover photo by Bob Zeni

Forty years ago,in the Fall of 1975, one of my first assignments as a college freshman was to read the first issue of The Chariton Review from cover to cover -- so many unforgettable stories and poems -- by Quinton Duval, John Haines, Jim Thomas, Glen Tracy, Winston Weathers.

And this one by James Tate:

Discovery & Recovery
we jump over their graves
frightening a red bird
we jump over their graves
hovering to applaud
we jump over their graves
who's afraid to love
we jump over their graves
spitting over our shoulders
we jump over their graves
taking flight like pheasants
beside a highway
we jump over their graves
whistling in the ozone
we jump over their graves
whistling in the ozone
we jump over their graves
the thousand million acres
we jump over their graves
like balloons skidding in the wind
we jump over their graves
leapfrog into the empty ones
the graves jump over the graves

I am hung by the toe from a star
with a blacksnake of dentalfloss
with a machete of dentalfloss
the hibiscus of dentalfloss
the cable - car of dentalfloss
the bikini of dentalfloss
the national anthem of dentalfloss
some $5's worth of used dentalfloss
12 miles of used dentalfloss
3 tons of used dentalfloss
the dentalfloss that rebelled in the night
and strangled the crest
the dentalfloss on which you strangled
your first tooth
the dentalfloss with which I bet
my tongue for nosing - in
the dentalfloss with which we lassooed
our first housefly
(a potential power source?)
the common housefly is an open book
(a potential power source?)
the hornet is a power source
for screams
which make the world go around
solving all my problems in the end
hung as I am by a toe from the star.

Another favorite for students of poetry in the midwest, in the 70s was Tate's cliche - defying "It's Not the Heat So Much as the Humidity". Suddenly the dog days of summer were filled with hometown nostalgia, witty connections and provocative contradictions:

It’s Not the Heat So Much as the Humidity
Only a dish of blueberries could pull me
out of this lingering funk.
I’m tired of taking the kids down
to the riot, no longer impressed
with the fancy electrical nets, sick
of supersonic nightsticks.

Buy myself a hot dog and a glass of beer—
That helps. It’s hard to say
who’s winning. Nobody is winning.

Boy, Kansas City! Big Zoo! Oriental art!
Starlight Theater: Annie Get Your Gun
going into its seventeenth year.
Once I met Tab Hunter there, four o’clock
in the morning, standing in line

at the Coke machine, so tall and blond,
though not much of a conversationalist.

It’s good to be home, trying to soften
the blow for young girls who are inclined
to fall off their porches.

Some of my best friends are . . .
Curse on those who do and do not take dope.

When Autumn comes, O when Fall arrives,
in her chemise of zillion colors,
I will sigh noisily, as if an old and
disgusting leg had finally dropped off.

No more drinking beer, no more
The perpetual search for an air-
conditioned friend, no more friends.

I’ll take piano lessons, French lessons,
speed-reading lessons, and if there is
still time to kill, gawk at a bluejay
tumbling out of the maple tree.

Cars slide by with their windows up,
whispering of a Mexican Restaurant
“with really good Chili Verde.”

The gutters billow with mauve death;
A mother’s sad voice sends out
a tugboat whistle through the purple mist:
she worries about her children.

And the dangerous fishhook of melancholy
dangles from every dog’s ear.
The dog that saved my life,
that keeps on saving each long, humid night.
The dead dog. And so:

a shiny baseball hovers over the city.
No one asks why. And so: it passes on.
And so: a telephone starts to ring
in a widow’s cake-filled kitchen . . .

A rollerskate collides with a lunchpail.

~ by James Tate (8 December 1943 – 8 July 2015)

In the wake of Tate's death this summer, numerous tributes -- by Dave Eisenstadter, Rich Smith, and Ned Stuckey - French, to name a few -- honored Tate's vision and recalled exemplary poems. Jeffery Gleaves of The Paris Review, included these irresistible references:

"Tate’s poems were 'always concerned to tell us that beneath the busyness and loneliness of our daily lives, there remains in us the possibility for peace, happiness and real human connection,' wrote Adam Kirsch in the New York Times."

"But John Ashbery once opined that Tate is a 'poet of possibilities, of morph, of surprising consequences, lovely or disastrous, and these phenomena exist everywhere.' ”

"Surprising consequences" and "real human connections" -- these comments from Ashbery and Kirsch pretty much explain why it's no surprise that I've turned to Tate's work previously, in both a Fortnightly essay ("I sat at home and began to cheer up. What if none of this happened? I thought. What if there was nothing to be sad about?") and a Quotidian post ("What I thought was infinite will turn out to be just a couple / of odds and ends, a tiny miscellany, miniature stuff, fragments / . . . But it will also be enough, / maybe even more than enough . . . ").

My professor and friend, and long - time editor of The Chariton Review Jim Barnes reminisced, "Yes, sad to hear of Tate's death. The old Blue Booby is gone. Funny how I associate him with that one bird in his great little comic poem":

The Blue Booby
The blue booby lives
on the bare rocks
of Galápagos
and fears nothing.
It is a simple life:
they live on fish,
and there are few predators.
Also, the males do not
make fools of themselves
chasing after the young
ladies. Rather,
they gather the blue
objects of the world
and construct from them

a nest—an occasional
Gaulois package,
a string of beads,
a piece of cloth from
a sailor’s suit. This
replaces the need for
dazzling plumage;
in fact, in the past
fifty million years
the male has grown
considerably duller,
nor can he sing well.
The female, though,

asks little of him—
the blue satisfies her
completely, has
a magical effect
on her. When she returns
from her day of
gossip and shopping,
she sees he has found her
a new shred of blue foil:
for this she rewards him
with her dark body,
the stars turn slowly
in the blue foil beside them
like the eyes of a mild savior.

Time and again, Tate's poems open their arms to a poetry - starved world, embracing all the nonsense, affirming the quest for meaning, and giving the reader a little something to smile or smirk or laugh right out loud about, as well as plenty to worry about. Like this one, for example:

Dream On
Some people go their whole lives
without ever writing a single poem.
Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
to cut somebody's heart or skull open.
They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease.
and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing.
These same people stroll into a church
as if that were a natural part of life.
Investing money is second nature to them.
They contribute to political campaigns
that have absolutely no poetry in them
and promise none for the future.
They sit around the dinner table at night
and pretend as though nothing is missing.
Their children get caught shoplifting at the mall
and no one admits that it is poetry they are missing.
The family dog howls all night,
lonely and starving for more poetry in his life.
Why is it so difficult for them to see
that, without poetry, their lives are effluvial.
Sure, they have their banquets, their celebrations,
croquet, fox hunts, their sea shores and sunsets,
their cocktails on the balcony, dog races,
and all that kissing and hugging, and don't
forget the good deeds, the charity work,
nursing the baby squirrels all through the night,
filling the birdfeeders all winter,
helping the stranger change her tire.
Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation
from decaying matter, subtle but everpresent.
They walk around erect like champions.
They are smooth-spoken and witty.
When alone, rare occasion, they stare
into the mirror for hours, bewildered.
There was something they meant to say, but didn't:
"And if we put the statue of the rhinoceros
next to the tweezers, and walk around the room three times,
learn to yodel, shave our heads, call
our ancestors back from the dead--"
poetrywise it's still a bust, bankrupt.
You haven't scribbled a syllable of it.
You're a nowhere man misfiring
the very essence of your life, flustering
nothing from nothing and back again.
The hereafter may not last all that long.
Radiant childhood sweetheart,
secret code of everlasting joy and sorrow,
fanciful pen strokes beneath the eyelids:
all day, all night meditation, knot of hope,
kernel of desire, pure ordinariness of life
seeking, through poetry, a benediction
or a bed to lie down on, to connect, reveal,
explore, to imbue meaning on the day's extravagant labor.
And yet it's cruel to expect too much.
It's a rare species of bird
that refuses to be categorized.
Its song is barely audible.
It is like a dragonfly in a dream--
here, then there, then here again,
low-flying amber-wing darting upward
then out of sight.
And the dream has a pain in its heart
the wonders of which are manifold,
or so the story is told.

And this one, from The Paris Review (Summer 2006, #177):

The Old Soldiers
When I came out of my study, Ginny was standing there with
wet hair. “Are you going to town today?” she asked me. “I wasn’t
planning on it,” I said. “Oh, never mind,” she said. “What is it?”
I said. “I need some stuff for my allergies, but I can get it
tomorrow,” she said. “No, I can go. It’s no big deal. Just make
me a list,” I said. Ginny had to be at a planning session for the
League of Women Voters. I went back to my study to line up
several dozen lead soldiers on my desk. They were expensive antique
specimens I had saved since childhood. When I had them all lined up
the way I wanted them, I knocked them all down. Ginny shouted, “Are
you alright?” “It’s nothing, just a small accident,” I shouted back.
She said goodbye and left me the list on the counter. I made myself
a bologna sandwich and sat staring at the list. It all sounded like
stuff that could kill you. But if it could also stop your nose from
dripping and your eyes from running, then good. I walked back and
stood at the door to my study: all dead. Then I put on my jacket
and drove into town, which was crowded and bustling for some reason.
I found my secret parking space at back of the deli. In the drugstore
I roamed the aisles until I found the section devoted to allergies.
There seemed to be hundreds of products making great claims, all with
dire warnings: dizziness, fainting, nausea, etcetera. I felt myself
getting sick just standing there. Finally I found everything Ginny
needed. It was really quite expensive. It wiped out all the cash
I had. When I stepped outside, I saw a mob had gathered in the park.
I asked a woman standing next to me, “What’s going on?” “They’re
protesting,” she said. “Protesting what?” I said. “Just protesting.
You don’t need to have a special cause anymore. In fact that’s now
thought to be kind of quaint and old-fashioned. I do think it’s an
improvement, don’t you?” she said. “I always miss the old ways, until
they come back to haunt you,” I said. She moved away from me, as if
from a bad aroma. The police were moving in on the mob, nightsticks
at the ready. I heard one of them say, “What is this about?” The other
one answered, “Spoiled brats don’t know what to do with their Saturdays.”
Finally I made it to my car behind the deli, and it had a ticket on
it. This made me sad. There had been a flaw in my otherwise perfect
mission. I drove home and lined up the medicines on the counter.
I hoped Ginny wouldn’t faint and throw up, fall down the steps, and
crack her head open. I walked into my study and the first thing
I noticed was that all the soldiers were standing up. I was
certain I had knocked them down. Ginny had left the house. No
one was here but me. I didn’t like thinking of the possibilities.
Nonetheless, I walked from room to room, slowly, quietly, glancing
at every item carefully. Everything seemed to be normal, undisturbed,
leaving only the uprighted soldiers unexplained. I could just be
losing my mind. That was a simple explanation. Yes, that was it.
Unless the soldiers righted themselves. They are old and have experienced
thousands of battles. Maybe they’ve learned a thing or two. I
entered my study and sat down at my desk. With a sweeping gesture
I knocked them all against the wall, breaking several bayonets
and a leg or two. I sat there solemnly contemplating my deed.
Ginny wouldn’t be home for three hours. That seemed like a very
long time. I went into the living room and waited for them to regroup.
I had a feeling this was going to be a fight to the death, but still
I was surprisingly calm.

In closing, a little irreverence never hurts; in fact, it often helps:

Goodtime Jesus
Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dream-
ing so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it?
A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled
back, skin falling off. But he wasn't afraid of that. It was a beau-
tiful day. How 'bout some coffee? Don't mind if I do. Take a little
ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.

~~ Rest in Peace James Tate ~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~ More Chariton Photos from Jay Beets ~
Looking North, August 2015

Shadows on the Chariton, August 2015

A Rocky Patch, May 2015

A Somewhat Bleaker Chariton, March 2015

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Monday, September 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Moving Day

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"GOODBYE, BEAUTIFUL, EMPTY HOUSE . . .
WALLS WE PAINTED, SHELVES WE BUILT, FLOORS WE POLISHED . . . "
[By "we," I mean Gerry!]

*****************************
I am dedicating this blog post to my wonderful neighbors
Mia ~ Zoe ~ Bea
who are boxing up and packing and moving away this summer
Au revoir mes amies!

*******************************

Away went our little family,
like rats leaping off the burning ship.
It hurt to think about everything at once:
our friends, our desert, old home, new home.
We felt giddy and tragic
as we pulled up at a little gas-and-go market
on the outside edge of Tuscon.
Before we set off to seek our fortunes we had to gas up,
of course, and buy snacks for the road.

Barbara Kingsolver
from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, p. 2

*********************************
A poem for every poem -- or in this case, four poems for one another -- all about the momentous occasion of Moving Day. The repeated images speak for themselves. In every poem you'll find the cardboard boxes, the eerie lonely no - person's land somewhere in between past and present and future, the strange light and odd sounds, the absent friends and closed doors, the keys, the landmarks, the old roads trailing behind, the new life stretching out ahead, the uncertainty of transition.

Each poet uniquely captures the sense of dislocation, isolation, and apprehension. Since first reading Joyce Barlow's poem in 1977, I have never failed to feel like "a great historical epic" whenever the occasion calls for such; and I was delighted, more recently, by the similarity of Barbara Kingsolver's sentiment: "We felt giddy and tragic." William Meissner unsettles the reader with his acquatic imagery and surprising motif of the pet goldfish / dead minnow; and Robert Wallace takes us back to a time before cell phones: "The phone has been disconnected."

Starting Out
Suddenly your life is packed away
in boxes and the present
is no longer home
again. You think
I must never leave
any of this. You feel
like a great historical epic,
capturing every moment around
you: the turning of keys, the entering
into rooms, your hand resting comfortably
on the light switch.

And then you are going,
the faces of your friends growing small
as they wave in the rearview mirror,
the sign at the city limits saying
COME BACK SOON

********

Then you are past stopping.
You would like to think you know
where you're going --
the map marked, the road clear.
But how will you know
when you get there?
the signs all blank
on this side, the roads narrowed
to a fine black line
behind you.

It may be you will never see any of this
again, coming suddenly bright
on the dark edges
of sleep. Or perhaps in the early
morning hours of some future room you will sit down
to write all this and find
it is the letter from home you've been waiting for.

Joyce Barlow, American Poet
poem from The Chariton Review, Fall 1977 (vol 3 no 2)


Moving Again
1.
You find yourself filing cardboard boxes for days.
When you open them you'll want everything
exactly as you packed it:
the flowers with petals unbroken, not smelling sour,
the slash of sunlight
caught in the corner
like a pet goldfish.

2.
Moving is a way of teaching yourself
where you've been, you think, while you watch
your wife stare at the soles
of her feet.
It's a way of learning
where you should not be,
like a fish that dreams too often
of breathing air.

3.
You step out the door for the last time,
expecting a hoard of neighbors, tears
hanging from their eyes, transparent laundry.
All that greets you is the empty
backyard, the hot sun
splashing you with salt.

4.
You walk to the truck with the key,
the key -- a dead minnow in your palm
that is suddenly heavier
than any packed suitcase, any davenport.

The engine starts in an instant.
As you drive away,
the exhaust leaves a blue stream behind you
where no fish are swimming.

William Meissner, American Poet
poem from The Chariton Review, Fall 1978 (vol 4 no 2)


Moving
Bookshelves empty, tables lampless, walls
bare, the house is a rubble of moving --
foothills of boxes, trunks
under clouds of ceiling.

My friends
said good-bye hours ago, when June twilight
hung on the hills. Now, in late dark
muggy for stars, moths whir at the yellow porch light,
ping screens. By the one dim floor lamp
among the shadowy undoings of my life,
in a limbo between having gone and having gone,
I sit like a caretaker of my doom.
Not an ashtray or a spoon.
In the real dawn, I will be going.

My friends are sleeping, turned toward
tomorrows without me -- will be sleeping
when I begin to drive the familiar streets and roads
in which the sun will come only after me.

If I called them now, in this hollow
past midnight, anything I said would
be from the future.

Alone in the present,
I wait, smoking (a tin can for ashes).
Bugs thwack on the screens. Beyond love
I am a projectile into the future --
still hours, days away.
Time has stopped at the speed I am going, landmarks
appear strangely in new light,
clouds whirling past me, into the past.

The phone has been disconnected.

Robert Wallace, American Poet
poem from the anthology
Some Haystacks Don't Even Have Any Needle, p. 170


And finally, the beautiful imagery and heart - breaking clarity of Howard Nemerov's poem was new for me in 2004 when my good friend Cate (mentioned many times before on this blog) sent me a copy to guide me on my westward journey. For many years we had lived across the street from each other in Philadelphia; then Cate returned to Ohio, and a year later, following in her footsteps, my family and I returned to Indiana. How aptly Nemerov describes the intensity of those neighborly days and years, and how honestly he portrays the conflicted decision to move away. Nowadays, Cate and I remain "neighbors" in the Midwest -- well, Ohio is right next door to Indiana! -- living proof that some friendships manage to survive the momentous, earth - shattering, giddy, tragic, time - traveling confusion of moving day.

Going Away
Now as the year turns toward its darkness
the car is packed, and time come to start
driving west. We have lived here
for many years and been more or less content;
now we are going away. That is how
things happen, and how into new places,
among other people, we shall carry
our lives with their peculiar memories
both happy and unhappy but either way
touched with a strange tonality
of what is gone but inalienable, the clear
and level light of a late afternoon
out on the terrace, looking to the mountains,
drinking with friends. Voices and laughter
lifted in still air, in a light
that seemed to paralyze time.
We have had kindness here, and some
unkindness; now we are going on.
Though we are young enough still
And militant enough to be resolved,
Keeping our faces to the front, there is
a moment, after saying all farewells,
when we taste the dry and bitter dust
of everything that we have said and done
for many years, and our mouths are dumb,
and the easy tears will not do. Soon
the north wind will shake the leaves,
the leaves will fall. It may be
never again that we shall see them,
the strangers who stand on the steps,
smiling and waving, before the screen doors
of their suddenly forbidden houses.

Howard Nemerov, American Poet
poem from
The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov, p. 220


SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, July 28, 2011

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

No One With A Nose

CENTRAL PARK ~ WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

" . . . the deciduous idea!
trees die for half the year and talk all else in the universe . . . "
from the poem "Desire, A Sequence" by Lee Perron, 1977
(photo taken on Ben's 21st Birthday, 2 June 2011)

************************
Another character who lives and dies by the nose:
Cyrano de Bergerac
A couple of weeks ago, on my Quotidian page, I posted the following long poem, which my nearest and dearest (and perhaps a few of my former students) will recognize as a long - time favorite of mine.For those who have not read it before, here is one of the best parables I have ever encountered on the topic of sacrifice and the price of experience. This man does not cut off his nose to spite his face. No, he does it to gain both the world and his soul.

I think perhaps rather than sacrifice, this poem may really be more about an idea that came to attention ~ coincidentally! ~ as I was turning the calendars ahead to July: opportunity cost, i.e., "the cost of any activity measured in terms of the best alternative forgone . . . the sacrifice related to the second best choice available to someone who has picked among several mutually exclusive choices . . . the basic relationship between scarcity and choice. The notion of opportunity cost plays a crucial part in ensuring that scarce resources [ ~ such as true love ~ ] are used efficiently. Thus, opportunity costs are not restricted to monetary or financial costs: the real cost of output forgone, lost time, pleasure or any other benefit that provides utility should also be considered opportunity costs" (see Wikipedia for further explanation and footnotes).

An even better explanation is provided by the young entrepreneurs who designed the Indiana Council for Economic Education 2011 Economic Concept Calendar. The featured concept for July is "Opportunity Cost," illustrated by fifth grader, Abbie S.: "When you make a decision, the most valuable alternative you give up is your Opportunity Cost. (Opportunity Cost is NOT what you pay to buy something.) There is always an alternative to any decision, so every decision has an opportunity cost" (click ICEE, scroll down to page 7 for calendar contest winners; clicking on the winning entries link will give you a preview of next year's 2012 calendar).

Another way to think of it is the passage from George Bernard Shaw's play Major Barbara (but also ascribed to novelist H. G. Wells; a discrepancy that I have not yet resolved to my satisfaction):

"You have learned something.
That always feels at first
as if you have lost something."
If there is a decision, an alternative, something to learn . . . then there will be a cost, something forgone, something to lose.

Following Lee Perron's poem, you will find a couple of letters. All the connections are self - explanatory, I think. So, please, read on and enjoy:

from Desire, a Sequence (1977)
by Lee Perron, California Poet & Antiquarian Bookseller

there are so many innocent little things we want
with application and luck and a good nudge from the gods
we may have any of them

it's those gods -- they bestow all things upon you
and they do not ask for much in return
they will give you everything & they will ask back from you only
some small thing --
for instance, they might ask for your nose

come on, they say, why don't you just chuck it in
put it down the garbage disposal and as soon as it works its way
back into the earth we'll give you whatever you want
the deciduous idea! trees die for half the year & take all else in
the universe
-- i can hear what's going on in your mind: what, my nose? oh
no, not me, you must be thinking of some other guy
but you know, a man might do it
he might take a knife & cut a little deeper every day
and if by the second week he's still only through the skin and
hasn't really gotten to the bone yet
in that second week he decides to lob off the whole thing at once
and there he is with no nose
people laugh at him
but immediately the gods start bestowing their gifts
they give him patience & application
he learns how to do things right
slowly he grows in command of his will & intellect
and with these he acquires whatever he feels he needs:
a wife, lovers, respect in his community, a drum set
the capacity to drink limitless quantities of gin

but what is hard right from the start is that nose
he sighs often (through his mouth) and is heard to say
without my nose sometimes none of it seems to make sense
his friends show up and remind him of the cold hard facts of
his noseless life
they tell him to apply himself
and he's back at work again, gathering his desires

sometimes he wonders if he really had to go out & cut off his
nose just to learn how to get things
maybe he could have just gone out and gotten them
but no, he looks around & sees that no one with a nose has
anywhere near the things he does, not a tenth so much,
not a hundredth

whenever he takes a trip to one of those big medical cities --
boston, baltimore, houston, he'll go & talk to the medics
what can you do about this nose? he'll ask
what nose? they reply
he has learned to be earnest always: can you do anything about
getting me another one?
but when the doctors hear the circumstances
-- his confused early life,
his vow to the gods, the garbage disposal
-- they won't touch him with a ten foot pole

there are good years and bad
he goes through periods where he is a great complainer
what is the point of it, he says, if i have no nose?
his friends show up to console him
well at least you'll never have to rub your nose in your own
filth, they say
his friends become his tormentors
there is a long time he won't speak to anyone
night after night he dreams his nose has come back
each night it's the same shape, but a different size
somewhere along the line, tho, he stops fighting things so hard

there are always people to make jokes, even upon the wealthy & successful
he makes them himself in moments of despair
he will howl, every yes must have a no
but every ass must have a nose!
and on his tombstone the universal jester gets off a last good one:
an excellent man / got everything a man / could want; said yes
to all / but could have used more nose

so they laugh at him in the graveyard
but you listen, when that man died he had finally achieved every-
thing:

children, grandchildren, troops of friends
the warm feelings of all who knew him
earlier on concubines & no desire left unfulfilled
an animal park named in his honor
real progress in the field of cancer
a fully benevolent philosopher-king in charge of his country
universal justice prevailing throughout the land

at the end they hear him say
you know, if i had it to do all over again, i'd like to try it with
my nose the next time
and he dies
& it is nothing like the death of priam or macbeth
or any of those other simpletons
this man got everything

***********************

you have seen it perhaps
there is always the time the car stops
in front of the big white house
or gray house, or blue
it will not go any further with you
the car is stopped
and one of you must get out
and the other drive off
it is all that simple
-- do you think i am talking of love?

or you will be driving down a country road
and there are two sparrows
or buntings or bluebirds
and you hit one of these and it lies by the roadside
and its mate circles about chittering
and then sits on a fencepost
and sings something
this mate, perhaps, is inconsolable
please --
i am not talking about love

your mate dies, or parents
or one of your other friends
there is nothing fearful in the death
the deadman is not the problem
his letters perhaps
some phrase he spoke that rings every after
the way he died, what the surgeons did to his brain, or kidneys,
or heart
what you & he would have been doing now
next week, all summer long as you always did
the deadman did not die
your plans died
and this is what is so upsetting
this makes us so sick we cannot even think

i have seen all the trees
and the great views from mountains
the stars
the tiniest flowers within inches of my eye
but i have seen nothing more beautiful than human desire
in the country, the lawns just going purple with violets
we would have these violets and one particular friend
we have shattered the glazed bowl and make another
rounder, or less symmetrical, or with a plainer glaze
who could blame us? at sunset, we ask for wine
in white dawn we take coffee
we make lovely worlds more & more lovely
and then we see they are better simple
and then we make them simple
this desire is very much like song
our melodies everywhere about us
like butterflies, our desires hover about our heads and our hands

in this beauty the car stops
the arm reaches for the doorhandle
and there is nothing left to it but the pulling up on the handle
there is a way the eyes have of gazing intently downward
the legs slide onto the pavement
and one of you looks back through the car window
you may touch one another's lips, or not
it hardly makes any difference, so beautiful is desire

********************************************

Letter from Ben McCartney to Lee Perron

28 March 2003

Dear Mr. Perron,

I am a 7th grade student, writing to you from St. Peter's School in Philadelphia. I want to tell you what a remarkable and memorable impression your poem "from Desire, a Sequence," has made on me.

Every month, every student at St. Peter's has to memorize a poem and recite it before his or her class. Then a few speakers from each class are chosen to recite their poems before the entire school. About a year ago, my mother showed me your poem, about the man who cuts off his nose in order to get whatever he wants from the gods. After reading your fascinating poem, I knew that I wanted to recite it at the next poetry declamation. I was successful in my class presentation and went on to win the award for the month and the all-school Declamation Award for 2002. I had several other successful poems throughout the year, but yours was the best of all.

In our family, we refer to your poem as "The Nose Poem," and we all love it. My mother (Kitti Carriker) learned of this poem years ago when she was a student of Professor Jim Barnes and Professor Andrew Grossbardt at Northeast Missouri State University, Kirksville. She discovered your poem in The Chariton Review, 1977. After college, she became an English teacher, and she told me that she taught this poem to her students every year. But I think what made her the happiest was being able to share it with me and my dad and my brother.

Since your poem appears in The Chariton Review titled "from Desire, a Sequence," we have always wondered if there is more to the sequence than appears here. We would all be greatly interested in learning more about this poem, as well as other poems that you have written. Please let us know where we could look for more of your work (so far we have not been successful in the library or on amazon.com).

Thanks again for your wonderful poem about the man who understood the price he had to pay in order to get everything!

Sincerely yours,

William Benedict McCartney

P.S. I hope you will enjoy the enclosed video tape from Friday, April 26, 2002. Despite my very best efforts to do your poem justice, I accidentally omitted a few lines right near the end. I was mortified, but luckily no one in the audience (except maybe my mom) seemed to notice.

************************************

Letter from Lee Perron to Ben

25 April 2005

Dear Ben,

Your letter was a most pleasant surprise. Thank you so much for it, and for the tape of your reading, and for the news that you and your mother have memorized my 25 year old poem. I'm quite honored by your appreciation of my unassuming anti-hero. In truth, I had long since forgotten the poem. I can hardly describe the eerie, wonderful feeling of learning that it lives in the memory of people two thousand miles away and is still mentioned on occasion in classrooms.

The situation reminds me of a matter in the life of the Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova, who wrote a poem of protest against the imprisonment of her son by the oppressive regime of Joseph Stalin. She was able to recite it in public one or two times before the authorities stepped in and destroyed all written copies of it and forbade her to recite it again. Twenty years later, under a somewhat more open government, she wanted to work on the poem once more, but didn't have a copy. However, there were people from her audiences years before who, having heard it just once or twice, had memorized it. They were able to bring the whole text -- many pages in length-- back for her.

To answer your questions: I'm not sure now whether or not I had other poems in a group to be called Desire, A Sequence. At any rate, no such book appeared. While writing has always been an important part of my life, I have tended not to publish work. Someone once invented the term "privishing" to designate printing & distributing written work to a few friends, as distinct from putting work out to the publish ("publishing"). I've been a privisher, customarily sending one poem a year -- a winter solstice greeting -- to family and friends. Something in this practice gives just the right amount of emphasis to the fact of my existence, and I take satisfaction in it and don't seem to want anything more of writing.

It happens my wife and I are moving . . . this spring. In order to avoid moving excess baggage from one attic to the next, I'm attempting to look over every piece of paper in 8 large and ponderous boxes of old poems and daily journals. Somewhere in the mass I'll find a copy of from Desire, a Sequence and will look at it for the first time in all these years and consider whether or not to hang on to it. To hear that both your mother and you have memorized is sure to land it in the keeper file.

Are you a writer yourself? If in the future you should publish a poem I would be delighted it you'd make a photocopy and forward it here.

Many thanks again for keeping my poem alive and for you your letter.

Best regards,

Lee Perron

P.S. Enclosed a copy for you of a small "book" of mine that did manage to find publication -- something to be carried around in a shirt pocket.



**********************************

Letter from Jim Barnes to Kitti

6 May 2003

Dear Kitti:

Thank you for the nice letter -- and the copies of your son's and Lee's letters. Happenings like this make all my years of editing worth it. The reward is the work and the knowing that it has meant something to someone out there in the world.

Let me hear from you: what you are up to, where you are teaching, what you are writing. You have a near - teenage so! My goodness, where has the time gone? Rhetorical question, of course. The mirror tells me each day: I am not Dorian Gray.

Peace and love,

Jim Barnes

***********************************

Letter from Jim Barnes to Kitti

8 July 2011

Dear Kitti:

Did I tell you of my encounter with Lee--after having published several of his poems in Chariton? Spring of 1978: I was giving a reading of my work at U. Cal.-- Berkeley. I dropped a hint that I needed a ride, after the reading, back to my hotel at the San Mateo airport. Several offers were presented. One big fellow (6 feet, 6 inches, I'd say) stepped forward barefooted and stuck out his front paw. It was Lee, who'd seen the announcement of the reading in Poetry Pilot and had driven up from Walnut Creek. We had a great drive to my hotel and some really fine conversation. As it turned out, I discovered that Lee had a good friend in Lafayette, Indiana, at the university--Neil Myers, who ten years later, was to be one of the editors for my Purdue book La Plata Cantata. But now Lee and I somehow have lost contact . . .

Peace and love,

Jim

********************************************

See? In every encounter there's a coincidence!
Now, we just need to get this blog post to
Mr. Perron to complete the connection!

[Additional posts on Jim Barnes, Andrew Grossbardt, and The Chariton Review include: Missouri Poets, Quinton Duval, Tomatoes & Gravy, Parallax, and Penelope]

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, July 14, 2011

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com