Pages of Rain

I love L-O-V-E as much as the next person, but two weeks of L-O-V-E poems was a bit much. Lesson learned: Never celebrate the month of L-O-V-E in such a manner ever again. Thank goodness, dear reader, we can now move onward. 

What poetry I've recently read or I am currently reading:

• Eireann Corrigan's poetic memoir, You Remind me of You. It is the story of Corrigan's struggle with anorexia, her relationship with her boyfriend, and his struggles with depression. Upon first read, I loved it. The book combines three loves of mine: poetry, memoirs, and young adult literature. It was a gorgeous, fast, emotional read. But, the more I come back to it, the less impressed I am. Corrigan over-uses shock value. Her writing is occasionally heavy handed and her attempts at irony often fall flat. Crucial events are rehashed half a dozen times throughout the book. I applaud Corrigan for what she has overcome and the work she has produced, but it is not a work I'd recommend for more than a quick read.
• Billy Collins' 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day. There seems to be this cult of lovers of Billy Collins. I do not want to join the following, because I'm stubborn like that. But dang, I'd have to admit the man is terrific. I own a copy of Collins' anthology Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry and I love it. It's just such a fun collection. While I have not yet had the time to really familiarize myself with 180 More, my initial impression is one of full approval. I must give a nod to Collins for spreading accessible poetry across America. 
• Ted Kooser's Delights and Shadows, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. To be fair to Mr. Kooser, I will refrain from commentary on the work as a whole until I have finished it. But tonight, I'd like to share with you one poem of Kooser's that I just love. 

A Rainy Morning

Ted Kooser

A young woman in a wheelchair,

wearing a black nylon poncho spattered with rain,

is pushing herself through the morning.

You have seen how pianists

sometimes bend forward to strike the keys,

then lift their hands, draw back to rest,

then lean again to strike just as the chord fades.

Such is the way this woman

strikes at the wheels, then lifts her long white fingers,

letting them float, then bends again to strike

just as the chair slows, as if into a silence.

So expertly she plays the chords

of this difficult music she has mastered,

her wet face beautiful in its concentration,

while the wind turns the pages of rain.

Poetry 180

Last year, Santa Claus, or maybe my mother gave me the terrific gift of a book entitled, Poetry 180. This book is actually a printing of a fabulous project also called Poetry 180 which offers a poem a day for American high school students. The project is the work of Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the United States. Collins started the project in hopes of creating a turning back, a 180, if you will, to poetry, an art so often forgotten in these days. For more about the project, click here.

Today, I'd like to post just one of the poems of Poetry 180. The poem is by Ted Kooser, whose project American Life in Poetry, I highlighted in my last post. Hopefully, by highlighting a few of the phenomenal poetry projects out there, I can perhaps encourage a few more people into incorporating poetry into their daily lives. Also, its a good example of just what the Poet Laureate of the United States actually does. We live at an age where poetry is perhaps more accessible that it has ever been. Why not take advantage of it?

Selecting a Reader

Ted Kooser

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.

from Sure Signs, 1980
University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Love's Austere and Lonely Offices

Years, decades, even half a century, has passed since my grandpa was a farm boy. Yet even now, in his eighties, he recalls with tender clarity the love of his father. Every Christmas, his father would let his sons sleep while he went quietly to the barn and milked the cows all on his own. When the milking was done he would make his way back to the house and rap on his sons' window and say "Christmas gift! Christmas gift!" Every year. This was one small way my grandfather's father said, "I love you." What came to my mind when I heard this simple tale was Robert Hayden's poem, "Those Winter Sundays."

Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze.  No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

"Love's austere and lonely offices." I love that line. Today is Mother's Day and I'm thinking of the many austere and lonely offices my mother's love holds--the things for which she is never thanked. I would like to thank her for a great deal of many things, like roses in the garden, music on the piano, and meals on the table. I would like to thank her for smiles, hugs, laughter, and beauty. It is her quirks that I love, like the way she leaves a dozen pairs of reading glasses scattered throughout the house. Or, her forgetful moments and silly sayings that she kindly lets us chide her about. I know little of love's austere and lonely offices, but I do know my mother is a good woman and I love her for this goodness.

Also, search this blog for Owen Sheers' "Not Yet My Mother" and Billy Collins' "Lanyard," both posted last May, and Collins again just recently. Great poems with a nod to mothers.

And to my sister, thank you for reading this little blog of mine.

YouTube meets Poetry

As of lately, I have discovered the joy of poetry meeting animation and sound. A simple Google search can pull up readings of many of my favorite poems. YouTube has awesome videos available, like animated poetry, clips from Def Poetry Jam, and videos of poets reading their own stuff. It adds a whole new dimension to poetry. Billy Collins also has an awesome Action Poetry website. So today, I post a video of Billy Collins reading his poem, "Lanyard." I've previously posted this poem, but hearing it gives the poem a whole new layer of dry humor. So it isn't really all that exciting to watch, but listen and I hope you enjoy!

Another nod to Collins

As promised, more of the works of Billy Collins. Sticking with Owen Sheers' theme of motherhood, I am posting "The Lanyard." I love the irony within the poem. And, I dearly love my own mother, even if I only have a "lanyard" of sorts to prove it.

"The Lanyard"
Billy Collins

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the pale blue walls of this room,
bouncing from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past --
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sickroom,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift--not the archaic truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Sweet Rapture

Oh sweet rapture. I am in love. I have claimed this before, but now my heart has truly taken wing. The flavor of the week? Richard Brautigan. Sadly, he swears left and right. And this discovery is recent... as in ten minutes recent. So, I must absorb more of his poetry before I choose the most worthy poetry to blog. And, I still owe you more Billy Collins. Collins, I have done you no justice. But tonight, Brautigan is at the forefront. Look with eager anticipation to future blogs concerning my new found love. Tonight, I offer only a teaser of his genius.

"We Stopped at Perfect Days"
Richard Brautigan
We stopped at perfect days
and got out of the car.
The wind glanced at her hair.
It was as simple as that.
I turned to say something—


"Please"
Richard Brautigan
Do you think of me
as often as I think
of you?

"Critical Can Opener"
Richard Brautigan
There is something wrong
with this poem. Can you
find it?

Billy Collins

As promised a little sample of Billy Collins. I was unsure what poem of his was most worthy of blogging and in the end I chose one I can relate to. Hope you like his poetry and perhaps I will post more later. What do you think?

I Go Back To The House For A Book

I turn around on the gravel and go back to the house for a book, something to read at the doctor's office, and while I am inside, running the finger of inquisition along a shelf, another me that did not bother to go back to the house for a book heads out on his own, rolls down the driveway, and swings left toward town, a ghost in his ghost car, another knot in the string of time, a good three minutes ahead of me — a spacing that will now continue for the rest of my life. Billy Collins

Ode to the paradelle

I have fallen in love. He is a poet. His name is Billy Collins. Of course, the affair is entirely one sided, but I have spent the last week immersed in his poetry. I have come to the conclusion of what is the essential flaw of my poetry. It is too weighed down with adjectives. Collins has perfected the art of light poetry, unimpeded by adjectives. Someday Collins, you will know my name too.

For now the work I post is not the work of Collins, but of Cody Mace and with it I issue a challenge unto my faithful imaginary readers. I will post Collins work at a later date when I have carefully selected which work of his speaks most strongly to me.

The topic of today's blog is the paradelle. I discovered the paradelle in the among the works of Collins. As Collins defines it: "The paradelle is one of the more demanding French fixed forms, first appearing in the langue d'oc love poetry of the eleventh century. It is a poem of four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas, must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines, which traditionally resolve these stanzas, must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words. Similarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only these words." The wonderful thing about it? There is no such thing. Collins invented the paradelle to parody strict poetry forms, Collins himself being a free verse poet. I, unknowingly duped, issued the challenge to a friend to write a paradelle. He accepted the challenge, cursing me violently. But nonetheless, this is what he produced.

Paradelle
Cody Mace

This task is very hard to do.
This task is very hard to do.
But I know I will succeed.
But I know I will succeed.
To but succeed I will do this task,
I know is very hard.

How could you be so cruel?
How could you be so cruel?
I just wanted something simple.
I just wanted something simple.
Something so cruel, how could you?
Just be simple, wanted I.

At least I will get you back.
At least I will get you back.
With a task extremely hard.
With a task extremely hard.
Back extremely, at least,
With a hard task I will get you.

So I just wanted to do,
A hard but simple task at least.
This is something I will succeed.
Know I could be cruel, very hard back.
You get, with how extremely
I will task you!

Now dear unknown reader, go into the world with a paradelle of your own, mocking the demands of structure and conformity. No, that would be too ironic. It is a task I dare not ask. Thank you Mr. Collins for making my week. You are fabulous.