THE SINGING SCHOOL

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1. Overheard Through The Walls Of The Invisible City . . . telling those who swarm around him his desire Is that an appendage from each of them Fill, invade each of his orifices,- Repeating, chanting, Oh yeah Oh yeah Oh yeah Oh yeah Oh yeah Until, as if in darkness he craved the sun, at last he reached Consummation. -Until telling those who […]...
2. WYTHER PARK SCHOOL LEEDS FIVE I stood there in front of forty-five faces The first day of term, not especially fancying “Exercises in Mechanical Arithmetic” and so instead I read a poem from Kirkup in Japan, about Nijinsky, Hand-written on a fan of rice-paper. Thirty years later, taking a Sri Lankan girl In search of her first job around London […]...
3. The School Of Metaphysics Executioner happy to explain How his wristwatch works As he shadows me on the street. I call him that because he is grim and officious And wears black. The clock on the church tower Had stopped at five to eleven. The morning newspapers had no date. The gray building on the corner Could’ve been a […]...
4. Whats The Use Of A Title? They dont make it The beautiful die in flame – Sucide pills, rat poison, rope what – Ever… They rip their arms off, Throw themselves out of windows, They pull their eyes out of the sockets, Reject love Reject hate Reject, reject. They do’nt make it The beautiful can’t endure, They are butterflies They are […]...
5. Thing Language This ocean, humiliating in its disguises Tougher than anything. No one listens to poetry. The ocean Does not mean to be listened to. A drop Or crash of water. It means Nothing. It Is bread and butter Pepper and salt. The death That young men hope for. Aimlessly It pounds the shore. White and aimless […]...
6. The Singing Girl (For the Rev. Edward F. Garesche, S. J.) There was a little maiden In blue and silver drest, She sang to God in Heaven And God within her breast. It flooded me with pleasure, It pierced me like a sword, When this young maiden sang: “My soul Doth magnify the Lord.” The stars sing all […]...
7. Revolt In The Ranks I have just spent one-hour-and-a-half Handicapping tomorrow’s Card. When am I going to get at the poems? Well, they’ll just have to wait They’ll have to warm their feet in the Anteroom Where they’ll sit gossiping about Me. “this Chinaski, doesn’t he realize that Without us he would have long ago Gone mad, been dead?” […]...
8. ON FIRST READING JOHN GOODBY'S 'IRISH POETRY SINCE 1950&#039 Barbarous insult to Yeats’ memory and Claudel’s Allen, thank God you are dead, you who breathed the air of Apollinaire, Ghost of Reverdy bear witness to the mendacity of his clamour, Hart Crane, rise from the estuary of the great river you drowned in, John Clare, rise from your country churchyard grave, Gray, from your […]...
9. Admire their style I’m reading fellow poets’ blogs today, A sustaining source of entertainment; I admire their style without exciting comment Or resorting to an unkind eye, simple though It is to sigh about uneasy affirmation. I hope when they read me (if they ever do) They rest as easy on my lack of finished form, The hazy, […]...
10. M. Degas Teaches Art & Science At Durfee Intermediate School Detroit, 1942 He made a line on the blackboard, One bold stroke from right to left Diagonally downward and stood back To ask, looking as always at no one In particular, “What have I done?” From the back of the room Freddie Shouted, “You’ve broken a piece Of chalk.” M. Degas did not smile. “What have I […]...
11. The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye To His Poetry Students Goodbye, lady in Bangor, who sent me Snapshots of yourself, after definitely hinting You were beautiful; goodbye, Miami Beach urologist, who enclosed plain Brown envelopes for the return of your very Clinical Sonnet; goodbye, manufacturer Of brassieres on the Coast, whose eclogues Give the fullest treatment in literature yet To the sagging-breast motif; goodbye, you […]...
12. The End of the World Here, at the end of the world, The flowers bleed As if they were hearts, The hearts ooze a darkness Like india ink, & poets dip their pens in & they write. “Here, at the end of the world,” They write, Not knowing what it means. “Here, where the sky nurses on black milk, Where […]...
13. Preface This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, dominion or power, except War. Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry. The subject of it is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry […]...
14. Poetry I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine. Hands that can grasp, eyes that can dilate, hair that can rise if it must, these things are important not because […]...
15. April 19 We have too much exhibitionism And not enough voyeurism In poetry we have plenty of bass And not enough treble, more amber Beer than the frat boys can drink but Less red wine than meets the lip In this beaker of the best Bordeaux, Too much thesis, too little antithesis And way too much New […]...
16. Willard Fluke My wife lost her health, And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. Then that woman, whom the men Styled Cleopatra, came along. And we we married ones All broke our vows, myself among the rest. Years passed and one by one Death claimed them all in some hideous form, And I was borne along […]...
17. WANTS POEMS AND HAS NEVER REJECTED ANYONE Eamer o’ Keefe with your tinge of brogue And Irish warmth, Daisy and Debjani With your karma and cool verse, I salute you. ( III ) “Ecoutez la voix du vent” – listen to the wind’s voice As Milosz commands “All your griefs, My sad ones, are in vain” but offering In recompense soaring sonatas […]...
18. A Following the phone rang at 1:30 a. m. and it was a man from Denver: “Chinaski, you got a following in Denver…” “yeah?” “yeah, I got a magazine and I want some poems from you…” “FUCK YOU, CHINASKI!” I heard a voice in the background… “I see you have a friend,” I said. “yeah,” he answered, […]...
19. September, The First Day Of School I My child and I hold hands on the way to school, And when I leave him at the first-grade door He cries a little but is brave; he does Let go. My selfish tears remind me how I cried before that door a life ago. I may have had a hard time letting go. […]...
20. SCHOOL SMELL Composed of chalk dust, Pencil shavings and The sharp odour Of stale urine; It meets me now and then Creeping down a creosoted corridor Or waiting to be banged With the dust from piles of books On top of a cupboard. The double desks heeled with iron Having long been replaced; The steel-nibbed pens and […]...
21. I reckon when I count it all I reckon when I count it all First Poets Then the Sun Then Summer Then the Heaven of God And then the List is done But, looking back the First so seems To Comprehend the Whole The Others look a needless Show So I write Poets All Their Summer lasts a Solid Year They can […]...
22. LETTER TO MICHAEL HOROVITZ It is time after thirty years We had our Poetry Renaissance Rise, Children of Albion, rise! It is time after nightmares of sleep When we walked the streets of inner cities Our poems among the burnt-out houses And cars, whispering compassion To the addicts shaking and the homeless Waking and those who have come apart […]...
23. The Singing Silences WHILE the yellow constellations shine with pale and tender glory, In the lilac-scented stillness let us listen to earth’s story. All the flowers like moths a-flutter glimmer rich with dusky hues; Everywhere around us seem to fall from nowhere the sweet dews. Through the drowsy lull, the murmur, stir of leaf and sleepy hum, We […]...
24. The Old Dust The living is a passing traveler; The dead, a man come home. One brief journey betwixt heaven and earth, Then, alas! we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages. The rabbit in the moon pounds the medicine in vain; Fu-sang, the tree of immortality, has crumbled to kindling wood. Man dies, his white […]...
25. Dunce At school I never gained a prize, Proving myself the model ass; Yet how I watched the wistful eyes, And cheered my mates who topped the class. No envy in my heart I found, Yet bone was worthier to own Those precious books in vellum bound, Than I, a dreamer and a drone. No prize […]...
26. Orphan School Full fifty merry maids I heard One summer morn a-singing; And each was like a joyous bird With spring-clear not a-ringing. It was an old-time soldier song That held their happy voices: Oh how it’s good to swing along When youth rejoices! Then lo! I dreamed long years had gone, They passed again ungladly. Their […]...
27. IN HARM'S WAY I was never a film buff, give me Widmark and Wayne any day Saturday matinйes with Margaret Gardener still hold sway As my memory veers backwards this temperate Boxing Day- Westerns and war films and a blurred Maigret, Coupled with a worn-out sixties Penguin Mallarmй- How about that mix for a character trait? Try as […]...
28. She is Overheard Singing OH, Prue she has a patient man, And Joan a gentle lover, And Agatha’s Arth’ is a hug-the-hearth,­ But my true love’s a rover! Mig, her man’s as good as cheese And honest as a briar, Sue tells her love what he’s thinking of,­ But my dear lad’s a liar! Oh, Sue and Prue and […]...
29. THE DEATH OF ART “Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.” -critic Harold Bloom, who first called slam poetry “the death of art.” I am not a poet. I want to be rich and buy things for my family. Besides, I am sort of popular and can honestly say I’ve had a great […]...
30. What Kisses Had John Keats? I scanned two lines with some surmise As over Keats I chanced to pore: ‘And there I shut her wild, wild eyes With kisses four.’ Says I: ‘Why was it only four, Not five or six or seven? I think I would have made it more, Even eleven. ‘Gee! If she’d lured a guy like […]...
31. Le Gout du Néant Morne esprit, autrefois amoureux de la lutte, L’Espoir, dont l’éperon attisait ton ardeur, Ne veut plus t’enfourcher! Couche-toi sans pudeur, Vieux cheval dont le pied à chaque obstacle bute. Résigne-toi, mon coeur; dors ton sommeil de brute. Esprit vaincu, fourbu! Pour toi, vieux maraudeur, L’amour n’a plus de gout, non plus que la dispute; Adieu […]...
32. Tomes There is a section in my library for death And another for Irish history, A few shelves for the poetry of China and Japan, And in the center a row of imperturbable reference books, The ones you can turn to anytime, When the night is going wrong Or when the day is full of empty […]...
33. The Poet’s Corner Here where the end of bone is no end of song And the earth is bedecked with immortality In what was poetry And now is pride beside And nationality, Here is a battle with no bravery But if the coward’s tongue has gone Swording his own lusty lung. Listen if there is victory Written into […]...
34. THE SINGING I was walking home down a hill near our house on a balmy afternoon Under the blossoms Of the pear trees that go flamboyantly mad here every spring with Their burgeoning forth When a young man turned in from a corner singing no it was more of A cadenced shouting Most of which I couldn’t […]...
35. The singing dog when the dog began to sing The people ran amok A man shinned up a flagpole A woman chewed her sock Children danced the drainpipe A policeman robbed a bank The mayor and all the councillors Fired doughnuts from a tank The queen embraced the dustman The clergy showed their knees Librarians in their thousands […]...
36. I shall keep singing! I shall keep singing! Birds will pass me On their way to Yellower Climes Each with a Robin’s expectation I with my Redbreast And my Rhymes Late when I take my place in summer But I shall bring a fuller tune Vespers are sweeter than Matins Signor Morning only the seed of Noon...
37. Cotton Song Come, brother, come. Lets lift it; Come now, hewit! roll away! Shackles fall upon the Judgment Day But lets not wait for it. God’s body’s got a soul, Bodies like to roll the soul, Cant blame God if we dont roll, Come, brother, roll, roll! Cotton bales are the fleecy way, Weary sinner’s bare feet […]...
38. Ars Poetica? I have always aspired to a more spacious form That would be free from the claims of poetry or prose And would let us understand each other without exposing The author or reader to sublime agonies. In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent: A thing is brought forth which we didn’t know […]...
39. Five-Per-Cent Because I have ten thousand pounds I sit upon my stern, And leave my living tranquilly for other folks to earn. For in some procreative way that isn’t very clear, Ten thousand pounds will breed, they say, five hundred every year. So as I have a healthy hate of economic strife, I mean to stand […]...
40. Singing Of speckled eggs the birdie sings And nests among the trees; The sailor sings of ropes and things In ships upon the seas. The children sing in far Japan, The children sing in Spain; The organ with the organ man Is singing in the rain....