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| ISBN-13: | 9781609405021 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wings Press |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 384 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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Read an Excerpt
Far Out
Poems of the '60s
By Wendy Barker, Dave Parsons
Wings Press
Copyright © 2016 Wings PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60940-504-5
CHAPTER 1
THE PRELUDE
what's that sound
Chana Bloch
Chez Pierre, 1961
The skirt's all wrong and the shoes
pinch: thin straps
and little pointed heels. Borrowed clothing.
She crosses her legs under the table.
Uncrosses them.
Heat rises heavy, a raincloud
gathering moisture.
His hand comes down over hers.
Look at those couples: their lives
are already a downpour.
She can't imagine me yet
though she's starting that puzzled
tuck around the mouth,
the one I'm just getting used to.
He draws little Os on her palm
with a fingernail, laughing, taking
his time. I still
carry her with me, unfinished,
into the hazard
of other people's hands,
I live with her choices.
The waiter says, Sweet
or dry? and wipes the dew from a bottle.
She's got to decide, tonight!
for my life to begin.
Robert Alexander
A Joe Pass Guitar Solo
I've fallen asleep in the afternoon. It's November and the radio is playing a jazz program from the local Public Radio station. But my father and I are in Fenway Park. It's June and the outfield grass is dark green (darker than the huge green left-field wall) and my father has just bought one of those ten-cent paper bags of peanuts (it must be close to a full pound of peanuts for a dime). We're both eating peanuts. My father's hands — which seem huge to me, the backs covered with veins "like a roadmap" as he used to say — are deft as hell with the peanuts: Crack and he tosses them into his mouth, the shells drop through the green slats of the seat.
It's the eighth inning and the Red Sox are behind by five runs. Ted Williams is batting and my father points out to me how perfect his swing is. "Look at that bastard swing," my father says — "level as Nebraska." I don't think my father was ever in Nebraska. "But remember, Rob," he says, "he only hit .400 in his really good years. ... Even at his best Ted Williams missed the ball six times out of ten."
It's getting to the end of my dream. I'm in that funny place where you're dreaming but you're also aware of the room around you. There's late-afternoon sunlight through the plants in my window and it sounds like Joe Pass on the radio, bass and piano comping in the background. Joe Pass's left hand is going all over the finger-board of his arch-top Gibson and his right hand is in perfect time. The notes are like tropical birds flying from the small speaker of my radio ... and suddenly all these bright yellow and blue and orange birds come circling and wheeling into Fenway Park. My father and I look up amazed at the bird-filled June sky.
Carol Newman
Simplicity
The window over the sink
looks out past the clothesline
where Sherry's mother hangs dishtowels,
her Bunny Bread tee shirt, and her father's
work pants. 'KB' radio bounces off the refrigerator.
It is 1959. We are dancing
in the kitchen. This is before
we watch I Love Lucy, spill grape juice
on the rug, after we made Cocoa Surprise Cookies.
Sherry rinses glasses, shimmies to the drying
rack. I dry, sashay past the double-oven Tappan,
twirl along the table's chrome edges, careful
of the glass swan where they drop their keys.
This is after Miss Schwabenbauer's red fingernails
traced ovaries, uterus, fallopian tubes, before
we knew what she meant by menopause
means you're old. Our socks glide
on clean yellow linoleum, dust-mopped
smooth. Outside, in rows like spectators,
red-winged blackbirds watch cows ruminate
on Jordan's Hill; telephone wires hum
under their feet. It is morning. Ahead of us,
the day stretches out as far as we can see.
It is 1959. We are dancing in the kitchen.
Fleda Brown
Tillywilly Fog
I'm kissing his poster, on my knees on my bed.
We're both children, in a way. Maybe we stop
at fifteen. We could easily be in the fogged-
up car at Tillywilly Quarry. We haven't, you know,
yet. It begins here. The rest seems like a vast
openness. I cannot imagine past his hand
up my skirt any more than he could imagine handing
back his songs to silence, or lying on his death-bed
without Priscilla or Kathy or Linda or Jo or vast
numbers of other girls called in to stop
his mind enough so he could sleep. What we know
together is half-shut eyes, call it a fog
of desire, if you want, but there is something in the fog
that is not us, an alertness of mind, a hand
running over the entirety of what we know
and calling it good. No matter whose bed
you get in later, something in your mind stops
here: you and Elvis touch lips across the vast
distance. Don't sap this up: the truth is vaster
than the jewel-belted icon stumbling in a fog
of barbiturates. The vibration of the universe never stops.
It's all song, the hum of molecules in the hand
and lips, and what goes away comes back, a flower-bed
of humming, spilling over the edge of what you know.
You think the fat women who cried didn't know
what they cried for, when he died? It's no vast
distance between them and me. Our souls are bedded
in our hungry bodies, taking advantage of the fog
at Tillywilly. "Please let me put my hand
there," he says, and being scared, he stops
there. Nothing ever felt this good, to stop
on that note, the mouth wide open, no
thought left, no design, waiting for the hand
of God to move on or intervene. It's vastness,
it's plenty, it's human spring, pure song, a fog
of wastefulness. You get out of bed
the rest of your life knowing it's Elvis's bed
you've come from–vast, vibrating. On the one hand,
you're stopped, flesh and bone; on the other, you're a song.
Robert Phillips
To Aaron Copland
On His Sixtieth Birthday. 1960.
Suffused light focused into brilliance of blazing poppies
Sprung forth full grown from sparse Appalachian soil:
You have given us adagios and allegros of feeling that soar
Over grazed grasses and glazed glasses of a nation
Balloon-bursting with joy and hysteria.
Shaker, Quaker, farmhand, bigcity Jew —
All are here — sprightly, rightly denim dancing to the groan
And thwack of tractors and threshing machines.
Brazen henna-haired Jazz descends upon a New England town,
Assaulting the immaculate and austere moods of sunparlors
And hundreds of stingily-lit, yam-filled sewing rooms.
Ascend your podium, Maestro-Composer!
Give the tender land more — more ripe rhythms, plump
Music to pleasure a tinseled, troubled day.
Rita Dove
The Enactment
"I'm just a girl who people were mean to
on a bus ... I could have been anybody."
— Mary Ware, Née Smith
Can't use no teenager, especially
no poor black trash,
no matter what her parents do
to keep up a living. Can't use
anyone without sense enough
to bite their tongue.
It's gotta be a woman,
someone of standing:
preferably shy, preferably married.
And she's got to know
when the moment's right.
Stay polite, though her shoulder's
aching, bus driver
the same one threw her off
twelve years before.
Then all she's got to do is
sit there, quiet, till
the next moment finds her — and only then
can she open her mouth to ask
Why do you push us around?
and his answer: I don't know but
the law is the law and you
are under arrest.
She must sit there, and not smile
as they enter to carry her off;
she must know who to call
who will know whom else to call
to bail her out ... and only then
can she stand up and exhale,
can she walk out the cell
and down the jail steps
into flashbulbs and
her employer's white
arms — and go home,
and sit down in the seat
we have prepared for her.
Maxine Kumin
New Year's Eve 1959
remembering Anne Sexton and Jack Geiger
This was the way we used to party:
lamps unplugged, shoved in the closet
rugs rolled up, furniture pushed back
Glenn Miller singles on the spindle.
There was the poet kicking off her shoes
to jitterbug with the Physician
for Social Responsibility
the only time they ever met
and he pecking his head to the beat
swinging her out on the stalk of his arm
setting all eight gores of her skirt
twirling, then hauling her in for a Fred
Astaire session of deep dips
and both of them cutting out to strut
humming along with the riffs
that punctuated "Chattanooga Choo Choo."
This was after Seoul and before Saigon.
Coke was still a carbonated drink
we added rum to. There was French wine
but someone had misplaced the curlicue
and a not-yet famous novelist
magicked the cork out on the hinge
of the back door to "Sunrise Serenade"
and dance was the dark enabler.
Lights off a long minute at midnight
(squeals and false moans) madcap Anne
long dead now and Jack snowily
balding who led the drive to halt the bomb
and I alone am saved to tell you
how they could jive.
Stanley Plumly
Glenn Gould
I heard him that one night in Cincinnati.
The concert hall, 1960, the same day
Kennedy flew into town in perfect sunlight
and rode the route that took him
through the crowds of voters and nonvoters
who alike seemed to want to climb
into the armored convertible.
Gould did not so much play as address
the piano from a height of inches,
as if he were trying to slow the music
by holding each note separately.
Later he would say he was tired
of making public appearances,
the repetition of performing the Variations
was killing him. But that night
Bach felt like a discovery, whose repetitions
Gould had practiced in such privacy
as to bring them into being for the first time.
This was the fall, October, when Ohio,
like almost every other part of the country,
is beginning to be mortally beautiful,
the great old hardwoods letting go
their various scarlet, yellow,
and leopard-spotted leaves one by one.
Andrea Potos
Birthday Parties in the '60s
These were the parties of living rooms
with shag rugs and velour armchairs,
hairsprayed mothers hovering with Polaroids,
and handfuls of girls with bandana blindfolds,
attaching the tail to the donkey's legs, nose, bottom;
the grueling, delicious trial
of the spanking mill — the birthday girl with no choice
but to crawl through the tunnel
of ferocious girls, to be sprung
from between their legs splayed apart
as if rehearsing for events twenty years to come,
all of them, emerging flushed and ravenous,
aiming for the linen clad table,
the reign of the tall round cake
smothered in a sculpture of pink roses.
Robert Phillips
For the Late Great Pennsylvania Station
(1910 – 1966)
"What is our praise or pride but to imagine
Excellence and try to make it?" the poet asked.
Man made it in Manhattan, a dream of pure glory,
Ornamented by the eagles of Caesars,
Walled in creamy gold travertine.
Vaunting Doric columns supported a vaulting
Crystal ceiling one-hundred-fifty feet high,
Waiting room the length of two city blocks,
Space suitable for history to stretch out legs in.
Exposed structural steel counterpointed,
Spoke to us of the Modern Age's motion and power,
Sepia murals whispered like Penn's Woods' past.
This was our immense New World temple.
This was our expansiveness and light,
Interior vista vast as our continent.
When you arrived there, you knew you knew
You had arrived. It cast long shadows,
Contained the sounds of time, for merely
Fifty-six years — not even a blink.
Then it fell to greed,
To demolishers of glory, for a chrome
And plastic sports dome that could have squatted
Anywhere. I recollected Ilion and Babylon,
Coventry and Dresden — hymns to joy, alas.
That which man has made, homo perdidit.
Rita Dove
Rosa
How she sat there,
the time right inside a place
so wrong it was ready.
That trim name with
its dream of a bench
to rest on. Her sensible coat.
Doing nothing was the doing:
the clean flame of her gaze
carved by a camera flash.
How she stood up
when they bent down to retrieve
her purse. That courtesy.
Paula Anne Yup
Waiting
My sister remembers how we lived
five children in a small house
horrible the lack of money
and a doll in a wedding dress for us two to share
so beautiful in the package she remembers
how lovely, lovely wanting to touch
but we didn't have permission from our parents.
For the doll to last
it had to stay in the package and we could only look
at the white dress and the doll in a box.
My sister remembers the longing
to touch the loveliness and to play
little child only wanting to hold and hold
to hug and hug and dress and undress
like a little girl should so it became too much
she pocked a hole through the plastic
so she could touch but it wasn't nearly enough
she says all these years later: not enough at all
Randall Watson
Trailways, August 28, 1963
We crossed the exhilarating, high-pitched.
Passed the stench and glittering,
the amusement bright, the gradual,
box apartments by the tracks and stations
squatting like bored and patient orphans
waiting for a Sunday market to begin.
Then the green-bordered interstates.
Hay bales scattered like formalist sculptures, cornfields
with their stiff stalks and rag-doll tassels
limp as puppets hung
in a storage closet.
Side woods snarled with briar and ivy.
Oaks and maples.
Then Rummy and Old Maid
at the little table rearward and nearby
the cramped bathrooms
that stank of chemicals and soap and piss
splattered on the metal floor, flecks
of snow-white shaving foam
clinging to the shadowy mirror.
Racks of bags and suitcases and light jackets
dreaming above our heads
like hibernating mammals.
The chrome bright
burnings of the little towns,
those signs for Burma Shave and Stuckey's and
The World's Largest Rabbit
and men in large hats and fringed buckskin
wearing side arms on the porch
of a mock saloon.
Birds scrolling the staves of the infrastructure.
Men outside a church
brushing ashes from their sleeves.
Wives and daughters and mothers touching their hair
as if to measure themselves,
waving little paper fans
stapled to paint sticks
where Jesus kneels, alone
in the midst of his drowsy, sleeping disciples,
knowing the story his body will tell.
And then my grandfather
sitting on the back stoop with his .22
shooting sparrows, which dirty the sidewalk.
Dust blowing off the fields.
Small purple flowers
speckled with dew and foraging ants.
He's dipping bread in a cup of milk, disregarding
the plate of tomatoes, red as transitions.
Crushing his Pall Mall in the drive.
Pulling two hot 7 Ups from the trunk
of his Oldsmobile.
And those boys
in jeans jackets who gather
outside Peguy's,
the only women's clothing store in town,
car hoods raised, adjusting
the air intake or idle, gunning
the engine.
Wiping the oil stick clean
with a slash of newsprint.
Attuned to the mechanical contrivance.
Discovering their blurred faces in the polished armature.
There near the geographical
heart of the country.
38 North by 97 West.
Entranced by the sheen.
W. E. Butts
Our Fathers' Clothes
And so now we wanted other lives,
sixteen years old on a summer evening,
coming out of the small town's theater
after "Dr. No" — Ursula Andress in a bikini,
suddenly emerging on a white Jamaican beach,
suntanned and rapt with private song;
Connery as Bond, dark browed and sexual,
stepping out from behind a dune, singing back.
And later, in a perfect tuxedo, Bond wins
at roulette, and deftly places a chip
in the cleavage of that night's good fortune.
These were not our fathers' clothes —
those men of field and factory labor,
Friday's poker ante, Schaefer beer,
a cigar's reward, gabardine trousers,
and rolled up sleeves. But when we stopped
at the Hickey-Freeman men's store
window, our reflected images
dissolved the manikins' blank stares,
until we boys became the characters
in a movie of our own making, confident as men
dressed in slightly tilted fedoras, carefully peaked
handkerchiefs pointing out the breast pockets
of our blended wool, three-button coats,
jacquard print ties in Windsor knots
on Hathaway shirts, the cuffs of pleated pants
just breaking over polished oxfords.
Then a fade to the final scene:
we walked home through the dimly-lit streets —
our fathers' sons.
Michael Waters
Dog in Space
Friday nights on WINS
Murray the K counted down the Top Ten.
A boy who loved the idea of order —
All objects having their place in the world —
I recorded each hit, its spot on the chart,
Then rummaged for meaning in weekly lists
As solemn scholars combed Dead Sea Scrolls.
The names of songs seemed almost Biblical —
My rapt concentration a kind of prayer,
Though only a Russian dog gazed down.
Tin Pan Alley was my chapel as cheap
Transistors spewed revival. Ecstatic
Cries suffused Brooklyn wilderness.
The lists warned how sinners would be ranked,
Culled from mausoleums come Judgment Day.
I Will Follow Him. It's Now or Never.
Like a smash hit played each hour all summer,
The canine cosmonaut spun overhead.
If I searched hard when the countdown ended,
I could spot the spark of the satellite
Among mute stars, crossing the sky, then hear
The weak, unanswered bark.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Far Out by Wendy Barker, Dave Parsons. Copyright © 2016 Wings Press. Excerpted by permission of Wings Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Preface xiii
I The Prelude: What's that sound
Chez Pierre, 1961 Chana Bloch 3
A Joe Pass Guitar Solo Robert Alexander 4
Simplicity Carol Newman 6
Tillywiily Fog Fleda Brown 7
To Aaron Copland Robert Phillips 9
The Enactment Rita Dove 10
New Year's Eve 1959 Marine Kumin 12
Glenn Gould Stanley Plumly 14
Birthday Parties in the '60s Andrea Potos 15
For the Late Great Pennsylvania Station Robert Phillips 16
Rosa Rita Dove 18
Yup Waiting Paula Anne 19
Trailways, August 28,1963 Randall Watson 20
Our Father's Clothes W.E. Butts 23
Dog in Space Michael Waters 25
Chicago, 1964 Janet McCann 26
II Dismantling: r-e-s-p-e-c-t
Geometry Alice Friman 29
Mother to Daughter (1960) Bonnie Lyons 31
Noblesse Oblige Judy Kronenfeld 33
Fifteen Lucille Lang Day 34
Self-Employment, 1970 Natasha Trethewey 35
Before the Pill Scott Wiggerman 36
Reject Jell-O Lucille Lang Day 37
Women's Liberation Judith Arcana 38
The Poet Alice Friman 40
The Feminine Mystique Wendy Barker 43
Love Letter Postmarked Von Beethoven Diane Wakosld 44
Filling the Boxes of Joseph Cornell Diane Wakoski 47
Mary George Ella Lyon 53
César Vallejo Died On A Rainy Night Robert Bonazzi 56
III Acceleration: the times a changing
The Day Kennedy Died Leon Stokesbury 59
Soul Sacrifice Jim Daniels 61
The Summer of the Cuban Missile Crisis David Kirby 63
California Dreaming, LA 1966 Dede Fox 68
Public School 190, Brooklyn, 1963 Martin Espada 70
The Industrial Diamonds of 1964 W.E. Butts 71
Four-Stroke Bryce Milligan 73
Duckling, Swan Jim Elledge 76
A Miltonic Sonnet for Mr. Johnson on His Refusal of Peter Hurd's Official Portrait Richard Wilbur 78
Her Last Sickness Sandra M. Gilbert 79
The Sign in My Father's Hands Martín Espada 80
Where She Was, Where He Was Fleda Brown 82
Sons Beverly Matherne 83
Austin Fire Dave Parsons 86
Cuba, 1962 Ai 90
Brotherhood Paul Mariani 91
For the Student Strikers Richard Wilbur 94
Optical Longings and Illusions Ginny Lowe Conners 95
The Other Language W. E. Butts 96
Beauty David Jauss 98
Dallas Alice Friman 100
IV Enactments: people get ready
King C. K. Williams 105
Teaching Uncle Tom's Children Wendy Barker 111
Between Assassinations Alan Shapiro 112
Blackbottom Toi Derricotte 114
Saturday Matinee Natasha Trethewey 116
The Fight Alan Shapiro 118
Ain't But One Way Heaven Makes Sense; Or, Annie Pearl Smith Explains the U.S. Space Program Patricia Smith 120
Dirty Mexican Ana Castillo 121
Asking for a Heart Attack Patricia Smith 122
Late Apology to Doris Haskins Kate Daniels 124
In My Alice Blue Gown Sybil Estess 125
Ave America Rebecca Balcárcel 128
Allison Wolff Tim Seibles 130
This Day Danny Romero 133
Back in the Day Lorenzo Thomas 134
V War Photographs: there's a man with a gun over there
At a March Against the Vietnam War Robert Bly 139
The Spoils Chana Bloch 140
War Photograph Kate Daniels 141
Sugarcane Tess Gallagher 143
This Poem H. Palmer Hall 146
We Have Seen the Enemy H. Palmer Hall 147
Father Buddha H. Palmer Hall 148
Correspondence Judith Arcana 149
The Lottery Edward Hirsch 151
Nerves David Huddle 152
Them David Huddle 154
Work David Huddle 155
The Border David Jauss 156
A Second-Hand Elegy Michael Anania 158
Communique Yusef Komunyakaa 160
Tu Do Sheet Yusef Komunvakaa 162
Hanoi Hannah Yusef Komunyakaa 164
VOX POPULI Alicia Ostriker 166
The Day of the Failure in Saigon, Thousands in the Streets, Hundreds Killed, a Lucky Few Hanging On the unners of Evacuating Copters Stanley Plumly 167
Minus One, Minus One More Patricia Smith 169
Expatriates, 1967 Katherine Solomon 170
Cambodia Alicia Ostriker 173
VI Sex (Education): baby, light my fire
After the Gold Rush Sally Lipton Derringer 181
Like This It Is We Think To Dance Alberto Ríos 183
Saint Valentine's Day, 1967 Susan Firer 184
Delores Jepps Tim Seibles 187
Terry Moore Tim Seibles 190
To Want the Man Andrea Potos 193
Sex Education Kent Newkirk 195
In Praise of the Passion Mark Martha Serpas 197
Playboy Richard Wilbur 199
Billy's Rubbers Paul Ruffin 201
VII Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll: dance beneath the diamond sky
Mud Dancing Alan Shapiro 205
Song for a Highway Angel Bryce Milligan 207
Cream Lorna Dee Cervantes 209
Charlie's Asleep at the Wire Waiting for You to Sleep Vivian Shipley 210
In the Workshop Aliki Barnstone 212
Austin Relativity Dave Parsons 214
Satisfaction Alicia Ostriker 216
Tripping Through Life, Fantastic! Kent Newkirk 218
Night Hawk Dave Parsons 220
Days of 1968 Edward Hirsch 221
Shankar After the Show Tim Hunt Ravi 222
The Trip Lucille Lang Day 223
A Momentarily Subdued Foofaraw Katherine Solomon 224
Ode to Rock'n Roll Barbara Hamby 227
Hike Up Av. Du Pere-Lachaise Vivian Shipley 229
Christ at the Apollo, 1962 Michael Waters 230
Strangers: An Essay Jim Elledge 232
Listening to the Doors Adrian C. Louis 235
Jimi Hendrix, National Anthem Jim Daniels 236
The Burning of the Midnight Lamp Edward Hirsch 237
VIII Aftermath the answer, blowing in the wind
The Revolution in Oakland Hunt Hawkins 243
Shame Ted Kooser 245
Obeying Glands Vivian Shipley 247
The Sun in Montana Judith Arcana 249
Reunion Ginny Lowe Connors 250
Evening's End: 1943-1970 Leon Stokesbury 253
Nostalgia for Apollo Kathleen Winter 259
Homage to Calvin Spotswood Kate Daniels 260
The Things They Taught Me Paul Mariani 265
Eight Hours in the Nixon Era Kevin Clark 269
Reading Dickinson/Summer '68 Peter Balakian 273
San Francisco: 1969 Adrian C. Louis 275
The Poet C.K. Williams 277
April 24,1971 Adrian C. Louis 282
The Death of Janis Joplin Robert Phillips 283
The Dharma Kia Foundation Janet Lowery 285
Shedding the Sixties Jim Daniels 288
The Sexual Revolution Stephen Dunn 289
Paris, 1971 David Lehman 291
Four Hundred Mourners Stanley Plumly 295
Around the Time of the Moon Stephen Dunn 297
"Their Hats is Always White" Jim Elledge 298
Sixties Sonnet Michael Waters 300
The Year I Was Diagnosed With a Sacrilegious Heart Martin Espada 301
In Front of the Coke Machine Janet McCann 303
Miniskirts Wendy Barker 304
Driving West in 1970 Robert Bly 305
About the Poets 307
Acknowledgments 357