Finally! A poem in English that gives the feeling that a good Japanese haiku has when it melds form and content:

A pot poured out
Fulfills its spout

This fabulous poem can be found in Samuel Menashe; New and Selected Poems, published in a stunning edition by the American Poets Project and edited by Christopher Ricks. Menashe, now 80 years old, is the winner of the Neglected Masters Award from the Poetry Foundation, and he deserves the recognition.

I returned on Dec. 21st to find Cid Corman’s the exultations ($14.00/ Mountains and Rivers Press/ Ce Rosenow, Publisher/ 815 E. 28th Ave./Eugene, Or. 97405/ paperback/134 pgs.) with a note from Shizumi.

Leafing through, I was initially excited by poems that actually displayed more than the familiar jog-trot syllable count breath-beat of Cid’s usual voice:

Dear Friend

The little package
of Ceylon arrived
in fragrant safety–

Caliban’s clust’ring
filberds were not so
luscious nor so brown.

Honey in March is
blissful and just as
inopportune and

to caress the bee
severe temptation–
like Eden’s first zest?

For how much we thank
you. Dear arrears of
tenderness we can

never repay nor
savoring want to.
Bullion is better

than minted things for
it has no alloy.
Thinking of you with

fresher love. As the
Bible says–New each
morning–fresh each night.

Such great language!–Cid actually weilding language and allusion in a way I’d never seen him do before! But no, it was just Cid mining Emily Dickinson’s letters–as so many have done–for a “found” poem sequence. For other interesting examples see Lewis Turco and Lucy Brock-Broido. The other poems in the collection fade in comparison, as in:

Existing

is neither
a right nor

privilege

nor any
thing but a

miracle.

A test of poetry indeed!

Still, this volume contains some heart-felt words for Shizumi–who, for Jonathan Greene and the rest–counted at least as much as the poetry–

The Labors of Love

How often have I

scrubbed Shizumi’s shit
as well as my own

from the toilet bowl

quietly–unasked–
the better for it.

We live together.

I suppose I should

explain that she is
out there busting her

ass while I’m at home

writing these poems–
each doing something.

Together we live.

We together live.

If beauty is truth and truth is beauty, then these are some of the most truthful, and beautiful words that Cid ever wrote. This is the life that visitors to Kyoto would have seen daily from sunrise–quite literally–to sunset. Still, the language doesn’t stack up at all to Emily Dickinson, though it could have–Cid certainly had the gift to write it.

And I’m sure he wanted us to see the difference between his plain style and Emily’s brilliance.

Laura Winter tells us, on the back cover:

“Cid’s poetry is about what we live. Sharp observations, calling attention to the immediate, the moment. Suspending [sic] long enough to remind us we are part of the whole. The music is there, the living is there, are we courageous enough to embrace them?”

I heartily agree with the second sentence, but the first, third and final sentences quite frankly baffle me.

The second book of interest is Kenneth Goldsith’s The Weather ($14.00/Make Now Press/paperback/124 pages), a year’s worth of transcriptions –complete with uh’s–of the weather report for New York City. While Cid gives us condensed slivers of life cunningly tucked side by side with translations and transcreations of poems by others, Goldsmith gives us the bland but comfortable yakety-yak of the guy or gal who glides into view after all the hard truths of the national and local news have been delivered. We’re treated again and again to the slowly changing patter of the everyday prognostications of tomorrow. Goldsmith’s The Weather reminds me of Andy Warhol’s movies on a smaller scale–maybe something to be read in a modern equivalent of an “Andy-mat,” with the television turned to the 24 hour weather station.