April 29: Unicorn, Tyehimba Jess, "Blind Boone's Pianola Blues"

Last day for the week of Tyehimba Jess.

I'm always excited to become familiar with a poet that I haven't read.  It's like opening up my eyes, looking out the window, and seeing a unicorn grazing in my backyard.  It makes the trees and grass and dirt look different.  The world a little clearer, brighter.

Saint Marty saw a unicorn in his backyard this morning.  The bastard was eating his lilac bushes.

Blind Boone's Pianola Blues

by:  Tyehimba Jess

They said I wasn’t smooth enough
to beat their sharp machine.
That my style was obsolete,
that old rags had lost their gleam
and lunge. That all I had
left was a sucker punch
that couldn’t touch
their invisible piano man
with his wind up gut-
less guts of paper rolls.
And so, I went and told them
that before the night was through
I’d prove what the son of an ex-
slave could do: I dared them
to put on their most twisty
tune. To play it double-time
while I listened from another
room past the traffic sounds
of the avenue below.
To play it only once,
then to let me show
note for note how that scroll
made its roll through Chopin
or Bach or Beethoven’s best.
And if I failed to match my fingers
and ears with the spinning gears
of their invisible pneumatic piano
scholar, I’d pay them the price
of a thousand dollars.


And what was in it for Boone?
you might ask…

Might be the same thing that drives men
through mountains at heart attack pace.
Might be just to prove some tasks
ain’t meant to be neatly played
out on paper and into air,
but rather should tear
out from lung, heart and brain
with a flair of flicked wrists
and sly smile above the 88s…
and, of course, that ever-human
weight of pride that swallows us
when a thing’s done just right…
But they were eager to prove me wrong.
They chose their fastest machine
with their trickiest song and stuck it
in a room far down the hall from me.
They didn’t know how sharp
I can see with these ears of mine—
I caught every note even though
they played it in triple time.
And when I played it back to them
even faster, I could feel the violent
stares… heard one mutter
    Lucky black bastard…
and that was my cue to rise,
to take a bow in their smoldering
silence and say, Not luck,
my friend, but the science
of touch and sweat and
stubborn old toil. I’d bet
these ten fingers against any coil
of wire and parchment and pump.
And I left them there to ponder
the wonders of blindness
as I walked out the door
into the heat of the sun.

April 28: Difficult Subjects, Tyehimba Jess, "100 Times"

One of the jobs of a poet is to write about difficult subjects sometimes.  Subjects that may shock, transgress.  Mental illness.  Rape jokes.  Menstruation.  Lynchings.  Abortion.  Abandonment.  Genocide.  Police violence.

As I said in my previous post, and as Emily Dickinson said more than a century ago, my job as a poet is to tell all the truth, but to tell it slant.  Tyehimba Jess knows a thing or two about this.

Saint Marty's truth tonight is that he still has a shitload of grading to do.

100 Times

by:  Tyehimba Jess

I say “nigger” a hundred times before breakfast every morning just to keep my teeth white.
–Paul Mooney, Comedian

Of course, I was skeptical, but because there’s often wisdom in the hardest humor, I stood before the mirror one sunrise and began my morning chant. All repeated calmly for the first week, but with flavors added on as the regimen continued into the second. 50 with er and 50 with a. 1/4 as question, 1/4 as surprise, 1/4 as anger, 1/4 implying the complaining “please.” All alternately whispered, shouted, laughed, snarled—all in search of the ideal whitening formula. After four weeks I remained skeptical. However, perseverance paid off by the sixth, when colleagues remarked on my brightened, hazeless smile, when friends alerted me to a steely glint in my grin.

I doubled the regimen to maximize results. Week eight saw a 2/3 increase in brightening, with a luminousness approaching diamond quality, particularly in the lower incisors. The uppers were sun white, never leaving room in their shine for shadow. Side effects became audible as well as visual: a small echo became perceptible after each repetition in my mantra, such that the cadence assumed a wondrous worksong rhythm. Upon closer examination, magnifying mirrors revealed one (1) small, brown man peering into the side of each tooth’s mirror-smooth enamel, each one appearing only briefly before each utterance. Alarmed but intrigued, I enhanced my treatment. Various gesticulations were added to the morning litany. Sneers, chuckles, sighs, and facial contortions were enhanced throughout. As a result, the echo’s intensity increased from slight windy whisper to low murmur, to small and steady chorus each morning, a daily affirmation of my will to shine. A halogen glare burned from my mouth throughout the day. I’ve become a walking lighthouse of shine—the ritual has grown above and beyond and through me. I wake each morning to stand before my mirror, and before I open my mouth I hear the chant begin above and around me, as if I were in the middle of the mantra’s core, as if I’m one in a circle of prayer. I’ve found others who hear the chant with me, or they’ve found me, those who rise up with me each morning to stand before our mirrors with the diamond-sharp sound of ourselves polishing each tooth until we gleam—our number grows daily. We shimmer and shine inside the bulging head of our chant, polishing our glowing mirrors, staring into the glare until we shield our eyes.

April 27: Hard and Sweet, Donald Hall, "Maple Syrup"

I will return to Tyehimba Jess tomorrow night.

Tonight, in honor of the meeting of my Book Club, I have a poem by Donald Hall to share with you.  It's beautiful and hard and sweet.

And it makes Saint Marty hungry for pancakes.

Maple Syrup

by:  Donald Hall

August, goldenrod blowing. We walk

into the graveyard, to find

my grandfather’s grave. Ten years ago

I came here last, bringing

marigolds from the round garden

outside the kitchen.

I didn’t know you then.

                                  We walk

among carved names that go with photographs

on top of the piano at the farm:

Keneston, Wells, Fowler, Batchelder, Buck.

We pause at the new grave

of Grace Fenton, my grandfather’s

sister. Last summer

we called on her at the nursing home,

eighty-seven, and nodding

in a blue housedress. We cannot find

my grandfather’s grave.

                                  Back at the house

where no one lives, we potter

and explore the back chamber

where everything comes to rest: spinning wheels,

pretty boxes, quilts,

bottles, books, albums of postcards.

Then with a flashlight we descend

firm steps to the root cellar—black,

cobwebby, huge,

with dirt floors and fieldstone walls,

and above the walls, holding the hewn

sills of the house, enormous

granite foundation stones.

Past the empty bins

for squash, apples, carrots, and potatoes,

we discover the shelves for canning, a few

pale pints

of tomato left, and—what

is this?—syrup, maple syrup

in a quart jar, syrup

my grandfather made twenty-five

years ago

for the last time.

                           I remember

coming to the farm in March

in sugaring time, as a small boy.

He carried the pails of sap, sixteen-quart

buckets, dangling from each end

of a wooden yoke

that lay across his shoulders, and emptied them

into a vat in the saphouse

where fire burned day and night

for a week.

                Now the saphouse

tilts, nearly to the ground,

like someone exhausted

to the point of death, and next winter

when snow piles three feet thick

on the roofs of the cold farm,

the saphouse will shudder and slide

with the snow to the ground.

                                          Today

we take my grandfather’s last

quart of syrup

upstairs, holding it gingerly,

and we wash off twenty-five years

of dirt, and we pull

and pry the lid up, cutting the stiff,

dried rubber gasket, and dip our fingers

in, you and I both, and taste

the sweetness, you for the first time,

the sweetness preserved, of a dead man

in the kitchen he left

when his body slid

like anyone’s into the ground.

April 26: New Political Party, Tyehimba Jess, "Mercy"

I just heard a report on National Public Radio, which still exists (so far), that the threat of a federal government shutdown in the United States has been averted.  It seems that the 45th President backed down on his threat to close things down if Congress didn't pass funding for his little Mexican border wall.  The President was waiting for Congressional Democrats to blink.  They didn't.

I'm a little tired of all the rhetoric about Islamic extremists coming out of Washington these days.  There seems to be a great supply of fear-mongering and finger-pointing, not a whole lot of compassion, understanding, and empathy.

Maybe Saint Marty should start a new political party.  He'll call it the Mercy Party.  Anyone interested in joining?

Mercy

by:  Tyehimba Jess

the war speaks at night
with its lips of shredded children,
with its brow of plastique
and its fighter jet breath,
and then it speaks at daybreak
with the soft slur of money
unfolding leaf upon leaf.
it speaks between the news
programs in the music
of commercials, then sings
in the voices of a national anthem.
it has a dirty coin jingle in its step,
it has a hand of many lost hands,
a palm of missing fingers,
the stump of an arm that it lost
reaching up to heaven, a foot
that digs a trench for its dead.
the war staggers forward,
compelled, inexorable, ticking.
it looks to me
with its one eye of napalm
and one eye of ice,
with its hair of fire
and its nuclear heart,
and yes, it is so human
and so pitiful as it stands there,
waiting for my hand.
it wants to know my answer.
it wants to know how i intend
to show it out of its misery,
and i only want it
to teach me how to kill.

April 25: Sonnet, Tyehimba Jess, "What Marked Tom?"

A sonnet from Tyehimba Jess.

Saint Marty needs to get Jess' book.

What Marked Tom?

by:  Tyehimba Jess

Did a slave song at a master’s bidding

mark Tom while asleep in Charity's womb?

The whole plantation would be called to sing

and dance in Master Epps’ large parlor room—

after work sprung from dawn and dragged past dusk,

after children auctioned to parts unknown,

after funerals and whippings. Thus

was the whim of the patriarch. No groans

allowed, just high steppin’ celebration,

grins all around, gritted or sincere.

Charity threw feet, hips, arms into motion

to please the tyrant piano. Was it here

Tom learned how music can prove the master?

While he spun in a womb of slavish laughter?

April 24: Poet of the Week, Tyehimba Jess, "Blind Boone's Vision"

Tyehimba Jess is the Poet of the Week. 

Jess won this year's Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection Olio.  I am not really familiar with his work.  I do know that Olio is his second poetry collection, and that he's won several other prestigious prizes, including a Whiting Award. 

The real test is in the poems themselves, though. 

Saint Marty thinks that Tyehimba Jess passes the test.

Blind Boone's Vision

by:  Tyehimba Jess

When I got old enough

I asked my mother,

to her surprise,

to tell me what she did

with my eyes. She balked

and stalled, sounding

unsure for the first time

I could remember.

It was the tender way

she held my face

and kissed where tears

should have rolled

that told me I’d asked

of her the almost impossible—

to recount my blinding

tale, to tell what became

of the rest of me.

She took me by the hand

and led me to a small

sapling that stood not

much taller than me.

I could smell the green

marrow of its promise

reaching free of the soil

like a song from Earth’s

royal, dirty mouth.

Then Mother told me

how she, newly freed,

had prayed like a slave

through the night when

the surgeon took my eyes

to save my fevered life,

then got off her knees

come morning to take

the severed parts of me

for burial—right there

beneath that small tree.

They fed the roots,

climbed through its leaves

to soak in sunlight . . .

and so, she told me,

I can see.

 

When the wind rustles

up and cools me down,

when the earth shakes

with footsteps and when

the sound of birdcalls

stirs forests like the black

and white bustling

’neath my fingertips

I am of the light and shade

of my tree. Now,

ask me how tall

that tree of mine

has grown to be

after all this time—

it touches a place

between heaven and here.

And I shudder when I hear

the earth’s wind

in my bones

through the bones

of that boxed-up

swarm of wood,

bird and bee:

I let it loose . . .

and beyond

me.