December 16: Inner High Schooler, Walt Whitman, "Make Me a Poet"

You know, over the last few days, I've been wondering how I managed to end up a finalist for Poet Laureate of the U. P.  I mean, I know how the process works--the nominations and all.  But I've never been good a self-promotion.  I love talking about poems, going to poetry reading, giving poetry reading, teaching poetry.  Every once in a while, though, my inner high schooler sometimes taps me on the shoulder and whispers, "You're not really that good."

It's a battle that I constantly fight.  When somebody compliments one of my poems, I have a difficult time not pointing out its flaws.  I don't think that I'm alone in this, however.  Walt Whitman was rewriting Leaves of Grass up until the day he died.  It was never finished.

I often tell my students that no writing is ever done.  It's just due.  I believe that.  I think Walt Whitman believed that, too. 

I'm constantly in the process of becoming a poet.

Make Me a Poet

by:  Martin Achatz

Dear Lord, make me a poet like cummings,
Except with capitalization and punctuation.
Make me hungry, wild as Uncle Walt,
Less the fingers of grass in delicate places,
Prolific as Emily, know Death's home phone,
Minus the agoraphobia, moth-white dresses.
Lord, I want to be Dr. Williams
With his wheelbarrow, rain, chickens,
But I don't want to go to medical school.
I'll observe the mating habits of blackbirds
With Mr. Stevens, but I won't sell car or life insurance.
I want to walk like Bob down a yellow road
That forks, get lost on a snowy evening, but can't
Pretend to farm, raise poultry, or pick apples.
I want to rage against dimming light like Dylan,
Without having to drink anybody under the table,
Dive, as Adrienne did, into the shipwreck,
Without the Jewish angst, the struggle of being
Woman, wife, mother, political activist, lesbian.
Let me sing like Sylvia against Nazi daddies
And not have to stick my head in an oven.
Allow me to garden words like Stanley,
Live a century, but also win the Nobel Prize.
Lord, I will leap in the streets, dance like a fool,
Strip naked, grab a tambourine, shake
My hairy goods at all onlookers if only
You will let me raise my voice, weave
My poems like David, the lucky bastard.
Of course, I don't want to cheat on my wife
Or kill a friend.  I won't go that far.
Other than that, anything for You, Lord.


Please vote for Saint Marty:

Voting for next Poet Laureate of the U. P.

October 4: Owed Poem, Lisel Mueller, "When I am Asked"

Yes, at the end of Lisel Mueller's week, I owe you a poem.  These last few weeks, it seems I can't keep up with my blogging responsibilities.  Too much to do, too little time.  Some nights, when I get home, I simply want to put my head down on a pillow and close my eyes.

Anyway, I know you don't want to hear my excuses, no matter how legitimate or well-expressed they may be.  So, I will get on with the business at hand.

I didn't set out to become a poet.  No, my first advanced college degree was in the much more lucratively promising:  I earned a Master's in fiction writing.  I wanted to tell stories.  My thesis was a collection of short stories.  In my last semester, my thesis director suggested I take a poetry workshop.  "You have such strong imagery," she said.  "I think you may be a poet."

At first, I laughed at the idea.  Me, the son of a plumber?  A poet?  It seemed like a ludicrous notion.  But I signed up for the workshop.  There wasn't any other class being offered that interested me, and I liked the instructor.  She was deeply spiritual and funny.

And I discovered, in my twenty-fifth year of life, that I was a poet.  I loved the mathematical precision of word and line.  The brevity and power of metaphor.  The beauty of image.  It was narcotically addictive.

 And that is how Saint Marty went to the dark side.

When I am Asked

by:  Lisel Mueller

When I am asked
how I began writing poems,
I talk about the indifference of nature.

It was soon after my mother died,
a brilliant June day,
everything blooming.

I sat on a gray stone bench
in a lovingly planned garden,
but the day lilies were as deaf
as the ears of drunken sleepers
and the roses curved inward.
Nothing was black or broken
and not a leaf fell
and the sun blared endless commercials
for summer holidays.

I sat on a gray stone bench
ringed with the ingenue
faces
of pink and white impatiens
and placed my grief
in the mouth of language,
the only thing that would grieve with me.

And that's how I went to the dark side...