(fleeting)

This month, I’m going to let myself off the weekly hook, and try instead to complete several longer books by the beginning of May.

Several book-length poems have resisted my attempts at progress for too long: they always get passed over in favor of the short, skinny things, which always seem so temptingly easy to get through. (The shorties are certainly easier to throw in my bag, so I tend to grab one or two of them, rather than one of the bulky epics.)

So, for April, I will focus on getting to the end of two or maybe three of the big books. This means there will be no updates on my progress until just before Beltane.

This is the first week that I haven’t finished reading any book of poetry, and there are several reasons for this.

First was an influx of new books (and not just poetry) that I bought last week during Sixth Chamber’s last week of business, which swamped my TBR pile.

Second was two long nonfiction books I’m reading, both engrossing; one of which I’m sprinting through the last 100 pages. I have therefore been juggling the two to the exclusion of poetry.

Third was that I’m trying to finish several poems of my own which are still in draft, and I’ve been finding it hard to read poetry while also trying to write it. (This isn’t always true for me, but it has been recently, for whatever reason.)

Last was the death on Friday of WS Merwin, which meant any other reading was put on hold as I pulled my Merwin off the shelf to revisit his work.

Well, the whole thing started
at three o’clock fast. I pulled
into Nazareth, I was feelin’
about half past dead.

It’s been seven hours and
fifteen days? Two years,
seven months, and sixteen
days! Friday morning at
nine o’clock, don’t try to
turn it off. The regular crowd
shuffles in: they just
use your mind and they
never give you credit.

It’s too late tonight
to drag the past out
into the light. Ten o’clock,
night time in New York —
it’s not late, no no, just
early early early. It’s gone
eleven and the bar is shut.
That’s when my love comes
tumbling down, that’s when
you’re going to be mine.
I know who I want to take
me home. We’re gonna
let it all hang down.

It’s one o’clock and time
for lunch, hum dee dum
dee dum. One, two, three
o’clock, four o’clock rock.
Wednesday morning at
five o’clock, there’s a church
beside a park and it fills
the dying dark with
five strokes. Don’t say
goodbye, he’s just leaving
early: the morning
is just a few hours away…

*