New Reading-Ish
I orderd a few new books of poetry. One of them, I know, is from a very good poet. The other one, I'm not sure about. The other one is a book from Partisan Press, a very small publisher. I have read some of this fella's poems, and I thought they were O.K. but nothing speacial. Once the book arrives, I'll let you know.
Yusef Komunyakaa is the very good poet and a book he one a pulitzer prize for - Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977-1989 - is on its way. I'm not sure if the following poem appears in that book, but I wanted to share it anyway. I didn't end up getting a book read today, so I had to post something.
Believing In Iron
The hills my brothers & I created
Never balanced, & it took years
To discover how the world worked.
We could look at a tree of blackbirds
& tell you how many were there,
But with the scrap dealer
Our math was always off.
Weeks of lifting & grunting
Never added up to much,
But we couldn't stop
Believing in iron.
Abandoned trucks & cars
Were held to the ground
By thick, nostalgic fingers of vines
Strong as a dozen sharecroppers.
We'd return with our wheelbarrow
Groaning under a new load,
Yet tiger lilies lived better
In their languid, August domain.
Among paper & Coke bottles
Foundry smoke erased sunsets,
& we couldn't believe iron
Left men bent so close to the earth
As if the ore under their breath
Weighed down the gray sky.
Sometimes I dreamt how our hills
Washed into a sea of metal,
How it all became an anchor
For a warship or bomber
Out over trees with blooms
Too red to look at.
February 25, 2009 at 7:09 PM
see this is why i dont read poetry
what does this mean
The hills my brothers & I created
Never balanced, & it took years
To discover how the world worked.
We could look at a tree of blackbirds
& tell you how many were there,
But with the scrap dealer
Our math was always off.
???? am I dumb? lol
~heather top
February 25, 2009 at 7:16 PM
Heather,
"The hills my brothers & I created
Never balance..." could mean a few different things. But after reading the poem in its entirety, I believe the poet was alluding to the mounds - hills - of iron they created, never balancing; or, never doing much for them.
"We could look at a tree of blackbirds & tell you how many were there, but with the scrap dealer our math was always off" could mean the scrap dealer was screwing them out of money, or it could mean they thought their hard work was worth more.
I could be wrong, but, to me, that's what the author is saying. top