The Critical Mom Rediscovers Poetry

These are the times that try anybody's soul, and the band-aid to slap on the bruise is a good poem.  I've been re-reading Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Sharon Olds, Charles Simic, and all my favorite Seventeenth-Century English religious poets, the ones with the numbers games and the word-play and green grass in a green glade.  I go for the direct, the obviously autobiographical, although I'd use the term broadly.  I find, having written a poem or two, that the combination of a bad headache, a touch of flu, and exhaustion can produce a nightmare, the contents of which easily fills a poem.  But here's a tribute to some favorites, all found online, and why I think they're great:

Letter to New York, by Elizabeth Bishop
For Louise Crane
In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:
taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road gose round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,
and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,
and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so teribly late,
and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.
--Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going. 

Now this is a love letter to a great city written by someone who catches the mood of the place exactly--even though she didn't live there, in fact, spent much of her time in Nova Scotia, Massachusetts,  and Brazil.

Another favorite: Robert Lowell's

"To Speak of Woe that Is in Marriage"

"It is the future generation that presses into being by means of
these exuberant feelings and supersensible soap bubbles of ours."
—Schopenhauer

"The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open.
Our magnolia blossoms.  Life begins to happen.
My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,
free-lancing out along the razor's edge.
This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge.
Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust. . .
It's the injustice . . . he is so unjust—
whiskey-blind, swaggering home at five.
My only thought is how to keep alive.
What makes him tick?  Each night now I tie
ten dollars and his car key to my thigh. . . .
Gored by the climacteric of his want,
he stalls above me like an elephant."

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15282#sthash.IPl2N79W.dpuf

The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open.

Our magnolia blossoms.Life begins to happen.

My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,

and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,

free-lancing out along the razor's edge.

This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge.

Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust. . .

It's the injustice . . . he is so unjust--

whiskey-blind, swaggering home at five.

My only thought is how to keep alive.

What makes him tick?Each night now I tie

ten dollars and his car key to my thigh. . . .

Gored by the climacteric of his want,

he stalls above me like an elephant. 

Not too many guys can really take a title from Chaucer's Wife of Bath and update her complaints--this 1976 poem seems to me to do just that.  And who'd think of rhyming "disputes" with "prostitutes?"  

Here's another,  from Sharon Olds:

Primitive

I have heard about the civilized,
the marriages run on talk, elegant and honest, rational. But you and I are
savages. You come in with a bag,
hold it out to me in silence.
I know Moo Shu Pork when I smell it
and understand the message: I have
pleased you greatly last night. We sit
quietly, side by side, to eat,
the long pancakes dangling and spilling,
fragrant sauce dripping out,
and glance at each other askance, wordless,
the corners of our eyes clear as spear points
laid along the sill to show
a friend sits with a friend here.  

Here is love, here is marriage, here is passion . . . and here is Moo Shu Pork.  Add a glass of wine, and I'm in heaven.

"It is the future generation that presses into being by means of
these exuberant feelings and supersensible soap bubbles of ours."

—Schopenhauer

"The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open.
Our magnolia blossoms.  Life begins to happen.
My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,
free-lancing out along the razor's edge.
This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge.
Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust. . .
It's the injustice . . . he is so unjust—
whiskey-blind, swaggering home at five.
My only thought is how to keep alive.
What makes him tick?  Each night now I tie
ten dollars and his car key to my thigh. . . .
Gored by the climacteric of his want,
he stalls above me like an elephant."

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15282#sthash.IPl2N79W.dpuf

"It is the future generation that presses into being by means of
these exuberant feelings and supersensible soap bubbles of ours."

—Schopenhauer

"The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open.
Our magnolia blossoms.  Life begins to happen.
My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,
free-lancing out along the razor's edge.
This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge.
Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust. . .
It's the injustice . . . he is so unjust—
whiskey-blind, swaggering home at five.
My only thought is how to keep alive.
What makes him tick?  Each night now I tie
ten dollars and his car key to my thigh. . . .
Gored by the climacteric of his want,
he stalls above me like an elephant."

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15282#sthash.IPl2N79W.dpuf

"It is the future generation that presses into being by means of
these exuberant feelings and supersensible soap bubbles of ours."

—Schopenhauer

"The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open.
Our magnolia blossoms.  Life begins to happen.
My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,
free-lancing out along the razor's edge.
This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge.
Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust. . .
It's the injustice . . . he is so unjust—
whiskey-blind, swaggering home at five.
My only thought is how to keep alive.
What makes him tick?  Each night now I tie
ten dollars and his car key to my thigh. . . .
Gored by the climacteric of his want,
he stalls above me like an elephant."

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15282#sthash.IPl2N79W.dpuf

"It is the future generation that presses into being by means of these exuberant feelings and supersensible soap bubbles of ours." —Schopenhauer "The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open. Our magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen. My hopped up husband drops his home disputes, and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes, free-lancing out along the razor's edge. This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge. Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust. . . It's the injustice . . . he is so unjust— whiskey-blind, swaggering home at five. My only thought is how to keep alive. What makes him tick? Each night now I tie ten dollars and his car key to my thigh. . . . Gored by the climacteric of his want, he stalls above me like an eleph - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15282#sthash.IPl2N79W.dpuf