Out of the fog comes the answer

  Nu ska jag inte hålla er på sträckbänken längre, när det gäller de sex webbplatserna med "Poem of the week", även om kvällens dikttitel motsäger det. I den avslutande omgången gav jag tre poäng till Anne Carsons, "Reticent sonnet" ('Förtegen sonett').

***

  Jag har redan tyckt till om det lättsammare innehållet i Times Literary Supplements veckoval. De har haft såväl X.J. Kennedy som Billy Collins i sin spalt under januari och februari. Det behövdes en ökad tillgänglighet i deras urval. Det gäller även för könsbarriären och där finns mer att göra. Endast tre av femton dikter i spalten, mellan 3 januari och 11 april, var skrivna av kvinnor. 
  Trots dessa ojämlika prioriteringar så vinner Times Literary Supplement årets bedömning av "Poem of the week".

  Deras kvintett bestod av:

"Words in the air" / Philippe Jaccottet
"At a low mass for Two Hot-rodders" / X.J. Kennedy
"Ignorance" / Billy Collins
"Rains" / Derek Walcott
"Reticent Sonnet" / Anne Carson

  Slutställning:

10 poäng: Times Literary Supplement
  7 poäng: Griffin Poetry Prize
  6 poäng: Inpress Books
  6 poäng: The Guardian
  4 poäng: Vallum Magazine
  3 poäng: Vinyl Poetry and Prose

  Jag kör nog en säsong till nästa år. Jag har hittat flera intressanta webbplatser som hakat på trenden. Vi säger "Bye, Bye" till Vallum och Vinyl, och även till Inpress Books som har lagt ner sin spalt. Det blir alltså tre nykomlingar under 2018. Vilka det blir, får ni reda på i mitten av april.
  Nu lämnar jag över ordet till kanadensiska Anne Carson som alltså deltog för Times Literary Supplement, och inte för den kanadensiska sajten Griffin Poetry Prize.

**

Reticent sonnet, by Anne Carson (f. 1950)
(First published in TLS, 2006. Ten years later it returned in her book Float.)

A pronoun is a kind of withdrawal from naming.
Because naming is heavy, naming may be slightly shaming.
We live much more lightly than this,
we address ourselves allusively in our minds –
as “I” or “we” or “one” – part of a system
that argues with shadow, like Venetian blinds.
Speaking of Venice, called “the Shakespeare of cities” by a friend of mine,
reminds me of how often the Sonnets misprint their for thine:

beware the fog in Venice.
Beware those footsteps that stop in a hush.
I used to think I would grow up to be a person whose reasoning was deep,
instead I became a kind of brush.
I brush words against words. So do we follow ourselves out of youth,
brushing, brushing, brushing wild grapes onto truth.

"It is all about the dress"

  Vi närmar oss upplösningen av årets Poem of the week. Idag redovisar jag den fjärde och näst sista omgången. Jag har varit hårdare i min bedömning i år för att om möjligt uppnå större skiftningar i "tabellen". Riktigt så har det väl inte blivit. En fullpoängare blev det i den här rundan och den gick faktiskt till Inpress Books och Kate Noakes för "Havisham à la Mode", en riktigt rolig dikt.

***

  Kate Noakes föddes i Guildford, Surrey av walesiska föräldrar. Hon har examina i geografi och engelsk litteratur från Reading University och en mastersexamen i kreativt skrivande från University of Glamorgan.
  Hon har deltagit och framfört sina verk vid Glastonbury Festival, Hay Festival, Nottingham Poetry Festival and Windsor Arts Centre. Källa: Boomslang Poetry

*

Havisham à la Mode, by Kate Noakes
(From A mutual friend : poems for Charles Dickens. Edited by Peter Robinson. Reading : Two Rivers with the English Association, 2012.)

No one has got it, so to satisfy my critics:
it is really all about the dress.
Few brides can wear theirs thirty years on
without stinking of cedar.

Theirs lie tissued like my untouched shoe,
but I can fasten pearl buttons
every day, if I choose.

No feeding family, no babies have pushed me
out of shape and it's surprising
how lasting wedding cake can be.

It's all about my silk-and-lace cocoon,
a second skin skimming my bones.
I love its yellowed ivory
resisting time and laundry for a look,
a shimmer in narrow light beams.

Here's a tip - stay out of the sun.
Shadow and a well-draped veil
show complexion best, will give you skin
pale and papery as moon moth.

I may have overdone this.
I don't look good naked.

***

  Inför slutomgången i nästa vecka är läget följande:

7 poäng  Griffin Poetry Prize
7 poäng  Times Literary Supplement
6 poäng  Inpress Books
5 poäng  The Guardian
4 poäng  Vallum Magazine
2 poäng  Vinyl Poetry and Prose

**

  Ytterligare ett bidrag från veckans kandidater får ni. Jag delade ut två poäng till dikten "Rains", skriven av den nyligen bortgångne nobelpristagaren Derek Walcott.

Rains, by Derek Walcott (1930-2017)
(First published in Times Literary Supplement, 2004.)

In a green street of hedges and vermilion roofs,
and gates that creak open into banana yards
and doors that groan on the evocation of ginger
behind which are the hill with five cresting palms
whose long fingers are stirring tropical almanacs
darkened with rain over the grey savannahs
of zebu and bison and the small chalk temples
of an almost erased Asia, and the ovations of cane
through which turbaned horsemen carry feathering lances.
The cloud-white egret, the heron whose hue
is wet slate, move through a somnolence
as sweet as malaria to a child whose parched lips
are soothed by a servant or his own mother,
to the sudden great sound of rain on the roofs,
cloudburst of benedictions, dry seas in the ears.

"Into the morning-glory-colored future"

  Den andra nykomlingen till Poem of the week är webbplatsen Vinyl Poetry and Prose. I de inledande två ronderna har de dessvärre kammat noll. Det har nästan jag också när jag sökt uppgifter om sajten. Den har sitt ursprung i en tidskrift med samma namn, men några ytterligare uppgifter om dess bakgrund presenteras inte på webbplatsen. Genom andra länkar kan jag konstatera att chefredaktör är KMA Sullivan och poesiredaktör är Phillip B. Williams.

  Hur gick det för dem i tredje rundan?

***

  Jag har läst flera av John Ashberys dikter genom åren och måste erkänna att jag inte alltid förstår hans texter. De går ibland lite över mitt huvud.
  I februari var hans dikt "Someone you have seen before" veckans dikt hos Griffin Poetry Prize och den hade jag definitivt inga som helst problem med. Det är en fantastisk dikt som inbjuder till eftertänksamhet och jag utnämner den till årets bästa bland samtliga veckopoem.

  John Ashbery (f. 1927) studerade vid Harvard, där han bland annat var medredaktör för den litterära tidskriften The Harvard Advocate och 1949 tog en fil kand i engelska med ett arbete om W.H. Audens poesi. Sin magisterexamen eller Master of Arts i engelsk litteratur avlade han 1951 vid Columbia. Han debuterade 1953 som poet på ett udda litet förlag som drevs av ett konstgalleri i New York. Vid sidan av sin verksamhet som poet, har han även verkat som konstkritiker sedan början av 1950-talet, liksom översättare och universitetslärare. Källa: Wikipedia

*

Someone you have seen before, by John Ashbery
(From Notes from the air : selected later poems. New York, N.Y. : Ecco, 2007.)

It was a night for listening to Corelli, Geminiani
or Manfredini. The tables had been set with beautiful white cloths
and bouquets of flowers. Outside the big glass windows
the rain drilled mercilessly into the rock garden, which made light
of the whole thing. Both business and entertainment waited
with parted lips, because so much new way of being
with one’s emotion and keeping track of it at the same time
had been silently expressed. Even the waiters were happy.

It was an example of how much one can grow lustily
without fracturing the shell of coziness that surrounds us,
and all things as well. “We spend so much time
trying to convince ourselves we’re happy that we don’t recognize
the real thing when it comes along,” the Disney official said.
He’s got a point, you must admit. If we followed nature
more closely we’d realize that, I mean really getting your face pressed
into the muck and indecision of it. Then it’s as if
we grew out of our happiness, not the other way round, as is
commonly supposed. We’re the characters in its novel,
and anybody who doubts that need only look out of the window
past his or her own reflection, to the bright, patterned,
timeless unofficial truth hanging around out there,
waiting for the signal to be galvanized into a crowd scene,
joyful or threatening, it doesn’t matter, so long as we know
it’s inside, here with us.

But people do change in life,
as well as in fiction. And what happens then? Is it because we think nobody’s
listening that one day it comes, the urge to delete yourself,
“Take yourself out,” as they say? As though this could matter
even to the concerned ones who crowd around,
expressions of lightness and peace on their faces,
in which you play no part perhaps, but even so
their happiness is for you, it’s your birthday, and even
when the balloons and fudge get tangled with extraneous
good wishes from everywhere, it is, I believe, made to order
for your questioning stance and that impression
left on the inside of your pleasure by some bivalve
with which you have been identified. Sure,
nothing is ever perfect enough, but that’s part of how it fits
the mixed bag
of leftover character traits that used to be part of you
before the change was performed
and of all those acquaintances bursting with vigor and
humor, as though they wanted to call you down
into closeness, not for being close, or snug, or whatever,
but because they believe you were made to fit this unique
and valuable situation whose lid is rising, totally
into the morning-glory-colored future. Remember, don’t throw away
the quadrant of unused situations just because they’re here:
They may not always be, and you haven’t finished looking
through them all yet. So much that happens happens in small ways
that someone was going to get around to tabulate, and then never did,
yet it all bespeaks freshness, clarity and an even motor drive
to coax us out of sleep and start us wondering what the new round
of impressions and salutations is going to leave in its wake
this time. And the form, the precepts, are yours to dispose of as you will,
as the ocean makes grasses, and in doing so refurbishes a lighthouse
on a distant hill, or else lets the whole picture slip into foam.

***

Ställningen efter rond 3:

6 poäng   Griffin Poetry Prize                  
5 poäng   Times Literary Supplement    
3 poäng   Inpress Books                            
3 poäng   Vallum Magazine                      
3 poäng   The Guardian                            
2 poäng   Vinyl Poetry and Prose              

Wheeled winner of round 2

  Poem of the week, round 2. Förra året tyckte jag att Times Literary Supplements urval hade lite väl hög akademisk svansföring. I år har de faktiskt chockerat mig på ett positivt sätt. 

  Nedanstående dikt av den nyligen blogg-omskrivne X.J. Kennedy publicerades av TLS i januari. I min genomgång fick dikten full pott.

  Ställningen efter två omgångar:

Times Literary Supplement, 4 poäng
The Guardian, 3 poäng
Griffin Poetry Prize, 3 poäng
Vallum Magazine, 3 poäng
Inpress Books, 2 poäng
Vinyl Poetry & Prose, 0 poäng

***

At a low mass for two hot-rodders, by X.J. Kennedy
(From Cross ties : selected poems. Athens : University of Georgia Press, 1985.)

Sheeted in steel, embedded face to face,
They idle in a feelingless embrace,
The only ones at last who had the nerve
To crash head-on, not chicken out and swerve.
Inseparable, in one closed car they roll
Down the stoned aisle and on out to a hole,
Wheeled by the losers: six of fledgling beard,
Black-jacketed and glum, who also steered
Toward absolute success with total pride,
But, inches from it, felt, and turned aside.

***

  Den kanadensiska poeten Jane Munro har skrivit en diktsvit om sitt liv med en alzheimer-drabbad make. De omtalade dikterna finns med i diktsamlingen Blue Sonoma (2014).
  En av texterna utsågs till veckans dikt hos Griffin Poetry Prize i slutet av januari.

Old man vacanas (extract), by Jane Munro
(From Blue Sonoma. London, Ontario : Brick Books, 2014.)

5

The old man who picks up the phone
does not get your message.

Call again.
Please call again.

The cats leave squirrel guts
on the Tibetan rug.
Augury I cannot read.

You’ve got to talk with me.
I scrape glistening coils
into a dust pan,
spit on drops of blood and spray ammonia.

The blood spreads into the white wool.

I am so sick of purring beasts.

Don’t tempt me, old man.
Today I have four arms
and weapons in each hand.

Inside Vallum Magazine

  I fjol studerade jag sex olika webbplatsers val av "Poem of the week". Det resulterade i att jag utsåg The Guardian till "Bäst i klassen". De närmaste fem veckorna gör jag nya stickprovskontroller. Två nykomlingar i sammanhanget är Vallum : contemporary poetry samt Vinyl : Poetry and Prose. Kommer mästarbältet stanna hos The Guardian?

Vallum Magazine

***

  Tidskriften Vallum grundades 2000 och är baserad i Montreal. Den kommer bara ut med två nummer per år, men har en mycket livlig webbplats. Vallum utgör ett forum för nya författare att interagera med mer etablerade kollegor och samtidigt ge dem möjlighet till exponering och förtroendet att fortsätta med sin konst. Vallum är en av Kanadas främsta poesitidskrifter med internationell inriktning.

*

  Och det började strålande för den kanadensiska tidskriften. I första omgången av min serie så tilldelades deras bidrag full pott, 3 poäng. Dikten handlar om galenskap ...

The Hospital of Bethlem (Bedlam), St. George's Fields, Lambe

*

Bedlam spring, by Amanda Earl
(Published in Vallum magazine of contemporary poetry, 2017.)

write in ink
as green as
arsenic wallpaper that
killed Napoleon

take photo of azure
hole in clouds
inebriate your
eye
chartreuse leaves
their new spring

leap into fresh untamed
season but bide a
while bide a while burn
your Russian amber
drink your Irish tea
stay away from strange
men on the internet who
want you only for your body
not your kink–a lust for agility
with language–nor your
madness, this insanity of
growing old, instant flare
your sun into seed your ardour
blackens flesh to bone & devouring

Titeln är hämtad från Sylvia Plaths “Spinster” in The Colossus (Faber & Faber, 2008), och de kursiverade textraderna är hämtade från Sylvia Plath, “Epitaph for Fire and Flower” in Collected Poems (Faber & Faber, 1981).

Amanda Earl är en poet, utgivare och fictionförfattare från Ottawa. Hennes senaste verk är Kiki (Chaudiere Books, 2014), firstwalks of the year (In/Words Magazine, 2016), samt en bok om Sveriges Queen Christina (Ghost City Press, 2016). Amanda är också redaktionschef för Bywords.ca. Källa: Vallum

***

  En annan färsk författare imponerade för det regerande lagets räkning, The Guardian.

  Rhiannon Hooson fick två poäng för sin dikt "Daughters of the dust". 

  Dr Rhiannon Hooson är en walesisk poet och författare. Hon föddes i centrala delarna av Wales 1979, och där bodde hon tills hon flyttade till norra England 1998. Hon studerade och senare undervisade hon vid Lancaster University, där hon först tog en MA i kreativt skrivande, och sedan en PhD i poesi.
  Hon har vunnit stora utmärkelser för sina verk, bland annat en Eric Gregory utmärkelse från Society of Authors för sin novellsamling, Un. Hennes första pamflett, This Reckless Beauty, publicerades 2004 och hennes dikter har sedan dess publicerats i litterära tidskrifter och antologier. Hennes första fullängdssamling, The other city, publicerades av förlaget Seren i november 2016. Källa: Rhiannon Hoosons webbplats
  Om hon redan har fångat redaktör Carol Rumens intresse så är det nog läge att lägga hennes namn på minnet. Diktens fond hittar vi på den mongoliska stäppen.

*

Daughters of the dust, by Rhiannon Hooson
(From The other city. Bridgend : Seren, 2016.)

There can be no mermaids of the steppe
though its bare hills roll and boom like the sea. Only
some strange creature, lithe in the gelid dust
and furred like a fox: silent, accusing in the eyes,
a deep wind parting fur down to bone coloured skin.
Horizons pile thin as paper one atop the next
and they spin their story into the pinched air: a woman,
and a wish, and a corsac fox. Nights

of the great white zud they might dance away the snow,
leaving paths of grass for the herd to eat, or else
rise like walls to blow across the landscape
stately and slow and sickening, only the chiming ice
singing their welcome with its spare high notes,
each like the prick of a needle. And in the city,
where the nights smell of sweet smoke and milk
and idling traffic, they go walking now:

silent over the glaze of blood frozen to the ground
around the wrestling palace. Silent in the alleys
where stray dogs sleep in the warmth from sewer grates.
Silent past the cafes where soldiers thaw their brows
over salt milk tea. Silent, until they are singing,
each alone in the dim reaches of the night,
each pale as an unlit candle, up through the gers
where the roads falter and the lights go out; up to the mountain
where the wind sings back; towering, and tidal, and old.

***

Ställning:

Vallum, 3 poäng
Guardian, 2 poäng
Times Literary Supplement, 1 poäng
Griffin Poetry Prize, 1 poäng
Inpress Books, 0 poäng
Vinyl, 0 poäng

The Guardian wins the playoff

  The competition is over. I have choosen my favourite website among Poem of the week - publishers.

  Jag har delat ut poängen 3-2-1 i de tio heaten med "poem of the week-dikter". I ett heat blev det delad seger mellan två bidrag och i det tionde heatet lät jag alla bidragen få två poäng vardera. 
  Summeringen gav att The Times Literary Supplement och The Guardian båda fick 11 poäng. Men segern går till dagstidningen The Guardian eftersom de hade fler fullpoängare. Ett stort grattis till Carol Rumens som väljer ut bidragen i den välkända dagstidningen.
  Jag bevakar redan hennes spalt, och jag rekommenderar mina läsare att lägga till den bland favoriterna.

Carol Rumens, f. 1944
poesiredaktör i The Guardian

***

  Efter poängredovisningen repriseras tre av dikterna.

Slutställning:

Griffin Poetry Prize 10,5 Missouri Review 8,5 The Times Literary  11 Don McKay 3 Michelle Boisseau 1 Carole Sutyamurti 2 Sue Goyette 1 Benjamin Landry 1 Ingeborg Bachmann 3 C.D. Wright 2 Charlie Bondhus 2 John Hall Wheelock 1 Derek Mahon 2 Jeffrey Bean 2 Jean Sprackland 3 P.K. Page 2,5 Susan Tichy 2,5 C.J. Driver 2             The Guardian 11 Poem of the week.org 9 Inpress Books 10 Waldo Williams 3 Christina Stoddard 1 Mila Haugova 2 Stanley Moss 3 Katherine Young 2 Vicky Arthurs 2 Joseph Campbell 3 Bill Brown 3 Monica Minott 1 Rebecca Perry 1 George David Clark 1 Owen Gallagher 3 Kapka Kassabova 1 Juan Morales 2 Octavian Paler 2

***

Chrysalis, by Stanley Moss (f. 1925)
(from It's about time : poems. Rhinebeck, NY : Hopewell Press, 2015.)

I wonder how my life might twine and untwine
if, like the brontosaurus, I had a second brain
to work my tail from the base of my spine.
Two egos at odds in one bed, two ids
might cause two dreams at once, hybrids,
one sweet, one nightmare: my bottom half in the mouth
of a brontosaurus, long as a railroad train.
She and I do what most would find uncouth.
Same time, I am in bed, young me with a beauty,
dreaming I'm having a birthday party -
I'm spinning, a butterfly breaks free
out of my ear that is a chrysalis,
circles the room, finds an open window, flies south
to join the millions it needs for company.
I wake, it's morning, I read, a good guess,
what I never knew I thought before: poetry -
poets who simply honor the language.
I'm a psalmist with a Miss-directed penis.
Cupid plays at cards with me for kisses.
Venus, who never spanks, spanks me,
whispers to Mars in bed, "It's time you turned the page
on Stanley being Stanley.
I thought he went out of style in the Ice Age."

***

The way down, by Jean Sprackland (f. 1962)
(from Tilt. London : Jonathan Cape, 2007.)

Forget the path.
Hack through gorse and blackthorn
and walk into the stream.

The thing about a stream is
it knows where it’s going, has a gift
for finding the shortest route.

A path can lose its nerve,
peter out into a bog or bracken, divide
inscrutably in two. I’ve stood at that place

and weighed the choices, weighed
and checked again, while mist crawls
over the mountain like sleep.

When the stream divides
both streamlets are equally sure.
Each plays its own game – the slick of moss,

the sudden race over a sill of rock –
and each, if you let it,
will carry you down.

***

Alluvium, by Don McKay (f. 1942)
(from Strike/Slip. Ontario : McClelland & Stewart, 2006.)

You wake, it wants you,
your room is fleuve. No use
hiding underneath the covers,
no use clinging to the lamp. It bears away
your diary, your mystery, your dresser
bobs off lika a basket of reeds.
There goes the lamp you might have clung to,
trailing its muskrat tail,
there goes the laundry to its long last rinse.
The arms of your octopus, formerly
alarm clock, clutch, grabbing
like a teenage lover like a two-year-old it wants you
it won't wait for you to die
to lick the letters from your name.
Your old heart,
driven by its pell-mell bloodstream, spins,
legs on a runaway bike, you wake,
your room is fleuve, you're flotsam,
you're also-ran, you're all the riff-raff Noah
had no room for, uncountable
Canada geese and not-quite-standard moose,
you're everyone who ever
missed the playoffs, it wants you,
you have to go, already you can feel you're
somewhere else, deposited,
you're washed up in some other life as
insubstantial as a stone.

Beyond hooks and shadows

  Dags för sista heatet i min lilla tävling "Poem of the week", där sex webbplatser gör upp om vilken som ger de bästa veckodikterna till sina följare. Jag har presenterat de fem första kandidaterna: Griffin Poetry Prize, Missouri Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, samt Poem of the week.org
  Den sjätte deltagande webbplatsen är Inpress Books. 

  Det är en imponerande brittisk nätbokhandel som tar tillvara de oberoende förlagens publicerade verk. Deras deklaration lyder:
"Inpress is the UK’s specialist in selling books produced by independent publishers. Since 2002, we have worked to support innovative, literary publishers across the UK and Ireland, delivering their fiction, poetry and non-fiction to book lovers worldwide. We bring painstakingly-created, innovative and outside-of-the-mainstream books together in one place so that you can browse, buy and love them, wherever you live."

***

  Här följer så att säga laguppställningarna. På förhand tyckte jag att Griffin Poetry Prize hade en imponerande kvintett. Hur det gick får ni veta i morgon kväll.

Griffin Poetry Prize		Missouri Review		The Times Literary Supplement
Don McKay		Michelle Boisseau		Carole Sutyamurti
Sue Goyette		Benjamin Landry		Ingeborg Bachmann
C.D. Wright		Charlie Bondhus		John Hall Wheelock
Derek Mahon		Jeffrey Bean		Jean Sprackland
P.K. Page		Susan Tichy		C.J. Driver
The Guardian		Poem of the week.org		Inpress Books
Waldo Williams		Christina Stoddard		Mila Haugova
Stanley Moss		Katherine Young		Vicky Arthurs
Joseph Campbell		Bill Brown		Monica Minott
Rebecca Perry		George David Clark		Owen Gallagher
Kapka Kassabova		Juan Morales		Octavian Paler

och dikterna till det tionde heatet får ni nu ...

***

Definition of loneliness, by Octavian Paler
(from Definitions : poems. London : Istros, 2011.)

Beyond the wind
a bird with a bitter shadow
beats its wings,
burying seeds in shadow,
burying with every beat
the words mislaid by me.

**

Fish hook, by Juan Morales
(from The siren world. [Fruita, Colorado] : Lithic Press, 2015.)

I was five when I learned my own blood.
Dad and I fished the lake of cement slabs,
out past yellow grass, our feet jammed in mud.
I pulled the snagged line. Snapped back. The hook stabbed
my thumb, slid past bone, dented the fingernail.
The sun's search for horizon came about
reflecting filament line, a detail
like dad dropping the bucket of caught trout. 

Everything halted: the water still cold,
red salmon eggs stuck on our hooks for bait. 
He steadied my hand-shaking, uncontrolled.
Father worked the hook. Barbs excavated
through skin ripped. For the tiny hole, I cried,
the blood pools in our hands I could not guide.

**

Song for an unborn brother, by C.J. Driver
(first published in TLS, 29/5 2009.)

The one who should have been the first,
My mother lost at thirteen weeks.
My parents saved his name for me
And one there sleeps, and one here wakes.

I wonder what he might have been
Since what I am would not exist.
What little gap there seems to be
Between my body and the dust.

So when I'm dead (as dead as him)
Will I then seem as never born?
A shadow lost when lights went out?
A matchhead struck which didn't burn?

Abundance thrives despite our loss:
The glass reflects, the glass refracts -
My brother's flesh and my own self
Still suppositions more than facts.