In Praise of the Awful, But Mostly of Awe

[Image: “Self-Portrait with 12 Bags of Trash,” by Anne-Katrin Spiess. The artist explains: “I noticed litter lining both sides of a very scenic stretch of desert Highway 191 in Utah. I decided to ‘Adopt a Highway’ and cleaned the stretch between mile markers 176 and 177. I photographed each object I picked up, and sorted my findings by category to create ‘Self Portrait With 12 Bags of Trash.'”]

From whiskey river:

On Bitching
after Catullus

Listen, Hilarius, you’ve got to snap out of it.
I know you’re in your fifties now,
but don’t let yourself give in to bitterness.
Sure, when you were younger the muse
used to visit more often, sprawling across your lap
and whispering in your ear, but at least
she treats you now and then to an idea
or plants a stanza in your head as you’re waking up.
And stop bitching about editors
who keep publishing each other’s poems
in Pretension Quarterly or The Moribund Review.
Try not to let it bother you so much.
Why waste your energy enumerating
all the petty injustices that have gone on
since ancient times and are bound to continue
for centuries to come? And there’s no point
in envying the poets who swagger into rooms,
charging every molecule with their need
to be important. So, let them be important.
And if, sometimes, you feel as if you
hardly exist, well, as a great poet once said,
be secret and exult . . . instead of sulking.
Believe me, I agree with you, it’s too bad
things sometimes work the way they do,
but it’s exasperating to listen to you
after you’ve had a few too many cups of wine
railing against the zealously self-promoting
postmodern obfuscators, the hip ironists revved up
on their own cleverness, the tedious fundamentalists
of rhyme and meter, or the one you call
the formalist narcissist Stalinist surrealist.
Not bad, Hilarius, but you need to get over it.
You didn’t want power, remember?
You wanted to write poems. So, write them.
And the next time some self-satisfied preener
wins a prize, don’t dwell on it, but remind yourself
of all the poems that didn’t get away, the poems
of your friends and how they’ve borne you up
and spurred you on with a better envy,
and remember the friends themselves, laboring
alone at their desks, mostly under the radar
(unlike the “famous poets” you call the oxymorons),
and giving you what literary life you have
which if not dazzling is at least genuine –
and thank the gods to the end of your days
for the time they’ve granted you to spend
on making poems, even if they come to nothing.

(Jeffrey Harrison [source])

…and:

Tides and storms, the patterns of seasons and migrations, the quality of the soil and the air – all of these continue to influence and are influenced by us; they remind us of the intricate web from which we cannot disentangle ourselves, try as we might. Also, some of us are still lucky enough to live in places where we are awakened by birdsong in the morning, where at night we can see the Milky Way spilled across the sky. These things are part of our daily human experiences. As such, these phenomena —like anything else—can take on particular meaning, both original and universal.

Such meaning depends on authenticity, which often depends on engagement. This is the case whether we are talking about authenticity between people and people or between people and nature. We must be attentive; we must give our senses over to the other.

(Hannah Fries [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Nine Ways of Looking at the Moon

i.	Where the heart of the sky would be
	we find the mother of all bones.
	There is some meat on her yet—
	This is what the wolves know.
ii.	No man is as gentle as the sky.
	So white, that boutonniere pinned
	to the lapel of his most formal suit.
iii.	While there is but one tooth
	there is much laughter to be had.
iv.	The throat of a toad bulges as it fills with song.
v.	White fox curled up in a mound of soot.
	It is only the hounds that dream of the chase.
vi.	Fat pearl on the dark tongue of a clam.
vii.	God has misplaced his glass eye.
	But there it is—ghosting the sky.
viii.	The lamb looks smallest on the altar.
ix.	All birds go to worship inside a cathedral
	white and round as the belly of a greater bird.

(Cecilia Llompart [source])

…and:

Instructions for Not Becoming a Werewolf

You feel it first
as an itch in the teeth, a gnarl
of nerves coiled too tight.
Some taut aperture sliding open
between the heart and gut.
Precautions must be taken.

Do not enjoy too much
the quick grey jolt of hare, the split-crate thrill
of punctured appleskin.
High lonely places, wind,
the supple creak
of oiled leather. Woods

are of course best avoided.
Copses, spinneys, anywhere,
in fact, where the strong-sweet bulk of horse chestnut
crowds too close, where you can raise
the wet note of fresh-churned earth
by digging in the nails. Rivers

are not to be trusted. They know too much.
They nuzzle the base of cliffs and snout
at kitchen doors. They learn
from the granite of the hills, the pulp
of slick black roots and lovely braids
unwinding in the weeds. The moon

may be looked at in moderation.
But don’t let it give you any ideas.

Fill your house with mirrors. Watch the clock.
Speak often. Do not feel
you are safe in the city: there’s another
under this one. Stop your ears
to curlews, vixens, hounds, they’ve tales to tell

if you’ve the ears. And you’ve no idea
what it is to have ears like mine.

(Abigail Parry [source])