Jorie, Marie, and Lucie have ROCKED Po-Biz for years, in what is known in more sophisticated circles as the Barbie Doll School of Poetry. Don’t let their looks fool you. Emily Dickinson is their Muse, and they have more poetry prestige between them than a thousand male professors. Jorie married into the Graham (Washington Post) family and was going to be a filmmaker until she overheard a T.S. Eliot poem being read. Speaking of film, Amber Tamblyn (you can read her blogs on Harriet right now!) is dating the actor who played Allen Ginsberg in the recent Bob Dylan film I’m Not There which also included the actor who just played Keats in Bright Star. She’s also on a reading tour for her second book of poems. The question is, does Amber have what it takes to belong to this prestigious school of poetry?
Scarriet 
thomasbrady said,
October 5, 2009 at 1:25 am
To help us answer that question, I’ve assembled 4 samples from the four poets listed above: Jorie Graham, Marie Howe, Lucie Brock-Broido, and Amber Tamblyn.
To me, all four samples have the same intensity.
1.
In a lung-shaped suburb of Virginia, my sister will be childless
Inside the ice storm, forcing the narcissus. We will send
Each other valentines. The radio blowing out
Vaughan Williams on the highway’s purple moor.
At nine o’clock, we will put away our sewing to speak
Of lofty things while, in the pantry, little plants will nudge
Their frail tips toward the light we made last century.
2.
No way back then, you remember, we decided,
but forward, deep into a wood
so darkly green, so deafening with birdsong
I stopped my ears.
And that high chime at night,
was it really the stars, or some music
running inside our heads like a dream?
I think we must have been very tired.
I think it must have been a bad broken off
piece at the start that left us so hungry
we turned back to a path that was gone,
and lost each other, looking.
I called your name over and over again,
and still you did not come.
3.
As they repetitively curtsy in the whirlpool of warm July waters,
I repetitively watch,
A gazer stealing a glance at what the image of God may be like.
I’ve seen a painting like this,
Capturing what paint can capture,
But forgetting about the distinct elegance in which these ships are riding.
Planting ten toes amongst the billions of grains of sand,
I imagine the journey to be somewhat spectacular
I would be the girl,
A pirate of the unknown fogs that wash out the morning sunrises,
A sailor of imperative winds that shift my ships from here to there.
I would be the girl,
Watching the shore like a distant thread of a smile,
Waiting for the cold-blooded vertebrates to direct me
In whatever way the sea has directed them.
Envious of the closeness between salt and water,
I’m sure I could disappear into the crevice between the sky and sea.
4.
Nobody gets
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by
each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself,
also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something
at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through
in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is
what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen
now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only
something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go.
I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.
It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.
poetryandporse said,
October 5, 2009 at 2:23 am
Is there anybody going to listen to my story
all about the boy with a crap job
s/he’s the kind of mind who thinks he’s God
Vart is unhappy
cuz he now looks like an idiot
Vartis
he regrets treating us like we’re thick
Vartis
art is?
When I think of all the times we tried so hard to reach him
S/he will turn to me and then we fly;
And she promises the $words to me
And i believe Her
After all this time I don’t know why
Vartis
Vartis
Vart’s the kind of guy with a crap job
his Reader’s here, he feels a tool.
but if he’ll say he’s been a flop
And beg us all to forgive him
all will be cool, cool, cool,
Art is
vartis?
Was you taught when you were young that fame
would lead to pleasure
do you understand it, when shee said
You must break our code to earn
your day of leisure
i$ it now lodged in your silly head
Vartis
grrl?
Lennon and McCartney
Girl – metrical exercise.
Desmond Swords – Kilmainham
poetryandporse said,
October 5, 2009 at 6:09 am
Petitioning sinners on a lonely highway
i ask if they are aware there is a God
luurrvve
luurrvve
And they tell me no we haven’t heard
the song all carry, we within our head
luuurrvve
luuurrvvve
and when a contrite soul asked if i could
please forgive Him, could we just forget
O harriet,
luuurrvvvve
whoever’s foereate
reverse the lurve it’s only Harriet
luurrrrreerrrrvvvve
Vartis foetry on Harriet
moderating blogs, how did i get
to be no bowls: because i’m thick?
foereate of no intelligence
is it true we have no intellect
only unintelliegence
luuurrrrrrvvvvverrr
Vartis it trav, you have a low IQ
lOVE uR?
kj HG
luurrrvvver
Do you ever see a storm brewing when you are boring
with all the ecstatic ones who care?
When you never know a thing about an art you claimed
to, was it then your interest pulled to Foetry,
what is claimed by US that this is what you be,
luuurrrvvver
Vartis
artist
Modder
rating
HAAYTTING
lurrrrvvverr
the one you claim to be
gaa God
GAA. gaah?
Games of god, we have
to trust, always has been there
love
for me not You
ha ha ho, dee dums.
poetryandporse said,
October 5, 2009 at 7:37 am
LROVSE
Underneath it all
we talk; over and above
what is
So why not stay a while
and let me dream of life
with you.
I will not make a hollow pledge
of empty words which promise
something I can’t give –
the wind
the moon
or starlight’s shimmer on your hair.
The bond i undertake to seek
exchanges comforts found
in undertsanding
and being understood,
although, when i gaze upon your form
i see emotion as a mirror
you, the one love
who will never truly stand before me.
Your flesh can be only touched
in dreams
when reality comes alive
in epic tales, played out nightly
or in some half snooze state
i sometimes get to fool around in
a world where my desire for you can be indulged.
~
Take no notice angel, with eyes that stare
along a pathway into the sky of make believe.
Under a milk birch tree, I saw you rise, host
sent from the sky – angel of this dream, fantasy
folk: there is no time for interruptions, flirting
in your net, reality a path to air abroad, stirring
goddess of puppetry, your will the call, victorious
lone shimmering breath, flood who makes
a well, steadily tu-wit tu-woo – belief in the swell
hurling here, spout of cheer from a ticking head,
itself the eye of poetry o’er mined nets.
Larkin Abuto
What if you the one dream of love’s rose
together, is you who’ll go beyond the end
of life with us together: can listen to a line
said today
..I’m gonna speak my mind
one fine day, what you say USA,
we’re gonna know our crime
one fine day, the gestalt configured
Homer
whitman, lanier, longfellow: Paul
Dunbar, in apple pie order, Ez
Ra, Thoth, Gaia Appollo and Ogmios
Amiri Baraka, LBJ, JFK, RFK, feck
gonna leave you all behind
Us, we wanna beat the climb
$u Vartis the angel of Aghamore plain
on Knocknacree moor, we are there
luuuurrrrvvve
de$ mon D’s words y’all
Kilmainham’s where you’ll find u$
luuuurrrrvvve
desmond $word$
thomasbrady said,
October 5, 2009 at 12:38 pm
The Ballad of J. Graham
I love poetry, but it depends
If the manuscripts are my lovers’ and friends’.
If they are my friends’ my heart sings
With the joy sweet poetry brings.
How easy it is to decide to love
What poetry and friendship thinks is enough.
I am lonely without friends.
Poetry? It all depends
On the joy and the happiness of my friends.
My friends write poetry and poetry depends
On something beyond itself.
Do not talk to me of abstract things.
Why do you think poetry sings?
Why do you think it is?
Why do you think I write things new?
Do you think it is for him? Or you?
You may read what I write.
But he is my day and my night.
If you could be one of my friends
You would understand how even genius depends
On love. If you were holding my hand
Now, hypocrite reader! you would understand.
cowpattyhammer said,
October 5, 2009 at 1:48 pm
“Mon semblable, mon frère!”
What I find so often about your send-ups, Tom, is how much I wish I had written them as a poem. How proud I would be!
If you could be one of my friends
You would understand how even genius depends
On love. If you were holding my hand
Now, hypocrite reader! you would understand.
I’d just change that word to “critic!” — then I’d await your reply which would blow my socks off, like Calvin!
Thanks, Christopher
thomasbrady said,
October 5, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Christopher,
I think maybe you’re right…’critic’ would be better…
Thomas
No Poem With A Name Is The Same
No poem with a name is the same
For every vanity is a sign
Of the good you, your history, your mind,
Which seeks comfort in recognition of the best of you
In others’ eyes, and though I am buried
And lost in my anonymity, I applaud your recognition too;
I respect your work and your luck and your prize
Which made your father proud the last time you looked in his eyes,
And your publisher, and your mother,
And foetry–which loves you like no other.
thomasbrady said,
October 5, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Come All Ye Fair And Tender Judges
Come all ye fair and tender judges,
Beware of how you choose the prize,
Now justice has the cliques’ dissolving
And poets see with open eyes.
If I had known before I entered,
I would have entered contest none.
I would have loved obscurity only
And let the cliques play in the sun.
I wish I were Joshua Clover*
And I had wings and I could fly,
I’d fly away to my former teacher
And see what else that I could buy.
But I am not Joshua Clover,
I have no degree and cannot fly,
I will enter one more contest
And when I win, they’ll wonder why.
If I had know before I entered,
That my poems could not win,
I’d have put my poems in a box of golden
And fastened them up with a silver pin.
*student of Jorie Graham
noochinator said,
January 14, 2017 at 3:06 pm
Speaking of ice storms:
An ice storm’s not violent,
It never rages—
Gently it falls,
Like onion-skin pages—
Let it fall on your heart,
On your past like a winter—
So the Domina Holy Ghost may
Burn in you unhindered.