Slam poet Patricia Smith was not included in Dove’s anthology
Mark Doty is the no. 3 Seed in the Midwest/South and has to be favored to win this contest. He is in Dove’s anthology and Patricia Smith is not.
Here is Doty’s poem (from the Dove anthology):
Brilliance
Maggie’s taking care of a man
who’s dying; he’s attended to everything,
said goodbye to his parents,paid off his credit card.
She says Why don’t you just
run it up to the limit?but he wants everything
squared away, no balance owed,
though he misses the petshe’s already found a home for
— he can’t be around dogs or cats,
too much risk. He says,I can’t have anything.
She says, A bowl of goldfish?
He says he doesn’t want to startwith anything and then describes
the kind he’d maybe like,
how their tails would fanto a gold flaring. They talk
about hot jewel tones,
gold lacquer, say maybethey’ll go pick some out
though he can’t go much of anywhere and then
abruptly he says I can’t loveanything I can’t finish.
He says it like he’s had enough
of the whole scintillant world,though what he means is
he’ll never be satisfied and therefore
has established this discipline,a kind of severe rehearsal.
That’s where they leave it,
him looking out the window,her knitting as she does because
she needs to do something.
Later he leaves a message:Yes to the bowl of goldfish.
Meaning: let me go, if I have to,
in brilliance. In a story I read,a Zen master who’d perfected
his detachment from the things of the world
remembered, at the moment of dying,a deer he used to feed in the park,
and wondered who might care for it,
and at that instant was rebornin the stunned flesh of a fawn.
So, Maggie’s friend?
Is he going outInto the last loved object
Of his attention?
Fanning the veined translucenceOf an opulent tail,
Undulant in some uncapturable curve
Is he bronze chrysanthemums,Copper leaf, hurried darting,
Doubloons, icon-colored fins
Troubling the water?
What do you think, Marla?
Marla Muse: It reminds me of his sister’s work: finding the beauty in real people’s suffering.
Sharon Olds could have written this poem, I suppose.
Marla Muse: Where is Smith’s poem?
Glad you asked. Let the battle be joined:
Hip-Hop GhazalGotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak,inhaling bassline, cracking backbone and singing thru hips.Like something boneless, we glide silent, seeping ‘tween floorboards,wrapping around the hims, and ooh wee, clinging like glue hips.Engines grinding, rotating, smokin’, gotta pull back some.Natural minds are lost at the mere sight of ringing true hips.Gotta love us girls, just struttin’ down Manhattan streetskilling the menfolk with a dose of that stinging view. Hips.Crying ’bout getting old—Patricia, you need to get up offwhat God gave you. Say a prayer and start slinging. Cue hips.
noochinator said,
March 27, 2012 at 10:17 pm
Doty’s poem doth celebrate life,
Through death and its attendant duties—
Smith’s poem, though, doth celebrate life
By commanding, “Yo now, shake your bootys!”
Doty’s poem makes me wish
That someone would give him a noogie—
Smith’s poem makes me want to dance
“The Bertha Butt Boogie.”
Yoko Urn said,
March 27, 2012 at 10:57 pm
The Smith poem is brilliant,
and should have been included.
All too often we think brilliance
Is but the pedant’s tortured music.