"The Starry Night" by Anne Sexton

Enough of the fatuous cheerfulness in the last few posts. I'm interested in your reaction to this poem. I wonder about the issue of motive in the speaker, of cause and effect, of Eliot's "objective correlative." Yet I find the poem curiously effective and efficient. And disturbing.

And by the way, I like the Van Gogh painting.

Visitors here might find themselves more responsive than usual in loving or hating the poem. The Poetry Foundation's commentary is once again helpful as an introduction to confessional poetry in general as well as Sexton's work and critical assessment of it.

The Starry Night by Anne Sexton : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

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Baseball and Diction: Tigers 4, Indians 2

Is it only a game?

Or a biting reminder


to watch your word choice,




even there at the park at a boisterous time,
the magical boys who can turn on a dime.







If you can't keep your mind
on the game or your diction,















enjoy a good corn dog, a greased benediction.

A Color of the Sky by Tony Hoagland : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

The male gold finches are almost back to complete yellow in Michigan, so we should check out a poem about spring.


A Color of the Sky by Tony Hoagland : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

Tony Hoagland's name has come up a few times here, so let's look at "A Color of the Sky." From the one-line stanza in the middle to the end, I like this poem a lot. However, I wonder how many of the words, lines, and stanzas up to that point need to be present to set the stage.

So guess where we are: back at that familiar conversation about casual chat or conversation compared (contrasted) to poetry. I'm choosing "A Color of the Sky" in part because I think it walks that line, traces those boundaries, and I wonder how folks respond to that.

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Dorianne Laux's "Democracy": Urban Tubes of Humans

Democracy by Dorianne Laux : The
Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.










Panoramic works like Dorianne Laux’s “Democracy” always raise at least one question for me: does each item in the rather long series of items (including characters) carry its weight? Is each image, action, and detail necessary? What would happen to the poem’s meaning, texture, rhythm(s) if this or that item were deleted?

In terms of theme, I think too of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and in turn, contemporary writer Charles Baxter’s magnificent “A Late Sunday Afternoon by the Huron” in his collection of stories, Through the Safety Net (mid-1980s).

Also, as is the case with many contemporary poems, long or short, a question here is why Laux breaks lines and stanzas where she does?

Am I the only one who hears “Democracy” as a companion poem to Sharon Olds’ “On the Subway” (March 4, March 9 here at Banjo)? There are important differences, but aren’t the similarities striking—the centrality of a vehicle of public transportation, of course, but also more?

Given the title, the reference to Republicans, and the poem’s overall content, is there any way to avoid calling this a political poem, whatever it might be in addition to that?

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Doc Watson - Peach Pickin' Time In Georgia

YouTube - Doc Watson - Peach Pickin' Time In Georgia

Edward Hirsch, "For the Sleepwalkers" and Theodore Roethke, "The Waking"

Here's more Edward Hirsch, the title poem of his first collection, which won the Yale Younger Poets prize. I wonder if we might see "For the Sleepwalkers" as a secular poem about faith, mystery, and compassion.

What a shame that organized religions so drift so far from simple statements like this about the desire to bridge the empirical and the spiritual. People really do sleepwalk; that much can be verified. But the poem sidesteps dogma, prescription, or formulas about the precise ways sleepwalking is or isn't a religious event. Mystery and mysticism inform the poem, but Hirsch is wise and kind enough to avoid creeds over which we should judge or hate or go to war.

So I hope "For the Sleepwalkers" offers one more way to think about experience that seems to transcend the rational and to be entirely good.

(There's a typo in this, the only online version I found, where two of the three-line stanzas [tercets] got jammed together in the poem's middle. Also, two stanzas toward the end are italicized, which you may not have noticed in this font).

For the Sleepwalkers -- Edward Hirsch

I hear "For the Sleepwalkers" as a companion piece to Theodore Roethke's magnificent villanelle, "The Waking," another poem about un-dogmatic faith.

The Waking by Theodore Roethke : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

Surely you hear in everyday chit chat, as I do, the notion that literature and art offer themselves as alternatives to religion as we normally define and think about it. If that seems odd, you might revisit these poems, along with other writing and art that's beyond your power to explain, illustrating why the whole is, yea verily, more than the sum of its parts.

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Edward Hirsch, "Fast Break"

Left: Dunking


I don't want to rush anyone away from the Addonizio and Stevens discussions; we can keep that going indefinitely.

But Final Four weekend in college hoops is approaching, and with it comes the question, again, of whether there can be important literature that centers on sport. If so, the writing has to be about larger issues than people playing games, doesn't it? Some might remember that this came up regarding James Wright's football poem, "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio." (Banjo52, Sept. 23, 2009), and I think of Joyce Carol Oates writing on boxing or Hemingway on bullfighting.

Since the mid-1980s, I've wondered how Edward Hirsch's "Fast Break" fits into the discussion. The fact that Hirsch's poem is dedicated to a man who died young encourages me to see see something more than the literal, more than a basketball poem, yet not abandoning or cheating on basketball as a worthwhile subject. Why and how does one write a basketball poem that serves as an elegy for a deceased friend? Doesn't Hirsch risk trivializing both the game and the friend?

I think the poem does succeed in both purposes, but I'm baffled as to how to explain it.

Fast Break by Edward Hirsch : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio by James Wright : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

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