poem

Helen Pinkerton Trimpi Reads and Comments on Favorite Turner Cassity Poems

Poetry reading and commentary video from Helen Pinkerton Trimpi.

Turner Cassity Reads at the Huntington Library, April 12, 2003

Poetry reading video from Turner Cassity

Visitors to San Simeon

                          1932

1. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The Rimer Unrhymed

Mej. Zelle

In youth I was your basic overweight Dutch frump,
As at the end I was. Between, the quantum jump

To Mata Hari, ethnic artist dancing nude
Before Crowned Heads, if not the Asian multitude

That would know bump-and-grinding when they saw it. Spy?
Well, maybe. Such few secrets as I could supply

I hardly understood. But faced with firing squad
I was as firm as Nurse Cavell. A simple nod

That signals one is ready; and the blindfold off,
To serve as scarf, inhibit any final cough.

Edith Cavell

England’s recruiting poster Joan of Arc,
I was a crypto-Walloon, and a stark

Reminder that when all is said and done
The letter of the law was with the Hun,

Although I rose at once to such renown
As was the Lusitania’s, once down,

If with as little claim to innocence.
All that could be brought forth in my defense

Is that I did not profit from my acts,
And that confession is what guile exacts.

Casting Away

            for Turner Cassity

What burning force
beyond the curtain
of all that’s certain
draws us out from shore
into solution?

What glitter over
twilit water parses
hidebound human
parts to droplets
in an ocean,

our needs made
slight and slender
as the reeds we were
surrender to
redemptive motion.

In Montmartre Cemetery

The seated statue on Nijinsky’s tomb
Depicts him in the role he thought his best—
The gentle, solitary puppet whom
A jealous impresario oppressed.
In his clown costume with its collar ruff
And tasseled cap, he rests with chin in hand,
As if conceiving  he might yet pull off
The sane and independent life he planned.

Translations from the Persian ¹

           for Turner and Suzanne

If that full moon were true and good,
how would that be?
And if he feared God as he should,
how would that be?

I’d like to stay with him a while -
If he decided that I could,
how would that be?

I long to kiss his lovely lips,
And if he said he thought I should,
how would that be?

Lines For Turner Cassity

Librarian with military bearing,
You’ve left us poems critics call unsparing,

A wit not merely clever but hard-bitten.
Sometimes I hear you utter, “overwritten,”

And even at this distance, there’s no choice
But hear the word in that distinctive voice,

Not circumflexing drawl, dipthonged legato,
But southern, brisk particular staccato—

Inimitable voice—for never cruel—
Impatient only of the pompous fool