I think I started this board about seven years ago, when I yielded the Mastery Board to Aliki. You can see my rueful reflections on a truly dumb interview I did with her over at General Talk. My task today is to introduce Leslie Monsour, one of the best poets writing in English. I have posed a number of questions to her about women in poetry, about poetry in women? I'll have my answers shortly, and they will prompt additional questions. But I want to start by introducing you to four poems. I read them to Alan Sullivan and Dick Wilbur in Cummington, MA, the nights of July 17 and 18, 2008. We had agreed that I would read two of Leslie's poems each evening. Not one of these poems could have been written by a man, and that is why I am so excited that Leslie has agreed to host what I hope will be a far-ranging discussion on women's poetry in November. Here are the four poems:
The Burrowing Bees
I prize their wild and solitary charm
Of being. They serve no queen, and thrive
Without conforming to the ritual and swarm
Of the industrious, honey-brewing hive.
Two weeks ago, the patio gave birth
To mounds of dirt where pavement cracked and lent
A gritty opportunity to sound the earth.
They took a sunny corner of cement
Where heat starts early, lasting all the day.
First five or six, now several dozen zip
Around in admirable disorder; drones relay
In restless idleness, while females slip
Like rain into their rocky subdivision,
Encrusted with the bullion of their toil,
And, crouched among them, I rejoice in the precision
With which they hang midair, dissolve in soil.
They growl like dainty bullets, whipping, shooting
About my feet. I shift to find a spot
Less near their sandy rings, the funneled cells for brooding,
Riddled beneath the fragrant bergamot.
At last, the males, converging, take the floor,
And, ravishing their mates in silvery blazes,
Like frenzied tumbleweeds, they rollick, three and four,
With heads and abdomens in teeming mazes.
Their progeny is their preoccupation;
And time exists to see that life occurs
In sequence: the crucial splicing of a generation,
The fertile spring each larvaed heir ensures.
At dusk, the cooling stones grow still again.
The world depends upon the sleeping bees --
Their chambered hymn, the last clear thought inside God’s brain --
Accompanied by distant piano keys.
The Suddenness of the Past
I hit a hummingbird today, while driving
To the commencement of my oldest son.
I saw its hair-slim beak, its pinpoint, living
Eye. It popped against the windshield and was gone.
I pushed ahead, not actually seeing
Much else beyond the radiating throw
Of red across the glass, a proof of being,
Caught in its wherenesses, a smear of now,
The way my heart is streaked with iridescent-
Feathered reminders, tiny-throated fears.
I watch my son stand clearly in the present,
Unflinching, like the emerald silk he wears.
Fifteen
The boys who fled my father's house in fear
Of what his wrath would cost them if he found
Them nibbling slowly at his daughter's ear,
Would vanish out the back without a sound,
And glide just like the shadow of a crow,
To wait beside the elm tree in the snow.
Something quite deadly rumbled in his voice.
He sniffed the air as if he knew the scent
Of teenage boys, and asked, "What was that noise?"
Then I'd pretend to not know what he meant,
Stand mutely by, my heart immense with dread,
As Father set the traps and went to bed.
The Last Concert
for Glenn Gould
Before he plays, he fills the bathroom basin
with birthwarm water for his room-chilled hands.
The way he floats them, they could be his child;
they have his seriousness, and there’s his face in
their grasp, which heaven won’t exceed. He stands
flexing off tension, bathes his wrists with mild
affection, almost with a father’s pride.
He is their master as they’re towelled, and such
demanding expectation he’ll impart,
when fingers upon ivories collide
in strain-resolving fugue, they’ll lightly touch
the pulse of love’s severe, exacting heart.
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