Chekhov's Mistress
“One day the Nouns were clustered in the street”
Lifted directly from the Knopf site, this bit from Kenneth Koch I liked:
Suppose you want to get an experience into words so that it is permanently there, as it would be in a painting—so that every time you read what you wrote, you reexperienced it. Suppose you want to say something so that it is right and beautiful—even though you may not understand exactly why. Or suppose words excite you—the way stone excites a sculptor—and inspire you to use them in a new way. And that for these or other reasons you like writing because of the way it makes you think or because of what it helps you to understand. These are some of the reasons poets write poetry.
This is the first I’ve seen this site, but they’re pretty smart, those Knopf folks. You got your poem there, complete with link to a podcast reading by another famous poet – in this case Mark Strand who has a new book coming out soon – and of course the option to buy the book right there on the site.
Here’s Koch’s “Permanent” for a Thursday morning:
One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.
Each Sentence says one thing—for example, “Although it was a dark
rainy
day when the Adjective walked by, I shall remember the pure and
sweet
expression on her face until the day I perish from the green,
effective earth.”
Or, “Will you please close the window, Andrew?”
Or, for example, “Thank you, the pink pot of flowers on the window
sill
has changed color recently to a light yellow, due to the heat from
the
boiler factory which exists nearby.”
In the springtime the Sentences and the Nouns lay silently on the
grass.
A lonely Conjunction here and there would call, “And! But!”
But the Adjective did not emerge.
As the Adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat—
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone
Until the destruction of language.
And by the way, Mark Strand is a good reader, even if a bit too weighty sounding on this particular poem. I listened to another of the Knopf podcasts, with Joan Didion reading. Not only was her reading not so swell, she desperately needed a glass of water.
comments
I do think the Koch poem is clever, but I wish poets would refrain from writing these sort of self-referential writer-poems (e.g. drawing attention to words/the fact that the writer is a writer). Sort of like I wish fiction writers would avoid using similes like this: “Her eyebrows were like parentheses turned on their sides.” Because it seems so short-sighted, you know?
– ing (04/14 at 02:39 AM)
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