I found each of these breathtaking, Fred.
They felt compelled and compelling, no words wasted.

The first, 'Cliche', evoked the suffocated feeling in the strongest parts of
August Strindberg's _Dream Play_.

The next, 'Eugenio de Andrade', shockingly shook us from spare magnificence
to disgust and dismay.

'Ingenu' holds much the most figures, tautly drawn and powerful.  It also
seems the most sweeping, speeding of the several poems.

Though I haven't much clue as to the matches and meanings of 'Years of The
Stranger' it, too, screeches an insistent pile of magnificent metaphor.  It
burns words like a prophet's:  "While the abusers of language,/ secular and
religious, froth/ and choke on their lies until/ they occupy all media to
correct them."

And, finally, 'I'm Like Wow' nails that scary disconnect between
generations, between teachers and their students, between 'hurry up' and
'you don't get it'----perhaps, fundamentally, two groups envying one
another, competing for Top Dog title with complete ignorance of one
another's rules, background, motives, awarenesses and expectations.

NIce.

Judy

2008/9/17 Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]>

> Cliché
>
>
> So polluted, it can't be water
> I tread, am under, breathing,
> knowing I shouldn't be …
> Piss-colored light,
> doors like old cardboard that
> could mean escape but are
> so rotted I put a hand through
>
> and awake, shouting.  Dreams
> are cliché, but this one was
> so bad, someone must pay.
> I seek him later on a floor without
> exit or elevator, the key
> to all the doors behind each door
> and every door locked tight.
>
>
>
>
>
> Eugénio de Andrade
>
>
> With envy enough to excuse
> another poem about reading,
> I read Levitin's translation
> of Eugénio de Andrade.
> Who spoke with expertise
> of the entrance to seasons,
> of the specific diameter
> of the smell of horses,
> of a single immanent blade
> of harvest.  And I wonder
> what analogue exists
> for the child of cities
> to earth, air, fire, and water
> (fear, contempt, dependency, apathy)
> or the poet's beloved familiars
> goats, sheep, birds, cicadas
> (fools, fanatics, fascists, and sociopaths).
>
>
>
>
>
> Ingénu
>
>
> Before what is no longer called
> second childhood comes a second adolescence.
> Women you won't possess
> drift as before
> with drinks and bikinis
> over the sand and into the lives of others,
> vividly recounting
> just out of hearing
> secret criteria
> you needed, till you gave up needing to know.
> The world slips sideways like a beachball,
> whether seen from waves or dunes
> or the delusive shade
> of an umbrella, which lets through
> the deadliest ray.
> Again the fear you won't be heard
> however you pose and shout,
> the posing vital for without it
> is only nothingness, which wants you,
> and childhood, which cast you out.
>
>
>
>
> Years of the Stranger
>
>
> The rapist at the point of rape
> feels amazing pain in his groin
> and crawls to the police to make it stop.
> The molester finds a knife in his ass;
> the torturer, everywhere in his body,
> the measure of his art, until
> he opens all the cells, and even then …
> While the abusers of language,
> secular and religious, froth
> and choke on their lies until
> they occupy all media to correct them.
>
> For years this image has been
> my talisman, my charm.  I think
> I may use, here, the intimate pronoun,
> no longer certain the myth
> accomplished anything, and never having
> imagined *myself the Avenger …
> Of whom bullies, defying pain
> with the disheartening
> courage of bullies, demand
> that he show himself, not hide
> in a ubiquitous cold shadow,
>
> and he does!  A nondescript fellow,
> however immortal, lacking
> the style of a Redeemer
> with official backing –
> that archetype which,
> in his professorial tenor
> from the midst of his work, he
> spends years, years, an eternity
> refuting.  His words
> seem over-nuanced, hard to understand,
> like poetry to the common reader.
>
>
>
>
> I'm Like Wow
>
>
> They believe in *getting on with their lives*,
> a creed they learned at the feet
> of serial absent parents
> or when they beat some juvie rap.  Professors
> who can't get on with their lives
> perceive the burden of their speech that staggers
> forward like reggae,
> their look of non-respect and non-contempt
> that holds not even Culture in contempt.
> It's the sort of regret
> that lets them know they're getting on with their lives,
> the precious unexperienced
> experience, the unknown knowledge.
> Such as that freedom
> is archons, celestial policemen, hustling one
> into the traffic, saying, *Move along*.
>