Writing on Napkins at the Sunshine Club

Transcription

1 Writing on Napkins at the Sunshine Club An Anthology of Poets Writing in Macon Edited and Introduced by Kevin Cantwell Afterword by David Bottoms MERCER UNIVERSITY PRESS MACON, GEORGIA

2 Contents Introduction by Kevin Cantwell 1 Stanley Kunitz 21 The Mound Builders 22 Miller Williams 25 Rock 26 The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina 27 Aesthetic Distance 29 Adrienne Bond 31 Hard Times 32 Christmas Day Renewal 35 Inheriting the Earth 36 Metastasis 37 Women at Sixty 38 Script 38 Householder 39 Chatelaine 40 No Agamemnon 41 Stephen Bluestone 43 The Unveiling 44 from The Laughing Monkeys of Gravity 45 i. "The Settlement" 45 vi. "In the World's Machine 46 vii. "Oracles of Lefts and Rights" 46 First Voices 47 A Garland for Skelton 48 The Rug Maker 50 The Flagrant Dead 51 A Late Blossom at the Bone 53 The Windsor Knot 53 Play on Radio 54 The Closing 54

3 Seaborn Jones 57 Orange 58 Golden Gate Bridge 58 Women & Money 59 Semper Fi 60 Lost Keys, Coffee and Guns 61 The Red Horse 63 Telephoning Ginsberg 64 Eagle 66 This Poem Is Not for You 66 First Words 67 Unemployed 68 The Breath 69 This Poem 69 Berlin 70 Becoming an Artist 71 Going Farther into the Woods Than the Woods Go 71 Judson Mitcham 73 The Touch 74 On the Otis Redding Bridge 74 Nature 75 Preface to an Omnibus Review 78 Comedian 79 Peace on Earth 80 A Postcard to My Father 81 History 82 Promise 82 David Bottoms 85 Wrestling Angels 86 Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump 86 Writing on Napkins at the Sunshine Club 87 Sign for my Father, Who Stressed the Bunt 88 Under the Boathouse 88 In a U-Haul North of Damascus 90 Red Swan 92 Under the Vulture-Tree 93

4 The Desk 94 Flower in My Father's Parlor 96 A Walk to Carter's Lake 97 A Canoe 98 O Mandolin, O Magnum Mysterium 99 In the Big House of the Allman Brothers My Heart Gets Tuned 103 Shelves on the Clark Fork 106 Allatoona Evening 107 Learning to Become Nothing 108 Judith Ortiz Cofer 111 Beans: An Apologia for Not Loving to Cook 112 The Poet's Work 113 Black Silk Shirt 114 The Art of Scrying: A Poem for My Birthday 115 Marjorie Becker 117 Looking for an Opening 118 Memory of a Dancer 120 Body Bach 121 Side-Steps the G-Minor, A-Flat Wail 122 Green 123 Begging for Clara 124 The Man who Danced Me in Spain 124 Anthony Grooms 127 In Biloxi 128 In the Bar at the North Ridge 128 The Problems of the Unimaginably Rich 129 Tsunami 130 Kevin Cantwell 131 Hard, Red Box 132 History 133 Border States 134 Song of the Black Corona 135 There's something black in the green part of your eye 137 The Wooden Trap 139

5 These Heights 141 Marlowe in Italy 141 Night Game Vexed by a Line from Melville 144 The Next Abstinence 144 Bruce Beasley 147 Witness 148 The White Children of Macon 151 Childhood 158 At Easter 159 Errata Mystagogia 160 The Corpse Flower 162 And Go into the Street Which Is Called Straight 166 Reginald Shepherd 171 The Difficult Music 172 Slaves 173 My Foolish Friend 174 Nuages 174 Antibody 175 Placet Futile 176 About a Boy 177 For My Mother in Lieu of Mourning 178 Narcissus to Echo 179 Hesitation Theory 181 Desire and the Slave Trade 181 The Gods at Three A.M. 183 West Willow 184 Hygiene 185 Gordon Johnston 189 Ties 190 Her Father's Pants 191 Amanda Pecor 193 A Reply to Auden's Elegy for Yeats 194 Alpha 194 American Psalm 195

6 At the Cherry Blossom Festival, Mary Magdalene Explains Her Preference for the Dogwood 198 Edenic Interlude 198 Invitation 199 Life Story 200 Marian 201 Pink Parasol 201 Red 202 Romance 203 Sexual History 204 Used Car Lot 205 Anya Silver 207 To My Body 208 Persimmon 208 Canticle of the Washing Machine 209 Kelly Whiddon 211 A Modern Myth 212 Swans and Mosquitoes 213 Afterword "What the Graveyard Says: A Thought on the Consequence of Place" by David Bottoms 215 Editor's Note 231 Acknowledgments 235