National Poetry Month: Take the I Out

Take the I Out

But I love the I, steel I-beam
that my father sold. They poured the pig iron
into the mold, and it fed out slowly,
a bending jelly in the bath, and it hardened,
Bessemer, blister, crucible, alloy, and he
marketed it, and bought bourbon, and Cream
of Wheat, its curl of butter right
in the middle of its forehead, he paid for our dresses
with his metal sweat, sweet in the morning
and sour in the evening. I love the I,
frail between its flitches, its hard ground
and hard sky, it soars between them
like the soul that rushes, back and forth,
between the mother and father. What if they had loved each other,
how would it have felt to be the strut
joining the floor and roof of the truss?
I have seen, on his shirt-cardboard, years
in her desk, the night they made me, the penciled
slope of her temperature rising, and on
the peak of the hill, first soldier to reach
the crest, the Roman numeral I--
I, I, I, I,
girders of identity, head on,
embedded in the poem. I love the I
for its premise of existence—our I—when I was
born, part gelid, I lay with you
on the cooling table, we were all there, a 
forest of felled iron. The I is a pine,
resinous, flammable root to crown,
which throws its cones as far as it can in a fire.

by Sharon Olds, from Blood, Tin, Straw
courtesy poets.org 

Suddenly — National Poetry Month

 Suddenly

(Ruth Stone, June 8, 1915 - November 19, 2011)   

And suddenly, it's today, it's this morning

they are putting Ruth into the earth,

her breasts going down, under the hill,

like the moon and sun going down together.

O I know, it's not Ruth—what was Ruth 

went out, slowly, but this was her form,

beautiful and powerful

as the old, gorgeous goddesses who were

terrible, too, not telling a lie

for anyone—and she'd been left here so long, among

mortals, by her mate—who could not,

one hour, bear to go on being human.

And I've gone a little crazy myself

with her going, which seems to go against logic,

the way she has always been there, with her wonder, and her

generousness, her breasts like two

voluptuous external hearts.

I am so glad she kept them, all

her life, and she got to be buried in them—

she 96, and they maybe 82, each, which is

164 years

of pleasure and longing.  And think of all 

the poets who have suckled at her riskiness, her

risque, her body politic, her

outlaw grace!  What she came into this world with,

with a mew and cry, she gave us.  In her red

sweater and her red hair and her raw

melodious Virginia crackle,

she emptied herself fully out

into her songs and our song-making,

we would not have made our songs without her.

O dear one, what is this?  You are not a child,

though you dwindled, you have not retraced your path,

but continued to move straight forward to where 

we will follow you, radiant mother.  Red Rover, cross over.

by Sharon Olds

About this poem:
"When Ruth Stone, one of our great American poets, died, I was not able to get to Vermont for her burial. That morning, I sat by the window, over Riverside Drive, in N.Y.C., and let my mind go, took off its collar and leash, and let it run—straight to her. All I asked of my mind was that it report back to me what it saw, what it thought and felt. After the poem was finished (by hand, by ballpoint in grocery-store notebook), and typed, and revised a little, it was ready to go out and seek other lovers of Ruth Stone's poems, with whom to observe and mourn her passing, and to praise her. Later I had the sorrowing joy of reading Toi Derricotte's story of her deep friendship with Ruth and her family, and of the day of the burial in her essay 'Ruth Stone's Funeral' which was published in Water-Stone Review, Volume 15, 2012. Thus do we all keep each other company." —Sharon Olds

Courtesy of poetry.org

Sharon Olds, Pulitzer Prize-Winner — National Poetry Month

I Go Back to May 1937

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, 
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the 
red tiles glinting like bent 
plates of blood behind his head, I 
see my mother with a few light books at her hip 
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the 
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its 
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married, 
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop, 
don't do it--she's the wrong woman, 
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things 
you cannot imagine you would ever do, 
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of, 
you are going to want to die. I want to go 
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body, 
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I 
take them up like the male and female 
paper dolls and bang them together 
at the hips like chips of flint as if to 
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

by Sharon Olds

via American Modern Poetry

Congrats to   the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner for her book, Stag's Leap. Read a few more of her earlier poems here.