Rendering poetry in a digital format presents several challenges, just as its many forms continue to challenge the conventions of print. In print, however, a poem takes place within the static confines of a page, hewing as close as possible to the poet’s intent, whether it’s Walt Whitman’s lines stretching to the margin like Route 66, or Robert Creeley’s lines descending the page like a string tie. The printed poem has a physical shape, one defined by the negative space that surrounds it—a space that is crafted by the broken lines of the poem. The line, as vital a formal and critical component of the form of a poem as metaphor, creates rhythm, timing, proportion, drama, meaning, tension, and so on.
Reading poetry on a small device will not always deliver line breaks as the poet intended—with the pressure the horizontal line brings to a poem, rather than the completion of the grammatical unit. The line, intended as a formal and critical component of the form of the poem, has been corrupted by breaking it where it was not meant to break, interrupting a number of important elements of the poetic structure—rhythm, timing, proportion, drama, meaning, and so on. It’s a little like a tightrope walker running out of rope before reaching the other side.There are limits to what can be done with long lines on digital screens. At some point, a line must break. If it has to break more than once or twice, it is no longer a poetic line, with the integrity that lineation demands. On smaller devices with enlarged type, a line break may not appear where its author intended, interrupting the unit of the line and its importance in the poem’s structure.We attempt to accommodate long lines with a hanging indent—similar in fashion to the way Whitman’s lines were treated in books whose margins could not honor his discursive length. On your screen, a long line will break according to the space available, with the remainder of the line wrapping at an indent. This allows readers to retain control over the appearance of text on any device, while also indicating where the author intended the line to break.
This may not be a perfect solution, as some readers initially may be confused. We have to accept, however, that we are creating poetry e-books in a world that is imperfect for them—and we understand that to some degree the line may be compromised. Despite this, we’ve attempted to protect the integrity of the line, thus allowing readers of poetry to travel fully stocked with the poetry that needs to be with them.
—Dan Halpern, Publisher
Late Poems
These are the late poems.
Most poems are late
of course: too late,
like a letter sent by a sailor
that arrives after he’s drowned.
Too late to be of help, such letters,
and late poems are similar.
They arrive as if through water.
Whatever it was has happened:
the battle, the sunny day, the moonlit
slipping into lust, the farewell kiss. The poem
washes ashore like flotsam.
Or late, as in late for supper:
all the words cold or eaten.
Scoundrel, plight, and vanquished,
or linger, bide, awhile,
forsaken, wept, forlorn.
Love and joy, even: thrice-gnawed songs.
Rusted spells. Worn choruses.
It’s late, it’s very late;
too late for dancing.
Still, sing what you can.
Turn up the light: sing on,
sing: On.
Ghost Cat
Cats suffer from dementia too. Did you know that?
Ours did. Not the black one, smart enough
to be neurotic and evade the vet.
The other one, the furrier’s muff, the piece of fluff.
She’d writhe around on the sidewalk
for chance pedestrians, whisker
their trousers, though not when she started losing
what might have been her mind. She’d prowl the night
kitchen, taking a bite
from a tomato here, a ripe peach there,
a crumpet, a softening pear.
Is this what I’m supposed to eat?
Guess not. But what? But where?
Then up the stairs she’d come, moth-footed,
owl-eyed, wailing
like a tiny, fuzzy steam train: Ar-woo! Ar-woo!
So witless and erased. O, who?
Clawing at the bedroom door
shut tight against her. Let me in,
enclose me, tell me who I was.
No good. No purring. No contentment. Out
into the darkened cave of the dining room,
then in, then out, forlorn.
And when I go that way, grow fur, start howling,
scratch at your airwaves:
no matter who I claim I am
or how I love you,
turn the key. Bar the window.
Salt
Were things good then?
Yes. They were good.
Did you know they were good?
At the time? Your time?
No, because I was worrying
or maybe hungry
or asleep, half of those hours.
Once in a while there was a pear or plum
or a cup with something in it,
or a white curtain, rippling,
or else a hand.
Also the mellow lamplight
in that antique tent,
falling on beauty, fullness,
bodies entwined and cherishing,
then flareup, and then gone.
Mirages, you decide:
everything was never.
Though over your shoulder there it is,
your time laid out like a picnic
in the sun, still glowing,
although it’s night.
Don’t look behind, they say:
You’ll turn to salt.
Why not, though? Why not look?
Isn’t it glittery?
Isn’t it pretty, back there?
My mother, sleeping.
Curled up like a spring fern
although she’s almost a century.
I speak into her topmost ear,
the one thrust up like a wrinkled stone
above the hills of the pillows:
Hello! Hello!
But she shows a clenched resistance
to waking up.
She’s down too deep, a diver
plunged into dangerous caverns:
it’s blank in there.
She’s dreaming, however.
I can tell by the way she’s frowning,
and her strong breathing.
Maybe she’s making her way
down one more white river,
or walking across the ice.
There are no more adventures for her
in the upper air, in this room
with her bed and the family pictures.
Let’s go out and fight the storm,
she used to say. So maybe
she’s fighting it.
Meanwhile I watch a spider
laying a trail across the ceiling,
little dust messenger.
The clock ticks and the day shrivels.
Dusk sifts down on us.
How long should I stay?
I put my hand on her forehead,
stroke her wispy hair.
How tall she used to be,
how we’ve all dwindled.
It’s time for her to go deeper,
into the blizzard ahead of her,
both dark and light, like snow.
Why can’t I let go of her?
Why can’t I let her go?
Princess Clothing
i.
Too many people talk about what she should wear
so she will be fashionable, or at least
so she will not be killed.
Women have moved in next door
wrapped in pieces of cloth
that lack approval.
They’re setting a bad example.
Get out the stones.
ii.
Fur is an issue too:
her own and some animal’s.
Once the world was nearly stripped of feathers,
all in the cause of headgear.
What was it for, my love,
this ripoff of the birds?
Once there was nothing she wouldn’t do
to render herself alluring.
So many items attached to her head:
ribbons and ships, all curling.
Now her torso lies in the ditch
like a lost glove, like a tossed book
mostly unsaid. Unread.
In the high palace of words, one princess the less.
iii.
Oh beware,
uncover your hair
or else they will burn down your castle.
Wait a minute: Cover it!
Hair. So controversial.iv.
As for feet, they were always a problem.
Toes, heels, and ankles
take turns being obscene.
Little glass slippers, the better to totter.
Many things that are not what you want
arrive in the disguise of flowers.
Lotus foot, the petals
broken bones.
v.
Wool worn next to the skin
was once an army decree.
In mid-battle it’s hard to shower.
Wool deterred microbes and did not stink,
or not as much. That was the theory.
Here you go: cashmere!
But armpits: drawbacks, damp as a groin,
even if pink:
not feminine.
vi.
Cotton on the other hand
was crackly. Still is.
Avoid it when making recordings.
You don’t want it messing with the ghost voice
of yourself you leave behind in the air.
vii.
Silk, however,
is best for shrouds.
That’s where it comes from, silk:
those seven veils the silkworms keep spinning,
hoping they will be butterflies.
Then they get boiled, and then unscrolled.
It’s what you hope too, right?
That beyond death, there’s flight?
After the shrouding, up you’ll rise,
delicate wings and all. Oh honey,
it won’t be like that.
Not quite.
Cicadas
Finally after nine years
of snouting through darkness
he inches up scarred bark
and cuts loose the yammer of desire:
the piercing one-note of a jackhammer,
vibrating like a slow bolt of lightning
splitting the air
and leaving a smell like burnt tarpaper.
Now it says Now it says Now
clinging with six clawed legs
and close by, a she like a withered ear,
a shed leaf, brown and veined,
shivers in sync and moves closer.
This is it, time is short, death is near, but first,
first, first, first
in the hot sun, searing, all day long,
in a month that has no name:
this annoying noise of love. This maddening racket.
This—admit it—song.
If we could reproduce by bud
or spore, there would not be these duels.
Or if each could swivel an identical
organ into the other’s ear
while both twirled in the air
suspended from a shimmering rope
of tears and glue, like a tip-top
highwire act,
that would work. It does for slugs:
Look at those pearly eggs!
(More future lacework lettuces.)
Unless they both get stuck.
That too can happen.
No help for it but chewing off
a penis. What then, humans?
If it were yours? Imagine:
The post-deed conversation: apophallation.
My turn! You bit off mine last time.
Get on with it or we’ll be here all night,
fair game for predators.
I don’t care! And I don’t want to live!
You never loved me!
You only loved my ear!
By daylight something’s got to give.
Or someone. Some one
has got to give. A given.
That’s how we carry on.
Everyone else’s sex life seems so impossible.
Surely not, we think:
surely not this into that!
Not such a dirty mouth
and such bad teeth!
Those cooked prunes, those wattles!
Please, keep your clothes on.
They exist for a reason:
to save you from yourself,
your own voyeur.
Nobody looks like a movie star
not even movie stars
on their days off,
rambling along the street
hunting for decent eats
and anonymity, without luck.
Nobody, except to themselves
in their own heads when drunk,
or if they’re narcissists, when sober.
Or when in love. Oh yes, In Love,
that demented rose-red circus tent
whose half-light forgives all visuals,
fig-leaves our lovers,
and softens our own brains
and the pain of our sawdust pratfalls.
So tempting, that midway faux-marble arch,
both funfair and classical—
so Greek, so Barnum,
such a beacon,
with a sign in gas-blue neon:
Love! This way!
In!
