Newsletter Issue #67 February, 2017

A BIRTHDAY POEM by Anthony Hecht

June 22, 1976

Like a small cloud, like a little hovering ghost
Without substance or edges,
Like a crowd of numbered dots in a sick child’s puzzle,
A loose community of midges
Sways in the carven shafts of noon that coast
Down through the summer trees in a golden dazzle.

Intent upon such tiny copter flights,
The eye adjusts its focus
To those billowings about ten feet away,
That hazy woven hocus-pocus
Or shell game of the air, whose casual sleights
Leave us unable certainly to say

What lies behind it, or what sets it off
With fine diminishings,
Like the pale towns Mantegna chose to place
Beyond the thieves and King of Kings:
Those domes, theatres and temples, clear enough
On that mid-afternoon of our disgrace.

And we know at once it would take an act of will
Plus a firm, inquiring squint
To ignore those drunken motes and concentrate
On the blurred, unfathomed background tint
Of deep sea-green Holbein employed  to fill
The space behind his ministers of state,

As if one range slyly obscured  the other.
As, in the main, it does.
All of our Flemish distances disclose
A clarity that never was:
Dwarf pilgrims in the green faubourgs of Mother
And Son, stunted cathedrals, shrunken cows.

It’s the same with Time. Looked at sub specie
Aeternitatis, from
The snow-line of some Ararat of years,
Scholars remark those kingdoms come
To nothing, to grief, without the least display
Of anything so underbred as tears,

And with their Zeiss binoculars descry
Verduns and Waterloos,
The man-made mushroom’s deathly overplus,
Caesars and heretics and Jews
Gone down in blood, without batting an eye,
As if all history were deciduous.

It’s when we come to shift the gears of tense
That suddenly we note
A curious excitement of the heart
And slight catch in the throat: –
When, for example, from the confluence
That bears all things away I set apart

The inexpressible lineaments of your face,
Both as I know it now,
By heart, by sight, by reverent touch and study,
And as it once was years ago,
Back in some inaccessible time and place,
Fixed in the vanished camera of somebody.

You are four years old here in this photograph.
You are turned out in style,
In a pair of bright red sneakers, a birthday gift.
You are looking down at them with a smile
Of pride and admiration, half
Wonder and half joy, at the right and the left.

The picture is black and white, mere light and shade.
Even the sneakers’ red
Has washed away in acids. A voice is spent,
Echoing down the ages in my head:
What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?

O my most dear, I know the live imprint
Of that smile of gratitude,
Know it more perfectly than any book.
It brims upon the world, a mood
Of love, a mode of gladness without stint.
O that I may be worthy of that look.

Anthony Hecht was one of the major American poets of the latter half of the 20^thcentury. Born in 1923, he fought in Germany during WWII and helped liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp; his war experiences haunted him for years. Hecht served as U. S. Poet Laureate between 1982 and 1984. He won the Pulitzer, the Bolligen, and nearly every major poetry prize for his work. He died in 2004. Watch a short video of Hecht discussing poetry at https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/anthony-hecht .

Steve Kronen’s two collections are Splendor (BOA), and Empirical Evidence (University of Georgia). His work has been published in Poetry, APR, The American Scholar, The Georgia Review, Little Star, The New Republic, The New Statesman, The Georgia Review, The Yale Review, Poetry Daily, Plume, and other journals and sites. He has recently completed two new manuscripts, Gimme That. Don’t Smite Me, and Cain on the Moon, translations/versions. www.stevekronen.com.

What a fine introduction, and the poem haunts and delights me, still, after a fifth reading this evening. I mean,

And with their Zeiss binoculars descry
Verduns and Waterloos,
The man-made mushroom’s deathly overplus,
Caesars and heretics and Jews
Gone down in blood, without batting an eye,
As if all history were deciduous.

That deciduous is something, yes?

So, to the news – and here I’ll allow the flyers (thank you, Marc Vincenz) to do the talking for a bit –only pausing to thank all the poets who will be reading for Plume – and for MadHat Press and White Pine Press, and to urge all you readers of our little journal and this newsletter to come out. The venue is but a four or five minute walk from the convention center, and from what I have learned, gorgeous.  I’m sure we’ll repair to some bar or other after each reading, too.

First, a look at our newest print anthology, Plume Poetry 5 – 400+ pages! Many poets you will know as old friends, some acquaintances, others you will meet for the first time. It’s available now at MadHat Press, with rather steep discounts for group purchases – classes and such, where the book already is finding its place for upcoming semesters.

Next, the three readings we will  host at AWP – stellar rosters all! Each reading’s location and starting/ending times are the same.

The Atrium  (just across the street from the Convention Center) 
Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church
900 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20001
7:00 – 9:30 pm

Reading 1: February 8

Reading 2: February 9

Reading 3: February 10

Come, enjoy – free!

Oh – if you are at the conference, please – come to one or all of the readings. Or, stop by our booth:  Booth 321-T, opposite Copper Canyon and Grove/Atlantic. We are listed as MadHat Press/Plume Poetry. I’d love to see you!

And – what else to tell you this month?

In this issue’s “Essays & Comment” (helmed by Associate Editor for Criticism and Essays Robert Archambeau) we offer Michael Anania’s moving, instructive brief history of the emergence of a local poetry scene — When Buffalo Became Buffalo.

Our Featured Selection this month focuses on the work of David Lehman, with a freewheeling interview – as usual — with the author by our own Nancy Mitchell,Associate Editor for Special projects.

In this issue’s Book Reviews, Adam Tavel reviews Anna Świrszczyńska’s Building the Barricade.

Our cover art this month — “Josie” 2016 – comes from the multi-talented Plumecontributor (and slated Featured Selection poet), Jeffrey Skinner.

Again, I hope to see you in Washington, DC, soon.

That’s it – I do hope you enjoy the issue!

Daniel Lawless
Editor, Plume