Blue Aerogrammes – Brief Poems by Cid Corman

Cid (Sidney) Corman (1924 – 2004) was an American poet, translator and editor, most notably of the magazine Origin. He was a seminal figure in the history of American poetry in the second half of the 20th century. Cid Corman was born to Ukrainian parents in Boston where he grew up and was educated. From an early age he was an avid reader and showed an aptitude for drawing and calligraphy. He was excused from service in World War II for medical reasons and graduated from university in Boston in 1945. He studied for his Master’s degree at the University of Michigan, where he won the Hopwood poetry award.  After a brief stint at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he spent some time travelling around the United States, returning to Boston in 1948.

Cid Corman ran poetry events in public libraries and started the country’s first poetry radio program. In 1952, he wrote: “I initiated my weekly broadcasts, known as This Is Poetry, from WMEX in Boston. The program has been usually a fifteen-minute reading of modern verse on Saturday evenings at seven thirty; however, I have taken some liberties and have read from Moby Dick and from stories by Dylan Thomas, Robert Creeley, and Joyce.” This program featured readings by Robert Creeley, Stephen Spender, Theodore Roethke and many other Boston-based and visiting poets. He also spent some time at the Yaddo artists’ retreat in Saratoga Springs. It was about this time that Corman changed his name from Sydney Corman to the simpler “Cid.”

In 1951, Corman began Origin in response to the failure of a magazine that Robert Creeley had planned. The magazine typically featured one writer per issue and ran, with breaks, until the mid-1980s. The magazine also led to the establishment of Origin Press, which published books by a wide range of poets as well as by Corman himself and which remains currently active. In 1954, Corman won a Fulbright Fellowship grant and moved to France, where he studied for a time at the Sorbonne. He then moved to Italy to teach English in a small town called Matera. By this time, he had published a number of small books, but his Italian experiences were to provide the materials for his first major work, Sun Rock Man (1962). At this time he produced the first English translations of Paul Celan, even though he didn’t have the poet’s approval.

In 1958, Corman got a teaching job in Kyoto in Japan where he continued to write and to run Origin magazine. There he married Konishi Shizumi, a Japanese TV news editor and began to translate Japanese poetry, particularly work by Bashō and Kusano Shimpei. In Kyoto they established CC’s Coffee Shop, “offering poetry and western-style patisserie.” He was a prolific poet until his final illness, publishing more than 100 books and pamphlets. In 1990, he published the first two volumes of his selected poems, OF, running to some 1500 poems. Volume 3, with a further 750 poems appeared in 1998 and further volumes are planned. Several collections of wide-ranging essays have been published. His translations (or co-translations) include Bashō’s Back Roads to Far Towns, Things by Francis Ponge, poems by Paul Celan and collections of haiku.

Cid Corman did not speak, read or write Japanese, even though his co-translation with Susumu Kamaike of Bashō’s Oku No Hosomichi is considered to be one of the most accurate in tone in the English language.

He died in Kyoto, Japan on March 12, 2004 after being hospitalized for a cardiac condition since January 2004.

 

 

BLUE AEROGRAMMES, POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS

I am old enough to remember aerogrammes, those thin sheets of  blue paper which, when folded neatly, could be used to send fairly lengthy letters to international destinations. They preceded the rise of the internet and the development of email. Cid Corman used them regularly and with great ingenuity. Billy Mills, in an article in the Guardian, describes  “the role Cid played as the hub of a global virtual community of writers and artists, one that far pre-dated the advent of the internet and email. He orchestrated this community through the good old postal system by following a very simple rule he set for himself: every letter he received was either answered within 24 hours of arrival or not at all. He typed his answers on blue Japanese aerogrammes and every square inch of space was used, down to the poems specially written for the occasion and placed on the front of the envelope, next to your name and address.” Bob Arnold has selected  and edited some of these poems and printed them, with an introduction, in  The Famous Blue Aerogrammes. Longhouse, 2004. Some are reprinted below.

Cid Corman described his own poems as direct. In conversation with Philip Rowland he had this to say,  I write what I call direct poetry: if you have to ask somebody to explain the poem then I’ve failed. As mentioned above, he was very prolific. His literary executor, Bob Arnold, (whose own poetry features in  Fortune Cookies – Brief Poems by Bob Arnold) has done much to keep his reputation alive. Not only has he published The Famous Blue Aerogrammes (Longhouse 2016) but he has also published  a selection of poems and translation in The Next One Thousand Years (Longhouse, 2008). He is due to publish the final volumes of OF (Longhouse) containing 1,500 poems over 850 pages.

 

Brief Poems by Cid Corman

Some Haiku

If these words
dont remember you—
forget them.

***

The leaf at last gets
the drift of wind and so
settles for the ground.

***

Azaleas gone and
hydrangea trying to make
a show of it yet.

***

HELLO!
How do you do? How
do you? How-do-you-do-you?
You’re asking too much.

***

I wear the mask of
myself and very nearly
get away with it.

***

In the shadow of
the mountain the shadow of
any bird is lost.

***

There is no end and
never was a beginning – so
here we are – amidst.

***

Your shadow
on the page
the poem.

***

Rain-drops. Each
makes a point
of silence.

 

Some Poems

Poetry becomes
that conversation we could
not otherwise have.

***

Assistant

As long as you are here –
Would you turn the page?

***

The Call

Life is poetry
and poetry is life — O
awaken — people!

***

There’s only
one poem:
this is it.

***

What were you
expecting?

What more is
there than this?

***

We are all
part of what’s

going on
to have gone.

***

THE COUNSEL

Live with the living
Die with the dying
And there you are: here.

***

What have I
to do with

you beyond
being with?

***

A COUPLE

She keeps coming home
to me – of all things – and I
remain home for her.

***

It isnt for want
of something to say—
something to tell you—

something you should know—
but to detain you–
keep you from going—

feeling myself here
as long as you are—
as long as you are.

***

 

from The Famous Blue Aerogrammes

Has it ever
occurred to you
you’re what is oc-
curring to you?

***

You are here – just as
I had imagined –
imagining me.

***

Nothing ends with you —
every leaf on the ground
remembers the root.

***

We wear out
but the sky

looks as new
as ever

***

Everything is
coming to a head — meaning
blossoms yet to fall.

***

WOMAN

She waters
the plants downstairs
from upstairs —
so does the rain.

***

The cry
of all cry –
silence

***

So that

when

was

now

will be

***

FIREFLY

I wonder. Is it
mere curiosity or
just a quiet glow?

***

The sun is
my shadow

I shall not
want — it

leadeth me

***

OMENKIND

The weight of

a falling

leaf upon

your shoulder.

***

So many black flies
getting into the house and
making us killers,

***

When am I going
to lose my leaves and find I
am the poetry?

 

Translations from Sappho

You make me think
of a sweet
girl seen once
picking flowers

***

Spring dusk

Full moon
Girls seem

to be

circling
around

a shrine

***

Come and I’ll
have fresh pillows
for your rest
***

Overjoyed
yes, praying
for such a
night again

***

Am I to
remind you,
dear

that complaint
aint right where
poetry

lives?

***

Further translations of Sappho by Cid Corman, together with the original Greek, are available on the Sappho (fragments) page.

 

Translations from the Japanese of Sengai (1750-1837)

Crown or grid iron —
there’s nothing to think about —
only all to use.

***

Over Everest
the same old moon shares its light
as clear as ever
but only for eyes ready
to see the darkness clearer.

***

Moon empty
sky shine
water deepened
darkness

***

Yes or no —
good or bad —
you have come

to this house.
Here is your
tear — your cake.

 

Translations from the French of Philippe Denis

I was present this morning when a
blossoming tree sweetly escaped.

For what refusal or acquiescence
was the head of the tree nodding
over my page?

***

The word snow used wildly.
I feel the difficulty of it.

Those mornings when we toss about
on one wing!

***

To be enchantingly alone. But does
that make any sense?

What we are, we are, most of the time,
thanks to what hasnt completely occurred.

 

LINKS

The Poetry Foundation page on Cid Corman with an extensive bibliography.

The Wikipedia page on Cid Corman.

Some haiku by Cid Corman on the TAO site.

A selection from The Famous Blue Aerogrammes.

Original Cid, an article in the Guardian by Billy Mills.

An obituary by Michael Carlson in the Guardian.

Cid Corman in conversation with Philip Rowland. Part One

Cid Corman in conversation with Philip Rowland. Part Two

Gregory Dunne on Cid Corman and translation.

A selection of Cid Corman books from the Longhouse Press.

 

Wet Skirts – Brief Poems by Kenneth Rexroth

Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982) was born in in South Bend, Indiana, the son of Charles Rexroth, a pharmaceuticals salesman, and Delia Reed. His childhood was troubled by his father’s alcoholism and his mother’s chronic illness. He was homeschooled by his mother, and by age four he was reading widely in the Classics. His mother died in 1916 and his father in 1918.  He then went to live with his aunt in Chicago and enrolled in the Art Institute of Chicago. He spent his teenage years as an art student and soda jerk, along with other odd jobs. In 1923—1924 he was imprisoned during a raid on a Near North Side bar that he frequented, allegedly for being partial owner of a brothel. He lived in a decrepit jail cell under the care of four black cellmates until his legal guardian could bail him out. In Chicago he  recited poetry from a soapbox to excited crowds on street corners downtown. He live as a postulant in Holy Cross Monastery (West Park, New York) where the lifestyle of meditation, silence and artistic creation suited him marvelously, and he later recalled it as the happiest time of his life. However, he felt strongly that he did not have a vocation there, and left with a solidified admiration for the communal rites and values of monasticism.

At age nineteen, he hitchhiked across the country, taking odd jobs and working a stint as a Forest Service trail crew hand, cook, and packer in the Pacific Northwest, at the Marblemount Ranger Station. Later he was able to board a steamship in Hoboken, exploring Mexico and South America before spending a week in Paris to meet many notable avant-garde figures, notably Tristan Tzara and the Surrealists. He considered staying on in Paris, but an American friend urged him not to become just another expatriate and he returned home. After meeting his first wife, he moved to San Francisco; he would live in California the rest of his life.

Rexroth married Andrée Dutcher in 1927, a commercial artist from Chicago. He claimed to have fallen in love with her at first sight when he saw her in the doorway of the apartment building he was renting. He encouraged Dutcher to pursue non-commercial painting, and she gave him feedback on his writing. The two shared many interests and what Rexroth described as a perfect relationship. Their marriage deteriorated, however, and the couple was divorced near his 35th birthday. Andrée died of complications from epilepsy shortly after, in 1940. Her death triggered great sadness in Rexroth, who wrote a number of elegiac poems in her honour.  Within a year of her death, Rexroth married the nurse and poet Marie Kass. They opened up their home to weekly literary discussions, anti-war protesters, and Japanese-American convalescents avoiding internment. They separated in 1948.  In 1949, Rexroth traveled to Europe with Marthe Larsen. The two were married in Aix-en-Provence despite Rexroth still being legally married to Marie. When the couple returned to the USA, Marthe was pregnant. They had had two daughters, Mary and Katherine, by 1955, when Rexroth’s divorce from Marie finally came through. In 1956, Marthe fell in love with the poet, Robert Creeley, and she later left Kenneth despite his desperate pleas for her to stay. Rexroth later removed all instances of her name from his poetry. After living in San Francisco for 41 years, Rexroth moved to Santa Barbara in 1968. He taught two courses at UCSB. After a few years, he married Carol Tinker, his longtime assistant. They remained married until Rexroth’s death in 1982.

Kenneth Rexroth is still, today, associated with the so-called Beat Poets. With Rexroth acting as master of ceremonies, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen read at the famous poetry-reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco on October 7, 1955. Rexroth later served as a defense witness at Ginsberg’s obscenity trial concerning this event. He had previously sent Ginsberg (new in the Bay Area) to meet Snyder, and was thus responsible for their friendship. Lawrence Ferlinghetti named Rexroth as one of his own mentors. Rexroth was eventually critical of the Beat movement. Years after the Six Gallery reading, TIME magazine referred to him as “Father of the Beats.” To this he replied, “an entomologist is not a bug.” He appears in Jack Kerouac’s novel The Dharma Bums as the character Reinhold Cacoethes.

He died in Santa Barbara, on June 6, 1982, of a massive heart attack that blew out the fuse of the electrocardiogram machine that was monitoring him. He is buried on the grounds of the Santa Barbara Cemetery Association overlooking the sea, and while all the other graves face inland, his alone faces the Pacific. His epitaph, one of his late brief poems, reads, “As the full moon rises / The swan sings in sleep / On the lake of the mind.”

 

READING KENNETH REXROTH

I first came across the poetry of Kenneth Rexroth when, in a Dublin bookshop in the 1970’s, I bought a copy of Penguin Modern Poets 9 which contained poems by William Carlos Williams, Denise Levertov and Kenneth Rexroth. Williams I already knew and the selection did not add much to my knowledge and appreciation of his work. Levertov I knew from anthologies but the wider work in the Penguin book did not appeal much. However Rexroth was a revelation. He seemed to have a voice that was individual, eloquent and intriguing. One poem haunted me – his brief translation of Akiko

I wish I were close
To you as the wet skirt of
A salt girl to her body.
I think of you always.

That poem stuck in my memory for years and when, in 2009, I decided to post brief poems on the Twitter account @poemtoday, it was one of the first poems I printed. Years later, on a visit to Vancouver, I found one of the most eclectic bookstores I had ever visited, MacLeods Books. There I came across a copy of One Hundred Poems from the Japanese. I have borrowed substantially from that book below and I have included, in italics, some of the intriguing and interesting comments Rexroth makes of the poems he has chosen. I hope you enjoy his work as much as I have.

 

THE LOVE POEMS OF MARICHIKO

The Love Poems of Marichiko were originally published as if they had been written by a young Japanese woman in Kyoto and Rexroth had merely translated them. In reality there was no such person as Marichiko — the poems were all written by Rexroth himself, projecting himself into a feminine persona, during the same period that he was translating several volumes of Chinese and Japanese women poets. These, his most erotic poems, Rexroth wrote when he was in his seventies. The text is chronological: in a series of short poems, the narrator longs for, sometimes meets, dreams of and loses her lover, and then grows old. The narrator is defined only in relation to her lover, and of her lover we learn absolutely nothing, including gender. Rexroth gained critical recognition for having conveyed so authentically the feelings of someone of another gender and culture. Linda Hamalian, his biographer, suggests that translating the work of women poets from China and Japan reveals a transformation of both heart and mind. Were they to be written today he would probably be accused of “cultural appropriation” although, in my view, given the sensitivity with which he translated and promoted the work of Japanese women poets, he earned the right to offer his own version of a fictional Japanese female poet who wrote poems that, in their tender eroticism, bore some resemblance to the brief poems of Yosano Akiko whose work he had also translated. If you are interested in responding to these poems, or to the problem of cultural appropriation, you could use the comment box below.

 

Brief Poems by Kenneth Rexroth

Translations from the Greek

… about the cool water
the wind sounds through sprays
of apple, and from the quivering leaves
slumber pours down. . . .

Sappho 

***

The moon has set,
And the Pleiades. It is
Midnight. Time passes.
I sleep alone.

Sappho

***

Time’s fingers bend us slowly
With dubious craftsmanship,
That at last spoils all it forms.

Krates

***

Pass me the sweet earthenware jug,
Made of the earth that bore me,
The earth that someday I shall bear.

Zonas

***

Neither war, nor cyclones, nor earthquakes
are as terrifying as this oaf
who stares, sips water and remembers
everything we say.

Antipatros  

***

Translations from the Japanese

This world of ours,
To what shall I compare it?
To the white wake of a boat
That rows away in the early dawn.

Shami Mansei

***

As I watch the moon
Shining on pain’s myriad paths,
I know I am not
Alone involved in Autumn.

Ōe No Chisato

…believed to have lived about 825 A. D.  Nothing else is known of her, although  this poem is one of the most famous in Japanese literature.

***

When I gathered flowers
For my girl
From the top of the plum tree
The lower branches
Drenched me with dew.

Kakinomoto No Hitomaro

***

A strange old man
Stops me,
Looking out of my deep mirror.

Kakinomoto No Hitomaro

***

My girl is waiting for me
And does not know
That my body will stay here
On the rocks of Mount Kamo.

Kakinomoto No Hitomaro

This poem is Hitomaro’s death poem.

***

I wish I were close
To you as the wet skirt of
A salt girl to her body.
I think of you always.

Yamabe No Akahito

***

The mists rise over
The still pools at Asuka.
Memory does not
Pass away so easily.

Yamabe No Akahito

***

Imperceptible
It withers in the world,
This flower-like human heart.

The Poetess Ono No Komachi.

She is the legendary beauty of Japan. She is supposed to have lost her beauty in old age and become a homeless beggar. This may be true, but it is improbable and is most likely derived from her poems, many of which deal with the transitoriness of life and beauty.

***

Have you any idea
How long  night can last, spent
Lying alone and sobbing?

The Mother of the Commander Michitsuna

According to legend, she gave this poem to her husband when he came home very late one night, as he habitually did.

***

I have always known
That at last I would
Take this road, but yesterday
I did not know that it would be today.

Ariwara No Narihira

***

Out in the marsh reeds
A bird cries out in sorrow,
As though it had recalled
Something better forgotten.

Ki No Tsurayuki

***

The deer on pine mountain,
Where there are no falling leaves,
Knows the coming of autumn
Only by the sound of his own voice.

Onakatomi No Yoshinobu

This is the first Japanese poem I ever translated; I was fifteen years old. It is still one of my favorites.

***

Someone passes,
And while I wonder
If it is he,
The midnight moon
Is covered with clouds.

Lady Murasaki Shikibu

She is the greatest figure in Japanese literature, the author of The Tale of Genji, one of the world’s greatest books, of a diary and of numerous poems.

***

Autumn evening —
A crow on a bare branch.

Bashô

***

An old pond —
The sound
Of a diving frog.

Bashô

…describes a monk’s retreat in the forest, so still that the only sound is the splash of a frog as the visitor approaches.

***

On this road
No one will follow me
In the Autumn evening.

Bashô

***

Summer grass
Where warriors dream.

Bashô

…paralleled by hundreds of Western poems from the Greek Anthology and the Bible to Carl Sandburg. It describes a battlefield.

***

I can see the stones
On the bottom fluctuate
Through the clear water.

Shiki

***

Frozen in the ice
A maple leaf.

Shiki

***

Shitting in the winter turnip field
The distant lights of the city.

Shiki

***

Press my breasts,
Part the veil of mystery,
A flower blooms there,
Crimson and fragrant.

Yosano Akiko

***

Left on the beach
Full of water,
A worn out boat
Reflects the white sky
Of early autumn.

Yosano Akiko

 

 

 

from The Love Poems of Marichiko

IV

You ask me what I thought about
Before we were lovers.
The answer is easy.
Before I met you
I didn’t have anything to think about.

VII

Making love with you
Is like drinking sea water.
The more I drink
The thirstier I become,
Until nothing can slake my thirst
But to drink the entire sea.

IX

You wake me,
Part my thighs, and kiss me.
I give you the dew
Of the first morning of the world.

XII

Come to me, as you come
Softly to the rose bed of coals
Of my fireplace
Glowing through the night-bound forest.

XV

Because I dream
Of you every night,
My lonely days
Are only dreams.

XVI

Scorched with love, the cicada
Cries out. Silent as the firefly,
My flesh is consumed with love.

XVIII

Spring is early this year.
Laurel, plums, peaches,
Almonds, mimosa,
All bloom at once. Under the
Moon, night smells like your body.

XXIX

Love me. At this moment we
Are the happiest
People in the world.

XXXIV

Every morning, I
Wake alone, dreaming my
Arm is your sweet flesh
Pressing my lips.

XXV

Your tongue thrums and moves
Into me, and I become
Hollow and blaze with
Whirling light, like the inside
Of a vast expanding pearl.

XLIV

The disorder of my hair
Is due to my lonely sleepless pillow.
My hollow eyes and gaunt cheeks
Are your fault.

 

A brief poem by Kenneth Rexroth

As the full moon rises
The swan sings
In sleep
On the lake of the mind.

This poem is engraved on Kenneth Rexroth’s tombstone in the Santa Barbara Cemetery  in Santa Barbara, California.

***

LINKS

A biography on the Poem Hunter site

A wide variety of translations by Kenneth Rexroth,

A wide variety of poems by Kenneth Rexroth

Seven Poems on the All Poetry site.

The Kenneth Rexroth page on the Poetry Foundation site.

 

Around the Scuttlebutt – Brief Poems by A. M. Juster

A. M. Juster (born 1956) is the pen name of Michael James Astrue, an American lawyer who has worked as a public servant at the highest levels, holding a position as associate counsel to two Republican presidents (Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush), then as general counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services, and finally as Commissioner of the Social Security Administration from 2007-2013. In the private sector, he practiced law and was a senior executive at several biotechnology companies. For the purpose of this post, I prefer to deal with the poet (A. M. Juster) rather than the political appointee (Michael Astrue) although an informative and entertaining article by Paul Mariani in the religious journal First Things skilfully explicates both sides of an intriguing personality.

A. M. Juster was the first moderator for Eratosphere, the largest on-line site for formal poetry and his work may be associated with what has come to be called The New Formalism. He has won the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award three times, most recently in 2008. My own favourite sonnet of his was one shortlisted for the award: Weldon Kees in Mexico. He also won the Richard Wilbur Award in 2002 for his collection, The Secret Language of Women. In 2014 he was a co-winner of the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize for his translation of a Middle Welsh poem by Gwerful Mechain. His books of translations include Longing for Laura (2001) a translation of Petrarch, The Satires of Horace (2008), Saint Aldhelm’s Riddles (2015), The Elegies of Maximianus (2018) and John Milton’s The Book of Elegies (2019) a translation of the young John Milton’s Latin poems. W. W. Norton will publish his translation of Petrarch’s Canzoniere in 2023. Recent collections include Sleaze & Slander (2016),  The Billy Collins Experience (2016), and Wonder and Wrath (2020) which, according to Dana Gioia represents the culmination and integration of A. M. Juster’s diverse and remarkable career. In 2023 his tongue-in-cheek retelling of the lost Aristophanes play Gerytades, in rhyming English verse, was published. A translation  of Petrarch’s Canzoniere will be published by W.W. Norton in 2024.

TWITTER – @amjuster 

For a Twitter account, that of A. M. Juster is particularly lively, engaging and provocative. He explains his interest thus: I reluctantly dipped my toe into Twitter (@amjuster) a year ago, and I like its concision and reach. I am not an academic or a networker, so it exposed me to a small but interesting group of poets and scholars. He tweets regularly, constantly offering a “warm Twitter welcome” to those who have joined, like a benevolent party-goer happy to see other like-minded souls in attendance. He is an advocate for the poets whose work he admires, promoting the work of such poets as A. E. Stallings, Rhina Espaillat and Kay Ryan and, in the past, campaigning for a Nobel Prize for the late Richard Wilbur. He is also a trenchant and persistent critic of those who he sees as undermining the craft and the reach of poetry. Ben Lerner, Christian Bok and Ezra Pound are often subject to his acerbic wit. Of those poets who use Twitter, he is certainly one worth following.

AROUND THE SCUTTLEBUTT

According to Wikipedia: Scuttlebutt in slang usage means rumor or gossip, deriving from the nautical term for the cask used to serve water (or, later, a water fountain). The term corresponds to the colloquial concept of a water cooler in an office setting, which at times becomes the focus of congregation and casual discussion… Since sailors exchanged gossip when they gathered at the scuttlebutt for a drink of water, scuttlebutt became Navy slang for gossip or rumours.

In the concluding poem below, a mock epitaph entitled Candid Headstone, with its concealed pun in the third line, the scuttlebutt is regarded as a poetic approach and the “bile and bluster” mentioned in disparaging terms is, in the shorter poems (and in many of the best of the longer poems in Sleaze and Slander), refined by rhyme and meter to a humorous and a caustic stance. This is evident in the translations of Martial below and in the Martial post. It is also evident in the brief poems which follow. Satire is one aspect of this approach. The Billy Collins poems, collected in The Billy Collins Experience, are a remarkable act of ventriloquism. Another poem meshes, like a frenetic disc jockey with his mixer, Eliot’s Prurock, Stevens’ blackbird and the famous red wheelbarrow of Williams. As well as Martial, there are translations of Horace, Erasmus, Ausonias and Luxorius, all rendered in a bilious American idiom. As for the two poems from the Middle Welsh of Gwerful Mechain – Poem of the Prick and Poem of the Pussy – suffice to say that the great Australian erotic poet, A. D. Hope, would be smiling in his grave. (A shorter poem by Gwerful Mechain is included below.) Rhina Espaillat put it best when she wrote in Light:  He doesn’t use satire to settle scores with “Them,” but to attack, with self-deprecating humor, the traits, customs and practices that need attacking in all of us.

Brief Poems by A. M. Juster

from Martialed Arguments 

1.28

To say Acerra stinks of day-old booze is wrong!
Each drink is freshened all night long!

***

1.47

Diaulus was a physician;
now he’s a mortician.
The undertaking’s the same –
it just has a new name.

***

2.20

Paul is reciting poems he buys.
At least he doesn’t plagiarize.

***

3.18

Dear Max:

Your reading opened with a whine
about your laryngitis,
but since your alibi was fine
why reread on and incite us.

***

3.79

Sex with Sertorius is anticlimactic;
rapid withdrawal is his typical tactic.

***

8.35

Since you both share the same approach to life
(a lousy husband and a lousy wife),
I am bewildered it
is not a better fit.

***

10.43

Your seventh wife, Phil, is buried in your field.
Nobody gets from land, Phil, that kind of yield.

***

11.97

Dear Telesilla,

Four times in one night is what I can do.
Damn! Once in four years is plenty with you.

***

All poems © A.M. Juster. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Further translations of Martial by A. M. Juster, together with the original Latin, are available on the Brief Poems Martial post.

OTHER TRANSLATIONS

Night Snow

I wondered why the blankets were so lacking,
And then I saw my window brightly glow.
With night long gone, I knew we had deep snow,
For through the calm the bamboo trees were cracking.

Translated from the Chinese of Po-Chui-i

***

Escaping Myself

Absorbed by wine, I do not notice dusk.
The blossoms fill my clothing when they fall.

I stand up drunk, then wade a moonlit brook.
Birds scatter; just a few are left at all.

Translated from the Chinese of Li Po

***

A Riddle from Saint Aldhelm

No one can hold me in his palms or sight:                                    
I scatter sudden clatter far and wide.
I want to hammer oaks with mournful might;
yes, I strike sky and scour countryside.

(Answer: wind)

Another Riddle from Saint Aldhelm

I share now with the surf one destiny
in rolling cycles as each month repeats.
As beauty in my brilliant form retreats,
so too the surges fade in cresting sea.

(Answer: moon)

Translated from the Latin of Saint Aldhelm

***

To Her Husband for Beating Her

Through your heart’s lining let there be pressed – slanting down –
A dagger to the bone in your chest.
Your knee crushed, your hand smashed, may the rest
Be gutted by the sword you possessed.

Translated from the Middle Welsh of Gwerful Mechain

***

Anonymous East African Proverbs

Let the relentless fist
be kissed.

No donkey can cart
what weighs down your heart.

Outside a man is respected;
at home that man is neglected.

True words end;
lies extend.

Translated from the Oromo

***

All poems © A.M. Juster. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Rationale

Poems are best
when compressed.

I detest
the rest.

***

A Stern Warning to Canada

If you want peace,
withdraw your geese.

***

Mismatch

I kept hoping she would come alone.
She’s a gem, but he’s a kidney stone.

***

A Consolation of Aging

Despite my thinning hair,
no barber cuts his rate.
At least the airlines care
and do not charge by weight.

***

Disclaimer

Despite what’s promised when you marry,
actual results may vary.

***

From the Workplace                                                                                            

Your Midlife Crisis

You found yourself, but at an awful cost.
We liked you better when you were lost.

To My Ambitious Colleague

Your uphill climb will never stop;
scum always rises to the top.

Concession to My Colleague

I know that you will win in time;
the rising sewage lifts all slime.

***

Self-portrait at Fifty

None of this can be denied:
crabby, flabby, full of pride;
hypertensive, pensive, snide;
slowly, growing terrified.

***

Visitation

We wander at the scene
of first and final love,
and what was there remains:

warm light through window panes,
a call across the courtyard,
the bristling of elms
with offhand majesty.

***

Sudden Onset                                                                                                              

They stay upbeat, then say,
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” –
that classic Nietzschean cliché.

We’ll know before much longer.

The problem is it’s true
for hate and tumors too.

***

Candid Headstone

Here lies what’s left of Michael Juster,
Failure filled with bile and bluster:
Regard the scuttlebutt as true.
Dance on the grave; most others do.

***

All poems © A.M. Juster. Reprinted by permission of the author.

LINKS

The A. M. Juster website.

An interview with A. M. Juster on political poetry.

A brief interview on the Headstuff site.

Another brief interview with an audio link.

An interview with A. M. Juster by Alfred Nicol

Paul Mariani on the double life of A. M. Juster/Michael J. Astrue.

Introducing Mike Juster by Rhina Espaillat.

Some interesting comments on the Evidence Anecdotal site.

A review of The Secret Language of Women.

Ten Riddles of Saint Aldhelm.

Anonymous East African Proverbs translated by A. M. Juster.

A review of Saint Aldhelm’s Riddles.

A. M. Juster discusses his translation of St. Aldhelm’s Riddles.

Brooke Clark reviews Sleaze and Slander.

A brief review of Sleaze and Slander.

Another brief review of Sleaze and Slander.

Patrick Kurp reviews Sleaze and Slander and The Billy Collins Experience.

A review of The Billy Collins Experience.

About The Elegies of Maximianus.

A review of Wonder and Wrath by Sally Thomas.

A review of Wonder and Wrath by Sunil Iyengar.

A. M. Juster reading from Wonder and Wrath at Rattlecast #62.

A. M. Juster: My Long Strange Trip to Aristophanes’ Gerytades.

A review of Gerytades in the New Criterion.

All poems © A.M. Juster. Reprinted by permission of the author.