Wide-Awake City Poetry is what makes sure we are awake.

A friend recently gave me a list of poets.  He didn't annotate or explain.  I guessed I should read them.
I then spent a happy hour getting reacquainted with the downtown KCMO library.  Some certain hours in the library are worth more than a whole day of whatever it is that I usually do.  Do you know what I mean?  It had been awhile, but now that my fine is again under the boundaries of good graces, the KCMO library and I are back on friendly terms. So I found several of the suggested poets, along with others, and some handy books about landscaping, etc. which also came home with me.

So.  Two poems.  One from Stephen Dunn (recommended by said friend; not sarcastic, not bitter, but pleasantly in the neighborhood-- seriously this guy is amazing)- this poem reminds me of the concept of Acedia and Kathleen Norris' "Acedia and Me."   And then one from Heather McHugh (happy accident find; her wordplay and rhythm are so satisfying!).

P.S. I'm not working this summer, so be warned -- I may be chatty in the weeks to come...

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Zero Hour
It was the hour of simply nothing,
not a single desire in my western heart,
and no ancient system
of breathing and postures,
no big idea justifying what I felt.

There was even an absence of despair.

"Anything goes," I said to myself.
All the clocks were high.  Above them,
hundreds of stars flickering if, if, if.
Everywhere in the universe, it seemed,
some next thing was gathering itself.

I started to feel something,
but it was nothing more than a moment
passing into another, or was it less
eloquent than that, purely muscular,
some meaningless twitch?

I'd let someone else make it rhyme.
                                           -Stephen Dunn




Message at Sunset for Bishop Berkeley

How could nothing turn so gold?
You say my eyelid shuts the sky;
in solid dark I see stars
as perforations, loneliness
as blues, what isn't
as a heavy weight, what is
as nothing if it's not ephemeral.

But still the winter world
could turn your corneas to ice.
Let sense be made.  The summer sun
will drive its splinters straight
into your brain.  Let sense be made.
I'm saying vision isn't insight,
buried at last in the first
person's eye.  You

should see it:  the sky
is really something.

                                      -Heather McHugh