Tag: poems

You Guys! A Book of Poems about Prehistoric Burials!

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

There’s a reason I’m posting about this book on Feb. 14.

It does something that I want to do with my novels.

It takes the feeling that I get when hearing about bog burials, stone circles, cave paintings — and amplifies it.

Did I mention that I love it?

I’ll be posting quotations from this book throughout the month of February. The one I posted two days ago – To The Air – could have been written about the scene in The Long Guest where the family cremates … well, I won’t give it away. It was trying for the same thing as that scene, or vice versa. But I mostly posted it for that evocative last line.

you died horribly but are beautiful,

sleeping face and pointed cap and perfect feet,

a peat cutter’s slash dug into your back

but preserved as none of your captors are —

though what a price for immortality.

–from Tollund Man, p. 39

If you’ve ever seen a picture of Tollund Man, this is exactly it.

I haven’t yet read every poem in Bone Antler Stone. They require close attention, and some of them are not short. But every so often I’ll dip into it, and find gems like this one:

The sun sets into the sea with a hiss

and rises with the sound of a driven wheel,

the creak of speaking stone, metal and wood.

The sun sets into the sea to simmer

and rises with the sound of stretched leather

and the song of the horse’s chain and bit.

ibid, p. 23

The idea of the solar system as a great big machine, perhaps made of hoops or wheels, that is alluded to in that first stanza is actually very close to how some ancient cultures conceived of the cosmos.

The last poem in the collection shows the author leaving Orkney, where he went to view the burials, with a friend who is named Pytheas for some reason. This poem raises the thought that not everyone is going to “get” a book of poems like this one.

The price to pay for a place like that,

the price to pay for poems like these…

our intensity is terrifying or just tiresome,

and so the dead and the damp doubleback

into just another of our silent, stone secrets.

It the compares the book itself to a barrow burial waiting to be discovered at the right moment:

So Pytheas proceeded in reply,

assuring me that for us, and for ours,

there was only the odd look, the old look, the awed look,

but rarely the real look of revelation,

or the consolation of having communicated.

And so the motive was to make meaning and memory

a kind of barrow burial in bloom

a garlanded grave underground

forged with turf and stone and fire and then forgotten,

until a propitious step or a sudden storm

blows open this book’s binding

and lays each line out in the light again,

shells of syllables dotting the sand.

Well, with a propitious step, I have found it.

It’s Poem Season and I Don’t Know Why

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Poems seem to come over me occasionally, like the weather.

Yesterday, I wrote a long poem about death and being embodied that I will probably never post here. Today, I started one called Take Me Instead. And also today, my students and I whipped out a sentimental but serviceable little Valentine’s Day sonnet. Sonnets are easy because you just plug in the iambic pentameter and the rhyme scheme.

Perhaps I accidentally primed the pumped by reading the book I’m about to review tomorrow.

Take care! Watch out for falling poetry!

When You Don’t Bury

On By Jennifer Mugrage5 Comments

TO THE AIR

Not burial at all

but instead a great freeing,

flesh handed over to the

birds and elements,

dead lives widely scattered

and confined to no single ground.

Or the hunger of fire,

earth gods dusted with ashes

and sky gods smudged with our smoke,

the wide circle covered

and all of us everywhere.

–Tim Miller, Bone Antler Stone, 2018, 2024

O Come, All Ye Faithful Is Much Better in the Original Latin (a repost)

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Adeste fideles, laeti triumphantes

“O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant”

Venite, venite in Bethlehem

“Come, come into Bethlehem”

Natum videte, regem angelorum

“Born see, the king of angels”

Venite adoremus [3x]

“O come, let us adore him” [3x]

Dominum

“The Lord”

Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine

“God from God, light from light” *(these are direct objects, so the subject and verb are coming up)

Gestant puellae viscera

“A girls’ innards carry” (the subject and verb, and by far my favorite line)

Deum verum

“True God” (and still the direct object)

genitum non factum

“Begotten, not made”

Refrain: Venite adoremus, Dominum “O come, let us adore/The Lord”

Cantet nunc io, chorus angelorum

“Sing it now, chorus of angels”

Cantet nunc aula caelestium

“Sing now, heavenly court”

Gloria, gloria in excelsis Deo

“Glory, glory to God in the highest”

Refrain: “O come, let us adore/The Lord”

Ergo qui natus die hodierna

“Therefore, who is born on the day of today”

Jesu, tibi sit gloria

“Jesus, to you be glory”

Patris aeterni Verbum caro factum

“Word of the eternal Father made flesh”

Refrain

See how the Latin is actually more direct/efficient than the English? Kind of shockingly so?

I think because the original Latin version had so many syllables, to translate the lines into English, additional words had to be added, and sometimes even new ideas such as “Yea, Lord, we greet thee,” which is how the fourth verse begins in English and is one of my favorite lines in that version.

The Angel is Not Impressed: A Poem

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Were you bitter, Zechariah? Many fruitless years had you

asked and asked God for a child, just to see your prayers fall through?

Standing slack-jawed at the altar, towering o’er you, Gabriel’s face:

not a chance you could have doubted God’s real power in that place.

But those dark years were your downfall, and your anger was your sin.

Now’s my chance, your sad heart whispered, Just to get one good dig in.

“It’s too late — You should have given us a baby long ago!”

Any man could understand it, but not the angel Gabriel.

Bitter mouths ought to be silenced, so the angel struck you dumb.

And so, dazed and unhappy, out into the light you come.

In a comedy of errors, Luke says you “kept making signs,”

till those gathered came to realize God had come to you inside.

Sometimes silence is a blessing. Yours was not empty but full

as you watched your once-hard neighbors come to wish Elizabeth well,

like an acorn dead below ground till its time comes to unfurl.

Nine months dumb, your mouth was ready to unsay its bitter ways:

Ready to croon to a baby, ready to explode in praise.

Life in America: Unrhymed Sketches

On By Jennifer Mugrage5 Comments

I love the little houses:

trailer,

double-wide,

double-long,

saltbox,

shotgun shack,

ranch,

unconverted farmhouse.

Dogs that come out and terrify you

from behind a far too flimsy fence.

***

Castor oil, ginger,

apple cider vinegar,

put half an onion on a sill and see how it behaves.

Honey’s good for cough and cold,

pine-needle for the hard-core.

Lots of garlic helps to chase the stomach bugs away.

Epsom salts and menthol rub,

basil, thyme, and black cohosh.

Herbs that our great-grandmothers

used to keep in stash.

Tinctures, teas, and poultices,

but we don’t say Hail Marys ’cause

we’re Protestants.

***

At first, it will seem intrusive.

If outdoors, you’ll want to stop what you are doing and watch it glide by,

noting its three or four engines,

its well-executed graffiti,

its rhythmic clicks.

If indoors, you’ll want to stop speaking

when you feel its rumble.

But after a while, it will become part of the necessary sounds of life:

water running, the heat kicking on, children singing, your own breathing,

and the train.

This process will take less time than you expect.

In weeks, not months,

you will feel uneasy if it does not come on time:

your motherland’s lullabye

rocking you through your days.

Poem: Almost Zero

On By Jennifer Mugrage1 Comment

The reservoir is all locked in.

Its tessellations enfold the old grain tower,

which is no longer free to dance, hopping, in and out the edge of the water

as it usually does.

The tower is left over from the old city,

which is now shrunk down in its new place —

hope you chose well,

you’re not going anywhere,

at least not until Spring.

Still there is some surface movement:

vehicles creeping and squeaking to their important places,

a train whisking through town,

red lights winking

over across the sweep of the lake,

on the pale grey mountains.

Best Rhyme of the Summer

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

There’s just some things that leave a man no choice

Like a compass needle needin’ its true No-o-orth

some country song

I didn’t know that choice rhymed with North, did you?

But they do! Once you have heard them in this song, you cannot deny that they do!

And those words will rhyme for you forever after.

This is my favorite kind of rhyme — unexpected, gutsy even, but once you hear it, it clicks into place and feels so natural.

Here’s my professional, I-used-to-be-a-linguist analysis of why choice and North do, in fact, rhyme.

Both have an /o/ followed by a sound that narrows the vocal cavity but doesn’t stop the air (/i/ or /r/, which is a liquid), followed by a voiceless fricative articulated near the front of the mouth (/s/, or theta).

In case you are wondering, the country song in question is Love You Anyway by Luke Combs, which is in the subgenre of Self-Pity (Male Singer).