Dana Gioia - 99 Poems

Where will it end? This grim cycle of workshops

churning out poems for little magazines

no one honestly finds to their taste?

This ever-lengthening column of contributors

scavenging the land for more students,

teaching them to write their boot-camp sestinas?

Perhaps there is an afterlife where all contributors

have two workshops, a tasteful little magazine, and sexy students

who worshipfully memorize their every sestina.

is something to be grateful for.

Once there were so many books, so many poets.

All the masterpieces one could never read,

indistinguishable even then

among the endless shelves of the unreadable.

Some claim the best stopped writing first.

For the others, no one noted when or why.

A few observers voiced their mild regret

about another picturesque, unprofitable craft

that progress had irrevocably doomed.

And what was lost? No one now can judge.

But we still have music, art, and film,

diversions enough for a busy people.

And even poetry for those who want it.

The old books, those the young have not defaced,

are still kept somewhere,

stacked in their dusty rows.

And a few old men may visit from time to time

to run their hands across the spines

and reminisce,

but no one ever comes to read

or would know how.

Money, the long green,

cash, stash, rhino, jack

or just plain dough.

Chock it up, fork it over,

shell it out. Watch it

burn holes through pockets.

To be made of it! To have it

to burn! Greenbacks, double eagles,

megabucks and Ginnie Maes.

It greases the palm, feathers a nest,

holds heads above water,

makes both ends meet.

Money breeds money.

Gathering interest, compounding daily.

Always in circulation.

Money. You don’t know where it’s been,

but you put it where your mouth is.

And it talks.

How much better it seems now

than when it is finally done—

the unforgettable first line,

the cunning way the stanzas run.

The rhymes soft-spoken and suggestive

are barely audible at first,

an appetite not yet acknowledged

like the inkling of a thirst.

While gradually the form appears

as each line is coaxed aloud—

the architecture of a room

seen from the middle of a crowd.

The music that of common speech

but slanted so that each detail

sounds unexpected as a sharp

inserted in a simple scale.

No jumble box of imagery

dumped glumly in the reader’s lap

or elegantly packaged junk

the unsuspecting must unwrap.

But words that could direct a friend

precisely to an unknown place,

those few unshakeable details

that no confusion can erase.

And the real subject left unspoken

but unmistakable to those

who don’t expect a jungle parrot

in the black and white of prose.

How much better it seems now

than when it is finally written.

How hungrily one waits to feel

the bright lure seized, the old hook bitten.

“Poetry must lead somewhere,” declared Breton.

He carried a rose inside his coat each day

to give a beautiful stranger—“Better to die of love

than love without regret.” And those who loved him

soon learned regret. “The simplest surreal act

is running through the street with a revolver

firing at random.” Old and famous, he seemed démodé.

There is always a skeleton on the buffet.

Wounded Apollinaire wore a small steel plate

inserted in his skull. “I so loved art,” he smiled,

“I joined the artillery.” His friends were asked to wait

while his widow laid a crucifix across his chest.

Picasso hated death. The funeral left him so distressed

he painted a self-portrait. “It’s always other people,”

remarked Duchamp, “who do the dying.”

I came. I sat down. I went away.

Dali dreamed of Hitler as a white-skinned girl—

impossibly pale, luminous and lifeless as the moon.

Wealthy Roussel taught his poodle to smoke a pipe.

“When I write, I am surrounded by radiance.

My glory is like a great bomb waiting to explode.”

When his valet refused to slash his wrists,

the bankrupt writer took an overdose of pills.

There is always a skeleton on the buffet.

Breton considered suicide the truest art,

though life seemed hardly worth the trouble to discard.

The German colonels strolled the Île de la Cité—

some to the Louvre, some to the Place Pigalle.

“The loneliness of poets has been erased,” cried Éluard,

in praise of Stalin. “Burn all the books,” said dying Hugo Ball.

There is always a skeleton on the buffet.

I came. I sat down. I went away.

I.

There will always be those who reject ceremony,

Who claim that resolution requires no fanfare,

Those who demand the spirit stay fixed

Like a desert saint, fed only on faith,

To worship in no temple but the weather.

There will always be the austere ones

Who mount denial’s shaky ladder

To drape the statues or whitewash the frescoed wall,

As if the still star of painted plaster

Praised creation less than the evening’s original.

And they are right. Symbols betray us.

They are always more or less than what

Is really meant. But shall there be no

Processions by torchlight because we are weak?

What native speech do we share but imperfection?

II.

Praise to the rituals that celebrate change,

Old robes worn for new beginnings,

Solemn protocol where the mutable soul,

Surrounded by ancient experience, grows

Young in the imagination’s white dress.

Because it is not the rituals we honor

But our trust in what they signify, these rites

That honor us as witnesses — whether to watch

Lovers swear loyalty in a careless world

Or a newborn washed with water and oil.

So praise to innocence — impulsive and evergreen—

And let the old be touched by youth’s

Wayward astonishment at learning something new,

And dream of a future so fitting and so just

That our desire will bring it into being.

Forget about the other six, says Pride.

They’re only using you.

Admittedly, Lust is a looker,

but you can do better.

And why do they keep bringing us

to this cheesy dive?

The food’s so bad that even Gluttony

can’t finish his meal.

Notice how Avarice

keeps refilling his glass

whenever he thinks we’re not looking,

while Envy eyes your plate.

Hell, we’re not even done, and Anger

is already arguing about the bill.

I’m the only one who

ever leaves a decent tip.

Let them all go, the losers!

It’s a relief to see Sloth’s

fat ass go out the door.

But stick around. I have a story

that not everyone appreciates—

about the special satisfaction

of staying on board as the last

grubby lifeboat pushes away.

The bargain was that he would recollect