A Nancy Willard Reader: Selected Poetry and Prose

A Nancy Willard Reader

Selected Poetry and Prose

Nancy Willard

FOR ERIC AND JAMES

Contents

Publisher’s Note

The Reader Inquires, the Author Answers

POEMS

Questions My Son Asked Me, Answers I Never Gave Him

In Praise of Unwashed Feet

When There Were Trees

How to Stuff a Pepper

Moss

Onionlight

The Potato Picker

Roots

How the Hen Sold Her Eggs to the Stingy Priest

A Wreath to the Fish

A Humane Society

Marriage Amulet

For You, Who Didn’t Know

In Praise of ABC

Walking Poem

Angels in Winter

Carpenter of the Sun

One for the Road

Little Elegy with Books and Beasts

From 19 Masks for the Naked Poet

The Poet Invites the Moon for Supper

The Poet Takes a Photograph of His Heart

The Poet Turns His Enemy into a Pair of Wings

The Poet’s Wife Watches Him Enter the Eye of the Snow

From The Ballad of Biddy Early

The Ballad of Biddy Early

How the Magic Bottle Gave Biddy Its Blessing

Charm of the Gold Road, the Silver Road, and the Hidden Road

How the Queen of the Gypsies Met Trouble-and-Pain

How Biddy Hid Mick the Moonlighter’s Sleep in Her Sleeve

Biddy Early Makes a Long Story Short

Song from the Far Side of Sleep

From A Visit to William Blake’s Inn

William Blake’s Inn for Innocent and Experienced Travelers

Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way

The King of Cats Sends a Postcard to His Wife

The Tiger Asks Blake for a Bedtime Story

Epilogue

Three from the Sports Page

Buffalo Climbs Out of Cellar

Saints Lose Back

Divine Child Rolls On

FICTION

The Hucklebone of a Saint

The Doctrine of the Leather-Stocking Jesus

Theo’s Girl

Sinner, Don’t You Waste That Sunday

The Life of a Famous Man

From Things Invisible to See

Salvage for Victory

FOUR LECTURES ON WRITING

The Well-tempered Falsehood: The Art of Storytelling

How Poetry Came into the World and Why God Doesn’t Write It

Telling Time

Close Encounters of the Story Kind

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Publisher’s Note

Long before they were ever written down, poems were organized in lines. Since the invention of the printing press, readers have become increasingly conscious of looking at poems, rather than hearing them, but the function of the poetic line remains primarily sonic. Whether a poem is written in meter or in free verse, the lines introduce some kind of pattern into the ongoing syntax of the poem’s sentences; the lines make us experience those sentences differently. Reading a prose poem, we feel the strategic absence of line.

But precisely because we’ve become so used to looking at poems, the function of line can be hard to describe. As James Longenbach writes in The Art of the Poetic Line, Line has no identity except in relation to other elements in the poem, especially the syntax of the poem’s sentences. It is not an abstract concept, and its qualities cannot be described generally or schematically. It cannot be associated reliably with the way we speak or breathe. Nor can its function be understood merely from its visual appearance on the page. Printed books altered our relationship to poetry by allowing us to see the lines more readily. What new challenges do electronic reading devices pose?

In a printed book, the width of the page and the size of the type are fixed. Usually, because the page is wide enough and the type small enough, a line of poetry fits comfortably on the page: What you see is what you’re supposed to hear as a unit of sound. Sometimes, however, a long line may exceed the width of the page; the line continues, indented just below the beginning of the line. Readers of printed books have become accustomed to this convention, even if it may on some occasions seem ambiguous—particularly when some of the lines of a poem are already indented from the left-hand margin of the page.

But unlike a printed book, which is stable, an ebook is a shape-shifter. Electronic type may be reflowed across a galaxy of applications and interfaces, across a variety of screens, from phone to tablet to computer. And because the reader of an ebook is empowered to change the size of the type, a poem’s original lineation may seem to be altered in many different ways. As the size of the type increases, the likelihood of any given line running over increases.

Our typesetting standard for poetry is designed to register that when a line of poetry exceeds the width of the screen, the resulting run-over line should be indented, as it might be in a printed book. Take a look at John Ashbery’s Disclaimer as it appears in two different type sizes.

Each of these versions of the poem has the same number of lines: the number that Ashbery intended. But if you look at the second, third, and fifth lines of the second stanza in the right-hand version of Disclaimer, you’ll see the automatic indent; in the fifth line, for instance, the word ahead drops down and is indented. The automatic indent not only makes poems easier to read electronically; it also helps to retain the rhythmic shape of the line—the unit of sound—as the poet intended it. And to preserve the integrity of the line, words are never broken or hyphenated when the line must run over. Reading Disclaimer on the screen, you can be sure that the phrase you pause before the little bridge, sigh, and turn ahead is a complete line, while the phrase you pause before the little bridge, sigh, and turn is not.

Open Road has adopted an electronic typesetting standard for poetry that ensures the clearest possible marking of both line breaks and stanza breaks, while at the same time handling the built-in function for resizing and reflowing text that all ereading devices possess. The first step is the appropriate semantic markup of the text, in which the formal elements distinguishing a poem, including lines, stanzas, and degrees of indentation, are tagged. Next, a style sheet that reads these tags must be designed, so that the formal elements of the poems are always displayed consistently. For instance, the style sheet reads the tags marking lines that the author himself has indented; should that indented line exceed the character capacity of a screen, the run-over part of the line will be indented further, and all such runovers will look the same. This combination of appropriate coding choices and style sheets makes it easy to display poems with complex indentations, no matter if the lines are metered or free, end-stopped or enjambed.

Ultimately, there may be no way to account for every single variation in the way in which the lines of a poem are disposed visually on an electronic reading device, just as rare variations may challenge the conventions of the printed page, but with rigorous quality assessment and scrupulous proofreading, nearly every poem can be set electronically in accordance with its author’s intention. And in some regards, electronic typesetting increases our capacity to transcribe a poem accurately: In a printed book, there may be no way to distinguish a stanza break from a page break, but with an ereader, one has only to resize the text in question to discover if a break at the bottom of a page is intentional or accidental.

Our goal in bringing out poetry in fully reflowable digital editions is to honor the sanctity of line and stanza as meticulously as possible—to allow readers to feel assured that the way the lines appear on the screen is an accurate embodiment of the way the author wants the lines to sound. Ever since poems began to be written down, the manner in which they ought to be written down has seemed equivocal; ambiguities have always resulted. By taking advantage of the technologies available in our time, our goal is to deliver the most satisfying reading experience possible.

The Reader Inquires, the Author Answers

Dear Ms. Willard,

A friend of mine recently loaned me a copy of your novel, Things Invisible to See. I notice that you have the same name as the person who wrote A Visit to William Blake’s Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers. Are you the same person? If so, why do you work in such different genres? Who is your audience?

Sincerely,

A.R.

Dear A.R.,

Yes, the same person wrote the two books you mention, and yes, I am that person. If you happen to run across a collection of poems called Water Walker or another one called Household Tales of Moon and Water, I’ll take responsibility for those, too. Also for a couple of collections of short stories.

To answer your question about working in different genres: each work chooses its own form, and I try to follow its lead—story, poem, novel, or essay. I hope the connections between them are clear. They all come from the same well, a metaphor I don’t take lightly.

When I was growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I heard plenty of stories about folks coming into the world and going out of it and maybe coming back once in a while to keep an eye on us, the living. Call them guardians, ancestors, spirits; they glistened before us in a web of words: their stories were the gifts they handed down to us.

Behind their gifts lay questions: What will you give to those who come after? Who do you want to be?

Why, the village storyteller, of course. The children sit in the front rows, the parents and the grandparents gather in the back. May my story or poem be as lucky as a lost traveler whose road finds him and leads him home. May it delight travelers, like a gift from the ancestors.

POEMS

Questions My Son Asked Me, Answers I Never Gave Him

1. Do gorillas have birthdays?

Yes. Like the rainbow, they happen.

Like the air, they are not observed.

2. Do butterflies make a noise?

The wire in the butterfly’s tongue

hums gold.

Some men hear butterflies

even in winter.

3. Are they part of our family?

They forgot us, who forgot how to fly.

4. Who tied my navel? Did God tie it?

God made the thread: O man, live forever!

Man made the knot: enough is enough.

5. If I drop my tooth in the telephone

will it go through the wires and bite someone’s ear?

I have seen earlobes pierced by a tooth of steel.

It loves what lasts.

It does not love flesh.

It leaves a ring of gold in the wound.

6. If I stand on my head

will the sleep in my eye roll up into my head?

Does the dream know its own father?

Can bread go back to the field of its birth?

7. Can I eat a star?

Yes, with the mouth of time

that enjoys everything.

8. Could we Xerox the moon?

This is the first commandment:

I am the moon, thy moon.

Thou shalt have no other moons before thee.

9. Who invented water?

The hands of the air, that wanted to wash each other.

10. What happens at the end of numbers?

I see three men running toward a field.

At the edge of the tall grass, they turn into light.

11. Do the years ever run out?

God said, I will break time’s heart.

Time ran down like an old phonograph.

It lay flat as a carpet.

At rest on its threads, I am learning to fly.

In Praise of Unwashed Feet

Because I can walk over hot coals,

because I can make doctors turn green

and shoe salesmen avert their eyes,

because I have added yet another use

to the hundred and one uses of Old Dutch Cleanser;

because they tell me the secrets of miners and small boys,

because they keep me in good standing and continual grace

in the ashes and dust of the last rites,

because they carry my great bulk without complaint,

because they don’t smell;

because it’s taken me years to

grow my own shoes, like the quaint signatures of truth,

because they are hard and gentle as lion’s pads,

pard’s paw, mule’s hoof and cock’s toes,

because they can’t make poems or arguments

but speak in an aching tongue or not at all

and come home at night encrusted with stones,

calluses, grass, all that the head forgets

and the foot knows.

When There Were Trees

I can remember when there were trees,

great tribes of spruces who deckled themselves in light,

beeches buckled in pewter, meeting like Quakers,

the golden birch, all cutwork satin,

courtesan of the mountains; the paper birch

trying all summer to take off its clothes

like the swaddlings of the newborn.

The hands of a sassafras blessed me.

I saw maples fanning the fire in their stars,

heard the coins of the aspens rattling like teeth,

saw cherry trees spraying fountains of light,

smelled the wine my heel pressed from ripe apples,

saw a thousand planets bobbing like bells

on the sleeve of the sycamore, chestnut, and lime.

The ancients knew that a tree is worthy of worship.

A few wise men from their tribes broke through the sky,

climbing past worlds to come and the rising moon

on the patient body of the tree of life,

and brought back the souls of the newly slain,

no bigger than apples, and dressed the tree

as one of themselves and danced.

Even the conquerors of this country

lifted their eyes and found the trees

more comely than gold: Bright green trees,

the whole land so green it is pleasure to look on it,

and the greatest wonder to see the diversity.

During that time, I walked among trees,

the most beautiful things I had ever seen.*

Watching the shadows of trees, I made peace with mine.

Their forked darkness gave motion to morning light.

Every night the world fell to the shadows,

and every morning came home, the dogwood floating

its petals like moons on a river of air,

the oak kneeling in wood sorrel and fern,

the willow washing its hair in the stream.

And I saw how the logs from the mill floated

downstream, saw otters and turtles that rode them,

and though I heard the saws whine in the woods

I never thought men were stronger than trees.

I never thought those tribes would join

the buffalo and the whale, the leopard, the seal, the wolf,

and the folk of this country who knew how to sing them.

Nothing I ever saw washed off the sins of the world

so well as the first snow dropping on trees.

We shoveled the pond clear and skated under their branches,

our voices muffled in their huge silence.

The trees were always listening to something else.

They didn’t hear the beetle with the hollow tooth

grubbing for riches, gnawing for empires, for gold.

Already the trees are a myth,

half gods, half giants in whom nobody believes.

But I am the oldest woman on earth,

and I can remember when there were trees.

* Adapted from the journals of Christopher Columbus, as rendered in William Carlos Williams’s In the American Grain.

How to Stuff a Pepper

Now, said the cook, I will teach you

how to stuff a pepper with rice.

Take your pepper green, and gently,

for peppers are shy. No matter which side

you approach, it’s always the backside.

Perched on green buttocks, the pepper sleeps.

In its silk tights, it dreams

of somersaults and parsley,

of the days when the sexes were one.

Slash open the sleeve

as if you were cutting a paper lantern,

and enter a moon, spilled like a melon,

a fever of pearls,

a conversation of glaciers.

It is a temple built to the worship

of morning light.

I have sat under the great globe

of seeds on the roof of that chamber,

too dazzled to gather the taste I came for.

I have taken the pepper in hand,

smooth and blind, a runt in the rich

evolution of roses and ferns.

You say I have not yet taught you

to stuff a pepper?

Cooking takes time.

Next time we’ll consider the rice.

Moss

A green sky underfoot:

the skin of moss

holds the footprints of

star-footed birds.

With moss-fingers, with

filigree they line

their nests in the

forks of the trees.

All around, the apples

are falling, the leaves

snap, the sun moves

away from the earth.

Only the moss stays,

decently covers the

roots of things, itself

rooted in silence:

rocks coming alive

underfoot, rain no

man heard fall. Moss,

stand up for us,

the small birds and

the great sun. You know

our trees and apples,

our parrots and women’s eyes.

Keep us in your green

body, laid low

and still blossoming

under the snow.

Onionlight

Sacks crammed with light, layer on luminous layer,

an underworld calendar, the peeled pages faintly lined

but printed without month or measure

and pure as the damp kiss of a pearl,

as if the rings in an old tree should suddenly separate

and bracelet the axe; I have stooped among onions all morning,

hunting these flightless birds as they perched among roots.

I have yanked them out by the tail

and dropped them into my bag like chickens

and pulled away the thin paper of their last days,

pale winegold, a silken globe, pungent,

striped with the pale longitude of silence.

Now over my door they shimmer in knobby garlands,

gregarious in chains like a string of lights

on the boardwalks of heaven where an old man

who loved his garden understands everything.

The Potato Picker

The plant lifts easily now, like an old tooth.

I can free it from the rows of low hills,

hills like the barrows of old kings

where months ago, before anything grew or

was,

we hid the far-sighted eyes of potatoes.

They fingered forth, blossomed, and shrank,

and did their dark business under our feet.

And now it’s all over. Horse nettles dangle

their gold berries. Sunflowers, kindly giants

in their death-rattle turn stiff as streetlamps.

Pale cucumbers swell to alabaster lungs,

while marigolds caught in the quick frost

go brown, and the scarred ears of corn

gnawed

by the deer lie scattered like primitive fish.

The life boats lifted by milkweed ride light

and empty, their sailors flying.

This is the spot. I put down my spade,

I dig in, I uncover the scraped knees

of children in the village of potatoes,

and the bald heads of their grandfathers.

I enter the potato mines.

Roots

This squash is my good cousin,

says the vegetable man,

rolling his pushcart through November.

These parsnips are first class.

I recommend with my whole heart.

I know the family.

Believe me, lady, I know

what I’m talking.

And I give you a good price.

I throw in the carrots free.

Carrots like this you got?

So what you want?

I wrap in the best Yiddish newspaper.

A dollar a year. Takes me

ten minutes to read it,

an hour to read the English.

Potatoes you need, maybe?

My wife says I eat too many

potatoes. In Poland, in war,

we ate potatoes, soup,

baked, boiled.

All my family was ploughed under

except me. So what can I say

to someone that he don’t like

potatoes? Positively last chance,

because tomorrow it might snow.

In winter I don’t come.

Look for me when the snow goes,

and if I don’t come back,

think that I moved, maybe.

I’m eighty-two already,

and what is Paradise

without such potatoes?

How the Hen Sold Her Eggs to the Stingy Priest

An egg is a grand thing for a journey.

It will make you a small meal on the road

and a shape most serviceable to the hand

for darning socks, and for barter

a purse of gold opens doors anywhere.

If I wished for a world better than this one

I would keep, in an egg till it was wanted,

the gold earth floating on a clear sea.

If I wished for an angel, that would be my way,

the wings in gold waiting to wake,

the feet in gold waiting to walk,

and the heart that no one believed in

beating and beating