Poem of the Day: Could Have Danced All Night by Dean Young

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend August 6, 2014   Could Have Danced All Night   Dean Young

 

The wolf appointed to tear me apart is sure making slow work of it. This morning just one eye weeping, a single chip out of my back and the usual maniacal wooden bird flutes in the brain. Listen to that feeble howl like having fangs is something to regret, like we shouldn’t give thanks for blood thirst. Even my idiot neighbor backing out without looking could do a better job, even that leaning diseased tree or dream of a palsied hand squeezing the throat but we’ve been at this for years, lying exposed on the couch in the fat of the afternoon, staring down the moon among night blooms. What good’s a reluctant wolf anyway? The other wolves just get it drunk then tie it to a post. Poor pup. Here’s my hand. Bite.           Copyright © 2014 by Dean Young Used with permission of the author.   About This Poem   “I wrote this poem after being sick for a couple days and realizing I had yet again survived.  So it’s about the sort of cockiness one has about still being alive.” —Dean Young class=featured>   Dean Young is the author of Bender (Copper Canyon Press, 2012).  He teaches at the University of Texas in Austin. class=featured> Most Recent Book by Young   Bender (Copper Canyon Press, 2012) "Anxieties" by Donna Masini alt=read-more> "Plural Happiness" by David Rivard alt=read-more> "Lucky" by Tony Hoagland <![endif]--> alt=read-more> Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.   <![endif]--> alt=Small-Blue-RGB-poets.org-Logo> Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038

Soundtrack for Bethany and Co.

"So, I was thinking that for all my music aficionado tweepsters, I had, in the past few weeks, sent out a 'special' song-of-the-day to each one, except Ms. Bethany.   I felt bad about that, and I wondered why.  I mean, she's a rocker, a blues aficionado - it should be easy, right?

"Well, no, not really.  The others just came up at the right time, but when you try to 'find' a song for a friend it's like dipping your hands into a running river to try and catch a fish.

"For the kind of free spirit she is, I was thinking pretty much anything by the Allman Brothers Band.  Then, it hit me:  Bethany takes her family on a road trip.   A road trip soundtrack!  Then, songs just started popping up everywhere.  What we have here will fit on one CD.

"There is only one rule for choosing songs for a road trip:  They MUST NOT PUT YOU TO SLEEP.  (at least while you're not sharing the open road with Verble and the fam!)   So that means you cannot take this moment to relive your old college memories by playing Dark Side of the Moon.  Mazzy Star is right out.  and definitely NO TRANCE RHYTHMS.  But, once you understand that, anything goes, pretty much.

"Remember, it's also OK for a road movie soundtrack to have a little cheese, because this is fun!  And yes, there will be some tunes on here that you might say, 'those are on EVERY road song list' - well, yes.  Because some songs continually make those 'lists' by the simple fact that they perfectly exemplify that particular list!  So, here you are, the Soundtrack to Bethany and Co. ...

Los Straitjackets	Cal-Speed
Camper Van Beethoven	Sweethearts
Janis Joplin	Move Over
Iron Maiden	The Prisoner
Buddy Guy	Meet Me In Chicago
Ray LaMontagne and the Pariah Dogs	Repo Man
Beth Hart and Ray Bonnamassa	Sinners Prayer
Molly Hatchett	Flirtin' With Disaster
Luka Bloom	The Acoustic Motorbike
AC/DC	It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock n Roll)
Allman Brothers Band	Ain't Wastin' Time No More
Tom Petty	Runnin' Down a Dream
Chuck Berry	No Particular Place to Go
Poison	Nothin' but a Good Time
The Raveonettes	Here Comes the Love Crew
The Doors	The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)
The Who	Join Together
They Might Be Giants	Ana Ng
Hoodoo Gurus	1,000 Miles Away

  
"Now you also gotta know, that by this afternoon I will probably have wanted to have replaced half these songs with others.  But, that's the blessing of living in an age of recorded music!

"Lastly, I was thinking 'well, if this is a road movie soundtrack, then what's the movie?' Glad you asked!  Yesterday I heard on the radio that developers want to make a god-awful casino-resort-hotel-theme-park on 420 acres of sacred Navajo land overlooking the Grand Canyon.  So, that made me think of this plot:

"Woman, wife, mother of two teenage boys in their late teens, living in New England, learns of the developers plan to destroy an American icon by building on the GC.  Being part Navajo, she knows she has  a say in the matter, so she gathers up her family, who haven't been on a road trip in years, and get them all to head out across country.  Along the way, they learn more about America, each other, she tells them stories her grandmother told her about the Navajo ways of life, of spirits of the ancestors.   Various hilarity ensues (as it always does in road movies) and eventually they come to the Navajo meeting where they infuse the proceedings with a strong dose of Yankee sass!

"But that's just the idea in my head.  It's your movie . . . make it yours!

"Here's to many wonderful adventures, Bethany and Co.!"

-Verble

MR, Poet Laureate of The Z&T

And this is where I write . . .

MR

Overread on the Screen above the Counter: This Day in History

July 28, 1914: Austria declares war on Serbia

Despite a further offer from British foreign secretary Edward Grey to host a peace conference, at 11 AM Austria-Hungary formally opened hostilities against its neighbor. The document pictured here is a notice that appeared in newspapers in Vienna announcing the start of war.

In response, partial mobilization began in Russia. Austria was now pressured by Germany to mobilize against Russia, so it could do likewise and appear to be acting out of defence. Even at this stage, Germany was determined to avoid giving the impression of wanting to turn a local dispute into a continental conflict.

Poem of the Day: The Maigre Crash-Land in Houston Just Before August

2014-0728

The Maigre Crash-Land in Houston Just Before August

They said they were aliens

and they had come seeking meat, but now
must find a front porch to shelter from the heat.

It was Houston, just before August,

that time of years when stepping outside
is akin to putting your face into a bakery oven.

The aliens told me they would only stay an hour,

then they must be on their way,
they pulled pocket watches from their vest pockets.

Their mouths were curled downward

like cartoon upside-down smiles,
they were tawny-skinned and sullen-eyed.

They looked as though they needed meat.

They were so thin only a French word could
truly describe them.  “Maigre” is that word.

So that is what I called them.   The Maigre.

They came to the world to find meat, but
they set down in the right state, but wrong town

at the worst time of year.

The Maigre asked me, “How the hell do you stand this?

Heat like this must completely cook your brains!”

“ Yes,” I said, pulling out my skewer and tongs,
“But it brings me such lovely conversations with
the hallucinations that are you.”





MR

Poem of the Day

LET us drink and be merry, dance, joke, and rejoice,

With claret and sherry, theorbo and voice!

The changeable world to our joy is unjust,

      All treasure’s uncertain,

      Then down with your dust!

In frolics dispose your pounds, shillings, and pence,

For we shall be nothing a hundred years hence.

We’ll sport and be free with Moll, Betty, and Dolly,

Have oysters and lobsters to cure melancholy:

Fish-dinners will make a man spring like a flea,

      Dame Venus, love’s lady,

      Was born of the sea:

With her and with Bacchus we’ll tickle the sense,

For we shall be past it a hundred years hence.

Your most beautiful bride who with garlands is crown’d

And kills with each glance as she treads on the ground.

Whose lightness and brightness doth shine in such splendour

      That one but the stars

      Are thought fit to attend her,

Though now she be pleasant and sweet to the sense,

Will be damnable mouldy a hundred years hence.

Then why should we turmoil in cares and in fears,

Turn all our tranquill’ty to sighs and to tears?

Let’s eat, drink, and play till the worms do corrupt us,

      ’Tis certain, Post mortem

      Nulla voluptas.

For health, wealth and beauty, wit, learning and sense,

Must all come to nothing a hundred years hence.


Written by Thomas Jordan, who lived 1612?-1865

... gone all these centuries, he understood the flight of his days, and emboldened all to grasp the time at hand.

Dear sir!  Although you are moldy three hundred years hence, we raise our cups and glasses to you and the words of dear rememberence that you have left to us!

Overheard at the Counter: The Three Amigos

Watched the Three Amigos last night with the kids.

How'd they like it?

They loved it!  I was so worried, though, y'know 'cuz usually when I show them 80s flicks they're like 'what's that?' and 'didn't they have special effects back then?' but they really got into this one, laughing all the way through it.

My favorite is the song when all the critters are singing along.

And the turtle!  "goodnight, Ned!"

And when he shoots the Invisible Swordsmen.

The classics never go out of style!