First Tuesdays, with January Gill O’Neil
January Gill O’Neil at the Brookline Poetry Series
January Gill O’Neil joins Patrick Donnelly for an afternoon of fine poetry!
The Brookline Poetry Series meets once a month on Sunday afternoons, September through May, normally in Hunneman Hall at the Brookline Village Library (361 Washington St., Brookline, MA 02445).
Timing of performances:
- 1:30 PM Doors open
- 1:45 PM Open mic sign-up
- 2 – 4 PM Poetry readings
January Gill O’Neil at the Ann Hutt Browning Memorial Reading
St. John’s Church in Ashfield is pleased to announce that January Gill O’Neil will be the featured reader for the Ninth Annual Ann Hutt Browning Poetry series. The reading will be held on Saturday, May 11, at 4 p.m. at St. John’s Church, Ashfield. In addition, the Ann Hutt Browning Youth Poetry Contest winners will read their prize-winning poems at that time.
January Gill O’Neil is the author of Rewilding (fall 2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009), published by CavanKerry Press. Her poem “Hoodie” recently appeared in the New York Times Magazine. She is an assistant professor of English at Salem State University, and from 2012-2018, she served as executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. A Cave Canem fellow, January’s poems and articles also appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Ploughshares and Ecotone, among others. In 2018, January was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant, and was named the John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence for 2019-2020 at the University of Mississippi, Oxford. She lives with her two children in Beverly, Massachusetts.
Sarah Browning, Ann’s daughter and founding director of the Split This Rock Poetry Project in Washington, D.C., whose recent collection of poetry is titled Killing Summer, will also speak at the reading. Judges for the Youth Contest include poets Susie Patlove, Marie Gauthier, and former Browning winner, Henry Lombino, a former Browning contest winner.
The event is free and open to the public. Books will be available for signing, courtesy of Boswell’s Books in Shelburne Falls. Refreshments will be served. This program is supported in part by grants from the Ashfield, Buckland, Charlemont/Hawley, Deerfield, and Plainfield local cultural councils, local agencies which are supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
January Gill O’Neil reading at Bedlam Book Cafe
Nin Andrews and January Gill O’Neil at the Virginia Festival of the Book
Join CavanKerry poet Nin Andrews as she moderates Our Wild, Luminous, and Lyrical Selves: Poetry
Rebecca Morgan Frank (Sometimes We’re All Living in a Foreign Country), January Gill O’Neil (Rewilding), and Leona Sevick (Lion Brothers) read from their new collections of poetry. Book sales and signing will follow. FREE to attend and open to the public.
Why should you attend?
“So much happens in these intensely lyrical poems, accompanied by such subtle music and profound, often witty, meditations on love, loneliness, rapture, and mortality. [Sometimes We’re All Living in a Foreign Country] is a beautiful book, one that asks us to see the everyday world anew, and discover in it marvelous strangeness.”—Kevin Prufer, author of How He Loved Them
“Rewilding, a relatively new ecological term, means to return an area of land to its original state. Reveling in letting go of the damaged and broken parts of ourselves while celebrating renewal and new beginnings, O’Neil’s poetry examines the external worlds of race and culture and the internal, personal worlds of family and desire. Ultimately, these poems tap into what is wild and good in all of us.”
“Leona Sevick’s Lion Brothers is a psychologically astute, keen, and powerful sequence of poems that harness the luminous particulars of experience and race to reveal worlds within and behind the immediate, visible one.”—Arthur Sze, author of Compass Rose
Cambridge Center for Adult Education’s Blacksmith House Poetry Series, featuring Catherine Barnett and January Gill O’Neil
Join Catherine Barnett and CavanKerry poet January Gill O’Neil for an hour of fine poetry!
Founded in 1973, the award-winning Blacksmith House Poetry Series brings established and emerging writers of poetry and fiction to Harvard Square. The series is sponsored by Cambridge Center for Adult Education and holds readings at the Blacksmith House, site of the village smithy and spreading chestnut tree of Longfellow’s 1839 poem “The Village Blacksmith.”
January Gill O’Neil Reading at Salem State University
January Gill O’Neil Reading at Plymouth State University, Eagle Pond Reading Series
Rewilding Publication Date
A most exceptional publication day for January Gill O’Neil, as she celebrates the release of her third book with CavanKerry Press! Pick up your copy today!
Rewilding, a relatively new ecological term, means to return an area of land to its original state. Reveling in letting go of the damaged and broken parts of ourselves while celebrating renewal and new beginnings, O’Neil’s poetry examines the external worlds of race and culture and the internal, personal worlds of family and desire. Ultimately, these poems tap into what is wild and good in all of us.
January Gill O’Neil elaborates…
THE CATHEDRAL
—After Rodin’s The Cathedral
I watch my daughter imitate
the pose of Rodin’s Cathedral.
Her arms curved in slow gyration.
It is her way of understating
the dark bronze, how two arms
can captivate the imagination
in their dizzying swirl,
find balance between
light and shadows. In truth,
the hands are both right hands
turning in on themselves, an architecture
almost sacred, serpentine, yet protective
of the space within, of what the
bronze cannot hold. My daughter bends
uncomfortably away from me, resistant, as if
her whole body is questioning
what it means to be a girl.
She sees—maybe
for the first time—what is there
and what is not from the hollow
her hands make, all the empty angles
that never touch,
the almost-grasp of the intimate.
Her wrists slight and glistening
with summer’s patina,
her fingertips conjure her being
and becoming,
body and soul
closing and opening
at the same time.
A few years ago, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem hosted an expansive exhibit of sculptor Auguste Rodin. My daughter and I fell in love with his sculpture, The Cathedral. We were enthralled. And while she moved on, there was something intimate about two hands almost-grasping. It seemed to be the perfect metaphor for us as she enters her teenage years and we enter a new phase of our relationship.
SAVE 20% on REWILDING now through October 26th!
January Gill O’Neil elaborates…
HOODIE
Rewilding
A gray hoodie will not protect my son
from rain, from the New England cold.
I see the partial eclipse of his face
as his head sinks into the half-dark
and shades his eyes. Even in our
quiet suburb with its unlocked doors,
I fear for his safety—the darkest child
on our street in the empire of blocks.
Sometimes I don’t know who he is anymore
traveling the back roads between boy and man.
He strides a deep stride, pounds a basketball
into wet pavement. Will he take his shot
or is he waiting for the open-mouthed
orange rim to take a chance on him? I sing
his name to the night, ask for safe passage
from this borrowed body into the next
and wonder who could mistake him
for anything but good.
Hoodie
When I wrote this poem, I was thinking of Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin. My son is at the age where he must be responsible for his own safety. We’ve had “the talk” quite a bit. The world is changing rapidly. Our preconceived notions of civility are being challenged daily. This poem is mother’s wish for “safe passage” as her son moves between worlds.
Pre-Order Today!
News and Events: Week of October 19th
Events
Paola Corso, Bread & Roses Gallery (310 West 43rd Street between 8th and 9th Ave, New York, NY)
Friday, October 23rd from 5:30-8 pm
Paola Corso and Maria Terrone, organizers will join four other poets in this reading honoring the late US Poet Laureate Philip Levine, who wrote eloquently about the labor experience in his hometown of Detroit. Other participating poets are Nicole Cooley, Ryan Black, Darren Bowman, and Paolo Javier to read their own poetry about labor and working people, as well as Levine’s poetry.
January Gill O’Neil (Creative Writers House, 58 West 10th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenue, New York, NY)
Friday, October 23rd at 5pm
January will be reading with Adam Day, Monica McClure, and Marjory Wentworth in NYU’s Creative Writing Program Reading Series. The reading will be followed by a wine & cheese reception and book signing.
January Gill O’Neil, Storyville (90 Exeter St., Boston, MA)
Saturday, October 24 from 5:30-7 p.m
January is reading with Sarah Kay and Lynn Levin at the Boston Book Fest
News and Events: Week of October 5th
Events
January Gill O’Neil, Old Dominion University (Norfolk, VA)
Monday, October 5th at 12:30pm
January will be kicking off Old Dominion’s 38th Annual Literary festival
Wanda S. Praisner, Unitarian Church (1 Nelson Street, Newton, NJ)
Tuesday, October 6th at 7pm
Wanda will be part of First Tuesday Writers’ Roundtable
Nin Andrews, Your Vine or Mine (154 Main St, Painesville, OH)
Thursday, October 8th from 6:30-7:30pm
Nin will be reading with Karen Schubert
News and Events: Week of March 2nd
Events
Dawn Potter, Cafe Espresso (Portsmouth, NH)
Wednesday, March 4th at 7pm
Featured reader, Portsmouth Poet Laureate Hoot
Robin Silbergleid, LookOut Gallery (Michigan State University)
Thursday, March 5th at 7pm
Robin Silbergleid will read from her collection Frida Kahlo, My Sister, discuss ekphrasis (the phenomenon of one form of art commenting on another) in her work, and conduct a workshop on using visual art as inspiration for poetry
Howard Levy, Mocha Maya (Shelburne Falls, MA)
Thursday, March 5 at 7pm
Howard is reading at the Collected Poets Series
Kevin Carey, Chatham Fiddle Company (Chatham, MA)
Friday, March 6th at 7pm
Kevin is reading at Voices of Poetry
Kevin Carey and January Gill O’Neil, Cape Ann Museum (Gloucester MA)
Saturday, March 7th at 2pm
Kevin and January will be reading in Poets in the Round
“Misery Islands” on Mass Poetry
“O’Neil candidly writes about family…of single-motherhood and of love, and in doing so penetrates the exquisitiveness of the everyday while highlighting the challenges of living as an artist and mother. Indeed, there is fine balance of imagery and story and song that makes this a fine collection to own, to read back one’s own solitariness, one’s own joy.”
Read more at Mass Poetry
“A Mother’s Tale” by January Gill O’Neil
A Mother’s Tale
I tell my son
that the best poems
are written in the sand
and washed away with the tide.
I say the moon controls the waves,
uses the wind to rake the shore.
It is an open invitation to fill
the world with words
because like seashells
you can never have too many.
I tell him to wade into the water.
Start a conversation with
the tiniest grain on the beach,
the one that catches his eye with its glint.
It will tell him everything he needs to know
about this moment, about how to stay in it
a little longer. It will tell him how to be,
for an instant, the thing he most wants
to become.
From Misery Islands
by January Gill O’Neil
Nin Andrews Interviews January Gill O'Neil
NIN ANDREWS
I love the title of this book, Misery Islands, in part because the poems about misery are really mixed in with those about joys of life. It has a very balanced feel—something hard to accomplish in a poetry book. How did you come up with the title?
JANUARY GILL O’NEIL
Thanks, Nin. I remember being at a local park with my friend, poet Colleen Michaels, who told me the story of Misery Islands. This park sits off the coast of Beverly, MA, and as she told me the story of the two islands, Great Misery and Little Misery and the captain who was stuck on the island for three days (the captain was miserable; hence, the name), something clicked. I was writing poems about the breakup of my marriage and wanted something more to pull the poems together. Somehow it worked. I also had never written a long poem, but the islands gave me the opportunity to tell many stories at once.
NA
I think one of my favorite poems is “What the Body Knows.” It really captures the feeling I have at the doctor’s office, and the last line is perfect—“If it listens carefully, it can hear its own voice making the wrong sound.” How did this poem come about?
WHAT THE BODY KNOWS
The body knows it is part of a whole, its parts believed to be in good working order. It knows it’s getting older, years ticking off like pages on a desk calendar, your doctor’s appointment circled in red. Try not to picture the body sitting alone in the waiting room. The body creaks up and down like a hardwood floor, you tell your doctor this; he says your breast is a snow globe. He says, Inside there’s a snowstorm—my job is to decipher a bear from a moose in the snow. He flattens the breast with a low radiation sandwich press. The body wonders if its parts will turn into Brie cheese, if its fingers will fuse and become asparagus stalks. He says it’s possible, but don’t give it a second thought. He says insulate your body with spinach. He says true understanding of the body will enable it to live long and live well. But the body knows when its leg is being pulled. The body is a container of incidental materials. If it listens carefully, it can hear its own voice making the wrong sound.
JGO
Honestly, I was in the doctor’s office waiting for my annual mammogram. I started the poem in the office; in fact, the line about spinach came from a TV show playing in the background. Then the technician told me that his job was like differencing a bear from a moose in a snowstorm. I mean, doesn’t the feeling of the scanner pressing down on your breast feel like a Panini machine or a George Foreman grill—or at least what I imagine those things to feel like?
I finished the poem at home that day, just making minor tweaks along the way.
NA
I also love the poem, “What My Kids Will Write about Me in Their Future Tell-All Book.” I thought I was the only one that wondered what my kids would write about me years later—about what they would remember of my parenting. Could you say a few words about the poem?
What My Kids Will Write about Me in Their Future Tell-All Book
They will say that no was my favorite word,
more than stop, or eat, or love.
That some mornings, I’d rather stay in bed,
laptop on lap, instead of making breakfast,
that I’d rather write than speak.
They will say they have seen me naked.
Front side, back side—none of which
were my good side.
They will say I breastfed too long.
In the tell-all book my kids will write
they’ll tell how I let them wrinkle like raisins
in the bathtub so I could watch Big Papi at the plate.
They’ll talk about how I threw out their artwork,
the watercolors and turkey hands,
when I thought they weren’t looking
and when I knew they were.
They’ll say that my voice was a slow torture,
that my singing caused them permanent hearing loss.
In the tell-all book my kids will write
as surely as I am writing this, they will say
I cut them off mid-sentence just because I could.
They’ll tell you how I got down on my knees,
growling my low, guttural disapproval,
how I grabbed their ears, pinched the backs of their arms,
yet they never quite knew who was sadder for it.
They’ll quote me saying, I cry in the shower—
it’s the only safe place I can go.
They will say she was “our sweetest disaster.”
They will say I loved them so much it hurt.
JGO
My constant worry about raising kids is what little thing will I do that will send my kids into therapy. I can see it now, “Mom wouldn’t let me play a video game so now I’m on the couch.” All parents wonder this, I’m sure, but when you’re a single parent and the primary caregiver, it’s much harder to be kind sometimes when you’d just rather hide under the sheets. I’m the one my kids turn to for everything, and I mean everything! It’s a blessing but hard to find balance sometimes.
NA
The divorce and post-divorce poems are really powerful. I think my favorite one is “Cunt.” Did you write these poems at the time, or long after, when you were looking back at your marriage?
CUNT
for SWS
It rolls off the tongue like a bullet train,
and once it leaves the station
that train is never late. You take it out
when your college-educated self
needs to tell it like it is. There’s not
another word in the English language
to describe the moment your daughter,
your love child, comes back after a weekend
with your ex-husband and his new girlfriend,
the one he left you for when he said
he wanted to lead a more “authentic life.”
You’ve spent your days not reacting
in front of the kids, for the sake of the kids—
but not this time. After 52 weeks of pickups
and drop offs, your turnstile of a mouth
swings open like a car door unhinged,
the moment your daughter tells you of her weekend,
you ask, Why does your hair look so different?
And she says, Daddy’s girlfriend combed it.
She looks at you with those inquisitive brown eyes
half-knowing she’s tripped the wire
between the said and unsaid.
You pull her into a hug, then send her into the kitchen,
dragging a deep breath out of the cave of yourself.
Regret is not in your vocabulary
because under your breath, barely audible,
you’ve just hurled the last word in the arsenal
you can draw back and launch like a punch in the face.
JGO
I can’t remember when I wrote it, probably just after the divorce when it was apparent this is how things are now. The life I worked for my whole life had changed so dramatically.
This poem is not about the word so much as the feeling when there’s no other word for this moment. We all have those words we’d never say unless pushed—this one is mine. I actually didn’t learn about the word until I was in my mid-20s, so I don’t have the strong gender-based feelings that others have. I really like the sound of the word cunt: short, curt, it pounds like a hammer. It’s the one word that stops people in their tracks, and yet I like it.
NA
Could you talk a little bit about the evolution of Misery Islands?
JGO
I had been writing quite a bit before Underlife was published. Then my then-husband and I were having problems and poetry became my umbrella. And it poured. So I wrote. What I didn’t want Misery to be was therapy. And I didn’t want the reader’s experience to seem as if he or her were peeking in on a nasty fight. The book is so much more than that. It’s important to me that the craft comes through.
Yes, the book is about divorce. But it’s also about transition, and kids, and beauty, and making it through to the other side.
NA
How about your evolution as a poet? When did you first think you were a poet? How did you become a CavanKerry poet?
JGO
As an undergrad at Old Dominion University many moons ago, I did poorly in my 8 a.m. economics class. So I think I have bad grades to thank for my turn to creative writing! But once I started taking classes with Toi Derricotte and Ruth Stone, I knew poetry would be my vocation.
When I went to grad school at NYC, I met poet Joseph O. Legaspi on my first day. We’ve been BFFs ever since. I would not be a CavanKerry poet if Joseph hadn’t encouraged me to send my manuscript in during CavanKerry’s open submission period. I was lucky in that my manuscript was chosen relatively quickly. I had also sent my manuscript to two contests and second publisher that gave my manuscript a seriously look-see, but ultimately passed. I’m glad CavanKerry saw potential in my poems.
NA
Who are your primary literary influences?
JGO
Toi and Ruth, of course. Also, Sharon Olds, Phil Levine, Galway Kinnell, Lucille Clifton, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Carlos Williams. I also read a lot of contemporary poetry and attend as many poetry workshops, readings, and gatherings as I can.
NA
When and how do you find time to write?
JGO
HA! I don’t find time, I have to make it.
I’ve learned to write anywhere I can: at my daughter’s Tae Kwondo class or my son’s baseball games (he hates that!). Last semester, I made a point to write when my students wrote, which worked out well. Nikki Finney suggests writing in the early morning, like 4 a.m. early, before the first cup of tea and first morning chore. That’s when I’m still in a half-sleep, half-wake state.
NA
You also run the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, right?
JGO
Yes, I do. The next festival is May 1-3, 2015 in Salem, Massachusetts. It will be our sixth year and out tiny team is starting the prep work for it now. It’s hard work putting on a festival with 100 readings, workshops, and discussions, music, etc. with little-to-no money, but it is a labor of love. Community is the cornerstone of our weekend. We put the “grass” in grassroots.
NA
What’s your next big project?
JGO
Well, I’m close to finishing manuscript #3, which means I’d like to start manuscript #4. My hope is to write poems about the slaves who lived in my current hometown of Beverly, Massachusetts. I have research and documentation on one family, and the matriarch who sued for her freedom and won. I just need to find the time to write the poems. I need more than a few hours here and there to put it together.
Book Press Release: Misery Islands
Misery Islands
Poems by January Gill O’Neil
In her second collection of poems, MISERY ISLANDS , Paterson Poetry Prize finalist January Gill O’Neil probes the rocky landscapes of family and marriage, as well as the struggle to get by in our troubled times. These poems, some of which first appeared in such prestigious publications as Ploughshares and North American Review and were twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, delve lyrically into the experiences of a woman, wife, and mother as she navigates the turbulent waters of transition with reflection, flashes of ironic wit, and ultimately, acceptance.
“O’Neil candidly writer about family…of single-motherhood and of love, and in doing so penetrates the exquisitiveness of the everyday while highlighting the challenges of living as an artist and mother,” says Major Jackson. “Indeed, there is fine balance of imagery and story and song that makes this a fine collection to own, to read back one’s own solitariness, one’s own joy.”
MISERY ISLANDS takes its name from a cycle of poems that uses the two islands off the coast of Massachusetts—Great Misery and Little Misery—as a metaphor for the “unforgiving terrain” of the beleaguered heart: “Two islands,/one shadowing/the other,/both untouched.” Visits to these islands, real or in memory, trace the trajectory of a hopeful love affair and a marriage unraveled.
We were never of one body.
You said wind. I said water.
And whatever connected us has all but disappeared.
I was the reedy weeds clinging to the bottom edge of everything.
I was the red algae rotting on the shore in the summer heat.
I was the stinging salty air, the air around your tongue.
Out of your tongue you carved a boat.
Out of the boat you sailed to a new life.
Out of your lifeboat I was wrecked.
No man is an island but it lives inside of you,
adrift in you like a rupture, a fault,
magma rising from your ocean floor
as you become whoever you are becoming.
O’Neil begins the collection with a series of poems that explore the daily reality of the working poor: A stout man tries to obtain unavailable funds from an ATM, another clears out the detritus of poverty and steam cleans away the stains of despair from rent-to-own sofas. Other poems find the poet in the company of women—bathing her elderly mother, laughing over coffee “as Billie Holiday croons above our heads,” baking a cake: “We let things rise the way women do/to make something near perfect.” Newly divorced, she haunts home improvement stores in search of capable, reliable men. Her sometimes anger is verbalized in a forbidden four-letter word or wielded in the sharp blade of a cleaver. She gives tentative advice to a biracial son about to face the world, shampoos her daughter’s hair, and wonders what her kids will write about her in years to come.
Afaa Michael Weaver has said, “O’Neil praises life with subtle wisdom wrapped inside the most delicious language.” Denise Duhamel calls her work “substantial, playful, and compassionate—even when dealing with difficult themes.” MISERY ISLANDS is a brilliant—and much anticipated—follow up to this rising poet’s highly acclaimed debut, Underlife, that journeys further down the road of one contemporary woman’s life.
~~~
About January Gill O’Neil
January Gill O’Neill is the author of Underlife, published by CavanKerry Press; She is the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival and an assistant professor of English at Salem State University. Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Rattle, MiPoesias Sou’Wester, JMWW, North American Review, The MOM Egg Review, Crab Creek Review, Drunken Boat, Crab Orchard Review, Callaloo, Literary Mama, Field, Seattle Review, and Cave Canem anthologies II and IV, among others. O’Neil runs the blog, Poet Mom.
~~~
MISERY ISLANDS by January Gill O’Neil
Publication Date: November 2014
Price: $16.00; ISBN: 978-1-933880-46-4
Distributed by: University Press of New England (UPNE), 800-421-1561 or 603-448-1533, Ext. 255
News and Events: Week of October 13th
Events
Howard Levy, NYU Bookstore
Wednesday, October 15th at 6:00pm
Howard will be part of the Four Way and Friends reading
Visit NYU Bookstore for more info
Baron Wormser, Longfellow Books (1 Monument Square, Portland, ME)
Thursday, October 16th at 7:00pm
Reading from Best American Essays 2014 and Teach Us That Peace
Visit Longfellow Books for more info
Joseph O. Legaspi (763 Broad Street, 7th floor, Newark, NJ)
Friday, October 17th at 7:00pm
Sanctuary/Open Doors Festival Reading with Timothy Liu
Visit Sanctuary for more info
Joseph O. Legaspi, Busboys and Poets (2021 14th St. NW, Washington, DC)
Sunday, October 19th at 5:00pm
Sunday Kind of Love Series with Jennifer Chang and Matthew Olzmann
Visit Busboys and Poets for more info
News
January Gill O’Neil was a guest blogger from October 6-October 10 on America’s Best Poetry blog
Baron Wormer’s essay, Legend: Willem de Kooning from Grist,
is featured in Best American Essays 2014
News and Events: Week of June 9th
News
Michael Miller has two poems in the forthcoming special The Literature and War issue of The Sewanee Review
Nin Andrews has three poems in Anthem
Events
Celia Bland and artist Dianne Kornberg: Madonna Comix, a collaboration of poetry and image
On exhibit at Lesley Heller Workspace, 54 Orchard St., NYC
June 11-July 12
For more info visit lesleyheller.com
Teresa Carson, Dawn Potter, and January Gill O’Neil, Bryant Park Word for Word Reading Series (between 40th and 42nd Streets & Fifth and Sixth Avenues, New York)
Thursday, June 12th at 12:30 p.m.
Word for Word Lunch Poems welcomes CavanKerry Press
For more info visit Bryant Park
Kevin Carey, Paterson Falls Film Festival (Fabian 8 Cinema, 301 Main Street, Paterson, NJ)
Saturday, June 14th at 11:22am
A film screening of Kevin’s fim “All That Lies Between Us.” The story of New Jersey poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan.
For more info visit Paterson Film Festival
CavanKerry Poets at Massachusetts Poetry Festival
January Gill O’Neil’s pick for “Poem in Your Pocket”
January Gill O’Neil writes…
My poem this time around will be William Carlos Williams’ poem “To Elsie.” It’s a poem I rediscovered recently, one I’ve always loved. And seems more relevant and timely than ever in our supercharged election season. How can you miss with a first line, “The pure products of America/ go crazy–” and the last lines, “No one/ to witness/ and adjust, no one to drive the car”? I believe that first line inspired Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” the poem that made me pay attention to poetry. Both poets were New Jersey natives.
“To Elsie”
William Carlos Williams
The pure products of America
go crazy
mountain folk from Kentucky
or the ribbed north end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes and
valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves
old names
and promiscuity between
devil-may-care men who have taken
to railroading
out of sheer lust of adventure
and young slatterns, bathed
in filth
from Monday to Saturday
to be tricked out that night
with gauds
from imaginations which have no
peasant traditions to give them
character
but flutter and flaunt
sheer rags-succumbing without
emotion
save numbed terror
under some hedge of choke-cherry
or viburnum-
which they cannot express
Unless it be that marriage
perhaps
with a dash of Indian blood
will throw up a girl so desolate
so hemmed round
with disease or murder
that she’ll be rescued by an
agent
reared by the state and
sent out at fifteen to work in
some hard-pressed
house in the suburbs
some doctor’s family, some Elsie
voluptuous water
expressing with broken
brain the truth about us
her great
ungainly hips and flopping breasts
addressed to cheap
jewelry
and rich young men with fine eyes
as if the earth under our feet
were
an excrement of some sky
and we degraded prisoners
destined
to hunger until we eat filth
while the imagination strains
after deer
going by fields of goldenrod in
the stifling heat of September
Somehow
it seems to destroy us
It is only in isolate flecks that
something
is given off
No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car
January Gill O’Neil is the author of Underlife (CavanKerry Press 2009) and the forthcoming Misery Islands (CavanKerry Press 2014). She is an assistant professor at Salem State University and executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival.
January Gill O'Neil's pick for "Poem in Your Pocket"
January Gill O’Neil writes…
My poem this time around will be William Carlos Williams’ poem “To Elsie.” It’s a poem I rediscovered recently, one I’ve always loved. And seems more relevant and timely than ever in our supercharged election season. How can you miss with a first line, “The pure products of America/ go crazy–” and the last lines, “No one/ to witness/ and adjust, no one to drive the car”? I believe that first line inspired Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” the poem that made me pay attention to poetry. Both poets were New Jersey natives.
“To Elsie”
William Carlos Williams
The pure products of America
go crazy
mountain folk from Kentucky
or the ribbed north end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes and
valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves
old names
and promiscuity between
devil-may-care men who have taken
to railroading
out of sheer lust of adventure
and young slatterns, bathed
in filth
from Monday to Saturday
to be tricked out that night
with gauds
from imaginations which have no
peasant traditions to give them
character
but flutter and flaunt
sheer rags-succumbing without
emotion
save numbed terror
under some hedge of choke-cherry
or viburnum-
which they cannot express
Unless it be that marriage
perhaps
with a dash of Indian blood
will throw up a girl so desolate
so hemmed round
with disease or murder
that she’ll be rescued by an
agent
reared by the state and
sent out at fifteen to work in
some hard-pressed
house in the suburbs
some doctor’s family, some Elsie
voluptuous water
expressing with broken
brain the truth about us
her great
ungainly hips and flopping breasts
addressed to cheap
jewelry
and rich young men with fine eyes
as if the earth under our feet
were
an excrement of some sky
and we degraded prisoners
destined
to hunger until we eat filth
while the imagination strains
after deer
going by fields of goldenrod in
the stifling heat of September
Somehow
it seems to destroy us
It is only in isolate flecks that
something
is given off
No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car