David Lehman, author of The Last Avant-Garde, and editor of The Best American Poetry series, shared on NPR his three favorite poems for 2011. “The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter” by Mark Strand was one of the three.
Strand’s poem, a prose poem, leverages mystery over logic and, appropriately, is written as a prose poem. Read the poem here.
I beg to dicker with my silver-tongued companion, whose lips are read to read my shining gloss. A versatile partner, conversant and well-versed in the verbal art, the dictionary is not averse to the solitary habits of the curiously wide-awake reader. In the dark night’s insomnia, the book is a stimulating sedative, awakening my tired imagination to the hypnagogic trance of language. Retiring to the canopy of the bedroom, turning on the bedside light, taking the big dictionary to bed, clutching the unabridged bulk, heavy with the weight of all the meanings between these covers, smoothing the thin sheets, thick with accented syllables–all are exercises in the conscious regimen of dreamers, who toss words on their tongues while turning illuminated pages. To go through all these motions and procedures, groping in the dark for an alluring word, is the poet’s nocturnal mission. Aroused by myriad possibilities, we try out the most perverse positions in the practice of our nightly act, the penetration of the denotative body of the work. Any exit from the logic of language might be an entry in a symptomatic dictionary. The alphabetical order of this ample block of knowledge might render a dense lexicon of lucid hallucinations. Beside the bed, a pad lies open to record the meandering of migratory words. In the rapid eye movement of the poet’s night vision, this dictum can be decoded, like the secret acrostic of a lover’s name.
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Harryette Mullen. Sleeping with the Dictionary. University of California Press. 2002.
I cut some roses from my garden, then went back in and put them in a vase. I put the vase on the dining room table and sat there staring at them for a while. They were yellow verging on orange with a red border. It was as though they were in motion, some private sea with tiny waves swirling about. Several dolphins were leaping under a clear, blue sky. I saw a man on a raft in the distance, just a speck really, shouting something and waving a white flag, but then he was gone. I went back to work, trying to solve some problems. Three thousand units shipped there, six thousand over there, nine thousand there, and so on and so on. I saw that it would never be enough. Everybody needed their units. And the planet was shrinking. You could feel it getting smaller and smaller. I stood up and went back outside. The raven had its eye on me. And I was watching it. It wanted to speak. It had something to say. I took a few steps toward it. “Yew, yew,” it said. “Me, me?” I said. “What about me? I come in peace. I mean you no harm. But enough about me. I hear you are afraid of nothing. Tell me, is that true?” The bird just stared at me and said, “Yew, yew,” again, and this time I took it to be in a sort of accusatory manner. So I said, “All right, I confess, it’s me, I’m the one, I’m the source of all the problems. So what do you want me to do about it? If it wasn’t me, it would be somebody else.” And then the bird flew off, right in the middle of my speech. I was just warming up. That was just my opening volley. He’d made his point, though. It was me. That bird didn’t mince words. Perhaps he will return, and we can talk again. I walked around the yard, always with the roses in view. There’s no way to explain what they do, or why they do it. Well, breeding, of course, but that’s just some madman tinkering with the secrets of the universe. The roses, still, have minds of their own. They’re just humoring the madman. Dried roses have been found in Egyptian tombs thousands of years old. I think they know what they’re doing, and it’s beyond us to even think about. But they’re slowly revealing something, that’s all. Just shut up and don’t ask too many questions. A car pulled into my driveway. It was Dustin. “Sorry to bother you like this, pal, but they need more units in Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, to be precise,” he said. “Ethiopia?” I said. “I didn’t know we did business there.” “Oh yeah, big business. We’re hot there. Can you do it right away. They need ten thousand units,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “Sorry to ruin your day off, but in this business the clock never stops ticking, as they say. Hey, thanks, Skip. I got to run,” he said. And, with that, he backed out of the driveway and sped down the road, narrowly missing a neighbor’s dog. King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba want their units. The man on the raft is waving. He wants his units, too. So much pressure. The earth is trembling. The mystery brews in the soil, then pokes its way out and starts to open. We gasp, jump back, speechless, weak, fall to the ground, worshipping.
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James Tate. “The Raven Speaks.” Raritan 23.1 (2003) and Return to the City of White Donkeys.