Readings in Contemporary Poetry
Tony Towle and Jennifer Moxley
Thursday, January 26, 2012, 6:30 pm, Dia Chelsea
Thursday, January 26, 2012, 6:30 pm
535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor
New York City
Introduction by Vincent Katz
Tony Towle
Tony Towle has been involved in the New York School of Poetry since 1963, when he took workshops with Kenneth Koch and Frank O’Hara at the New School. In conjunction with his first major collection of poetry, North (1970), he received the Frank O’Hara Award. His recent publications include his twelfth book of poems, Winter Journey (2008). He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including fellowships from the National Foundation of the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Semi-Private
If you’re dressed in white and being importuned
by sick people, you might be a nurse
or other health care professional. If you feel
you’ve been pierced with harpoons and are lying on a beach
listening to the sand but not hearing the ocean
you could be mistaken. But if, in the middle of the forest
you come upon your arch-foe finishing a sandwich
and drinking from your skull, you will know with certainty:
you have taken a wrong turn in life.
Coming home from school that day
you should have gone left at the dry goods store,
followed Elm Street to the edge of town
and then set off on the dash through the proliferations of the moment
to the interim haven of the future. This must have been the work
of the sorceress in red, whose existence may have come to fruition
that very morning &emdash; you overheard whispers in the garden, there,
just outside your window, while enchanted flies buzzed in the heat.
by sick people, you might be a nurse
or other health care professional. If you feel
you’ve been pierced with harpoons and are lying on a beach
listening to the sand but not hearing the ocean
you could be mistaken. But if, in the middle of the forest
you come upon your arch-foe finishing a sandwich
and drinking from your skull, you will know with certainty:
you have taken a wrong turn in life.
Coming home from school that day
you should have gone left at the dry goods store,
followed Elm Street to the edge of town
and then set off on the dash through the proliferations of the moment
to the interim haven of the future. This must have been the work
of the sorceress in red, whose existence may have come to fruition
that very morning &emdash; you overheard whispers in the garden, there,
just outside your window, while enchanted flies buzzed in the heat.
Jennifer Moxley
Jennifer Moxley’s publications include five books of poetry, Clampdown (2009), The Line (2007), Often Capital(2005), The Sense Record (2002; 2003) and Imagination Verses (1996; 2003), as well as her memoir, The Middle Room (2007). She has published translations of Anne Portugal’s Absolute bob (2010), as well as Jacqueline Risset’s The Translation Begins (1996) and Sleep’s Powers (2008) and she currently teaches at the University of Maine.
The Longing for Something to Protect
eats us up with useless grief
binds the intestinal spool
into a painful and inept clench
against vigilante memory
(the risk cop in our brain)
something to worry over
under our noses, in the way,
something we keep beside us
that cannot survive on its own
something to go home for
and begrudge a little, a gentle
but not binding limit on this
supposedly commodious freedom
(we check email like addicts)
something to direct the directionless
heart and pressure time’s cottony mass
into something other than lists of tasks
(the work will never be done)
something we cannot pay to insure
but without which we cannot live,
something that will be
(though we won’t see it)
indispensable to love’s psyche
binds the intestinal spool
into a painful and inept clench
against vigilante memory
(the risk cop in our brain)
something to worry over
under our noses, in the way,
something we keep beside us
that cannot survive on its own
something to go home for
and begrudge a little, a gentle
but not binding limit on this
supposedly commodious freedom
(we check email like addicts)
something to direct the directionless
heart and pressure time’s cottony mass
into something other than lists of tasks
(the work will never be done)
something we cannot pay to insure
but without which we cannot live,
something that will be
(though we won’t see it)
indispensable to love’s psyche