Sunday Poetry XXXVIII -- "YOU'VE JUST BEEN TOLD"

One of the many great things about being a teacher, or English teachers, anyway, and especially for those working in old buildings, is book inheritance.  Pretty much every time a teacher changes classrooms, especially in the case of assuming the former classroom of a now-retired English teacher, is the mass of books left behind.  Sometimes hundreds.  Really.  Literally.  Over the last ten years, I have been the move-inner to the former space of three departed English teachers and have duly reaped the literary benefits.  (Of course, I assume that these teachers left behind only the books they didn't want to take home with them, but still, I've scooped up some pretty awesome windfalls.)

As all of my favorite books are boxed up in the garage, and as I used some of my less-favorite books as buffers in the stacking and packing before the drive eastward, which books are not in boxes, it is from this latter pile (quite, again, literally, I'm sorry to say) that I draw today's material: You've Just Been Told, by one Elizabeth Macklin, whose book has just been out in the garage, unprotected, alone, and (oh, I'm embarrassed) left on the concrete floor.

I've never read any of Macklin's poetry.  I kept the book because, honestly, it looked nice and, originally, I thought it might serve as potential inspiration for coming English students.  Well, that's out, so I probably ought to determine if the book's worth holding the space it takes.  I will randomly open the book three times--yes, in just the moment between right now and final typing of this sentence--and copy out the three poems I find there.

***and as I crack open the book, it literally crackles.

I don't think it was ever read, even by the former owner[s]***

The Lazy Girl Was Never Scolded

(p58)

Then: New-painted ceilings shed light, in our place,

as if they were living, or holy/  That smell was early

spring, with the windows open.  Ambition was only

sleeping, or shortly to be awakened, and would not disappear

forever into compliant ambition.  One time, I sat down

on the steps of a ladder, holding a cup of black

coffee that nearly woke the world.  Paint was spread bright-

yellow into the corners.  Turpentine curled

from woodwork and settled.  I did not sit straighter.

A willow outside the window reeked in the sun of doing

nothing, up in its branches, its leaves whole stories,

all summer.  A long blond girl, dark in the backlight,

I seized what is nowadays made to seem

nearly nothing.

Almost

A qualifier of superlatives

(p29-30)

How much of this

was misunderstanding--

how much was almost blindness?

We did math at the table

almost forever.  Or I "helped"

around you finicking chores.

I almost certainly thought

you couldn't see me.

You almost always said

yet again "You with me?"

I was certainly

angry with you.

Dear Old Dad (your almost ironical

nickname; y our invention), explain

our delay in getting the gist

of kindness.  I didn't see you almost

might've but couldn't;

you didn't tell me stories

about your childhood.

You were maybe afraid, almost.

And so, almost maybe, was I.

But beatings, chiggers in Texas,

butter borrowed on welfare

are almost laughable

after a lifetime,

fears of a planet

or angry passion

almost a memory.

Wholly unique (though yes we

have no degrees of uniqueness)

your almost irreconcilable

lifetime:

qualifying the present

and almost the past

by strict, strong, stronger

grammars of attention--

just when you're thinking 

of dying, you marry again,

quickly, almost ecstatic,

trusting at last your almost

perfect decision, your superlative.

Yet almost just as jealous

of each wife, child/children:

how our love is apportioned.

See? I'm almost

with you again.

I'm almost angry

with you again.

At 43, She Thinks What

to Name Her Children

(p84)

Oh . . . Firstborn, Asher!--asher means "happy"--

because I am happy.  Carlyle, Joseph,

Robert and Richard, for family names:

namesakes all unspeakably loved, for all their flaws.

Jean, Margaret, Ila for girls,

to say they were loved, and will be loved.

All of them out of two originals--Margaret Jean,

Ila Margaret--not to be copied.

Or--she hopes, does she?--uncopied by me.

Because not wishing harm on a daughter?

Margaret, Jean, Ila, Margaret--all

speakable now, since now chosen.

Or else--can it be a name for a woman?--

the lastborn, Asher: no, possible Asher,

"Do what you can--I love you, Asher,"

because I'm alone but I am happy.