The Morning of the Poem
Bonjour madame,
I am the Marcel Proust
of toast and jam,
orange juice,
honeydew melon
oatmeal,
The Irish kind
coffee and the news:
I’d like to share
a pipe with Baudelaire,
You
could be my
nineteenth-century
dandy dude
Typing pseudo-symbolism
something meaning something
doesn’t mean a thing
at all:
I’ve searched
the collected William
Carlos Williams
for something called
the Poison Line:
a short
and seemingly
Senseless:
“Are you sure
we shouldn’t just
go to church?”
no siree,
Bob!
Who has the time
to obtain an antidote?
What’s
your problem?
I’m a lousy poet
with no talent,
no innate
love of words,
nor sense of how
the words themselves
constellate!
that’s the poem!
But today
this morning
a breakthrough
Awakening
at six? six-thirty?
to the fresh faint smell
of rain, rain,
Rain!
if I were younger
I’d have
Run outside
naked as a snake,
my hair full of Prell,
my mouth agape
my heart pitta-patting
the artist’s (your)
determination
I make
Myself sound
like a dirty old man,
a hound,
always on the sniff:
sitting in this
Hitchcock chair
idly pulling
my foreskin––
Imagine
An office building
straight from Babylon:
businessmen
busy, busy,
sucking
each other off
in cave-like cubicles
(the neighbors children
and grandchildren
visiting?)
gathering rocks
to stone me
I’m very brave.
A shovelful
of earth
is thrown
into a grave
and rattles
on the coffin.
Death
and rebirth?
Do you often
Experience
déjà vu?
jinglejangle
Here’s the story
of our first
acquaintance
We went paddling
bare-ass
in a brook
Way back when
your lithe handsomeness
mixed in my mind
with beads
and a dangling
crucifix.
You said, “I’m sorry.”
Writing goes by
so fast:
a couple hours
of concentration,
then you’re
Spent:
Comrades, leave me
read my Times.
Mini-interview with Matthew Klane
HFR: Can you tell us what prompted “The Morning of the Poem”?
MK: During the first year of the pandemic, housebound as we were, I wrote my way through the Collected Poems of James Schuyler: English-to-English translations, transformations, elisions, distillations. Most of my versions of Schuyler’s poems ended up between 0 and 10 words, but I had to figure out what to do with the long poems, for example, the 44-page “The Morning of the Poem” from his book The Morning of the Poem. So I gleaned and collaged, intuitively, and wrote for me what is an extremely long poem.
HFR: What’s next? What are you working on?
MK: This year, alongside my mostly daily collage practice, I’ve been trying to write 1) folk songs as well as 2) a series of kinda flitty li’l poetic statements, working title: On Writing. Finally, 3) I’m working on a long-form memoirish “voice portrait” of poet, friend, and mentor Lori Anderson Moseman documenting her poetic sensibilities and life in poetry.
HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)?
MK: Sweet segue setup! As a senior in college, before I even identified as a poet, I took a pile of poems over to Lori who had been my first-year comp teacher. At the time, I was a philosophy major and was supposed to be working on a senior thesis. But Lori took my envelope of esoteric juvenilia, noted up the poems with punny riffs and enthusiastic provocations, and then offered up multiple ideas and arrangements for possible manuscripts. And that was it for me. Poetry 4eva.
HFR: What are you reading?
MK: As I begin composition of this “voice portrait,” I’ve been working my way through Lori’s bibliography, from her first book Cultivating Excess to her current manuscript-in-progress FATHOM. I also try to maintain a li’l microreview blog on my website. Recent or forthcoming reads include books by poets Chaun Webster, Leslie Sainz, Paolo Javier, Kamelya Omayma Youssef, Maged Zaher, William Erickson, S. Brook Corfman, and Steven Karl. Y’all can scroll the backlog of these microreviews here.
HFR: Take the floor. Be political. Be fanatical. Be anything. What do you want to share?
MK: See above! Other than that, I’ll just add many thanks for your interest in my work and for offering some space on your platform! Heart of hearts, Mk
Matthew Klane has an MA in Poetics from SUNY Buffalo and an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His books of poetry include Hist (w/ James Belflower, Calamari 2022), Canyons (w/ James Belflower, Flimb Press 2016), Che (Stockport Flats 2013), and B (Stockport Flats 2008). An e-chapbook from Of the Day is online at Delete Press and an e-book My is online at FENCE. He is co-founder of Flim Forum Press and currently co-curator of Salon Salvage, a poetry and performance series inside of Weathered Wood in downtown Troy, New York. See: matthewklane.com.
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Heavy Feather Review 