Waiting for the big things

I've been reading Elaine Barry's Robert Frost on writing. In 1932, in a letter to protégé Kimbal Flaccus, Frost wrote (pg. 111):

[Art ] should be of major adventures only, outward or inward--important things that happen to you, or important things that occur to you. Mere poeticality won't suffice.

We must wait for things to happen to us big ... you can't have them at will.... And when you get a good one, given out of nowhere, you can almost trust it to do itself in poetry.

So, these two poems of mine don't seem very big to me. I rationalize them to myself this way--writing them is good exercise. And also, to stay in poetry land where I'm receptive to noticing the big things. But would I subject the world to the poems? (This blog? Are they ok here?)

In Frost's first book, A Boy's Will, the youngish (1913) Frost gives 1-line summaries to each of his poems. For example (pg. 37):

IN NEGLECT He is scornful of people his scorn cannot reach.
MOWING He takes up life simply with small tasks.
MY BUTTERFLY There are things that can never be the same.

These are some of the big things.

At a recent reading by Lucie Brock-Broido she said she goes 1000 days (plus or minus) after finishing one book before she starts writing again (and she starts writing in autumn). In a 2013 interview for Guernica, Brock-Broido tells Ricardo Maldonado:

As a writer, I am hard on myself. I write so much more than I would ever publish. I don’t write manically, the way I did when I was in my twenties, when I was writing 300 poems a year and I would just conjure up the verses every night.

Other topics in the book:

• metaphor vs. simile (pair)
• sentence sound (voice, tone are only part of it ...) vs a grammatical sentence vs a "book sentence"
• style (what makes us like a poem)

How much do you tip a mariachi?

A butterfly settled on the salty lip

The sun behind it boomed

I found myself in a flight path

The margaritas bounced

and for what seemed like days
the tables flitted this way and that

The mariachi bowed

and I bought them drinks

The sun behind them boomed

I am a sentimental drunk

She twirled a paper parasol between her lips

I brushed salt from them with mine

untitled for now

First red. A new Mazda.

Then the uprooted sidewalk

and Taylor Swift from a boom box.

A red, white and blue paper lantern

fading in a tree. The eye contact is friendly

this cool summer evening,

and I let the story of the game stop me.

Who is ahead? How many are out?

The pitcher wants to throw strikes

but he wants her to put the ball in play too.

The bench cheers the batter in the box

Shorts, T-shirts, flushed skin under lights--

they’re not thinking now of their day at the office.

She singles to center. A run scores.

From the chain-link fence applause.

A net rigged above the fence

keeps the street safe from foul balls.

A polite but insistent siren makes a wake of cars.

I am ready to move on but see a dog’s bandaged paw.

The dog paces while his owner talks on the phone

about how much the minutes cost.

Eau de Joy

Eau de Joy

My girlfriend picked roses from the landlord’s garden and put
them in a vase. The roses were mostly yellow; the petal tips,
fuscia. Stems were bent by lush ripe blooms. Some buds
hadn't opened. As she packed and boxed things up she moved
the vase until when I arrived it sat on top a bookcase under
a vent. That was nice. As the heater warmed the room, the roses’
fragrance displaced the smell of cardboard and dust from
normally out-of-sight places. The forced air stopped. And then
the noise of petals falling two or three at once from the most bent
bloom. In seconds the ruckus is over, and the silence starts this time
for real. Do roses die when she cuts them, or when the petals wilt
and drop? What if buds dry before they open? I've been told
my son Jack, yes he is dead but he lives on inside you, like a rose
inside Patou’s Eau de Joy, where I can’t hug or wrestle him.

I think I should speak

I cannot breathe.
I am swaddled in paper
dark in a box
with mummied glasses
and candlesticks.
I am not upset with you
stowing me here,
but you never smoked did you?
Why do you keep me?
I understand
your need to move.
Certainly the situation
is untenable
and the new place,
with her family,
well, that will be spectacular!
But they don’t smoke do they?
I’m not so pretty you’ll miss me.
Start with me.
Let go.
I’m easy. I never met Jack.