April is poetry month: what's good and what's not

photograph by Ed Baker

The good...

4/ You want what
every
one always

wants: to have
all and yet
never have

to give. To
die -- and live
beyond death.

But isn't
that -- had -- just
what this is?

5/ Here I am
like a leaf
falling or

fallen. Point-
less as one --
as any--

all. Holding
mother's hand
though she's gone.
   (from Origin, April 1982, Cid Corman)

The bad...

In scraggy lingo lost
high mean--
times petering, thickets of
lex & scrawn:
split for abysmal, hopalong
underword, head for no exit,
grapshrapnel yore spelunking.
Fractal untongue.
            (from Un, Dennis Lee)
______________________________

The tongue and vellum clearly at odds make the bad bad--try saying "In scraggy lingo lost" quickly!-- and yet it's taken as good "open field" speech, fit for Canadian anthologies & tenure trackers. Lee's 'unpoem'. Partout. The sage of Utano knew, however, that the poem is always a leaf fallen and that the gift is never more graciously given than when it's fallen. Freely and with love.

Cid, always had the dear final word in these matters: always letting the beloved hand go.