April is National Poetry Month, and I, like many other poets around the world, have been trying to write a poem every day throughout it. (We’re almost halfway there, friends—hooray!) I have to confess, though, that in all the writing of poetry, I don’t always do too well on the reading poetry bit, especially when it comes to reading works or authors that are not already among my firm favorites.
The first part of April has also more or less been Moon Month in my household; we watched several portions of the Artemis II mission together as a family, and my father frequently tuned into the 24-hour coverage from NASA in between those events. The moon was therefore on my mind—and, since it’s also a classic poetic image or metaphor, I decided I would also turn my poetic gaze to the moon for a week. The Golden Shovel is one of my favorite poetic forms (after all, how could you not like sending secret messages?), so I decided to write in that form using lines from various poems (some personal favorites, some new to me) that mentioned the moon.
After I wrote the first one (with a line from E.E. Cummings’ [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in], though, poets and poetry itself started to emerge as sub-themes, and the poems began to take the feel of letters; I knew the particular who and what that went into the first poem, but I didn’t know, now that it had something of a mind of its own, where the story was going to end up. But I wanted it to be a cohesive story. In the end, I don’t think it quite reads as one long coherent poem, but there’s only so much one can do within the limits of a Golden Shovel. But I will let you judge for yourself (find the list of source poems and lines below). It was a success, however, in terms of engaging with new-to-me poems; I very much enjoyed several of those I read … and found some others either depressing or borderline disturbing. I guess that’s just how poetry goes.
letters to a poet on the moon
in the evening sometimes i imagine you
are there reading your favorite poets, are
somewhere slowly walking along whatever
dusty road gives you the best view of a
sunset, of the golden rising of the moon.
then in the morning i remember it has
been such a long silence of an always,
and i wonder what it all never has meant.
what can span the distance from
me to you, from the unknown to the
particular, amid all the world’s raging?
some poets, i know, would say the moon.
perhaps they are more confident than i
am in the strength of what they write.
it’s spring; my heart should be whole, but
the sight of vapor trails crazy-quilting the
sky pulls on me like waves drawn by the moon.
poet, can you tell me what the remedy is?
i would write you a letter, an apology, a
poem of my own to say how i am sorry—
and i have. but you will not write me one.
one bright, brief moment of “we,”
then i and my imagination ran
wild with poetic dream-weaving as
though hopes were certainties, as if
those dreams only needed you to
awake to the inevitable. now i meet
the morning knowing only that the
dream might as well be the moon.
i don’t remember what was on the
radio that day; just another song
i was too old to know—what poet would
have thought that detail might be
worth remembering? i was too joyous—
or too thoughtless—then to care. and
later, when i all i recalled was your cheerful
eyes, that was still enough. the
memory was worth more than the moon.
now you might be as far as the moon!
yet all this i have no right to keep
for myself in the vast world and wide:
poet, thou’rt flown, and the stuff of thy
poems with thee. and so no golden
words of mine shall ever find your ears.
the trouble is i don’t know where
you are—nor why i should care for the
knowing. could you ever see the sea
from there, the magic when it meets
the sunrise in the morning and the
sky is set on fire? all i have is the moon—
a handful of memories blanched
to black and white, a place for a poet to land.
Day One: [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] by E.E. Cummings
Line: you are whatever a moon has always meant
Day Two: In my craft or sullen art by Dylan Thomas
Line: from the raging moon i write
Day Three: The Difference by Thomas Hardy
Line: but the moon is a sorry one
Day Four: Going for Water by Robert Frost
Line: we ran as if to meet the moon
Day Five: Accidentally used another line from Hardy’s The Difference.
Line: the song would be joyous and cheerful the moon
Day Six: A Prophecy: To George Keats in America by John Keats
Line: moon! keep wide thy golden ears
Day Seven: Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
Line: where the sea meets the moon-blanched land
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