Springing : New and Selected Poems

by Ponsot, Marie

• ISBN13: 9780375413896
• ISBN10: 0375413898
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-03-01
• Publisher: Knopf

Summary

From the award-winning author ofThe Bird Catcher, this life-spanning volume offers the delight of both discovery and re-discovery, as Ponsot tends the unruly garden of her mind with her customary care and passion. The book opens with a group of new poems, including "What Would You Like to Be When You Grow Up?"a question that has kept Ponsot's work vital for more than five decades. Throughout the selections from her four earlier books and a trove of previously unpublished work covering the years 1946 to 1971, she offers us a "lost haven in a springing world." Sometimes sharp in her self-perception, but always listing toward pleasure and elegance, unafraid of grief and the passage of time, Ponsot continually refreshes her language and the spirited self from which it emerges.

Author Biography

Marie Ponsot’s first book of poems was<i> True Minds</i> (1956); later books are <i>Admit Impediment</i> (1981) and <i>The Green Dark</i> (1988). She is a native New Yorker who has enjoyed teaching at Queens College, Beijing United University, the Poetry Center of the YMHA, New York University, and Columbia University. Among her awards are an NEA Creative Writing grant, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize, and the Shaughnessy Medal of the Modern Language Association. Ponsot’s most recent collection, <i>The Bird Catcher</i>, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in 1998.

Table of Contents

New Poems
Old Jokes Appreciate	3	(1)
Drunk & Disorderly, Big Hair	4	(2)
Origin	6	(2)
What Would You Like to Be When You Grow Up?	8	(3)
Now Then	11	(1)
Decorum, Reflection	12	(1)
Ghosts of Narrative	13	(3)
Metaphysica	16	(2)
Quick It Can	18	(2)
Rods & Cones, & The Statute of Limitations	20	(2)
What Changes	22	(3)
End of October	25	(2)
Entranced	27	(2)
Real Estate: Kripplebush, New York	29	(1)
Crude Cabin, At the Brink of Quiet	30	(2)
Out of Water	32	(1)
Pathetic Fallacies Are Bad Science But	33	(2)
Antepenultimate	35	(1)
At the Botanical Gardens, University of British Columbia	36	(1)
After-Image, Cortes Island	37	(2)
My Word Is My Bond	39	(1)
We Stand Our Ground	40	(1)
Strong, Off Route 209	41	(1)
Imagine That	42	(2)
The First, At the Last	44	(2)
Rain All Night, Paris	46	(3)
Uncollected Poems, 1946-1971
A Visit	49	(1)
Sensibility	50	(1)
St.-Germain-des-Pres: Summer 1948	51	(1)
Ritournelle, for Paris 1948	52	(2)
Private and Profane	54	(2)
Anniversary	56	(1)
Pleasant Avenue	57	(3)
``Ville Indigene'': Afrique du Nord	60	(3)
Sam Refuted, Respectfully	63	(2)
Take Any Card	65	(2)
Under a Routine Procedure	67	(1)
Elegy for Elizabeth Bleecker Averell	68	(1)
Gigue for Christmas Eve	69	(1)
To Forbid Grief	70	(1)
Because We Certainly Have Nothing Better to Do	71	(1)
Survival	72	(1)
Springing	73	(1)
Dialogue of Nemo and Personne	74	(2)
Explication de Texte	76	(2)
The Crow Dressed in Peacock Feathers	78	(1)
A Tale Told by Atheneus (Venus Callipygus)	79	(1)
Symposium Holiday	80	(1)
Last Resort	81	(1)
``Luxuria,'' Dreamboat	82	(1)
Half Full	83	(1)
Out of the North: Two Views	84	(5)
From True Minds, 1956
Take My Disproportionate Desire	89	(1)
``Qu'ai-je a Faire en Paradis?''	90	(1)
Matins & Lauds	91	(1)
Possession	92	(1)
Multipara Gravida 5	93	(1)
Communion of Saints: The Poor Bastard Under the Bridge	94	(1)
```What Are You Doing Here, Stephen?'''	95	(1)
Rockefeller the Center	96	(3)
From Admit Impediment, 1981
For a Divorce	99	(4)
Basic Skills	103	(1)
Residual Paralysis	104	(2)
About My Birthday	106	(1)
Bilingual	107	(2)
Among Women	109	(1)
From the Fountain at Vaucluse	110	(4)
Ghost Writer	114	(3)
The Differance: Chatou-Croissy	117	(2)
Live Model	119	(2)
Half-Life: Copies to All Concerned	121	(2)
Unabashed	123	(1)
As Is	124	(1)
Late	125	(4)
Of Certain Students	129	(1)
For a Season	130	(1)
Lullaby	131	(1)
A Third Thank-You Letter	132	(3)
Discovery	135	(2)
Advice: Ad Haereditates (I)	137	(4)
Gliding	141	(4)
The Great Dead, Why Not, May Know	145	(6)
From The Green Dark, 1988
On a Library of Congress Photo of Eunice B. Winkless, 1904	151	(2)
The Problem of Freedom & Commitment	153	(1)
The Problem of Fiction	154	(2)
The Problem of Gratified Desire	156	(1)
The Problem of Loving-kindness	157	(1)
Wearing the Gaze of an Archaic Statue	158	(2)
``Love Is Not Love''	160	(4)
Hangzhou, Lake of the Poets	164	(2)
Levels	166	(2)
The Royal Gate	168	(1)
Outside the Fertile Crescent	169	(1)
Synthesis	170	(1)
De-fusing the Usual Criminal Metaphors	171	(2)
Jamaica Wildlife Center, Queens, New York	173	(2)
The Ides of May	175	(1)
Between	176	(1)
Hard-Shell Clams	177	(1)
Out of Eden	178	(1)
Patient	179	(1)
Museum out of Mind	180	(3)
Call	183	(1)
Friday Market	184	(1)
Myopia Makes All Light Sources Radiant	185	(2)
In Abeyance	187	(2)
Analemmatic	189	(1)
Take Time, Take Place	190	(9)
From The Bird Catcher, 1998
``I've Been Around: It Gets Me Nowhere''	199	(2)
Old Mama Saturday	201	(2)
Northampton Style	203	(1)
The Title's Last	204	(1)
One Is One	205	(1)
Pourriture Noble	206	(2)
For My Old Self, At Notre-Dame	208	(2)
The Border	210	(2)
Separate, In the Swim	212	(2)
The Story After the Story	214	(2)
Roundtone Cove	216	(1)
Reading a Large Serving Dish	217	(2)
Analysis	219	(1)
Two Questions	220	(2)
Pre-Text	222	(2)
Explorers Cry Out Unheard	224	(1)
Winter	225	(1)
Oceans	226	(1)
Even	227

Excerpts

Springing

In a skiff on a sunrisen lake we are watchers.

Swimming aimlessly is luxury, just as walking
Loudly up a shallow stream is.

As we lean over the deep well, we whisper.

Friends at hearths are drawn to the one warm air;
stranger meet on beaches drawn to the one wet sea.

What wd it be to be water, one body of water
(what water is is another mystery). (We are
water divided.) It wd be a self without walls,
with surface tension, specific gravity, a local
exchange between bedrock and cloud of falling and rising,
rising to fall, falling to rise.


Old Jokes Appreciate

Up the long stairs I run
stumbling, expectant.
Impatience is hopelessly
desperate. Hope
takes time.

Sort out the private from the personal.
Advance on losses at a decent pace.

"Aside from all that, Mrs. Lincoln,
how did you like the play?"

Origin

The skull or shell
or wall of bone shaped
with its egg advantages
does not advertise

the gardens it contains,
the marriages, the furies,
or the city it shelters
(clangs, clouds, silences,
found souls crowding,
big dank cans where things
putrify)

or the glade it hides
for us to hide in, where
—our lives eased open—
we drowse by the pond and wake
beside ourselves with thirst,
where (dipping the cup we find)
we get of necessity
a drink of some depth
full of taste
and original
energy.

The darling face,
the fragrant chevelure,
even the beautiful ears
on the shell do not
boast about the workplace inside.

They prefer to appear to agree
they are just along for the ride.

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Excerpted from Springing: New and Selected Poems by Marie Ponsot
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