Poems From Providence - The Poet's Press

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ABOUT THE POET Brett Rutherford, born in Scottdale, Pennsylvania, began writing poetry seriously during a stay in San Francisco. During his college years at Edinboro State University in Pennsylvania, he published an underground newspaper and printed his first hand-made poetry chapbook. He moved to New York City, where he founded The Poet’s Press in 1971. For more than 20 years, he worked as an editor, journalist, printer, and consultant to publishers and nonprofit organizations. After a literary pilgrimage to Providence, Rhode Island, on the track of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, he moved there with his press. Poems From Providence was the fruit of his first three years in the city (1985-1988), published in 1991. Since then, he has written a study of Edgar Allan Poe and Providence poet Sarah Helen Whitman (briefly Poe’s fiancee), a biographical play about Lovecraft, and his second novel, The Lost Children (Zebra Books, 1988). The various themes shown in Poems From Providence have since yielded separate volumes: Things Seen in Graveyards (2007), Anniversarius: The Autumn Poems (1984, 1996), and Twilight of the Dictators (1992, 2009). Further collected poems appear in The Gods As They Are, On their Planets (2005), Whippoorwill Road: The Supernatural Poems (1998, 2005), and An Expectation of Presences (2011). Returning to school for a master’s degree in English, Rutherford completed this project in 2007, and now works for University of Rhode Island in distance learning, and teaches for the Women’s Studies Department. There, he has created courses on “The Diva,” “Women in Science Fiction,” and “Radical American Women.” He has prepared annotated editions of Matthew Gregory Lewis’s Tales of Wonder, the poetry of Charles Hamilton Sorley, A.T. Fitzroy’s antiwar novel Despised and Rejected, and the first volume of the collected writings of Emilie Glen. His interests include classical music and opera; Chinese art, history and literature; bicycling, graveyards, woods, horror films, intellectual history, and crimes against nature.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR Pieter Vanderbeck was born in Rochester, NY in 1944, and began drawing and writing in grade school (when he decided that would be his destiny). In 1960 he moved to Providence and studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. With a large series of poems and drawings in 1964, he began his lifework proper, and since has done thousands of either. His preferred drawing medium is the Rapidograph pen, a choice influenced by the etchings of Matisse and the woodcuts of Utamaro. Other artists to influence his work are Bosch, Goya and Klee. Both his drawings and paintings are built chiefly on music, most notably Schubert, Bruckner and Shostakovich. He draws inferences from oblique cross references, being a committed eclecticist. He hopes to live to complete Opus 50000. Vanderbeck retired recently after many years on the staff of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. He spends several months each year drawing in the Adirondacks.
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POEMS FROM PROVIDENCE by BRETT RUTH
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CONTENTS AUTUMN POEMS 13 October Is
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184 The McWilliams’ Coffee Table
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POEMS FROM PROVIDENCE
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drifting ghostlike and invisible on
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3 Listen! October is coming! It wil
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THE STATE VERSUS AUTUMN RESOLVED: F
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NOT YEARS ENOUGH How many autumns m
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THE SAILOR AND THE OAK NYMPHS Oak w
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then turning to mockery of his all
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END OF THE WORLD Not with a trumpet
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Stockbrokers adjusted their power t
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THE OUTSIDER Some say that spring i
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oll in this new moon blanket with m
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waiting for the bat, the creeping m
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I waited, I waited — He never arr
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THE ARGUMENT “Two decades ago tha
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AVOIDING THE MUSE Silent this voice
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The clouds make way, open a blue do
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WRITER’S BLOCK For Barbara A. Hol
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This state of things will never do!
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BOARD GAME It is a game that never
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CREATION REVISITED 1 According to U
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But now the horizon rages with whir
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Is it invisible, this imago of Wint
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(the fathers knowingly, in jest, th
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The does take bubble baths. At dusk
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ECLIPSE How like the moon, that sul
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EDGAR AND HELEN Edgar Allan Poe and
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2 Moon and the flames of candled gl
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3 Coffined in his sleepless rooms,
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One truck hurtling toward gates lik
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These crows are not informers. A sh
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eside him, “Comrade, what if I cr
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And then he will send them away, do
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You have become an allergy, an anti
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IVAN GROZNI Ivan Grozni Tyrant of t
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Yet who are these ghosts that crowd
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dust devil’s playground when all
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Winter is honest, at least, the bui
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all now are only names in peeling p
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PLAGUE It is a plague — an epidem
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JUST REWARDS WELCOME TO HEVIN a sig
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Stalinists and Maoists, Progressive
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THE EVANGELICALS ARE COMING! Who ne
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BLUMENSTÜCKE The parlor frowned wi
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The combinations were shocking as s
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ROADSIDE VIEWS It is the way of tra
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RUINS Passing the gutted neighborho
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WATER SPRITE Who made you, this ful
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It draws us, real and unreal mortal
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Time is an endless line wound in a
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A shaman sat here, useless for hunt
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AT THE COKE OVENS I wanted to see m
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I played here as a child, amid the
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Moving to field and orchard, Ben na
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THE CEMETERY BY THE LAKE Edinboro L
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I miss that tree. If one of the gra
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You did not know the gourd was holl
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who lured me with promises and sea-
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In the scant shade of his splintere
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It was you who raised the child in
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GANYMEDE 1 Night after night the pa
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2 The boy felt the tense of lightni
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Beauty too soft for marble, subtle
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5 He summons the troupe of ageless
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The boy did not resist, but let his
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8 Ganymede thinks only of Zeus. No
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10 I like to think of the gods stil
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THE RANSOM OF GANYMEDE 1 THE TEMPLE
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2 THE SIBYL AT DIDYMOS It is a plac
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“What would we shepherds want wit
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With this, the Sybil collapses unco
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enduring the seismic embrace of her
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Yet Hera hesitates. She knows the G
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and there, trembling and pale, the
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3 GANYMEDE’S PLEA Ganymede offers
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a plaything, upstart and crude. Jea
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“It’s really a mercy I turn the
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T H I N G S S E E N I N G R A V E Y
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2 SACRIFICE Before a cenotaph in ci
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(Silt, fish, flotsam flow from Youg
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4 NIGHT SHIFT At two in the morning
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They watch for a long time, wait fo
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An ectoplasmic virgin blushes, aver
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for this night of nights, summer’
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8 SALEM At Salem the burying ground
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9 THE FORGOTTEN GRAVESTONE At Swan
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THE McWILLIAMS’ COFFEE TABLE So t
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SCENES FROM A MEXICAN VAMPIRE MOVIE
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3 Things go wrong at the American b
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Never knew what hit them or how a b
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Who wrote the note? The blonde on t
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T H U N D E R P U S S: I N M E M O
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We keep our vigil against the time
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yet terrified, into the hands of th
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nothing would daunt your interest i
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I watched you dreaming: the twitch
Page 205 and 206: 7 We became one person, shards of t
Page 207 and 208: It was not done in a daze. The sun
Page 209 and 210: A T L O V E C R A F T ’S G R A V
Page 211 and 212: 2 We stand about, a handful swellin
Page 213 and 214: Earth reels beneath our feet into t
Page 215 and 216: 5 Later a golden moon lifts up, swo
Page 217 and 218: LOW TIDE “The tide was flowing ou
Page 219 and 220: Then why should a fireball plummet
Page 221 and 222: In the stillness of museum night, t
Page 223 and 224: And there, the steeple on distant F
Page 225 and 226: prisoners un-decapitated, toxins un
Page 227 and 228: a literary man, to be sure, a lawye
Page 229 and 230: “I fear the wine speaks now. Perh
Page 231 and 232: Here Pabodie would say no more, but
Page 233 and 234: unquenchable, to fall into her arms
Page 235 and 236: and flying across the parlor to him
Page 237 and 238: so that these seeds transcend to se
Page 239 and 240: HERE AT THE POINT Secret transcript
Page 241 and 242: Those Lovecraft fans are the worst.
Page 243 and 244: TO THE ARC OF THE SUBLIME In nights
Page 245 and 246: We are the scourge of entropy. We s
Page 248 and 249: ABOUT THE POEMS The following notes
Page 250 and 251: DEER HUNTERS was inspired by a trip
Page 252 and 253: INDIAN ROCK SHELTER recounts an eve
Page 254 and 255: SCENES FROM A MEXICAN VAMPIRE MOVIE
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