My Way_ Speeches and Poems - Charles Bernstein

176 WATER IMAGES OF THE NEW YORKER
some arid stanzas before her dam breaks with 'Will water / in the desert
also stagger"; several lines before the end there's also the heart-felt precipitation
of "weep". The third poem in 2/6, by Eleanor Ross Taylor, tells
us "it rained all day" and ends with drinking "a glass of water".
At the risk of water-logging my tale, I'll condense the chronicle a bit
from here out.
2/13: "ancient pools left by the glaciers" (Suzanne Gardiner) and "long
sheets of ice" "stuttering black syllables of rain" by the "swimming pool"
(Edward Hirsch).
2/20: "steam-table" and "pump water" (Amy Clampitt); "raw glimmer
of Atlantic blue" (Eamon Grennan); and Donald Hall's state of the art "Like
an oarless boat through midnight's watery / ghosthouse ... I drift on / January's
tide ... / to repose's shore-where all waves halt."
2/27: "ice-white neon," "spit up, frothing, coming to a boil," "sob"-yet
a "soft dry shout"! Oorie Graham}; and another "flood" Oosephine Jacobsen}.
Somehow the combination of "the weather was nice,""a blueness run
everywhere", "source of desiring", "wellheads" and, incredibly, "turtledoves"
led me to count George Bradley's marginal call in 3/6.
Mark Strand, in the same issue, is more forthcoming with "On the
shores of the darkest known river" on line 2 followed by "steaming",
"muck", "drift upstream, / Against the water's will", "weep", and "frost".
Macklin in 3/13 shares with us "wet gray" "marsh bird" "waves" and "cool
as water", while Joseph Brodsky has the obligatory "tear" and soon after
"moon skims the water" (3/27). Some cartoons on we splash over Revan
Schendler's "bay tide" and "broad shore".
In the April 3rd issue, Robert Mazzocco writes of "the Hudson" and
"taking a leak" and "1'11 water it when I remember it" and Strand has "lake"
"rushing sound" "storms" and "water's edge"; while in 4/10 Linda Bierds
muses about "rippling lines", "lake bass", and "sudden rain".
Seamus Heaney has a particularly appropriate title in 4/17- "Crossings".
This modern master goes on to note that "Running water never disappointed"
and waxes about "the wetness of the bog", "old drains and old
streams", before reaching The New Yorker epiphany par excellence: "the
absolute river / Between us and it all". Not to be outdone, Charles Wright,
in the same issue, writes of stars "east of the river" and of being "Washed
in the colors of paradise" "water-colored"; while Philip Levine manages
only "snow had all but melted".
After Raymond Carver's terse "rain" and "damp" and Clampitt's "overseas"
and "warm snowdrift", we get John Ashbery's "like a fish on a line"
"under the waterfall" and his stabbing sense of where he's publishing­
"A kind of powdered suburban poetry fits / the description" "to read little
signs / in the moss" (4/24). Moss indeedl