Mark Ford: Selected Poems - Softcover

Ford, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1566893496 ISBN 13: 9781566893497

Publisher: Coffee House Press, 2014

Synopsis

Selected Poems charts Mark Ford's growing complexity as a writer and his mastery and use of form. John Ashbery calls Ford's work "refreshing" and it's that exuberance and goodwill that animates the poems, giving them their spontaneity and leavening the grim with comic élan and joy. Myth, history, and the everyday are all at play in this wonderfully diverse collection.

Invisible Assets:

After he threw he through a
plate glass window, nature seemed that much closer.

Even the dastardly division in society
might be healed by a first-rate glazier.

Of course, on Sundays families still picnicked
boldly on the village green, and afterwards

marveled at the blacksmith's glowing forge—
how strong they all were in those days!

And yet how small! Even a man only six foot tall
was then esteemed a veritable giant.

Surely the current furor over architecture
would have evoked from them only pitying smiles.

Meanwhile the market for landscapes has never
been firmer. This view, for instance, includes

seven counties, and a bull charging around in its paddock.

Mark Ford was born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1962. He has published three collections of poetry and a biography of the French writer Raymond Roussel and is the editor of Frank O'Hara's Selected Poems. He has also translated Roussel's New Impressions of Africa and is the editor of London: A History in Verse. He lives in London, England.

About this title

About the Author

Mark Ford was born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1962. He has published three collections of poetry and a biography of the French writer Raymond Roussel. He has also translated Roussel's New Impressions of Africa, and is the editor of London: A History in Verse. He lives in London.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Selected Poems

By Mark Ford

Coffee House Press

Copyright © 2014 Mark Ford
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-56689-349-7

Contents

FROM LANDLOCKED (1992), 
If You Could Only See Me Now!, 1, 
Christmas, 2, 
Landlocked, 4, 
Street Violence, 5, 
General Knowledge, 6, 
Stocking Up, 7, 
Invisible Assets, 8, 
Daily, 9, 
Winter Underwear, 10, 
I?m, 11, 
Free the Spirit, 12, 
Snowfall, 13, 
Second-Hand Clothes, 16, 
Unpicking the Knot, 17, 
A Head for Heights, 18, 
The Queer Smell of Gas, 19, 
Policing Beaconsfield, 20, 
Soft Sift, 21, 
Coastal, 22, 
Affirmative Action, 23, 
A Close Friend, 24, 
In the Adirondacks, 25, 
High Performance, 26, 
A Swimming Pool Full of Peanuts, 27, 
Cross Section, 30, 
Kid Crazy, 31, 
Super Black Thursday, 32, 
Demise, 33, 
Then She Said She Had to Go, 34, 
Funny Peculiar, 35, 
Last to Leave, 36, 
Manifest Destiny, 37, 
Chattering Teeth, 38, 
Under the Bridge, 39, 
Resting Up, 40, 
Ledgers, 41, 
Outing, 42, 
FROM SOFTSIFT (2001), 
Looping the Loop, 45, 
Plan Nine, 48, 
The Great Divide, 49, 
Contingency Plans, 50, 
The Long Man, 51, 
Jack Rabbit, 52, 
Early to Bed, Early to Rise, 54, 
Misguided Angel, 55, 
Hooked, 56, 
I Wish, 58, 
Reproduction, 59, 
He Aims, 60, 
Twenty-Twenty Vision, 62, 
She Spears, 63, 
Penumbra, 65, 
We Crave, 66, 
The Casket, 67, 
You Must, 69, 
Arrowheads, 71, 
Snags and Syndromes, 72, 
Inside, 73, 
?Stop Knocking ...?, 75, 
FROM SIXCHILDREN (2011), 
Dominion, 79, 
The Death of Petronius, 80, 
The Gaping Gulf, 82, 
Six Children, 84, 
International Bridge-Playing Woman, 85, 
John Hall, 87, 
Lower Case, 88, 
The Death of Hart Crane, 90, 
The Passing of the Passenger Pigeon, 92, 
White Nights, 93, 
The Snare Unbroken, 95, 
Signs of the Times, 96, 
They Drove, 98, 
Hourglass, 99, 
After Africa, 102, 
Ravished, 103, 
Gregory of Nazianzus, 105, 
A Natural History, 107, 
The Münster Anabaptists, 110, 
Dithering, 112, 
Rinse and Repeat, 113, 
Decree Nisi, 114, 
Masse und Macht, 115, 
Wooster and Jeeves, 117, 
Released, 119, 
Decree Absolute, 122, 
The Confidence Man, 123, 
Fragments, 124, 
NEW POEMS, 
Dark Matter, 127, 
Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, 129, 
Show Time, 131, 
Streets ii, 134, 
Unreal, 135, 
Adrift, 138, 
In Loco Parentis, 139, 
Aloft, 140, 
World Enough, 142, 
Under the Lime Trees, 144, 
Notes, 149, 

CHAPTER 1

    If You Could Only See Me Now!

    When I'm in power I will pursue landlords
    across the country. Right now, life
    has me boxed in, and my cries for help drift inscrutably
    around willows, oak trees, and grief-stricken elms.
    I left home young, and since then I've roamed
    and roamed, following my nose, through deserts and cities,
    always alone, in forests, living in trees—
    What a life!

      They say every character is complex,
    but I am tangled up like spaghetti; I lie here, observing the stars,
    a stiffening breeze tickling my feet, my pillow
    a petrified log. The birds chirruping in the early dawn
    ignore me, while I dream I am a lunatic, striding the land,
    scattering seed and crushing the asphodel
    beneath my pitiless heel;
    but finally the day arrives,
    bursting softly over the horizon.

      For the West
    has been ruined. You left under a cloud
    but I love you. If you could only see me
    now! I stand here, incompetent,
    tracing figures on a map, fully dressed
    as if it were already evening, enraged
    and impenitent, clenching my teeth.


    Christmas

    I very much enjoyed your latest book I lied having
    NOT read it. Hurrah! We're all of us bright as chickens
    As if Jack liked Chrissie and Chrissie liked Jack.
    Ah, we had a good season, then, we drew all five fixtures!
    For Christmas, I asked my mother to knit me a tie
    To go with my tunic. "No!" she snapped,
    "Go out and buy one." So off I samba—
    When it was Sunday and all the shops were shut—
    The streets are full enough though and there are
    Some fine ankles showing through—my fertile imagination!—
    I see miniskirts where others see only galoshes,
    I can count all my exes at the bus stop
    All over with tinsel, polluting the atmosphere with
    Their dirty breaths. It is lunchtime
    So I hail a friend munching a pastrami sandwich—
    He spotted me and then he lay flat in the snow.
    "Stop playing hookey," I yelled, "you're grown up now!"
    Then I thought—but what if something is really wrong?
    I screeched to a halt beside his head
    The snow spooning up into my sandals, and I shouted
    "Get up, Jake," and I toed him. Any moment
    I expect him to grab me playfully by the ankle,
    I quite liked the idea of a tussle in the Christmas snow
    On Main Street. He didn't budge though.
    Only the yellow stains of the mustard from his sandwich drooled
    Scenting the crisp air. "Ah, come on Jake,
    You think this a rodeo?" I whisper to him,
    "Why not get up?" And I threaten him with
    The police, arrest, his sister in tears on the phone.
    And I poured hot coffee down his throat, murmuring
    "But it's the season of goodwill, no one plays for keeps
    Over Christmas." What kept him down there,
    Face in the slush, people must've seen him eating
    Pastrami sandwiches before?

      Apparently not. I waited
    All afternoon by him, chain-smoking his Camels,
    And then I watched his feet disappear into the ambulance
    That arrived after dark. I stamped his damp sandwich
    Back into the snow. People, I thought,
    Will find this when the thaw sets in
    And wonder about it, shopping or on their way to work,
    Birds like sparrows will nibble the sesame seeds
    And wish it were pumpernickel,
    It will liven up their Easter.


    Landlocked

    See, no hands! she cried
    Sailing down the turnpike,
    And flapped her arms like a pigeon,
    And from the backseat Solomon, her spaniel, answered her
    By woofing ever more madly at each passing car!
    What a trek it was out west
    And back again! Weeks on end she spent
    Stranded in the worst motels, poor thing,
    Could never quite make up her mind to go on
    To go back, to stay absolutely where she was.
    Such awful doubts assailed her in the prairie states—
    For days she chewed her favorite gum on the hard shoulder
    And whispered her difficult secrets to the wheat
    Where game Solomon yelped, and, true to form,
    The unmiraculous wheat only rustled through its rosary once more.
    She sent me a postcard from somewhere
    In Missouri, and then again from Amarillo,
    Texas. She said she thought she'd make it
    All the way to sunshine California, but she said
    She couldn't promise she'd like it when she did
    Or even that she'd get all the way over to the ocean there,
    Which didn't surprise me or disappoint me one little bit,
    And I sent one back to an address in Vegas saying,
    Well why should you, unless of course you want to?


    Street Violence

    I asked for nothing better than a five-spot.
    I thought that modest. Whisking around
    On her single stiletto, though, her lips twitching,
    She stared me in the eye so forcefully
    I saw only the familiar words—
    Nothing Doing. I determined there and then
    To take each disappointment as best I could.
    There you have it, once we were so close
    Nothing short of a machete
    Could have separated us. Now ...
    I watched her hail a shiny yellow taxi.
    It was such a wonderful afternoon!
    I moved off down the block, my block,
    Its bright red bricks seemed to watch me,
    There was a sudden breeze fresh in my face
    And the sun was so strong it made my eyes water.
    Too bad, I thought, for her sake,
    That she didn't remember me like she should have.


    General Knowledge

    Atlanta emerged from the ribbed, red soil
    Of Georgia; it now has
    One of the busiest airports in America.

    From there we flew to the cradling arms
    Of New Orleans; here, where the Mississippi
    Ends, perspiring jazz musicians like bulls lock horns.

    It's said that every forty minutes the world is girdled
    By a satellite; with a nail I trace the thin blue
    Veins of the delta winding dubiously toward the sea.


    Stocking Up

    No one lives in the imagination, or if they do
    they probably stink of garlic. What a thought!
    Five o'clock. Everyone's pushing off to the country for the weekend.
    What a jamboree the streets enjoy, sticky
    traffic jams, spouting hydrants, and roofs that catch the red and dying sun.
    While Tom Cat plays with baby, there's Mother
    waving us farewell. "Drive carefully," she cries
    as we pull out, "it's Friday night, remember."
    We slide so easily though through strings of amber traffic lights
    on our smooth journey to the shops, our windows rolled down
    all the way. The light
    lies down beautifully over the new arcade.
    What a lovely evening! My trolley is overflowing
    with supplies. In the low, flat sweep of store window
    my friends and I see ourselves reflected.
    The lot behind us is beginning to fill up,
    could be they'll introduce valet parking at some point. Pleased,
    we fill up the trunk and go back for more
    ("You again" the cash girl joked us),
    enough to feed us and our families for
    a part, at least, of the long, hot summer now approaching.


    Invisible Assets

    After he threw her through a
    plate glass window, nature seemed that much closer.

    Even the dastardly divisions in society
    might be healed by a first-rate glazier.

    Of course, on Sundays families still picnicked
    boldly on the village green, and afterwards

    marveled at the blacksmith's glowing forge—
    how strong they all were in those days!

    And yet how small! Even a man only six foot tall
    was then esteemed a veritable giant.

    Surely the current furor over architecture
    would have evoked from them only pitying smiles.

    Meanwhile, the market for landscapes has never
    been firmer. This view, for instance, includes

    seven counties, and a bull charging around in its paddock.


    Daily

    Newspaper clippings drift
    across the Walworth Road,
    and, in the unmentionable cold, the shops
    incline their shutters. I imagine
    chalk dinosaurs erupting from the doorways,
    and a tinkle of glass to accompany
    the carefree motion of their scaly tails ...

    Inside, the soup
    has already congealed inside the single pan
    around whose rim moss sprouts,
    and released into the air the innumerable sightless microbes
    that will later perplex the authorities.
    Hungry pets yelp in locked attics, while we gawp
    as at last the rubbish enters the furnace.
    Turn out the light—some story
    is breaking, crumbling, collapsing
    under the intolerable weight of fresh evidence
    whispered over telephones and hedges: awful
    types prosper and suddenly the rhumba
    is everywhere the rage again, a perfect dance
    for couples or singles, for either in front
    of the mirror or actually on the crowded dance floor.


    Winter Underwear

    How vividly the football flew
    Only he would remember;
    And likewise the dark purple scarves
    In which the body was later wound.

    Until one day speech
    Is merely syntax, and one's head
    Is so full of stratagems
    The tea freezes solid in its pot;

    And a fresh snow covers the plains
    Above which newfangled aircraft constantly
    Maneuver, their vapor trails soft
    And brilliant as the white

    Winter underwear she is even now pulling on.


    I'm

    I'm an aggressive man
    Always walking up escalators
    And sniffing out rights. Sharks
    Infest our local waters,
    You too I despise.

      Night floods the land.
    We must leave now. Armies of flowers
    Advance, stealing the oxygen
    Right out of our mouths.


    Free the Spirit

    So polite he could almost have been
    The villain in a Charlotte Bronte novel—

    If only he knew what we were about to do!
    A school bell rings shrilly in the distance

    And the very seconds prepare to choke
    On their own significance, marked out by an orange kitchen clock.

    Noon arrives nursing its own peculiar threats;
    No wind and a soft meowing sound

    Accompany the last hopes of the vanishing day, and soon
    It will be more than late enough for a drink.

    Leaving, on the other hand, would mean
    Forking out for a new haircut, and arguing

    The whole thing through with the face man again.


    Snowfall

    You must be snug in there
    you and your seventh TV wife
    with a cat and a fire, I swear
    I'm so glad you ended up with that.

    He writes! How wonderful. And
    bloodies his own nails and nose
    for sensation. He has a firm hand-
    shake, why I'm glad of their liaison.

    And she sweet vague snowdrop
    is also carefully posed each morning. Does he
    draw her? They sketch each other! And what could stop
    her melting but amnesia?

    I've a new taste in my mouth all day.
    It rises overnight and hangs there,
    and chokes my breath, all morning I say
    this final straw, now chew it over ... please.

    My system! I fiddle while Rome burns. But find
    another, or more untrampled snow
    which doesn't exist. Kind kind
    rain has pockmarked everything.

    In the afternoon I swept
    the porch and yard and dressed. We left
    in the early evening, under gray skies, the car leapt
    into life, and I relaxed with a sigh into its rich upholstery.

    Hush! my mother said ... The lights
    are green but she won't go.
    Move! Mother, I said, nights
    are long on the Pulaski Skyway.

    We shunt around town for hours.
    Ah, Mother, she must have been held up,
    her car wouldn't start! Even ours
    is unsafe in this blizzard.

    Oh Mother, I'm sorry. Let's go,
    we'll go home. Don't say anything,
    please, I wish we didn't know
    each other so well, drive safely.

    We stare out the car.
    The snow is rain for a while
    and then slush. I find where we are
    on the map. Mother is silent while she drives.

    And it is silence which falls
    with more snow. I don't care, I must speculate.
    Mother ignores my silence and calls
    the weather awful when at last we pull over.

    My dear girl! My sweet friend!
    I compose to you in the hissing dark,
    you are a poker player to the end,
    your breasts are mushrooms without stems ...

    We try the engine again.
    It coughs but it is frozen and out
    of gas. I see the shapes of moving men
    blanket the windows, they rattle the fender.

    Mother! Ghosts! She finds an old
    tartan traveling rug and lies down in
    the back. Get some sleep, I am told.
    Her breathing goes quiet and regular.

    No ghosts. I can conjure up though
    wide-eyed fevers to sweep the nation and
    bloody betrayals and grotesque obesities and low
    heaps of wrecked trucks and other violence.

    What I picture comes true—their livestock frozen in the snow
    and polar bears in our once-warm houses
    and the creaking of glaciers and a wild ice floe
    and death and flames in the desperate cold.

    Only once during the night I tried the radio;
    it was dead, and once I dreamed I was on the phone
    to my sweetheart. Believe me, I said, I can't just go,
    with the frostbite I've got, and hush my mother's still sleeping.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Selected Poems by Mark Ford. Copyright © 2014 Mark Ford. Excerpted by permission of Coffee House Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1566893496
• ISBN 13: 9781566893497
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 168