The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Tue 1/29/2008)

[RetroLounge]

Refrigerator, 1957

More like a vault -- you pull the handle out
and on the shelves: not a lot,
and what there is (a boiled potato
in a bag, a chicken carcass
under foil) looking dispirited,
drained, mugged. This is not
a place to go in hope or hunger.
But, just to the right of the middle
of the middle door shelf, on fire, a lit-from-within red,
heart red, sexual red, wet neon red,
shining red in their liquid, exotic,
aloof, slumming
in such company: a jar
of maraschino cherries. Three-quarters
full, fiery globes, like strippers
at a church social. Maraschino cherries, maraschino,
the only foreign word I knew. Not once
did I see these cherries employed: not
in a drink, nor on top
of a glob of ice cream,
or just pop one in your mouth. Not once.
The same jar there through an entire
childhood of dull dinners -- bald meat,
pocked peas and, see above,
boiled potatoes. Maybe
they came over from the old country,
family heirlooms, or were status symbols
bought with a piece of the first paycheck
from a sweatshop,
which beat the pig farm in Bohemia,
handed down from my grandparents
to my parents
to be someday mine,
then my child's?
They were beautiful
and, if I never ate one,
it was because I knew it might be missed
or because I knew it would not be replaced
and because you do not eat
that which rips your heart with joy.

Thomas Lux

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Thomas Lux was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1946. He was educated at Emerson College and The University of Iowa. His books of poetry include The Cradle Place (Houghton Mifflin, 2004); The Street of Clocks (2001); New and Selected Poems, 1975-1995 (1997), which was a finalist for the 1998 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; The Blind Swimmer: Selected Early Poems, 1970-1975 (1996); Split Horizon (1994), for which he received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Pecked to Death by Swans (1993); A Boat in the Forest (1992); The Drowned River: New Poems (1990); Half Promised Land (1986); Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy (1983); Massachusetts (1981); Like a Wide Anvil from the Moon the Light (1980); Sunday (1979); Madrigal on the Way Home (1977); The Glassblower's Breath (1976); Memory's Handgrenade (1972); and The Land Sighted (1970). Thomas Lux also has edited The Sanity of Earth and Grass (1994, with Jane Cooper and Sylvia Winner) and has translated Versions of Campana (1977).

Lux has been the poet in residence at Emerson College (1972-1975), and a member of the Writing Faculty at Sarah Lawrence College and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. He has also taught at the Universities of Iowa, Michigan, and California at Irvine, among others. He has been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry and has received three National Endowment for the Arts grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship


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:hi:

RL

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. ~

"and because you do not eat
that which rips your heart with joy."

[RetroLounge]

3. ...

:hi:

RL

[xchrom]

2. like strippers at a church social

[RetroLounge]

6. ...

:hi:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. My dear Retro!

Oh, perfect!

I love this...

What a contrast, the bald meat and boiled potatoes...

With the glowing from within maraschino cherries!

But these lines especially resonate with me:

...because you do not eat
that which rips your heart with joy.

Thank you so much...

:hug:

[hisownpetard]

5. Awesome. IMO, one of the best poets alive today and probably the most generous and beloved

teacher of poetry in the country. Great reader, too. If you ever have a chance to hear him read in person,
you'll see (and hear) why he is personally responsible for turning thousands of people into poetry fans.

Thanks, RL!:thumbsup: :hi: :thumbsup: