In Their Own Words
Matthew Rohrer on “The Winter Sun”
The Winter Sun
A cold day is a prison
a little music breaks it open
clouded and angry like a child
let it roll all over me
I know love is the answer
to everyone’s question and I know
they aren’t listening it is enough
to have this leg across mine
and break open bottles of wine
over the books from the library
while my mind feels like a tide pool
a hopeless case writhing and beautiful
what is wrong is only temporary
if you bend like a weed in a stream
the winter sun is this year
the most annoying it’s ever been
at eye level all the way
down the street like a tree
that’s particularly obnoxious
at the end of the block
I battle through
my whole face locked against it
walking down Broadway
turning myself sideways
to pass through the beautiful crowd
a truck selling very small cupcakes
has a line standing beside it
I prefer pie
maybe you’ve read my other poem
it’s called PIE
wherein I decide the most tragic thing
about Li Po is no pie
in ancient China
all these people waiting for cupcakes
are blessed imagine their lives
compared to Li Po’s
which I do as I walk south on Broadway
they aren’t sick shitting their pants
in a camp by the sea
shaking all day in the sun
rattling at night knees drawn up
why do I think of this
the winter sun can’t hurt me
the diplomatic corps works for me
while I sleep they fend off
the Arabian king when he says
cut the head off the snake
I buy wine in the morning
for the night when my love
sits beside me on the couch
kind of manic the cold air
curling on itself outside the windows
My face breaks into a smile
all the dogs at the hotel
for the dogs behind the glass
back and forth back and forth
I have nothing to give them
or the man so utterly broken
standing a little under the scaffolding
his pained voice like a flower
you nearly crush on your way
then I think of Walt Whitman
who told me in his book
to stand up for the stupid
and crazy oh Walt I don’t
have any change
I walk down some stairs
to the train where I disappear
into an essay only to emerge
with the train at the canal
the winter sun like a lollipop
a kid dropped in the sky
that’s stuck there
an icy cold action beyond meaning
burning itself up like it’s sick
on the inside
an inelegant spray
of unacceptable light
across the city where the essay
still holds power I barely escape
pulling myself out of the train
at my stop my phone waits
to tell me my plans tonight
are exactly like every other night
then I sleep and just before
I fall asleep a terrible wave
destroys a village smashes the huts
water coming through the woven grass
the kids washed away and drowned
trees stripped down to their skins
and then suddenly like nothing happened
stars come out the water disappears
I get out of the jeep
to buy coconut from a kid
who won’t speak she only says
a little cough in her hand
in the bay bright behind her
a great cry from the natives
and the birds sort of swells
to surround us
like the smell of chorizo soup
from the kitchen in their hut
which tasted worse than it should
in the sun while a dream
(I was by now asleep)
said to me that I was
made of love and made of stars
which should be enough for anyone
in a house on the prairie
only waking up when the night
which felt like a blue blanket
and a woman’s perfume called me out
to the car and the stars were my guides
because the roads were all straight
out of there driving for hours
through pin oaks without their leaves
like little girls turning themselves away
but the Spring is a lie
that is welcome on the trains
everyone’s through coughing
and the cardinal is not alone anymore
in a mist and seagulls
sometimes fading out in the clouds
now she speaks to every bird who’ll hear her
in the voice of buds opening on every branch
which I hear while I observe
the park enter my constricted lungs
a little break then I breathe it back out
still I feel I can’t lose
I see myself in a window
loping like sasquatch
(this is when I’m still young)
I’m not walking kids to school
not carrying everyone’s laundry down the block
around the corner bringing home milk
I risked everything for beautiful hair
now it’s gone but I speak now of coconut
shredded in candies
sprinkled on waffles
the roasted kind the street vendors sell with peanuts
its rich milk from a can in a curry
and the chunks sold by girls
on a beach after a wave
washed them away with their brothers
only their ghosts come meet us
when I hop from the jeep
with my money which they accept
though they’re ghosts
and the sun on those islands
was so low like I could bat it away
even seeing cars wrecked in trees
trying to cross with my father a stony creek
it was hard to feel haunted in that light
and the lianas indistinguishable from birds
very rare orchids oozing a sap
that transports you a few moments
into the future
or little grains of phosphorescent sand
on the beach
the little ghosts
almost seemed embarrassed
taking my money for the coconut
a whitewashed chapel raised its voice
against the wind
whereas I thought
especially on top of the volcano
the previous morning
it was nature calling the shots
and the wind stirring the palms
was only part of the wind
like a cat flicking its tail
every so often while it sleeps
there is something that’s much bigger
than a chapel ringing its bell
and much later pushing N.’s stroller along the park
the Brooklyn winter without even thinking about us here
whips its tail the true winter
is out there like a Russian girl on the train
legs crossed smirking at everything
that’s her eye blinding the city
a winter low until the library
blocks it out with the wisdom that has not died
carved in gold and we pass
through automatic doors under constant surveillance
from the apartments where the shut-ins watched me smoke
(years before this)
a soggy joint under an umbrella
pushing the stroller
if S. succumbs to the pitter-patter
I remember thinking
I can read the Russian poets
for one hour
like a horse just standing there
while the rain crystallizes over me
in my head there’s an argument
about art history
the clouds win
then I see an old man
slowly through rain making his way
with no expression on his face
unless that too is an expression
and I think of elementary school
30 years ago
some of us grow up to become this
very slow man
or the little ghosts by the bay
who sell coconut
the palm trees visible through their bodies
sunlight on the water
like a ship loaded with sequins
has gone down
On “The Winter Sun”
Looking at the poems in my most recent book, Army of Giants, I realized there’s not much reason to write an “In Their Own Words” about most of them, because most of them are remarkably transparent. Transparent in how they were made. Which was actually a big focus of mine while writing the book. About 90% of the poems were written in some form—the occasional iambic pentameter, or syllabics, or my at-that-time-favorite four words per line, or poems about trees shaped like trees, etc. For instance, the poem “49” was written on my 49th birthday, and each stanza is 49 syllables. That’s not much of an essay. And I like this about these poems, that they’re transparent. I’m not trying to hide that they’re made things, and I certainly am not trying to hide their content.
But one poem in there still sort of bemuses — “The Winter Sun.” This was first published years ago in a chapbook by Dikembe Press, a small press Jeff Alessandrelli started before founding the mighty Fonograf Editions. I had been playing with five words per line for years because of the amazing Rain by Jon Woodward, but felt a little guilty stealing that form from him (though I think he stole it from Zukofsky) and had been writing four-word-per-line poems for a long time. I thought: Can you go any smaller? My friend Noelle Kocot had published an entire book of poems that were only one word per line (Phantom Pains of Madness), but what about, I wondered, two words per line? It’s not great, is the answer to that question. And what about three? So I wrote this very long poem called “The Winter Sun” using exactly three words per line.
What I liked about making the poem that way was that I couldn’t really accomplish much in a line, so there was a necessary continuous energy pushing the poem forward; each line was sort of the beginning of an idea, or a continuation of a prior one, but on their own the lines didn’t usually feel finished . . . and so it pushed me forward. I’d been fascinated by how people write long poems (I usually didn’t, before this book), and I wondered what their “engines” were. How did they keep it going? Usually, I’m looking for the off-ramp as soon as I start a poem. So this was a revelation in a way, except I didn’t like it when I finished it. The lines were just too short. And too regulated. It looked bad. I liked how the constant forward movement led me to unexpected places—memories of raising my two kids as a stay-at-home dad, remembered dreams, things I saw walking through New York City, etc—but it seemed too controlled. What if I ignore how it was made, I wondered, and smooshed it all together like a “real” poem? And how would I decide how that’s done? So I started by combining the lines into groups of six words, which is less obvious to the reader’s eyes. And lots of the poem is in that form still, but I realized that many times I’d just have to ignore any sense of how I’d made it and focus on how I wanted it to sound, which is almost always the same as how it looks.
I still don’t know how to think about this conundrum, though, going forward: do we, as people who make works of art, stay true to the generative impulse and generative structure that made them, because that’s how they were made? Or ultimately is our job to make the poem work, to change it around and do whatever it takes to make it look and sound good, even if that obscures an important aspect of how it was made? What if you wrote a sonnet but realized that, actually, it would be better in a totally different form? I just said I still don’t know the answer to this question. But then I realize, no, of course I do, the answer is to make it awesome, even if that means your intentions get thrown away.
