NATIONAL POETRY MONTH . . . CONTINUED

“Words alone are certain good.” That is the tenth line in the first poem in William Butler Yeats’s Collected Poems. Pretty conspicuous. Words are also literally “the stuff of poetry.” Perhaps that’s why I’m drawn to poems that draw to themselves a reader’s awareness of any and every poem being what W. H. Auden referred to so accurately as “a verbal contraption.” (Auden described his initial engagement with any poem thus: “Here is a verbal contraption. How does it work?”)

Certainly that was part of what caught my eye in “Poem I Cannot Read Aloud,” included in Getting Lost in a City Like This, the hot-off-the-press volume of poems by Jack Anderson. A longtime NYC-based dance writer and critic, Anderson steps lightly with his theme here, yet his deftly-phrased and nicely-balanced free verse couplets (how this poem “works”) leave a satisfying imprint on this reader.

POEM I CANNOT READ ALOUD

There is this ancient word:
Caryatid.

I know what it means,
Am fascinated by its image:

A stoic noble marble maiden
Who props up a building with her head.

There are male caryatids, too.
(Parenthetical question:

What are they called?
Answer at the end of this poem.)

Ever since I first saw that word
I’ve never known how to pronounce it.

Where does the accent fall?
And is the “y” like “eye” or “ee”?

If I ever peeked at a dictionary once,
I forgot what it said,

And I never want
to look it up again.

O mysterious word, be like that maiden,
Stay always patient, stony, mute,

Dear word I must never learn to pronounce
For, should I do so, this poem will crumble,

This poem kept alive
Only by its silence.

So do not ever say
“Caryatid” in my hearing!

(Male caryatids are called atlantes.
Does anyone know how that word in pronounced?)

Jack Anderson’s tenth collection of poems, Getting Lost in a City Like This was sent my way by my friend and colleague Mark Pawlak, one of the founding (and continuing) editors of the book’s publisher, Hanging Loose Press.