A Beautiful Sound

Hearing that Joyce Sutphen was recently named Minnesota Poet Laureate by the state Governor is to my ears much like the effect of her poetry—a beautiful sound indeed. Governor Mark Dayton made the announcement on August 23 that Sutphen will succeed current laureate Robert Bly, who was named the state’s first official poet laureate in 2007. For anyone who has read the work of Sutphen, it shouldn’t be hard to understand what the selection committee saw in the poet and her body of work. Sutphen’s earliest memories of poetry harken back to time spent with her father growing up on their farm near St. Joseph, Minnesota. “He always made little funny rhymes for us all through the day,” she recalled. “We’d try to keep up with him, but mostly we just stood back and let him go.” From those days she continues to draw inspiration, but has also noted that what she sees of Minnesota from her car window on the drive to school and home again is a revelation as well. An award-winning poet who teaches literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in St Peter, she says about her particular spot of Minnesota, “I live on a 100-acre marsh. I’ve written about the birds, the deer, the wind in the reeds…” All of this is evident in the five collections of poetry she has published. Her work has appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Minnesota Monthly and North Dakota Review. She has also been a guest on A Prairie Home Companion and is a favorite of Garrison Keillor and The Writer’s Almanac.

Twice before the poems of Joyce Sutphen have found a place in these pages, the first time back in December of 2009, the second time in January of 2010. The two poems below are both from her most recent book of collected work, First Words (2010).

THE BEFORE I WAS BORN BLUES

I wasn’t born the year she sang that song,

but I miss it anyway. I miss the

clarinet that starts it out; I miss the

way the lady says he done her wrong.

I would’ve liked a red-feathered hat,

a tailored suit and high-heeled shoes, a pearl

necklace—a single strand—and leather gloves.

Nothing I wear will ever look like that.

There’s something about the saxophone

and the piano slightly off the beat

that makes me imagine someone handsome

who’s just about to fall in love with me,

and god, I wish I knew what happens when

he turns and…too bad—I wasn’t born then.

WATCHING MY FATHER SHAVE

I see my father’s face in the mirror,

stripping off the white mask that wraps

along his cheekbone, over his mouth,

and, chin jutted up, down his neck.

The silver razor tap-taps the sink;

the ivory-handled brush swishes back

and forth in the cup, and every time

he turns the handle, the faucet squeaks.

I watch the steaming water fill the sink,

and when he splashes it on his face,

the mask dissolves into his waiting hands;

the towel turns on the wooden roller.

How I regret being a girl and never

being able to find myself this way,

to prove how steady I am,

how close to the edge I can come.

A Dollar and a Half’s Worth

Philip Levine is what many describe as a poet of American urban working-class life. In much of his poetry is a voice that speaks simply, of simple things for those whose emotions and perhaps imaginations are restrained by a life of hard work. Librarian of Congress James Billington characterized the poet’s work as being ‘…about the hard work we do to make sense of our lives.’ After studying at Wayne State University and the University of Iowa he worked at a string of factory jobs before starting to teach at colleges and universities. The 1991 collection, What Work Is won the National Book Award and the 1994 collection, The Simple Truth received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Mr Levine has published numerous collections of his work since 1963. Earlier this week he was named America’s Poet Laureate.

THE SIMPLE TRUTH

I bought a dollar and a half’s worth of small red potatoes,

took them home, boiled them in their jackets

and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt.

Then I walked through the dried fields

on the edge of town. In middle June the light

hung on in the dark furrows at my feet,

and in the mountain oaks overhead the birds

were gathering for the night, the jays and mockers

squawking back and forth, the finches still darting

into the dusty light. The woman who sold me

the potatoes was from Poland; she was someone

out of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglasses

praising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetables

at the road-side stand and urging me to taste

even the pale, raw sweet corn trucked all the way,

she swore, from New Jersey. “Eat, eat” she said,

“Even if you don’t I’ll say you did.”

Some things

you know all your life. They are so simple and true

they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,

they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,

the glass of water, the absence of light gathering

in the shadows of picture frames, they must be

naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.

My friend Henri and I arrived at this together in 1965

before I went away, before he began to kill himself,

and the two of us to betray our love. Can you taste

what I’m saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch

of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious,

it stays in the back of your throat like a truth

you never uttered because the time was always wrong,

it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken,

made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt,

in a form we have no words for, and you live on it.