Poet's Choice

Three clear days
and then a sudden storm --
the waxwings, having
feasted on the pyracantha,
perch in the yard
on an upended pine, and face
into the slanting rain.
I think they are a little drunk.

"I was making this gathering," Hass adds, "which pleased me, the waxwings that always pass through at this time of year, the discarded Christmas tree they perched in, and the first January storm, as if I had finally defined a California season -- when Rachel came down the walk and went into the house. I typed out the poem -- the birds giddy with Janus, the two-faced god -- and then went in to say hello."

ROBERT HASS ON RITA DOVE

When Rita Dove was a young poet living in Europe, she wrote several poems about women saints. They are to be found in her second book, Museum (Carnegie-Mellon Univ.). I thought of them when I read a poem from her most recent book, On the Bus With Rosa Parks (Norton).

Rosa

Now she sat there,
the time right inside a place
so wrong it was ready.

That trim name with
its dream of a bench
to rest on. Her sensible coat.

Doing nothing was the doing:
the clean flame of her gaze
carved by a camera flash.

How she stood up
when they bent down to retrieve
her purse. That courtesy.

This stunning small poem does so much to capture the spirit of the time and of great-souled Rosa Parks in a few words. It made me think how much Rita Dove's poems are about the right to a vivid inner life. One of her most moving poems on this subject comes from her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, Thomas and Beulah (Carnegie-Mellon Univ.), a sequence of narrative poems about an ordinary and remarkable African-American family. Beulah, in this poem, is neither saint nor activist, but a woman in a life full of the demands of nurturing, trying to hold onto some corner of herself that belongs to her.

Daystar

She wanted a little room for thinking:
but she saw diapers steaming on the line,
a doll slumped behind the door.

So she lugged a chair behind the garage
to sit out the children's naps.