Santa Clara County Poet Laureate Blog

Claustrophilia
Alice Fulton

This is my second favorite poem at the moment. It would be my first favorite if I did not have such a strong lingering memory of the pack-punching final line in the other, temporarily-lost-on-my-desk favorite poem: “the operative word in all alone is all.”  Fulton’s poem is a wonderful collage of images and emotional cycles. It, too, is about the need for more than just one’s self. Her humor is perfect: romance dressed in leg irons, ground to a velvet. She captures a female mindset of deep yet glib self-observation.

Susan Krane
Oshman Executive Director
San Jose Museum of Art

Claustrophilia

It’s just me throwing myself at you,
romance as usual, us times us,

not lust but moxibustion,
a substance burning close

to the body as possible
without risk of immolation.

Nearness without contact
causes numbness. Analgesia.

Pins and needles. As the snugness
of the surgeon’s glove causes hand fatigue.

At least this procedure
requires no swag or goody bags,

stuff bestowed upon the stars
at their luxe functions.

There’s no dress code,
though leg irons

are always appropriate.
And if anyone says what the hell

are you wearing in Esperanto—
Kion diable vi portas?—

tell them anguish
is the universal language.

Stars turn to train wrecks
and my heart goes out,

admirers gush. Ground to a velvet!
But never mind the downside,

mon semblable, mon crush.
Love is just the retaliation of light.

It is so profligate, you know,
so rich with rush.

Alice Fulton
 The New Yorker,
August 2, 2010

Among School Children
William Butler Yeats

I love the richness of Yeats’s fine mind listening to itself, the interiority, the intertwining of memory and learning reaching towards understanding. Between first and second verse, my favorite stanza break. As he stands smiling before the children, a longing for his lost love breaks over him. Heart feels the gulf between public image and private self. At last, magnificent stanza eight – answer that is riddle.

I taught this poem for many years. One day I looked around the classroom and realized I was a “sixty year old smiling man.” Now, I’ve outlived Yeats, that great poet of old age.

Nils Peterson
Professor Emeritus, San José State University
Poet Laureate Emeritus, Santa Clara County

Saadi, 13th century Persian poet

I believe this poem very eloquently states the common roots and linkages that all of us have as part of the human race. The analogy of the human body to the human race sagaciously demonstrates that if one person is suffering, it is the suffering of all humankind. By this assertion our insouciance to other humans’ pain anywhere questions our worthiness to be considered as part of the human community. Thus, our common elements as part of the human race clearly eclipse any differences that we may perceive by any set of measures or metrics.

The English translation of the poem is posted in the halls of the United Nations.

Mohammad H. Qayoumi, President
California State University, East Bay
Incoming President, San José State University

Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul,

If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.

If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.

Saadi

What We Want
Linda Pastan

I love this poem because it captures the mystery and the ache of the yearning for that which has no name and cannot be found in the outer world, not even in the face of a loved one. Though we search the outer world, the thing we long for responds to us in our innermost world, our dreams, as we “fall past” it, but awaken with aching arms.  It is hidden yet right before our eyes “as the stars are there even in full sun.” I especially love that the poet does not try to “teach” us or  name what it is that we seek, but instead leaves the mystery there before us.

Parthenia M. Hicks
Los Gatos Poet Laureate

What We Want

What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names—
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don’t remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.

My Hobby
Shel Silverstein

Life is all about enjoying the little things. This poem to me is all about finding joy and creating your own. It also speaks to the child in me, which I tap into as frequently as I possibly can.

Vision
Robert Penn Warren

This poem by Robert Penn Warren speaks volumes to me with the opening lines. “The vision will come—the Truth be revealed—but not even in its vaguest nature you know—ah truth.” The poet speaks of eternal concepts of life—vision, truth, grace, virtue, and even death. Yet, he describes human understanding through existential images such as beds too wide, illicit meetings, crummy cafés, hospital rooms, surgical cuts, and blurred windows.

Ruth E. Kifer
University Library Dean
San Jose State University 

Vision

The vision will come—the Truth be revealed—but
Not even its vaguest nature you know—ah, truth

About what? But deep in the sibilant dark
That conviction irregularly

Gleams like fox-fire in sump-wood where,
In distance, lynx-scream or direful owl-stammer

Freezes the blood in a metaphysical shudder—which
Might be the first, feather-fine brush of Grace. Such

An event may come with night rain on roof, season changing
And bed too wide; or say, when the past is de-fogged

And old foot tracks of folly show fleetingly clear before
Rationalization again descends, as from seaward.

Or when the shadow of pastness teasingly
Lifts and you recollect having caught—when, when?—

A glint of the nature of virtue like
The electrically exposed white of a flicker’s

Rump feathers at the moment it flashes for the black thicket.
Or when, even, in a section of the city

Where no acquaintance would ever pass,
You watch snowflakes slash automobile lights

As you move toward the first
Illicit meeting, naturally at a crummy

Café. Your pace slows. You see her
Slip from the cab, dash for the door, dark fur coat

Collar up, head down. Inside,
As you order two highballs,

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At the Zoo
A.A. Milne

One of my favorites is “At the Zoo” by A.A. Milne. Everything in it brings out memories of childhood and innocence, times when life was just plain fun and you were learning new things. And it avoids the silliness of Dr. Seuss while still being silly!

Steve Tate
Mayor, City of Morgan Hill

At the Zoo

There are lions and roaring tigers,
and enormous camels and things,
There are biffalo-buffalo-bisons,
and a great big bear with wings.
There’s a sort of a tiny potamus,
and a tiny nosserus too—
But I gave buns to the elephant
when I went down to the Zoo!

There are badgers and bidgers and bodgers,
and a Super-in-tendent’s House,
There are masses of goats, and a Polar,
and different kinds of mouse,
And I think there’s a sort of a something
which is called a wallaboo—
But I gave buns to the elephant
when I went down to the Zoo!

If you try to talk to the bison,
he never quite understands;
You can’t shake hands with a mingo—
he doesn’t like shaking hands.
And lions and roaring tigers
hate saying, “How do you do?” —
But I give buns to the elephant
when I go down to the Zoo!

A.A. Milne (1882-1956)