Famous Ithaca Poems by Famous Poets

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Wittgensteins Ladder

 "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: 
 anyone who understands them eventually recognizes them as 
 nonsensical, when he has used them -- as steps -- to climb 
 up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder 
 after he has climbed up it.)" -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus 

1. 

The first time...Read more of this...

At Ithaca

 Over and back, 
the long waves crawl 
and track the sand with foam; 
night darkens, and the sea 
takes on that desperate tone 
of dark that wives put on 
when all their love is done.

Over and back, 
the tangled thread falls slack, 
over and up and on; 
over and all is sewn; 
now while I bind the end, 
I...Read more of this...

Shake The Superflux!

 I like walking on streets as black and wet as this one
now, at two in the solemnly musical morning, when everyone else
in this town emptied of Lestrygonians and Lotus-eaters
is asleep or trying or worrying why
they aren't asleep, while unknown to them Ulysses walks
into the shabby apartment I live in, humming and feeling
happy with the avant-garde weather we're having,
the winds...Read more of this...

When A Woman Loves A Man

 When she says Margarita she means Daiquiri.
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window."

He's supposed to know that.

When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia
or he is in Boston,...Read more of this...

Big Hair

 Ithaca, October 1993: Jorie went on a lingerie
tear, wanting to look like a moll
in a Chandler novel. Dinner, consisting of three parts gin 
and one part lime juice cordial, was a prelude to her hair.
There are, she said, poems that can be written 
only when the poet is clad in black underwear. 

But that's Jorie for you. Always cracking...Read more of this...

The Art Of Poetry

 To gaze at a river made of time and water
And remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.

To see in every day and year...Read more of this...

All Women in One

You shall not stop or hesitate and sway 
Until you pass through the forest, 
And compare the beauty of the summer's day and night— 
Until you arrive in your own Ithaca. 

There is always Venus; 
New Elissa to build new Carthage, 
The new Kingdom of Light. 

You shall not stop until you find Venus: 
One woman in all, 
And all...Read more of this...

Circes Grief

 In the end, I made myself
Known to your wife as
A god would, in her own house, in
Ithaca, a voice
Without a body: she
Paused in her weaving, her head turning
First to the right, then left
Though it was hopeless of course
To trace that sound to any
Objective source: I doubt
She will return to her loom
With what she knows now. When
You see her again,...Read more of this...

Canto I

 And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us onward with bellying canvas,
Crice's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we...Read more of this...

Impossible To Tell

 to Robert Hass and in memory of Elliot Gilbert


Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn,
Bashõ and his friends go out to view the moon;
In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter,

The secret courtesy that courses like ichor
Through the old form of the rude, full-scale joke,
Impossible to tell in writing. "Bashõ"

He named himself, "Banana Tree": banana
After the plant some grateful students...Read more of this...

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