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Acknowledgments

Saturday Morning and Grand Alap
first appeared in The Lowell Review.
Poem for the All-Nighters
first appeared in Leviathan.

Tadanori

Sometimes
the poet’s ghost
takes the form
of an old man
gathering firewood
on the mountain.
He'll bring it down
to the coast,
where the fisher folk
are cooking sea water,
reducing the brine,
because he wants to be
part of it,
the sea salt,
the concentration.

Grand Alap: A Window in the Sky
     for Chinary Ung

A chamber
space,
large
as he wants it to be,
cello,
Asian percussion,
aggregations
of stars,
and these syllables,
like elementary particles,
coming
and going
in the wide
space.

From the Early Years of Jack Story

Once
he threw a stone
from Virginia
into the Ohio country,
a violation
of the laws of nature
that everyone appreciated.
People ran into the yard
to follow
this new fact of the imagination.
The stone,
easy
in its trajectory,
telling itself
against the sky.

Poem for the All-Nighters
at the Moby-Dick Marathon

Some nights
a station will come in
from very far away.
It surfaces
through a silence
on the dial.
You may hear
Ishmael’s late night radio show,
if the weather’s right
and the affinities hold.
Ishmael, solo,
too close
to the mic.
His breath,
coming through,
like the necessary h in Whale.

Saturday Morning, Reading Howl
 - Janet Egan

If everybody takes one page from Howl
and you all read it aloud
at the same time
in front of the Kerouac commemorative
at Bridge and French Streets,
it sounds like a Buddhist chant.
It feels like a prayer in the mouth.

If you look up from the commemorative
you can see the outline
of the old Keith’s Theater
in the red brick wall.
In true New England fashion,
you can see what “used to be.”
If you listen,
you can hear Allen Ginsberg
reading
by candlelight
at the dedication of this monument
to his good friend Jack.
And you’re glad somebody taped it.
And you’re glad to be here now
in the cold morning dampness
among granite columns
etched with prose and poetry.

If you drop a stone
into the still water of the canal,
you can see the ripples
go out and out
and out
wrinkling the reflections
of the warehouse,
the mill, the fence, the pipes,
the bridge…
outward and outward
until you can’t see it anymore
but it’s still rippling all the way
to the Merrimack River and down river
to Newburyport
and out to sea.

•

Nancy Jasper & Janet Egan © 2023

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Cover: ‘Orfeo’ from
https://commons.wikimedia.org

″

Bartok in Bellevue

In Beneath the Underdog,
Mingus says,
and I’m taking him
at face value,
that when
he was in the psychiatric ward
at Bellevue,
the difficult music
of Bartok
brought him joy.
Searching
and abstract,
coming through
on someone else’s radio,
a lost
language.
O bassist,
do you begin
to remember?

Stardust

It’s beautiful. 
You don’t have to resist it. 
The trumpet player 
holds the note 
so soft 
within the embouchure,
so tender 
on its pulse, 
the trumpet 
is dreaming
inwards. 
We are entirely present 
and also participating 
in a legacy. 
The deep memory 
of standards,
the artists 
who this young man loves.  

Standing before a large canvas
by Jon Hen

UnchARTed, 2019

You cannot look away
from the man in the green chair.
The noise of colors
in his face,
the propulsive pinks
and oranges,
the thick propulsive pinks
and oranges.
The green
and purple
on his brow,
and whatever it is
that pulls this man inwards,
a privacy
beneath the excited surface of the canvas.
Something
that pauses,
mysterious to us.

Calling the Name of Orpheus

for Aldina Duarte from Tales of Fado

The skin
of earth
trembles.
The river
pauses.
Even the stone
hears
a new
tuning,
because you have been
mandated;
directed
as in myth
or dream.
. (cont..)

You go down
into the vacant
places,
calling
the name
of Orpheus

I hear in your voice
a vocation for water

for Cantor Isaac Algazi
Izmir, Turkey

A photograph
from the twenties.
He is in his bathing attire
on the coast
of the Aegean.
He is walking towards the water.
Already
he feels the pull
of the other kingdom;
the water
slipping past
his body,
the smallest
intervals
of water.

Cecil Taylor; solo piano

Antioch, 1973

His hands are gathering,
plunged
so deep
in the inexhaustible.

•

Nancy Jasper © 2022

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Cover collage by Jan Keough

Angels

In Felicity,
Mary Oliver exhorts us
to carry angels
in our heads,
so we will recognize the one-off
when it appears.
And to this
I say,
O Mary Oliver,
it is not in my nature
to carry angels,
but I will carry you
in my head,
because I need your God-talk
and your herons,
your beautiful
and remorseless
waders,
their patience
at the edge of the water.

Swallow Weather

On Plum Island, in early August
the swallows
feel a restlessness so compelling,
their flocking
is a turbulence,
a sudden weather.
You pause on the road,
delighted.
You have your father’s eye
for discrepancy,
the outlier,
the white sliver of a bird,
a least tern,
caught in this weather,
joyriding
on a commotion of air.

A Gentleman in the Underworld, 1907

 - for E.A. Baker

A caver.
That is to say,
a wriggler
through tight places.
An athlete
of curiosity
in the under-realm
of the River Axe.
And now
the cave
temporarily
does not begrudge him.
It opens into a chamber
of stalactites,
spacious
with slow time.
Everything glistens.
Fantastic shapes
of creams and ambers.
The lustrous skin
of minerals.
Calcite.
Dripstone.
The loosening
of waters.
The patient liquids.
He says a word
on his softest breath.

Fox

In a Mary Oliver poem,
there is a fox,
seen without metaphor.
He is simply
this fox,
coming down the hill,
who looks up
and does not see her.
How do you imagine
the world without you?
How do you imagine
the innocence of the fox?

Bari

  - for Charlie Kohlhase

He goes down
into the baritone sax,
down
into the deeper
trouble
of the instrument,
cave mouth,
dog throat,
where he plays,
he plays.

•

Acknowledgments
Swallow Weather first appeared
in The Wrack Line; Fox first
appeared in Revista Cardenal.

-

Nancy Jasper © 2021

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Cover: Photogravure of Male Oyster-catchers
by Joseph Smit

-

The Bird Watcher in the Shetlands is
available on Project Gutenberg

The Bird Watcher in the Shetlands, 1905

He has returned to the island
and already
the gulls
are trash-talking him.
He would feel less lonely
if he had a dog
or cat
or, oddly
bacon
frying in a pan,
but that is not the point.
He feels more keenly alive
among these lives
that do not welcome him.

2

He will not reduce them
to skins
or specimens.
Instead,
he observes,
situates himself
in his long
patience.
Gradations
of color
in the piratical skua,
cream to dun.
And the flare of color
in the cormorant’s mouth.
Saffron
in the sea cave.

Kittiwakes

He is happiest
this way,
studying these small gulls
on the ledge.
Mouths, again;
these startling
interiors,
like a red flower,
opening.

Red-Throated Diver

It’s not so much
the throat
he is thinking of,
but the painterly
striping
along the neck,
the breeding plumage
which dazzles,
in certain conjunctions
of bird
and light.

-

Hafnarfjordur

He is looking
at eiders,
and this reminds me
of an afternoon in Iceland,
when you and I
heard two eiders
moaning in a puddle.
We had no idea
what was happening,
until the terns
came in from the water,
thick as snow
in riotous
air,
and settling,
two by two,
to earth.

-

(untitled)

An old book
now,
released
into its chances.
But Edmund,
you were faithful
to your deepest
intuitions.
Beauty
is a driver.
No extravagance
is wasted.

For Edmund Selous, 1857-1934.
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Nancy Jasper © 2020

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Cover: Image of Capri

•

(for Pablo Neruda, Capri, 1952)

He imagines himself small
so he can enter
his true kingdom.
He has been shipwrecked
on this island
and he is writing
a book of spells.
He imagines himself
as a small comedic insect,
so he can walk
more slowly,
walk
at the pace
of wonder,
walk
his disproportions,
as he makes his way
legwards
towards his lover’s toes,
which are becoming
toe peninsulas,
with eight openings.

Reed

When Coltrane plays
My Favorite Things,
it is not a catalogue,
but a moment
circling outwards.
A bird
in the utmost branches.
A tenor
reveling
in his soprano breath.

Bits. Remnants

(for Nikki Giraffo & Hope Marbut; UnchARTed)

Sarong.
Embroidered dog.
A laugh
in the fabric.

2

Your grandfather’s
duffel bag
from the war.
The weight
he carries.
In the artist’s
dark,
the beginnings
of a face.

3

You experience this
in layers.
How she steps
from the wave,
sea born
as any goddess.
This is her new texture:
these golden threads.
She is not afraid
to be beautiful.

Girl In An Old Language
(Horace, Ode 1.9)

I liked this poem
so much,
I had to find
the girl
on the facing page.
Ab angulo.
Overheard
in a corner,
laughing.
She is flirting,
not quite with us.
She moves
so lightly
in the old language.

Basho’s Typewriter

At the typewriter festival,
people are fascinated
by the Japanese typewriter
from the twenties.
It is not an alphabet,
but a tray
full of characters,
tiny and precise.
A large vocabulary,
but limited.
The curator
of a public language.
I am looking
for Basho’s typewriter.
The sudden leap
of the keystroke.
A new
word.

•

Nancy Jasper © 2020

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Cover: Civil War Celebration using Coston Flares

www.civilwarsignals.org

•

 Martha

Commotion

Lucky

Commotion

There’s a certain misogyny
here,
(how large women are, how demanding)
but I think, on balance,
Snorri gets it right
about Odin’s three nights
with the giantess.
How poetry
is not only
a fine ferment,
but also
carries with it
a history of commotion,
skirmish,
the ogre’s bed.
How even
in its origin story,
the poet
is formed
from spittle,
the honey
mixed with blood.

Another Origin Story

He sat
in the crook of her arm,
felt warmed
by something almost geothermal.
He loved the sound of her voice.
He loved the chambered resonance
of her vowels.
Her enormous brain
held fold upon fold
of poetry.
Riddles, boasts, incantations.
Praise poetry.
Opaque poetry.
Poetry
translucent as amber.
She knew the human heart,
and because she was a giant,
she knew about things
that were elemental.
She knew the voice of frost.
She knew the vulnerability of ice
as it remembers water.
She was fleshy
and archival.
Canonical
and non-canonical.
He sat up with her
for three nights.
The old god,
delighted.

Snorri Learns The World Is Wide 

Snorri Loses Sleep

Something
has gotten into
Snorri’s horse.
His horse has developed
a sixth gait,
a subtle alteration
in timing.
It is more subtle than Snorri.
He cannot follow it,
cannot feel his way
into the altered hitch
and swing.
It is a rogue meter,
one of the old skaldic meters
he disturbed
when he was showing off
for the Norwegians.
He is deeply unsettled.
It is a warning.
He has overreached himself,
again.

Snorri, Cornered

He wasn’t a bit like Yeats,
but I imagine him
at the end,
alone
with his heart,
saying goodbye
to his circus animals,
all of his beautiful
circus animals.
Entire mythologies.
Ragnarok
in the final room.
A finished man
among his enemies.

Egil’s Lament

They’re generations
apart,
but already
it feels
as if something
has been torn.
He extends his lament,
with the sad prescience
of his kin,
towards Snorri,
towards Reykholt,
where Snorri
has fallen
without serviceable words.

•

Nancy Jasper © 2015

The Heart of Fado

The Birth of Fado

A Malasada Is Not A Doughboy

In the church garage,
the women are assembling
flour, sugar, eggs, and tricks
their grandmas knew.
Malasadas today,
after the Mass.
I want to get them bem quente,
right from the oil.
The sign on the garage reads:
Malasadas/Doughboys.
A malasada is not a doughboy.
Malasadas
have melismatic
turnings of flavor.
They don’t give everything away
at the first bite.
Taste: the pleasure
will glide away from you a little,
like Portuguese vowels,
like a word sung by Amalia.

Amalia In Fox Point

Yes, Amalia
visited Fox Point.
She muted her charisma.
She took a walk
in this small neighborhood,
not too far from the water.
She went to Friends Market.
It was stocked
with everything she remembered.
She paused for a picture
with the owner and his wife.
Even now,
she’s not that far from us.
This morning,
on Ives Street,
Joe cues up
Amalia
on Pandora.
The fadista,
that veteran of distances,
slips into the room.

Nem Às Paredes

Not even to the walls
can she confess
who she loves,
but it is public knowledge.
The old women
on the beach
know all about it.
Their mouths press in,
towards the salt
of someone else’s
fado.

Tudo Isto É Fado

Dedicated to Ana and Jose Vinagre
and their dog, Binnie

The fado singers have a dog.
They tell us
everything is fado,
nothing
is beyond the reach of fado.
So the dog must be fado,
too.
The singing of fado is stylized and passionate.
Gestures with dark shawls,
generational tides
of longing.
The dog waits outside the tent.
He is good.
Then he is not good.
He runs onto the stage.
His heart
cannot be contained.

Egil Swims Away From Europe

Egil

Not all poets are sensitive and solitary.
Consider Egil Skallagrimsson,
Icelandic, tenth century.
The old sociopath was known
for the disproportions of his violence,
the strategic
deployment of his kennings,
his capacity for lament.
When necessary,
he could turn himself into metaphors.
A good poem
almost saved his life.
He stayed up all night,
made a better poem.
His enemy, the queen,
sat on a branch outside his window.
Her birdy,
judicious ear
caught
the technical innovation,
the Continental end rhymes,
and the praise,
and she knew her husband would fall for it.

Bear

A bear has wandered into Egil’s story.
It is not an avatar of Odin,
although Odin can be called Bear.
It is not the pelt of a berserker,
although it is true that Egil is angry.
No,
the bear seems to have come from a fairy tale
to frighten children.
The children are guarding sheep
and they tell Egil about the bear.
He is hiding in the woods.
They have been told to watch out for him.
They think Egil must not be very clever,
because he has not heard about the bear.
Egil is delighted by this.
He will use it in a ruse.
He has come for a child.
Not these children,
he will be friendly with them,
but for the king’s son.
The king’s son is ten years old.
He is sleeping.
Not even at the edges of his dream
does he hear the branches moving.

Egil Is Baffled By Grief

For Egil,
revenge
was the final stage of grief.
When his son
drowned,
he didn’t know who to hurt.
He couldn’t hurt the sea.
Odin
was beyond his reach.
So he stopped,
he simply
stopped.
His daughter
had to tell him
there was a poem
caught
in his throat.

Egil’s Mouth

He is intimate
and specific,
wants us to know
his mouth
from the inside,
before
words come,
when the throat
is stunned,
when the tongue
labors.
Earlier,
after violence,
he had improvised
a poem
about how his mouth
could bite.
This is different.

Snout

Snout

Cicadas

They sprawl into our imaginations,
although we probably won’t get to Connecticut
to hear the inland tides of their percussion.
Their disproportions disturb us.
Seventeen years underground,
then for a few weeks only
the multi-state emergency
of their search for love.
Their lives underground
may be richer than we think.
They are nourished by fluids
from the roots of trees.
They know the forest in a different way.
They know the way it tastes.
Over the years,
they molt,
steadily becoming more robust,
burrowing deeper
towards roots they had not known before.
They must feel their truest direction
is down,
until they are summoned to another molt
and the extravaganza.

Flying Fish
(for Mo Mancini)

There’s something
about the heft of it in your hand
that reminds you
of the balsa wood of childhood,
the balsa wood of backyard flights,
and the improbable
bright
copper wings,
tilted
just so,
are already
an invitation,
but I think it is
finally
the re-purposed brad eyes
that make you want to pick it up
and make it fly.
They are so plucky and earnest.
He wants to play,
but if necessary
he could fly for help
for the child trapped in the well.

Reasonable Accomodations

Chances

At the parish feast,
the chances are little strips of paper,
rolled up tight, then bent.
We buy twenty for a dollar,
all that luck
compressed.
We take turns opening chances.
The prizes aren’t the point.
The fun
is the untwisting
and this summer night.
We untwist our chances,
opened out to blanks.
All around us,
a festive litter of small dashed hopes.

Transit Street

We share a bowl of fava beans
at the Holy Rosary feast.
On this summer night,
a parking lot becomes a plaza,
hung with lights.
Across the way,
the once a year Ferris Wheel
turns.
The large beans
do not resist the change.
Trading integrity for experience,
they are beginning to slip from their skins.

Snowy

The Snowy Owl is not a showy bird.
It does not have the Barred Owl’s facial discs,
Eared Owl’s erratic zig zag flight. - the Short
Hunger does not move it to patrol.
It hunts by sitting on a log or post.
a compact white immobility.
Birders find it irresistible.
It hides in plain sight
on the winter marsh.
It’s a trickster, a clump of snow
on a stump.
A white plastic bag
far out on the marsh.
The wind stirs it.
You put down your binoculars and grin.
Fooled again.
Today
you looked for the Snowy and did not find it.
At twilight
you saw something you had never seen before.
Thirty robins
flew up into a tree to roost.

Small Meadow

The meadow
at the Audubon Education Center is not large.
It’s an example of a meadow.
A teachable habitat.
But it’s also a real place.
Stand still
in the August heat.
Listen.
Crickets, grasshoppers, katydids.
Their intricate pulsing
their rasp and scrape
is not music,
but it could come to you as music.
Late summer hoedown,
great fugue,
360° of insect polyphony
from soil, from grasses,
from the underside of leaves.

Reasonable Accommodations

We’re visiting the Brant at Colt State Park.
It’s home base
for a winter flock.
The lawn goes right down to the Bay.
They can find the grass under the snow,
or dabble, butts up
scraping sea lettuce from the rocks.
A soft sound comes from the water.
They pass this sound back and forth.
I would call it a chuckle,
with a goose accent.
a reediness in the throat.
I grab the back of your jacket ,
as I walk with my white cane.
A tender gesture,
not recommended by mobility instructors.
Over the years,
you’ve gotten good at descriptive narration.
You tell me about the Brant,
their dark heads,
their bright sides,
as they bob in little squadrons on the water.

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Nancy Jasper © 2013