Ladder Music

Ellen Dore Watson is obviously not a new poet -- the blurb on the back of LADDER MUSIC says that she is Director of The Poetry Center at Smith College and is an editor at The Massachusetts Review. But she is new to me. One of the great delights of a used book business is the serendipity that reveals itself in every new box of old books that comes into one's greedy little hands. LADDER MUSIC appeared in a box of books given to me by my most excellent and cherished daughter-in-law Sine, who is clearing out her bookshelves in preparation for welcoming her new baby -- she and my son's first child, my ninth grandchild. As I took up LADDER MUSIC to list it for sale, I had to browse it first. It is, after all, a book of poetry and I am a sucker for good poetry. The last half of the 20th century brought a lot of bad poetry -- or maybe there is bad poetry in every century, but for some reason so many poets who gained acclaim in the last few decades produced work that was incomprehensible at best and downright ugly at worst. I came to despair of finding beauty, imagination and intelligence fused in the poetry that was making the rounds. LADDER MUSIC is a book of poetry that sings, lightly and without pretension. An intelligence is at work here. I am grateful to have found it. And not just because --- twice -- the poet mentions popcorn, the veritable food of Paradise. From LADDER MUSIC: (Reviewer's note: the words with quote marks are italicized in the original poem; I can't do italics here.) Before Bed The word I leave out on the stoop to shiver like a cat that tears up a couch in the night is "forget". I don't want it in my dreams. The dreams can be themselves terrifying or gone in the morning, just as long as they remember everything as long as they last. I don't stoop down before bed as I was taught by my forgetting mother who is learning to be gone, trying to remember to dream as long as she lasts, like the cat on a cold stoop dreams of a good, stuffed couch, morning's open door. I shiver in my tears, "forget" in my hand, say "shoo". ---------- Hummingbirds are Never Confused A darting whir towards thin sweetness - look! We welcome then into any arena: the blinding still life out there where we'd like to go or a dismal back yard full of junked bikes or a full-tilt patio argument - all become lightened, brightened, confused by such goodness, apparent and fragile. A rat looks out from under the tumble-down house next door, eyes like rivets, thinks: color overload in miniature, dithering. Doesn't venture out. Okay I made him up. What an idea, what a place to put the other, the self. But invariably while a bird like that hums, gyrating its unfeathers, we find a way to glory, then pout. Why can't we buy one? (Why don't we know who we are?) ---------- Mykonos, Mattincus, Maceio It's bone simple to be in three places at once if some part of you understands bodily rhyme. Mykonos, Mattincus, Maceio - I am behind myself and ahead, at once moody and