#fred marchant

[apocryphics]

fred marchant

[dk-thrive]

a word takes to thread one soul to the next

and a world stilled for a second as if it had stopped breathing

as if in the space between breaths the brain might float like a planet on nothing

and the eye open to a flensing, pared down to a pulse and the long less than an instant

a word takes to thread one soul to the next

— Fred Marchant, from “Your Words,” Image: Art, Faith, Mystery (no. 54, Summer 2007) (via The Vale of Soul-Making)

[therumpus]

Advice we had was to just step right out,    like wading    in a stream. Motorbikes-hundreds of them-    would find    a way around us. We must not be hesitant,    for that    would throw everyone off. So, trusting these    our friends    here on the street named for the poet of Kiêu,    we leaned    into the traffic as if it were only a light wind    flowing round    our faces. At that instant I tried to imagine    a world    completely merciful and belonging to those    few who,    as they passed smiling, looked as if they just    might forgive us.

“Crossing Nguyên Du Street” excerpted from Said Not Said by Fred Marchant, reviewed by Barbara Berman for The Rumpus

[cloudswamp]

cicada, fred marchant

[theotherpages]

2021 NPM Number 23 - Fred Marchant - Here Is What the Mind Does

You can listen to the podcast version of today’s article on Spotify, ITunes, Anchor, Breaker, or Google Podcasts. Click Here to access links. (https://anchor.fm/steve-spanoudis) Look for the podcast titled National Poetry Month at the Other Pages.

Welcome to National Poetry Month at The Other Pages. My name is Steve Spanoudis and I curate the series each year, with help and contributions from Bob Blair, Kashiana Singh, and (Nelson) Howard Miller. I’m coming to you from Coral Springs, Florida, on the eastern edge of the Everglades.

Bad things happen. They happen everywhere. Sometimes you try to disconnect from the world, but when you reconnect, they are there again, facing us, challenging us to figure out how we are going to respond. We’ve all had that experience, at one point, or at many points. You can become paranoid, or you can grow numb. Perhaps that is what Fred Marchant (https://fredmarchant.com/) is giving us a picture of, that numbness, in his poem Here Is What the Mind Does (https://poets.org/poem/here-what-mind-does). I had the good fortune to be able to watch and listen (thanks to Zoom) to Fred Marchant as he read several pieces as part of Amherst College’s annual Emily Dickinson reading series. He is the author of four poetry collections, and is a professor emeritus at Suffolk University. The poem begins with:

when my laptop opens to a small red car

a tight street in Jenin gray-yellow dust

an electric window half-open and five

lean-to cards where on each a number

denotes a round spent or the place where

it began to travel at the speed of its idea

You’ve all seen this scene, on the news, in police procedural dramas on television, in movies. This one happens to be in Jenin, a West Bank city. Note that the person narrating this is not talking about the how or the why or the who - questions that perhaps no one can answer. It is absorbed in the small details - the yellow dust, the half-open car window, the ubiquitous numbered tent-cards. Why? Because, Marchant is telling us, that “is what the mind does” when faced with violence on such a persistent basis.

He continues,

while by an open car door the blood pools

pools and follows a tilt in the road—not

far—more a lingering as if blood could

choose not to leave

Of course everyone always focuses on the blood - the trend in movies is to spatter it plentifully, but Marchant’s focus is on the behavior of the liquid substance, not the amount. He talks about its liquid nature, not its color. The comment about blood is not for dramatic effect, but to contemplate the ephemeral nature of life, and of what it leaves behind - how the blood seems to linger and make a choice not to depart - the implied reference, clear from his wording, is wondering about the humans who died - whom in English we refer to as the departed, and the question from many religious beliefs as to whether the soul of what we are stays for a time, or also departs.

He continues, pondering whether the departed stay and watch, curious like the bystanders, or the investigators who must document these details, tediously, as he says “reluctant and deliberate” because, as he concludes, it is

what the mind does at moments

like this—really little more than nothing

There is more about Fred Marchant on his website (https://fredmarchant.com/), and at the Poetry Foundation. The full text of this poem is available at poets.org (https://poets.org/poem/here-what-mind-does).

Thank you for Listening. If you’re enjoying these commentaries, and the poem selections, please share them - either the text versions or the podcasts - on social media.

Once again this is Steve Spanoudis at theotherpages.org. You can find more there, at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr.

[clatteriing]

nerve-root               cord in the tunnel                             from mind to the far               extremities the flesh tendrils               how they transit & exit                             with more truth               than they can carry the neurons               like crowds                             in the capital               buzzing in distress long dendrites               bristling with                             pain we have never dreamed of in this our shattered               body politic                             here is the knife               to cut open flesh and grind back               bony facets                             pick out the debris               with tweezers and as there is no other way               we feel almost                             happy as we               count backwards going under

Spine Surgery by Fred Marchant

[lunchboxpoems]

AGAINST EPIPHANY

What god was it that would open

earth’s picture book and see the two

of us on a road, snowfields glittering

on every side and poplars bent like

the fingers of an old man clutching

what he loved about the sun?

  Which one was it that would peer

into our thatched, white-washed

farmhouse, and see the fur, flies,

and shit-stained walls? Which one

laughed at the barbed wire fences,

the wall topped with broken glass?

  Which of the many who came then,

gleaming and rimed in hard sunlight?

Which of those who bobbed like ice

along the winter shore? What did

we have that any god would want?

Quick, if you can find it, hide it.

FRED MARCHANT

[hepatosaurus]

national poetry month, day 8

Night Heron Maybe I woke to more rain, and felt in the dark for how wet the sill was, then rolled back to my radio, and a midnight preacher in my earphone teaching about sin.   I learned that punishment would come like lightning that surprises an innocent shore. Thunder would follow me all my days, stern reminder and sharp rebuke.   The long, sleek, and pointed call that rose, as if in response, out of the estuary of night and storm, said it knew well what the given world gave, and wanted more. —Fred Marchant