a primary reason to read literary journals is to find poets we'd never find otherwise -- for example, Barbara Ras. I ran into her poem "you can't have it all" in Mudfish last year, and kept it taped to whatever wall I'm claiming as mine most times since then. in the Strand last week with GK, I found her book "bite every sorrow" and wow. buy this book.

often when I see which books win major awards, I'm at a great loss to understand what on earth got them there -- not so with this one, which won the Whitman in 1997.

one of my favorites (so far -- I'm only halfway through) is this:

Angels on Holiday
by Barbara Ras

At first all they want is watermelon,
big bites, spitting out the black seeds
while the red pulp melts in their mouths.
They eat it on the ground, their wings
resting moplike behind them, then they go on to rice,
eating it with their fingers, the grain's grain,
weddings' exuberance.
Sometimes they try sex, approaching it
they way you approach a strange dog. People
are too scary. They'd prefer statues
of their own kind, angel to angel clapping
the way a kid will click plastic horses together,
head to head, feet to feet, over and over.
It's a vacation, a chance to learn
small talk, use tools, play cards,
the ace of diamonds, their queen of spades, its red shape
pointing both ways, here today, gone tomorrow.
Angels are shy, especially about their wings, which so far
only God knows are crocheted and starched
like the extra-toilet-paper-roll creations in the bathrooms
of grandmothers. They try out our soap, the one for bodies
called Darling, and Terror, for big dirt, which they use
for excessive dreaming, needing to purge like they need to know
who else is working for God, the fire department,
the devil, welders who make light a little too Promethean
for comfort, so they run off, go to the zoo in the rain
and watch monkeys run around and around their enclosure, inventing
chases the way the angels before they go home will make up
some more phrases to put into circulation,
flying off the handle, hope against hope, nose to the grindstone,
expressions none of us will get, but later
we'll think up meanings, serious ones, afraid our laughter
might scare something up, even the pigeons,
their feet, retractable forks,
tucked under them in flight.

***

so Whitman-esque, her ability to maintain energy through the wide line, to move from idea to idea and back without losing the tension...

I'm thinking about this piece in relation to Robert Hass' poem (the name of which is out of my head right now,) that deals with angels -- writing the invisible, hmmmm...

more later...