Welcome to my blog, a work in progress on the pleasures of reading and writing poetry. I planned to call it “Quartz,” after the first line of the title poem of The Hardness Scale. Blog posts aren’t polished diamonds, but they’re not meant to crumble like talc either. On the Mohs mineral hardness scale, quartz, at number seven, seems about right.
But Quartz is already the title of a digital news outlet owned by the Atlantic Media Co. There’s also an online litmag named for the state gem of New Hampshire, Smoky Quartz, though the last issue was posted Spring 2014. One of my interests is literary journals, and I plan to write about current issues of various publications. Perhaps I’ll report on what happened to Smoky Quartz.
The blog will feature poetry reviews, notes on reading and re-readings, teaching, writing and rewriting, and my own work. I’ll end this introduction with “The Hardness Scale.” During this year’s AWP, I was asked by the Poetry Foundation to record poems from three of my four books. After the recording, I asked why not “The Hardness Scale,” and was told the Foundation couldn’t get the rights. Since Carnegie Mellon owns the rights to all my books, I felt like dragging James Sitar down to the book fair with a paper for Gerald Costanzo to sign immediately, but since another poet was waiting to record, I didn’t. For a while the poem was accessible through Ploughshares, but no more. It’s available on a Tumblr post, and also as a PDF in Mass Poetry’s 2012 Common Threads booklet (and as a video, posted here on my website under “Multimedia”). But I want it, like the zeitgeist, many places as once.
THE HARDNESS SCALE
Diamonds are forever so I gave you quartz
which is #7 on the hardness scale
and it’s hard enough to get to know anybody these days
if only to scratch the surface
and quartz will scratch six other mineral surfaces:
it will scratch glass
it will scratch gold
it will even
scratch your eyes out one morning—you can’t be
too careful.
Diamonds are industrial so I bought
a ring of topaz
which is #8 on the hardness scale.
I wear it on my right hand, the way it was
supposed to be, right? No tears and fewer regrets
for reasons smooth and clear as glass. Topaz will scratch glass,
it will scratch your quartz,
and all your radio crystals. You’ll have to be silent
the rest of your days
not to mention your nights. Not to mention
the night you ran away very drunk very
very drunk and you tried to cross the border
but couldn’t make it across the lake.
Stirring up geysers with the oars you drove the red canoe
in circles, tried to pole it but
your left hand didn’t know
what the right hand was doing.
You fell asleep
and let everyone know it when you woke up.
In a gin-soaked morning (hair of the dog) you went
hunting for geese,
shot three lake trout in violation of the game laws,
told me to clean them and that
my eyes were bright as sapphires
which is #9 on the hardness scale.
A sapphire will cut a pearl
it will cut stainless steel
it will cut vinyl and mylar and will probably
cut a record this fall
to be released on an obscure label known only to aficionados.
I will buy a copy.
I may buy you a copy
depending on how your tastes have changed.
I will buy copies for my friends
we’ll get a new needle,
a diamond needle,
which is #10 on the hardness scale
and will cut anything.
It will cut wood and mortar,
plaster and iron,
it will cut the sapphires in my eyes and I will bleed
blind as 4 a.m. in the subways when even degenerates
are dreaming, blind as the time
you shot up the room with a new hunting rifle
blind drunk
as you were.
You were #11 on the hardness scale
later that night
apologetic as
you worked your way up
slowly from the knees
and worked your way down
from the open-throated blouse.
Diamonds are forever so I give you softer things.