‘Spontaneous Overflow’

April 10, 2018

In honor of National Poetry Month, UCSB celebrates its own creators of verse

By Andrea Estrada for The Current

national poetry month
national poetry month

In the preface to his “Lyrical Ballads,” William Wordsworth described all good poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling.” April is National Poetry Month, and to celebrate this auspicious literary occasion The Current is highlighting some of the campus’s resident wordsmiths.

Throughout the month, we are publishing pieces by faculty and staff poets whose work has been recognized nationally and internationally.

We continue today with a poem by Robert Krut, a lecturer in the Writing Program.

Here are the poets we’ve already highlighted: John RidlandStephanie Batiste and Teddy Macker

Divinity

Virus-blind, you stumble to an alley,

under a lentil rainstorm, a preacher

waves rudder arms to the thunder,

makes lightning scatter until five canaries

escape his sleeves, singing condolences,

a misdirection from the transistor radio

around his neck, beneath his vestments,

its zealous torque fusing electrodes

to your breath, turning thoughts to words,

your face a cannon, and the realization

that he was merely a collection of discarded

nightclub flyers lifted by wind

between graffitied walls.

— Robert Krut, 

 

 John Ridland

To the Brave Generation

   Who have been fired on, and march now for their lives

Those who should lead this land of the free and the brave,

Who should have led you, must now themselves be led

By you who learned too early what it is to give

A life, or rather, to have it taken away

For no good reason except that it was there

For the gun and the shooter who could shoot anywhere,

Who had no image of what it means to live,

Moved by a spirit angry as it was dead.

You learned how easily night can shadow day

By pulling a switch, a trigger. You survive,

You have been tested by fire, and chosen to save

Our nation from itself: you'll be The Brave

Generation, and the Free, who can keep us alive.

— John Ridland, professor emeritus of English

 

 Stephanie Leigh Batiste

Fray

Loops remain.

Remnant of the tangled thread

Memory restored to the past,

the present

threads forth across the knot

Restored towards prismatic being.

 

Losing One

Losing one’s mother

is like losing your root.

being unattached

to the world

to history

yesterday now and the day before are doubtful

perhaps not having been at all

tomorrow

a wall of static

beyond it

a tear that might swallow

and you wonder

perhaps

is it possible

no longer to belong

to this planet.

Is it even still

spinning...

— Stephanie Leigh Batiste, associate professor of Black studies and of English

 

 Teddy Macker

The Otter and the Seaweed

This is what you need to know:

you need to know that otters wrap themselves

in seaweed so they won’t,

 

while sleeping at night, float out to sea…

Are you imagining this?

Can you see the otters actually doing this?

 

Does it break your heart a little?

Does it seduce you just a bit

into loving more

 

this odd hard world?

Oh otters, wrap yourselves tight! And sleep,

exactly like you do, floating but seaweed-held

 

in our salty living waters! Oh otters,

wrap yourselves tight! And you,

the one who doesn’t, the one who doesn’t

 

tether himself down right,

we are with you as you float away,

we are with you as you sleep

 

and lose yourself in the night.

 

On This Earth

after a line by Mahmoud Darwish

We have on this earth what makes life worth living:

the perfume of a sleeping child, the four rain-colored wings

of the dragonfly, the hourglass on the black widow’s belly

pouring blood into blood. We have the mineral green innards

of cucumber, rain-pocked snow, the plastic crucifix 

on the sick whore’s wall, sincerer than any cathedral. 

We have an alley of poplar trees and road-darkened feet,

bats sipping clear water from a dwindling creek,

we have slices of black bread at a blue table by the sea. 

We have on this earth what makes life worth living, 

what makes it so queer and lovely and painful, 

moon on the snake in the dying rosemary, 

and the young couple upstairs in bed

undressing each other regardless.

— Teddy Macker, lecturer, College of Creative Studies

 

 

 

 

Contact Info: 

Andrea Estrada
(805) 893-4620
andrea.estrada@ucsb.edu