Naomi Replansky Collected Poems

Naomi Replansky's Collected Poems is forthcoming Summer 2012 from Black Sparrow Books (an imprint of David R. Godine Publisher; ISBN 978-1-57423-215-8). Available for pre-ordering.

"Nominated for the National Book Award in 1952, Naomi Replansky's first book Ring Song dazzled critics with its candor and freshness of language. Here at long last is the new and collected work of a lifetime by a writer hailed as "one of the most brilliant American poets" by George Oppen. Replansky is a poet whose verse combines the compression of Emily Dickinson, the passion of Anna Akhmatova, and the music of W.H. Auden. These poems, which Marie Ponsot calls "sixty years of a free woman's song," are Replansky's hymns to the struggle for justice and equality and to the enduring beauty of life in our dangerous world."

Naomi Replansky Featured on Writer's Almanac

 

Naomi Replansky's poem, "Nightmare Car" will be featured on American Public Media's Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, on Sunday, March 11, 2012. This unique program of literary notes can be heard on many public radio stations, or online The poem was originally published in Replansky's collection A Dangerous World (Another Chicago Press, 1994).

The Dangerous World

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The Dangerous World collects seventy-some poems of Naomi Replansky's written between 1934 and 1994, some previously published in Ring Song. Published by Another Chicago Press, it is unfortunately now out of print. Selected poems are posted below on this blog.

Night Prayer for Various Trades

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Night Prayer for Various Trades
      
Machinist in the pillow's grip,
Be clumsy and be blind
And let the gears spin free, and turn
No metal in your mind.

Long, long may the actress lie
In slumber like a stone,
The helpless words that rise from sleep
Be no words but her own.

Laborer, drift through a dark
Remote from clay and lime.
O do not tunnel through the night
In unpaid overtime.

You out-of-work, walk into sleep.
It will not ask to see
Your proof of skill or strength or youth
And shows its movies free.

And may the streetcleaner float down
A spotless avenue.
Who red-eyed wake at morning break
All have enough to do.
     
Enough to do. Now let the day
Its own accountings keep.
But may our dreams keep other time
Throughout our sprawling sleep.
   

Changes of Climate

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Changes of Climate

Once I lived in polar night,
Burned summer fat for winter light.

When my store was nearly gone,
There came someone like Tropic sun.

I shed my clothes in so much heat
And the ice-mountains in retreat

Fled downhill over river-banks,
Sweat streaming from their white-skinned flanks.

Now, though all around I see
A fragrant moist community

Of fevered growth and sudden storm
Where insect generations swarm

And flesh is eager to divide
And fruit is roundly multiplied,

I dare not lose my Arctic skill,
My strategies against the chill:

What if the fire quit that face?
What if that sun shifted its place?

What if my clouds obscured its light?
What if I woke to daylong night?

Cold would then constrict this scene
And pinch the bud and bleach the green

And scatter those bright birds, all lost
In one shotgun blast of frost.

The giant tendrils withering,
Flesh shrinking into shivering,

Lichens and one stunted tree
Replacing this dense canopy,

And then, upon their well-worn track,
The ice-monsters lumbering back.

Copyright ©Naomi Replansky

Foreigner

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Foreigner

He is alone and unarmed
And has no vessel for his vanity.
His curse is spoken, but nothing trembles.
His praise like rain runs down the gutters.

Laughter seizes him and he is silent.
Grief shakes him, he hides it in a stare.
And he can change nothing where he passes
Though he walk barefoot through bristling events.

A room, a sea, a street, a war,
Gather within and sinew him for speech
Richer than this, but who will hear him out.
O who will know him unto nakedness.

Copyright © Naomi Replansky

The Weeping Sea Beast

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The Weeping Sea Beast

Tentacled for food,
You range your underwater neighborhood.

To look, to like, to eat, to break your fast!
Before you move an inch an hour is past,

Your prey is past, a swarm of scales, an eye,
A round fish eye, a rude unblinking eye.

You close on nothing; slowly you untwine
Your many arms and trail them through the brine.

Now sailors at the surface hear you cry,
And from those heights they cannot fathom why.

For there are agile creatures all around
Who dart like flames through this rich hunting ground

And others who lie still and gaping wide
And make no move; but armies come inside.

Copyright ©Naomi Replansky