In Provincetown and Other Poems, Leo Connellan masterfully depicts the New England landscape while capturing the afflicted spirit of those filled “with wonder / and fear that we are being forever left yearning / malcontent.” In his accessible and characteristic style, Connellan empathizes with the impoverished and disparaged, as well as criticizes the roles big industries have in producing adverse circumstances for the region. With its focus on the working class, Provincetown offers a grim and unforgettable look at the place where “Death sings to life . . . where / life style has no code.”
In Provincetown and Other Poems, Leo Connellan masterfully depicts the New England landscape while capturing the afflicted spirit of those filled “with wonder / and fear that we are being forever left yearning / malcontent.” In his accessible and characteristic style, Connellan empathizes with the impoverished and disparaged, as well as criticizes the roles big industries have in producing adverse circumstances for the region. With its focus on the working class, Provincetown offers a grim and unforgettable look at the place where “Death sings to life . . . where / life style has no code.”
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Overview
In Provincetown and Other Poems, Leo Connellan masterfully depicts the New England landscape while capturing the afflicted spirit of those filled “with wonder / and fear that we are being forever left yearning / malcontent.” In his accessible and characteristic style, Connellan empathizes with the impoverished and disparaged, as well as criticizes the roles big industries have in producing adverse circumstances for the region. With its focus on the working class, Provincetown offers a grim and unforgettable look at the place where “Death sings to life . . . where / life style has no code.”
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781880684290 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Northwestern University Press |
| Publication date: | 07/01/1995 |
| Edition description: | 1st ed |
| Pages: | 77 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.30(d) |
About the Author
Leo Connellan published twelve books of poetry including The Clear Blue Lobster-Water Country, Another Poet in New York, Crossing America, and Death in Lobster Land. Winner of the Shelly Memorial Award, he was a Poet-in-Residence for Connecticut State University. He served as Connecticut's Poet Laureate from 1996 until his death in 2001.
Read an Excerpt
Provincetown, and Other Poems
By Leo Connellan
Curbstone Press
Copyright © 1995 Leo ConnellanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-880684-29-0
CHAPTER 1
NO, THE RIVER NEVER FRIGHTENED ME
On the other side of the river
all we anticipate here and are not there
to find it is not there either to have
or we are not good enough here or there.
There here where we are is the other side,
two visible sides of a river each
invisible. Blue ice is breaking up.
Ice cubes of sky shined on by bright sun.
Then a frown of dark cloud. Suddenly
the river looks like it has a crack in it,
gurgling blue water rattle.
In Spring the wind over this water
is roses of perfume and young excitement.
The river is to splash in, laugh in and what
lies on the other side of the river doesn't
concern us because whatever danger is subtle,
even invisible. Even drowning seems
an accident, not intent. Throughout
Summer and Fall there is warmth and color
and we are alive in ourselves. Then
dark silver spreads frozen and
we can run and walk on top of water, still,
never do we get off on the shore on the
other side of the river nor does
anyone from over there come among us
until ice cracks fill us with wonder
and fear that we are being forever left yearning
malcontent, fearing and cowardice unfulfilled.
I am here from over there, here perhaps alone
until I hear from you. I was excited to go
skating and over splitup and crackup. No, the
river never frightened me. I am in search of a poem.
MOTEL
I
We came in off the Parkway past two
union pickets silent in their shivering behind
signs since Reagan and The Air Transporters.
This is a new one from the most famous luxury chain,
just opened, with a special cheap rate to fill
rooms and give staff practice ... that
succeeds because the help's picked from immigrants.
Cocktail waitress forced to wear outfit that
makes her look stripped, fired if they catch
her chewing or her mouth looking like it's got
anything in it but her tongue. Athletic teams,
Corporations hoping that false front if not their
products gets business will fill this place,
depression outside or not. Starving human
beings within a mile or not.
Poverty is within walking distance of this place
up little oil dirty snow side streets here. Hunger
shows in the punctured tattered half drawn
window shades and in the cold pipes without heat.
Murder just to eat and for something warm, a scarf to
clutch around your adam's apple and try not to
think of the numbness of the rest of your body
lonely so cold, to control rage at being so cold
and unfilled while just across the street
this new motel has human beings who can
spend and do not even pause once in
mid-swallowing of good Grand Marnier
cutting the insides of their throats like
smooth honey, as some just across the
street consider cutting the outside of
their throats with steel; not once
in this opulence does a guest shudder
thinking of poor men who cannot fill
those they love or themselves with any
good things and even consider let alone
do anything about it ... There is a
toughness in the breezes. All around this place
is the quiet of hard struggle and to
walk here is not safe. ... If they think
you might be some big money from the motel
you have asked a starving man for your life
and he'll take it for his life.
II
Here I was in a luxurious room with room service
and a balcony, but the maids in the hall when
I passed them saw penury in the set of my mouth fixed
forever in fatigue and endurance's look and
on their hands and knees scrubbing carpets
and the halls of the motel hallways, if they wanted
their jobs, one or two of these lovely ladies smiled
at me enjoying that one of them had somehow managed
to be a guest, and if I had wanted to imagine
that I could get away with being anyone but
who I am, a sweeper like them, their knowing
smiles as I passed them told me I fooled no one.
I was like an elderly trick passing Queens thinking
that growing old ever hides your soul, that
you're "everybody's make" ... no it wasn't sly suggestion
their smiles and looks knowing me, no, it wasn't that
their postures on their hands and knees forcing
their bottoms to elevate as if they'd do anything in
my mind for a twenty dollar bill, no there was no
offer, even if growing old I yearned for there
to be one more offer ... just one more! Once more
heads turned cruising me — no matter my fantasy
wishes, there was nothing more in that hallway
than my dirty images and just one or two
worn out human beings knowing
another when they
saw one ...
III
I was so common and familiar
in my conversations with desk clerks
that when the elevator was tied up
by maids moving their carts
from floor to floor, they had
no problem suggesting
I use the Service elevator which meant walking
through their kitchen passing garbage and through
their laundry room to ride with the Room Service
waiter who knocked on my room door with reverence, now
a knit brow disturbed frown as he really saw me now
next to him riding up in his shit, and though
he was young and couldn't put it together, he too
sensed I was more an older him than a guest here
yet he knew in seconds as the Service elevator
got me to my floor, he would have to resume
catering to me. I'll always wonder if he suddenly grew up
in that realization ...
IV
The desk clerks knew only too well
I was in their motel on an ingenious low rate
plan ... you dial 800 information and ask
for the package number ... owing everyone but
life gets so pressed you blank your conscience
temporarily of the people you telephoned
in horror about the wage garnishee and phone turnoff
if they didn't rush you money ... but if
you don't do this you won't live to pay them back, worse,
you won't be alive to be the person they sent cash.
Man has to escape out of his cages for
new breath ... I. ... just. ... did it!
There isn't any excuse to do what you wish when you owe!
But I did it to survive and not use or drink
or have a coronary for principle.
Should this make me disreputable, dishonorable,
at least I can be told this personally
and not through the grass of my tomb. ...
... and up in the hallways thickly carpeted like
bath towels the maids on their hands and knees were
washing carpets and the walls vulnerable
to my stare at their bottoms raised in air
strung out here along the hallway like so much
breathing meat bereft of their dignity as
they put out their flesh for food and roof. We motel guests
gorged and drank as if poverty were not
close death whispering dying along
the bedposts of luxury. Evil dressed its best.
Poverty had started to harden us beyond
the ability to ever enjoy again, but at
this motel that succeeds because the help's picked
from immigrants, I saw a chinese or vietnamese woman
maid all expression of joy erased from her naturally
stoic disposition, blank, only her mouth
without even her lips moving let words, like
hollow echoes from a pebbled well, out if
spoken to; she was desperate lest one
of her answers lose her this work. ... This
small vietnamese or chinese woman she
seemed to appear out of the walls, probably a
service elevator as I would come and go in
and out of our room ... pushing a heavy long
cart with everything on it to make rooms up
just about all this little tiny woman could push
by people like me there for comfort and pleasure
from our new depression given us for our faith and
vote by our President for being the fools we
always are always allowing the lie that it's
the Welfare Indigent not the wealthy who are
responsible for our loss of jobs, pensions
medical help ... soon the years you can
still climb three flights of stairs on two sides
of twenty one buildings if you have to and
sweep one all the way down and climb up the next
or do anything but sit in the corner
of some Reagan club soup kitchen shelter
will be gone ... of course
I'm to blame
but dying isn't easier because
you deserve it. ...
TOMORROW
Tomorrow is like yesterday
resented, resisted. Now
frightened of time when
everything could be done
for us, we fear imagination
so why are you surprised
you cannot cope with imagining
the old Hormel, Armour Ham
plants becoming refleshing
plants, you'd have to go
before age 35 or you'd be
too old, the skin of your
skeleton too set to de-skin,
then you refleshed with new
kidneys, liver, heart so
you'll always look young.
Man and computer cure paraplegia,
now they can part whole spine
from body long enough to bypass
nerve connection ... cars become
heli-cars, combination car and
helicopter. Parking now off the
ground within your hovering
space inches above each other and
get down on the ground and back up
into your heli-car by pliable
pogo spring ladder. Now
you get ceiling as well as
wall to wall tv all going
at once, watch with a twitch
turn of your neck side to
side and up and down and
so as not to get afflicted
with "twitch turn neck" a
prevalent disease, especially
back at the beginning when
all the marvels became available,
you skim look quick left and right
up, down or straight ahead or
settle on one tv show to watch like
they did in the old days. Laser
surgery means nobody's body ever
gets cut. Everything gets done
for us, we get bored ... but
there's a new game around, everybody's
doing it, it's called reading, thinking and
I tell you when you start your eyes
water, come together, almost cross, your
head aches trying to do this what they
call concentrate and you find out
that with all the wonderful everything
man ever dreamed for you've now got, you
don't have yourself, you've lost yourself,
can't think, reason, read, agree
disagree, there is no hopeless
struggle you have to surmount, so
what good is being renewed, reskinned,
living a couple of thousand years!
The sky's up there, we've always
been able to see it and we
cut a way through its heat shield
out into weightless whatever ... but
we have to use ourselves here
and out of gravity.
LETS FALL IN LOVE
My mother was an abortion.
No, I mean it, an unborn fetus
eggs planted in a hippopotamus
so if I seem an animal
there's this good reason
but I'm empty from not knowing
my real mom who was never here
so I could be anti social or distant
or in so much need I'm overwhelming.
Should I love my birth mom or mom mom?
STOCKBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Outside Red Lion Inn room 240
snow flakes touch Norman Rockwell canvas
Stockbridge, Massachusetts, loose in air like
specks of frosting on this cake town saved
from looking like a Saturday Evening Post cover
by flesh, breathing people, real life, not neat
scenes with no problems ... I locked my car
and couldn't get back in and a Policeman kind,
gracious but tired, weighed by what lies under
tinsel, used a tool that looked like a thin saw
with hooks to catch the inside lock down a
window without breaking the door so I couldn't
open or close it, and I could move again.
Hawthorne, Bryant, LongFellow, this Inn you stayed in
doesn't exist. The carpeted rooms creak and their
carpets and fixtures suggest and hint trails you
traveled, some no wider than a path between
communities suddenly cleared and lived in among
forest, roads, dirt, no wider than for a stage
coach to travel, enough for human feet and horses
and wheels, are now wider roads paved for our
transportation; beautiful in the Berkshires where
ice sparkles on tree branches when light rain freezes
and what is vanished is visible but the light of candles
flickering imagination is now electricity and no one
knows what a Thunder Mug is, you pull a chain and
refuse is gone, in a bathroom not out back or down a
hall or left for someone else to have to carry swishing
to dump, become immune to vomiting. The old Inn
you knew has been added onto once moving about was
solved but age only hides the youthful face which
if you look you can see for yourself without need of photos.
Once human beings in these rooms dreamed of perfecting, a
day when somehow buildings would be built so tight, solid
against weather as to erase noise. Now in our hustle
and clatter we pay for creaks when we walk across rooms
off balance as if creaking unites us with those whose
breath breathed in these rooms which now heave from
hanging on, shifted in this ancient building by rage
of wind and storm but have television now; Room Service
and the old Inn has an elevator, however the beds and food
are good and if you were here today you'd gladly stay over.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Provincetown, and Other Poems by Leo Connellan. Copyright © 1995 Leo Connellan. Excerpted by permission of Curbstone Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
No, The River Never Frightened Me,Motel,
Tomorrow,
Let's Fall In Love,
Stockbridge, Massachusetts,
York Maine,
The Treachery Of Flame,
An Image From Howard Coughlin,
Sloughter Poet,
Children Of Your Horror Existence, Manhattan,
Hunger,
Hot Day In New York,
The $100 Street Person,
Home Again,
Jazz,
Shooter,
Squirrel Shoot,
Winter,
Pulling Oar,
The Shadow Of A Leaf,
Gone Walking,
Tree Shades,
The Frog Jump At Lisbon Central School,
Smoke To Cochise,
Life,
The Other Man On The Cross,
Alternative,
Before Fiberglass,
Poem Written In Thomas Gray's Country Churchyard,
Oscar Wilde Lament,
Maine,
Lobster Fisherman,
The Sun,
Fish,
Wet Fourth of July Fire Cracker,
Song For Dylan Thomas,
Provincetown,