{"id":316,"date":"2007-11-09T23:03:41","date_gmt":"2007-11-10T03:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/09\/stephen-cramer-curses\/"},"modified":"2007-11-09T23:03:41","modified_gmt":"2007-11-10T03:03:41","slug":"stephen-cramer-curses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2007\/11\/09\/stephen-cramer-curses\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Cramer, “Curses”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gleamed from gutter mouths, we knew their musicle before
\nmeanings, the monosyllables raised to hallowed refrains
\non our tongues. We glorified it, the older world of vice
\n& impiety. So just as we both wanted to be the fugitive
\nin cops & robbers<\/i>, my best friend & I hid downstairs
\n& scrawled out a barrage of vulgarities—the heavy hitters,<\/p>\n

of course, but then the half-dozen declensions of ass<\/i>,
\nthe lumped phrases of defecation,
\nthe whole shameful lexicon
\nof anatomy. Then, those white
\nsheets defiled (microcosm
\nof our own soiled tabula rasa<\/i>),
\nwe crumpled them &—like shoving a bottled note to<\/p>\n

the sea’s blind tug—threw them to the ditch at wood’s edge.
\nIt was the same fertile gully where I’d picked, years before,
\npalmfuls of fruit &—the words monk’s hood<\/i>, nightshade<\/i>
\nstill a decade off—swallowed them. I hardly even remember
\nbeing sped to the ER to have my stomahc pumped. Of course<\/p>\n

our ink-spangled pages
\nnever went anywhere,
\nthough I wish I could hold
\none now, dim record
\nof childhood’s vast
\ntesting ground—the
\nnecessary absurdity & litter
\nof it all. Instead, those lost<\/p>\n

notes were draped with stray
\nleaves, coiled with briars
\nwhich could never quite
\nkeep from reach those
\nsweet-looking berries
\nwe were told not to touch
\nbut had to. And did.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Tongue & Groove<\/i><\/a>. A previous collection by Cramer, Shiva’s Drum<\/i>, was selected for the National Poetry Series by Grace Shulman. Other poems of Cramer’s online include “Fuel<\/a>” and “The Ark<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

In an essay on the University of Illinois Book Blog, Cramer describes how moving to Vermont changed his writing<\/a>, following the poems in this collection about life in New York City: “My breathing slowed, and I could feel my shoulders drop. Poetry, I’ve always believed, but could never, until now, prove, takes cue from your musculature. So my poems were relaxing a bit too, both in their syntax and their diction.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gleamed from gutter mouths, we knew their musicle before meanings, the monosyllables raised to hallowed refrains on our tongues. We glorified it, the older world of vice & impiety. So just as we both wanted to be the fugitive in cops & robbers, my best friend & I hid downstairs & scrawled out a barrage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}