Baby, It's You
Before Pandora’s Kitchen drops this fall, I thought I’d share three older poems and a little story on how each one came to be.
Before Pandora’s Kitchen drops this fall, I thought I’d share three older poems from earlier collections that still hang around the house. Each comes with a little backstory about how it came to life. Enjoy.
—Ron
Baby, It's You
Poetry lifts language from its knees
in the kitchen, from its tired behind
at a desk full of bills, from off its feet
beside the ironing board, from under
the beater that needs a clutch.
Poetry kisses with its mouth open
and whispers, "Sure, I'm idiomatic,
but nobody loves you like I do."
For some people, this modest poem opens a real can of worms as it tells a Reader what Poetry (note the capital) does. I can name any number of poets (Matthew Zapruder, Kenneth Koch, Barbara Hamby, and the list goes on and on) who’d disagree. Are they wrong? Nope. But I’m not wrong, either. Poetry is a mansion with many rooms, including a rec room and a creepy basement. For me, Poetry does exactly what the first stanza says: it helps get people back on their feet. And it does that in an intimate, flirtatious way.
Bears from Space
Plastic honey bears on every table in every coffee shop.
Nanoparticles in the yellow nozzles send information
back to Constellation Ursa. Thousands of bears are on alert.
Our space ships stand ready.
When the bear-ships land – huge, monolithic, imposing --
humans will go to their knees. They will roll over and show
their fat, white stomachs.
Only one thing from coffee shop data is worrisome: most
hominids tip the little bear and squeeze. But a few rip
the bear’s hat off and dip a spoon into its skull.
This suggests a savagery that must be taken into account.
Perhaps they are not as naked and puny as they appear.
This poem was fun to write and I remember – brace yourself for a fancy word -- its provenance: my local coffee shop. I don’t like to work anywhere except my studio. But I do like coffee with steamed soy milk. I’m waiting for the barista when somebody at a nearby table picks up a honey bear and says to his friend, “What a great place for nanotechnological spyware.” Bingo. I sat down and made a few notes on a napkin. The first few drafts weren’t promising: easy (aka dumb) jokes, FBI/CIA stuff, a noir shamus in a trench coat. I still liked the idea of bears with a plan for world domination. In lots of sci-fi movies, humans are called “puny earthlings” and yet in film after film we prevail. Then one morning I saw an ad on TV for toys, and one of those was Talking Teddy. Once I had a bear-narrator things got better faster.
Diary Cows
Got up early, waited for the farmer.
Hooked us all up to the machines as usual.
Typical trip to the pasture, typical
afternoon grazing and ruminating.
About 5:00 back to the barn. What
a relief! Listened to the radio during
dinner. Lights out at 7:00.
More tomorrow
On school visits to grade schools (and usually matched with a writer of picture books) this little poem can send kids into hysterics. From their early readers and pic books, they’re used to animals talking and doing things. Sometimes the picture book writer asks the kids to draw something using the poem and they can’t wait to go to work. The poem seems to baffle some adults who ask me, “Didn’t you mean dairy cows?” Um, no. Because then there’s no joke. Or I get, “Boy, this must have taken you about two minutes to write.” I just nod until they walk away and then, like the diary cow, think, What a relief.
Ron Koertge (April 22, 1940) is an American poet and author of young adult fiction. Koertge is currently the Poet Laureate of South Pasadena, California. Koertge's honors include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a California Arts Council grant, and inclusion in numerous anthologies. His young-adult fiction has won many awards, including Friends of American Writers Young People’s Literature Award, New York Library’s 100 Best Children’s Books, ALA Best Book, New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age, and P.E.N. awards. In 2017, he was awarded a Pushcart Prize.
Pandora’s Kitchen will be out Sept 16. Pre-order now.
I love Diary Cows!
Thanks, Ron.
Oh Ron, love your work! Diary cows just cracked me up laughing!