Sharon Bryan
This is on Poetry Daily today.
I was lucky enough to hear Sharon read this poem a few times at PLU. It's probably one of favorite poems ever because not only does she use wordplay, but it moves beyond that into a more interesting place or why and how.
Bass Bass
Stringed fish thub
thub thubbing its way
downstream or wave-
grained instrument—
the words make a little
sizzle in my brain,
which twin is it, does it
rhyme with ace or ass,
my tongue trips over
itself when I come to
either one, am I at
the opera, jazz club,
bait shop, is something
keeping time or sifting it
through gills—you've
got the picture, here's
the quiz: striped bass,
stringed bass, sea bass
double bass, basswood—
what a difference a vowel
makes, this is the danger
you face, telling the story
of your life, if you fail
to enunciate perfectly
you could have yourself
all wrong, Bayzil not Basil,
married to Lisa not Liza,
writing for Poultry magazine—
how many close calls our
lives are made of, did
the palm reader say
You will have a long life
or the wrong wife, suppose
god has bad handwriting
or a lisp, and we've mis-
understood the messages:
In the begonia was the worm...
we mistook gardening advice
for the story of our lives—
god made lime, and separated
the lime from the bark, planted
seeds, they were fruitful and
vegetable, he looked at what he had
made and saw that it was food,
he was pleased, this was just
his first try, blessed were the leeks,
unheard of on earth until he
grew them, and the peas also,
he tasted them and found
that they were good, a god
could spend his life like that,
puttering in the garden, not
a care in the world beyond
watering his plants, growing
the only sweet fat tomatoes
in the universe—if only
he hadn't wanted to take a day
off to go fishing, so he created
fish and fishing line, and got
to looking at the line, thinking
what else it might be good for,
suppose he plucked it just like
that, and that, it sounded pretty
good, but by then he was tired,
he used almost the same names
for the stringed thing and the fish
that jerked his line just then,
he got himself all tangled up
in words, until he didn't know
his bass from his treble,
he was in trouble, he saw
he needed help, so he invented
Mingus and other people
to show him which way was up.
Sharon Bryan
Poetry Northwest
Fall 2007 / Winter 2008
I was lucky enough to hear Sharon read this poem a few times at PLU. It's probably one of favorite poems ever because not only does she use wordplay, but it moves beyond that into a more interesting place or why and how.
Bass Bass
Stringed fish thub
thub thubbing its way
downstream or wave-
grained instrument—
the words make a little
sizzle in my brain,
which twin is it, does it
rhyme with ace or ass,
my tongue trips over
itself when I come to
either one, am I at
the opera, jazz club,
bait shop, is something
keeping time or sifting it
through gills—you've
got the picture, here's
the quiz: striped bass,
stringed bass, sea bass
double bass, basswood—
what a difference a vowel
makes, this is the danger
you face, telling the story
of your life, if you fail
to enunciate perfectly
you could have yourself
all wrong, Bayzil not Basil,
married to Lisa not Liza,
writing for Poultry magazine—
how many close calls our
lives are made of, did
the palm reader say
You will have a long life
or the wrong wife, suppose
god has bad handwriting
or a lisp, and we've mis-
understood the messages:
In the begonia was the worm...
we mistook gardening advice
for the story of our lives—
god made lime, and separated
the lime from the bark, planted
seeds, they were fruitful and
vegetable, he looked at what he had
made and saw that it was food,
he was pleased, this was just
his first try, blessed were the leeks,
unheard of on earth until he
grew them, and the peas also,
he tasted them and found
that they were good, a god
could spend his life like that,
puttering in the garden, not
a care in the world beyond
watering his plants, growing
the only sweet fat tomatoes
in the universe—if only
he hadn't wanted to take a day
off to go fishing, so he created
fish and fishing line, and got
to looking at the line, thinking
what else it might be good for,
suppose he plucked it just like
that, and that, it sounded pretty
good, but by then he was tired,
he used almost the same names
for the stringed thing and the fish
that jerked his line just then,
he got himself all tangled up
in words, until he didn't know
his bass from his treble,
he was in trouble, he saw
he needed help, so he invented
Mingus and other people
to show him which way was up.
Sharon Bryan
Poetry Northwest
Fall 2007 / Winter 2008
Yes. Excellent. How good to imagine that you and gods are not so presumptuous to think you might not be all tangled up in words and other judgments.
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