Flying to Calcutta: And Other Poems

By Robert Ayres Carter

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 27, 2005
• ISBN: 9781469123974

Robert Ayres Carter

ROBERT AYRES CARTER is a widely published and versatile writer of fiction and non-fiction, as well as a poet and playwright. He has written several books on publishing topics, the novel Manhattan Primitive, and two mystery novels: Casual Slaughters and Final Edit. He is also the author of a biography, Buffalo Bill Cody: The Man Behind the Legend, and a two volumes of memoirs: Sunday’s Child: Memories of a Midwestern Boyhood; and Nobody Yet Knows Who I Am: A Personal History: 1943-1953. A native Midwesterner, he now lives in Richmond, Virginia, with his wife Reade Johnson and their mixed-breed rescue dog Rolfe.

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Copyright © 2005 by Robert Ayres Carter.

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CONTENTS

Foreword

EARLY POEMS

As grief was our division

Here with my hands

On Bidding Maria Goodbye

Twilight

Ranchos de Taos

On Art

To All the Mismatched Lovers

Risus Sardonicus

In Persia Once

Ishtar at the Gates of Paradise

Birds in the Air

Sand of Many Kinds and Colors

Cutting Losses

The Aquarium

On Women

Lines to be Carved

On My Gravestone

The Last Train

From Chatham Square

The Landlocked Salmon

The Minstrel in Search of a Legend

Street Scene: New York City

Death of A Poet

TWO POEMS

One: Sestina

Two: Grandfather Speaks to

His Garden

Song to a Mountain

Chinese Garden: A Villanelle

Flying to Calcutta

Beatitudes

Good Friday Blues

This

Tree

The Story of Baucis and Philemon

Baucis to Philemon

The Vigil

A Kindness of Candles

Summer Squall: Lake George

Windsong

Recipe for a Thanksgiving

The Return

Villanelle on a December Wedding

A Chance Encounter

THE INDIAN SPRINGS POEMS:

A Midwestern Portrait Gallery

Portrait of the Artist in Pinstripes

The Pom-Pom Girl

The Gold-Star Boy

Gretchen Ermantinger

Harold

Young Tom Mooney

Eric Swenson

Josephine Bergeron

Chloe Kurth Swenson

Our Class President

Billy Caslon

Flash O’Farrell

Johnny

Senator Josiah Reilly

Goldenberg & Son

And Then I Wrote …

Edwin Walsh

Indian Springs: An Afterword

TRANSLATIONS

FIVE BY FRANÇOIS VILLON:

Ballade of Small Talk

Ballade

Villon’s Epitaph

Prayer For Our Lady

Double Ballade

Afterword

Once again for Reade,

who has made our life together

a kind of poem.

Foreword

My Long and Happy Life in Poetry

I recently went through my Commonplace Book (which in

my case is a box of file cards, alphabetically stored, each bearing a

quotation of some sort), and turned to the P’s. Under the general

heading of Poetry I found the following:

From Ezra Pound:

"The only reason I like to publish poetry is that it saves me

the trouble of making 15 copies for my friends."

And, from an unknown, or long forgotten source:

"It is said, on far from satisfactory authority, that the Primate

of Ireland in the 7th Century A.D. decreed that the number of

poets in the nation was to be limited to 1400 at any one time.

Such a limitation was necessary, because ‘they are such a scabrous

collection of thieves, drunkards, lunatics, whores and perverts.’"

Finally, from Robert Graves, a much-cited truism:

"There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in

money either."

So—why write poetry at all, when there’s no financial gain

in it, and not much fame either, if you’re counting noses—that

is, readers?

I find it difficult to answer this question, but in the course of

these opening pages, I shall certainly make the attempt.

To begin with, poetry seems to me to be as innate an

expression of self as speech itself. The youngest children delight

in nursery rhymes. My own first exposure to poetry was probably

Hickory dickory dock/The mouse ran up the clock; or maybe

it was Mary had a little lamb, or "There was an old woman

who lived in a shoe." I’m sure you see the point without my

belaboring it. Rhymes enchant us; they linger in the memory

like familiar and well-loved music.

If young children love nursery rhymes, why do they not keep

the love of verse all their lives, instead of putting it aside as

something childish, like a toy outgrown?

Only, I think, if you write it yourself is the habit of reading

poetry likely to stay with you. I’m sure there are poetry lovers

everywhere who have never written a line of the stuff and still

swear by it—but, I insist—once you have composed a poem of

your own, you’re hooked.

Why write poetry? "For the glory of God, and to make glad

the heart of man," was one poet’s answer.

When did I write my first poem? I can’t really remember.

The date ought to have stuck in my mind, like some rite of

passage, but it did not. I know I was writing poems in the fourth

grade, when I was fortunate enough to land in Miss Gundlach’s

class.

A love letter: Dear Miss Gundlach: how grateful I am for

your encouragement. I never had the opportunity to thank you

in person, and I’m sure by now that you’re long gone. After all,

some seventy years have passed since I sat in your classroom at

Groveland Park School in St. Paul—one of the happiest periods

of my life—and you seemed old to me even then.

One winter’s day, with the snow drifting haphazardly down,

icicles pendant on the eaves, and frost riming the window panes,

I was kept home in bed with a slight cold. A classmate later told

me that Miss Gundlach, dear Miss Gundlach, had said to the

class:

"Isn’t a shame that Bobby Carter isn’t here today, to write a

poem for us about this