Apples from Shinar. Hyam Plutzik

      

      APPLES FROM SHINAR

       WESLEYAN POETRY CLASSICS

      APPLES FROM SHINAR

       A Book of Poems by

      HYAM PLUTZIK

      SPECIAL EDITION

       With Afterword byDavid Scott Kastan

      WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS

      MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT

      Wesleyan University Press

      Middletown CT 06459

       www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

      Poems © 1950, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1958, 1959

      Estate of Hyam Plutzik

      Preface of 2011 edition © 2011 Estate of Hyam Plutzik

      Afterword by David Scott Kastan © 2011 Wesleyan University Press

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.

      Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following publications in which some of these poems first appeared: Accent, The American Scholar, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Epoch, Fifteen Modern American Poets by George P. Elliott, Furioso, The Hopkins Review, New World Writing No. 8, Prairie Schooner, Saturday Review, The Sewanee Review, The Transatlantic Review, and Yale Review.

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2011924376

      ISBN 978-0-8195-7167-0

      5 4 3 2 1

      TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER

      CONTENTS

       PREFACE

       BECAUSE THE RED OSIER DOGWOOD

       THE DREAM ABOUT OUR MASTER

       TO MY DAUGHTER

       I AM DISQUIETED

       AS THE GREAT HORSE

       IF CAUSALITY IS IMPOSSIBLE

       THE OLD WAR

       THE PREMONITION

       JIM DESTERLAND

       AFTER LOOKING INTO A BOOK

       THE GEESE

       THE MYTHOS OF SAMUEL HUNTSMAN

       BEWARE, SAUNTERER

       THE AIRMAN WHO FLEW OVER

       THE PRIEST EKRANATH

       I IMAGINED A PAINTER

       THE BASS

       THE IMPORTANCE OF POETRY

       WINTER, NEVER MIND WHERE

       THE ZERO THAT IS ALL

       FOR T.S.E. ONLY

       A NEW EXPLANATION OF THE QUIETUDE

       PORTRAIT

       REQUIEM FOR EDWARD CARRIGH

       AND IN THE 51ST YEAR

       MAN AND TREE

       OF OBJECTS CONSIDERED AS FORTRESSES

       A PHILOSOPHER ON A MOUNTAIN

       TRIO FOR TWO VOICES AND A WOODWIND

       THE MYTHOS OF THE MAN FROM ENOCH

       THE MILKMAN

       THE LAST FISHERMAN

       THE SHEPHERD (from Horatio)

       AFTERWORD BY DAVID SCOTT KASTAN

      PREFACE

      A recent traveler in Granada, remembering the gaiety that had greeted him on an earlier visit, wondered why the place seemed so sad. The answer came to him at last: “This was a city that had killed its poet.” He was talking, of course, of the great Federico García Lorca, murdered by Franco’s bullies during the Spanish Civil War.

      But are there not many cities and many places that kill their poets? Places nearer home than Granada and the Albaicín? The poets, true, are humbler than Lorca (for such genius is a seed as rare as a roc’s egg), and the deaths are less brutal, more subtle, more civilized. Against us, luckily, there are no squads on the lookout. There is no conspiracy against us, unless it is a conspiracy of indifference. But there are more powerful things in the modern world (and people who are the slaves of things, and people who are things) that move against poetry like an intractable enemy, all the more horrible because unconscious. They would kill the poet—that is, make him stop writing poetry. We must stay alive, must write then, write as excellently as we can. And if out of our labors and agonies there appears, along with our more moderate triumphs, even one