Poetry Magazine, Feature Poet : Maxine Chernoff, Spring 2005

Poetry Magazine

Maxine Chernoff

USA

Maxine Chernoff has published a book of short stories, Bop, in the Vintage Contemporaries series, as well as the novels, Plain Grief, American Heaven, and A Boy in Winter. A second collection of short stories, Signs of Devotion, was selected as a New York Times Book of the Year. Her most recent books are the poetry collection World (Salt Publications) and Some of Her Friends That Year: New & Selected Stories (Coffee House Press). Chair of the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University, she lives in Mill Valley, California

[a group’s intended eternity is always at risk from depradation]

envy as

the mainspring

of demand

self-made rules

form a triangle

"of honor

luck &

shame"

avenging gods

replaced by novelty

"free floating desire"

"voices overlap

and blend"

"shadows slip

through shadows"

future and past

"allegory

a destination

one can long for"

"Golden was the first

age which

kept faith

and did

the right"

next world—

a bribe

for losing

this

all Hamlets

with a gift

for monologue

[Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods, Grant McCracken, Culture and Consumption, Peter Conrad, Romantic Opera and Literary Form]

[to give without falling prey]

even in refusal

a gift is destroyed

(history as amnesia)

to minimize betrayal

seek ingratitude

(says the seer)

"I give you a world

and emptied

I return it

a seeker of emptiness

my without is

not hidden

but beyond

being

beyond myself

and my fetters"

the gift is not

alms or begging

counterfeit or debt

orgiastic mysteries

replaced

by the null set

the nothing

the liturgies

of ambiguity

the magnanimity

of blind refusal

[Robert Bernasconi, What Goes Around Comes Around, 1994]

[one in space, the other in time]

I need opacity

to see myself—

clearly—

through prayers

& sacrifice

as I exist

it is my wish

to make

a world

through laws

and then

to miss

the recognition

amnesia

a fact

of all between—

the what of things--

the things

of man--

which stand in

at the altarpiece

defying time

& recognition

a salt exchange

results in praise

(and sometimes death

in higher doses)

& semen too

a type of salt

each gift the poison

of human position

when my

duplications

represent me

in volition

& desire

[Maurice Godelier, Substitute Objects for Humans and Gods]

["In giving you I give myself."]

A worthy object

bond of souls

which given

results

in exchange of

hau but failing

to reciprocate--

a religious concept

misunderstood--

will wound

one deeply and

then perhaps

vengeance

of god or man

depending on

what

quits the body

at death--

soul or capital--

as if a shadow

or cape to give

someone

whose shoulders

need convincing

["the world owes the world more than the world can pay"]

a ray

like music:

"pertinence

and beauty everyday"

many parts rejoice:

flower leaves, paint boxes,

coral and lambs

generosity in fate

but rich men and kings

who receive a gift poorly

fear favor or blackmail

glut (then loss)

If gifts might speak:

"you do not need me"

like a goldsmith

or loved one

finding rectitude

(a way to love)

in interference

[Emerson, 1844 in "Gifts"]

[Marshall Sahlins, 1972, Stone Age Economics]