AUTUMN 07: Janet McCann
Janet McCann's poetry has been published in Kansas Quarterly, Parnassus, Nimrod, Sou'wester, Christian Century, Christianity and Literature, New York Quarterly, Tendril, Poetry Australia and McCall's, among many others. She has won three chapbook contests, sponsored by Pudding Publications, Chimera Connections, and Franciscan University Press. A 1989 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship winner, McCann has taught at Texas A & M University since 1969. She has co-edited three anthologies with David Craig, Odd Angles of Heaven (1994), Place of Passage ( Story Line, 2000), and Poems of Francis and Clare (St, Anthony Messanger, 2004), and has co-authored two textbooks, Creative and Critical Thinking, 2nd ed. (Houghton Mifflin, 1985) and In a Field of Words (Prentice Hall, 1993). Her book on Wallace Stevens Wallace Stephens: The Celestial Possible was published by Twayne in 1996. McCann's most recent poetry book is Emily's Dress (Pecan Grove Press, 2004).
PARIS AGAIN
three times the age of my first visit
I return, a tourist now
armed with camera like the others
it's much the same
but there are now so many of us-
history flows around us
we snap at it
it vanishes
at the bouquinistes I buy:
old Simenons, pages from a hymnal,
eaux-fortes of Notre Dame,
an old map of Provence
I do not buy the little Eiffel towers or the
magnets and buttons
the young in each other's arms
along the Seine
and I am three times older
a sudden rain comes
water gushes from the mouths of gargoyles
on the sides of Notre Dame, umbrellas pop open
like batwings, I stand by the cathedral
let the gargoyles pour water over me
the lovers
embracing under umbrellas
think I am mad
later I buy to-go gargoyles
at the Tabac, the owner wraps them
in plastic padding, but I know
the gargoyles do not go
I go
they stay
MILANO
has to do with opulent churches
rich with madonnas and the tiny eyed warden
who snuffs the candles out by handfuls
and throws them in a can of sand
so people will pay to light more
he shouts his outrage over students
picnicking on the marble steps, though
so long as the steps have been there
the young have opened sandwiches, bottles
of soda and beer, and sat joyously in sunshine
among the pigeons who also deface the steps
and belong there, but the tiny eyed warden
shakes his long wide broom at them,
and the beggars beg because they have that right
and he scowls at them, and he doesn't believe
anything, particularly in the rights of beggars
or students or in the efficacy of candles
but only in the necessity of order,
the need to make a living, the respect
due the dark priest now moving towards his box.
LA GARDE-FREINET
scent of lavender and eucalyptus
words names I have forgotten
the woods the flowers bathed in light
boudrages, those shiny bugs
buzzing the tall grass. the mistral blows
wash off the line. Those words I remember:
linge, ligne. faces of friends
catching the light. something invisible
recording. long ago, maybe half a
romance, running down sandy alleys,
hiding behind dunes. now, decor, a kind of
ritual. return. faces, light
turning, a turn. again, come back
to the land not ours, the high delight,
the wind over the earth, the language
of laughter and the senses, plates piled
with tomates, pates, aioli
the bright road windswept
light melting over flowers, fig trees,
memories of other departures
a turning of faces, time returning, light
© 2007 Janet McCann
