Joanne Monte

Joanne Monte Poems

1.

The river below us:
nitrogen, phosphorous, petrochemicals,
dioxin from the paper mills,
a rich buffet of metals digested
...

Entering the garden,
I notice the rhododendron,
the platinum pearl, that had displaced
the unwanted vines of bittersweet
...

(a.m.) the city
was split by lightning,
stripped down to bone, and tortured,
its flesh lashed by flames…
...

An ordinary morning―
awakening to nothing but daylight
prodding through the eggshell-tinted blinds
and the warm quilts to be tossed back
...

I

This morning I thought how easy
it must have been for you
...

in a village
soldiers have hunted,
borne behind doors
that have been kicked open
...

Today the drapes, for once,
have been drawn and, at last,
the sun has lit up the pine-dark interiors
of that day you poured me wine at supper,
...

You stand on the porch
unaware of the woman you are,
the woman in quandary, the woman
from whom you must step away
...

from the beginning,
was meant to douse the darkness
as it did then in that year;
...

The earth, its flesh scarred for life,
cut open by one nation,
the land for which we fought,
...

Threatening our tenacity that summer
were the most turbulent vandals of weather.
We drifted, guarding our freedom,
and not thinking the errors we’ve made
...

There is a wind
breaking with eloquence, rain,

a thousand origami cranes for longevity;
...

It’s the work of the lens,
to focus its gaze and find the proper angle
for impact, clarity; to show from its own perspective
the body of a child wrapped in a garment
...

It's the chance we did not have,
that metered stroke of a second before we knew

you were leaving, its luminous hand
...

from heart, from an old Italian recipe
handed down
through generations: flour, salt, yeast.
...

Today I learned
how to translate the words
for bread and wine into another language,
...

No soft-hearted voices,
no chimes singing an aria in duet
with the breeze; only the Adirondack chair,
lying back in its aura of aged cedar,
...

The last month of the year
caught in a revolving door of haste,
packed-up briefcases, a bloodstream
of rush-hour traffic. Newspapers
...

Joanne Monte Biography

Joanne Monte is the author of a highly acclaimed Korean War novel, " The Day to Eternity" . She is also the recipient of the 2012 Bordighera Poetry Book Award for " The Blue Light of Dawn." Many of her poems have been published in literary journals which includes Poet Lore, The Raintown Review, Ancient Paths Literary Review, and many others. She is the recipient of several awards, most notably, The John David Johnson Memorial Poetry Award, The Writer's Digest Award and the New Millennium Writings Award IV for Poetry.)

The Best Poem Of Joanne Monte

River

The river below us:
nitrogen, phosphorous, petrochemicals,
dioxin from the paper mills,
a rich buffet of metals digested
from the mines, and still we remain
oblivious to its symptoms

until a skull-and-crossbones sign warns
of the poisons that run the course
of its slim body, writhing like a patient
on a gurney, admitted for treatment;

warns too, of its offspring
in the waiting room: soft-shell crabs, oysters,
the striped bass, the silk fillet,
and the trout we want to bring home
to the sizzle of butter and garlic
and the fresh herbs in the kitchen.

And suddenly we are left alone
to recover mere memory: the river
we had swung across on ropes

in the dungarees of childhood,
splashing in its shallow gut; the river
over which we fought and killed—
and for which we even died—
the river we damned.

Joanne Monte Comments

Frank Avon 04 October 2014

Sometimes it's one's duty simply to call attention to the special beauty that's there before us, .. such rare sensitivity: a flower of great beauty amid the noise and clangor and violence.... How often we have cried out in silence for 'a language / we cannot speak, ' for the grace of a single moment, 'immortal, held still in one shot, one frame.' And isn't that frame the very image at the heart of Being that 'we hope to see more clearly, ' the very thing that, for our own peace, we must salvage 'out of this rubble' of life? William Carlos Williams found this in the world about him, and now another New Jersey poet has found it for us as well. Read her. No, better, meditate on what she has to tell us in such exquisite and tender language. Her poems are like saxifrage, the healing flower that breaks the very rock of indifference strewn each morning about us.—Paul Mariani

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Frank Avon 04 October 2014

I should have known immediately that you were a published professional. I've just finished reading the latest edition of Best American Poetry. Several of your poems published here are better than any of the poems in that volume. I'm also poring over Hart Crane once again (reputedly the 'most influential' poet of the 20th century) . It seems to me, brilliant as his poetry is, that he led us up the wrong road, rejecting accessibility for metaphoric density and logical discontinuity. If a poetry for the people is to be renewed, I think your style, deceptively simple yet majestically elegant as it is, must be the style we develop. I'll be looking for your books.

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