The Whole Song

SELECTED POEMS

Vincent Ferrini, Kenneth Warren, Fred Whitehead

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780252091193
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

With a voice emerging from class tensions, labor struggles, the Great Depression, and World War II, Vincent Ferrini lived as a people's poet crying out for an end to exploitation and organized greed. Radical Christian gnosis and the conviction that poetry should be more than a display of word-craft distinguished him from poets like T. S. Eliot, infusing his work with dynamic images of Christ as a fighter, a revolutionary, and a martyr in opposing the mighty for the sake of the poor.

Fishtown

Fishcutters

the scales of the dawn

stick to the skin

of the cutters

ankle deep in fisheyes

white bony skeletons

sleep with them

and follow them

back to these wharfs

wet with the smell

of old love that anchors

them to the innumerable fish

that come forth

perpetually

and is their breathing

Folksong

I pass

by day

and night

no one has

seen me

If you ever

want to find

me

and know me

leave behind

yourself

and enter

the caves

of other

people

there you

will find

me

who is

yourself

A Little Autobiography

a dog ran

down the night

with my left hand

I asked

the lamppost

where the dog had gone

the lamppost

hung its head

it had no tongue

I hunted

the dogtrack

down the endless night

and on a hill

I saw the dog

burying the bone

of my left hand

in the moon

This House

This house

is holier

than a temple

it is where

I live

and have my

being

this house

of bone

and blood

molded

by the weathers

of experience

is all

I have

this house

after

this house

which is me

only

is dust

I will be

in your

house

Excerpts from “In the Arriving”

this poem

is addressed to

Charles Olson

whose drive, insight & perception are the mark of the

maker, the

Poet

with a voice most original, provocative &

contagious

IN the Arriving

prebirth

. . . . . . of fishtown

(or any) as it is

to become

from us

in this shape

now singled out

to . . . .

the streets & houses of sleep,

work, landgripped & the

water roads

ancestor bound to moon

searchings

we

rise wet to our souls

gnarled by the meanderings

& i roots of our bones

moonwhite

heart-stemmed

make known to you

ourselves

of the bench, garbage truck,

store counter, the wheel

the booming drag

of need & the variegated

others pushing thru

. . . . .

everyone

. . . . .

those

who slip down

in a tangle of choking

named in the logbook

the death column

& coming back to our

plates

we

eating them & becoming more

of us, replenishing the

grails of ourselves

. . . .

this our living & the sorrows

we bleed by beads

where they went & go

we are

to you

steering the night

on stone tower

aiming outwardly

in

your searchlight

thru cloudjammed windpacked

peoplesnarled

atmosphe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Shoe City
• Fishtown
• Know Fish
• The Navigators
• The Community of Self
• This Other Ocean
• Magdalene Silences
• Magi Image
• The Indweller
• Beyond 9/11
• Appendix: Onions & Bread—From a Rediscovered Manuscript
• Notes to the Poems
• Vincent Ferrini Bibliography
• Index of Titles