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    Alone and Not Alone
    Alone and Not Alone
    Alone and Not Alone
    Ebook111 pages42 minutes

    Alone and Not Alone

    By Ron Padgett

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Following Pulitzer Prize finalist Ron Padgett's 2013's Collected Poems (winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the William Carlos Williams Prize) Alone and Not Alone offers new poems that see the world in a clear and generous light.

    From "The World of Us":

    Don't go around all day
    thinking about life—
    doing so will raise a barrier
    between you and its instants.
    You need those instants
    so you can be in them,
    and I need you to be in them with me
    for I think the world of us
    and the mysterious barricades
    that make it possible.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCoffee House Press
    Release dateApr 20, 2015
    ISBN9781566894029
    Alone and Not Alone

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    Reviews for Alone and Not Alone

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      There are some really good poems in this collection - I like the one about how difficult it would have been for us to do multiplication with Roman numerals such as MDCCCLXIV. In 'Paris again' Padgett has French waiters down to a T - 'grumpy and snooty and Cartesian and quick all at the same time'.
    • 3/5
      A fun, quirky collection with a few gems, especially "The Street," which has a slow, powerful beauty.

    Book preview

    Alone and Not Alone - Ron Padgett

    What Poem

    What poem

    were you thinking of,

    my dear,

    as you breezed out the door

    in your long coat fur-tipped

    at the top?

    What animal

    once wore that fur

    and licked it

    with a long, raspy tongue

    that lolled to one side

    in the afternoon shade?

    If only you too

    could lope across

    the Serengeti Plain

    and grab something

    in your powerful jaws,

    instead of pausing

    at the door and saying,

    as if in afterthought,

    "Write a poem

    while I’m out."

    The Roman Numerals

    It must have been hard

    for the Romans to multiply

    —I don’t mean reproduce,

    but to do that computation.

    Step inside a roman numeral

    for a moment, a long one

    such as MDCCLIX. Look

    at the columns and pediments

    and architraves: you cannot move them,

    but how beautiful they are

    and august! However, try to multiply

    MDCCCLXIV by MCCLVIII.

    How did they do it?

    I asked this question some years ago

    and never found an answer

    because I never looked for one,

    but it is pleasant,

    living with this question.

    Perhaps the Romans weren’t good at math,

    unlike the Arabs, who arrived

    with baskets of numerals, plenty

    for everyone. We still have

    more than we need today.

    I have a 6 and a 7 that,

    when put side by side, form my age.

    Come to think of it,

    I’d rather be LXVII.

    Butterfly

    Chaung Tzu wrote about the man

    who dreamed he was a butterfly

    and when he woke up

    wondered if he weren’t now

    a butterfly dreaming he was a man.

    I love this idea

    though I doubt that Chaung Tzu

    really thought that a man would think

    he is a butterfly,

    for it’s one thing to wake up

    from a dream in the night

    and another to spend your whole life

    dreaming you are a man.

    I have spent my whole life

    thinking I was a boy, then a man,

    also a person and an American

    and a physical entity and a spirit

    and maybe a little bit butterfly.

    Maybe I should be more butterfly,

    that is, lurch into a room

    with bulging eyes and big flapping wings

    that throw a choking powder

    onto people who scream and fall dead,

    almost. For I would rescue them

    with the celestial music of my beauty

    and my utter harmlessness,

    my ætherial disregard of what they are.

    Reality

    Reality has a transparent veneer

    that looks exactly like the reality beneath it.

    If you look at anything,

    your hands, for instance, and wait,

    you will see it. Then

    it will flicker and vanish,

    though it is still there.

    You must wait a day or two

    before attempting to see it again,

    for each attempt uses up

    your current allotment of reality viewing.

    Meanwhile there is a coffee shop

    where you can sit and drink coffee,

    and where you will be tempted

    to look down at the cup and see

    the transparent veneer again,

    but that is only because you are overstimulated.

    Do not order another cup. Or do.

    It will have no effect on the veneer.

    Sometimes the veneer becomes detached

    and moves slightly away from reality,

    as when you look up and see a refrigerator

    in refrigerator heaven, cold and quiet.

    But then the veneer snaps back

    to its former position and vanishes.

    This is a normal occurrence—

    do not be alarmed by it.

    Instead, drive to the store

    and buy something

    that looks like milk, return

    home and place it in the refrigerator.

    Days go by, years go by, people

    grow older and die, surrounded,

    if

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