8.24.15

Hey look, a weekend words!

8-23-15

Today we share an apocalyptic sun

with the land of a thousand summers.

That land, past our stone’s arc

picketed by ragged ranges,

is typically presented for our enjoyment.

Today it is a basin of savage fire.

The beaches and trails we claim

do not belong to us,

any more than the fertile rake of the soil.

While we weary, fret for old growths,

and our lungs become gently silted,

others are driven before the indiscriminate prod.

Their abandoned dooryards a collection of char,

sowing rows of live embers.

They will grow into memory’s shadow

of unquenchable fear.

8.17.15

Ooo, do I love me some revelation about a well-known cultural fact that I've taken for granted all my life. (Case in point, the meme about how Beauty and the Beast is really about outcasts finding real beauty in each other and why that makes Gaston and the townspeople so scary. It shouldn't be a mind-blowing moment, but I guess the status quo was stuck in my head since childhood).

So, the latest of that ilk making the rounds is how we've been interpreting The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost wrong. (Charitably, maybe "simplistically" or "not contextually" would be nicer, but the shock is greater with the former!)

Here is the text, if for some reason you don't already have it committed to memory. (My brain is just like that, I can't help it)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

The traditional, pretty ubiquitous interpretation is that the subject is extolling the virtues of personal independence and not following the path of crowds and trends. What a lovely validation for an American audience, especially young people! However, this article brings up some interesting points: (citing David Orr from his new book here)

Except Frost notes early in the poem that the two roads were “worn . . . really about the same.” There is no difference. It’s only later, when the narrator recounts this moment, that he says he took the road less traveled. “This is the kind of claim we make when we want to comfort or blame ourselves by assuming that our current position is the product of our own choices (as opposed to what was chosen for us, or allotted to us by chance),” Orr writes.

“The poem isn’t a salute to can-do individualism,” he continues. “It’s a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives.”

And some further contextual argument:

In 1912, Frost was nearly 40 and frustrated by his lack of success in the United States. After Thomas praised his work in London, the two became friends, and Frost visited him in Gloucestershire. They often took walks in the woods, and Frost was amused that Thomas always said another path might have been better. “Frost equated [it] with the romantic predisposition for ‘crying over what might have been,’ ” Orr writes, quoting Frost biographer Lawrance Thompson. 

(...) 

One Edward Thomas biographer suggested that “The Road Not Taken” goaded the British poet, who was indecisive about joining the army. 

“It pricked at his confidence . . . the one man who understood his indecisiveness most acutely — in particular, toward the war — appeared to be mocking him for it,” writes Matthew Hollis. 

Thomas enlisted in World War I, and was killed two years later.

 Do you like to have your assumptions challenged? Or to be surprised by what a piece has to share?

8.16.15

I am working on some other content, sorry for the lapse, but here is some filler:




The Naming of  Cats


T.S. Eliot




The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum-
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover—
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

8.10.15

Apparently, Seattle has a new Civic poet! Here's their statement of purpose:

The new two-year Civic Poet post will serve as a cultural ambassador for Seattle's rich, multi-hued literary landscape and should represent Seattle's diverse cultural community. The Civic Poet program celebrates our history and commitment to the written and spoken word and the people who have given it such a place of honor in our city. The goal of the program is to celebrate Seattle's rich literary community, while investing the future of literary arts through community engagement.

They selected Claudia Castro Luna, a Salvadorean immigrant who fled her country due to civil war. More biographical information here.  Here is her blog (yeah, blogspot!), and I particularly like this entry on Pupusas and War.

And of course, the good stuff, the poems.




Wake 

by Claudia Castro Luna



Not for what was left behind 30 years later,
departure salty       still
Nor for what I wish to come
Lo que(se)rá será
But for the tight
Narrow
Abyss
Between the two
I live at a wake
 The lilies on my desk know this
Petals paper thin, crumpled 2 of 2
They breathe simultaneous beauty
And decay
Outside the rain
Burrows deep inside the earth
My grief works the same way
Tunnels dug each day
Alongside limbic system, cardiovascular highways, digestive tracts
Alongside breath
I       remain       split
And folks with eagle eyes
And others with doe eyes
Offer hands, skin, as a way of unearthing a truth.


Choking my vernacular

 by Claudia Castro Luna


The small orifice, wishing to be called a window, has two crossing bars to prevent escape. Its design: to limit. From this cavity behold blue hill fragments, exiled lips, blank pages. This landscape of place born, suffusing everything-- even the poorest thoughts. Grafted meanings choke my vernacular. The universe lodged between pupil and eyelid compromises vision. Sometimes, a chip of song makes it through the bars. A quiet whisper soft and true. Sometimes, a veces, un pedazo de canción, a chip of song, a roar to swear by. A mark to live with; by. Such is mine.


These were the two poems she read during a city council event in 2013. Her other works are surprisingly difficult to find. Does anyone have a chapbook title of hers they can recommend? Hopefully I can go to an event where she presents her work and get a better idea!

8.5.15

It's always interesting "experiencing" a death, and I feel like there will be a lot of caveats to this, since we suck at talking about it. Someone passed away in my online circle. Did I "know" her? Not really, but there is such a funny thing about "knowing" people online you've never met, when sometimes those who we see every day don't have the same meaning. It doesn't make one type of acquaintance more real or more valid.

This person had been troubled, struggled with depression and mental health, and I'm sure more that I don't even know. These words were kicking around my head during the day, and while they are not about her, they are certainly for her.

8-4-15

The wind blows a hum

across the conch of my ear.

It is different from the clacking leaves

and insect legs.

It hints and reveals

in the heat of early August

like the dull song from the hive

or the faceless freeway.

Higher in the hills are arroyos still

under a pretense of green,

scarring and crossing their crooked limbs

triangulating with the sky,

extending antennae.

The South Fork makes a percussion

too, under the cement bridge.

It is a fainter, shallower echo.

But now I know the refrain

and I don’t have to pause and squint.

I heard it when the water was deeper,

but it is not gone.

8.3.15

I found a new poetry (nominally) blog over the weekend. That is to say, someone linked to a post from a blog they liked on facebook and I clicked on it. That seems like the lowest-effort way to do anything, and kinda not how I would like to operate, but the end result was good.

Whatthewoodscreated lives in the midwest, makes things, makes them grow, and talks candidly about the kind of things we encounter regularly but don't necessarily bring to light. Maybe something you look at but don't see, or notice but don't mention. I always appreciate attention to detail, and have respect for such fearless honesty, especially on the internet.

I basically want to block-quote this entire post for being relate-able.

After getting disappointing news about yet another fellowship, I was thinking I ought to be done with poetry. Whatever I do, I can’t seem to hold it right for very long. I have all these thoughts and ideals about what I think Poetry should be. Sometimes I really do operate out of that ideal. I remember that poetry isn’t about making me somebody. It doesn’t exist to put me in a job or a book deal. I remember that poetry isn’t the goal at all, but a way to tune into the goal, a way to talk about the goal, re-think the goal. Poetry is supposed to serve humanity, to teach us about each other and ourselves, and to make us pay attention to the world. Poetry is supposed to (in my mind) cause us to forgive, to spur us, to quiet us, to jar us. Poetry should make us wonder about God, wonder about the astounding power of nature, wonder about what we are doing and why. And on most days, I’m ready to cash all that in for something to make my resume look better. Oy. 

The problem is that all my poems are saying I’m lost, I’m lost. Or where is God, where is good, where is hope. And that scares me back into the world where I’m a waitress for no great reason other than one of loving where I work. Where I have literally no idea what I’m doing with my life. Where I have a creeping feeling that I missed the boat, and that boat was the last boat, and everyone else is on it, sailing away from an island that’s about to go down under the waves. And there I am on that island, sobbing pathetically about how I wanted to be a child still, and why isn’t the world different than it is. 

Oy indeed. This is a brick wall, and don't we know it. It's somewhat self-fulfilling, in that we wonder about where we are as people, what we're doing, and that is a circle of the unknown, and it doesn't always feel great. The hope being, I guess, that each time you go around, perhaps you pick up a small "aha" to take into the next circle.

One time, a friend told me that he never wanted to turn what he most loved into a profession. That money would taint it somehow, make it his own bread and butter instead of a pure gift. Now that’s ideals for you. I admired it at the time, but I didn’t understand it until recently. Trying to use poetry to get me somewhere career-wise has cost me everything worth having in poetry. It makes me jealous of poems I should be weeping over, makes me scoff at poets I should respect, makes me write calculated phraseology where I once wrote poetry. That fight, I surrender. I throw in the towel.

 Again, so relate-able. When we're unsure about something, the natural response is to look over, next door, next desk, and then that loop of unknown has a sinister tone, because every time you feel thrown, it seems that everyone around you somehow knows better. In the face of this insidious comparison, giving in seems like a great idea.

I can’t make poetry for the purpose of success. I’m no use at all at that. I genuinely suck at it. I’m not sure I’m of any use in poetry period when it comes down to brass tacks. But I know poetry is good for me. I know it makes me see better, gives me the heart to change (however slowly) into a Brianna far better than the one I am now.But the point of it can’t be much more than that in my soul. I can’t hijack it for gain. It’ll buck me right off. Which puts me back in the same shoes I wore before my MFA. Scuffy, old shoes that slog through the mud and out again with poetry clinging to the laces. I’ll stop pretending the work is anything more glamorous than that.

I feel a little bad using so much of her text on this page, but the words are worthwhile, and she's said it better than I could.