10.4.14

I saw some people celebrating Rosh Hashanah on Friday, the Jewish new year. I thought I would share something from local poet Dana Kuttler since it was timely. 



The Shofar Breaks your Heart

When you give a girl a shofar – 
no, not a proper instrument of G-d,
but a rough-cut horn with no real mouthpiece
her aunt brings back from a trip to Jerusalem,
don’t make it easy.

Put it up on the shelf in the living room
where its curled promise of a shout
will tempt her until she can reach it on tiptoe.

Tell her no one has ever found its voice,
that she will only make it grunt, bray and sputter
like the animal it came from.

Then give her a few years.

Give her an empty garage and a neighborhood
Jewish enough to understand what it’s hearing
so she can practice until
tiny tekiot burst forth from the scrap of ram.

She will be the only one who can ever shape its sounds,
can bend the call to tekiah, round off nine drops of t’ruah wailing,
fling the anguished cry of a sh’varim from its mouth.

Let her brag about this.  Remember that children
are not humble creatures, that the simple act of being heard
is their great triumph.  Let her be heard.

Bring her to Hebrew school.
Teach her the story of the rabbi
who told his students that he would put the words of Torah on their hearts;
that the words would only find their way in when the students’ hearts broke.
Let her sit with that tale for as long as it takes
for her own heart to shatter, for torah and poetry and forgiveness 
find their way inside,

play her Leonard Cohen. Let him croon about the cracks in everything,
that’s how the light gets in, let her begin searching for light,
ask her where she thinks the cracks come from,
give her Auschwitz, give her Torquemada, give her pogrom and
quota and blacklist, the ashes of all her burnt bridges,
give her avinu malkenu, ashamnu, ashamnu, ashamnu, 

watch her break 
her heart
with her fist.

Give her the shofar.  
Let the horn steal her breath,
let her begin to understand that she’s not holding a dead piece of animal,
but a living prayer.

Teach her: after every blast
you can hear the echo
of the still small voice.

If you listen for it,
you can hear the calls for the wild cries they are;
salute them with a straight back when they yank you from your amidah;
and should you hear a shofar blower struggle and gasp and strain for each call,
imagine yourself a trapped animal, desperate to be heard.

When it’s over,
Close your eyes.

Be. Broken. Here.  Before G-d and your people. Be. Cracked.

feel the light
and the words
come
in.

10.2.14

It can feel very lonely in web-space sometimes, especially when you are not connecting via social media. I thought I would try and explore other writers who do what I am trying to, or other platforms that bring writers together.

The first I found was the Valparaiso Poetry Review, from the University with the same name in Indiana. Sometimes I miss being in a University atmosphere from a writing perspective, since there is always something new and interesting going on, and enough turnover in atmosphere to keep things fresh. Just in my scanning I found several pieces that I liked. Here's The First Law of Thermodynamics by Michael Meyerhofer:



Dig too far and you’ll find the shards
of something ancient, stacked like Rome
and San Francisco on the crust
of ancestors: streets capping ruins,
ziggurat plus bazaar equals taco stand.
Sooner or later, all the cloisters
in your abbey become eligible
for an upgrade. All you have to do
is peel back your bedroom wallpaper
and you’ll find a whole tiramisu
of lost history. Remember, 
atoms are just bags of cowbells—
electrons, leptons, quarks,
the sparkler lifespan of the mayfly.
How many cowbells in a tulip,
a woolly rhino, a taxidermist, cowbells 
sloughing through the pastures 
of Tel Aviv, tin song that used to be
my mother now recycling that anthem
of hay and flies and runaway sun.


I have to admit, I was drawn to this one at first because it sounds like something I would write. I am fascinated by archaeology, and the idea that just by looking below, or beyond, or just inside, you could find a piece of another time. I often have dreams of finding hoards of coins, or a priceless old photo, or something exciting in a thrift store purchase. I also find a smile in comparing Rome and Tel Aviv to San Francisco and bedroom wallpaper. 

Can I just say, I am totally surprised by the number of "formalist" poems in this issue? So far I have found a ghazal, formalist rhythm, some terza rima, and other rhyming forms. Obviously there is a ton of variety, but it makes me excited to see all these forms in one place! A few were amateurish, but that's kind of the idea of a University Review, right? You gotta start somewhere. This next one is called Winter Solstice by Catherine Champion:


In early winter, the waves of Lake Michigan
clap against the mouth of the Black River

and surge up past the height of the lighthouse.
The surf freezes in reefing ice along the shore.

South Haven is dead long before this time;
the dark storefronts of the ice cream parlors

are locked in seasonal slumber. Two warm lights
remain in the newsstand and the town bar

where televisions flash a more present world.
This is my father’s favorite time of year—

once, he gathered us and announced a drive
to the lake, to celebrate the year’s shortest day.

We were never sure why the briefness of light
gave him such cause, but we knew its rareness;

a midday silken twilight shawled the horizon
and he took the car to a highpoint overlooking

Lake Michigan’s icy shore, silenced the ignition.
We could feel something solidify inside him

as he sat there, fixed in the mauve of evening,
the stir of lake-effect moving the sky closer,

the waves frozen in such an impossible moment
of freezing; rising over the beach, never breaking.


I really liked "midday silken twilight shawled", but that could just be the knitter in me. I also liked how we began with waves moving, and ended with them ceasing/freezing. I imagine our human ancestors may have felt this way about the solstice, and thus its (and its counterpoint's) celebration. Just one more that I liked the feel/color of; Rubies in her Ears by Chantel Acevedo:


Four weeks old, the needle, rum-dipped,
           held fast between the pads of her
           father’s fingers—
her mother could not keep her hands
           still enough, palsied by her animal
           need to shield—
his paw heavy on her tiny forehead, fingers
           so long they spanned her whole face—
           hand filling the universe, hand holding
the needle, threaded with red string, also rum-
           soaked. Thin aguja, thin as a fish bone,
           thrust through the baby’s
delicate earlobe, piercing a tender morsel of flesh.
           She cried. Twice for each jab—twice more
           when the thread was pulled through days
later—the abscinded flesh ready for the next 
           violation—a pair of rubies—little pinprick 
           gems, such brilliant wounds.


I usually can't abide run-ons, but this one made having 3 sentences work. Also, "Rum and Rubies" sounds like the title of a mystery novel. That's all for today. 

10.1.14

Clive James recently hove into my consciousness because of the stunning and sad personal elegy he created in the poem Japanese Maple that was featured in the New Yorker. It is more stunning and sad because it's true, the Australian poet is terminally ill. 

Japanese Maple 

Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:

Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?

Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.

My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:

Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colours will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.

Slate's "Culture Blog" has a thorough analysis, and I think Katy Waldman does a better job than I could.  His website features more of his work, and I wanted to share just a little more of his time on earth. As you could imagine, death is the salient theme of his recent poems. Winter Plums shares the poetic perspective of the speaker looking out on his surroundings and shading them against his days and his days against them. Today I learned this style is called "Valedictory" poetry, from the Latin for farewell (that puts our graduation addresses in new light)

Two winter plum trees grow beside my door.
Throughout the cold months they had little pink
Flowers all over them as if they wore
Nightdresses, and their branches, black as ink
By sunset, looked as if a Japanese
Painter, while painting air, had painted these

Two winter plum trees. Summer now at last
Has warmed their leaves and all the blooms are gone.
A year that I might not have had has passed.
Bare branches are my signal to go on,
But soon the brave flowers of the winter plums
Will flare again, and I must take what comes:

Two winter plum trees that will outlive me.
Thriving with colour even in the snow,
They’ll snatch a triumph from adversity.
All right for them, but can the same be so
For someone who, seeing their buds remade
From nothing, will be less pleased than afraid?

I am attracted to this work because of the consistent rhythm, and the tonic of rhyme. The mere presence of rhyme seems to be controversial today (it certainly seems rare), and I imagine some critics would toss a piece offhand if it had such consistent dedication to rhyme, but James' work is a great resolution for the ear without being heavy-handed or too directed by where the rhyme needed to go. Since he is speaking to endings, it seems meet that the sonic resolution to satisfy the ear would be a feature of his work. 

In addition to poetry, Clive wrote literary criticism, essays, appeared on television programs, wrote non-fiction works, translated The Divine Comedy, produced shows for radio, and collaborated with musicians. Our society has a bit of trouble dealing with death (perhaps artists have less trouble?), perhaps James' contributions can help with that conversation. 

Event Horizon

For years we fooled ourselves. Now we can tell
How everyone our age heads for the brink
Where they are drawn into the unplumbed well,
Not to be seen again. How sad, to think
People we once loved will be with us there
And we not touch them, for it is nowhere.

Never to taste again her pretty mouth!
It’s been forever, though, since last we kissed.
Shadows evaporate as they go south,
Torn, by whatever longings still persist,
Into a tattered wisp, a streak of air,
And then not even that. They get nowhere.

But once inside, you will have no regrets.
You go where no one will remember you.
You go below the sun when the sun sets,
And there is nobody you ever knew
Still visible, nor even the most rare
Hint of a face to humanise nowhere.

Are you to welcome this? It welcomes you.
The only blessing of the void to come
Is that you can relax. Nothing to do,
No cruel dreams of subtracting from your sum
Of follies. About those, at last, you care:
But soon you need not, as you go nowhere.

Into the singularity we fly
After a stretch of time in which we leave
Our lives behind yet know that we will die
At any moment now. A pause to grieve,
Burned by the starlight of our lives laid bare,
And then no sound, no sight, no thought. Nowhere.

What is it worth, then, this insane last phase
When everything about you goes downhill?
This much: you get to see the cosmos blaze
And feel its grandeur, even against your will,
As it reminds you, just by being there,
That it is here we live or else nowhere.

9.30.14

Sorry or no weekend words, it got away from me, so have some for a Tuesday instead. I meant to include some on the theme of poetry of place from the post about Hugo, so we'll see how well this dovetails:

1/9/11

Everything has shifted.

I woke up this way,

Propped up with mud.

The worms in their sockets

Wriggle under soft mist.

I pop my ears to clear the muffled echoes

That cuff my head with humidity.

I brush off the little sprouts and runners

It is not yet time!

But when, I cannot see.

. . .

I pass through,

Peered at by rows of curious trees.

Focused more on the shapes on the windshield

That what lays in front of it.

A continuous ribbon,

Unzipping the terrain

Into competing fabrics,

At each hand, chintz and corduroy.

My scope is marred by the wet stars

At once galaxial and glacial.

I do not reach today for mountains.

9.25.14

This article popped up in my facebook feed lately (and probably yours too, if you are local). It's all about how us Seattle people are partial to our rain, and how comforting it is to have the season come around again. I thought this was particularly beautiful: "It's not simply the arrival of rain, but the transition to a different environment and way of life. The drear has a certain dark beauty; a low-contrast softness. There's no need to squint or close the blinds. Even the sound of rain on the house is music to my ears, a lullaby". 

There's no question that these surrounds deeply influence people who write here. There are a handful of poets who are associated with the Northwest, even if they aren't technically from here. Roethke, Hugo, and Wagoner are some. While I recognized some of the names, I haven't ever studied these writers. Hugo is a big enough name in Seattle, though, with an institution devoted to writers named for him here in town. The Hugo House hosts readings, classes and workshops, teen seminars, and performance events. 
This, from their website, made me smile: "Richard Hugo wrote in The Triggering Town that 'writing is hard, and writers need help.' The hardest part is the solitary slog that’s required to get the right words on the page. Hugo House is the place to find your greatest allies in writing, whether you connect with a kindred spirit in a class, meet someone chatting after an event, or help put on an program that reminds everyone present just why all this literary business matters so much".

Hugo was born in Seattle, and at various points worked at Boeing, the University of Missoula, served in WWII as a bombardier, and studied at the University of Washington (under Roethke). As far as the poetry of place goes, this article describes how Frances McCue followed Hugo's journey around Montana. She says: "Starting in 1980, I came to know a handful of Montana towns under Hugo's influence. There seemed to be something omnipotent and right in his words, as if he'd been granted special access to the truth of places". However, the article is much more attuned to the human atmosphere of the Montana towns than the weather. 

Here is something beautiful by Hugo. It wasn't what I thought I'd share when I started out, but I rather like it when the material leads in different directions. 


Making Certain it goes on

At last the Big Blackfoot river
has risen high enough to again cover the stones
dry too many months. Trout return
from summer harbor deep in the waters
of the power company dam. High on the bank
where he knows the river won’t reach
the drunk fisherman tries to focus on
a possible strike, and tries to ignore
the hymn coming from the white frame church.
The stone he leans against, bleached out dull gray,
underwater looked beautiful and blue.
The young minister had hoped for a better parish,
say one with bells that sound gold
and a congregation that doesn’t stop coming
when the mill shuts down.

We love to imagine
a giant bull trout or a lunker rainbow
will grab the drunk fisherman’s bait
and shock the drunk fisherman out
of his recurrent afternoon dream and into
the world of real sky and real water.
We love to imagine the drought has ended,
the high water will stay, the excess
irrigate crops, the mill reopen, the workers
go back to work, lovers reassume plans
to be married. One lover, also the son
of the drunk fisherman, by now asleep
on the bank for no trout worth imagining
has come, will not invite his father
to the happy occasion though his father
will show up sober and properly dressed,
and the son will no longer be sure of the source
of the shame he has always rehearsed.

Next summer the river will recede,
the stones bleach out to
their dullest possible shade. The fisherman
will slide bleary down the bank
and trade in any chance he has of getting
a strike for some old durable dream,
a dream that will keep out the hymn
coming again from the church. The workers
will be back full shift. The power company
will lower the water in the dam
to make repairs, make repairs and raise rates.
The drunk fisherman will wait for the day
his son returns, divorced and bitter
and swearing revenge on what the old man
has come to believe is only water
rising and falling on climatic schedule.

That summer came and is gone. And everything
we predicted happened, including the death
of the fisherman. We didn’t mention that before,
but we knew and we don’t lie to look good.
We didn’t forsee the son would never return.

This brings us to us, and our set lines
set deep on the bottom. We’re going all out
for the big ones. A new technology
keeps the water level steady year round.
The company dam is self cleaning.
In this dreamy summer air you and I
dreamily plan a statue commemorating
the unknown fisherman. The stone will bear
no inscription and that deliberate anonymity
will start enough rumors to keep
the mill operating, big trout nosing the surface,
the church reforming white frame
into handsome blue stone, and this community
going strong another hundred years.

I love the rhythm in this poem, with the rise and fall of the water levels, the sounds of music (thought not a tune that is desired) on the air, and how the rhythms of the people living there continue even as things stabilize or change. I say I love it, but it is also a very desperate climate to move through. "Son will no long be sure / of the source of the shame he always rehearsed" and the disappointed minister make the atmosphere very harsh, and make me doubt that the fisherman ever caught the fish (even if it isn't one he needs for his survival. Or maybe he does. I haven't decided yet). Something else that I like was how this line tripped me up "but we knew and we don't lie to look good". My typo-conscious brain read this as "we don't like to look good", then blended them together for someone who doesn't dress up their existence and doesn't pretend its anything other than it is. 

So, to bring this back around: let us embrace things that others discard. Or as Hugo said, "Never write a poem about anything that ought to have a poem written about it". 

9.24.14

There is a great tradition of war poetry, as you would expect from such an emotionally disruptive experience. I could do an entire segment on each war's output, but that's not for today. I am not feeling great about the state of our everything, so here's something from a more recently conflict. This from NPR poetry, poet Brian Turner and his book Here, Bullet:

Najaf 

Camel caravans transport the dead

from Persia and beyond, their bodies dried

and wrapped in carpets, their dying wishes

to be buried near Ali,

where the first camel

dragged Ali's body across the desert

tied to the fate of its exhaustion.

Najaf is where the dead naturally go,

where the gates of Paradise open before them

in unbanded light, the blood washed clean

from their bodies.

It is November,

the clouds made of gunpowder and rain,

the earth pregnant with the dead;

cemetery mounds stretching row by row

with room enough yet for what the years

will bring: the gravediggers need only dig,

shovel by shovel.

And Asbah: 

The ghosts of American soldiers

wander the streets of Balad by night,

unsure of their way home, exhausted,

the desert wind blowing trash

down the narrow alleys as a voice

sounds from the minaret, a soulful call

reminding them how alone they are,

how lost. And the Iraqi dead,

they watch in silence from rooftops

as date palms line the shore in silhouette,

leaning toward Mecca when the dawn wind blows.

It's just started raining here, and this seems appropriate. They don't really need me to talk about them at all today. 

9.23.14

I've been writing a lot of thank-you notes recently, and it made me think of poems that are also notes. The first one that comes to mind is This is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams:

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

I love this poem, not just because it is visually beautiful, but because there is a little guilt along with the speaker's gratification, and they are thinking of another when writing this note. Writing thank you notes and letters (do any of you maintain written correspondence?) is done with the other in mind, even as we tell them about ourselves. As always, Wiki tells us about the Epistolary poem, originating in the Homeric era, and popular to this day. It had a heyday in the 18th century as the postal system flourished and a new class of literate people wanted to express themselves.

Epistle means letter in Latin, which I love. (Etymology is so exciting). As usual, poets.org has great examples of epistolary works, and a great breakdown. I was interested in their assertion that the form has usually been associated with women; female writers and subjects. Something I liked from the article concerning the voice of the epistle; "The appeal of epistolary poems is in their freedom. The audience can be internal or external. The poet may be speaking to an unnamed recipient or to the world at large, to bodiless entities or abstract concepts".

This piece from the Poetry Foundation is also a good resource, and made me feel a little better in my guessing of subjects to choose. I thought I remembered Dickinson as a poet who wrote in this style, but wasn't quite sure, and indeed they spend a good segment talking about her work's influence coming from and contributing to her letter-writing. Interestingly, this piece has exercises built in for the learning writer. I scoffed at them initially, but after a moment's though, I think I may give some of them a try. It also had good examples to examine, here's one from 17th century poet Lady Mary Chudleigh:

To the Ladies

Wife and servant are the same,

But only differ in the name:

For when that fatal knot is tied,

Which nothing, nothing can divide:

When she the word obey has said,

And man by law supreme has made,

Then all that’s kind is laid aside,

And nothing left but state and pride:

Fierce as an Eastern prince he grows,

And all his innate rigour shows:

Then but to look, to laugh, or speak,

Will the nuptial contract break.

Like mutes she signs alone must make,

And never any freedom take:

But still be governed by a nod,

And fear her husband as a God:

Him still must serve, him still obey,

And nothing act, and nothing say,

But what her haughty lord thinks fit,

Who with the power, has all the wit.

Then shun, oh! shun that wretched state,

And all the fawning flatt’rers hate:

Value your selves, and men despise,

You must be proud, if you’ll be wise.







This seems to me less of a letter and more of a cultural dictum, grown-up nursery rhyme, or proverb. Obviously a product of its time, the structure is very rigid, and much more formal than our first example (it would be hard to be more relaxed than This is just to Say, so that is not remarkable). In it I can imagine an older woman laying out her knowledge for a younger counterpart, part informative, part cautionary. There were other works I liked better, but some of them were very long. For some reason I am averse to posting something really long. Also, apologies for the formatting here. When I copy and paste poems, sometimes it messes up the formatting. (I don't relish re-typing everything, as I would definitely fail to catch all my errors)