Matter | Pattern

Frank O'Hara, "Autobiographia Literaria"

2010-11-13T12:53:00.000-08:00

Upstairs the young people are baking chocolate cake and reading picture books out loud. A mixed group from Middlest's French class. On a kind of field trip to their disappearing childhood, I gather, revisiting a protected pocket of that endangered habitat.

Honestly. I'm surprised they would entertain themselves this way. Aren't you? Did young people when I was young ever gather like this, so innocently? It was all videos and practicing dance moves when I was young. One house had a foosball table. Sometimes we would go skating - roller (Xanadu anyone?) and ice. Sometimes we would get a pizza. In other circles, according to reports that were common property at school, there were the keggers and drug partying and the cops showing up. That kind of fun. But boys and girls baking together belonged to the realm of grandmas and Christmas storybooks and the childhoods we all were fleeing.

I wouldn't have imagined this cozy homeyness when I imagined the social goings and comings that went on beyond me. When I opened a page later, in the library stacks at the university, Frank O'Hara's "Autobiographia Literaria" spoke to me like a post card from my past, a promise from a future self:

When I was a child
I played by myself in a
corner of the schoolyard
all alone.

I hated dolls and I
hated games, animals were
not friendly and birds
flew away.

If anyone was looking
for me I hid behind a
tree and cried out "I am
an orphan."

And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!

But I did not go there. Instead here I am, not the center, but the encircling perimeter.

From the other room, their voices, the intermittent sound of piano, laughing, the smell of baking - all this warmth that happens with no doing on my part. A sense of wholeness, of things coming right for this moment.

I have only ever been the empty stage my daughters' plays have been produced upon. I am the closet of properties, the light crew. They are the maestros, director and cast, musicians and dancers - the costumes of hospitality inhabited. And I love it. Being part of the performance from the privacy of the sidelines. I talk to their friends. I come down to my work. But am still here at the edges of happiness and conviviality. And it is this, hugely, that I fear I will miss with my daughters' departures, coming and come.
[cross-posted on Imaginary Bicycle]

"I Wonder as I Wander"

2009-12-24T14:17:00.000-08:00

from the Wilton Diptych

"I Wonder as I Wander"
Appalachian Carol (collected by John Jacob Niles)

I wonder as I wander out under the sky,
How Jesus, our Savior, did come for to die
For poor ornery people like you and like I:
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

When Mary birthed Jesus, ‘twas in a cow’s stall,
With wise-men and farmers and shepherds and all.
But high in God’s heaven’s a star’s light did fall
And the promise of ages it then did recall.

If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing:
A star in the sky, or a bird on the wing;
Or all of God’s angels in heav’n for to sing,
He surely could have had it, for he was the King.

I wonder as I wander out under the sky,
How Jesus, our Savior, did come for to die
For poor ornery people like you and like I:
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

Jane Kenyon: "Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter 1993"

2009-12-01T14:20:00.000-08:00

Nativity icon from Rena Andreadis collection

"Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter 1993"
by Jane Kenyon

On the domed ceiling God
is thinking
I made them my joy,
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
But see what they do!
I know their hearts
and arguments:

“We’re descended from
Cain. Evil is nothing new,
so what does it matter now
if we shell the infirmary,
and the well where the fearful
and rash alike must
come for water?”

God thinks Mary into being.
Suspended at the apogee
of the golden dome,
she curls in a brown pod,
and inside her the mind
of Christ, cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow.

Marina Tsvetaeva: "I Bless the Daily Labor"

2009-11-22T21:03:00.000-08:00

I have loved this poem for years now - even before I knew anything about the life of its author. And even though I'm still not quite sure what she means by "dusty purple" (her art? her passion? her memories? the majesty of her inner fire?), nor what her dusty staff is "when all light's rays are shed" (her enduring stubbornness? her hope beyond hope?), nor what is the "law of blessings and law of stone" (the gospel of Jesus and the Ten Commandments? grace and justice? the sudden miraculous serendipity that walks hand in hand with relentless reason and unforgiving consequence?)

But I love this poem because, even without knowing exactly what she means - I know what she means.

After WWII, Marina Tsvetaeva faced starvation in Moscow - even mistakenly (and tragically) placing a daughter in a state orphanage where she thought the girl would be better fed. She and her surviving daughter fled to Berlin, where she was reunited with her husband. They moved to Prague, where their son was born, then settled in Paris where she contracted tuberculosis. Then faced ostracism when her husband was revealed as a spy for the Soviet secret police.

Without other options, Tsvetaeva followed her husband to Moscow, but in Stalin's USSR found all doors closed to her. Her sister had already been imprisoned and the two sisters never saw each other again. Friends, afraid for their own lives and reputations, refused to help. Within a few years her daughter (who had increasingly turned against Tsvetaeva) was also imprisoned and Tsvetaeva's husband was shot for espionage. Tsvetaeva and her son were evacuated to an area where she could not find work to support them. She spent the last months of her life desperately looking for any kind of job. Some believe she was at last forced by a squad of secret police to hang herself. She lies in an unmarked grave.

Not so encouraging reading for our Thanksgiving Feast?

But this story traces the shapes of all the things I fear most - the monsters of my nightmares - torn by war, not being able to feed my children, losing the people I love, estrangement, doors closed against me, betrayal, despair - and still, in the face of all these nightmares, Marina Tsvetaeva wrote this poem.

I Bless the Daily Labor

I bless the daily labor of my hands,
I bless the sleep that nightly is my own.
The mercy of the Lord, the Lord’s commands,
The law of blessings and law of stone.

My dusty purple, with its ragged seams—
My dusty staff, when all light’s rays are shed.
And also, Lord, I bless the peace
In others’ houses—others’ ovens’ bread.

A poem which still lives.

Which still carries on, whispering her words into my ears, and now yours, lighting a small and comforting fire on other hearths many years and many miles from her own.

Blessings on all of you,

wherever you are, whoever you are.

Peace to your houses.

May you have peace as your daily bread.

Rainer Maria Rilke: "Autumn Day"

2009-11-01T14:27:00.000-08:00

"Carnival Evening," by Henri Rousseau

"Autumn Day"
by Rainer Maria Rilke

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

(translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell)

"Jesus Christ, the Appletree"

2009-10-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

"Creation of the Animals," by Master Bertram of the Grabow alterpiece

"The Apple Tree Carol"

traditional carol collected by Joshua Smith

The tree of life my soul hath seen
Laden with fruit and always green;
The trees of nature fruitless be,
Compar’d with Christ the appletree.

This beauty doth all things excel,
By faith I know, but ne’er can tell,
The glory which I now can see,
In Jesus Christ the appletree.

For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought;
I miss’d of all, but now I see
‘Tis found in Christ the appletree.

I’m weary’d with my former toil,
Here I shall set and rest awhile;
Under the shadow I will be
Of Jesus Christ the appletree.

I’ll sit and eat the fruit divine,
It cheers my heart like spir’tual wine
And now this fruit is sweet to me,
That grows on Christ the appletree.

This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying soul alive;
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the appletree.

These first of the month pictures and poems (or in this case, lyrics) are like Easter eggs I hid for myself to find - chosen and scheduled far in advance - and when they show up - delight and surprise.

The Apple Tree carol is an old Appalachian song collected Joshua Smith, re-collected by Elizabeth Poston who brought it back with her to England so that these little British boys could sing it so purely. But really the song begs to be sung by some grizzled old guy or a hillswoman with a corn-whiskey twang - it's "set and rest" not "sit" and note the rhyme between "my former toil" and "and rest awhile."

I love the image of Jesus as the tree of life whose branches make a shady place and whose fruit revives. I feel weary, too, with fruitless, former toil and want to make my way to that steady trunk beneath the leaves and set and rest awhile.

Anna Kamienska: "A Prayer that Will be Answered"

2009-09-23T14:46:00.000-07:00

Uh, why the eggs?

Because I love the eggs. It's true they do not inspire a passion in me like their lustrous great-aunt the Eggplant. But looking at them comforts me. Taking pictures of eggs is, in fact, a form of meditative yoga among the techno-rural of my particular latitude and longitude.

Because, for reasons I do not entirely understand, looking at eggs and handling them, hefting their light weight in my cupped hand, makes me feel that my life is not actually slipping away like so much sand through Time's long fingers. Eggs are the secret sharer to that poem by Anna Kamienska which also comforts me in a way too deep for me to explain.

"A Prayer that Will be Answered"

Lord let me suffer much
and then die

Let me walk through silence
and leave nothing behind not even fear

Make the world continue
let the ocean kiss the sand just as before

Let the grass stay green
so that the frogs can hide in it

so that someone may bury his face in it
and sob out his love

Make the day rise brightly
as if there were no more pain

And let my poem stand clear as a windowpane
bumped by a bumblebee’s head.

(translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanaugh)

Linda Pastan: "September"

2009-09-01T14:59:00.000-07:00

"John the Baptist in the Wilderness," by Geertgen tot Sint-Jans

(click to see the really wonderful detail of his sad and lonely feet)

"September"
by Linda Pastan

it rained in my sleep
and in the morning the fields were wet

I dreamed of artillery
of the thunder of horses

in the morning the fields were strewn
with twigs and leaves

as if after a battle
or a sudden journey

I went to sleep in summer
I dreamed of rain

in the morning the fields were wet
and it was autumn

. . . and here is the power of poetry.

Last night I set this poem to post this morning - a warm night in late summer. And in the morning awoke to the sound of rain and a cold bedroom. The poem had come true.

I put on, for the first time this morning, a jacket and flannel-lined jeans to walk the hills.

Summer is over.

Yes, she may come back, all golden and blowsy-petaled like an opera star for a final farewell performance - and then again, perhaps, for a really, truly final farewell performance. But we all know.

Summer is over.

Raymond Carver: "My Work"

2009-08-01T15:04:00.000-07:00

"My Work"
by Raymond Carver

I look up and see them starting
down the beach. The young man
is wearing a packboard to carry the baby.
This leaves his hands free
so that he can take one of his wife’s hands
in his, and swing his other. Anyone can see
how happy they are. And intimate. How steady.
They are happier than anyone else, and they know it.
Are gladdened by it, and humbled.
They walk to the end of the beach
and out of sight. That’s it, I think,
and return to this thing governing
my life. But in minutes

they come walking back along the beach.
The only thing different is that they have changed sides.
He is on the other side of her now,
the ocean side. She is on this side.
But they are still holding hands. Even more
in love, if that’s possible. And it is.
Having been there for a long time myself.
Theirs has been a modest walk, fifteen minutes
down the beach, fifteen minutes back.
They’ve had to pick their way
over some rocks and around huge logs,
tossed up from when the sea ran wild.

They walk quietly, slowly, holding hands.
They know the water is out there
but they’re so happy that they ignore it.
The love in their young faces. The surround of it.
Maybe it will last forever. If they are lucky,
and good, and forbearing. And careful. If they
go on loving each other without stint.
Are true to each other—that most of all.
As they will be, of course, as they will be,
as they know they will be.
I go back to my work. My work goes back to me.
A wind picks up out over the water.

for more read "Going to Water"

Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Portrait by a Neighbor"

2009-07-01T15:22:00.000-07:00

“Gardening in the Rain,” by Brian Kershisnik

"Portrait by a Neighbour"
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Before she has her floor swept
Or her dishes done,
Any day you'll find her
A-sunning in the sun!

It's long after midnight,
Her key's in the lock,
And you'll never see her chimney smoke
Till past ten o'clock!

She digs in her garden
With a shovel and a spoon,
She weeds her lazy lettuce
By the light of the moon,

She walks up the walk
Like a woman in a dream,
She forgets she borrowed butter
And pays you back cream!

Her lawn looks like a meadow,
And if she mows the place
She leaves the clover standing
And the Queen Anne's Lace!

Karl Krolow: "The Open Shutter"

2009-06-01T15:27:00.000-07:00

"The Open Shutter"
by Karl Krolow

Someone pouring light
Out of the window.
The roses of air
Open.
And children
Playing in the street
Look up.
Pigeons nibble
At its sweetness.
Girls are beautiful
And men gentle
In this light.
But before the others say so
Someone shuts
The window again.

(translated from the German by Kevin Perryman)

"May" by Mary Oliver & "Invocation of the Creator" by the Yoruba

2009-05-04T09:37:00.000-07:00

There is a hum just beyond our hearing.

A turbine beyond knowing at the hub of being.

Once, walking down the hill road toward the shady gully on a hot still day, we moved step by step into some gradually perceptible hum - I felt it first like fear, my own blood thrumming in my veins, like a warning before waking. And then I saw a shifting cloud, darkling against the trees - frightening and somehow holy. I had no words to name it, but held the hands of my two small daughters more tightly.

How long a moment was that? It seems to still be humming while we stand, still and waiting, the shifting flickering light like a school of fish, like mica flashing as it's wiggled back and forth in the sun, and the hum and buzz mesmerizing us still.

It was a swarm of bees, resting on the air, and moving as with meaning.

Now I understood that Yoruba chant:

Invocation of the Creator
by the Yoruba people (translated by Ulli Beier)

He is patient, he is not angry.
He sits in silence to pass judgment.
He sees you even when he is not looking.
He stays in a far place—but his eyes are on the town.

He stands by his children and lets them succeed.
He causes them to laugh—and they laugh.
Ohoho—the father of laughter.
His eye is full of joy.
He rests in the sky like a swarm of bees.

Obatala—who turns blood into children.

Now I hear that sound of power even in the daily bees who visit the yard, singly and innocent, bent on gathering, to bring back food for the future.

I am following the news of endangered bees and disappearing hives with care because there are fruits beyond knowing and honey beyond sweet that we are losing if we lose the bees.

Mary Oliver's poem, "May," hums with m's and n's - a hum deepening with the voiced echoes of the repeated b's and d's. Her poem buzzes with s's and z's - and even fs and vs and hard ths pick up the buzz like sympathetic wires. She begins like the Yoruba in a chant, composed of short syllables within a strong forward-driving line of four beats, then tumbles (with "dive") down into the throat of flowers at the fourth line, where the rhythm loses itself in delight there in the nectar and pollen, before regathering and backing out onto the lip of the flower, that liminality at the threshold to flight - where lines 5 and 6 swell out to five, six beats each - before pumping back into that heartbeat four-count chant (with one mid-air pause - or one still moment riding at the hub of a spinning top - for emphasis - in the three beats of line 8).

May
by Mary Oliver

May, and among the miles of leafing,
blossoms storm out of the darkness—
windflowers and moccasin flowers. The bees
dive into them and I too, to gather
their spiritual honey. Mute and meek, yet theirs
is the deepest certainty that this existence too—
this sense of well-being, the flourishing
of the physical body—rides
near the hub of the miracle that everything
is a part of, is as good
as a poem or a prayer, can also make
luminous any dark place on earth.

Naomi Shihab Nye: "Famous"

2009-05-01T15:32:00.000-07:00

"Carp," by Hokusai

"Famous"
by Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anyone said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

e.e. cummings: "#9, suppose Life . . ."

2009-04-01T15:37:00.000-07:00

"Spring" by Lee Bennion

#9
by e.e. cummings

suppose
Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head.

young death sits in a café
smiling, a piece of money held between
his thumb and first finger

(i say “will he buy flowers” to you
and “Death is young
life wears velour trousers
life totters, life has a beard” i

say to you who are silent.—“Do you see
Life? he is there and here,
or that, or this
or nothing or an old man 3 thirds
asleep, on his head
flowers, always crying
to nobody something about les
roses les bluets yes,
will He buy?
Les belles bottes—oh hear
, pas chères”)

and my love slowly answered I think so. But
I think I see someone else

there is a lady, whose name is Afterwards
she is sitting beside young death, is slender;
likes flowers

Power of the Psalms

2009-02-21T12:28:00.000-08:00

I’ve been asked to teach you how to write a psalm.

In 15 minutes?

So here goes:

a psalm is

a poem sung unto God,

or in praise of

or about God.

(click on picture to enlarge)

Hand-out: (highlight Types: Lament,Thanksgiving, etc. Structure of a Lament-type psalm: 1) Statement of distress, 2) Word of trust in God, 3)Appeal for deliverance, 4) Declaration of obedience, 5) Vow to sing a Thanksgiving. Examples of psalms in other places in the scriptures.)

The best way to learn to write a psalm?

Read the psalms – soak up their rhythms, imagery, their spirit of reverence. Then write from your heart.

And there you have it! – and all under 15 minutes!

I’ll take the next 13 minutes to get you started in reading the psalms. Why psalms anyway?

Deuteronomy 31:19, 21

Now therefore write ye this song for you, and teach it the children of Israel: put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel . . .

And it shall come to pass, when many evils and troubles are befallen them, that this song shall testify against them as a witness; for it shall not be forgotten out of the mouths of their seed . . .

That’s the power of poetry and song – even little jingles stick in your mind: advertising slogans, rhyming bits of advice:

“I before E, except after C,”

“When in doubt, throw it out.”

We need to lay claim on our heritage – Read the psalms.

Generations before us knew the psalms well - you’ll probably recognize these sayings even if you don’t recognize them as verses of the psalms:

Lift mine eyes unto the hills . . .

Except the Lord build the house . . .

Out of the depths have I cried unto thee . . .

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion . . .

Make a joyful noise . . .

Create in me a clean heart . . .

God is a very present help in trouble . . .

Be still & know that I am God . . .

One of the most interesting things I learned is that what we call the "Book of Psalms" is really separated into 5 Books – each with its own theme (see hand-out). The psalms build on each other, comment on each other.

Realizing this interaction and realizing that different psalms were sung in different settings (on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, at certain holidays or times of the year, as a Q&A call-and-response during temple worship) makes the psalms even more interesting.

I can’t do justice to the whole book of Psalms so I will focus just on Book 1

(which is a wrench because I’m dying to talk about Psalm 73 which begins Book 3 and Psalm 80 – both very thoughtful, poignant laments. And Psalm 42-43 which begins Book 2 with its beautiful imagery of the deer panting after water and its repeated refrains – gorgeous lines of poetry. And I wanted to read to you Psalm 104 from Book 4 which re-creates the whole creation line after line – Read it yourself! Great stuff here!)

Book 1 of the Book of Psalms focuses on the path of Wisdom and the Law. As in all the “books” of the Psalms, the first psalm of this section sets the tone and establishes the theme:

Psalm 1

Blessed is the man
that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly . . .
but his delight is in the law of the Lord . . .
and he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water,
that bringeth forth his fruit in his season;
his leaf also shall not wither;
and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper . . .

The mood is trusting, hopeful and innocent, and full of childlike awe. Many beautiful passages describe God and humanity at peace together in the wonder of the creation:

Psalm 8

When I consider the heavens,
the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

Psalm 19

The heavens declare the glory of god
and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
Day unto day uttereth speech and sheweth knowledge . . .

Psalm 23 – we know it as "The Lord is my Shepherd" – is a psalm of pilgrimage sung while travelling to Jerusalem for feast days at Temple. Doesn’t knowing that setting and imagining the dry and rocky terrain the pilgrims had to travel over, the danger of robbers along the way, add to the significance of this psalm?

Psalm 29 – I wish I could hear this is Hebrew, but even in our English translation it is a great thundering poem describing an awesome storm rising over the Mediterranean (“many waters”) rolling ominously over the mountains of Lebanon and spending itself in the desert. Listen to how these lines build and rumble:

Give unto the Lord, O ye mighty,
give unto the Lord glory and strength.
Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name;
worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
The voice of the Lord is upon the waters:
the Lord of glory thundereth:
the Lord is upon many waters.
The voice of the Lord is powerful;
the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.
The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars;
yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon . . .

This section, Book 1, is full of Wisdom-type psalms. However, even the Laments you find in Book 1 are more hopeful than in later sections. And only in Book 1 do we find standing alone just the more optimistic parts of a lament – for example, a Song of Trust (Psalm 11) and a Vow (Psalm 16). Remember a vow was usually the last part of a lament where the sufferer promises to sing a Thanksgiving psalm in God’s honor in the courts of the temple once he is delivered from suffering.

For the last seven or so minutes I would like to focus on one particular Lament-type psalm in Book 1, Psalm 22, which begins: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? These are, of course, also the words Christ cried out in a loud voice during the depths of His final suffering on the cross (Matthew 27:46).

Knowing this psalm and knowing how psalms function teaches us something. These lines are more than just the cry of His anguish. It is prophecy of what is coming next – indeed when Christ cries out the words of this psalm in Aramaic, Eli, eli, lama sabachthani? those roundabout mock him, “Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him,” just like verses 7 and 8 of the psalm would have led Christ’s disciples to expect:

All they that see me laugh me to scorn:
they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him
let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.

After Christ dies the soldiers will cast lots for His clothing – just like the lines of the psalm in verse 18, “They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.”

This is the power of a psalm – with a few words Jesus can send a kind of shorthand message to His disciples – to prophesy of what’s coming next and to comfort them and to bear testimony to them. Because the psalm doesn’t just describe great suffering:

I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint:
my heart is like wax;
it is melted in the midst of my bowels.

My strength is dried up like a potsherd;
and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws;
and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.

For dogs have compassed me:
the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me:
they pierced my hands and my feet.

But because this psalm is also remarkable among the Book of Psalms for the unshakable trust of the sufferer who knows He is beloved of God and expresses His complete reliance on His Father:

But thou art he that took me out of the womb:
thou didst make me hope
when I was upon my mother’s breasts.
I was cast upon thee from the womb:
thou art my God from my mother’s belly.

So when Christ cries out the opening phrase of a familiar psalm, He starts up a process in His disciples’ minds, that takes them from suffering, through reliance on God, to the victory over death:

Ye that fear the Lord, praise him;
all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him;
and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.
For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted;
neither hath he hid his face from him;
but when he cried unto him, he heard.

And it’s obvious from the way Matthew has structured his account of Christ’s crucifixion, the details that Matthew emphasizes, that Psalm 22 is playing in the background for him as he writes down his testimony of Christ - his testament of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Shortly after He cries out, “My God, my God , why hast thou forsaken me?” Jesus gives up the ghost and dies – but if we know the psalm then we know He is also telling us what is really coming next, what comes after the garments are divided among the soldiers, after the apparent victory of the powers of this world.

Remember that the final part of a lament is a vow to sing a Thanksgiving among the congregation at the Temple? Remember that the temple was simply an earthly representation of Heaven? Verses 22 and 25 of the psalm remind us:

I will declare thy name unto my brethren:
in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. . . .
My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation:
I will pay my vows before them that fear him . . .

The psalm reminds us – and the words of the psalm would have painted a picture in the minds of the disciples mourning there at the foot of that terrible cross – reminding them that Christ would now be ascending to that Great Congregation where He would declare the triumph of His Father’s name in the courts of Heaven and fulfill His vow to sing praise to His Everlasting Father – there amidst all the hosts of heaven.

Christ knew, as the psalmist knew, that “none can keep alive his own soul,” but must submit to the will of the Father. Christ knew that

Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit (John 12:24)

as the psalmist knew, that

A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.

The disciples would have echoing in their ears – as we should also have echoing in our ears – a call to now carry forward Christ’s triumphant message to the rest of God's children:

All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord:
and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.
For the kingdom is the Lord’s:
and he is the governor among the nations. . . .
They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness
unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.

And that is the power of the psalms. Read them and lay claim to the comfort and prophecy and testimony that the psalms have carried – through the years – until our day – for you.

W.S. Merwin : "The Blessing" and "Separation"

2009-02-08T15:42:00.000-08:00

I once had a friend who now won’t answer when I write.

This is a long story and because I still think that someday (like Jefferson and Adams) we will be friends again I won’t try to postulate in public the whys (except that I am superficial and conventional and she is running so hard - like the man in Merwin’s poem:

The Blessing

There is a blessing on the wide road
the egg shell road the baked highway
there is a blessing an old woman
walking fast following him

pace of a child following him

he left today
in a fast car

until or unless
she is with him
the traffic flows through her
as though she were air
or not there

she can speak only to him
she can tell him
what only he can hear

she can save him
once

it might be enough

she is hurrying

he is making good time
his breath comes more easily
he is still troubled at moments
by the feeling
that he has forgotten something
but he thinks he is escaping a terrible
horseman

This month is the month of her birthday and so I remember her even with the forefront of my brain and even the surface of my heart. It has been six (seven?) years since we were friends and it is no longer true – that other poem of Merwin’s:

Separation

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

Or maybe it is so true that I’m not aware any more of the thread that is her absence running through my days.

What is true is that she is irreplaceable for me.

Which is amazing. I have been so unreasonably blessed with the friendship of remarkable people – friends who have come from faraway to this tucked-away corner of the world, friends who have lived beside me for years before unpacking the treasure that is themselves. New friends and old friends, friends who are related to me by blood and marriage, friends who were strangers when we first meet, friends whom I feel I've known forever.

But none of them are her. None of you are. Irreplaceable all of you, I’m afraid, though (please) let’s not separate and see.

I was going to write this week about Eldest Child pointing out that I am unreliable about meals – sometimes I say I am making something for dinner and then get sidetracked and never start or get involved in an hours-long cooking project. This is true. And at the time, her pointing it out was . . . painful seems too strong a word. But the clear-eyed look she bent on me while explaining why she would make her own dinner before finishing something I wanted her to do was diminishing. However, now weeks later, that is all old news – only this sad old sorrow, this friend gone away from me, still feels fresh.

"Dogsbody" is the title of what I thought I was going to write – about the time my friend and I, when we were still friends, confused the word dogsbody with godsbody and insights resulting therefrom that seemed to apply to my daughter and the diminished I, at the beck and call of every household expectation.

But instead all I can think of is what a stupid hound the heart is – you try to yell at it and order it back home and it whines and cowers back, until you aren’t looking, then bounds up around your heels again, ears flapping, tongue flapping, so glad to be out on the road with a friend.

Amy Clampitt: "The Smaller Orchid"

2009-02-01T15:57:00.000-08:00

"Winter Dancing" by Brian Kershisnik

"The Smaller Orchid"
by Amy Clampitt

Love is a climate
small things find safe
to grow in—not
(though I once supposed so)
the demanding cattleya
du côté de chez Swann,
glamour among the fauborgs,
hothouse overpowerings, blisses
and cruelties at teatime, but this
next-to-unindentifiable wildling,
hardly more than a
sprout, I’ve found
flourishing in the hollows
of a granite seashore—
a cheerful tousle, little,
white, down-to-earth orchid
declaring its authenticity,
if you hug the ground
close enough, in a powerful
outdoorsy-domestic
whiff of vanilla.

Gerard Kelly: "Behold I Stand"

2009-01-01T16:06:00.000-08:00

"Behold I Stand"
by Gerard Kelly

When the night is deep
With the sense of Christmas
And expectancy hangs heavy
On every breath,
Behold I stand at the door and knock.

When the floor is knee deep
In discarded wrapping paper
And the new books are open at page one
And the new toys are already broken,
Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

When the family is squashed
Elbow to elbow
Around the table
And the furious rush for food is over
And the only word that can describe the feeling
Is full,
Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

And when Christmas is over
And the television is silent
For the first time in two days
And who sent which card to whom
Is forgotten until next year,
Behold, I stand at the door.

And when the nation has finished celebrating
Christmas without Christ
A birthday
Without a birth
The coming of a kingdom
Without a King
And when I am
Forgotten
Despised
Rejected
Crucified—

Behold, I stand.

Gerard Manley Hopkins: "Moonless Darkness Stands Between"

2008-12-24T16:12:00.000-08:00

"Nativity," by Carl Bloch

"Moonless Darkness Stands Between"
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Moonless darkness stands between.
Past, O Past, no more be seen!
But the Bethlehem star may lead me
To the sight of Him who freed me
From the self that I have been.
Make me pure, Lord: Thou art holy;
Make me meek, Lord: Thou wert lowly;
Now beginning, and alway:
Now begin, on Christmas day.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "Sail On, O Ship of State!"

2008-11-08T16:25:00.000-08:00

"Ship Starlight" by Fitz Hugh Lane

Sail On, O Ship of State!
(from The Building of the Ship)
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all its hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
‘Tis of the wave and not the rock;
‘Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by a gale!
In spite of rock and tempest’s roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith, triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee, —are all with thee!

Robert Frost: "My November Guest"

2008-11-01T16:17:00.000-07:00

"My November Guest"

by Robert Frost

My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

"Wild Swans" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

2008-10-22T00:18:00.000-07:00

What is it about the calling of migratory birds that stirs us?

In my part of the world, it is the sandhill cranes – their peculiar, triumphant croaking that marks winter’s approach, and a few months later, the return of spring.

I grew up reading and re-reading Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytales: the stories that lived within me most were all tales pivoting around the winged migration: the gallant robin who returns to Thumbelina and at last bears her away to the warm and flowery land; the storks who clatter their beaks together in sunny Egypt telling the story of the northern Swamp King’s daughter; and the Wild Swans – the seven brothers who return to carry their sister out of danger, the faithful sister weaving capes of nettles with blistered hands and mute in her own defense to save her brothers from their step-mother’s curse.

Something mysterious is happening in the skies. Is it any wonder we paint angels with wings, rushing down out of the sky with a message from on high?

The mark of the birds’ flight across the sky – an ideogram in moving ink. Their cry – a message we barely know how to understand.

I know I will stand still when the cranes go over, watching and listening as long as I can keep them in range. As if there were some warning or news – something more surprising than just, Winter is coming.

The poem “Wild Swans” – like most of Millay’s – is sleek, straightforward, measured in meter and rhyme. Her style is too simple sometimes for our post-Eliot age that loves complexity and ambiguity, but in this poem the way the words skim over our minds is like the flight of those migrating swans – orderly, expected and beyond us. Millay tosses the rhyming up in the air – abbc cbac – enough order to set up expectation, enough surprise to unbalance. And while the entire poem is written in pentameter (five emphasized beats per line), the lines are of varying syllabic length: both stanzas begin with a longer line (like the ribbon of flight trailing above us) and each subsequent line falls short of that first flight. The penultimate line (“Wild swans, come over the town, come over”) is the shortest in syllables – it is the line that cries out our lack, our falling short, our yearning for the flight of the wild swans.

Wild Swans
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over
And what did I see I had not seen before?
Only a question less or a question more;
Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying.

Tiresome heart, forever living and dying,
House without air, I leave you and lock the door.
Wild swans, come over the town, come over
The town again, trailing your legs and crying!

Denise Levertov: "Stepping Westward"

2008-10-19T16:47:00.000-07:00

"Self Portrait" by Mabel Alvarez

Stepping Westward
by Denise Levertov

What is green in me
darkens, muscadine.

If woman is inconstant,
good, I am faithful to

ebb and flow, I fall
in season and now

is a time of ripening.
If her part

is to be true,
a north star,

good, I hold steady
in the black sky

and vanish by day,
yet burn there

in blue or above
quilts of cloud.

There is not savor
more sweet, more salt

than to be glad to be
what, woman,

and who, myself,
I am, a shadow

that grows longer as the sun
moves, drawn out

on a thread of wonder.
If I bear burdens

they begin to be remembered
as gifts, goods, a basket

of bread that hurts
my shoulders but closes me

in fragrance. I can
eat as I go.

"The Day is Done" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

2008-10-16T22:45:00.000-07:00

Ah, Longfellow. Not only is his style eaily lampooned but even his name sets itself up for witticism:
You're a poet
And don't know it,
But your feet show it -
They're long fellows!
We no longer live in an age of public poetry. And our great public poets of the past are hard to hear now, when we hear them only murmured beneath our breath, into our own inner ears only. So much of poetry now is for private meditation, individual epiphany – a silent interchange between a reader and a written page from a writer with a written page. Even at poetry readings, I feel myself drawn inward, listening to the poet read their words from where they stand far away within their innermost self.

So it was strange recently to recite a public poem by Longfellow at my grandfather’s funeral and to feel the audience following – filling up the words, as if I were a voice for more than myself, their accompaniment filling the hall as much as my voice did.

I must confess I had never, even as a child, really considered “The Day is Done” true poetry. I’d memorized it at my schoolteacher grandpa’s prompting – to please him. But “Paul Revere’s Ride” (also by Longfellow, which we memorized together afterward) was much more dramatic: “Listen my children and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere . . .”; and even had occasional chanted passages that gave me that shudder of weirdness that was for me the marker of a true poem:

A phantom ship with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar
And a huge black hulk that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide

But even with such passages I was sure within myself – despite older people’s opinion to the contrary – that Longfellow just was not a poet in the same way that Emily Dickinson was – whose poem after poem shook me and made me feel strange, as if suddenly awoken.

And it’s true Longfellow is not a poet in the same way. But I wonder now if I haven’t (if we haven’t) been too hasty in writing Longfellow off . Or is it just that I feel such affection for his poem now – it having kept me company through the death of my grandfather and what comes after. The words and rhythms I had thought manufactured and dry seemed in my sorrow to be reassuringly restrained and orderly. The rhyming lines rolling everlastingly on comforted me – that the rhythms around me – sun and wind and rain – would roll on as irresistibly. “The day is done” became for me not a clichéd phrase, but a measured acknowledgement of death. The lights of the village, the rain and the mist and the quiet, non-dramatizing sadness (“that is not akin to pain,/ And resembles sorrow only as the mist resembles rain”) matched exactly with my inner landscape – and apparently with the landscape within many of the congregants who attended the funeral. I saw them nodding, tears welling up in their eyes. Because these old-fashioned words were familiar from childhood? Because we all were a little weary of “life’s endless toil and endeavor/ And tonight I long for rest”? What have we lost by laying aside a culture where public recitation of good words, capable of holding the burden of many hearts, happens only at old schoolteachers' funerals? Where we cannot (do not) ask those who live alongside us to

. . . read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

Where we no longer know the chants of healing - those songs with “the power to quiet/ The restless pulse of care,” remembered words that “come like the benediction / That follows after prayer.”

The Day is Done
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is done and the darkness
Falls from the wings of night
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sorrow comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist.

A feeling of sadness and longing
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple, heartfelt lay
That will soothe this restless feeling
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime
Whose distant footsteps echo
Along the corridors of time.

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor
And tonight I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet
Whose song gushed from his heart
Like rain from the clouds of summer
Or tears from the eyelids start,

Who, through long days of labor
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have the power to quiet
The restless pulse of care
And come like a benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night will be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Will fold their tents like the Arabs
And as silently steal away.

"daughters" by Lucille Clifton

2008-02-23T22:40:00.000-08:00

woman who shines at the head
of my grandmother's bed,
brilliant woman, i like to think
you whispered into her ear
instructions. i like to think
you are the oddness in us,
you are the arrow
that pierced our plain skin
and made us fancy women;
my wild witch gran, my magic mama,
and even these gaudy girls.
i like to think you gave us
extraordinary power and to
protect us, you became the name
we were cautioned to forget.
it is enough,
you must have murmured,
to remember that i was
and that you are. woman, i am
lucille, which stands for light,
daughter of thelma, daughter
of georgia, daughter of
dazzling you.

I like this last poem because of its short, energetic lines - she doesn't waste time. And I like how she reclaims a forgotten unnamed foremother - renames her and reclaims her by imagining her. Like the poem at the first of the week, this poem bears witness to the lastingness of family connection.

"Wedding Cake" by Naomi Shihab Nye

2008-02-22T22:39:00.000-08:00

Once on a plane
a woman asked me to hold her baby
and disappeared.
I figured it was safe,
our being on a plane and all.
How far could she go?

She returned one hour later,
having changed her clothes
and washed her hair.
I didn't recognize her.

By this time the baby
and I had examined
each other's necks.
We had cried a little.
I had a silver bracelet
and a watch.
Gold studs glittered
in the baby's ears.
She wore a tiny white dress
leafed with layers
like a wedding cake.

I did not want
to give her back.

The baby's curls coiled tightly
against her scalp,
another alphabet.
I read new new new.
My mother gets tired.
I'll chew your hand.
The baby left my skirt crumpled,
my lap aching.
Now I'm her secret guardian,
the little nub of dream
that rises slightly
but won't come clear.
As she grows,
as she feels ill at ease,
I'll bob my knee.

What will she forget?
Whom will she marry?
He'd better check with me.
I'll say once she flew
dressed like a cake
between two doilies of cloud.
She could slip the card into a pocket,
pull it out.
Already she knew the small finger
was funnier than the whole arm.

Can't you just see that baby? And the tired mother? I always laugh at "we had cried a little" - they both had. For me the poem actually ends at "I'll chew your hand," the lines after that just aren't as interesting to me. Maybe she should have stopped it right there. What do you think?

"Childhood" by Maura Stanton

2008-02-21T22:36:00.000-08:00

I used to lie on my back, imagining
A reverse house on the ceiling of my house
Where I could walk around in empty rooms
all by myself. There was no furniture
Up there, only a glass globe in the floor,
And knee-high barriers at every door.
The low silled windows opened on blue air.
Nothing hung in the closet; even the kitchen
Seemed immaculate, a place for thought.
I like to walk across the swirling plaster
Into the parts of the house I couldn't see.
The hum from the other house, now my ceiling,
Reached me only faintly. I'd look up
to find my brothers watching old cartoons,
Or my mother vacuuming the ugly carpet.
I'd stare amazed at unmade beds, the clutter,
Shoes, half-dressed dolls, the telephone,
Then return dizzily to my perfect floorplan
Where I never spoke or listened to anyone.

I must have turned down the wrong hall,
Or opened a door that locked shut behind me,
for I live on the ceiling now, not the floor.
This is my house, room after empty room.
How do I ever get back to the real house
Where my sisters spill milk, my father calls,
And I am at the table, eating cereal?
I fill my white rooms with furniture,
Hang curtains over the piercing blue outside.
I lie on my back. I strive to look down.
This ceiling is higher than it used to be,
The floor so far away I can't determine
Which room I'm in, which year, which life.

Here's a poem I first came upon in college. The remembered image of the celing was so exactly what I remembered from my childhood, and the emotional significance of that spare ceiling world also rang true. Of course, I've found my way back down to the floor now. Now when I read this poem I remember the ache I felt, when alone ,for the messiness of living in a family again - and I yearn now again for some of the spareness and clarity of that ceiling life.

"First Lesson" by Philip Booth

2008-02-20T22:29:00.000-08:00

Lie back, daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man's-float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

This poem speaks maybe more directly than any others I know to that panicky fear that shakes me sometimes. I love the image (reminiscent of baptism) of the father cupping the daughter's head, teaching her to float on the water. The very definite rhyme - though completely unobtrusive and occasionaly slant - buoys up the lines invisibly, just like the water will hold up the daughter (head, Spread, dead-; dive, believe, survive; held you, told you, hold you, alternating with fear and light-year.) Right at the center of the poem is an interesting internal rhyme: Daughter with water - as if in some way the water and the daughter are really one substance - and thus no reason not to trust herself to it.

"Hope" by Philip Booth

2008-02-19T22:27:00.000-08:00

Old spirit, in and beyond me,
keep and extend me. Amid strangers,
friends, great trees and big seas breaking,
let love move me. Let me hear the whole music,
see clear, reach deep. Open me to find due words,
that I may shape them to ploughshares of my own making.
After such luck, however late, give me to give to
the oldest dance. . . . Then to good sleep,
and - if it happens - glad waking.

This poem is a prayer. I love the vigor of the lines (all those quick, strong words, many of them ending or beginning with energetic-sounding plosives t, d, p, k) and there's kind of a rocking rhythm like a boat or a lullaby that comforts me.

Half a Dozen More, beginning with "Easter Sunday, 1955" by Elizabeth Spires

2008-02-18T22:09:00.000-08:00

Over the next week, six more poems, these from Word of Mouth: poems featured on NPR's All Things Considered edited by Catherine Bowman.

Easter Sunday 1955

Why should anything go wrong in our bodies?
Why should we not be all beautiful?
Why should there be decay? - why death?
- and, oh, why, damnation?
- Anthony Trollope, in a letter

What were we? What have we become?
Light fills the picture, the rising sun,
the three of us advancing, dreamlike,
up the steps of my grandparents' house on Oak Street.
Still young, my mother and father swing me
lightly up the steps, as if I weighed nothing.
From the shadows, my brother and sister watch,
wanting their turn, years away from being born.
Now my aunts and uncles and cousins
gather on the shaded porch of generation,
big enough for everyone. No one has died yet.
No vows have been broken. No words spoken
that can never be taken back, never forgotten.
I have a basket of eggs my mother and I dyed yesterday.
I ask my grandmother to choose one, just one,
and she takes me up--O hold me close!--
her cancer not yet diagnosed. I bury my face
in soft flesh, the soft folds of her Easter dress,
breathing her in, wanting to stay forever where I am.
Her death will be long and slow, she will beg
to be let go, and I will find myself, too quickly,
in the here-and-now moment of my fortieth year.
It's spring again. Easter. Now my daughter steps
into the light, her basket of eggs bright, so bright.
One, choose one, I hear her say, her face upturned
to mine, innocent of outcome. Beautiful child,
how thoughtlessly we enter the world!
How free we are, how bound, put here in love's name
- death's, too - to be happy if we can.

I choke up at "O hold me close," where the adult voice suddenly breaks into the thoughts of the child - like there's no real difference between then and now. And I love the thin-veil feeling of those first lines - her brother and sister are there, eager for their turn - to be swung you think at first, then to be born you realize. Throughout the poem there is a sense of eternal time, partly through repetitions and examples like those above, and partly because the rhythms and sound-patterns are very smooth and dreamlike. And it comforts me, the picture this poem gives of the continuity of love - I think our family, too, is that "shaded porch of generation, big enough for everyone." And that repetition of choosing - the egg we choose - the child coming after us. Free to choose and bound by our choices - it feels very true to me.

“A Poem for Emily,” by Miller Williams

2007-12-06T21:56:00.000-08:00

p. 169

Small fact and fingers and farthest one from me,
a hand’s width and two generations away,
in this still present I am fifty-three.
You are not yet a full day.

When I am sixty-three, when you are ten,
and you are neither closer nor as far,
your arms will fill with what you know by then,
the arithmetic and love we do and are.

When I by blood and luck am eighty-six
and you are someplace else and thirty-three
believing in sex and God and politics
with children who look not at all like me,

sometime I know you will have read them this
so they will know I love them and say so
and love their mother. Child, whatever is
is always or never was. Long ago

a day I watched awhile beside your bed,
I wrote this down, a thing that might be kept
awhile, to tell you what I would have said
when you were who knows what and I was dead
which is I stood and loved you while you slept.

This is not so much tongue-twister of a poem — it’s a brain-twister, playfully joyous in its language like something you’d chant to jump rope to. I like how it leaps over the years, replaying the way you instantly start to figure how old you’ll be when this new baby is such-and-such an age. And I like the love in this poem: the grandfather’s confidence that she will grow up to repeat to her children this poem about how much he loves her. His unquestioning confidence that he loves her children, too, sight unseen. And his unspoken confidence that just as he “stood and loved you while you slept,” so she’ll stand and love him while he lies “sleeping” in death.

“Written to the Tune: River Town,” by Su Tung-P’o

2007-12-05T21:55:00.000-08:00

p. 157

Lost to one another, the living and the dead, these ten years.
I have not tried to remember
What is impossible to forget.
Your solitary grave is a thousand miles away,
No way to tell you my loneliness.
If we were to meet, you would not recognize me—
Face covered with dust,
Hair like frost.

Last night in a dark dream I was all at once back home.
You were combing your hair
At the little window.
We looked at one another without speaking
And could only weep streaming tears.
Year after year I expect it will go on breaking my heart—
The night of the full moon
The hill of low pines.

(The twentieth of the first month, 1075, to record a dream)

Things I like in this one: “No way to tell you my loneliness”—that’s what grief is—that the one who would understand that loneliness is the one you cannot tell. He says “At the little window” and I feel it’s that one specific window in their old home. The last three lines are so concrete and non-indulgent—they don’t beat the breast and moan and so I believe the emotion more. I imagine the “night of the full moon” was their married happiness, their joy together. The note says “the hill of low pines” is another way of saying the place where she is buried.

“Elegy for My Father, Who Is Not Dead," by Andrew Hudgins

2007-12-04T21:53:00.000-08:00

p. 142

One day I’ll lift the telephone
and be told my father’s dead. He’s ready.
In the sureness of his faith, he talks
about the world beyond this world
as though his reservations have
been made. I think he wants to go,
a little bit—a new desire
to travel building up, an itch
to see fresh worlds. Or older ones.
He things that when I follow him
he’ll wrap me in his arms and laugh,
the way he did when I arrived
on earth. I do not think he’s right.
He’s ready. I am not. I can’t
just say good-bye as cheerfully
as if he were embarking on a trip
to make my later trip go well.
I see myself on deck, convinced
his ship’s gone down, while he’s convinced
I’ll see him standing on the dock
and waving, shouting, Welcome back.

I liked the image of those two ways of seeing death—one standing on the deck of his own boat grieving the drowned ship, one standing on the dock looking forward to welcoming the other when he comes in to shore. The thing that’s nice about this poem is that it respects the beliefs of both the father and the son, honors the faith of one and the grief of the other and re-enacts again their love for each other.

“Grace,” by C.K. Williams

2007-12-03T21:48:00.000-08:00

p. 140

Almost as good as her passion, I’ll think, almost as good as her presence,
her physical grace,
almost as good as making love with her, I’ll think in my last aching
breath before last,
my glimpse before last of the light, were her good will and good wit,
the steadiness of her affections.

Almost, I’ll think, sliding away on my sleigh of departure, the rind of
my consciousness thinning,
the fear of losing myself, of—worse—losing her, subsiding as I think,
hope it must,
almost as good as her beauty, her glow, was the music of her thought,
her voice and laughter.

Almost as good as kissing her, being kissed back, I hope I’ll have the strength
still to think
was watching her as she worked or read, was beholding her selfless
sympathy for son, friend, sister,
even was feeling her anger, sometimes, rarely, lift against me, then be
forgotten, put aside.

Almost, I’ll think, as good as our unlikely coming together, was our
constant, mostly unspoken debate
as to whether good in the world was good in itself, or (my side) only
the absence of evil:
no need to say how much how we lived was shaped by her bright spirit,
her humor and hope.

Almost as good as living at all—improbable gift—was watching her once
cross our room,
the reflections of night rain she’d risen to close the window against
flaring across her,
doubling her light, then feeling her come back to bed, reaching to find
and embrace me,
as I’ll hope she’ll be there to embrace me as I sail away on that last
voyage out of myself,
that last, sorrowful passage out of her presence, though her presence,
I’ll think, will endure,
as firmly as ever, as good even now, I’ll think in that lull before last,
almost as ever.

Another wonderful C.K. Williams poem. I’m going to have to check out a book of his poetry and read him more fully. I love it that he never says that all those “deeper” and more spiritual qualities are better than the physical love between them. First of all, I think I believe him more when he says “almost as good.” Secondly, how wonderful to be cherished as a desirable woman and treasured as a good person. The repetition of “almost as good as” seems to erase the comparison though between spirit and body, and by the end, seems to erase the line between life and death. If it’s almost as good as—and what he describes is so beautifully good— maybe, really, it is as good. I think the last lines are especially graceful. Reading it out loud to my husband I realize that this poem almost needs to be read silently and with full attention. I like the pictures made by “sliding away on my sleigh of departure” and “the rind of my consciousness thinning.” I like the little vignette he shares about her getting up to close the window, approaching her own reflection in the glass, and coming back to bed “reaching to find and embrace me”—I get the feeling that’s what he’s most grateful for—her reaching to find and embrace him over and over in all the things she was and did. I can’t but believe with him that “her presence will endure as firmly as ever.”

from "Last Days," by Donald Hall

2007-12-02T21:46:00.000-08:00

p.139

“Dying is simple,” she said.
“What’s worst is . . . the separation.”
When she no longer spoke,
they lay alone together, touching,
and she fixed on him
her beautiful enormous round brown eyes,
shining, unblinking,
and passionate with love and dread.

Those eyes stay with me after I’ve put the book down. Everything of their love seems to be in that gaze. I admire how spare and sure Hall’s writing is, nothing extraneous.

“Alzheimer’s: The Husband,” by C.K. Williams

2007-12-01T21:40:00.000-08:00

p.132

He’d been a clod, he knew, yes, always aiming toward his vision of the
good life, always acting on it.
He knew he’d been unconscionably self-centered, had indulged himself
with his undreamed-of good fortune,
but he also knew that the single-mindedness with which he’d attended
to his passions, needs and whims,
and which must have seemed to others the grossest sort of egotism, was
also what was really at the base
of how he’d almost offhandedly worked out the intuitions and moves
which had brought him here,
and this wasn’t all that different: to spend his long-anticipated retirement
learning to cook
clean house, dress her, even to apply her makeup, wasn’t any sort of
secular saintliness—
that would be belittling—it was just the next necessity he saw himself as
being called to.

I like how conversational the tone is - the sound of someone talking to himself. I love “wasn’t any sort of secular saintliness—that would be belittling—it was just the next necessity.” Like the other poem of Williams’ earlier, this poem make me feel hopeful—that there is a good instinct within even the most unlikely. How wonderfully Williams celebrates goodness manifesting itself.

“Winter Verse for His Sister,” by William Meredith

2007-11-30T21:37:00.000-08:00

p. 129

Moonlight washes the west side of the house
As clean as bone, it carpets like a lawn
The stubbled field tilting eastward
Where there is no sign yet of dawn.
The moon is an angel with a bright light sent
To surprise me once before I die
With the real aspect of things.
It holds the light steady and makes no comment.

Practicing for death I have lately gone
To that other house
Where our parents did most of their dying,
Embracing and not embracing their conditions.
Our father built bookcases and little by little stopped reading,
Our mother cooked proud meals for common mouths.
Kindly, they raised two children. We raked their leaves
And cut their grass, we ate and drank with them.
Reconciliation was our long work, not all of it joyful.

Now outside my own house at a cold hour
I watch the noncommittal angel lower
The steady lantern that’s worn these clapboards thin
In a wash of moonlight, while men slept within,
Accepting and not accepting their conditions,
And the fingers of trees plied a deep carpet of decay
On the gravel web underneath the field,
And the field tilting always toward day.

I find the images in this poem very beautiful in a ghostly, haunting sort of way. I like the recurrence of the moon, the angel with a light, the field tilted toward the east, accepting and not accepting—it gives the poem a feeling of coming full circle. I like the surprising phrases: “the moon is an angel,” “proud meals for common mouths.” I like the details he uses to describe growing up in that house and the last line of the middle stanza. And I like it that they raised two children “Kindly” and that the field is “tilting always toward day” with all its connotations of resurrection and joy.

from "Three Poems for a Twenty-Fifth Anniversary," by Richard Shelton

2007-11-29T21:34:00.000-08:00

p. 122

1. Housecleaning

after returning
all the tools I borrowed
from neighbors and friends
and the books to the library

I am amazed to find
so many things around the house
like you
that really belong here

I had thought
you were on loan and overdue
the fines were mounting into millions
I could never pay them

so for twenty-five years
I looked everyone straight in the eyes
pretending you were mine
and I kept you

Oh, I love this one. The comparison is so unusual—his wife to an overdue library book. I think he’s saying he’s always known he doesn’t deserve her, but wonder of wonders—she’s given herself! A gift and not a debt he’ll never be able to repay. I just laugh at the last three lines—he’s so sweetly self-satisfied with his brazenness in claiming her.

“Sent to Her Elder Daughter from the Capital,” by Lady Otome of Sakanoe

2007-11-28T21:27:00.000-08:00

p.109

version #1

More than the gems
Locked away and treasured
In his comb-box
By the God of the Sea,
I prize you, my daughter.
But we are of this world
And such is its way!
Summoned by your man,
Obedient, you journeyed
To the far-off land of Koshi.
Since we parted,
Like a spreading vine,
Your eyebrows, pencil-arched,
Like waves about to break,
Have flitted before my eyes,
bobbling like tiny boats.
Such is my yearning for you
That this body, time-riddled,
May well-not bear the strain.

Had I only known
My longing would be so great,
Like a clear mirror
I’d have looked on you—
Not missing a day,
Not even an hour.

translated by Geoffrey Bownas & Anthony Thwaite

version #2

I cherished you, my darling,
As the Sea God the pearls
He treasures in his comb-box.
But you, led by your lord husband—
Such is the way of the world—
And torn from me like a vine,
Left for distant Koshi;
Since then, your lovely eyebrows
Curving like the far-off waves,
Ever linger in my eyes,
My heart unsteady as a rocking boat;
Under such a longing
I, now weak with age,
Come near to breaking.

If I had foreknown such longing,
I would have lived with you,
Gazing on you every hour of the day
As in a shining mirror.

translated by Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai

Here’s another poem that I had already collected for my own. In fact, my daughters and I memorized it one summer. But I had a different translation — which I prefer (which is why I reproduce it first). I like how the first version focuses on the gems, the treasure rather than on the mother “I.” I think “like waves about to break” is a more see-able image than “curving like the far-off waves.” And I like the simple, emphatic language of the last stanza in my version. The rhythm is more song-like throughout the first version, I think. But I do wonder if “my heart unsteady as a rocking boat” in the second version isn’t a better translation.

“September, the First Day of School, #1,” by Howard Nemerov

2007-11-27T21:09:00.000-08:00

p.99

My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first-grade door
He cries a little but is brave; he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting go.

Each fall the children must endure together
What every child also endures alone:
Learning the alphabet, the integers,
Three dozen bits and pieces of a stuff
So arbitrary, so peremptory,
That worlds invisible and visible

Bow down before it, as in Joseph’s dream
The sheaves bowed down and then the stars bowed down
Before the dreaming of a little boy.
That dream got him such hatred of his brothers
As cost the greater part of life to mend
And yet great kindness came of it in the end.

Look how the line breaking at “he does Let go” shows the reluctance of that parting. So nicely done. This poem makes me think and I haven’t finished thinking about it yet. I wonder about that dream that “got him such hatred of his brothers . . . and yet great kindness came of it in the end.” I know it’s talking about Joseph, as a governor in Egypt, feeding his brothers through the famine. It feels right to connect Joseph’s story with going to school where the child will be subjected to the discipline of “learning the alphabet, the integers,” but I haven’t thought quite why yet. I read Nemerov as a Jewish surname and I wonder if his fear for his son, his grief at their parting is a fear of letting the child go into a world of brothers who have so often indulged in anti-Semitism. I wonder if the father comforts himself (and his son) with Joseph’s story as a hope, as a testimony that the dream carried by the thinkers (religious, academic, scientific) will despite everything carry out “great kindness . . . in the end” even among the hating brethren. But there is something to this story more universal than just this one father and his son, something universal about linking School and the world of knowledge (“so arbitrary, so peremptory”) to “the dreaming of a little boy” before which sheaves and stars bow down. Something about gaining mastery of the elements of the world in order to bless the world around you. The inevitable mistakes that “cost the greater part of life to mend” but the lasting hope that “great kindness came of it in the end.” I don’t know. I’ll have to keep thinking.

“For a Five-Year-Old,” by Fleur Adcock

2007-11-26T20:46:00.000-08:00

p. 93

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
It might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful had,
to eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
four closest relatives, and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to may another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
and we are kind to snails.

I like the gentle order — partly set by the unobtrusive rhyme — that lies behind this poem. That despite us and our failures, we can still point towards kindness. I laugh, too, because despite our best efforts and successes the snail still goes out and eats a daffodil — how kind is that?

“Night Terrors,” by Alan Shapiro

2007-11-25T17:53:00.000-08:00

p. 90

Whose voice is it in mine when the child cries,
terrified in sleep, and half asleep myself I’m there
beside him saying, shh, now easy, shh,

whose voice — too intimate with all the ways
of solace to be merely mine; so prodigal
in desiring to give, yet so exact in giving

that even before I reach the little bed,
before I touch him, as I do anyway,
already he is breathing quietly again.

Is it my mother’s voice in mine, the memory
no memory at all but just the vocal trace,
sheer bodily sensation on the lips and tongue,

of what I may have heard once in the pre-
remembering of infancy — heard once and then
forgot entirely till it was wakened by the cry

brought back, as if from exile, by the child’s cry,—
here to the father’s voice, where the son again
can ask the mother, and the mother, too, the son—

Why has it taken you so long to come?

This poem has some of the same ideas as yesterday's — where does the Wise Parent in us come from? (And why isn’t he / she always there?) Also, how it seems we reconnect and re-heal the break we made as teenagers with our own parents when we become parents. Though the language is simple and straightforward, there is such a driving rhythm to this poem, forcing us onwards, waking us up. And this looping up of lines in alliteration or other sound-echoes - though staying stubbornly this side of real rhymes - creates a strong sense of chant. The pervasive alliteration and other subtle inter-echoes weaves one line into the next: ("Is is my mother's in mine, the memory/ no memory . . .," for example, or "Whose voice is it in mine when the child cries/ terrified in sleep, and half asleep myself." The fact that the entire poem is a single sentence gives it a breathless - half-woken - immediacy.

“Instinct,” by C.K. Williams

2007-11-24T22:32:00.000-08:00

(p. 88)

Although he’s apparently the youngest (his little Rasta-beard is barely
down and feathers),
most casually connected (he hardly glances at the girl he’s with, though
she might be his wife),
half-sloshed (or more than half) on picnic-whiskey teen-aged father,
when his little son,
two or so, tumbles from the slide, hard enough to scare himself, hard
enough to make him cry,
really cry, not partly cry, not pretend the fright for what must be some
scarce attention,
but really let it out, let loudly be revealed the fear of having been so
close to real fear,
he, the father, knows just how quickly he should pick the child up, then
how firmly hold it,
fit its head into the muscled socket of his shoulder, rub its back, croon
and whisper to it,
and finally pull away a little, about a head’s length, looking, still concerned,
into its eyes,
then smiling, broadly, brightly, as though something has been shared,
something of importance,
not dreadful, or not very, not at least now that it’s past, but rather
something . . . funny,
funny, yes, it was funny, wasn’t it, to fall and cry like that, though one
certainly can understand,
we’ve all had glimpses of a premonition of the anguish out there, you’re
better now, though,
aren’t you, why don’t you go back and try again, I’ll watch you, maybe
have another drink,
yes, my son, my love, I’ll go back and be myself now: you go be the
person you are, too.

I have never really liked C.K. Williams before—usually the poems included in anthologies by him have been boring to me, but I loved this one. The details are exactly right—I have seen this teenage father in the park, I'm sure. Typing the poem out I discovered that, unlike Whitman who writes long lines that go on and can be broken wherever it’s necessary to fit on the page, Williams breaks his lines purposely—long and then short. The line-breaks themselves show the rhythm of the breath—I always pause (and I think most readers do naturally) on the last word of a line. And that pause gives an emphasis to the last word of the line and then an emphasis to the words in the short line. I feel laughter and joy when I read this poem—that some portion of parenting wisdom comes instinctively and is available to us all, that we and our children can be the people that we are and still tend to each other. I love the way this poem is told, thoughts and emotions unfolding, correcting themselves, just as if we were there watching this father and son at the park ourselves.

"To my Daughter" by Stephen Spender

2007-11-23T20:28:00.000-08:00

(p. 87) “To My Daughter,” Stephen Spender

Bright clasp of her whole hand around my finger,
My daughter, as we walk together now.
All my life I’ll feel a ring invisibly
Circle this bone with shining: when she is grown
Far from today as her eyes are far already.

Why do I like this one? Maybe it’s just the image that I can almost feel physically—the memory of my own children holding a finger like a bright ring eternally binding me to them and all the while they are looking and moving far into the future and away. The strangeness of the word-order in that last line capture some of the disorientation of knowing the child who is so close now is rightfully bending all her will, his will on moving away.

"A Cradle Song" by W.B. Yeats

2007-11-22T21:20:00.000-08:00

A Cradle Song,
W.B. Yeats

(1st version)
The angels are stooping
Above your bed;
They weary of trooping
With the whimpering dead.

God’s laughing in Heaven
To see you so good;
The Sailing Seven
Are gay with His mood.

I sigh that kiss you,
For I must own
That I shall miss you
When you are grown.(2nd version)

The angels are bending
Above your white bed,
They weary of tending
The souls of the dead.

God smiles in high heaven
To see you so good,
The old planets seven
Grow gay with his mood.

I kiss you and kiss you,
With arms round my own,
Ah, how I shall miss you,
When, dear, you have grown

This is a poem I have collected in my own gathering of favorite poems, but I had an earlier version (shown first). It’s interesting to compare the changes. The second version (the one in this anthology) is softer and sweeter but rather boring. I like the happier bounce of “God’s laughing in Heaven” instead of "God smiles in high heaven" and I much prefer “I sigh that kiss you for I must own that I shall miss you when you are grown” to "I kiss you and kiss you with arms round my own. Ah, how I shall miss you, when, dear, you have grown." Blegh! That's too saccharine sweet. I also like the snappier rhythm of the first. Just goes to show that rewrites are not always right. (I'm assuming the 2nd version is a later version.)

"The Tempest - to my daughter Miranda" by Stephen Corey

2007-11-21T23:18:00.000-08:00

(p. 73) “The Tempest—To my daughter Miranda,” Stephen Corey

If you name your daughter vision,
or wondrous to behold, your should not be surprised
if she comes to you in anger or in shame,
wishing to be known as Mary or Ann.
That will be the moment to carry her out
to the things of the world she is not,
speaking other sounds that were almost hers:
aspen, lily-white, cumulo-nimbus glow.

Soon enough she’ll realize the world,
too often, gets named in hope of profit,
or deceit, or the scientist’s exactitude.
But on the greening island of the family
testing its voice in the months of waiting,
the sought-after words are music and the past:
Grandparent. Aunt. Child deceased.

Spirits of fashion and monsters of commerce
lurk, bedfellows eager to keep us
from our own best inventions and songs.
Some days it seems we grow from wailing silence
into speech, only that we might curse
the coming return to silence.
But if you’ve named your daughter wondrous to behold,
she’ll someday learn she heard those words
before all others, and then again, and again.
When you are gone beyond all roaring
she’ll know, should you ever brave return,
which words are the first you’ll speak.

The middle stanza of this poem is boring to me, but I like the father’s insistence that his child is “wondrous to behold,” and the idea that the best thing for a child feeling so trapped within her given name is not a long argument about why she’s so wondrous, but just to be carried outside (outside herself?) to see all those other things “wondrous to behold” like aspens and lilies and glowing clouds. And I like the ending insistence that the first thing the father will say if he sees her after his death is still that she is “wondrous to behold.”

"Morning Song" by Sylvia Plath

2007-11-20T22:16:00.000-08:00

(p.72) “Morning Song,” Sylvia Plath

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth open clean as a cat’s. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

What I like about this much less exuberant poem is the metaphors she uses to describe this strange, bewildering, and exhausting experience of caring for a new baby. The images (metaphors) don’t work together—they just came flying at you one after another: gold watch, statue in a museum, a cloud above a dewy field, breath like a moth fluttering, the sea, a cow, a cat’s mouth, balloons. That’s kind of how the first days of being a mother felt—strange and disconnected, but experienced with intensity: apparently meaningless details etched in the mind, and everything happening in the present tense.

"Five a.m., the Ninth Month" by Jacqueline Osherow

2007-11-19T22:13:00.000-08:00

(p. 69) “Five a.m., the Ninth Month,” Jacqueline Osherow

Your kick awakens me to wild geese
Honking overhead, the stirring trees
Just visible beneath the new, pale blue.
Everything is coming: day, spring, you;
The geese above all seem to shout, “Make way!”
But I would almost keep you where you are,
Your pulse at breakneck speed turning the air
I breathe into a future, wind on clay,
Your heart galloping beneath my heart
And every living thing I hear, its echo,
Geese and wind in trees and my own heart,
The whole unwakened world resounds with you,
Shaking until life itself will part
And you—imagine—you’ll come screaming through.

I like this one, too. For one, I like wild geese in poems—I don’t know why, but they always catch my attention, just like they do when they fly over the sky. The poem is so eager and happy and all the images are full of flying and galloping forward—the geese, the trees in the wind, the baby’s pulse and the coming birth. Why did she write this one much more rhymed (aabb cddc efefef) and more definitely in sonnet-form than the poem above (which shows some vestigial partial rhymes and also has 14 lines)? I wonder if it expresses how much more fully formed the child in the womb is?

"After Midnight, the Fifth Month" by Jacqueline Osherow

2007-11-18T21:04:00.000-08:00

(p. 68) “After Midnight, the Fifth Month,” Jacqueline Osherow

I am becoming a cathedral! My
Belly rises from the bed like a tiny
Model of the Florence Cupolone.
Probably a belly just like this
Inspired Brunelleschi’s great design:
The original, the perfect, home.
There is a tapping from the inside,
Gentle, almost imperceptible,
Like piano hammers touching piano strings.
And I am fluent in these first attempts
At language; I am turned to someone else.
There is life beyond our own. Gabriel
Whispers, softly fluttering his wings,
With every touch a hushed annunciation.

She’s so exuberant! And I can see the domed womb like a cathedral dome—the cathedral dome like a domed womb and I agree—they are the same in some deep way—a holy enclosure. I like the idea of those first soft flutterings as piano hammers—touches that soft and light. The line “I am turned to someone else” says at least two things at once: 1) I’ve changed into a different person, and 2) my deepest focus has turned from myself to this new life in me. I love poetry when it carries all the meanings of its words at the same time—so each sentence reverberates and changes slightly, reinforcing or modifying itself with each reverberation. In everyday speaking we usually employ words so half-heartedly, like sieves with most of the meaning dripping out, hoping people will get the general drift of what we’re saying. I think the lost language of paradise has more to do with the care and spirit in which we speak whatever we do speak than with the actual vocabulary and grammar heard in Eden.

"Infertility" by Edward Hirsch

2007-11-17T15:01:00.000-08:00

p. 64, “Infertility,” Edward Hirsch

We don’t know how to name
the long string of zeros
Stretching across winter,
the barren places,
The missing birthdates of the unborn.

We’d like to believe in their souls
drifting through space
Between the Crab and the Northern Cross,
Smoky and incandescent,
longing for incarnation.

We’d like to believe in their spirits descending,
But month after month, year after year,
We have laid ourselves down
and raised ourselves up
And not one has ever entered our bodies.

We’d like to believe that we have planted
And tended seeds
in their honor,
But the spirits never appear
in darkness or light.

We don’t know whether to believe in their non-existence
Or their secrecy and evasiveness,
their invisible spite.
Maybe it’s past us, maybe it’s the shape of nothing
Being born,
the cold slopes of the absolute.

This poem is haunting and mysterious. The lines stretch brokenly across the page almost like the image of those souls drifting “between the Crab and the Northern Cross” (such nice detail—so you see these long soul-clouds, slightly glowing, floating not just in an idea of “space” but between the constellations, actually in space). I find myself thinking about all kinds of “unanswered” prayers when I read this poem.

"My Husband before Leaving" translated by J. Moussaieff Masson and W.S. Merwin

2007-11-16T08:59:00.000-08:00

(p. 50) “My Husband before Leaving,” 12th century India (trans. J. Moussaieff Masson & W.S. Merwin)

My husband
before leaving on a journey
is still in the house speaking
to the gods and already
separation is climbing like
bad monkeys to the windows.

I think “clmbing like bad monkeys to the windows” is a very good picture of what it feels like when someone is about to leave you—that panicky, ratcheting up of worry and oncoming loneliness.

"Lesson" by Forrest Hamer

2007-11-15T19:56:00.000-08:00

(p.33) “Lesson,” Forrest Hamer

It was 1963 or 4, summer,
and my father was driving our family
from Ft. Hood to North Carolina in our 56 Buick.
We’d been hearing about Klan attacks, and we knew

Mississippi to be more dangerous than usual.
Dark lay hanging from trees the way moss did,
and when it moaned light against the windows
that night, my father pulled off the road to sleep.
Noises
that usually woke me from rest afraid of monsters
kept my father awake that night, too,
and I lay in the quiet noticing him listen, learning
that he might not be able always to protect us

from everything and the creatures besides;
perhaps not even from the fury suddenly loud
through my body about this trip from Texas
to settle us home before he would go away

to a place no place in the world
he named Viet Nam. A boy needs a father
with him, I kept thinking, fixed against noise
from the dark.

This poem has a strong, confident, brave rhythm—even though it’s talking about a time when he was very afraid. What makes that strong, definite rhythm? Maybe the straightforward sentence structure—subject-verb-object. Maybe that there are no extra, fanciful, or overly emotional words. I think there’s more to it than that, something just in the pace the words come out, one after the other, so calmly and so sure, but in any case, the combination of confident rhythm and the fear of KKK attack and the images of dark moss hanging from the trees and seeing his father’s wary face, echoes what is being said about how fathers stand on guard, giving a sense of safety even when they feel unsafe. I admire the insight the boy in the poem is learning about what it means to be a father, and the necessity of being there to be a father. And I admire the righteous anger of that boy at the injustice that both makes the world unsafe and takes fathers away.

"Letter of Recommendation" by Yehuda Amichai

2007-11-14T14:54:00.000-08:00

(p. 32) from “Letter of Recommendation,” Yehuda Amichai

... This is not a scar you feel under my shirt.
It’s a letter of recommendation, folded,
from my father:
“He is still a good boy and full of love.”

I remember my father waking me up
for early prayers. He did it caressing
my forehead, not tearing the blanket away.

Since then I love him even more.
And because of this
let him be woken up
gently and with love
on the Day of Resurrection.

Wouldn’t you like to be a parent whose children asked that you be resurrected so gently, because you had been so gentle to them?

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden

2007-11-13T09:48:00.000-08:00

(p. 31) “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

This poem does such a good job—all the B and D and K sounds keep it sounding stiff and cold and labored—the sounds don’t flow, they jerk and stop and start, just like trying to get a fire started on a cold, unhappy morning. And the insight—this is what love is: driving out the cold, polishing the shoes of unappreciative teenage sons. I can see the grown son now sadly shaking his head as he tells us this poem,“What did I know, what did I know . . .” and then the very formal, beutiful language of that last line: "of love's austere and lonely offices" in contrast with the everyday words earlier. This is a poem I’ve long loved.

"I Ask my Mother to Sing" by Li-Young Lee

2007-11-12T23:45:00.000-08:00

(p. 29) “I Ask My Mother to Sing” by Li-Young Lee

She begins, and my grandmother joins her.
Mother and daughter sing like young girls.
If my father were alive, he would play
his accordion and sway like a boat.

I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,
nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch
the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers
running away in the grass.

But I love to hear it sung;
how the waterlilies fill with rain until
they overturn, spilling water into water,
then rock back, and fill with more.

Both women have begun to cry.
But neither stops her song.

I like the picture of the waterlilies filling with rain and tipping and then filling again and this magical place in his mother and grandmother’s song where elegant picnickers run over the grass to shelter from a rain—I imagine them laughing and dressed in silk. It reminds me of how our parents’ memories—their real life—is to us dreams and stories.

"Clearances" by Seamus Heaney

2007-11-11T20:39:00.000-08:00

p. 27, “Clearances,” Seamus Heaney

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives—
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

Again, I love that subtle rhyme—almost every line rhymes with the one after. But the rhyme is very quiet, very slight, and never satisfyingly complete (“at Mass” with “potatoes,” “by one” with “iron,” “to share” with “water,” “at her bedside” with “towards my head.”) Rhyme often functions to give a musicality to the lines. But I think in this poem that partial rhyme also carries some of the feeling of the poem, how this mother and son come close but never quite chime together, or like the last line says: “Never closer in all our lives.” For the boy, that time peeling potatoes on Sundays was a time approaching rhyme, approaching closeness, approaching music—not quite there, but close—the closest they got and the dearest thing to be remembered now. And I like the insight: that what connects us with our loved ones are these quiet, unspectacular times working together. That those matter more than dramatic carryings-on and fine phrases. "Would that there were more of them and that death did not end them," I think this poem says.

"Portrait of my Mother on Her Wedding Day" by Celia Gilbert

2007-11-10T13:35:00.000-08:00

“Portrait of My Mother on Her Wedding Day”
by Celia Gilbert

A young woman,
lilies gathered to her breast—
the moment of the wave
before it crests—
bride,
incandescent,
even in this sepia image
dazzling me, like a wedding guest.

Fifty years later, I uncover
in the movement of her swept-back veil
the life that was to come,
seeing revealed the cunning of those hands
that clasp the flowers;
the will to shape a world
of her devising.

And once again I feel
how evil seems to fall away
before the power of her candid gaze
while everything in us that answers to good
crowds round her lap
hearing itself spoken for.

This poem speaks so clearly and exactly, with no sloppy, extra words. I like how subtle the rhyme is. You can read it without realizing it is there, but all hte while the rhyme gives this pleasant, almost subconscious echoing ring to the ends of the lines. I find this poems opens up my own memories of my mother—I remember digging around in an old trunk of hers and finding a black & white picture of her just before she married, so young and so smooth-faced and brave-looking and unbelievably beautiful and familiar at the same time. It gave me a little shiver, like this poem does, that I knew the future of this young woman more than she did—the home she would make with her hands (“the cunning of those hands”) and the way her choices would make a world for me to live in (“the will to shape a world of her devising”). The last stanza is exactly what I love best about my mother—that she claimed me for Goodness, recognized goodness within me and defended it sometimes against my own lack of faith in (or even evidence to the contrary of) that goodness. And I like the picture the words make in that last stanza: as if there are all these cherubic little children inside us (“everything that is in us that answers to good’) that come crowding up around her lap eagerly at her call, ready to be kissed and approved.

"The Journey," by David Ignatow

2007-11-09T10:27:00.000-08:00

(p. 20)

I am looking for a past
I can rely on
in order to look to death
with equanimity.
What was given me:
my mother’s largeness
to protect me,
my father’s regularity
in coming home from work
at night, his opening the door silently and smiling,
pleased to be back
and the lights on
in all the rooms
through which I could run
freely or sit at ease
at table and do my homework
undisturbed: love arranged
as order directed at the next day.
Going to bed was a journey.

The simplicity of the words, the short lines, and the straightforward thought help to recreate the well-lighted world of this childhood. I liked the gratitude for such little everyday things: the father’s regularity, the mother’s largeness, the rooms orderly and lit and safe for a child to run or study. My favorite line: “love arranged as order directed at the next day.” It’s interesting that he says he can look at death with calmness because his parents’ loving way of making order in his young life gives him a feeling that there IS order—maybe throughout the whole universe. That maybe Love (in a larger and deeper, maybe divine sense) is also arranged as order pointed toward the next Day.

"Nikki-Rosa," by Nikki Giovanni

2007-11-08T14:21:00.000-08:00

(p. 13)

childhood remembrances are always a drag
if you’re Black
you always remember things like living in Woodlawn
with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something
they never talk about how happy you were to have
your mother
all to yourself and
how good the water felt when you got your bath
from one of those big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in
and somehow when you talk about home
it never gets across how much you
understood their feelings
as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
and even though you remember
your biographers never understand
your father’s pain as he sells his stock
and another dream goes
And though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good
Christmases
and I really hope no white person ever has cause
to write about me
because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy

The insight delights me—how we get wealth and ease mixed up with love and happiness. We do it to ourselves and we do it to others. I like how this poem insists on the dignity of experience. And the possibility of being “quite happy” in an unideal world. The run-on breahtless quality of the lines gives this poem its immediacy and sincerity.

A Poem a Day for 30 Days: #1“There Was a Child Went Forth,” by Walt Whitman

2007-11-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

Here's the aim: a month of straight reading and rapid response, keeping it simple - no scrabbling after symbols or plotting out rhyme schemes - just let the poems do their work and work their spell.

All poems for this next month from Grant Hardy's Enduring Ties: Poems of Family Relationships.

Ready?

(p. 11) from "There Was a Child Went Forth," by Walt Whitman

His own parents, he that had father’d him and she that had conceiv’d him in her womb and birth’d him,
They gave this child more of themselves than that,
They gave him afterward every day, they became part of him.

The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table,
The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by,
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger’d, unjust,
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure,
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, the yearning and swelling heart,
Affection that will not be gainsay’d, the sense of what is real, the thought if after all it should prove unreal,
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the curious whether and how,
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?

Whitman loves the long line, the list and lists of lists. The effect is a rather ageless, Biblical rhythm. I like (sometimes) Whitman’s long lines—they sound like someone thinking to himself very carefully and thoughtfully, but almost sleepily. Like how your thoughts come very clear sometimes right before you fall asleep. But it's the details I love about this poem--that he makes me see his parents uniquely as themselves rather than settling for dull and empty generalizations. The line: “a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by” puts me right next to the mother in her tidy gray dress, as she sets the table. I like too that even though the father is shown more negatively there is still “affection that will not be gainsay’d.” And the insight that rings true with me—that parents’ beliefs, words, physical characteristics, etc., become the environment a child grows up in. That parents form the ground, the foundation to “the sense of what is real,” and also the point from which we differentiate ourselves and begin our contradiction.

Where I'm Coming From: Biases and Blindspots

2007-11-06T22:27:00.000-08:00

I grew up in a household that crooned old Scottish folksongs and cowboy ballads, sang hymns and recited scriptures and nursery rhymes and comic verse like "Little Orphant Annie" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee." I memorized bits of Longfellow and Tennyson to please my country schoolteacher grandfather and spent happy afternoons in the big chair in my parents' room, poring over the big black book of Best Loved Poems of the American People. In my household, no one would have called themselves a poet, though many of us were guilty of occasional verse.

I first conceived an enthusiasm for Robert Burns in junior high for his

wee sleekit beastie

and

But gie me a cannie hour at e’en,
My arms about my dearie, O;
An’ war’ly cares, an’ war’ly men,
May a’ gae tapsalteerie, O!

Then I stumbled upon Emily Dickinson:

I dwell in Possibility—
A fairer House than Prose—
More numerous of Windows—
Superior—for Doors—

Then e.e. cummings:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

And this trio shaped my emerging literary taste in favor of the personal lyric, purposely simple, persistently strange, but strongly rhymed and metered. I relished the unfamiliar word, the apt image, the quirky epiphany, and above all-- a poem was a poem if it sounded like a poem.

By the time public school got around to teaching me serious poetry, I was stubbornly opinionated, as only the self-taught can be. When my teacher sneered that every one of Emily Dickinson's poems could be sung to the tune "The Yellow Rose of Texas" and tried to demonstrate the obvious superiority of William Carlos Williams'

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

to Vachel Lindsay's

Booth led boldly with his big bass drum—
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
The Saints smiled gravely & they said: “He’s come.”
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)

I was unconvinced. I wanted to know why such scorn for the sounds of poetry? Is the eye better than the ear? Do we really have to titter if the line is singable?

Through high school I read Robert Frost:

My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

and Edna St. Vincent Millay:

Wild swans, come over the town, come over
The town again, trailing your legs and crying!

Then abandoned his straightforwardness and her hard bright clarity for T.S. Eliot, who was reassuringly erudite and deep and whose poems could be chanted aloud as if they were mantic words of power:

There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Of course I studied English at college, where I found - one breathless evening reading Julius Caesar all the way through in one sitting - that Shakespeare was indeed a poetic genius and his reputation not just a conspiracy between Leonard Bernstein and the NEA. I fell in love with the sounds of medieval English lyric, "I sing of a maiden that is makeless," and "Adam lay ibounden, Bounden in a bond." I admired the complex wit of Wallace Stevens and John Donne, and against my biases to their buxom lines came to acknowledge the talent of William Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats. I read Robert Frost for pleasure and William Carlos Williams for the quiet focus of his poems. I guiltily glutted myself on A.E. Houseman and Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Cavalier lyric poets. Eagerly gathered poems by Maxine Kumin, Mary Oliver, Anne Sexton, and May Swenson like post cards from earthy, older, cackling sisters. Gloried in the richly textured visions of William Butler Yeats and William Blake, the evocative spareness of Li Po, and the goofy, all-embracing, exultingly detailed irresistible optimism of Walt Whitman.

In grad school I studied Anglo-Saxon poetry: Beowulf, Caedmon's Hymn, The Wanderer, and the writings of medieval women mystics (Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen). I found respite in the limpid and stately vulnerability of the poems by Robert Hass and shook off academia's pretensions in the cheekiness of Anna Swir and the rougish stubbornness of Wislawa Szymborska. I read Louise Gluck's Wild Iris over and over - for reasons I still can't put satisfactorily into words.

Several years I taught monthly poetry workshops in the schools. Seeking poems that would speak to the young, I found myself returning to the most musical, like the powerful images and gorgeous beat of Blake's Tyger, Tyger.

And for my own soul, I still read poetry. Most recently, sick at heart and needing comfort, I found myself reading again Inger Christensen's alphabet, a series of poems written originally in Danish, based on the Fibonacci sequence, a chant that re-creates, re-establishes the world in its familiar beauty, despite and within the terror we find here, too. (English translation by Susanna Nied):

1

abrikostræerne findes, abrikostræerne findes

apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist

bregnerne findes; og brombaer, brombaer
og brom findes; og brinten, brinten

bracken exists; and blackberries, blackberries;
bromine exists; and hydrogen, hydrogen

cikaderne findes; cikorie, chromog
citrontraeer findes; cikaderne findes;
cikaderne, ceder, cypress, cerebellum

cicadas exists; chicory, chromium,
citrus trees; cicadas exists;
cicadas, cedars, cypresses, the cerebellum

duerne findes; drømmerne, dukkerne
dræberne findes; duerne, duerne;
dis, dioxin og dagne; dagne
findes; dagene døden; og digtene
findes; digtene, dagene, døden.

doves exists; dreamers and dolls;
killers, and doves and doves;
haze, dioxin, and days; days
exist; days and death; and poems
exist; poems, days, death

Christensen's poem goes on through most of the letters of the alphabet, each section longer and more complex, more weighed down by our presence in the world. But it ends with hope - not just the children who have found shelter in the cave but the echoes of that swelling chant of witness: "apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist, bracken exists, and blackberries, blackberries . . . " - a chant that steadies the mind and focuses the eye, fills the heart with courage and readies us for better action.

I read for courage as much as for enlightenment. So my definition of poetry is a powerful playing, a laughing at the destroyer, a dance we do in honor of our hearts' truth, a marriage of the body (the fecund matrix of sounds and rhythms of the world and human speech; the detailed matter that makes a forest or a street or a human body; the things that matter to us walking here beneath the sky) with the spirit (the acrobatics of metaphorical thought, patterns of rhyme and alliteration, the connections of logic and dream, the idea of order).

Matter and pattern. Patterns that matter.