Category Archives: Poetry

Practicing

When I was 15 years old and learning to type on my dad’s old manual typewriter, I decided to write my memories; I was composing memoir before I knew what memoir was, under the influence of fiction (David Copperfield). I lost track long ago of where those pages are, but I do recall that I wrote page after page. What on earth would an adolescent who was raised in loving and non-traumatic circumstances in a middle-class New Jersey suburb have had to say that was worth recording?

I wrote about losing a toy bear, and learning to read; receiving second-hand books with joy, reading voraciously, wondering what it would be like to be an orphan, and feeling terrified of dying. I wrote about the attic of our old house and learning to ride a bicycle. There were other things, too, that I can’t remember now. Generally, mundane and typical 1960s-childhood events–and descriptions galore. It felt important to write down the small details.

Perhaps I should have gone into journalism.

These days I’ve no interest in writing memoir. I have kept a journal since I was ten years old, and that constitutes enough self-indulgent scribbling on its own. I treasure, however, the practice all that writing gave me: practice in constructing sentences, employing vocabulary words, creating metaphors, using punctuation in various ways, expressing abstract ideas and describing concrete objects. Writing, learning to write, critique, and revision have been immensely valuable to me.

I’m not sure who I would be if I hadn’t been constantly writing (and reading). Maybe I’d have been a contemplative.

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All of which is to report to my readers, who may be experiencing their own obstacles to their art, that –yes– the writing continues in the face of loss and grief, anxiety, and the work of the body in the world, in the mundane spaces of daily grind and in the wakeful hours, and in the containers of dreamwork and consciousness. Right now, the writing is not “good,” not crafted, aware of itself, ready to speak to others than the self. It is, at present, more akin to what the Buddhists call practice.

Photo by Donald Macauley on Flickr | https://tricy.cl/2DSmsmY

~

Keep working, keep practicing, keep breathing.

Short lines, few words

A friend has been sending me the occasional haiku she’s written; she says that the haiku form has kept her busy and creative during a time when her attention feels divided. I am reminded that, in the past, composing haiku has been a useful practice for me, as well–a method of retaining images and moments that might later prove useful in other types of poems..

My colleagues Dave Bonta, Michael Czarnecki, and Marilyn Hazelton, among others, find in haiku and tanka a wide range of possibilities for expression–and compression. Though I suppose that is true for any poetic form or strategy.

I just want to get writing again.

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This morning I made some attempts at writing again. Writing poetry, I mean–different from my other acts of writing. Writing against frustration, grief, and absence and pain…obstacles, for me, to composition.

If I were a fiercer poet, a fiercer person, I might manage to write in media res, the midst of the goings-on; I might accomplish poems through my anger or sorrow. Instead, I have to wait it out, mull, observe, speculate. It’s just my natural modus operandi.

Maybe I’m lazy, or afraid.

~

No luck with haiku. I wrote a couple of mediocre tanka that might be salvageable once I work on them a bit.

I wrote this–no form, just words. Putting it out there for now, with an illustration. Not exactly haiga, not nearly luminous or complete.

Hey, Muse. This is all I got.

~

Introvert
 
Long-necked gourd
tangled in
its own vine
twists and curls.
There is something
fantastic in its nature,
imprinted in seed,
patterned and tendriled--
an urge to
turn
and flourish
hidden though it is
beneath broad leaves.
 





zucchino rampicante











			

	
	



				
					


	

		
Living with history


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		

It’s complicated, history. It engages with things I love, such as art, in complex and often contradictory ways. How did a person with such fascist tendencies write such enduring, challenging work? How could such a misogynist womanizer create paintings of surpassing depth and beauty? Why was a person who was so concerned with the welfare of others so neglectful of his or her family? 





Alex Ross, writing about classical music in The New Yorker‘s September 21 issue:





“The poietic* and the esthetic should have equal weight when we pick up the pieces of the past. On the one hand, we can be aware that Handel invested in the business of slavery; on the other, we can see a measure of justice when Morris Robinson sings his music in concert…there is no need to reach a final verdict–to judge each artist innocent or guilty. Living with history means living with history’s complexities, contradictions, and failings…Attempts to cleanse the canon of disreputable figures end up replicating the great-man theory in a negative register….Because all art is the product of our grandiose, predatory species, it reveals the worst in our natures as well as the best.”





People are complicated and contradictory. None is perfect. The worst in our natures can be compelling, even inspirational.





Even in history, where it’s famously said the victors write the verdicts, such verdicts can be overturned, the stories made new, retold from different perspectives, satirized. I love that Ross calls humans “grandiose and predatory” but notes our capacity for creating beauty nonetheless. Rings true in my experience, and sounds a lot like what poets do.





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  *The terms were coined by semiotician Jean-Jacques Nattiez, with poietic referring to the productive process of art (its creation) and esthetic with the receptive process (its impact upon the listener-viewer-reader).





If you are curious, you can see and hear Morris Robinson singing the bass in Shostakovich’s 14th Symphony on YouTube. (I couldn’t find him singing Handel online).






			

	
	



				
					


	

		
No better place


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		

In a time of grief and gravity and gratitude for some wonderfully-lived lives, I happen to find myself reading Mark Doty’s book What Is the Grass? Walt Whitman in My Life.





And I find this paragraph; and for now, I need add nothing more.





The dead are not lost, but in circulation; they are involved in the present, in active participation. Bits of them are streaming through your hand and mine, just as language is circulating through us. Lexicon and materiality forever move onward and outward in the continuous wheeling expansion this world is. This is no mere philosophical proposition on Whitman’s part, not an intellectual understanding but a felt actuality. We are alive forever in the endless circulation of matter. Nothing luckier, stranger, or more beautiful could ever happen. There is no better place.











			

	
	



				
					


	

		
Turn, turn, turn


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		

As a child, I loved the Pete Seeger song “Turn, Turn, Turn” as sung by The Byrds. My father told me the words came from the Bible, Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (KJV). Ecclesiastes offers some lovely poems, and Seeger’s interpretation is simple and wise:





To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven





A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep





To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven





A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together





To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven





A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing





To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven





A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time for love, a time for hate
A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late





~





Given the time of coronavirus and covid-19, “a time to refrain from embracing” seems apt, and a little painful to contemplate. For me and my beloveds, a time has come in which to mourn and weep, and to embrace, because everything (and every one among us) must reach a time to die. The sweet-natured, intelligent man who took us to a Pete Seeger concert when we were children and told us where to find the lyrics in Ecclesiastes, among many other things, has moved from physical existence to existence in our consciousness–the strange loop of human “being” that none of us understands. 





He would have called it soul.





autumn rainbow






			

	
	



				
					


	

		
Break/change


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
David Bowie famously invites us–or exhorts us–to turn and face the strange. Necessary, especially during times people are wishing things were as they used to be. Change seems a stranger. We don’t want it at our door.


Facing change presents challenges and requires confronting fears. No wonder people resist; yet change is all there is. Without it, not even death (which is all about change). Just stasis. Not-life instead of no-life; un-life.


For now, a break from blogging, from submitting poems to journals, from sending out my latest attempt at a manuscript, from attending readings and conferences and workshops. I might say “it’s all too much” under current circumstances, but the reasons are more complicated and center around transitions of the not-writing kind.


In time, knowing the way my writing process occurs, these transitions will lead to more writing. More poems. Lots of process.


Meanwhile. I’m in the woods. I’m in the garden. I’m even (I think) going to be in the classroom. But it will all look different.


IMG_6972

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
@, &, etc.


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
Decades ago, when I worked in the graphics and typography industry, I became fascinated with ligatures * and “special characters” (which sounds like a euphemism of some kind). Some font designers seemed to share my interest and to design particularly elegant or amusing symbol characters and ligatures as options, though the classic ones have long since gone out of style.


The symbol ampersand supposedly evolved out of the Latin word et (as in et cetera), into “and per se and”–but now it simply means “and.”ampersand


fig2c


That character-ligature-symbol gets used frequently in logos, headlines, labels, cartoons. I like the over-the-top swash versions of ampersand just for fun, though I would not specify them in a design; they tend to be hard to read.


Several of the special characters find employment in legal documentation or academic writing, the only places you are likely to find  ‡, §, and ¶ . They’re quaintly antique, but useful. The symbol for “at,” however, was underused when I worked in the field in the 1970s and 80s. It seemed to be going the way of the §.


What a difference a world-wide web makes! Now, of course, @ is ubiquitous, instantly recognizable, and used in logos, brand names… etc.!


~


What we might notice here is that symbols change over time; status varies as social requirements vary, and what’s considered relevant or useful in one era or with one technology can fall into disuse or neglect depending upon the times. Do we regret their fall from grace? Perhaps for a generation or so, and then “they’re history.” If we value history, we geek around in scholarly or enthusiastic amateur ways, recovering past usages and the social norms of past eras. But we seldom insist upon a return to most of them. What endures overcomes the norms. I am curious as to what will endure.


Yes, this is another one of my analogies to the present moment.


~


@ 6 am

wren & sparrow chitt-errrr

etc.


(Just a lot of twitter noise.)


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*The etymology of the word is as follows (thank you Online Etymology Dictionary): c. 1400, “something used in tying or binding,” from Middle French ligature “a binding” (14c.), from Late Latin ligatura “a band,” from Latin ligatus, past participle of ligare “to bind” (from PIE root *leig- “to tie, bind”). In modern musical notation, “group of notes slurred together,” from 1590s; of letters joined in printing or writing from 1690s.


~


cf : The term ligature, when used in medicine, means a thread or cord that ties off a blood vessel. Now you know!

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
Respite, refuge


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
Last night, first time I heard the tree crickets’ din blossoming in darkness; cicadas’ daytime clatter began last week, and the lantern fly nymphs are in their last stage before morphing into winged tree-pests. The heat’s oppressive, which seems to suit the general mood. I have not been writing poems, but this morning wakened early to surrounding birdsong and felt a moment of beauty amidst the tension.


As usual, my garden has offered respite. I harvest beans in evening’s humid warmth, pulling pods from the resilient stems. I marvel at the squash blossoms–bright bells amid enormous green leaves–and gather cucumbers and zucchini, and wait for tomatoes to ripen as I tie up the vines heavy with green globes. The scent of lemon basil pervades dusk as the last fireflies start to wink. Yes, there are disappointments and bugs and there will be yet more weeding and work. It is, however, labor of the body for the nurture of the body. A body in the world.


~


Twenty-odd years ago, we planted an American beech and a stellata magnolia 15 feet apart in the yard. For years, the magnolia–an understory tree (more of a shrub)–grew taller than the beech. Beeches are slow growers in their early years, but it caught up. Now the magnolia flourishes happily under the spreading beech, and in the space between them there’s a mossy, shady refuge where I sometimes sit to escape the heat or the stress and worry of life. I’m not the only one who seeks the protective room beneath the spreading trees, as that’s where the snapping turtle buried her eggs, and there’s a sandy spot in the mosses where another creature has made a place to lie.


I sought the place last evening after watering the garden. Wandered there over the brittle grass and spent clover blossoms of our meadowy yard. Felt the things of the earth beneath my feet. Still a barefoot girl. Still in need, now and then, of refuge.


~


Oh yes–my book of poems, Barefoot Girls, is still available. It is a limited run, though. $8.95 from Prolific Press. Reading poetry: another type of refuge.


 


 

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
Uncertainties


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
Best Beloveds are again in difficulties. Difficulties abound, it seems.


As do beans. It is that season–the beans have come on mighty sudden. Bounty presents its own challenges, but there’s joy riding along like a kite above it. And when I meditate on things, I realize that all times are “uncertain times,” a phrase bandied about so often these days as to render it a meaningless cliché.IMG_1547


~


Herewith, a very early draft of a new poem, one on which I will need to work (revising…) for some time to come. But it’s a start.


~


Hypothesis


Garden teaches a comfort with uncertainty,

knowing that I cannot know, each plan a guess.

From a clear day, hail spewing.

Tree fall on a windless afternoon.

Influx of virus or insects, invasion

of the burrowing vole. I’m never sure

what to believe, or whom–

each seed, each season a test of my hypothesis,

the hypothesis of the garden,

on which nothing at present depends.

We won’t starve. I can purchase food, certainly,

although the garden demonstrates

how rapidly such certainties may change.

Maybe tomorrow, no oranges, no flour,

no disinfectant soap. We live without guarantees

despite the product labels’ promises.

This year the pear tree bears no fruit:

few bees? late frost? Does it want a reason?

Yet I quiver with my need to know.

Knowing, old as I am, uncertainty means change.

Comfort? That requires a trust not at odds

with what’s ambiguous. I weave for myself

a hammock of my unanswered questions,

settle into it, become seed pod, chrysalis, womb.

I place my trust in change.


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Top ten, discourse, power


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
Last week’s New York Times Book Review listed, as always, the ten best-selling books. It’s rather heartening to note that this past week, in the non-fiction category, nine of the ten top selling books deal with systemic racism, historic racism, personal experiences as a person of color, and anti-racism in the United States. Granted, the NYT Bestsellers list projects the interests of only a small percentage of citizens and reflects the interests of a well-educated readership. These readers, however, tend to be people who have money and influence, who make hiring decisions and corporate policy protocols, and who are responsible for educating Americans. They may not think of themselves as people with power, for many of the Times readers are under 40 and middle-class.* But they seem to be showing an interest in learning more about privilege, power, and racism.


I have never considered myself a person who had any power; and yet I now recognize that just as I have privilege I never earned, I have power I never earned–and that I have indeed been using that power (as I have unwittingly benefited from privilege) and can do more with it. For educators possess power.


So do poets.


The past three months, as spring has bloomed into summer, poems of protest and poems that inform society have likewise bloomed. Poets of color, marginalized poets, poets who are disabled or queer or immigrant or for other reasons yearning to be heard are all over social media–which is not unusual in itself (the voices, the poems, have been online for decades)–but the difference lately comes through retweets and viral videos and shared posts at a higher rate than previously. These poems, and the prose and interviews that often accompany them, create discourse. Badly needed discussions. Confrontations that cannot be shoved away as easily as they were. I’ve been reading and observing, hoping a change is gonna come.


True, maybe change will not come. At any rate, it’s unlikely to come readily or rapidly; we have been at this pass many times before in the USA. One person at a time may make incremental changes, though, as my father did in the 1960s: a tiny addition to the marches, one person speaking to a small and largely indifferent congregation. One person at a time can be me, as I instruct my students in how to discuss and how to write about controversial subjects using genuine evidence while being respectful of other perspectives. Demonstrate to them how to notice that there are other perspectives. Teach them that they can read and listen in order to teach themselves.


That is power, and it is power to change. Incrementally, a drop in the ocean, a butterfly effect…why not? We have a dream.


monarch.ann e michael


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* I’ve gleaned demographic information from NYT’s published statistics and those from several media-advertisement websites.