Hominid animals

Reading Frans de Waal’s books always gets me thinking about the use of anthropomorphism/personification in poems. When I was studying and first learning about poems, the general thinking from critics seemed to be to treat anthropomorphism, and even personification, as a “no-no” in contemporary poetry. We were not to make trees or grasses or wolves “humanized”–which does make a kind of sense; instead, we were told to observe and describe what we saw with less of a reflection on whether the non-human thing bore resemblance to human things.

For example, the bee was not to love the flower or the hive, nor the ostrich to love a fellow ostrich. A willow shouldn’t sway like a dancer. It should sway like a willow in the wind. There was science behind all this, maybe Skinner’s science but still; and there is Nagel’s bat: how can a person imagine being a bat the way a bat experiences being a bat? I’m not going into reductive materialism here, don’t worry. Just trying to provide some context outside of poetry to suggest there may be forces behind the trend away from anthropomorphism, some of which are valid.

I have always been tempted to title a book The Personification of Everything.

Now science is fairly certain that emotions preceded “rational intelligence” as life evolved and that animals possess traits and behaviors that aren’t so fundamentally different from ours; we are hominid animals. I would add that, as reflective hominids who employ language for reasons beyond basic information, human beings make connections (metaphor, simile, parallelism…) and can observe the “others” in our environs as not always so unlike ourselves. Or dream of inhabiting the lives of those others, or imagine telling stories from those vastly strange (to us) points of view.

So I’m coming around to appreciating anthropomorphism and personification as dwelling in the realm of the imagination that is not the domain of philosopher or scientist. After all, writers have been taking other perspectives on stories for quite some time, especially during the past century. Ophelia’s perspective (Hamlet), Persephone’s (The Odyssey)…Kazim Ali re-writing Icarus’ story (Sky Ward, 2013). Why not, then, write poems using the perspective of the spotted lanternfly, as Robin Gow has done?

One of my favorite short stories by Ursula Le Guin, “Direction of the Road,” takes the perspective of an oak tree. It is about the relativity of time and motion, but one thing the piece brings home–without any preaching–is that human lives are comparatively brief and, dare I add, not as important in the scheme of things as we may believe. Once we can accept that possibility, maybe we can more gently embrace the world and the things of the world.

Vacuum of meaning

Seven months ago, my mother’s handwriting was decipherable–to a degree:

Her script now resembles nothing so much as asemic “cursive”:

Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing. The word asemic means “having no specific semantic content”, or “without the smallest unit of meaning”. With the non-specificity of asemic writing there comes a vacuum of meaning, which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret. Wikipedia

Her words likewise sound as though they possess no semantic content, but her body language, facial expression, and intonation when she speaks make it clear that there is a unit of meaning in whatever she tries to convey verbally. It amazes me that she doesn’t seem particularly frustrated by her aphasia. Although I can’t know what my response to aphasia would be, I doubt I would be as accepting and unflustered as my mother is.

I think of how Eloise Klein Healey wrote her book of poems Another Phase while experiencing Wernicke’s aphasia after a bout of meningitis. I gave my mom this collection a few years back; she marveled at these short poems, when she was still able to read, deeply impressed that Klein Healey persisted in using words–creating poetry, no less–despite aphasia. Eloise has regained some of her fluency, while my mother can only get worse (her aphasia is due to vascular dementia, from which there is no possible return).

Yet my mother continues to write–to take notes? jot down ideas?–it’s not possible to know, but I find her cribbed, indecipherable cursive here and there on pieces of paper on her desk, and in a notebook in her dresser drawer. It resembles asemic writing now. That habit of recording some aspect of one’s life, or of making lists…it appears that muscle memory can include the small-motor habit of handwriting. I wonder if she is making meaning in some way that I cannot possibly discern, something interior but necessary to her. As a writer, the idea appeals to me. But I also wonder what the point of writing is when there is no audience, so that the act is no longer an act of communication. Does it then become a “vacuum of meaning”?

~

In happier (meaningful?) news, January’s surprisingly full of poetry this year, and I have had time to attend, participate, listen in. Plus it finally feels wintry here. Snow’s coming down, herbal tea warms me in the afternoon, and we’ve lit the fire in our fireplace more than a few times, burning up the dead-fall ash trees that have been coming down around the property the past three or four years. I’m staying inside more than usual, “yin energy” restfulness. And withholding some lovely news for now, awaiting confirmation, enjoying the possibilities ahead.

Vision/revision

Although the word “vision” derives from the Latin visionem, it first appeared in English with the definition of things seen in the mind or via the supernatural. Vision as simply the sense of sight is a later meaning (late 15th c.), and vision referring to foresight dates only to 100 years ago [see https://www.etymonline.com/word/vision#etymonline_v_7835]. The cliché “a vision of loveliness” provides an example of the early, 13th century meaning, as does the phrase “visions of sugarplums.” Poets have long been known for writing about, or being under the influence of, such vision.

When the first flush of poetic vision inspires work that later needs some adjustment, writers turn to revision. According to Etymology Online, revision’s history in English first showed up as a noun in the 1610s: “act of looking over again, re-examination and correction,” from French révision, from Late Latin revisionem (nominative revisio) “a seeing again” … the meaning “that which is revised, a product of revision” is from 1845.” This noun, and its verb form (the act/work/verb-sense of revising), keep me occupied a good bit of the time, especially lately while I’m trying to catch up with a large backlog–20 years of poetry drafts.

And then there’s this: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/cataracts#vm_A_20f6f6e1… blurred vision, leading to eye strain, drier eyes, halos around lights at night, trouble reading street signs. Yes, time to get a cataract evaluation, suggests my optometrist. “It’s our legacy,” my brother says, because our dad and most of his siblings got cataracts before age 70; Dad was only 48.

Efforts to correct cataracts apparently date as far back as 600 BCE in India, reports the American Academy of Ophthalmology, but the “father of modern cataract extraction surgery” was Jacques Daviel in 1747; since then, the surgery’s come a long way. I’m not worried about having it done and actually rather eager to see better and not need glasses all the time, though it could be over a year before that happens. In the meantime, the symptoms are irritating but not too significant. I can read books (and drafts of poems) just fine. I just might want to avoid driving in the dark, rainy nights of midwinter.

Johns Hopkins Medicine

Anticipating removal of the thickening, cloudy lens that blurs my visual outlook offers a metaphor for the revision process in my writing. Observation, reflection, critical analysis, problem-solving, intervention, re-envisioning, repair. And perhaps: clarity, if I’m lucky.

Life story

My current slow-read is K. Setiya’s book Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way. While there are many aspects of this philosophical book that interest me and pertain to current or recent experiences in my life, something that gained my attention regarding writing is the author’s suggestion that the concept of failure as a loss is bound up with cultural narratives. If we imagine our lives as arcs with the aim of goals, journeys’ ends, attainment of heart’s desires, finding true love, and the like, Setiya argues, it is too easy to feel that we are failures, and to despair or grieve. Maybe we should not be so caught up in narratives, he suggests.

Hmm. As a poet who writes a good deal of what may be termed “lyrical narrative” work and as a human who loves a good story, I’m more drawn to theories of story-as-essential-to-humans; I’m thinking here of Daniel Dennett and Brian Boyd, about whom I’ve blogged in the past (I will place those links at the end of this post). Nonetheless, poetry is often writing about what is NOT a story; some of my favorite poems have no story per se to tell, yet they move me to reflection and/or to emotional resonance. Hence they feel deeply significant.

Photo by Elliot Ogbeiwi on Pexels.com [Despair]

And if you have happened to click on the links to the right of this page that lead to my poetry online, or purchased and read my books (thank you, dear readers!), you are sure to find several pieces that are not even remotely narrative. As someone who has struggled with self esteem and ambition, and often felt myself a failure, Setiya’s philosophical undoing of the concept that a well-lived or meaningful life entails having “successes” comes as a relief. Whether one decides to accept his idea–I guess that’s up to you. It’s a book worth reading given how anxious contemporary American citizens seem to be and how powerless and despairing we often feel.

Colleagues have often asked why I don’t write fiction, and I respond that much as I love stories, I am no good with plots. It occurs to me that I cannot imagine writing a memoir, either. First, my life doesn’t strike me as being all that interesting, and second–I don’t think of my life in plot lines. It has been, instead, a series of experiences that mainly connect because my body and my ego-self are being carried more or less randomly through life on earth while I observe the world and participate in whatever moment I happen to find myself inhabiting. So it seems I need to locate a book Setiya mentions, Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode. Whenever I get around to reading and reflecting on it, I’ll post here.

~

Here are links to posts about art, storytelling, narrative urges, etc.

The narrative vein

~

Art and “human intelligence”

Work

Ending the year reading new-to-me poetry collections was my plan, though of course family life and all that distracted me quite a bit, in a pleasant way. Maybe I will reframe that as starting the new year with poetry collections. Which is to preface the following, an excerpt from “The Work,” a poem that contains a lovely reflection on what it means to leave one’s job and find one’s work–eg, retirement–in David Mason’s latest (2022) collection, Pacific Light:

~

Once, work was the thing one rose to by the clock,
the place one drove to, the faces one met getting coffee.
Now there are stones to be moved, but will they be moved?

...We are doing the work no other demands in the light
we are given, forgetting what day of the week it is,
the work all other work was a way of putting off.

That’s a useful way of thinking about post-job life, the work that everything else was a way to put off. So now we are poets or writers, artists, gardeners, people who spend time fishing, walking in the woods, hanging around in libraries, caring for grandchildren or pets. In his poem “One Day,” Mason writes “I was always too slow/and now my deadline/nobody knows,//not even the moon…” That concept of a deadline, so ubiquitous in all industries (and academia), churns workers into all kinds of stress. Needless to say, the term has a violent origin–“time limit,” 1920, American English newspaper jargon, from dead (adj.) + line (n.). Perhaps influenced by earlier use (1864) to mean the “do-not-cross” line in Civil War prisons.” [Thank you Etymology Online.] I am happy not to have so many deadlines now. Whatever work I do now, moving stones or writing poems, no other person demands it of me or sets the timing. “Not even the moon.”

Or maybe I’m mistaken, just a bit, because: gardening. I do have to follow the environment’s requirements and timing when it comes to that work. Nature can be a demanding “boss,” but the work rewards me. As does the work of reading and writing poetry. Pacific Light, by the way, is one of those rewarding books.

Nourishing

A few decades ago, at a time I knew very few infants, I made the acquaintance of a baby. This person stayed in my life for 20 years or so, but since then we haven’t had much contact–life happens, distances increase, friends of parents…etc. However, during their mid-adolescence they developed quite an interest in poetry, so we spoke a bit about that; I cannot say I was a mentor, but I may have been an inspiration of sorts. I had no doubt of their talent in the writing direction–at 14, they were composing better poems and essays than some adults I knew.

But again: life intervenes. Their life went in other directions than poetry. At least for awhile. Not long ago, though, when I was working with Moonstone Press on my chapbook Strange Ladies, I noticed the name Emma Wynn as author of Help Me to Fall, a recent chapbook from the press. Yes, the same person I knew when she was a child. I ordered the book, of course, and later attended a Zoom event that Moonstone hosted, in which Emma was reading. We said hello across the virtual divide. And now, Wynn has a full-length book out that I’m pleased to say is well worth reading. It is full of little marvels and careful observation, noticing the pain in love as well as the joys. Wynn writes, “Every day I turn over the stone of the world/ready to be surprised,” and I believe it. The section titled “Interlude” takes on such surprises with intimate words from letters written by historically-important people, crafted into poignant epistles of affection and potential regret and bitterness. To recognize that human beings are emotionally complicated seems to be one of Wynn’s impulses as a poet. 

To be emptied is to be full.
To be battered without bitterness
is to bloom spacious
at one's heart
and nourish, unknowing,
the lives of others.
(--from "Kernel")

As it is gift-giving “season,” I remind my readers that books make good, modestly-priced gifts and that purchasing from a business other than Amazon when possible helps out independent small presses and independent booksellers (some small press publishers, however, use Amazon as their selling platform, as do two of my publishers; so does FutureCycle, which published Wynn’s book).

See the links to my books on the “My Books” tab above or the links on the right of this page. Sorry for the self-promotion, and if you aren’t inclined to get my books–buy books by another poet! There are many I’ve mini-reviewed here in past posts. Americans, especially, should spend more time reading poems and less time watching crappy TV shows or obsessing over unreliable news media sites. Of course, this is my personal (read: biased) opinion, but I believe poetry can help people gain a more well-rounded understanding of others and the state of the world. If we were to read and reflect on poems now and then, we would find the process nourishing.

Other forms of gleaning

Of the many tasks that lie before me as I work toward restructuring my routine, the past drafts pile must be the most engaging long-term project. Other kinds of odd jobs can be done in brief segments; it doesn’t take more than half an hour to clean out a drawer or closet, throw laundry in the washing machine, or cut back the ornamental grass for the season. Even a big job, like uncluttering the attic, can be done bit by bit once we get the motivation. Those tasks don’t require much critical thinking, no analysis beyond “Do I need this anymore? Can I get rid of it? Can I consolidate it with other items of its kind? What will take this stain off?”

While I can’t say I love organizing and clearing out stuff, it is not really taxing work. Just tedious.

Sorting through the drafts pile isn’t tedious, but it’s monumental and a bit intimidating. The pile of poems dates back as far as 2001 and is made up of probably two reams of paper. It includes hundreds of fairly terrible poems and, if I am lucky, maybe 80-100 poems that have the potential to be meaningful, beautiful, or at least not embarrassingly bad. This pile’s the result of 20 years of procrastination, lack of time, lack of motivation, and generalized disorganization. I admit it! Now I must roll up the proverbial shirtsleeves and get to work: work which requires analysis, criticism, revision, sorting, culling, and–that precious commodity–time. I find I’m unable to accomplish much if I attempt the work in small bits, (though I do break it up into sections, more or less). If I don’t spend at least two hours at a go, I get distracted and indecisive. I read each draft carefully, several times, to assess.

So we’re looking at weeks and weeks here. Maybe months and months, though I hope not.

The way I choose to understand the process is as a type of gleaning and sifting. I’ve got the harvest in–a big pile of poem drafts, maybe ur-poems, maybe seeds of poems, maybe crap. My efforts help me to decide which ideas are interesting, even if the poems themselves are not pulling the weight of an intriguing possibility; which lines and images are worthwhile, even if they don’t operate too well in their current context; which pieces suffer from thoughtless lineation, weird syntax, clunky form, form that doesn’t suit the content, and the like; which poems are far too wordy or else missing vital words for clarity; and which poems are basically not worth putting any effort into because: Boring! Obscure! Derivative! Sentimental! Awkward! Meh! What was I thinking?!

And then, every once in awhile, I find a poem I like and had forgotten about, one that only needs a bit of appropriate tweaking. Eureka moments while wading through my own creative work.

Yes, I should have been doing this sort of gleaning and sifting all along, the way I did when I was first starting out as a poet, 45 years ago. It probably would have made things easier. I notice myself noticing myself, though…noticing my changes as a writer, my little obsessions and my past enthusiasms glimmering in the work, noticing the different ways I have approached Big Themes and smaller ones. There may be something useful in that offshoot of my major poetry drafts excavation. Who can tell?

~

The Gleaners, Jean-François Millet, 1857; image, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Local libraries

There are two local libraries near my house, and the campus library at the college where I used to work. And yet, until just a couple of months ago, they were rather underutilized by yours truly. I had developed into a bit of a book hoarder. I had enough disposable income to purchase books, and as a writer myself I felt an obligation to buy books–from the authors or their publishers when possible (some books are out of print and then…Amazon or ThriftBooks). Buying books helps to keep authors and publishers afloat. Win-win.

I’m now on a fixed income, however, and also have much more ‘free time’ because I have stopped working 40 hours a week. I can get to the libraries at ten a.m. and browse the stacks and ask for interlibrary loans. The first time I borrowed from the library in town, I received a receipt that said: “You checked out the following items,” followed by the due dates of each item, and then this cheerful little notice: “You saved $65.96 by using your public library!” Look at me, the savvy saver.

Maybe libraries have been doing this for awhile and I never noticed because I haven’t been using them. But I thought it was an amusing reminder. I guess it also serves to let people know they ought to donate money and books since, after all, they are saving so much by opting for the library. And so, while I slowly cull my own shelves for –er– “downsizing” purposes, I’ve been borrowing weekly from my free public libraries, one of so-called civilization’s greatest boons. I am sorry it took me so long to return to the safe and welcoming space of a public library.

ann e michael
The South Whitley Library as it was in 1967, with my grandmother in her Story Lady attire.

~

In most public libraries, the hardest books to locate are small-press poetry titles; but the campus library has a good selection of those and, as a former employee, I can drive over there when searching out poetry collections. This means that I will still purchase the occasional new or hard-to-locate poetry books by writers whose work I feel I simply must possess. It’s a big challenge to get over that hurdle of needing to own books, though. A series of full bookshelves feels somehow comforting to me. I’d much rather divest myself of clothing, shoes, jewelry, electronic devices, furniture, craft supplies, maybe even artwork or gardening tools, than part with my books…especially the poetry collections and the philosophy texts.

I’ll keep those for now. But I will also return this $65.96-worth of books to my local library and borrow another $66-worth of books in their place.

~ And in the happy news department, P.S. see below! The issue should be live soon. Amazingly, this is my third Pushcart nomination this year. The last time I was nominated for this annual prize was 1997. So, kinda gobsmacked…and grateful.

Practice

I have been reading novels, which affects my state of mind, makes me dreamy and distracted, foggy-headed, and full of the conflicts in their plots. Or maybe the weather is what does it–too much lovely late autumn sun and not enough rain, which feels “off” for our region; and once the rain finally arrives, it is a dour and chilly dousing I have to convince myself to feel grateful for. Likely the news cycle has not helped my mood. My nine-year-old self emerges from a distant past, crying, “People are so mean!” My parents can no longer sit down beside me and offer comfort.

Time to switch to the poets. I’m finally getting around to reading Ocean Vuong’s Time Is a Mother, a collection that’s been on my to-read list for far too long. The very first poem, “The Bull,” startled me into reading it twice. “I reached–not the bull–/but the depths. Not an answer but/an entrance the shape of/an animal. Like me.” Enough to jolt me out of my fiction-induced haze, especially on a day like this one when I feel the anxious dreamy child in me more than I wish. The prose poems later in the book intrigue me, as well: a very different prose than is found in most novels.

~

“People are so mean!” –I said that often when I was a child. People were mean to me and mean to each other. The news was full of warfare and protest. Grownups were mean, kids were mean, teachers were mean. I had a few complaints, but I also possessed the clueless narcissism of a child. Needless to say, I was not one of those precocious, old-soul children I sometimes read about in books. My siblings could have pointed out a few examples of my own meanness. And I was too much of a coward to stand up for others who bore even more teasing than I did, or to advocate forcefully to right wrongs. As a result, I always feared that my life has been rife with sins of omission.

I wrote the following poem two years ago. I must have been in a similar frame of mind.

~

In Which I Give Myself a Scolding Concerning Compassion

While pruning the quince with its
	twisted thorny syntax of greenwood
	I reflect on errors, mine,
	in the arena of compassion—
the quality and behavior I value most
	and in which I am deficient.

Empathy I’ve got, but compassion requires
	motivating force toward good
	and needs, in my case, practice.
I haven’t practiced enough. I feel the prick
	of quince or conscience through
	my gloves damp from autumn drizzle, 
disentangle stems’ inventive turns, toss cuttings
	on the ground. I disappoint myself.

Perhaps meditation would avail, yet
	I’m incompetent at meditation
	though my friend in her monastery
	by the frigid bay once told me
everyone is bad at meditation for the first
	ten years or so.

Lopping off twigs and branches I imagine
	her sitting on her cushion while
	icebergs converge in saltwater cove
	a wash of pale gray during the short-day
months while she practices one kind of compassion.

My friend who always stops to help a stranger
	change a tire or rescues a loose dog
	from the side of a highway practices 
another form of compassion.

I lack it—that immediate impulse of outreaching,
	kindness. It strikes me as a flaw, the log
	in my own eye it took me years to see.
	So when the late-season mosquito
lands on my forearm to sup perhaps its last
	nourishment, I refrain from flattening it—

a microscopic act of compassion in a world so needy,
	but perhaps a start.
~

Promotional

I keep forgetting to mention a few nice happenings regarding my recent book, so I may as well stuff them all into one post here in case anyone is interested. Have I mentioned how much I hate doing promotion for my poetry? Why yes, I believe I have. And since these days I feel no career ambitions related to my work anymore, why does it even matter?

I think there is an answer to why it matters. Sort of an answer, anyway–that without some form of prompting to the World at Large, my poems will be reader-less. A sad fate for a poem or book, and a common one. I don’t write just for myself: I keep a journal for that. I write as a form of communication, a way to connect with a reader I may or may not know.

Sometimes no one connects because the poems don’t work for them. Sometimes no one connects because no one knows the poems exist. The first lack is unavoidable–there is no kind of artistic creation that works for everyone. The second lack I cannot do much about, but I can do a little. Hence, this post.

Some months ago, a current student at one of the colleges I attended called to ask a few questions about my new collection. I did not expect it to be more than one of those “here’s-a-thing-an-alumna-did” paragraphs, and no one got back to me to make sure the piece is accurate (and, yes, a fact or two are incorrect and no, I didn’t say I believe “anyone can write poetry because anything can be poetry; people just have to look for it,”); but it’s a nice little promo bit all the same. Link here.

Then, Michael Escoubas of Quill & Parchment reviewed The Red Queen Hypothesis. Somewhat to my surprise (I don’t think of myself as very “edgy”), he writes, “Michael’s latest collection is edgy; chock full of poems that challenge everyday assumptions about life.” He does recognize that often what I try to do in poetry is exactly that: confront assumptions, observe from different angles. Less surprisingly, he adds that my poems are “sensitive to analogies between the natural world and human experience.” Um, that would be me. That review can be found here.

I know that in a previous post I mentioned Lesley Wheeler’s generous mini-review of the book, which can be found here; she’s an especially insightful reader. I’m thrilled that she writes: “Michael’s second full-length collection is meditative, witty, and smart, with a scientific and sometimes philosophical bent. Also like her blog, it’s closely observant of the more-than-human world in flux…The Red Queen Hypothesis suggests the advantage of sexual reproduction, and there are plenty of seductively “soft persuasions” in this collection. Like the “Stew Cook” speaking to her beloved, this is a book to “fill nooks with aromatic hours.” Shout-out to all the tasty slant-rhymes amid a profusion of traditional forms.” Thank you again, Lesley!

Another little thing to celebrate is Highland Park Poetry’s nominating my poem “Game” for a Pushcart Prize. By the way, that poem appears in The Red Queen Hypothesis!

Finally–or maybe, down the road, there’ll be more to add to promotional posts–I have been getting out and around to readings a bit, in person and virtually. The latter is easier, since many readings are in the evening; these days, I am not too terrific most evenings thanks (ha! as if!) to fibromyalgia fatigue and symptoms. But I do enjoy in-person events and have been glad to read at the Easton Book Festival, at Nowhere Coffee in Allentown PA, and at Bethlehem’s Sun Inn, to mention a few. I was featured in a Mad Poets “OK Zoomers” online reading (love the pun) virtually and will be participating in a group launch of Inlandia‘s most recent issue online on November 19th (info below).

That’s about all the energy I can spare right now for self-promotion. And no, I don’t use Instagram or Tik Tok or Substack or YouTube, at least not yet, so this is all I got, folks. Thank you for bearing with me. Less promotion and more poetry and philosophizing and nature/gardening next time.

If you join the Inlandia event–make sure you account for the time zone! That’s 1-3 pm PACIFIC time.