Tag Archives: Poetry

Year-end with raven

Last day of the year. Though when the year ends or begins is an arbitrary thing, calendars being a human invention so far as we know, this is my culture’s end date for the approximately 365-day cycle Earth makes around the sun–so I may as well stick with it. Here’s what the close of the year has brought me so far:

A sunny and mild morning post-frost, not uncommon at this time of year.

A Cooper’s hawk calling, hassling the songbirds, as they do. This one’s been hanging about our yard for a week now, sometimes perching right next to the leafless shrubs–it is amazing to watch how they can maneuver through the branches to grab at a finch or sparrow. A lithe and handsome raptor.

A solo Northern mockingbird, boldly eying me as I stood watching it (six feet away) while it gobbled up oriental bittersweet berries.

This surprised-looking tree, framed by horizontal branches–

Mutual disturbance among me and the mourning doves huddled on the ground amid the hedgerow’s vines and leaf-rot. Their sudden flurry startled me as much as I startled them.

Walking along with my Merlin Bird App turned to “sound identification,” I expected to hear the usual characters this time of year: finches, song sparrow, field sparrow, mourning doves, bluejays, crows, starlings, nuthatches, chickadees. Then I heard what sounded like…a raven? Indeed! The app noted “Common Raven,” with the little icon that indicates the bird is a vagrant or may be misidentified. I watched it fly north, over the house. Solo, (whereas early in my walk there was an entire “murder” of crows and they tend to hang about in groups this time of year). This bird was also very large, but too far off to see its beak or the color of its eyes. However, it sounded exactly like the third call recording here. I’m gonna call it a raven.

I found some collages the environment made on its own, much more lively and well-composed than any collage I might try to make.

~

The inner environment today has been focused on yet more revision. I much prefer it to sending poems to journals. It’s playful and creative, if occasionally irritating when a poem refuses my attempted improvements. At present I’m wrestling with a sonnet. Not a bad way to end the year, I reckon.

Post-exertion malaise

This year, my holiday plans are less busy than usual. I don’t have to cook a large meal, wrap a lot of gifts, travel much (or far), or attend a bunch of parties or festivities. There is a quiet joy in this low-key schedule, though it means the season possesses a slightly different character. I thought that the lack of holiday stress would mean I had more time to write, revise, maybe even to submit work to literary journals. The rain and chilly humidity have enervated me more than I expected, though, and some days even an hour of serious concentration seems to wipe me out.

I believe this weird exhaustion for no apparent reason is a kind of post-exertion malaise.

Post-exertion malaise (PEM) is not uncommon among people with chronic conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome, Epstein-Barr, long covid, fibromyalgia and the like. Its key features are that the fatigue seems far out of proportion to the exercise or other exertion that preceded it, and that it is delayed–the exhaustion may set in two hours or even two days after the experience. I have had PEM, for example, after spending a lovely and high-energy day of hiking or wandering for hours around a city or museum and suddenly, without warning, “crashing” into bone weariness two hours later, or a day later (I have fibromyalgia). I’ve learned to manage the physical aspects of PEM, however. It does not happen all the time, and often I can plan for it.

Post-exertion malaise: it sounds like the title of a contemporary novel.

I’ve read studies that speculate PEM results from a sort of communications snafu among the many complex body systems: nerves, synapses, gut microbes, spine, brain, and probably processes science has yet to discover. What I wasn’t aware of until recently is that PEM can appear after mental or social “exertions” as well. Mental exertion such as submitting to journals; social exertion such as attending poetry readings, parties, family gatherings. It explains why I had to lie down for a nap at 5 pm every day the last few years I was working full-time, even though my job was a desk job. And why shopping has become such a tiring task for me.

Shopping, when you think about it, involves: 1) being in a public or social space; 2) attention to details; 3) frequent decision-making; 4) stress about finances, parking, and whether said decisions were the right ones; 5) unexpected stuff like long lines, a credit card that refuses to work, bad weather, and not finding what you were shopping for. Even if you shop online, some of these processes are involved. Yes, our brains are bombarded; and our brains are designed to filter and make efficient work of the bombarding, but perhaps that’s part of what goes awry with long covid and chronic fatigue. The filter may clog, so to speak. Brain fog and fatigue.

Similar micro-decisions go on when I send out poems to journals. Should this poem be sent to that publication? Do I like the other poems in this magazine, the editorial bent? Is this poem finished, and is it any good? Do they require a fee? Do I want to pay the fee? Are they okay with simultaneous submissions? Do they use Submittable, email, or some other method? Such analysis goes on constantly, as well as lots of even smaller decisions. I have to read the submissions guidelines carefully and, sometimes, re-format my work to suit. And then there’s the cover letter if required, and the bio–though I have a “boilerplate bio,” often it seems wrong for the journal; if they’ve asked for a personal touch or want me to stress place or background, I have to tweak the bio…and on and on. The task was never my favorite, but it didn’t exhaust me.

Because my PEM is intermittent, often I can send out a good deal of work in one sitting with no fallout, just as sometimes I can hike or walk for hours without pain or fatigue. I had almost no trouble when I was in Spain earlier this year. But this week in drizzly-snowy eastern Pennsylvania, I’m having to take too many rests after doing what seems like almost no real work. Frankly, it’s disheartening. So I’ve decided not to expect to get much done during the next two weeks and to appreciate the time I can spend reading a novel, decorating the tree, sitting by the fire, talking to loved ones by phone. No need to be disheartened.

Whatever works

My last post (here) generated some intriguing feedback and was cause for further reflection about revisions, at least on my part. Because I was writing a poem for a specific person–my son–I got useful information from his response, as well as responses from other readers; so I had the chance to hear back from my audience, however small, and to compare reactions. My son, the “you” in the poem, told me he liked the descriptions and that the piece did a good job evoking the atmosphere of the experience he’d had. He liked the closing lines, too. However, he said that while he had some moments of anxiety during his stint on the military ship, his overwhelming feelings cantered more toward frustration and an almost-constant irritation. He thought I had focused over-much on the anxiety aspect. “Though a person certainly could be feeling exactly that way in those conditions,” he added.

And that’s fascinating, because in earlier drafts I did not work toward evoking anxiety; I was trying to get the details right and to create a sense of annoyance, even anger, at the situation. (Apparently, that is closer to how he responded.) Here’s the “BUT”–but those revisions weren’t making the poem work any better. This is a challenge for many of us writers: when the impetus for writing the poem, and the initial intentions of the writer, don’t resolve into a good poem…and then some alterations–some “fictionalization”–make a better poem, but maybe not the poem the poet set out to write. Do we stay with our initial idea and keep whaling away to make it work as we initially imagined, or do we let the poem move into new territory somewhat removed from initial inspiration if the resultant revisions are more powerful, more believable?

I’m inclined to go with whatever works to make a stronger poem, most of the time. There are other options, though. Sometimes I end up with two or more poems stemming from the same initial idea. A bonus! One prompt I have occasionally used for myself is to re-write an earlier, less-satisfactory poem from a different viewpoint or to focus on a different aspect of the experience. This practice has been awfully helpful, and it keeps me from getting over-invested in the more obscure, personal components of a writing piece.

Photo by Leon Ardho on Pexels.com

Strengthening one’s work takes practice, and possibly a kind of discipline–not to suggest that I am a very disciplined poet, although I wish I were. I do take my practice seriously, though, and revision is a major aspect of my practice, always has been, even when I was a “baby poet” starting out. I never could quite agree with Ginsberg’s famous “first thought best thought,” since my first thoughts are seldom deep, reflective, or in any way excellent; and my first words set on paper are generally equally weak. For me, writing is thinking, in the way of E. M. Forster’s famous quote “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” Thinking is often flawed, so analysis and critique and revision? They’re required.

Finally, whatever makes the poem better as a poem is worth doing. That’s my opinion: whatever works.

Chastened & learning

The temperature got wintry this past week, and now I feel inclined to make chili or giambatta, or savory stews with ingredients such as butternut squash, potatoes, beets, eggplant, cannellini beans. Or polenta, maybe–anything that takes awhile to cook, sending up steam and warming the kitchen so it feels toasty when I come in from a walk. I admit to being a wimp about walking in cold weather. I do it; I know walking in any weather is good for me and I bundle up, but my walks are decidedly shorter. Even on sunny days.

Today was not a sunny day.

And to my dismay, the downy woodpeckers are back again, hammering at the wood on our house. The one on the left banged into a window, but generally they cling to the boards. I wish they would drill at the many dead trees along our property line; they’d have more luck, too, if they’re seeking food. By the way, this photo is 10 years old. Now I would know not to handle a wild bird with bare hands because the oils on human skin are not good for feathers. (Three decades of educating myself about my own environment have chastened me–there’s so much I don’t know.)

I also don’t know which of my own poems are any good, or which ones to send to which journals, or whether I should care. It’s oddly heartening–and honestly, NOT schadenfreude! (because I get no pleasure from it, merely a sense of community)–to read in my colleagues’ social media posts that “rejection season” is here. I am not the only one whose poems have returned lately. Lesley Wheeler writes: “Magazine rejections have been trickling in, too, although mostly the please-try-us-again kind, and I know enough about editing now to really appreciate those.” I have had a number of those, too. And I’ve been an editor, so I get it, and I am appreciative. But I am mystified nonetheless–after 40 years, why am I so clueless at this sort of critical analysis? When I sit myself down to submit poems, I tend to find all my work lousy or, looking at the poems I think may be good, realize I lack any idea of where to send them–even though I am a frequent and avid reader of online and print literary journals. You’d think I’d have gleaned something about poetry the way I have learned about my geological region, its seasons, critters, viruses, predators, bloom times, pruning times, sowing/planting times and such.

Equally chastened by poetry’s landscape, I guess!

Drying up

….and the drought continues into mid-November. This is a very long stretch of dry weather, and the rivers I’ve crossed recently–the Delaware, the Schuylkill, the Lehigh, the Susquehanna–are looking mighty low. Little islands are showing up in the center of the riverbeds. Tree roots visible along the banks. I found this government website that filled me in concerning the current situation. Looking at the charts, wow.

My low mood continues, for a number of reasons: the recent political news, the continuing wars, my mother’s consistent decline, the drought, my physical distance from my grown children on the other side of the continent, a friend’s death, a bunch of recent poetry rejections, the fact that I can’t go into a store without hearing Christmas music…granted, some of these reasons are not earth-shattering but the effect is, well, cumulative. Han VanderHart’s recent blog post speaks to the rejection, reminding me of things I know and should keep in mind. The challenge is just getting through and occasionally finding delights at which to marvel, for the delights surely endure. Ross Gay’s Book of Delights is my book group’s next selection, a book I’ve read before but which–at this particular moment–will probably benefit me when I re-read it.

I also feel creatively dried-up, and that’s dismaying. Reading novels (see my last post) offers peasant distraction but seldom gets me writing my own work. I’ll never be a novelist. I’ve been reading poetry, online and in books, as I always do; yet right now, the poems I have been reading, no matter how wonderful, have not inspired me to work on my own.

I’m not even revising! This is not my usual self, not my poetry “norm,” not a space in which I feel happy or well-regulated or at least inspired. Perhaps I have encountered the dreaded writer’s block. Or rather, a drought of some kind, an inner sluggishness of the imaginative flow. Despite the glorious stretch of sunny days and moonlit nights, the incessant blue sky reminiscent of those high-altitude desert environments I seem to love, despite these delights, I’m discontented.

How very human of me.

Listen, there’s a trio of redtail hawks along the woodlot. Their nasal “screeee” and their graceful swoops between the bare branches catch my attention. Sunlight on the field tells me, “You could at least get outside and take a walk.” Okay. Can do.

Recuperating

Last week took a lot out of me, many reasons for that, mostly keeping those reasons to myself. I needed some rest from exertion and from social media, so I’m re-reading Les Misérables. In which Hugo seems to be trying hard to convince readers that compassion and goodness can be awakened in the hardest of hearts through the process of gentle persistence and genuine decency. Radical decency, as a friend of mine put it. Well.

I won’t write that off as an impossibility, since lord knows many things that seem impossible are not. But yes, Hugo was writing fiction, and one turns to fiction for escapism but also for reference, and for understanding human actions and feelings, and for perspective, and for information. I just completed Richard Powers’ Overstory, which offers a vast range of perspectives on the above-mentioned and adds ecology and forest infrastructure and the psychology of groups into the mix. Novel-reading has been giving me a sense of overarching historical range that lifts me a bit from my too-close focus on my own small life and my ability to sustain hope and make art. That acts as a form of recuperation, if you’re me.

This week, though, happens to be full of poetry. Tomorrow, I’m attending a reading at a nearby public library, where I’ll see many poetry colleagues, the sorts of folks who create a community of local writers. Friday, I’ll be reading with Montgomery County’s Poet Laureate, my friend Lisa DeVuono, at the retirement community where my mother resides. Saturday, I’m heading down to Philadelphia to read with another long-time poetry community in celebration of Philadelphia Poets, a long-running zine established decades ago by the late Rosemary Cappello.

It is good I have had some reading-novels time, and it is good I’ll be having some reading-with-poets time ahead. Both are nourishing to my soul. I haven’t been writing much lately, but I will be eventually. Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for the drought to break…we got a fraction of an inch of rain a couple days ago, and I really hope there is more ahead.

Whatever you happen to need to nourish your own soul, make time for it.

Two falls

I have experienced two autumns this October: one in New Mexico, one in Pennsylvania. In the American Southwest, high up in the world, the cottonwood trees that hug every available water source were going a brilliant gold while I was there. Any view above a creek or river revealed a winding path of yellow–along the Chama, along the Rio Grande. The tiny-leaved oaks were turning brown-leaved and dropping scads of acorns along the paths. The oranges and reds are mostly there year-round, on the mesas and in the canyons.

https://mjskitchen.com/2018/11/chama-river-valley-new-mexico/

It was wonderful to experience a poetry workshop with Anita Skeen and Cindy Hunter Morgan and to learn how books are made by hand, wonderful to draft some poems using color imagery and ekphrasis, wonderful to meet some fascinating people with whom I enjoyed pushing past my/our comfort zones and into art forms we may have been a bit less comfortable with. These are reasons to attend an instructor-led workshop, seminar, or residency. I spent part of last September in New Mexico, but it wasn’t the most spectacular time for autumn coloration–whereas October certainly gleams in northern NM!

When I returned home, I had missed “peak season” for color in Pennsylvania; my husband said that came a bit early this year because of drought. But it’s still very bright here. The maple leaves haven’t all fallen, most of the tulip trees are still yellow, the hickories haven’t reached peak gold yet, and many of the sassafras are that warm coral color I love so well. The burning bushes? Ours hasn’t dropped its bright fuchsia-maroon leaves. It’s a vivid presence at the corner of the house.

~

Therefore, I have two autumns this year, one sea-level Mid-Altlantic East, and one high-altitude Southwest.

Which strikes me as an abundance of beauty and color. So I am continuing the theme of last week’s workshop. Here’s a new draft of a new poem just for the joy of it. [This fall, those of us in the USA could use a bit of joy.]


I don’t have a title for it yet. Maybe you can help me think of one.

~


The difference between orange leaf color
and orange rock color.
Between the greens of grass and juniper,
the pale dun of meadow’s die-back
and beige sand stretching westward
to the mountains.
Even the clear sky’s blueness
on fair, mild mornings
differs by an almost measurable degree.
Something to do with altitude
and aridity, the science of which
I don’t really understand.
Life’s variations and hues—
striated like cliffs, buttes, mesas,
like hills of maple and hickory in fall—
beautiful and strange.
Even when I close my eyes, color-
memories, all those shades
I can’t define, sift through my skin.
Into blood. Into bone.

With color

I’m taking a break from the garden and from the news cycle and indulging in a different form of work: “Making Poems, Making Books,” a 4-day workshop with poets Anita Skeen and Cindy Hunter Morgan at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, NM. Yes, I’ll be making my own book–a small accordion book. There are about a dozen of us in the workshop, which is centered around the idea of color. Autumn in northern New Mexico offers a range of hues somewhat different from the post-equinox colors of eastern Pennsylvania. Perhaps that will inspire me. The last time I took a workshop here was in 1993, and I learned how to draw/paint in chalk pastels. A long time ago–and yet, walking around the dusty alfalfa field in the center of the Ranch’s office and dorm buildings, I felt completely at home. As if I’d been here just last year.

This week differs from the artist residency I attended at Joya-AiR in May because I’m part of a class getting instruction in how to make a hand-made book and also participating in feedback on our writing. Nonetheless, every afternoon there’s a nice stretch of time to work on solo projects, hike, drive to some nearby sites of interest, or nap. I will admit I have been doing more napping than I had hoped. The high altitude, dry air, walking more than usual (on rocky trails) and the emotional energy it takes to learn a new skill and meet new people have conspired to creep up on me some afternoons.

That’s fine with me, though, because I’m banking many images, quotes, anecdotes, ideas, prompts–all the things memory can do.

And I am drafting some new work, so there’s that as well.

~

Enjoying the session and the people, third best thing about this trip. Being back at Ghost Ranch, second best thing, though it is perfectly wonderful. Best thing? Getting some time in the Albuquerque area to visit with my daughter and her partner. And their dog. And their cat, guinea pigs, and beehives. According to her, bees kept in hives (apiculture) are considered considered agricultural animals.

Who knew?

It’s time for my nap, I think. But I have wanted to post about this workshop/retreat before I get home again, just to remind myself of how grateful I am to be here, to be writing, to be seeing my child, to be–yes–escaping from the media frenzy as the presidential election looms. If that seems like something you need, as well, all I can do is send a few cheerful photos I took at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta.

~

August

August is the month of the Sealey Challenge, which basically urges those who like/love poetry to read a book of poetry each day of the month. I haven’t given myself the challenge this year, but I am posting individual poetry books on my Instagram account daily–books from my personal library, mostly–and that means that I read a few of the poems, too. Sometimes I get carried away and re-read the entire book. [@aemichaelpoet]

This is not a bad thing.

Meanwhile, August this year behaves as it usually does, weather-wise: blisteringly hot and wiltingly humid. That would be okay except that June was so hot and dry and now an early hurricane has begun its climb up the coast; for now, we are stalled in a heat dome, and by Friday we may be inundated with rain. All of this means that my tomatoes are likely to split just as they all get plump and ripe. It also means that our annual folk life festival (Goschenhoppen) is likely to be a muddy, damp affair with fewer attendees than usual. These things happen, and they happen more frequently when the planet undergoes climate change.

~

August, as most of us learned back in grade school, is named after the emperor Augustus, whose name means “venerable, noble, majestic.” [Source: my favorite, Etymology Online]. The online source notes that “In England, the name replaced native Weodmonað ‘weed month’.” Weed month is a perfect name for August, and I think I will adopt it from now on. It certainly fits the current state of my vegetable patch as the dog days keep the outdoors too miserable for heavy labor in the dirt.

At least for me, however, the laboring can be optional as long as I don’t object too strenuously to a haggard-looking garden. The people who are truly hard workers this time of year are construction and road crews, landscaping crews, farm workers, roofers, line workers, and others who have to brave the heat and humidity to make a living. Also the janitorial staff crews at schools and dorms and other older buildings that don’t have reliable–or any–air conditioning. When we are outdoors working at the festival in August, we get a taste of how challenging it is to do physical work in the heat. This is actually an educational aspect of the festival for those who participate, especially for younger people who are new to the festival. We remind them that people worked like this all the time, in summer and during snowy winters and in the rain and without electricity…with no escaping it, since they needed to work hard just to stay alive.

Perhaps unfortunately, our forebears’ grinding efforts may have led to the idea that only hard work will save us and make us morally upright human beings. Few of the early Germanic settlers here had much time to read or compose poetry, to savor novels, to learn to play an instrument. Art was acceptable to a degree, so long as it decorated otherwise-useful objects. The poetry of the Bible was acceptable, but it wasn’t studied for its beauty. A person with my sensibilities and temperament would probably have been an outlier in Goschenhoppen’s historic community. If I’d lived to be 66 in the early 1800s, I’d be considered “an old cripple,” mostly blind and bent over with arthritis and stenosis. But maybe I’d be the kind of old woman who tells stories.

On the other hand, maybe I’d be considered a witch! I guess it depends on what sort of stories one decides to tell.

At a previous year’s festival, with my daughter. Bewitching the local kids with potato candy!

Useful avoidance

Trapped inside with the air conditioner on for over a week, I sat by my bookshelves going through the poetry books in my library. I’m re-reading, assessing which books I truly want to keep because I turn to them often or learn something each time I read them, which books I keep for sentimental reasons (maybe I know the author personally), which ones to keep because they are signed copies, which ones are long out of print and I would never be able to replace them. Some of them remind me strongly of places or eras in my life: I bought this one in a small bookshop in Grand Rapids MI, or this one at Barnes & Noble when it was just one store on a NYC street corner, or these at the storied and much-mourned Gotham Book Mart or St. Mark’s Bookshop. What are good reasons to keep books when I really have to downsize? It’s not an easy task, and the first of many in the process of getting rid of stuff so my kids won’t be stuck doing it. Besides, I enjoy re-reading these books. My children are not as enthusiastic about poetry as I am, so it makes sense that someone who loves the works on the shelves be the one who makes such decisions. It feels good to be surrounded by the words of wonderful writers when the outdoors is brutally hot and humid, and every joint in my body aches.

Surrounding myself with other people’s books also acted as one more way of avoiding my own creative work. Sometimes, though, waiting around and doing nothing on a project ends up bringing clarification or new ideas. It can prove useful. I have been stalled on my in-progress manuscript, so a month or so back I asked someone to take a look at it–and then I got caught up in doing other things. Like getting cataract surgery and having covid, and then it was gardening in full swing under sweltering weather, and then the bookshelves… I wasn’t exactly procrastinating, but neither was I actively working on, or even thinking about, the collection.

Acquired when I was much younger, and cool bookshops abounded.

And one night recently–during a much-needed rainstorm–I got a brainstorm! I realized I was trying to pack too many topics into what really should be a manuscript more closely focused on how people who love one another vary in their relationships to old age and death, and on how the contemporary social and medical aspects of the aging process pull us in uncomfortable directions, often distancing us from those relationships. So yes, there should be family poems, hospice poems, biblically-influenced poems, and dealing-with-everyday observation poems. Also some poems of hope and love, poems reminding me (and readers) of the need for compassion in all dealings. But the draft had 92 poems in it, far too many; and some were there just because I like them or they’d been published in a good journal. Which are actually not good enough reasons to include a poem in a collection, according to most of the editors I know.

I am back to thinking about the manuscript and digging up potatoes–a nice crop this year–instead of culling the poetry books because, thank goodness, the heat wave’s subsided a bit. But in the process of this non-routine summer I have allowed numerous weeds to flourish and set seed; all the more work for NEXT year’s gardening, but it’s been too hot to deal with said interlopers. I like to believe the weeds and I are reaching a sort of understanding, but it is not really a compromise. All the concessions have been on my part. [Note: weeding a personal library is less physically taxing but not really any easier.]