Can poetry teach us how to live? #NPM17

It's a quiet, rainy Sunday afternoon here on April 30, the last day of April and the end, for this year, of National Poetry Month. The time and circumstances are close to ideal for a final celebration of the Month by curling up and taking time to "Read the first chapter of Muriel Rukeyser’s inspiring book The Life of Poetry."

In Minnesota, April is much like I am before I've had my first second cup of coffee: still waking up from a deep slumber, like a bear coming out of hibernation. And, you take your chances if you try to rely on Spring in Minnesota in April, or on what I may say while still drinking my first cup of coffee, because neither of us is really all there yet. Well, April and I may be there physically but we aren't yet coherent. Synapses start really firing in May, when the woods and waters really awaken around here, and with me as I'm finishing my second cup.

SiSi, four years ago

Photo by J. Harrington

As I think about it, the end of April is also when SiSi came to live in her "forever home" four years ago. She was about six months old when she rescued us by adopting our family. Funny, it doesn't seem that long ago. People and puppies become part of our lives, if we're lucky. So can poetry. Poetry is as constant as the seasons, as entertaining as a family pet that sneakily infiltrates our life. Even better, I've never had to clean up after poetry, nor take a poem for a walk, although I have really enjoyed some walks I've shared with other poets, or taken alone, with SiSi, while letting a prospective poem simmer in my subconscious. April, and poetry, are always as full of promise as SiSi is full of hope that something good will happen next. When we're really lucky, poetry sometimes delivers much more than we're expecting. SiSi does that too. Mary Oliver provides an example of what can happen.

“I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life”

by Mary Oliver.

Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.

Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.

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Mom's rhyme, rhythm and reasons #NPM17

There's a strange light in the sky today. I'm not sure what it is. If it were farther away, it might be a star. I'll watch and see if it shows up again. If I figure out what it is, I'll report back. Not having the sky covered over with clouds is kind of freaky as we near the end of April. April showers, May flowers, all that.

two purple finches, one gold finch

Photo by J. Harrington

Next month's May flowers help celebrate Mother's Day two weeks from tomorrow. That should give each of us plenty of time to do personal cards and avoiding the saccharine tone of many commercial cards. Every mother I've ever met has always said she preferred something home-made by her own children's hands so, for National Poetry Month's suggestion 29, on April 29, let's "Get ready for Mother’s Day by making a card featuring a line of poetry."

If you want to be even more original, try using some, most, or all of these words, prompted by visitors to our feeder this morning. This is just an example. Make it easy and use a rhyming dictionary for your own list.

• finch
• cinch
• pinch
• flinch
• clinch
• Grinch
• inch

Put together with a little inspiration, a drawing, and lots of love, you could please your Mom with something like this:

Mom, it's a cinch
That you could pinch
Mr. Grinch
Into a clinch
And make him flinch,
Step back and inch,
And save a house finch.

I hope your day is sunny and warm and full of poetry and Mother love.

Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry

Howard Nemerov, 1920 - 1991

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow 
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

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Like a bird on the water... #NPM17 #phenology

Spring in Minnesota is very much a roller coaster ride until, suddenly, temperatures soar into the nineties and Summer is here. We're still enjoying the ups and downs part. It brings us such miracles as black-capped chickadees that can walk on water as they try to peck through unseasonable ice covering their morning drink of water.

"I know I left some water around here someplace"

Photo by J. Harrington

This Spring has also brought something I've neither seen, nor heard of, in all my years of waterfowling. I've seen ducks and geese and cranes foraging in farm fields. Today is the first time I've seen trumpeter swans foraging in a field of chopped corn. Today's sightings are enjoyable enough, and unusual enough, to almost make the exceptionally cold weather worthwhile. Almost.

Spring: lambs in the meadow, swans in the corn?

Photo by J. Harrington

As National Poetry Month winds down, suggestion 28 of way to celebrate is "Sign up for a poetry class or workshop." Here in Minnesota, one place that offers a number of quality classes and workshops is The Loft Literary Center. [Full disclosure, I've been a member, now supporting member, and it's been awhile since I've take a class there. Time to revisit that.]

Minnesota also has a League of Minnesota Poets. I've not been involved with them, and it's probably past time I rectify that omission. Other Minnesota options for classes or workshops might be found here. None of the classes or workshops I've attended have quite resembled one such as Billy Collins describes.

Workshop

By Billy Collins

I might as well begin by saying how much I like the title.

It gets me right away because I’m in a workshop now

so immediately the poem has my attention,

like the Ancient Mariner grabbing me by the sleeve.

And I like the first couple of stanzas,

the way they establish this mode of self-pointing

that runs through the whole poem

and tells us that words are food thrown down

on the ground for other words to eat.

I can almost taste the tail of the snake

in its own mouth,

if you know what I mean.

But what I’m not sure about is the voice,

which sounds in places very casual, very blue jeans,

but other times seems standoffish,

professorial in the worst sense of the word

like the poem is blowing pipe smoke in my face.

But maybe that’s just what it wants to do.

What I did find engaging were the middle stanzas,

especially the fourth one.

I like the image of clouds flying like lozenges

which gives me a very clear picture.

And I really like how this drawbridge operator

just appears out of the blue

with his feet up on the iron railing

and his fishing pole jigging—I like jigging—

a hook in the slow industrial canal below.

I love slow industrial canal below. All those l’s.

Maybe it’s just me,

but the next stanza is where I start to have a problem.

I mean how can the evening bump into the stars?

And what’s an obbligato of snow?

Also, I roam the decaffeinated streets.

At that point I’m lost. I need help.

The other thing that throws me off,

and maybe this is just me,

is the way the scene keeps shifting around.

First, we’re in this big aerodrome

and the speaker is inspecting a row of dirigibles,

which makes me think this could be a dream.

Then he takes us into his garden,

the part with the dahlias and the coiling hose,

though that’s nice, the coiling hose,

but then I’m not sure where we’re supposed to be.

The rain and the mint green light,

that makes it feel outdoors, but what about this wallpaper?

Or is it a kind of indoor cemetery?

There’s something about death going on here.

In fact, I start to wonder if what we have here

is really two poems, or three, or four,

or possibly none.

But then there’s that last stanza, my favorite.

This is where the poem wins me back,

especially the lines spoken in the voice of the mouse.

I mean we’ve all seen these images in cartoons before,

but I still love the details he uses

when he’s describing where he lives.

The perfect little arch of an entrance in the baseboard,

the bed made out of a curled-back sardine can,

the spool of thread for a table.

I start thinking about how hard the mouse had to work

night after night collecting all these things

while the people in the house were fast asleep,

and that gives me a very strong feeling,

a very powerful sense of something.

But I don’t know if anyone else was feeling that.

Maybe that was just me.

Maybe that’s just the way I read it.

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Remember Poem in your Pocket Day #NPM17 #pocketpoem #phenology

The birdbath is ice-covered again this morning. Reports about Lake Superior mention ten foot waves. Snow showers burst forth around the Twin Cities region. What had been shaping up as a nice transition from Winter to Spring has deteriorated into a volatile battle with ground being won and lost daily. Late April and late March are squabbling over whose turn it is. Meanwhile, the 27th day of National Poetry Month is also Poem in your Pocket Day. The idea is simple. Select a poem, carry it with you, and share it with others throughout the day at schools, bookstores, libraries, parks, and workplaces. There's a guide, if some help would encourage you to play. If not, like Mother Nature, we can try what's worked before and hope for the best. Last year, about this time, the bush pictured below was blooming in the same place it started blooming a couple of days ago.

'tis the season for blooming, and snow showers

Photo by J. Harrington

In terms of something else that has worked before, I'm delighted to see, among the lists of downloadable poems for today's pocket poem, is one of my all time favorites, Remember by Joy Harjo. Over the years, we've featured it four times here at My Minnesota, most recently on April 6. If we hadn't, it would be our pocket poem today. As it stands, we'll choose another, one no on the Academy's list for this year, one that might end up slightly worn or crumpled if we leave it in our pocket too long. Instead, we have to remember to take it out, share it and say

This is a Wonderful Poem

David Wagoner, 1926

Come at it carefully, don’t trust it, that isn’t its right name,
It’s wearing stolen rags, it’s never been washed, its breath
Would look moss-green if it were really breathing,
It won’t get out of the way, it stares at you
Out of eyes burnt gray as the sidewalk,
Its skin is overcast with colorless dirt,
It has no distinguishing marks, no I.D. cards,
It wants something of yours but hasn’t decided
Whether to ask for it or just take it,
There are no policemen, no friendly neighbors,
No peacekeeping busybodies to yell for, only this
Thing standing between you and the place you were headed,
You have about thirty seconds to get past it, around it,
Or simply to back away and try to forget it,
It won’t take no for an answer: try hitting it first
And you’ll learn what’s trembling in its torn pocket.
Now, what do you want to do about it?

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April showers bring "Leaves of Grass" #NPM17

It's cold (35℉), wet, dreary, but the ice storm line is well North of us, thank heavens. The male bluebird I saw this morning was puffed up and looking as disgusted as I feel. On the other hand, we need the rain, leaves are growing and there's basically no temptation to go out and play in this weather, although there's been a frantic level of coming and going at the feeders this morning. Even a warm rain might lure me into a rain jacket, but that seems weeks (months?) away. So, I took advantage of the weather to "Read Allen Ginsberg’s classic essay about Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” That's suggestion 26 of 30 ways to celebrate National Poetry Month.

bluebird of happiness?

Photo by J. Harrington

To be honest, I had come across Ginsberg's essay some time ago and kept meaning - to get around - to reading it. You know what they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions? Well, this morning I repaved that road with action. I've now read the essay in its entirety. Ginsberg includes a number of extended quotations from Whitman's "Leaves." I struggle with what I read as Whitman's ornate style. Ted Kooser, Gary Snyder, Joy Harjo, and Mary Oliver are more to my liking. But, I also feel guilty, because of his stature among American poets, about not having read hardly any of Whitman, other than for school assignments years ago. Last Christmas I was given a copy of Leaves of Grass (The Death-bed Edition). This Summer I intend (there's that word again) to read all 700+ pages, if we get enough warm, dry weather to enable me to sit on the screen porch and enjoy some peace and quiet. Ginsberg's essay helps frame what has seemed a too daunting undertaking into a more coherent read. Seeing more and more similarities between many of the Beat writer's works, especially Ginsberg's Howl and Kerouac's On the Road, and Whitman's style is helping to ease my transition back through time to Whitman's own stream of consciousness.

oak leave clusters with rain

Photo by J. Harrington

I know I'm not the only one troubled by Whitman's style. Several years ago, in a writing class at the Loft Literary Center, a classmate became quite irate during a discussion of Whitman's work, with the phrasing of:

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

My classmate read the "assume" line as being dictatorially offensive, since he believed readers should be entitled each to his or her own assumptions about what a poem means. I may have done Mr. Whitman an equal disservice by equating his elegy for Lincoln, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, especially stanza 6, with Robert Kennedy's funeral train. Much of Whitman's poetry seems to foretell the trials and tribulations democracy continues to face. It also portrays the resilience with which both democracy and life continue. Don't just take my word for it. Go, read Ginsberg's essay. Even better, read Whitman yourself. Maybe we can compare notes after this Summer.

To the Oracle at Delphi

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1919

Great Oracle, why are you staring at me,
do I baffle you, do I make you despair?
I, Americus, the American,
wrought from the dark in my mother long ago,
from the dark of ancient Europa--
Why are you staring at me now
in the dusk of our civilization--
Why are you staring at me
as if I were America itself
the new Empire
vaster than any in ancient days
with its electronic highways
carrying its corporate monoculture
around the world
And English the Latin of our days--

Great Oracle, sleeping through the centuries, 
Awaken now at last
And tell us how to save us from ourselves
and how to survive our own rulers 
who would make a plutocracy of our democracy 
in the Great Divide
between the rich and the poor
in whom Walt Whitman heard America singing

O long-silent Sybil, 
you of the winged dreams, 
Speak out from your temple of light 
as the serious constellations 
with Greek names
still stare down on us 
as a lighthouse moves its megaphone 
over the sea
Speak out and shine upon us 
the sea-light of Greece 
the diamond light of Greece

Far-seeing Sybil, forever hidden, 
Come out of your cave at last 
And speak to us in the poet’s voice 
the voice of the fourth person singular 
the voice of the inscrutable future 
the voice of the people mixed
with a wild soft laughter--
And give us new dreams to dream, 
Give us new myths to live by!

Read at Delphi, Greece, on March 21, 2001 at the UNESCO World Poetry Day

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Whose voice is heard? #NPM17 #phenology

Most of our local oak trees finally have a softened silhouette. Buds have burst and leaves are developing. Winter-bare branches are trying on their Spring outfits. More and more male goldfinches are showing up at the feeders in full, breeding, bright yellow plumage. As I write, the temperature is 65℉. I'm going to pretend that I can't see the snow in the forecast for next Monday. It's Spring. It's April! It's Minnesota, sigh!

goldfinch males coming into season

Photo by J. Harrington

Now, before you follow the link at the end of this paragraph, consider that, as much as Mark Doty's talk contains many truths, it is not the whole truth, according to some of us. Also, when reading through Tide of Voices, I became curious about the omitted poems Doty read, so I've provide links to those poems down below. So, after that, to help celebrate National Poetry Month, on this twenty-fifth day of April, please take some time and follow suggestion number 25 from the Academy of American Poets to: Read or listen to Mark Doty’s talk “Tide of Voices: Why Poetry Matters Now.”

From the title of Doty's talk, one might wonder if there are times when poetry doesn't matter. After posting to this blog daily for almost four and a half years, and including with each post a poem relevant to the daily topic, I hope it's clear that one of us believes that poetry always matters. Some of the comments over those years give me hope that more than one of us finds that poetry matters. Of course, we also realize that all any of us every have is Now, so perhaps I'm splitting hairs as well as infinitives. Anyhow, Doty frames his talk in the context that Poetry’s work is to make people real to us through the agency of the voice. "‘Poetry is the human voice,' I tell them, ‘and we are of interest to one another. Are we not?'"

I respectfully suggest there is much more to poetry and the interests of humans than each other. Have you ever heard the poems whispered by the leaves as they are tickled by a Summer breeze? Is not a Spring morning's bird song a poem of joy to be heard and heeded? When a country brook takes the time to burble to you, does that poem fall on deaf ears? Just as Maslow's hierarchy of needs, to which Doty refers, can applies to humans and the entire earth community (think about Thomas Berry's Pax Gaia and Shakespeare's

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

And yet, given the difficulties Doty notes regarding our listening to other humans, how much more of a challenge it is to listen to the animal people, plant people, the "other" people with whom we share the earth. Poetry helps us not only to find our own voice, but to hear and come to understand the voices of the others.

Now, off the soapbox and here are the promised links to the poems mentioned in Doty's talk:

[Reads “A Brief for the Defense”]
[Reads “Seventh Avenue”]
[Reads “Revenge”]

Finally, as a fascinating coincidence, that, I believe, fits wonderfully with voices and learning to listen, the guardian today has published insightful writing about why we need to listen to individuals and not judge people as categories, try reading There’s no such thing as a blue or red state. Let’s talk about real life instead.

Passers-by

Carl Sandburg, 1878 - 1967

Passers-by,
Out of your many faces
Flash memories to me
Now at the day end
Away from the sidewalks
Where your shoe soles traveled
And your voices rose and blent
To form the city’s afternoon roar
Hindering an old silence.

Passers-by,
I remember lean ones among you,
Throats in the clutch of a hope,
Lips written over with strivings,
Mouths that kiss only for love,
Records of great wishes slept with,
      Held long
And prayed and toiled for:

      Yes,
Written on
Your mouths
And your throats
I read them
When you passed by.

Sing a song of witness #NPM17 #phenology

Yesterday, driving west on Highway 95 from Taylors Falls toward North Branch, we saw a small roadside field of dandelions in bloom. They arrived about the same time last year, end of the third week, beginning of the last week of April. Later in the day, while doing Spring cleaning along our roadside ditches, I noticed two small dandelions bravely bringing bursts of yellow to a countryside turning more shades of pale greens and chartreuse than I can find names for.

witnessing a sign of Spring's rebirth

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning I felt overwhelmed in a very different way as I followed the 24th suggestion on how to celebrated National Poetry Month, to Watch or read Carolyn Forche’s talk “Not Persuasion, But Transport: The Poetry of Witness.” Her mention of at least two songs, Amazing Grace and the Star Spangled Banner, in the context of poetry of witness, made me think of a paragraph I read recently in Gary Snyder's The Real Work: Interviews & Talks, 1964-1979. There he's quoted as saying:

"For a book of formal poetry, Turtle Island sold quite a bit. Actually, Americans love poetry, pay huge sums of money for it, and listen to it constantly. Of course, I'm talking about song, because poetry is really song. Rock 'n' roll, ballad, and all other forms of song are really part of the sphere that, since ancient times, has been what poetry is. If you accept poetry as song, then there are plenty of songs already which are doing most of the work that poetry is supposed to do for people."

That, in turn, reminded me of songs such as Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan's I Pity the Poor Immigrant, and Woody Guthrie's Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (also known as "Deportee"). Poetry, especially poetry of witness, combined with music, can, perhaps, do more to soften a hard, human heart than even kittens or puppies. There is no doubt in my mind that we are living in days when we are in ever-growing need of hearts less hardened by exposure to

The Poem

Daniel Hoffman, 1923 - 2013

Arriving at last

It has stumbled across the harsh
Stones, the black marshes.

True to itself, by what craft
And strength it has, it has come
As a sole survivor returns

From the steep pass.
Carved on memory’s staff
The legend is nearly decipherable.
It has lived up to its vows

If it endures
The journey through the dark places
To bear witness,
Casting its message
In a sort of singing.

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The magic of poetry #NPM17

I hope you had a fantastic Earth Day yesterday. I can't quite decide if today is the beginning of the last week of April or the end of the third week of National Poetry Month. Is Sunday the beginning or your week or its end? Perhaps it's both, just as poetry is both read and heard. I confess that almost all of the poetry I encounter is read, unless I go to a reading or follow the suggestion for day 23 of #NPM17, and "Watch Rachel Eliza Griffiths’s P.O.P (Poets on Poetry) videos."

magical view

I watched a few of those videos this morning and discovered, quite literally, new voices, more correctly voices new to me. By poking around on the Vimeo channel, I also got to hear the voices of some poets whose written work I've long admired. Not all poets, no matter how talented they may be as writers, read well even their own work. I hadn't thought of that before. I had just assumed that any poet would read aloud a poem they had authored, imbuing it not just with authenticity, but with -- what? -- magic?! I suppose that's about as valid a perception as thinking all songwriters are great singers or musicians. It's also part of an education that there's more than one "correct" way to read, internally or aloud, a poem.

When you read, can you hear the voice inside your head? Is it your voice? A different one? Male, female? Old, young? Soft, loud? Watch some of the videos and listen to the poets. See if that awakens or changes the voice you hear internally. Listen to Naomi Shihab Nye's Gate A-4 from last year's "Poets Creating Community." Doesn't that make you think of your grandmother, or your aging mother, and how you would want her treated? And then watch and hear Joy Harjo's magical, mystical, Remember. Both poets and poems are part of poetry's gentle power to teach us about our relationships with each other and our places in the universe, to bring the magic of poetry into our lives.

This Magic Moment

David Kirby

            Poetry does make things happen. A friend says, “I wanted
to let you know that my stepfather is chattering like
            a schoolboy about a poem of yours on my Facebook page.
This may not seem like much to you, but this guy has been
            giving me a hard time since I was two. You built a bridge
between people who never understood each other before.”
            How’d that happen? Magic, that’s how. I know the poem

            she means; it took me years to write it. Songwriter
Doc Pomus was crippled by polio, and he wrote once
            about this dream he had again and again: “I used to believe
in magic and flying and that one morning I would wake up
            and all the bad things were bad dreams. . . . And I would
get out of the wheelchair and walk and not with braces
            and not with crutches,” though when the light came through

            the window in the morning, there he was, encased
in steel and leather from hip to ankle, unable to move.
            Again and again he has the dream, and then one day
he writes “This Magic Moment,” where the guy meets
            the girl, and suddenly he has everything he wants. How?
Magic! Wouldn’t you love to have saved pale Keats
            with his blood-speck’d lips? And Fanny, her skin like cream,

            listening through the wall. He dies with his lungs on fire,
she mourns, marries, gives birth, and, after her husband dies,
            gives Keats’ letters to her children—she had kept them all
that time. We have them, and we have his poems. And his
            tool kit, too: look what he does in the “Ode to a Nightingale.”
Nobody bolts music and lyrics together the way Keats does,
            no one pays more attention to detail. There’s a Jack Gilbert

            poem that begins with a real incident from World War II,
when the Polish cavalry rode out against the Germans
            with their swords glittering, only the Germans had tanks.
But that’s not bravery, says Gilbert. Bravery is doing
            the same thing every day when you don’t want to.
Not the marvelous but the familiar, over and over again.
            Do that, and the magic will come. My dad was frail

            and distracted in his last hours. My mother said he asked,
Do we have enough money? and when she said yes, he said,
            Then let’s just get in the Buick and go. He was looking
at car trips, thirty-cent gas, roadside picnics, these new things
            they called motels. My brother, me, the little house
we lived in, fifty years of marriage, a long and happy life as
            a Chaucer scholar: all that was in the sunny days to come.

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Happy #EarthDay, #RecordStoreDay, #NPM17 #phenology

Today, April 22, 2016 is Earth Day. It's also #RecordStoreDay and the 22nd day of National Poetry Month.

Yesterday, we celebrated the actual arrival of Spring-like weather here in the North Country, we had dinner at the local drive-in. It was a cool evening but nice contrast to a morning which started with a skim of ice coating the now unheated bird bath.

leaf out reflected in bird bath ice

Photo by J. Harrington

The twenty-second suggestion for celebrating National Poetry Month is that we "Subscribe to American Poets magazine or a small press poetry journal." I already subscribe to American Poets, but hadn't yet come across the CLMP Directory of Independent Literary Publishers. Unfortunately, this seems to be my week for finding warts on resources suggested by the American Academy of Poets. One of my main interests is poetry (and literature) of place. I searched on the CLMP site and found listed a journal, Elsewhere. The accompanying link, however, goes to a blog site with a similar name but little, if any, relationship to literature or poetry. (Back in the days when the internet and I were both much younger, I learned to run a "link check" at least once a week.) A little sleuthing on Google revealed the following as the correct linkage for ELSEWHERE, A Journal of Place. I know of other journals of poetry of place [such asWindfall], but they didn't show up in a search of the data base. Searching for journals that focus on prose poetry also yielded nothing. Sigh! It's sort of like needing to know how to spell a word before one can look it up in the dictionary. On the brighter side, poking around on the internet looking for obscure things is sort of like intellectual gunk holing, even if you don't find what you started out looking for, other discoveries often compensate.

Earth Rise: we're all in it together

Earth Day

By Jane Yolen

I am the Earth

And the Earth is me.

Each blade of grass,

Each honey tree,

Each bit of mud,

And stick and stone

Is blood and muscle,

Skin and bone.

And just as I

Need every bit

Of me to make

My body fit,

So Earth needs

Grass and stone and tree

And things that grow here

Naturally.

That’s why we

Celebrate this day.

That’s why across

The world we say:

As long as life,

As dear, as free,

I am the Earth

And the Earth is me. 

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Sins of Omission #NPM17

This morning began peacefully and beautiful, filled with the misty, drifting ground fog that makes everything haunted and romantic at the same time. Duck after duck, in singles and pairs, more than I'm used to seeing around here, flew low, just over the treetops, barely above the foggy mist. I was in a rare, mellow mood until I opened the web page on 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month and saw what was missing!

misty morning, sunrise

Photo by J. Harrington

What the Hell?! Academy of American Poets!? For suggestion 21 on how to celebrate National Poetry Month, you offer "Watch a poetry movie." So far, so good. Then you provide a list that includes "Films About Poetry" and "Films That Reference Poetry." Fine! But, you have absolutely no mention of the films about or with America's latest Nobel Laureate in Literature (poetry), BOB DYLAN? (Yes, I am shouting. I'll try to calm down.)

Try including these poetry movies next year, or, even better, edit them into this year's list:

• Don't Look Back, D.A. Pennybaker's 1967 documentary


• No Direction Home, Scorsese's 2005 documentary


• The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival


• I'm Not There, six incarnations of Dylan

There are other options, but the ones listed seem to be an inexcusable omission since Dylan's award was "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition". Even the Academy's biographic notes on Dylan acknowledge that he is also the author of Tarantula, "a collection of prose poetry." How the egregious omission of Dylan's movie poetry, or would that be poetry movies, could have occurred is beyond me. Perhaps it's evidence of ... what? what could account for it.

Record

Katrina Vandenberg

Late night July, Minnesota,
John asleep on the glassed-in porch,
Bob Dylan quiet on a cassette


you made from an album
I got rid of soon after
you died.  Years later,


I regret giving up
your two boxes of vinyl,
which I loved.  Surely


they were too awkward,
too easily broken
for people who loved music


the way we did.  But tonight
I’m in the mood for ghosts,
for sounds we hated: pop,


scratch, hiss, the occasional
skip.  The curtains balloon;
I’ve got a beer; I’m struck


by guilt, watching you
from a place ten years away,
kneeling and cleaning each


with a velvet brush before 
and after, tucking them in
their sleeves.  Understand,


I was still moving then.
The boxes were heavy.
If I had known



I would stop here
with a husband to help me
carry, and room—too late,


the college kids pick over
your black bones on Mass. Ave.,
we’ll meet again some day


on the avenue but still,
I want to hear it,
the needle hitting the end


of a side and playing silence
until the arm gives up,
pulls away.

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There's a word for that #NPM17

April 20, two-thirds of the way through this year's National Poetry Month. Suggestion number 20 of 30 ways to celebrate The Month is to "Read about poems titled “poem.” The introductory essay does a nice job of explaining that such poems aren't simply circular reasoning. The list at the bottom of the essay is extensive (although, at the time this was written, I encountered some nonfunctional links, which I reported). I was pleased to see that, although the essay doesn't discuss it, the list does include one of my favorite poems, one I've printed, framed, and have sitting on my desk, The Prose Poem by Campbell McGrath.

I've run into a few problems recently trying to research things by title. I wanted to read a poem by Lillian Robinson, titled In the Night Kitchen. Unfortunately, that title is shared by a popular children's book by Maurice Sendak (of "Where the Wild Things Are" fame). Robinson's poem was published in a magazine or anthology titled Beefsteak Begonia. An internet search on that phrase yields link after link to nurseries and garden supply shops, but no poem. Imagine the challenge of looking for a poem titled "poem" on the internet. I suppose it's not much better trying to find one of Emily Dickinson's poems by its number. Original works can be and are protected by copyright, not so titles. We are once again brought face to face with the importance of naming and the creation and use of lexicons. Have you yet encountered the Lexicon of Sustainability?

Spring time fern croziers

Photo by J. Harrington

So, we have lexicons, glossaries, dictionaries and other terms of terms. How to tell them apart? See if this helps. Poets (and others) often create new words, as well as using existing ones. Old words, through disuse, can disappear. The reality those words name sometimes remains, sometimes disappears itself. (Will we know icebergs 1000 years from now?) There's also the confusion created by using the same word for very different things, simply due to a similarity of appearance. There's a bishop's staff crozier which looks sort of like the fern head crosiers pictured above, but serves a different purpose. Language and reality have a messy relationship, don't they. Poetry helps that?

Eschatology of the Lexicon

By J. Allyn Rosser

They come down to us

rounding the corners of centuries

at an innocent jog, shedding letters

and most of the grand old meanings

to take on the sleek new hide

our day demands, a snappier

nap that can repel the stare

of a rather less tactful sun;

they come down to us com-

pounding, bounding in idiot

joy, they come with that trustful

tired old mutt look, that soft woof,

warm doggie sigh on the knee,

hoping for what? Some reason,

no doubt, to continue sounding.

Give me one good reason,

they come down to us saying,

as if we could have one without them.

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Leafing through forms #NPM17 #phenology

'Tis the season of frondescence, marking hyemation where we live. We've gone from the crisp smell of falling snow to the beginning of the season of petrichor. How's that for a segue from phenology, through language, into poetic forms?

frondescence begins

Photo by J. Harrington

Over the years, I've taken a handful or two of writing classes and courses at The Loft Literary Center. In several, an assignment has been to write a villanelle or a sestina or.... Although my college major was English, we didn't get into poetic forms much beyond sonnets, odes, elegies, basics like that. Of course, in those days "The Beats" helped make popular in the US eastern forms such as haiku and tanka, of interest to those not committed to life in a gray flannel suit. So, with a limited background in and not much experience with most poetic forms, I chose for one of the first poetry contests I entered a simple form, the acrostic. Unless you're willing to limit yourself to free verse or prose poems, it could be a good idea to follow the suggestion for this nineteenth day of National Poetry Month and "Read about different poetic forms." There's a delightful book, Poetry as Spiritual Practice, mentioned here before, I believe, that offers examples of and practice in about a dozen or so forms. You might want to check that out.

Botanists, bakers, neurosurgeons and naturalists, plus phenologists, each have their own special vocabulary, lexicon, language, sometimes several, tacked onto our common terminology. Writers and poets aren't much different. Fortunately, one doesn't have to become a linguist in each area of specialty to be able to write prose or poetry about a topic, but it helps, it's even essential, to be able to understand enough of a language or a form to get a sense of appropriateness of the fit between the form and the subject. One of poetry's earliest purposes was to make it easier for humans to remember things. Rhyming and repetition help with that. Different patterns (forms) then help reduce boredom triggered by the same pattern of repetition. Have you ever had a whip-poor-will outside your window in the evening? How long did it take before the repetitive calling started to get on your nerves? Does that help explain why there are a number of different poetic forms? Here's an even more helpful explanation:

Poetry

Marianne Moore, 1887 - 1972

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
      all this fiddle.
   Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
      discovers that there is in
   it after all, a place for the genuine.
      Hands that can grasp, eyes
      that can dilate, hair that can rise
         if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
      they are
   useful; when they become so derivative as to become
      unintelligible, the
   same thing may be said for all of us—that we
      do not admire what
      we cannot understand. The bat,
         holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless
      wolf under
   a tree, the immovable critic twinkling his skin like a horse
      that feels a flea, the base-
   ball fan, the statistician—case after case
      could be cited did
      one wish it; nor is it valid
         to discriminate against “business documents and

school-books”; all these phenomena are important. One must
      make a distinction
   however: when dragged into prominence by half poets,
      the result is not poetry,
   nor till the autocrats among us can be
     “literalists of
      the imagination”—above
         insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them,
      shall we have
   it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand, in defiance
       of their opinion—
   the raw material of poetry in
      all its rawness, and
      that which is on the other hand,
         genuine, then you are interested in poetry.

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Rising to the rhyming recipe #NPM17

In our neck of the woods, we're back into several days of cloudy, showery weather, conditions conducive to following the suggested eighteenth way to celebrate National Poetry Month, "Recreate a poet’s favorite food or drink by following his or her recipe." If you find nothing to your taste  among the Academy's half-dozen or so offerings, take a look at The Favorite Recipes of American Poets. (I was not at all surprised to find reference that the creatively ubiquitous Maria Popova had uncovered the linked gem.) Then, feel free to act on the Recipe for Writing prompt provided by Poets & Writers. Writing about recipes and cook books, especially Keats's Porridge, even makes it into The Paris Review's blog. There's definitely substance to Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat lines about "a book of verses underneath the bough, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou..."

bread and poetry, staffs of life

Photo by J. Harrington

As tempting as the preceding options may seem, the loaf of bread mention is, in part, because I'm about to start on a different kind of recipe. I've been reading Michael Pollan's Cooked and have now reached the chapter about creating a sour dough starter from scratch. Since I've been using "store boughten" starter from King Arthur for the past several years, and before that baked 5 minutes a day artisan bread, I'm curious to see what happens as I follow Michael's guidance. Perhaps, if all goes well, I'll be able to knead a poem which rose from very basic ingredients. Wish me success. (If performers are wished "break a leg," and writers are wished "break a lead," does one hope that a baker "breaks bread?")

Trees Need Not Walk the Earth

David Rosenthal

Trees need not walk the earth  
For beauty or for bread;  
Beauty will come to them  
Where they stand.  
Here among the children of the sap
Is no pride of ancestry:  
A birch may wear no less the morning  
Than an oak.  
Here are no heirlooms  
Save those of loveliness, 
In which each tree  
Is kingly in its heritage of grace.  
Here is but beauty’s wisdom  
In which all trees are wise.  
Trees need not walk the earth 
For beauty or for bread;  
Beauty will come to them  
In the rainbow—  
The sunlight—  
And the lilac-haunted rain;
And bread will come to them  
As beauty came:  
In the rainbow—  
In the sunlight—  
In the rain.

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Put a poet's stamp on it #NPM17 #phenology

There was a turtle (species unknown) sunning along the road's edge today. That's the earliest I ever remember seeing any, but it's consistent with the fact that, over the weekend, most of the local trees and bushes burst bud and developed auras of green tint. One of the local sandhill cranes was seen foraging in a chopped corn field this morning. Spring seems to have come in and slammed the door behind herself. Still few signs of migratory song birds though.

sandhill crane in chopped corn field

Photo by J. Harrington

The seventeenth suggestion for celebrating National Poetry Month is to "Ask the United States Post Office to issue more stamps celebrating poets." I have several ideas I'd like to offer that complement poetry stamps. First, check at your local post office and see if you can purchase any poet stamps. For example, there's the Maya Angelou Commorative stamp. Second, if you need to check on when the poet you want to suggest became deceased (living poets aren't elegible) try https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poets or https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets#. [The mention of "deceased 10 years" for eligibility is about to be outdated (#4) and, apparently, wasn't applied to Ms. Angelou, who became deceased in 2014.] Third, perhaps a request to reissue the 2012 commemorative stamps of twentieth-century poets would be received with favor. Finally, for now, write or copy a poem and mail it, using a poet's stamp, to someone you're thinking about. Do so regularly.

Maya Angelou commemorative stamp

All of the preceding presents me, and perhaps you, with a conundrum. Many of my favorite poets are contemporary and still alive. I certainly don't wish them any harm simply so we can enjoy a commemorative stamp and, even at my age, don't look forward to watching the obituary pages. Perhaps we should consider more carefully commemorative stamps and what they may signify.

It’s obvious

Greg Hewett

It’s obvious
beauty is a postage stamp,
a composed self-portrait
of Frida Kahlo
wearing a simple necklace,
an image chosen by the USPS
not because it was like one she painted
for Trotsky. Of course
beauty could not include
imagery of hammer and sickle
or black monkey leering
over her shoulder or parrot
twisted under her chin.
And not the one with snakes.
Not the one of her
all butched-up, hair cropped short,
wearing one of Diego’s suits
after they split for the final time.
Not one with wheelchair, spinal-brace,
or scar down her long trunk.
Forget the one of her cloven wide open,
a jungle of history and myth, of poetry
burgeoning forth from her innermost.
Most definitely not
the one of her wearing the collar
of thorns in memory
of Jesus and Trotsky
and revolution
lost.

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Reading poems, a resurrection #NPM17 #phenology

Some, but not all, celebrate today as Easter Sunday. Regardless of your spiritual beliefs, let me wish each of you a joyous day with many peaceful returns. Personally, I find myself leaning more and more each year toward wanting to follow a Native American calendar. It's possible I was overly influenced when I was young by having Spring Is A New Beginning read to me too many times.

April brings pasque flowers

Photo by J. Harrington

As part of celebrating Easter and Spring and National Poetry Month, I'm happy to announce that the swallows are back in the house we put up years ago to attract purple martins. The blue birds are using the blue bird house. Last night I finally saw a couple of sandhill cranes flying through the neighborhood. There's a pair of wood ducks regularly visiting the small pond up the road. Oak leaf buds continue to swell and turn more green and, this morning, I found a bird feeder the bear dragged into the woods last year. (The afternoon will be spent cleaning and, if possible, reassembling it.)

sandhill cranes in flight

Photo by J. Harrington

The Academy of American Poets suggestion to "Deepen your daily experience by reading Edward Hirsch’s essay “How to Read a Poem.” seems highly fitting for today. You might even be interested in learning that there's a book on Poetry As Spiritual Practice. Although I've read that, my copy of  Hirsh's A Poet’s Glossary (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), is largely unread so far, nor had I, until this morning, read his helpful and reassuring essay. At the moment, I'm struggling with a several of Seamus Heaney's poems, in part because Heaney writes poems about topics, or includes references for which I have no frame, such as The Tollund Man. Hirsch informs us trhat we shouldn't expect to know what a poem is about at first reading.

I'm encouraged to find resources such as Hirsch's essay on the interwebs because learning how to read a poem seems like a wonderful antidote to the shortening of my attention span that much of the internet's content seems to be triggering. See what you make of this poem by Hirsch after you've read his essay. For one thing, I see it referring to a different kind of resurrection, or does it?

Early Sunday Morning

By Edward Hirsch

I used to mock my father and his chums

for getting up early on Sunday morning

and drinking coffee at a local spot

but now I’m one of those chumps.

No one cares about my old humiliations

but they go on dragging through my sleep

like a string of empty tin cans rattling

behind an abandoned car.

It’s like this: just when you think

you have forgotten that red-haired girl

who left you stranded in a parking lot

forty years ago, you wake up

early enough to see her disappearing

around the corner of your dream

on someone else’s motorcycle

roaring onto the highway at sunrise.

And so now I’m sitting in a dimly lit

café full of early morning risers

where the windows are covered with soot

and the coffee is warm and bitter.

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