Bluebird weather #NationalPoetryMonth #phenology

Eastern bluebirds and tree swallows arrived, or, more correctly, were first seen, last Friday. This morning we watched the year's first lightning, sans, thus far, rainfall. To be on the safe side, our mukluks are still ready in the front hall should Mother Nature decide to again pull the warming rug from around us. Maybe we'll put the mukluks back into the closet come June, but, for now we'll leave them out as insurance that Spring may have, at long last, arrived.

Eastern bluebirds are back!

Photo by J. Harrington

May will be the month of leaf out and ephemeral wildflowers. We'll definitely try hard to fit in at least a couple of trout fishing trips. April usually brings us high water, mud and taxes, but also red-winged blackbirds and some bud burst. Eliot may have been more right than he knew with his proclamation that "April is the cruellest month,..."; but it is full of promises. Unfortunately, many of those promises will be kept post April. May spends most of her month honoring April's promises. That leaves us feeling about April that perhaps it's time to remember the saying attributed, maybe incorrectly, to Dr. Seuss:

Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.

In April

James Hearst

This I saw on an April day:
Warm rain spilt from a sun-lined cloud,
A sky-flung wave of gold at evening,
And a cock pheasant treading a dusty path
Shy and proud.


And this I found in an April field:
A new white calf in the sun at noon,
A flash of blue in a cool moss bank,
And tips of tulips promising flowers
To a blue-winged loon.


And this I tried to understand
As I scrubbed the rust from my brightening plow:
The movement of seed in furrowed earth,
And a blackbird whistling sweet and clear
From a green-sprayed bough.

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Shacked up #NationalPoetryMonth #phenology

There was no sign of snow down around Baraboo the whole time we were there. As we returned home this morning, snow patches appeared about the time we were as far North as Turtle Lake. Meanwhile, across of much of Minnesota, there's a Red Flag fire warning. Spring in our North Country is an "interesting" (in the Minnesota sense) mixture.

"The Shack"

Photo by J. Harrington

April, and thus National Poetry Month, are almost past. Our visit to Aldo Leopold's Shack offered us the first view of Spring's ephemeral wildflowers we've had this year. Next month we'll check some places we've discovered for other opportunities. For now, we'll just enjoy having visited a shrine that's being well preserved and listen for more of Spring's song.

bloodroot amidst daylilies(?), North side of "The Shack"

Photo by J. Harrington

New Song

By Devin Johnston

After William IX, Duke of Aquitaine

As sweetness flows through these new days,

the woods leaf out, and songbirds phrase

in neumes of roosted melody

incipits to a new song.

Then love should find lubricity

and quicken, having slept so long.

The bloodroot blossoms, well and good,

but I receive no word that would

set my troubled heart at ease,

nor could we turn our faces toward

the sun, and open by degrees,

unless we reach a clear accord.

And so our love goes, night and day:

it’s like the thorny hawthorn spray

that whips about in a bitter wind

from dusk to dawn, shellacked with sleet,

until the sun’s first rays ascend

through leaves and branches, spreading heat.

I have in mind one April morning

when she relented without warning,

relenting from her cold rebuff

in laughter, peals of happiness.

Sweet Christ, let me live long enough

to get my hands beneath her dress!

I hate the elevated talk

that disregards both root and stalk

and sets insipid pride above

vicissitudes of lust and strife.

Let others claim a higher love:

we’ve got the bread, we’ve got the knife.

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A Sand County visit #NationalPoetryMonth #phenology

The further South we drove, approaching Wisconsin Dells and Baraboo, the more bud burst on hill sides became visibly colorful. Remaining vestiges of Winter hid under low branches at the foot of slopes. Rivers ran bank full and more. We were headed about 150 miles south of our origin, which would place us at the leading edge of Spring's creep Northward. Where we were coming from, warm weather was still a dream on the Southern horizon although red maples had bud burst and aspens were starting to leaf out.

red maple bud burst (finally)

Photo by J. Harrington

The geese at the pond near the B & B we're staying at had already produced goslings. Nearby farmers, not yet doing fieldwork back North, were just starting work in some fields along I-94. Today we'll visit an exhibition of cranes in the morning and a famous "Sand County" farm in the afternoon. Aldo Leopold's writing has had a major influence on us, so we're looking forward to finally visiting his shack and the LEED Gold building that now houses the work of his eponymous Foundation.

Much of Leopold's writing has been classified as prose and belongs there. We, on the other hand, have come to see A Sand County Almanac as an extended prose poem. The quotations below, among others he wrote, support, we believe, our perspective.

“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then and have known ever since that there was something new to me in those eyes, something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.” Thinking Like a Mountain, A Sand County Almanac.

“Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher ‘standard of living’ is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free.” Foreword, A Sand County Almanac. 

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Flyover Country? #NationalPoetryMonth

We were born and raised on the East Coast. Most of our adult life has been lived in Minnesota -- "flyover country" to most East Coasters. We've been trying to adapt and become naturalized for the entire time we've lived here. Poetry has helped us find our way, often through the kind of associations and serendipity poetry is know for. Today's posting provides one example.

yesterday's pasque flower

Photo by J. Harrington

Sometime after this is posted, we're headed toward the Baraboo area to visit the Aldo Leopold Foundation and the International Crane Foundation. Yesterday we first noticed one of our back yard pasque flowers blooming. We suspect it started blooming while the vernal pool not 100 feet away was still locked in ice. We live in a land of contrasts. Anyhow, we wanted to post the photo above so we started looking for a poem about pasque flowers but couldn't find anything that appealed. Pasque flowers often grow uphill from wetter country that also attracts sandhill cranes. Poking about the internet, we serendipitously found a newspaper column by one of our favorite poets, who happens to be from flyover country, in which he shared a poem by a Native American about sandhill cranes.

sandhill cranes in flight

Photo by J. Harrington

Pasque flowers, sandhill cranes, Ted Kooser et. al., we're noticing that "flyover country" has a number of indigenous pleasures that aren't native to Massachusetts. Maybe we're finally starting to settle in to our second "home."

Life In Poetry: Poet Writes About Magic Of Sandhill Cranes

BY TED KOOSER U.S. Poet Laureate

This column originates in Nebraska, and our office is about two hours’ drive from that stretch of the Platte River where thousands of sandhill cranes stop for a few weeks each year. Linda Hogan, one of our most respected Native writers and Writer in Residence for The Chickasaw Nation, perfectly captures their magic and mystery in this fine poem.

The Sandhills  

The language of cranes
we once were told
is the wind. The wind
is their method,
their current, the translated story
of life they write across the sky.
Millions of years
they have blown here
on ancestral longing,
their wings of wide arrival,
necks long, legs stretched out
above strands of earth
where they arrive
with the shine of water,
stories, interminable
language of exchanges
descended from the sky
and then they stand,
earth made only of crane
from bank to bank of the river
as far as you can see
the ancient story made new.

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Found Poems #NationalPoetryMonth #pocketpoem #phenology

morning, yesterday, our vernal pool was frozen

Photo by J. Harrington

Today is Poem In Your Pocket Day in National Poetry Month. In light of the recent snow melt and the resultant water in the low, wet spot in our back yard, we wanted to share a vernal pool poem. There are very, very few of those. They're mostly outnumbered by poets poeticizing about the Vernal Equinox, which occurred more than a month ago, although this Spring's weather makes that hard to believe. But, in our internets search, we came across (found) a resource we want to share. We've not had time to check it thoroughly, but at first glance it looks promising and, it's about vernal pools. We happen to think this may be among the best "found poems" we've found so far this year. Even better, given our prior postings this National Poetry Month, there appear to be a number of very creative teachers using anything but an historic poetic canon to teach the joys of poetry to children. That, as much as anything, we believe will help poetry save America.

more on The Great Frog Race

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Poetry saving America #NationalPoetryMonth

John Ashbery wrote a poem that may, or may not, belong on a list like Tony Hoagland's Twenty Poems That Could Save America. We haven't yet decided about that, but we do think that Ashbery's The One Thing That Can Save America belongs with Hoagland's list or any like it.

why are developments named after what they've replaced?

Photo by J. Harrington

We haven't read much of Ashbery's work. It's only through a book we recently finished that we've come to reconsider Ashbery's poetry. We knew his reputation, but had found his poems excessively cryptic. Matthew Zapruder's Why Poetry nudged us to reconsider by introducing us to and walking us through:

The One Thing That Can Save America

By John Ashbery

Is anything central?

Orchards flung out on the land,

Urban forests, rustic plantations, knee-high hills?

Are place names central?

Elm Grove, Adcock Corner, Story Book Farm?

As they concur with a rush at eye level

Beating themselves into eyes which have had enough

Thank you, no more thank you.

And they come on like scenery mingled with darkness

The damp plains, overgrown suburbs,

Places of known civic pride, of civil obscurity.

These are connected to my version of America

But the juice is elsewhere.

This morning as I walked out of your room

After breakfast crosshatched with

Backward and forward glances, backward into light,

Forward into unfamiliar light,

Was it our doing, and was it

The material, the lumber of life, or of lives

We were measuring, counting?

A mood soon to be forgotten

In crossed girders of light, cool downtown shadow

In this morning that has seized us again?

I know that I braid too much on my own

Snapped-off perceptions of things as they come to me.

They are private and always will be.

Where then are the private turns of event

Destined to bloom later like golden chimes

Released over a city from a highest tower?

The quirky things that happen to me, and I tell you,

And you know instantly what I mean?

What remote orchard reached by winding roads

Hides them? Where are these roots?

It is the lumps and trials

That tell us whether we shall be known

And whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star.

All the rest is waiting

For a letter that never arrives,

Day after day, the exasperation

Until finally you have ripped it open not knowing what it is,

The two envelope halves lying on a plate.

The message was wise, and seemingly

Dictated a long time ago, but its time has still

Not arrived, telling of danger, and the mostly limited

Steps that can be taken against danger

Now and in the future, in cool yards,

In quiet small houses in the country,

Our country, in fenced areas, in cool shady streets.

Here's an introduction to Zapruder's writing on Ashbery's poem. What we found is that Ashbery, via Zapruder, raises questions about:

• saving America from What?;
• saving America for What?
• from Whom?
• for Whom?

Somehow, the poems on Hoagland's list didn't trigger such questions. They lay dormant. Ashbery not only awakened those questions, his poem also evoked the ghosts of Yeats' The Second Coming. Perhaps we're reading too closely, but we believe the last several lines of Ashbery's "The One Thing..." imply, or at least we infer, that the steps depend on us communicating with our neighbors, honestly, openly, to reach agreement on what we have in common and how we will better manage our differences. The challenges and opportunities facing us are to important to be left to politicians. They belong to us and Shelly's "unacknowledged legislators of the world."

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Poetry saving America #NationalPoetryMonth

We are, and have been for some time, dedicated fans of Ed Abbey's writing. From what we've read of the man, we're not sure if we'd want to live next to him, but then his misanthropic attitude seems to closely approximate our own, so maybe we'd do fine as neighbors if we each kept what seemed like a reasonable (long) distance between us. You know, like Robert Frost's "Mending Walls" lines about 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

One aspect about Abbey that we most like is his intense love of unspoiled country coupled with an equally intense, perhaps even greater, dislike of those who would despoil it. Earlier today we picked up, once again, a new to us volume of Abbey's essays, "One Life at a Time." As we paged through it, we found ourselves wondering, this being National Poetry Month, why Abbey hadn't written any poetry. Turning to an internet browser and search engine, we typed in "Edward Abbey poetry." Damned if this didn't show up: Earth Apples: The Poetry of Edward Abbey (1994).

an Ed Abbey special? probably not

Photo by J. Harrington

We're sure we've been to the Abbey web site before, so we must be suffering the consequences of a faulty memory. Having rediscovered Abbey's poems, yet another volume that must be added to our "need to have" list of books. Come to think of it, unless our memory faults are continuing, we believe we've somehow missed reading Abbey's classic, Desert Solitaire, although these days we wish more people were familiar with The Monkey Wrench Gang. Anyhow, the one review of Abbey's poetry (from Outside magazine), makes us suspect that none of Abbey's poems/verse would have made it into Tony Hoagland's list of Twenty Poems That Could Save America. Until we've read each of Abbey's poems, we'll withhold judgement on whether any warrant being added to an extended version of that list. However, we have no such qualms about several of Gary Snyder's poems. Snyder is clearly a kindred spirit to Abbey. we have thus arrived at our proposal for one of Snyder's poems that could help save America.

For the Children

By Gary Snyder

The rising hills, the slopes,

of statistics

lie before us.

the steep climb

of everything, going up,

up, as we all

go down.

In the next century

or the one beyond that,

they say,

are valleys, pastures,

we can meet there in peace

if we make it.

To climb these coming crests

one word to you, to

you and your children:

stay together

learn the flowers

go light

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Can farming help poetry save America? #phenology

Spring has returned, again. Some snow is left along the Southern and Eastern edges of fields, but about 90% of it has melted, as has the ice cover on local streams and smaller ponds. Canada geese are building nests. We saw several egrets along the marshes edge. Grass in the roadside ditches is starting to green. Male goldfinches have turned chrome yellow in anticipation of breeding season. And, a neighbor down the road a piece has his yaks back for Summer pasture.

the yaks are back!

Photo by J. Harrington

When we looked, there was no sign of pasque flowers where a few had bloomed last year. Too early? Too late? Claimed by the major snow storm a week or so ago? In the next few days we'll wander back and see how far the skunk cabbage has progressed. Meanwhile, the bluebird houses are ready for occupants, although none have been seen yet. This time last year they had been here for three weeks already. The swallow/martin house has been cleaned out. Let the nesting begin!

how do we combine this with traditional farming to make a more livable world?

Photo by J. Harrington

We had an interesting series of Tweets this morning with others involved in local foods and non-industrial scale farming. Although there remain many points of disagreement, we seemed to be in accord on some major themes. One of the concerns we took from that exchange is how challenging it is to determine if one is dealing with facts or fiction. Is organic dairy better for the milk drinker or the environmental commons? Where can one find relatively unbiased studies on which to make a decision? If we want to have major elements of our local food systems be organic, do organic requirements undermine the viability of smaller operations that may have higher unit costs? How much does the source of funding bias "independent studies?" We encountered, on occasion, similar issues in the green building arena, especially effects of sustainable elements on the construction cost versus longer term operational costs. Also, some folks were sometimes accused of gaming the system to accumulate points for features that may not have otherwise been high priority and might not contribute much to a more livable world.

All of this, plus the continuance of National Poetry Month, prompts us to share today's poem. We think it could easily be added to a list of poems that could save America. What do you think?

 

A Purification

Wendell Berry

At start of spring I open a trench

in the ground. I put into it

the winter's accumulation of paper,

pages I do not want to read

again, useless words, fragments,

errors. And I put into it

the contents of the outhouse:

light of the sun, growth of the ground,

finished with one of their journeys.

To the sky, to the wind, then,

and to the faithful trees, I confess

my sins: that I have not been happy

enough, considering my good luck;

have listened to too much noise;

have been inattentive to wonders;

have lusted after praise.

And then upon the gathered refuse

of mind and body, I close the trench,

folding shut again the dark,

the deathless earth. Beneath that seal

the old escapes into the new.

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Happy Earth Day! #NationalPoetryMonth

It's Earth Day. It's National Poetry Month. In honor of both we're going to share one of our favorite "earth poems." We think it says just about all that needs saying these days. We'll just leave it right here.

Earthrise taken on December 24, 1968

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

By Joy Harjo

I am the holy being of my mother's prayer and my father's song

                                                      —Norman Patrick Brown, Dineh Poet and Speaker

1. SET CONFLICT RESOLUTION GROUND RULES:

Recognize whose lands these are on which we stand.
Ask the deer, turtle, and the crane.
Make sure the spirits of these lands are respected and treated with goodwill.
The land is a being who remembers everything.
You will have to answer to your children, and their children, and theirs—
The red shimmer of remembering will compel you up the night to walk the perimeter of truth for understanding.
As I brushed my hair over the hotel sink to get ready I heard:
By listening we will understand who we are in this holy realm of words.
Do not parade, pleased with yourself.
You must speak in the language of justice.


2. USE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS THAT DISPLAY AND ENHANCE MUTUAL TRUST AND RESPECT:

If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters "as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run."

The lands and waters they gave us did not belong to them to give. Under false pretenses we signed. After drugging by drink, we signed. With a mass of gunpower pointed at us, we signed. With a flotilla of war ships at our shores, we signed. We are still signing. We have found no peace in this act of signing.

A casino was raised up over the gravesite of our ancestors. Our own distant cousins pulled up the bones of grandparents, parents, and grandchildren from their last sleeping place. They had forgotten how to be human beings. Restless winds emerged from the earth when the graves were open and the winds went looking for justice.

If you raise this white flag of peace, we will honor it.

At Sand Creek several hundred women, children, and men were slaughtered in an unspeakable massacre, after a white flag was raised. The American soldiers trampled the white flag in the blood of the peacemakers.

There is a suicide epidemic among native children. It is triple the rate of the rest of America. "It feels like wartime," said a child welfare worker in South Dakota.

If you send your children to our schools we will train them to get along in this changing world. We will educate them.

We had no choice. They took our children. Some ran away and froze to death. If they were found they were dragged back to the school and punished. They cut their hair, took away their language, until they became as strangers to themselves even as they became strangers to us.

If you sign this paper we will become brothers. We will no longer fight. We will give you this land and these waters in exchange "as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers run."

Put your hand on this bible, this blade, this pen, this oil derrick, this gun and you will gain trust and respect with us. Now we can speak together as one.

We say, put down your papers, your tools of coercion, your false promises, your posture of superiority and sit with us before the fire. We will share food, songs, and stories. We will gather beneath starlight and dance, and rise together at sunrise.

The sun rose over the Potomac this morning, over the city surrounding the white house.
It blazed scarlet, a fire opening truth.
White House, or Chogo Hvtke, means the house of the peacekeeper, the keepers of justice.
We have crossed this river to speak to the white leader for peace many times
Since these settlers first arrived in our territory and made this their place of governance.
These streets are our old trails, curved to fit around trees.


3. GIVE CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK:

We speak together with this trade language of English. This trade language enables us to speak across many language boundaries. These languages have given us the poets:

Ortiz, Silko, Momaday, Alexie, Diaz, Bird, Woody, Kane, Bitsui, Long Soldier, White, Erdrich, Tapahonso, Howe, Louis, Brings Plenty, okpik, Hill, Wood, Maracle, Cisneros, Trask, Hogan, Dunn, Welch, Gould...

The 1957 Chevy is unbeatable in style. My broken-down one-eyed Ford will have to do. It holds everyone: Grandma and grandpa, aunties and uncles, the children and the babies, and all my boyfriends. That's what she said, anyway, as she drove off for the Forty-Nine with all of us in that shimmying wreck.

This would be no place to be without blues, jazz—Thank you/mvtoto the Africans, the Europeans sitting in, especially Adolphe Sax with his saxophones... Don't forget that at the center is the Mvskoke ceremonial circles. We know how to swing. We keep the heartbeat of the earth in our stomp dance feet.

You might try dancing theory with a bustle, or a jingle dress, or with turtles strapped around your legs. You might try wearing colonization like a heavy gold chain around a pimp's neck.


4. REDUCE DEFENSIVENESS AND BREAK THE DEFENSIVENESS CHAIN:

I could hear the light beings as they entered every cell. Every cell is a house of the god of light, they said. I could hear the spirits who love us stomp dancing. They were dancing as if they were here, and then another level of here, and then another, until the whole earth and sky was dancing.

We are here dancing, they said. There was no there.

There was no  "I"  or "you."

There was us; there was "we."

There we were as if we were the music.

You cannot legislate music to lockstep nor can you legislate the spirit of the music to stop at political boundaries—

—Or poetry, or art, or anything that is of value or matters in this world, and the next worlds.

This is about getting to know each other.

We will wind up back at the blues standing on the edge of the flatted fifth about to jump into a fierce understanding together.


5. ELIMINATE NEGATIVE ATTITUDES DURING CONFLICT:

A panther poised in the cypress tree about to jump is a panther poised in a cypress tree about to jump.

The panther is a poem of fire green eyes and a heart charged by four winds of four directions.

The panther hears everything in the dark: the unspoken tears of a few hundred human years, storms that will break what has broken his world, a bluebird swaying on a branch a few miles away.

He hears the death song of his approaching prey:

I will always love you, sunrise.
I belong to the black cat with fire green eyes.
There, in the cypress tree near the morning star.


6. AND, USE WHAT YOU LEARN TO RESOLVE YOUR OWN CONFLICTS AND TO MEDIATE OTHERS' CONFLICTS:

When we made it back home, back over those curved roads
that wind through the city of peace, we stopped at the
doorway of dusk as it opened to our homelands.
We gave thanks for the story, for all parts of the story
because it was by the light of those challenges we knew
ourselves—
We asked for forgiveness.
We laid down our burdens next to each other.

Joy Harjo, "Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings" from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings.  Copyright © 2015 by Joy Harjo.  Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc..

Source:Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings(W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2015)

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Poetry saving America Day 21 #NationalPoetryMonth

We have searched wide and deep on the internet and have not uncovered anything Tony Hoagland has written about C.D. Wright's "Our Dust" that would account for his listing it as the last of Twenty Poems That Could Save America. Furthermore, we have no prior experience with C.D. Wright's poetry, at least none we can recall. We'll have to start with the words on the page--what the poet actually wrote.

Our Dust by C. D. Wright

Our Dust

I am your ancestor. You know next-to-nothing
about me.
There is no reason for you to imagine
the rooms I occupied or my heavy hair.
Not the faint vinegar smell of me. Or
the rubbed damp
of Forrest and I coupling on the landing
en route to our detached day.

You didn’t know my weariness, error, incapacity,
I was the poet
of shadow work and towns with quarter-inch
phone books, of failed
roadside zoos. The poet of yard eggs and
sharpening shops,
jobs at the weapons plant and the Maybelline
factory on the penitentiary road.

A poet of spiderwort and jacks-in-the-pulpit,
hollyhocks against the tool shed.
An unsmiling dark blond.
The one with the trowel in her handbag.
I dug up protected and private things.
That sort, I was.
My graves went undecorated and my churches
abandoned. This wasn’t planned, but practice.

I was the poet of short-tailed cats and yellow
line paint.
Of satellite dishes and Peterbilt trucks. Red Man
Chewing Tobacco, Black Cat Fireworks, Triple Hut
Creme Soda. Also of dirt dobbers, nightcrawlers,
martin houses, honey, and whetstones
from the Novaculite Uplift. What remained
of The Uplift.

I had registered dogs 4 sale; rocks, dung,
and straw.
I was a poet of hummingbird hives along with
redhead stepbrothers.

The poet of good walking shoes—a necessity
in vernacular parts—and push mowers.
The rumor that I was once seen sleeping
in a refrigerator box is false (he was a brother
who hated me).
Nor was I the one lunching at the Governor’s
mansion.

I didn’t work off a grid. Or prime the surface
if I could get off without it. I made
simple music
out of sticks and string. On side B of me,
experimental guitar, night repairs and suppers
such as this.
You could count on me to make a bad situation
worse like putting liquid make-up over
a passion mark.

I never raised your rent. Or anyone else’s by God.
Never said I loved you. The future gave me chills.
I used the medium to say: Arise arise and
come together.
Free your children. Come on everybody. Let’s start
with Baltimore.

Believe me I am not being modest when I
admit my life doesn’t bear repeating. I
agreed to be the poet of one life,
one death alone. I have seen myself
in the black car. I have seen the retreat
of the black car.

whose ancestors lived or worked here?

Photo by J. Harrington

Our first thought is this is a poem of working America, rural America, too often forgotten America, the "wrong side" of both the tracks and the digital divide. Our second thought is that this poem is to rural America what Phillip Levine is to urban American, especially Detroit. Our third thought is "why didn't Tony Hoagland include any of Levine's poems in his list of twenty?

We absolutely agree that America, and Americans, need more poems like this, written by those who have "been there, done that." We should not leave poems and poets like this in our dust. They should be kept alive and part of our own vernacular. As Wendell Berry notes: “If you don't know where you're from, you'll have a hard time saying where you're going.” If you enjoyed this poem, you might want to take a look at William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways and Blue Highways Revisited, a photo journal of Heat-Moon's trip. Each of these, although prose more than poetry, shows us much of what's worth saving about America and Americans.

Thanks for following our thoughts on Tony Hoagland's Twenty Poems That Could Save America. We'll explore some similar themes during the rest of National Poetry Month. We may also get back to some phenology reports as the last of our snow melts and Spring temperatures finally reach our North Country.

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Poetry saving America Day 20 #NationalPoetryMonth

We have now reached the penultimate poem in Tony Hoagland's list of Twenty Poems That Could Save America. Here's what Hoagland has written about it:

Obviously, poems in a curriculum may usefully complicate and contradict one another. “The Ballad of Orange and Grape” addresses the ethics of language and the need for trustworthy speech. Against Rukeyser’s urgent formulation of that truth, one might, in our imaginary curriculum, counterpose Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” which asserts the superiority of silence and nature to scholarly language and ideas. In Whitman’s poem, two kinds of learning are opposed to each other, and the speaker advocates playing hooky:

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” represents a streak of anti-intellectualism that is a familiar part of the American tradition of self-sufficiency and independence. The natural man, claims the poem, has little need for arid recitations of classroom knowledge. Rather, as Emerson suggested, it is the true work of each American to go outside and forge her own original relationship with the universe. Whitman’s lyric embodies that American narrative.

evening "stars"

Photo by J. Harrington

Another way to think about this poem, less anti-intellectual we hope, starts with an idea that each of us learns differently. Some of us are more comfortable in a built environment. Others much prefer a natural setting. Think about Aldo Leopold's wonderful observation in A Sand County Almanac:

 “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.”

As we were growing up, we learned about a similar, but somewhat different distinction: that between "book learning" and "street smarts." In general, it's been our experience that wisdom requires some of each. Part of our contrariness toward, not Whitman's poem, but Hoagland's assessment of it, is that we think perhaps anti-intellectualism and independence have become too dominant in the American narrative. We need to learn how to better recognize and act on our interdependence and the different ways each of us comes to know what we think we know. Synergy over reductionist thinking, yes please! Just looking in perfect silence at the stars would not have brought us Earth Rise. The equations that got us there lack the emotional impact of the picture.

Earthrise taken on December 24, 1968

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Poetry saving America Day 19 #NationalPoetryMonth

This, the eighteenth in Tony Hoagland's list of Twenty Poems That Could Save America, is a poem we have studied in several classes over the years. We have yet to "enjoy" this poem, unlike many of the other works we read. It is uncomfortably real in the dilemma it portrays: no really good choice, only better or worse options. [Sidebar confession: until we started this piece, we've always pictured this poem being set in the Winter. That can't be correct. Does in North America drop their fawns in late May or June. We think it was "the dark" that threw us off. Metaphorical, perhaps?]

whitetail deer doe, sans fawn(?)

Photo by J. Harrington

The events described in the poem seem to us to raise a number of questions we Americans often try to avoid answering:

• Why us?
• Why here and now?
• Can't we let someone else handle this?

Implied in Hoagland's choice of this poem, we believe, is a perspective that we Americans must improve our ability to make better ethical decisions. To do so, we must more honestly and openly engage with each other, remembering to "not let the perfect become the enemy of the good."

poetry teaches the ethical nature of choice
To visualize this poetry-enriched near-future, please imagine that somewhere in the echoey, high-ceilinged meeting rooms of our nation’s Capitol, a congressional committee is in session. It is midsummer in Washington, D.C., and a pitcher of water is on the table, beads of condensation on its side; the ice has melted. A difficult bill is also on the table, one in which the exigencies of the political present must be weighed against the needs of the future — say, for example, that the subsidized production of corn for ethanol might be given priority over other alternatives to gasoline. Too many Midwestern farmers have become dependent on these subsidies. But if policy is changed now, they will suffer.

“It’s like that William Stafford poem,” says one congressional aide. “What’s the title — the one about the deer?”

“Traveling through the Dark,” says a representative from Missouri. The poem begins:

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

“That’s the one,” says the aide. “Yeah, that scene where the guy has to decide whether to push the mother deer over the edge of the cliff to make the road safer — even though the deer is pregnant, with a fawn inside her.”

“To swerve might make more dead,” says someone else.

“Yes,” says the first legislator, “here we are, getting ready to choose some lives over others, to clear the road for traffic. Are we going to push the deer over the side of the highway?”

“When you put it like that,” says another, “I think we should wait.”

“That’s not deciding,” says a third congressman, “that’s procrastinating. I say we vote right now.”

Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;?
under the hood purred the steady engine.?
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;?
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all — my only swerving —,?
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

“Traveling through the Dark” is a well-known poem, but one with legs yet — it offers a lucid ethical dilemma that foregrounds the nature of moral choice.

Traveling through the Dark

By William E. Stafford

Traveling through the dark I found a deer

dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.

It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:

that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car   

and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;   

she had stiffened already, almost cold.

I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—

her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,   

alive, still, never to be born.

Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;   

under the hood purred the steady engine.

I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;   

around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—,   

then pushed her over the edge into the river.

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Poetry saving America Day 18 #NationalPoetryMonth

Before you read today's posting, we strongly suggest that you take a moment and listen to Tony Hoagland himself read the seventeenth of his Twenty Poems That Could Save America. We'll wait right here. Back already? OK, here's what Hoagland writes about "Song of Speaks Fluently." We love it. It reminds us of many of Gary Snyder's poems.

poems rehearse the future
Poems, some more than others, are songs, passed down through time. It is amazing how far and how long they can travel and still remain fresh. Was there ever a poet named Speaks-Fluently? That is the name assigned to the author of this Native-American poem of Osage origin, passed on to me by another poet. “Song of Speaks-Fluently” is as light as a nursery rhyme and as serious as a gospel; wry, yet firm about the facts of life. And what a flavor of reliability it bears from its at once distant and personal source.

To have to carry your own corn far —
who likes it?
To follow the black bear through the thicket —
who likes it?
To hunt without profit, to return without anything —
who likes it?
You have to carry your own corn far.
You have to follow the black bear.
You have to hunt without profit.
If not, what will you tell the little ones? What
will you speak of?
For it is bad not to use the talk which God has sent us.
I am Speaks-Fluently. Of all the groups of symbols,
I am a symbol by myself.

Here is the news, says the poem sympathetically: You too shall labor, and on Tuesday your enterprise shall not succeed, and on Wednesday you shall bend again to the labor before you. Now, this is a message well worth inclusion in the speech of any high school valedictorian in America. Instead of demanding favors of the universe, Speaks-Fluently tells us, we must cultivate the wisdom of the shrug and exercise the muscle of persistence. “You have to carry your own corn far. You have to hunt without profit.”

With its images of ancient farming and hunting, “Song of Speaks-Fluently” carries another quiet implication — that we readers, whatever our work, are connected to the oldest rhythms of human effort and human survival. The necessities and hazards of our lives have changed in appearance, but not in essence.

A thousand kinds of poems exist, and they point in an infinite number of directions.

a bear in a thicket

Photo by J. Harrington

Poems can point in any number of directions. Bears in thickets can run in any number of directions. Each of those is a far different tune than a "win at any cost" attitude that has come to prevail in much of our (corporate) business and almost all of our politics. If winning is the most important point, what's the point of winning? It is also bad to (mis)use the talk which God has sent us just for the sake of winning, is it not? Does America need to remember our fundamentals?

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Poetry saving America Day 17 #NationalPoetryMonth

[UPDATE: we don't know how we missed this, but we did. Here's Hoagland's section from his "Twenty Pieces" essay:]

poems teach aesthetics that are of broad application
Another dividend of even a basic investment in poetry is the way it refines our sensitivity for tone, for subtleties of inflection, which in turn enables us to navigate the world more skillfully. Take the delicate, tentative mix of irony and affection in “The Geraniums,” by Genevieve Taggard:

Even if the geraniums are artificial
Just the same,
In the rear of the Italian café
Under the nimbus of electric light
They are red; no less red
For how they were made. Above
The mirror and the napkins
In the little white pots . . .
. . . In the semi-clean cafe
Where they have good
Lasagna . . . The red is a wonderful joy
Really, and so are the people
Who like and ignore it. In this place
They also have good bread.

Taggard’s poem, delivered in a reflective, tender, meditative voice, is about aesthetics. It asks an interesting question: Can a thing be simultaneously false and beautiful? Is the modern world, with its manifold illusions, nonetheless an environment in which the soul can find nourishment? What do we see and what do we habitually ignore? Can we train ourselves to appreciate anyenvironment? Consider the loveliness of the humble fake flowers! To cultivate an ear for tone is, oddly enough, to cultivate one’s own perceptual alertness. In “The Geraniums,” irony and wonder (the “semi-clean” cafe and the “wonderful joy, really” of red) collaborate intricately in the speaker’s casually unfolding voice. To develop an ear for such delicate modulations is in fact a survival skill that can aid one for a lifetime.

About the only other hints we could find for why Tony Hoagland included "The Geraniums" by Genevieve Taggard as the sixteenth of Twenty Poems That Could Save America came from a BloodAxe Books web page on Hoagland and his books, which included a video that we haven't watched yet. If we're tracking this correctly, of the five examples listed under the American poetic voice, only Taggard's work carries into the "Twenty Poems" list.

Tony Hoagland: The American Poetic Voice
What is most distinctive about the American poetic voice? It may be its democratic vernacular, its elasticity, its plainness of style, its life-giving vulgarity, its pragmatism, its materialism, its self-regard, or its humour. All of these features are embedded in that mysterious element we call Voice, that rhythmic undulating metabolism which transports and delivers whatever "information" a poem contains. In this talk, given at Ledbury Poetry Festival on 3 July 2017, Tony Hoagland uses examples to analyse, admire and illustrate some of the specific secrets of the American voice, providing a means for considering the craft of any poetic voice. His examples include poems by Frank O'Hara, Ezra Pound, Louise Glück, Adrian Blevins and Genevieve Taggard.

Italian cafe with red artificial geraniums?

Photo by J. Harrington

Is there something in particular about an the American poetic voice that could save America? Let's consider one by one the reported characteristics Hoagland mentions [our assessment]:

• democratic vernacular [probably not]
• elasticity [maybe]
• plainness of style [possibly]
• life-giving vulgarity [yes and no]
• pragmatism [definitely]
• materialism [probably not]
• self-regard [probably not]
• humour [absolutely]

Your mileage may vary. Our biases are showing. Fake, but good-looking, geraniums, detract little if anything from the primary purpose of an Italian cafe, one that's semi-clean at least. The food is good. The bread is good. That's more important (more authentic?) to the people who go there for the good food and the good bread. They tend to "ignore the small stuff." There's an aphorism we need to better take to heart. Is the glass half full or half empty? When you go to a restaurant is it for the ambiance or the food? Would you let artificial geraniums spoil a good plate of lasagna? Is America becoming too preoccupied with supercilious details? Are we focused more on what separates us (real versus artificial geraniums) than on what we have in common (good food)? Are we letting our differences ruin a good family meal? Are the differences only unimportant, artificial details? What are our priorities that could save America?

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Poetry saving America Day 16 #NationalPoetryMonth

From one perspective, Tony Hoagland's selection of Louis Simpson's "American Classic" as the fifteenth of Twenty Poems That Could Save America seems self-evident. Read the poem. From a surgical perspective, the American classic scene is aligned with material possessions, particularly car ownership, and the ability to make such things work. From an alternative view point, the claim is made that the poem raises the question of identity, particularly American identity.

by the roadside, left in the dust

Photo by J. Harrington

American Classic

Louis Simpson

It’s a classic American scene—

a car stopped off the road

and a man trying to repair it.  

The woman who stays in the car

in the classic American scene

stares back at the freeway traffic.  

They look surprised, and ashamed

to be so helpless…

let down in the middle of the road!

To think that their car would do this!

They look like mountain people

whose son has gone against the law.  

But every night they set out food

and the robber goes skulking back to the trees.

That’s how it is with the car…

it’s theirs, they’re stuck with it. 

Now they know what it’s like to sit

and see the world go whizzing by.  

In the fume of carbon monoxide and dust

they are not such good Americans

as they thought they were.  

The feeling of being left out

through no fault of their own, is common.  

That’s why I say, an American classic.  

If you've read any of the recent books purporting to explain the last presidential election, Hillbilly Elegy and "Strangers in Their Own Land" come to mind, the "feeling of being left out" should resonate. Perhaps, if you've read either version of Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land," or Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness," you've thought about the question of how much, and what, must we have in common with others to accept them as being "like us."

Simpson's poem also raises questions about the pros and cons of technology and technological dependence. According to Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And then, as William Gibson is reported to have observed "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." Does FaceBook or Google know more about you than you do yourself? How does one safely exit a slippery slope?

Once repairs required but a modicum of mechanical knowledge, access to replacement parts, and an ability to handle tools. Now, from tractors to computers and "smart"phones, we seem no longer to own what we have "purchased." Our possessions can only be repaired at "authorized" locations, to protect the "intellectual property" of the manufacturers. As our digital, and economic, divide continues to grow, will that further lead to additional technological dependency which furthers corruption of our identity as individuals and our common identity as a society? How many of us may become, of necessity, a "son who has gone against the law?" Would an old fashioned barn raising have been successful if it required a "user license?" Is the poem correct, that we're "stuck with it?" Has Hoagland laid down another cautionary road block?

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Poetry saving America Day 15 #NationalPoetryMonth

Muriel Rukeyser is the only poet with two poems listed in Tony Hoagland's Twenty Poems That Could Save America. Clearly, America has no shortage of phenomenal poets. Why is it that Hoagland twice selected Rukeyser's work? Especially, what has "Waiting for Icarus" to do with saving America? Since we have found no writings by Hoagland about this poem, we can start at one of several places.

First, there is the poem itself,  the actual words on the page. Second is the myth of Icarus. Third and fourth are the biographies of Rukeyser found at the Poetry Foundation and at the Academy of American Poets (those fantastic folks who bring us National Poetry Month). It's in the latter that we find a strong hint that may help explain Hoagland's choices.

“Muriel Rukeyser’s poetry is unequalled in the twentieth-century United States in its range of reference, its generosity of vision, and its energy," wrote Adrienne Rich. “She pushes us, readers, writers, and participants in the life of our time, to enlarge our sense of what poetry is about in the world, and of the place of feelings and memory in politics.”

"The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves..."

Photo by J. Harrington

Waiting for Icarus

Muriel Rukeyser

He said he would be back and we’d drink wine together

He said that everything would be better than before

He said we were on the edge of a new relation

He said he would never again cringe before his father

He said that he was going to invent full-time

He said he loved me that going into me

He said was going into the world and the sky

He said all the buckles were very firm

He said the wax was the best wax

He said Wait for me here on the beach

He said Just don’t cry

I remember the gulls and the waves

I remember the islands going dark on the sea

I remember the girls laughing

I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me

I remember mother saying : Inventors are like poets,

a trashy lot

I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse

I remember she added : Women who love such are the

Worst of all

I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.

I would have liked to try those wings myself.

It would have been better than this.

"...the place of feelings and memory in politics," combined with a "generosity of vision" doesn't sound much like contemporary politics. It takes me back to President Kennedy's inaugural address “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” Try as I might, I cannot picture those words coming from the 45th president, can you? At the risk of reading way too much into this poem as one of the Twenty Poems, we ask whether "Waiting for Icarus" might suggest that we have flown too close to the sun by trying to turn the sum of individual goods into the Common Good. Or, might we need to remember that sometimes the whole can be much less than the sum of its parts? It was another Kennedy, Robert, President Kennedy's brother, who cautioned us:

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.  It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.  And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

We believe we've not seen any better example of "the place of feelings and memory in politics" than that offered by either Kennedy. Can "Twenty Poems" lead to a restoration of feelings, other than anger and revenge and winning at any cost, to politics, the kind of feelings evoked by the poetry of the Kennedy quotations?

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