Into each life, a little rain...

 Once again this week the daily weather is cloudy and rainy. Next week promises more of the same. The standard reaction this would trigger from me would be kvetching about clouds and rain and never-ending. Today I'm trying a different approach. This is national poetry month. One of my favorite poets is Joy Harjo. Please enjoy her poem about rain.

Praise the Rain

By Joy Harjo

Praise the rain; the seagull dive

The curl of plant, the raven talk—

Praise the hurt, the house slack

The stand of trees, the dignity—

Praise the dark, the moon cradle

The sky fall, the bear sleep—

Praise the mist, the warrior name

The earth eclipse, the fired leap—

Praise the backwards, upward sky

The baby cry, the spirit food—

Praise canoe, the fish rush

The hole for frog, the upside-down—

Praise the day, the cloud cup

The mind flat, forget it all—

Praise crazy. Praise sad.

Praise the path on which we're led.

Praise the roads on earth and water.

Praise the eater and the eaten.

Praise beginnings; praise the end.

Praise the song and praise the singer.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

One of my favorite forms of poetry is the prose poem. Please enjoy a prose poem about rain.

Rain

By Francis Ponge
Translated by Joshua Corey and Jean-Luc Garneau

The rain, in the backyard where I watch it fall, comes down at different 
rates. In the center a fine discontinuous curtain — or network — falls implacably and yet gently in drops that are probably quite light; a strengthless sempiternal precipitation, an intense fraction of the atmosphere at its purest. A little distance from the walls to the right and left plunk heavier drops, one by one. Here they seem about the size of grains of wheat, the size of a pea, while elsewhere they are big as marbles. Along gutters and window frames the rain runs horizontally, while depending from the same obstacles it hangs like individually wrapped candies. Along the entire surface of a little zinc roof under my eyes it trickles in a very thin sheet, a moiré pattern formed by the varying currents created by the imperceptible bumps and undulations of the surface. From the gutter it flows with the restraint of a shallow creek until it tumbles out into a perfectly vertical net, rather imperfectly braided, all the way to the ground where it breaks and sparkles into brilliant needles.

Each of its forms has its particular allure and corresponds to a particular patter. Together they share the intensity of a complex mechanism 
as precise as it is dangerous, like a steam-powered clock whose spring is wound by the force of the precipitation.

The ringing on the ground of the vertical trickles, the glug-glug of the gutters, the miniscule strikes of the gong multiply and resonate all at once in a concert without monotony, and not without a certain delicacy.

Once the spring unwinds itself certain wheels go on turning for a while, more and more slowly, until the whole mechanism comes to a stop. It all vanishes with the sun: when it finally reappears, the brilliant apparatus evaporates. It has rained.
 

Translated from the French

 

chickadee in April rain

Photo by J. Harrington

Rain replenishes our fresh water streams, rivers, ponds and wetlands. Without rain, many frogs and fishes would lose their homes. Rain doesn't seem to bother chickadees. If rain is good enough for chickadees and trout and plants need rain and we need plants and Water Is Life, it's entirely likely that it's my attitude that has been all wet and needs to get rained out!

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Making Minnesota home #phenology

Today, the Yellow Goat's Beard (Tragopogon dubius) has come into bloom. We've been sprinkled on a few times, but not even a real shower has fallen yet. We're noticing that trees that are fully leafed-out appear much more restless, more often, than Winter-bare branches. Unaccustomed as we are to actually chilling out and enjoying a lazy day, we're going to take a crack at that this afternoon since we don't want to do yard work in the rain and aren't really in the mood to do much around the house.

yellow goat'sbeard in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

We've almost finished reading the prose poems in Thomas R. Smith's Windy Day at Kabekona. We've taken a couple of his classes at The Loft Literary Center and both enjoyed and learned from them. Somehow, we missed his prose poetry writings until recently. As we read the blurbs on the back cover of Windy Day, we discovered another acknowledged master of the prose poem, Nin Andrews. Looks like we may have to get our hands on one or more of her volumes to add to our collection of prose poetry. We note that we've come to particularly associate the prose poem with our adopted state of Minnesota, thanks to its creation by such native or naturalized Minnesotans as Smith, Robert Bly, Louis Jenkins, and Julie Gard.

As we've proceeded with our readings in Creating Minnesota, a History from the Inside Out, we've discovered a similarity we share with its author, Annette Atkins. She's from South Dakota, and finds herself more comfortable and at home in the western, open biome of Minnesota than in the deciduous or boreal woods. We relate our identification with lands near the Atlantic Ocean and the ocean's openness with Minnesota's prairie, but we also have the benefit of having spent time in New England's North Woods in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Perhaps that's why we may actually be more Minnesotan than we realize, according to Atkins. She writes: "It's this passion, this visceral connection to trees and water, that informs Minnesota history, identity, and life. It's the impulse that makes Minnesotans Minnesotans." We admit to a visceral connection to trees and water, although our water has salt in it and our preferred trees tend to grow on mountains or in beach sand, but we fit Atkins' version of Minnesota impulse better than we ever will attain "Minnesota Nice."

A HOMEMADE WORLD

We all live in one, Huxley said.
Look around, and it's here,
individual as a signature.
How have you built your world?

Many people salvage bricks
from their childhood homes.
They nail the old framed
prejudices above the fireplace.

They can't see out their windows
because they've recycled the smoked
glass of fear.  Even their
books keep out light.

If you build with only
the things you've made your own,
a friendliness toward living
warms you like a patchwork quilt.

If you build your world-house
with toxic cast-offs, there's some
poison everywhere you turn.
And if you build your country

with bombs and oil instead of
wheat and schools--you can't help it,
you'll just go on electing
Disaster as your president.

--from The Foot of the Rainbow, Red Dragonfly Press, copyright 2010 Thomas R. Smith
(original appearance:  Pemmican 2010, www.pemmicanpress.com)

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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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Celebrating Spring and poetry in April

April, as you know, is:

You may not know that poetry is and has been written by poets in such a wide variety of forms, themes and levels of accessibility that everyone should be able to find poems they enjoy. This judgement is based on having written daily posts for My Minnesota over the past three years and finding a different poem to match each day's theme (with few duplicates). Minnesota is home to many wonderful poets and bookshops friendly to poetry. We'll soon share a list of those we've read and shops we've frequented. Meanwhile, in case you want to start with a broader overview of poems and poets and online resources, here are some options:

• The Poetry Foundation


• Academy of American Poets


• Coursera's upcoming and free MOOC on Modern Poetry


• 60 Poets You Could Be Reading to Celebrate National Poetry Month


• Five Nature Poets


• Minnesota poetry resources and poets

You may even come to enjoy poetry written in prose like this:

Prose Poem ("The morning coffee.")

By Ron Padgett

The morning coffee. I'm not sure why I drink it. Maybe it's the ritual
of the cup, the spoon, the hot water, the milk, and the little heap of
brown grit, the way they come together to form a nail I can hang the
day on. It's something to do between being asleep and being awake.
Surely there's something better to do, though, than to drink a cup of
instant coffee. Such as meditate? About what? About having a cup of
coffee. A cup of coffee whose first drink is too hot and whose last drink
is too cool, but whose many in-between drinks are, like Baby Bear's por-
ridge, just right. Papa Bear looks disgruntled. He removes his spectacles
and swivels his eyes onto the cup that sits before Baby Bear, and then,
after a discrete cough, reaches over and picks it up. Baby Bear doesn't
understand this disruption of the morning routine. Papa Bear brings
the cup close to his face and peers at it intently. The cup shatters in his
paw, explodes actually, sending fragments and brown liquid all over the
room. In a way it's good that Mama Bear isn't there. Better that she rest
in her grave beyond the garden, unaware of what has happened to the
world.

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Local poetry at Common Good Books

I was in "The Cities" the other day to get the main ingredients for a special Mother's Day dinner and to meet my Better Half for coffee at Nina's. In between ingredients at Coastal Sea Food and coffee, I stopped in at Common Good Books [CGB] to see what was new and exciting. Even if I don't always buy anything, I feel better if I've at least looked around and presented myself with the opportunity to do so. Then it becomes a matter of choice rather than deprivation.

Several years ago, when CGB was still located downstairs from Nina's, I started importuning the staff with requests to set up a local poetry section. From my perspective, this became an even more urgent matter after Northern Lights Books in Canal Park closed. Northern Lights used to have a wonderful selection of northern and other Minnesota poets such as Joe Johnson, Sheila Packa and Joyce Sutphen. They also had selection of Louis Jenkins works that prompted a special trip so I could feed my addiction to his prose poems. Anyhow, Northern Lights closed, CGB couldn't find time, or space, or whatever, for a local poetry section, despite having one of the better poetry selections around (although SubText Books, which took over CGB's space below Nina's,  gives them a run for the money) and I was frustrated. Then, when I stopped in last week, look what I discovered!

Local Poetry section at Common Good Books

Photo by J. Harrington

The two books in the lower left corner are Louis Jenkins', the gray one in the middle is Barton Sutter's, Naming the Stars was written by Joyce Sutphen, our current poet laureate. Right under the "Local Poetry" sign is one of Robert Bly's volumes. He was Minnesota's original poet laureate. John Berryman taught at the University of Minnesota. If you've previously stopped by My Minnesota, you may have noticed that I'm strongly in favor of local foods, local economies, and local culture. Minnesota is extremely fortunate to have had, and continue to have, a number of extremely talented poets writing here or about here.  My pestering CGB staff was motivated by my growing interest in bioregionalism and the fact that, as often as not, I'd just as soon explore a new local poet as anyone else. when poetry is primarily arranged alphabetically, by author, finding local talent becomes a real challenge. Our literary community warrants all the support it can get so I'm pleased all out of proportion that CGB has highlighted some of our local poets and poetry and look forward to visiting (and book buying) in the future. Thank you CGB!

Wanting Sumptuous Heavens

By Robert Bly 

No one grumbles among the oyster clans,

And lobsters play their bone guitars all summer.

Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want

Heaven to be, and God to come, again.

There is no end to our grumbling; we want

Comfortable earth and sumptuous Heaven.

But the heron standing on one leg in the bog

Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.

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Transitions

Welcome. Thanks for visiting. Today has turned windy, cool and wet with some much-needed rain. The local trees are starting to look windblown and tattered. Leaves are beginning to pile up along roadsides and in the ditches. Pumpkins are beginning to show up on porches and steps. Autumn's transition seems underway and I'm getting excited about it.

rain clouds                © harrington

We went in to St. Paul this morning to take care of some business related to retiring and run some errands. Since we were almost in the neighborhood, we swung by Common Good Books, G. Keillor, prop. I went in to pick up a copy of the 2014 Poet's Market. I discovered that Will o' the Wisp Books has published Louis Jenkins Tin Flag, a volume of new and selected poems, including all those from Nice Fish (the play, not the volume of poetry). A copy is now residing in my "to be read" pile. I'm not giving up on my involvement with green building and sustainable development, but my retirement is going to focus more on writing and photography than my working career has allowed time for. That includes trying harder to prepare submissions and trying to get published. As part of this strategy, I've taken on the role of lead blogger and photographer for a different blog, the USGBC-MN chapter's Dynamic Green Home. I'm on the chapter's board and we're working with the Greater Frogtown Community Development Corporation to help make greener their rehabilitation of this house by contributing the interior painting and flooring refinishing and landscaping and a rain garden in the yard. Here's a different, and almost too true to be humorous, perspective on Home:

Dynamic Green Home #1    © harrington

Home Again, Home Again

By Marilyn L. Taylor

The children are back, the children are back—

They’ve come to take refuge, exhale and unpack;

The marriage has faltered, the job has gone bad,

Come open the door for them, Mother and Dad.

The city apartment is leaky and cold,

The landlord lascivious, greedy and old—

The mattress is lumpy, the oven’s encrusted,

The freezer, the fan, and the toilet have rusted.

The company caved, the boss went broke,

The job and the love affair, all up in smoke.

The anguish of loneliness comes as a shock—

O heart in the doldrums, O heart in hock.

And so they return with their piles of possessions,

Their terrified cats and their mournful expressions,

Reclaiming the bedrooms they had in their teens,

Clean towels, warm comforter, glass figurines.

Downstairs in the kitchen the father and mother

Don’t say a word, but they look at each other

As down from the hill comes Jill, comes Jack.

The children are back. The children are back.

Thanks for listening. Come again when you can. Rants, raves and reflections served here daily.

Dovetailing east and (mid)west

© harrington

Welcome. Thanks for stopping by. The buildings in the picture have clearly been around for awhile. Just as clearly, either they've been well cared for or they're being restored. They have character and help create a sense of place. I'm hoping that, sometime this Summer, I get a chance to go inside one or both. Have you ever heard of wabi-sabi? It's a philosophy and aesthetic based on beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete." Do you think these buildings qualify? I do. As an antidote to the constant barrage of "new and improved," wabi-sabi provides a sense of the real. It reminds me of the New England philosophy of "use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without" which may have been learned from my grandmother and my mother who learned it during the Depression, WW II, and the Korean conflict (a "police action" rather than a war). I also wonder if the fact that there ore two buildings reflects the prudence of someone who learned "if you find something that you really, really like, get another one before they stop making them." Now old isn't always best, although as I continue to age I find more often than not older is better. But, many of the things we've had and failed to take care of may be irreplaceable. Here's an example of not so benign neglect: 

© harrington

Look at those dovetail corners. How many builders/carpenters today do you think know how to do that? I'm not sure if this outbuilding is restorable. I wonder if the lumber could be put to use in furniture or flooring by someone who knew what they were doing. It just doesn't seem right to let pieces of Minnesota's history rot in place. Especially when it has inspired poets like Jim Johnson to write prose poems that accompany the photos of Marlene Wisuri and J.C. Hendricks in a book titled Dovetailed Corners. Here's a sample:

The barn roof collapsed in the middle. Tired of standing alone in the field against the odds-on popple trees, it just sat down. The logs of the one wall need time to consider. Soon they will be what they once were. Like you. In the middle of your life you came back to where you came from. Stopped the car, got out, and walked through the balsam trees. There were but two ruts where the grasses high-centered. Eventually you came to a field. In the middle of the field, so far back in the woods, so smack dab in the middle of this great continent that you might as well say in the middle of this world, now there you are. The barn roof collapsed in the middle.

I hope you enjoyed Jim's poem. Come again when you can. Rants, raves and reflections served here daily.

S'no time like now

© harrington

Here we are again. Thanks for visiting. It's midway through National Poetry Month. Time for Minnesota's first poet laureate, Robert Bly. He has addressed the question of nature poetry in his Recognizing the Image as a Form of Intelligence in which he writes: “We do feel a gap between ourselves and nature. We can remain in the gap, and let the two worlds fall apart farther and remain separate. Or a human being can reach out with his left hand to the world of human intelligence and with the right hand to the natural world, and touch both at the same time…The power that makes us able to touch both is called ‘imagination’.” This concept makes me think of the science demonstration of electricity passing through our bodies from our finger tips to make our hair stand on end. Bly writes prose poems, among other forms. I am particularly fond of prose poems. In honor of National Poetry Month, the ides of April, and Robert Bly himself, here's an apt prose poem for this season. It's from Reaching Out to the World [White Pine Press].

SNOWED IN AGAIN

    Snow has been falling for three days. The horses stay in the barn. At four I leave the house, sinking to my waist in snow, and push open the door of my writing shack. Snow falls in. At the desk there is a plant in blossom.
   The plant faces the  window where snow sweeps past at forty miles an hour. So the snow and the flowers are a little like each other. In both there is the same receiving, the longing to circle slowly upward or sink down toward the roots. Perhaps the snow and the orangey blossoms are both the same flow, that starts out close to the soil, close to the floor, and needs no commandments, no civilizations, no drawing room lifted on the labor of the claw hammer, but is at home where one or two are present.
    The two people sit quietly near each other, In the storm, millions of years come close behind us. Nothing is lost, nothing is rejected. The body is ready to sing all night, and be entered by whatever wishes to enter the human body singing.

I had been going to write that Bly's poetry is often more mystical than Snyder's. Fortunately, I stopped before a made a fool of myself. Between them, Bly and Snyder probably have covered the poetics of mysticism, or the mysticism of poetry, from most conceivable, and several inconceivable, angles. If you think SNOWED IN AGAIN misses any of Snyder's new nature poetry points, please comment and note which point or points you think were missed. I think he nailed it, but I'm obviously biased. Thanks for listening, Come again when you can, Rants, raves and reflections served here daily.

Fishing for Spring

© harrington

Hi! Thanks for visiting. For those of you who, like me, may have forgotten what fair weather looks like, the photo is a picture of blue sky. Feel free to let me know if you need a high quality version suitable for framing, hanging on the wall and making sacrifices to, so that it may someday return to Minnesota. Yesterday I noticed that the willows are turning more golden, the local poplars are starting to loosen their buds winter tightness and develop the beginning of leaves. That's good because yesterday was the opening of Minnesota's stream trout season, which is also supposed to be a sign of Spring. You do realize, don't you, that, if this were March, we'd be right on schedule, except for the trout fishing? Enough of this weather talk. Another highlight of this weekend were the Minnesota Book awards. The poetry winner was Patricia Kirkpatrick for “Odessa” which, based on reviews, explores the existence of self after brain surgery to remove cancer. Congratulations to each of the winners. For an alternative perspective on self, let's see what can be found in John Voelker's/Robert Traver's Testament of a Fisherman. Under his pen name, Voelker wrote this in the mid-1960's. (He's also the author of Anatomy of a Murder.) He was from Michigan, and I can find no direct linkage between him and My Minnesota except that many of my fellow Minnesotans fly fish and I'm met quite a few who share the sentiments expressed in the following (prose) poetry. In honor of Spring's stream trout opener in Minnesota:

Testament of a Fisherman

"I fish because I love to; because I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful,
and hate the environs where crowds of people are found, which are invariably ugly; because of all the
television commercials, cocktail parties and assorted social posturing I thus escape; because, in a world
where most men spend their lives doing things they hate, my fishing is at once an endless source of
delight and an act of small rebellion; because trout do not lie or cheat and cannot be bought or bribed or
impressed by power, but respond only to quietude and humility and endless patience; because I suspect
that men are going along this way for the last time, and I for one don’t want to waste the trip; because
mercifully there are no telephones on fishing waters; because only in the woods can I find solitude without
loneliness; because bourbon out of an old tin cup tastes better out there; because maybe someday I will
catch a mermaid; and, finally, not because I regard fishing as being so terribly important but because I
suspect that so many other concerns of men are equally unimportant -- and not nearly so much fun"

Robert Traver/John Voelker

Thanks for listening. Come again when you can. Rants, raves and reflections served here daily.