Miriam Levine

Poets Read at Occupy Boston

2011-10-28T07:20:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, Oct. 27, in Dewey Square, Boston, Don McLagan tries to keep his poems dry.

Rain picks up. People begin to gather for the reading.

It was my turn. I read "Buying Flowers," a poem from the T'ang Dynasty, which speaks for the poor man in the "emperor's city." As I read this 8th century poem, I felt part of a cycle of voices. Rain spotted the page.

Buying Flowers

Late spring in this emperor’s city,

horses and carts clattering past:

it’s peony season on the avenues

and the people stream out to buy.

They won’t be this cheap for long.

At these prices, anyone can buy.

Showing five delicate whites amid

hundreds of huge luminous reds,

they rig canopies to shelter them

and bamboo screens to shield them,

sprinkle them, stand them in mud,

keeping their color rich and fresh.

Families come back day after day:

people just can’t shake their spell.

Happening by the flower markets,

an old man from a farm somewhere

gazes down and sighs to himself,

a sight no one here could fathom:

a single clutch of bottomless color

sells for taxes on ten village farms.

Po Chu-i (772-846 C.E.)

Translated from the Chinese by David Hinton

J. took the photo. Po Chu-i's poem set in spring, in the imperial city, fits the fall day in Boston. That red umbrella is a rain-spotted peony, and the folder in my hand a big petal. Let's stop there before metaphors taken too far become absurd.

Out

2011-10-07T13:25:00.000-07:00

It was marvelous to see this still life in a private apartment near Harvard Square. Someone arranged it for the passerby, kept the shade up. I wonder what happens at night. I wonder whether the still life is lit then.

Duck, horse, church, red tassel, sage, shoebox, carrousel riders but no carrousel. What else is there? What can you see? Not the absent person. Do you make altar-like arrangements like this one?

On another day, this time at the pond: snarled, useless fishing line and fly caught the light.

Fretted leaves make shadows.

October days: I want to be out, in them.

Loitering with Intent

2011-09-05T06:49:00.000-07:00

Though loitering with intent, not to do mischief, while reading you, off and on, in the nowhere of the blogosphere, I haven't blogged much. Summer, storms--of various kinds--and physical problems have cut short my time at the computer, but now there are fresh pictures, and a little about Robert Walser's Microscripts.

Above: black elderberry--I think--at the pond, tiny figures in the distance, just the right proportion.

Hard-boiled? The eggs are so carefully placed. Discarded from someone's meal?

Delicate chance mold, mushrooms breaking down all right and finding another form. Words that might apply to Robert Walser's life.

Walser sometimes shrunk his writing to tiny letters and marks, which for a time was believed to be code. He wrote "Swine," an essay now included in Microscripts, published by New Directions, on a slip of paper measuring approximately 3 inches by 2 1/2 inches. Walser's tone disarms with seeming inconsequence. His tone charms me:

A person can be swinish in matters of love and might even succeed in justifying himself to a certain extent. In my opinion, various possibilities would appear to exist with regard to swinishness, etc. Someone might happen to look like a person who appears to be a swine, and all the while he is at bottom perhaps fairly upstanding. One can say with a rather large degree of certainty that men seem to possess a greater predisposition and talent for swinishness than women, who of course are now and then capable of achieving excellence in this regard.

Walser's charm is sly: "achieving excellence " in swinishness. I'll cop to that.

What are you up to? Let me know, please.

Microgreens

2011-07-27T13:09:00.001-07:00

Forget about macro. Try working small. There are daikon radish in the green pot and cress in the muffin tins. I punched holes in the muffin tin with an ice pick--easy. Water must drain. Isn't that an enormous ash tray?! Repurposing--awful word--is satisfying.

Fiona Hill's book, "Microgreens," is my guide, and already I've tasted a cress leaf, a primary one, but will be patient and wait until the secondary leaves come in.

Though I like working small, I don't want to shrink. My friend R., who has been lifting weights for years, is doing well at eighty! I've begun to lift at a local class and like it. I'm working with small weights, a present from J., They are red, my color.

What are you growing?

Wedding Surprise

2011-07-20T07:01:00.000-07:00

'Keep it fresh', someone once said about writing poetry, yet "keep" implies control. How to live a fresh life? Maybe wander a bit and do nothing; though, as for exercise, I need routine, which can be be reassuring but sometimes dull. Sunday I went out for what I thought would be a routine walk, round and round on a brick path, and found a wedding party assembled for photographs. I wish I had gotten a shot of the red fans the bridesmaids carried but it was difficult. I didn't want to intrude. The couple was striking.

There was break-away action.

How do you break up the routine? Or do you?

Back Home Up North

2011-07-10T08:38:00.000-07:00

It's taken a while to settle in, get my bearings and begin writing again. I've missed connecting with you. I'm glad to be back. North is still home. North is familiar glossy black sugar-eating ants rather than Florida's red fire ants. They sting. A few black crazy ants dance if you get too close and do not sting.

I feel at home when I take the lid off the compost pile and see this piece of disintegrating fabric. How long will it take for those embroidered flowers to disappear?

Someone on my block has put out books-- for the taking. There were no takers, not before rain soaked the books, certainly not after. None of the books interested me--pop, pulp, poor.

The next morning some of the books ended up in the gutter. Teenage marauders?

Small ruins are easy to take.

Tell me how you get your bearings.

Exposure

2011-06-19T17:45:00.000-07:00

In a few days I'll be leaving South Beach and wanted a few pictures to remind me of the view. Twilight today: a view I'd never see without my little camera.

It's been a quiet day. Scorching weather at first. J. and I closed ourselves in. Air conditioning on. Simple Father's Day lunch. For post Bloom's Day, between the first course and the main, we read passages from Joyce's Ulysses out loud. Short passages, stumbling here and there. I like the words Joyce gives to Simon Dedalus: ". . . that will open her eyes as wide as a gate. I'll tickle his catastrophe, believe you me." Smiling we finished our lunch and talked about other things.

The weather changed. Rain at last. The storm blew out. Clear air. Brilliant sunset. How are you all? I've been caught up with packing and sorting and haven't had time to check in.

Baudelaire Addresses Hair and Lovers

2011-06-08T18:01:00.000-07:00

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

Some of us write actual letters to powerful people, hoping against hope to convince them to do the right thing. The formal terms of address are sources for irony: "Your Honor" for the dishonorable; "Your Majesty" for the non-majestic nebbish; "Your Holiness" for the unholy; "Your Eminence" for the fallen; "Your Grace" for the klutz.

I prefer Baudelaire's address to hair: "Ecstatic fleece"; "Take me, tousled current"; "vault of shadows." ("Head of Hair," translated by Richard Howard, Everyman Pocket Library.) Baudelaire's 'terms' are authentic. Outdoing himself, he addresses his lovers: "salutary leech"; "My Queen of Sins"; "Sublime disgrace"; "slattern deity;" "lazy beast"; "Dear Demon."

Nothing twittering here. His poems have what Elizabeth Bishop valued in writing: Accuracy, Spontaneity, Mystery. (Capital letters and Italics hers.) She was a fan of this wicked poet.

Wild Vine in Art Deco Land

2011-06-02T17:13:00.000-07:00

The tree strip--in this part of Florida they call it a "swale"--is parched; a hot wind raises dust, yet a volunteer vine zooms across a weedy neglected patch in front of a boarded up building.

Will you help me identify the vine. Watermelon?

The growing tip has felt its way to chain link. Do you see the tendrils? I wish it would rain. The vine would grow even more. Can you imagine the chain link covered with green?

So Few of Us Then

2011-05-26T08:35:00.000-07:00

'Christianity was a death cult,' a friend said after she had seen the catacombs in Rome. I thought of her words as J. and I left the theater after seeing The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a film about the prehistoric drawings on the walls of the Cave Chauvet. 'It's not about death,' I said. 'All about life.'

'Energy,' J. said.

While I'm cautious about idealizing the life and work of Aurignacian and earlier people, and most attempts to re-enact and revive the past--remember Leni Riefenstahl--the work of our ancestors fascinates and awes. There were so few of us then.

At Chauvet. The legs of the bison are also the legs of the woman. We see her from the vulva down. (Thanks to S.L. for posting this photo.)

The tiny figurine, carved from wooly mammoth tusk, found in a cave in southwestern Germany, is 35-40 thousand years old. There's a small loop at the very top through which a string could be threaded. The figurine may have been worn as an amulet. (A flute carved from a vulture's bone was found near this figurine. I couldn't find a photo of the flute.)

Figurines from the Grimaldi Caves, often called Venuses.

The horses at Chauvet, 32-33 thousand years old, as is the hand in the top photo, also at Chauvet.

And these--can you see the wooly mammoth on the right? I hope you get a chance to see "The Cave of Dreams" and to read such books as Preshistoric Art by Randall White.

Our Species & the Scent of Figs

2011-05-23T07:20:00.000-07:00

Monday morning. The beach is overwhelmed by trash, mostly plastic. Weekend, beach-party trashers were here. I did not photograph the litter. If I had I would have had to look at it more closely. Instead I looked east and walked on, but for a moment I thought: This place needs a swarm of eco-prophets to patrol the beach. Never mind, 'Beware the end of days,' rather, 'Beware drowning everything in trash.' Mind almost rinsed clear, I watched a huge tractor plow under seaweed and garbage. Near South Point the tractor stopped. Coming abreast of the tractor I made the mistake of looking at the driver in his high seat. His bulk filled the cab. He was enormously fat. "It's almost over," I said to myself, "our species and this planet." The thought made me smile.

At South Point Park there were more birds than people, the human figure small in relation to water and sky--the right proportion.

Without planning my route I headed home and found myself in front of a clump of fig trees I had found weeks ago. There hasn't been much rain. The figs are unripe still, yet the broken fig gave off a subtle perfume--depth without musk, new green, and pale yellow honey. Untended, the fig trees still flourish.

Tropical

2011-05-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

South Beach is tropical--the same longitude as Vietnam. In May the temperature reaches the nineties. It's a common notion that life in the tropics slows down as the temperature rises. Human life may slow down. People may stroll rather than race--stroll with their parasols. You see them here. While the human pace slows, plants, compared to those up north, seem to riot and bolt. The passion vine races, poinciana speeds, palms shoot up. It's wild. The plants could be running on Cuban coffee. If I drank it I'd be jumping out of my skin. For me: green tea, a parasol, and a willingness to stroll, though I don't stroll easily. I've lived up north for years, where people race and trees need a hundred years to reach their full height.

Post Office Pleasure

2011-05-14T13:44:00.000-07:00

A child plays at the fountain inside the United States Post Office on 13th Street in South Beach, where I like to buy stamps. If I time it right, there's not much of a line and I can speak with an actual person. FedEx and UPS have been useful but I don't want to give up the post office. The writer Zadie Smith called people like me and herself, '1.0 people.'

On the ceiling above the fountain the light makes a lessor sun. The painted-on stars shine.

Do you send actual letters? Do you go to the post office? I confess: I go less and less. This morning I was glad I dropped mail into the post office slot.

Fine Morning

2011-05-11T09:47:00.000-07:00

It was good to go out this morning after a difficult time, walk to Provence, a cafe in South Beach, drink a coffee and eat a brioche before the place filled up. Province is a good cafe. (Forget about pricey "Paul" on Lincoln Road.)

Travelers from Germany scanned the menu.

From toothsome pleasure at Provence, I walked on to bookish pleasure at the library and checked out the 18th century, Chinese novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, which I would not have chosen if it weren't for my reading group friends. The title of the first chapter: "In which Chen Shih-yin meets the Stone of Spiritual Understanding."

The South Beach Local went down Washington Avenue, the elegant man in the red cap among us.

Please tell me what you are reading. What did you see today that held your interest?

Talking to Strangers

2011-04-29T13:45:00.000-07:00

Never talk to strangers we're told. If, while you're out, on foot, and a stranger stops his or her "vehicle" and asks you to come closer, don't! I'm, of course, no longer a child, though child-size. In northern New England, where I visited last week, I went out on the unexpectedly warm morning the day before Easter and walked down a dirt road, mountains in the distance, water rushing in the ditches. Small daisy-like yellow wildflowers--not sure what they were--had opened: all flower, no leaf. (Camera broken so no photo.) Happily I poked along--literally: I had picked up a walking stick. Down the steep dirt road I went and, when the road petered out, turned back, making my way to the paved road.

Though there wasn't much traffic I walked facing oncoming cars and made sure my long red scarf was visible. On the side of the road I picked up a discarded pale purple shopping bag in good condition. I'll use this, I thought, stick in one hand, empty holiday bag in the other. A voice called, 'Isn't it a beautiful morning!' Startled I looked to my right and saw a woman who had stopped her SUV in the middle of the road. Her large, round, bright face came at me from the driver-side window. A girl, most likely her daughter, sat in the passenger's seat, her head down.

'Yes,' I answered. 'Beautiful.'

'Are you going to church?' she asked.

'No,' I said in a perfectly even voice.

'I have something for you,' she said. Her smile was sunny and intense.

Curious, I went closer. She held out a pen and a card encased in plastic. Her serious daughter never looked up. The driver's eyes lit up: big, round, blue. I took the pen.

The woman waved and drove off. I held the pen and read the message in shades of blue. "Welcome Friend!" Welcome printed five times in differently sized fonts. At the bottom of the card: "We're blessed because you're here." On the reverse side were verses from the New Testament, mostly from the Book of John, and sayings: "God loves you!" followed by "We all feel the terrible effects of sin in our lives." I looked at the lovely pale blue mountains in the distance. A woodpecker tapped, tapped again. Wandering again I walked on, the violet bag on my arm.

The blue pen on the kitchen counter in South Beach where I'm typing is still sealed in plastic. Through the plastic I can make out the fine print circling the bottom of the pen: John 14:6. The verse appears in full on the card: "Jesus told him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.'" I don't break the seal.

Rumi and Agave: "Safe from Virtue and Vice"

2011-04-17T11:01:00.000-07:00

A huge agave plant sends up a towering tree-like stem, and flower in which a bird perches. The Persian poet, Rumi, sends us this poem:

A Just-Finishing Candle

A candle is made to become entirely flame.

In that annihilating moment

it has no shadow.

It is nothing but a tongue of light

describing a refuge.

Look at this

just-finishing candle stub

as someone who is finally safe

from virtue and vice,

the pride and the shame

we claim from those.

Public Places

2011-04-05T17:15:00.000-07:00

The public park is full after school. After-school goes on until dark. These boys filled the bench. After I took the shot, a boy said, 'Isn't that against the law?' 'Not in a public place,' I answered, identifying myself as a writer and blogger. 'Freedom of the press,' another boy said. We talked for a while about public and private. 'It would be against the law if I took your picture in a private place without your permission,' I said. They asked me about taking pictures of famous people. They didn't express any interest in being famous themselves and weren't interested in seeing the picture of themselves. They wanted to discuss ideas.

I like public pleasures--frangipani, sea grape, palm, park benches, beaches open to all, though I wish my fellow citizens would not litter the beach. These boys should have access to fine public schools, public universities. They have access to the park, to flowers, to the ocean, to a first-rate swimming pool, and tennis courts--all public.

Family

2011-03-29T07:00:00.001-07:00

Related life forms from the Eukarya domain to which humans belong

Love, death, flora, fauna, self, mother, father, child, sister, brother, pleasure, etc., etc., We all have our themes and interests. We make distinctions. Certain things interest us, other do not. 'I am not interested in death, not even my own,' Colette famously said.

Editors also have preferences. Some have mission statements. The 21st century has not so far been a time for anything as grand as a manifesto, but there are mission statements and explicitly stated editorial policies about content. One from the American Poetry Journal states, "not interested in: poems about family members; poems about the poet; the poem; or writing a poem; or poems with an overabundant 'I.'" (Italics theirs.) Their mission does not interest me. I love, for instance, the big I-am of Whitman's "Song of Myself," and the first person voice of Bishop's "In the Waiting Room."

The idea of family--all kinds of families--fascinates me. According to scientist E.O. Wilson, writing in The Future of Life, biologists now divide life into three domains "on the basis of DNA sequences and cell structure." Humans belong to the Eukarya, a vast domain, which I like to think of as family. The Eukarya, includes "the single-celled protists or 'protozoans,' the fungi, and all of the animals." Plants, too.

Dear Readers, dear Eukarians: what fascinates you?

Friends in the Surf

2011-03-15T15:06:00.000-07:00

There were few people on the beach this morning and nothing to block my far off view of two young women lying in the surf. The caution flags flew from the lifeguard station, and there were Portuguese man-of-wars all along the beach, but these friends had found a safe place. As I reached them, I heard them talking compatibly. They lay on their stomachs; the ocean washed over them. The water was cold, the sun warm. I could hear their light voices for a minute or two after I had passed them, an easy back and forth in the dissolving foam, the waves played out. I couldn't hear much of what they were saying. It didn't matter. The rhythm and sound of friendship stayed with me as I walked north.

Signs

2011-02-28T17:32:00.000-08:00

A sign nailed to the lifeguard station explains the meaning of the flags. The yellow stands for "moderate surf conditions"; "exercise caution." Moderate is somewhere between calm and rough. The purple flag means: "dangerous marine life." Here the danger is mostly in the sting of the Portuguese man of war. The flags do not need much interpretation, except perhaps to reflect on "moderate," as you wade into the surf and feel the waves slap and the tide pull.

There are other objects that I elevate to "signs," a mess of keys in the sink, for instance.

Asparagus fern--fresh green against pink.

And this green doorway with its single plant.

If I hadn't seen the wedding party I might have taken these bouquets for offerings to the ocean.

Keys, green plants placed at entrances, bouquets trailing ribbons & gauzy fabric, a cargo ship coming in. How do I read these things? I read them in a hopeful mood.

Chunky Hermes

2011-02-22T15:44:00.000-08:00

The other night at dinner J. and I told our friends about the scantily clad man we had seen on Lincoln Road. "Hermes," I had said to J. and then ran to catch up with the man in the red bathing suit. I had wanted to to get a closer look at his helmet and shoes, which reminded me of the wing-bearing hat and sandals in which Hermes is always depicted. I had wanted to see him from the front. The Hermes on Lincoln Road goes to the gym and rides a bike. He had had to dismount because of the shopping and strolling crowd.

We poured more wine and went on talking about the man with the bike. 'You know about those birds who always follow an old flight path even though almost every thing below has changed, even though planes, towers block the way?' I asked. Our friends nodded yes. Lincoln Road used to be quiet. There had been few restaurants, almost no brand-name shops, no crowds. It was common to see a person undressed for the beach, whizzing by on a skate board or bike. 'The man in the helmet was like those birds,' I said. He had blundered into a crowd. The beach is just a few blocks away. Before Lincoln Road had become a shop-and-eat mall, where people wore street clothes, there hadn't been such a sharp distinction between beach and street. It was lovely then when in the long afternoon Lincoln Road was almost deserted.

'He's an exhibitionist,' J. said. He went there to be seen.

'His face was tense,' I said, and thought, Exhibitionists should at least smile as they preen. A close-mouthed smile would do. In the photo at the bottom he looks imperious, but mostly he looked tense, ill at ease, and angry.

I could have tried to speak to him. Photographer friends I admire speak to their subjects and quote them. They have a moral and ethical position: they share power, so to speak, and allow another's point of view. Timidity may have stopped me. Timidity and his speed. I'm a poet who's on Whitman's side when he writes: "I am afoot with my vision." I like to imagine, envision, eavesdrop, spy. Usually I empathize. About the man in red--brief red--already other interpretations occur to me. Isn't that what we do: interpret?

(From Wiki: Ancient Anglo-Saxon law punished eavesdroppers, who skulked in the eavesdrop of another's home, with a fine; the eavesdropper was also sometimes called the eavesdrop. Eavesdrop also means a small low visibility hole near the entrance to a building (generally under the eaves) which would allow the occupants to listen in on the conversation of people awaiting admission to the house. Typically this would allow the occupant to be prepared for unfriendly visitors.)

Rites of Friendship

2011-02-14T14:32:00.000-08:00

Roland Barthes has a graceful, original view of friendship. In his 'autobiography' he writes about himself in the third person, which I believe allows him an insouciant distance and the appearance of objectivity:

Just as we decompose the odor of violets or the taste of tea, each so particular, so inimitable, so ineffable, into several elements whose subtle combination produces the entire identity of the substance, so he realized that the identity of each friend, which made that friend lovable, was based upon a delicately proportioned and henceforth absolutely original combination of tiny characteristics organized in fugitive scenes, from day to day. Thus each friend deployed in his presence the brilliant staging of his personality.

. . . he liked to abide by the minor rites of friendship to celebrate with a friend the release from a task, the solving of a problem: the celebration improves upon the event, adds to it an unnecessary addition, a perverse pleasure.

By "perverse" I believe he means "surprising" rather than "kinky." What were these "minor rites of friendship"? His must have included food and drink: he was French. What else: cigars? Do you celebrate rites of friendship? Tell me about them, please. As for me, I'm all for celebrating, with a friend or myself, "the release from a task, the solving of a problem." Turning the trick on work by following it with pleasure--light, graceful pleasure. When I think this way, work itself becomes less arduous, less threatening. I imagine Barthes across the table from a friend who "deployed in his presence the brilliant staging of his personality."

Out Until Dark

2011-02-02T05:37:00.000-08:00

It was freedom to walk away from my desk--work and worries--and go out in the middle of the afternoon while there was still plenty of light. These trees, one on each side of the entrance of a building on Lenox, grow full in unobstructed light, fill the scrappy front yard, and shade the worn facade. The woman in a pink sari came home.

I went on to the beach and walked north at low tide. Yellow flags at the lifeguard stations signaled rough water, danger, rip tide; purple flags signaled more danger from men of war and jelly fish. I picked my way. The surf was cold.

Feet back in Crocs, I walked west and bought a loaf of bread, west again to the thrift shop, where I bought forks. By the time I got to Flamingo Park, the lights were on. Five thirty, school night, parents, mostly mothers out with their children, people in motion laying out dinner.

The lights shone brighter. I watched children play soccer. By the time I got home it was dark, new moon invisible.

Fashion Shoot Backside

2011-01-24T06:59:00.001-08:00

In this Richard Avedon photo, we don't see backsides, not the elephants', not the model's. She's svelte, sylph-like. What was she thinking? Was she allowed to speak? These questions may sound trite to those who know more about fashion photography than I do--I don't know much. When I saw a fashion shoot on Ocean Drive I was shocked: the model was almost completely mute, though I heard her murmur a few words just before she and the crew changed location, crossing the street to the Versace house.

There, near the steps where the designer was murdered, the model relaxed a little, shifting her weight before the shoot continued. She was silent. The tag shows at the striped sweater's back neckline.

While the photographers conferred, she did not speak. Mid-day in hot Florida, dressed for fall in long sleeves, she waited, alone. Plump, scruffy, in short sleeves, clothes rumpled, the photographers worked to get the best shots.

She worked too, obeying, keeping her cool. I wondered about the final shots: would she look powerful and perfect? The goal is to sell a product. I'll take for free the backside tag, hair-shifting breeze, plump belly. Will I be open enough to let my subjects speak? Photographers whose work I admire often record their subjects' words. Others I also admire, shoot living subjects with such empathy that I don't miss the words. Empathy and also the shock of recognition: Arbus shows us herself in her subjects. Do you worry about such things? Do you let your subjects speak?

Playful South Beach

2011-01-17T08:01:00.000-08:00

There are times when the passing scene is playful and language delightful: the two C's in Corn on the Cob, "Friendly John," "Bob's Barricades"--I didn't get a shot of those. Tell me what surprised and delighted you today.

Lawn jockey holding a lamp, cinder blocks, white impatiens, white curlicues: we humans are able and determined to create arrangements.

Seven small, post-like plaster lions stationed on this fence, two more life-size lions near the door.

South Point Park is sculpted, the carved/molded hill a backdrop for shadows in the late afternoon.

The lighthouse-lifeguard station appears through the planted 'wild' area.

Figures on the slant. I didn't tilt my camera. People gather here at sunset.

These three on the hill did not look up at the towering condo.

The Habana is miles from Cuba. Workers have filled the cracks in the facade so the crazed surface appears startling white. (Mostly I've seen crazed surfaces on glazed plates, miniature lines compared to these.) I hope they keep those bold colors. Buildings shift and settle on land that was once a mangrove swamp.

Mail Lady Chrystler

2011-01-12T09:45:00.000-08:00

This morning in SoBe the "Mail Lady" car was parked in front of the 13th Street Post Office, which was built in 1937 during the Great Depression. Henry Morgenthau, Jr., the champion and key planner of Social Security was Secretary of the Treasury.

The U.S. MAIL sign on the dashboard signifies official business. I don't know the Mail Lady's official title. The sign may allow her free parking.

Morgenthau's name and Postmaster James Farley's are carved on a plaque at the front of the building, along with other names and the date, which I take pleasure in repeating--1937--and placing before our year: 2011. Styles change. It's a worn-out truism that appearances deceive. Yet we choose how to appear, how to present ourselves. The Mail Lady presents herself in a red Chrystler: "Mail Lady" in an auto drama starring the car and herself. She's made herself a character and given the character a name. (I don't know her other names.) What was she thinking, if she was thinking? Flaunt it? Look, I made it! Is that what she means? Tell me, what do you think? I was shocked, though I love red.

On the way home I saw this chalk drawing of a truck the rain will wash away.

Relentless Ants, Drifting Clouds

2011-01-06T07:29:00.000-08:00

Hakuin (1685-1768)

This Zen master, I've recently learned, often painted the image of an ant circling a grindstone. Round and round the ant goes. Ants will relentlessly follow an ant track. Repeat, repeat. Relentless repetition: call it obsession; call it despair, call it slavery. Slave masters enforce unrelenting repeated motion. Why when the slave master is dead or no longer in power, do we repeat, repeat, exhausting ourselves? Even a wise person like Hakuin cannot give a pat answer. Instead he exhorts:

An ant goes round and round without rest

Like all beings in the six realms of existence,

Born here and dying there without release,

Now becoming a hungry ghost, then an animal.

If you are searching for freedom from this suffering

You must hear the sound of one hand.

(Not "one hand clapping," the way the line has been translated.)

I wonder whether Hakuin drank tea. I did this morning--some green. Not bad!

Yesterday I shot a picture of an empty decaying house in South Beach. The ants and termites are taking it down. Eating it, undermining it. Are you smiling with me? Are you ant-like today? Are you free? Are you both? I can't do it alone. Ants of the World, Unite. We'll wear away the world together. And unlike ants, watch the clouds drift. They're massing southward, cumulus; low, stratus. Mixed: there's even mackerel-mottled. I grew up, a noodle-eating city girl who seldom looked at the sky. Books and mud-pie pleasures. Years later, the window of my Boston room had a view to the sky. With J. I saw the sky over the Allagash--other skies too. The same sky here in South Beach seems endless--more endless, if there is such a thing--endlessissimo. Venus low and bright at 4: AM. My Crocs squeak on the tile floor. Dust blows in. The little metal table rusts. From the trash shoot on our floor, my lithe neighbor runs barefoot, bare-chested back to his apartment, empty handed.

Dandy, Focus, Joy

2010-12-21T08:18:00.000-08:00

"Banish the will to be dreary," said the designer Dorothy Draper, when she wrote about giving parties. Draper was a dandy. The dandy chooses high style--bella figura. Cut a beautiful figure. In the end, nature triumphs but until it overcomes us completely, twirl, dress up, decorate. Yet let me tell you, I'm not decorating much--a few strings of bright lights--but I'm enjoying gazing at my neighbors' lights, and avoiding what some have called "a false sense of urgency," by staying away from my computer except to check e-mail and work on poems. There's been enough real urgency. You can imagine--the same things that cause urgency in your lives.

I've seen a few friends in the flesh and gazed at their faces and listened to their stories. I watched artist Melissa Shook's video, Kemper and Me, in which she and Kemper, to whom she was once married, talk about theirs lives with remarkable candor. They are honest without being hurtful, a remarkable feat, especially to someone like me who is quick on the trigger. (I mostly show that side of myself to J.--poor J.) I turned off the flash on my camera and set it for long exposures to pick up night light and motion.

Long exposures on modern cameras are short but take in a lot. So do our eyes and so do we if we focus. I can't force joy. It comes when it will. But let me focus! Tell me: what do you wish for?

Nobility and Self Oblivion

2010-12-02T04:38:00.000-08:00

The word "noble" is out of style. "Noble" meaning "honorable." "Noble" meaning "superiority of mind or character." Roland Barthes gives these attributes to his mother and to literature: "Since maman's death, no desire to 'construct' anything--except in writing. Why? Literature = the only region of Nobility (as maman was noble)." I believe him!

Mourning Diary is a record of his mourning for his mother. But this morning I'm also interested in his surprising, idealistic view of literature as the only "region of Nobility." A tremendous claim in these relativistic times. Reading Barthes I feel I return to the idealism of my youth when my teachers, friends and I recoiled from materialism. To Barthes' equation I would add another: Literature = Freedom.

A few weeks ago my friend N. and I were looking at one of her paintings. "The paint takes over," N. said. When paint takes over, the artist is freed from herself. When language takes over, the writer is freed from herself. When artists express the seemingly impossible to express, there is freedom in the work. So today I won't beat a poem to death trying to get it right. Or scrub a pot to an inch of its hard-metal life.

Bumble

2010-11-14T06:44:00.000-08:00

Writing is harder than breaking stones, Yeats wrote. Not first drafts but revising. I've been away, revising. Now it's bliss to walk to the pond and bumble around rocks. The dog pack thinned out. I didn't have to avoid the larger dog gang, people with their dogs, sometimes more than a dozen, chattering, beside themselves with cozy fellow feeling. J. calls them smug, entitled, while I say these suburbanites seem to know little about animals. They like to see dogs frolic in packs on play dates. They call it freedom.

Between rocks and dog gangs, I choose rocks--these from Ice Age glaciers.

In the woods a single chocolate lab ran at me hard, eager to play. I liked him, spoke to him, then went on bumbling toward the sun.

Outlaws

2010-10-27T04:59:00.000-07:00

Does private life exist anymore? In 1960, E.M. Forster thought private life was finished, at least in England. Without wild nature, he believed, there can be no secret life. England's "greenwood" is gone:

There is no forest or fell to escape to today, no cave in which to curl up, no deserted valley for those who wish neither to reform nor corrupt society but to be left alone. People do still escape, one can see them any night at it in the films. But they are gangsters not outlaws, they can dodge civilization because they are part of it. ("Terminal Note" to Maurice, Forster's novel about men loving men.)

This gentle-sounding notion of "wild"--"forest or fell," "cave" with "curl"--reminds me of Duke Senior's appreciation of the Forest of Arden in As You Like It:

And this our life exempt from public haunt
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones and good in every thing.
I would not change it.

I also like to take "wildness" with goodness and shelter--not sermons, though--and walk in woods as close to my town as Concord Center is to Walden. Forster does not write solely about solitary life. His frame of reference is plural: "those who wish," and "outlaws," not outlaw. I believe he was also thinking of shelter with comrades. "Homosexual acts" were a crime in England until the 1960s.

Some people I know, J., for instance, go into the deep wild woods alone and read books like Alone: The Man Who Braved the Vast Pacific--and Won. When I go for my solitary walks, I sometimes "double off" (Thoreau's language) and enter a story I tell myself, a way of changing one to two--no, not quite. Instead, let's say: oneness deepened as well as lessened. "Tell" maybe too strong. It's a place between telling and reverie.

There's no one way to be. But I wish wild kids had not set fire to this tree no matter how interesting the burn pattern.

Secret places, caves, burrows, deserted valleys, forests, Ardens, Edens, brains--please, don't tell.

Wear and Wild

2010-10-21T07:16:00.000-07:00

My work glove split; my thumb poked through. Now I've lost this glove and its mate in the garden, where they are wearing more, like these B. found when digging up a sumac.

B. said she wondered whether she would find a body. No body, no bones, yet right for my kind of Halloween. I lost those gloves years ago. B. and I admired them together--lacy holes, leather thumb dangling, rootlets. I found the label, still intact. The leather was still pliant. After a few days in the house the gloves have stiffened. I'll bury them again.

Some say gardens are tame. Don't believe it! Look closely. The ground hog is digging deep.

A creature has eaten a window-like hole in the pumpkin, carved it, scattered seeds, a wonderfully neat job. My efforts for Halloween will not involve gnawing and digging--no pumpkin carving. Ghosts only in my dreams.

Morris Engel, Photographer

2010-10-15T11:41:00.000-07:00

Morris Engel took wonderful pictures! Here's one, "Coney Island."

When I was out walking in the woods with M.S., I pointed to a rocky ledge. "It's comprehensible," said M. The figures in this photo are comprehensible too, aren't they? Tell me, what do you comprehend?

Poetry Party at The Liberty Hotel

2010-10-05T12:45:00.000-07:00

Please join the Poetry Party at The Liberty Hotel, formerly the Charles Street Jail!

I'll be reading with Richard Hoffman and Kathleen Spivack, open mike to follow.

Thursday, Oct. 14, 6:30 PM, 215 Charles Street

Boston, MA 02114

Thanks to sponsors Harris Gardner of Tapestry of Voices, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, and here's to Liberty!

The grunge of the derelict Jail is gone, but the renovation is too sand-blasted clean. The building will age again; new dirt will stick. Let's help those surfaces build up a patina. Our hands will do it. I plan to have a beer in the bar before the reading. Look for me a little before six.

Here are before and after pictures:

Kathleen Spivack's, "A History of Yearning"

2010-09-30T07:54:00.000-07:00

It's a pleasure to have poet Kathleen Spivack's A History of Yearning in my hands and admire the blurb-less back cover--generous margins, white space, and a black and white photo of the much published author. Her poems have arrived and speak for themselves: lyrical, elegiac, super-sensitive, intelligent.

Among my favorites, "The Path into Night":

Two drawn out

calls of birds

falling in fifths

in late evening

and now the tree frogs

start to throb.

Solitude sinks in

like a blanket, bluish

absence inhaled: skin

a sheen of sadness

finely silver-edged.

If one's whole life

were to be this

solitary would the

true notes

start to sound;

repeated bird song

measuring darkness?

It was also a pleasure to hear Spivack read from this--her just-out book--last Sunday at the Pierre Menard Gallery on Arrow Street in Harvard Square. The event, sponsored by the Grolier Poetry Bookshop, brought out keen listeners.

Kathleen Spivack and Ifeanyi Menkiti, owner of the Grolier, poet, publisher, and professor at Wellesley, warmly commanded and engaged the audience.

Forster's Fruit-Bats

2010-09-24T12:29:00.001-07:00

It's been marvelous to re-read E. M. Forster's novel, A Passage to India. Some people say we read to experience beauty and also to learn how to live.

After I read this passage about fruit-bats--and other things--I felt I could live more peacefully; but, to be true to Forster, only for a moment, before the peaceful mood changed, yet he beautifully describes a moment of acquiescence.

The promontory was covered with lofty trees, and the fruit-bats were unhooking from the boughs and making kissing sounds as they grazed the surface of the tank; hanging upside down all the day, they had grown thirsty. The signs of the contented Indian evening multiplied; frogs on all sides, cow-dung burning eternally; a flock of belated hornbills overhead, looking like winged skeletons as they flapped across the gloaming. There was death in the air, but not sadness; a compromise had been made between destiny and desire, and even the heart of man acquiesced.

Often I don't acquiesce but give up in exasperation. Tell me, when does your heart acquiesce?

The window is open: sparrow chirp gets in, a warm breeze too, but no sounds as evocative and foreign as fruit-bats kissing. Here it's still day. At twilight the crickets will start. My friend, L., said that crickets don't hear each other except when one loses the beat. They hear that one! Then what? I wonder. Do they get the out-of-beat, off-beat cricket back in rhythm?

Innisfree: "Beauty Secrets of the Dead"

2010-09-07T19:33:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Greg McBride, poet editor of Innisfree Poetry Journal for including "Beauty Secrets of the Dead" in the fall 2010 issue. I hope you enjoy my poem as well as the work of other contributors.

Still Life: Garbage

2010-09-01T12:55:00.000-07:00

We compost garbage. "Garbage" meaning "food waste." Rather than wasting, J. and I save, yet if we accumulate garbage in a container in the kitchen before putting it on the compost pile, it attracts ants, fruit flies, etc.--no mouse in the kitchen yet--and gives off a ripe-rotten odor even when covered. J. has solved the problem. Following his lead, I freeze garbage! The peels, stems, seeds, cores, and pith pile up, but naturally do not overflow. This morning the frozen pile made a zany still life, but I won't call it "still." Frozen, on the table, in 95 degree heat, the little garbage tower gave off a frosty cloud that my camera couldn't catch. A pleasure!

I rapped the container against the hard black bin, and the garbage slid out; the still-frozen tomato-peel 'torta' split off from the banana peels and tough eggplant ends. (The tomato meat had gone into a sauce.) By now wasps, fruit flies--and who knows what else--and the action of a layer of soil are bringing the mess back to life.

What does all this have to do with my August writer's retreat at home? Let me think. Although I wrote an essay, roughed out some poems and buffed up others, read till my eyes crossed, I was forced to listen to plenty of rubbish during 8/2010. Maybe some of it will find its way into stories. I'll trust to time and the vagaries of memory to transform some of the truly worthless parts into material--comedy, I hope. If you were here with me, dear Bloggerones, I might tell you about it. How was your August? And how are things on September first?

Writing at Home

2010-08-04T03:07:00.000-07:00

Thank you for stopping by! For the month of August, I will leave the blog world to work at home on poems and essays. I hope some of that work will be good. We'll see. All the best to you. Goodbye for now and good luck! Until September, Mim

Patterns & Veterans

2010-07-27T14:55:00.000-07:00

Some years ago at Boston University there was an undergraduate literary magazine called Patterns, a name that fit the age of New Criticism in which we scrutinized the text for forms. Color, metaphor, design. Seldom did we look beyond the text. New Criticism was a convenient way to instruct undergraduates who, it was believed, were not ready for research. I'm still interested in patterns. In a small town in upstate New York I liked the parallel lines of paint indicating utility lines, though the sight of paint on top of grass was jarring. Yet safe digging requires these marks. Cut a gas line and risk an explosion. Cut a water pipe and risk a flood.

At the local office of the Division of Veteran Affairs on the main Street I read these notices as history, a pattern of history.

Finally, a credit to the Obama administration, Agent Orange benefits have been changed for the better. In time, there will be a notice for veterans of the War in Afghanistan.

Bubble Fun?

2010-07-23T11:54:00.000-07:00

The three of us--Ms. B, Mr. H. and I--were uneasy when, walking through Davis Square on our way to a friend's book party, we saw children thrashing about inside these huge plastic bubbles at the Art Beat Festival, which we ignored: there wasn't much art. The temperature was in the nineties; the sun cooked the plastic; sunlight flared off the plastic. The bubbles turned and collided.

We spoke up about the child who appeared to be exhausted--a small boy with fair hair--and were told the rule: children under two and under are not allowed. This boy was older than two but small. Finally his father and the attendant released him.

The older children could take it--the falls, the bumps.

There were air holes, small air holes.

As the bubble turned and the child flopped, thrashed, slipped and slid, the bubble took a little water, making the concave surface even more slippery.

Have you seen this amusement, which was not amusing to me?

Exclusive

2010-07-18T12:31:00.001-07:00

Democracy is not exclusive. In theory: power to the people; all the people. I am a democrat. I vote; I belong to no exclusive clubs and shop at no exclusive stores. I frequent public libraries and belong to a union. I am a graduate of a public grammar school and high school.

Yet democrat though I am, I'm aware of my many acts of exclusion. Take these two pictures. Imagine how much I have left out.

Some of my colleagues at work would say, "My door is always open." Not mine, I would think. "Please knock," said the sign on my office door. (I was lucky to have an office with a door. I'd freak in a cubicle.)

Oh, the luxury of privacy! I've heard about the punishing lack of privacy in prisons, except when there's too much in solitary.

Though in the larger sense, I'm one person among many, crowds, conventions, huge gatherings turn me off. You won't see me at a fireworks extravaganza. Let me have a table for one or two people or a larger round table where a congenial group may talk and eat something delicious. Do you have a favorite dish?

Exude, Extrude

2010-07-09T08:13:00.001-07:00

The fungi living on the oak tree exude liquid. A clear ooze.

A creature, whose name I don't know, a spinner but perhaps not a spider, has extruded these webs along the top of the clipped yew hedge, pushed out fine threads through tiny openings. The webs mist the severe line.

I also think of the way breath clouds a window: a category different from exudations and extrusions. But back to the Realm of Ooze and Extrusion, what are you thinking of? Tell me, please.

Independence Day

2010-07-05T03:41:00.001-07:00

This Mac computer, which already feels too hot under my wrists, had been turned off since Friday.

Our Fourth of July was quiet, J's and mine. In the early morning while the house was still cool he read the Declaration of Independence out loud as I walked up and down the living room, my bare feet on the carpet.

He read from the booklet containing The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States, and The Constitution of New Jersey, which I had received at graduation from Junior High School along with the engraved "Certificate of Promotion to the Senior High School." The Board of Education gave us--in lavish blue and gold with ribbons--this gift to officially welcome us to the Republic. Not that I thought in those terms on graduation day. Yet many of my teachers had already schooled us by example and by drawing us out with questions, in Civics class, and in the regular classroom. They raised questions; we answered; sometimes we fumbled; we thought. Most of our teachers had come down from New England, unmarried women--that was the rule when they were hired--to work in New Jersey. Hazel Putnam, descendent of the Revolutionary War General Israel Putnam had taught me about the Republic.

I had been nervous about letting J. touch this gold-stamped memento and artifact of another time and a past life and I made him promise not to "slop it up." I administered the oath--"I promise, I swear . . . "--and he took it. You see, earlier he had tried to read from the print facsimile in the New York Times and found it unreadable even with a magnifying glass, so I had volunteered my treasure and then took the risk. It was worth it, and the documents are still in good shape.

We both loved the inditement section in which the crimes of George III, King of England, are rolled out one after another, gathering force, in 27 succinct paragraphs beginning mostly with "He." He the king had done this; he had done that. He had gone too far. His acts, his crimes, had piled up. Enough!

Our founders indited a king.

"A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."

The passage in which the founders' recounted their unsuccessful appeals to their "British brethren" lit up for me and J:

We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpation, which would inevitable interrupt our connections and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity.

Consanguinity: with blood, with common blood. Blood brothers: English to English.

Don't we all have blood in common, aren't we all commoners? Blood when it shows in my veins through my pink skin is blue, which does not make me and others like me superior blue bloods as distinguished from darker-skinned people who do not appear blue-veined. All blood is red; when it dries it is purplish. Royal purple, common red: all of us. Red, white, and blue, etc., etc. Bring on the colors! But flag raising is not to my taste.

Tuesday Poem: "I am Raftery . . . "

2010-06-28T14:03:00.000-07:00

Translated from the Gaelic of Anthony Raftery (1784-1835)

I am Raftery the poet,

Full of hope and love,

My eyes without sight,

My soul without torment,

Going westward on my journey

By the light of my heart,

Weary and tired

To the end of my road.

Behold me now

With my back to the wall

Playing songs

To empty pockets.

******

Is Mise Raifteirí an file,

Lán dúchais is grádh,

Le súile gan solas,

Le ciúnas gan crá.

Ag dul síar ar m'aistear

Le solas mo chroí

Fann agus tuirseach

Go deireadh mo shlí

Féach anois mé

Is mo chúl le bhfalla

Ag seinm ceoil

Do phócaí folamh.

For "Tuesday Poem" based in New Zealand.

Stroll Report: Bumming Around

2010-06-21T10:52:00.000-07:00

Smilla Dankert from Cologne, whose blog I follow, asked how I was. In the same message she wrote:

Your blog changed a bit; at the time you were in Miami you always wrote these little stroll-reports

and so it was more easy to get to know your all-day-mood (sort of)
Now it's not that easy anymore...

I thought, Back north in Fast Land, it's not so easy for me to know my moods. Photos pile up, details scatter, work increases. At the southern tip of Miami Beach I was three blocks from the ocean and got there almost every day. I could see the horizon.

Spring up north came all at once this year after flooding rains. Epiphany spring. Boom! Poems came in electric spurts. Electric for me. Who knows which ones will be left standing.

It's been lovely to stroll again: to artist Mimi K.'s garden--poppies and butterfly plants in bloom; it was lively to find a cast-off undergarment that heavy rain washed to the sewer grate.

This bike was meticulously organized to carry a light cargo of materials for recycling: plastic bags sorted into types. There was a paper bag neatly filled with plastic bottles. There were pairs of protective gloves clipped to the carrier. At first I foolishly thought the bike belonged to someone dedicated to green, recycling, etc. I shot a few photos and as I walked away I saw a man cross the main street and head for the bike. "Is it yours?" I asked him, and he said yes. When I told him I had taken photos of the bike--"so beautifully organized"--he said, "I'm trying to earn a few dollars." He had come from the return-for-deposit machines at the supermarket across the street. He works on his own at collecting discarded, tossed, for-deposit bottles people don't bother to redeem for money. He redeems. We shook hands. He gave me permission to take his picture. His name is John. Will I see him again? I was so happy he didn't say something like, 'You're a nice little lady.' Lady I'm not.

At the pond the faucet gleamed. The water was clean. I wish I had the skill and time to rebuild that rotted-out piece of wood so that it still bore marks of age and the grain. Or find a piece of salvage I could cut to fit that round opening. Marked salvage.

Stroll rhythm--now too as I write and quiet down. (Bummel is a German word for stroll--just found it on Google. Does the word Bummel have anything to do with the English "bumming around"? I hope so!)

Maybe the Moon: Transformation

2010-06-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

In my small way I like to transform things--soak labels off jars; clear the glass; remove the brand; shift my angle of vision and see the moon on this grease-blackened-and-browned cookie sheet.

I say this as if I am always the agent ruling my eyes to shift. In fact, often the shift happens by itself. By chance. It's the fashion to call this "creative." But I just go with it. The shift catches me. Sometimes the shift is soft, sometimes violent as when birds shoot up like geysers.

As for soaking labels off jars, that's deliberate. Yet if I make the water hot enough and wait long enough, I don't have to claw or scrape much. And sometimes glue melts and the labels just float off.

This morning when I woke at 3 A.M., thinking it was dawn, I found my notebook and wrote--a dawn of sorts. I got back to sleep. If I hadn't my eyeballs by now would feel as though they were popping out of my head. I'd be wasted. Tell me: how did you sleep last night?

Olivia Manning's "School for Love"

2010-06-11T14:53:00.001-07:00

Olivia Manning, 1908-1980

It's an extraordinary novel, School for Love, so much so that I want to keep repeating the title. Thanks to New York Review of Books Classics, Manning's novel, first published in 1951, is finally out in America.

Set in Jerusalem in 1975, School for Love tells the story of orphaned Felix Latimer. On his first night in the freezing house of the monstrous Miss Bohun, described by Jane Smiley in the introduction as, "a marvel, even a paradigm, of hypocrisy," he lies in bed grieving, completely alone until the cat Faro joins him. (Manning knew cats and wrote about them in the nonfiction Extraordinary Cats.)

The School of Love is worth reading if only for Manning's descriptions of Faro and her powers:

He [Felix] stared into nothingness, thinking he would never sleep, never feel warm again. At last Faro jumped on to his bed and he felt her paws, soft and heavy, move with cautious certainty up to his face; her whiskers touched his cheek as she sniffed to be sure of him, then, like an arrow-tip of ice, her nose pointed between the sheets. He raised the covers for her. Slipping like silk into his arms, she curled warm against his body and lay with her chin on his shoulder, purring contentment. He wrapped his arms round her. Comforted, kissing her between the ears, he whispered: 'I love you.' He pressed his face into her fur and said: 'Faro, darling little Faro . . . ' but in a moment, when he meant only to say 'Faro', he found he was saying: 'Mother' and all the tears he had kept back that day streamed down his face until he slept, exhausted.

Manning commands a number of tones, among them, ironic notes, and tender notes. Tonight I lean toward the tender ones. Just the word "Faro"--isn't that soft?

Tuesday Poem: Dimitrova's "Deserts"

2010-06-07T17:00:00.000-07:00

Blaga Dimitrova

Deserts

I was born for love--

to give and to receive it.

Yet my life has passed

almost without loving.

So I've learned forgiving:

even the deserts

I have crossed

I feel no scorn for.

I just ask them

with astonished eyes:

What gardens were you born for?

(Translated from the Bulgarian by Heather McHugh)

Tuesday Poem, a community of poets, is based in New Zealand.

Rhapsody

2010-06-04T07:14:00.000-07:00

Virginia Woolf

For the next two weeks I'll be with myself. If I'm lucky new poems will come. In the intervals there will be walks to the various nearby ponds and time to read: dip in, float, dive; time to hear the rhapsodists sing. (Please scroll down for more on "rhapsody.") The ocean, which we think of, live near, live from, is in all of these selections.

From Woolf's To the Lighthouse:

So off they strolled down the garden in the usual direction, past the tennis lawn, past the pampas grass, to that break in the thick hedge, guarded by red hot pokers like brasiers of clear burning coal, between which the blue waters of the bay looked bluer than ever.

They came there regularly every evening drawn by some need. It was as if the water floated off and set sailing thoughts which had grown stagnant on dry land, and gave to their bodies even some sort of physical relief. First, the pulse of colour flooded the bay with blue, and the heart expanded with it and the body swam, only the next instant to be checked and chilled by the prickly blackness on the ruffled waves. Then, up behind the great black rock, almost every evening spurted irregularly, so that one had to watch for it and it was a delight when it came, a fountain of white water; and then while one waited for that, one watched, on the pale semicircular beach, wave after wave shedding again and again smoothly, a film of mother of pearl.

Hart Crane

From Crane's "Voyages II":

And onward, as bells off San Salvador
Salute the crocus lustres of the stars,
In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,--
Adagios of islands, O my Prodigal,
Complete the dark confessions her veins spell.

Mark Doty

From Doty's "Almost Blue" (Apologies: line breaks are not accurate because of formatting problems.)--

If Hart Crane played trumpet he'd sound like you, your horn's dark city

miraculous and broken over and over, scale-shimmered, every harbor-

flung hour

and salt-span of cabled longing, every waterfront, the night-lovers'

rendezvous.

Rhapsody:

1. Exalted or excessively enthusiastic expression of feeling in speech or writing.

2. A literary work written in an impassioned or exalted style.

3. A state of elated bliss; ecstasy.

4. Music A usually instrumental composition of irregular form that often incorporates improvisation.

5. An ancient Greek epic poem or a portion of one suitable for uninterrupted recitation.

Tuesday Poem: Alan Dugan's "One used to . . . "

2010-05-31T14:28:00.001-07:00

Untitled Poem

One used to be able to say

what Seneca said to Nero:

"However many people you kill

you can never kill your successor."

But now the joke may not

be necessarily true: we might

have done it already. So let's

remember what the poet Oppian said:

"The hunting of Dolphins is immoral

and the man who wilfully kills them

will not only not go to the gods

as a welcome sacrifice, or touch

their altars with clean hands, but will

even pollute the people under his own roof."

Tuesday Poem, a community of poets, is based in New Zealand.

Irises and Weigela

2010-05-27T05:53:00.001-07:00

There's a stretch of irises in bloom in front of the house. They have spread from two small clumps. Some time ago I drove two friends to Concord in search of an abandoned garden they had once found and from which they had taken plants. I followed their directions though I didn't believe they would find the garden again, but somehow they spotted the obscured turn-off on to a dirt road. We bumped along and eventually found the garden. A tangle, overgrown, but thru the wild, matted growth we could see Siberian irises, fresh green spears but no bloom. It must have been early May. I had to stand on the spade to get the point into the root-cemented ground.

This is a particularly fierce strain of iris, an old strain. They spread by seed which pops from seed pods in late fall. I let them spread.

The Siberian invasion does not disturb me, but this weigela shrub, planted by the former owners, overwhelms me, heavily festooned, ongepotchket, faputzt. I'll look at it again today now that the heat spell has broken. Yesterday the temperature was in the nineties. Today in the cold I might welcome such hot lushness. You might think I was talking about people.

Tuesday Poem: Miriam Levine, "Surprise"

2010-05-24T06:45:00.000-07:00

Surprise

Steam from the shower clouds the mirror

except for the lower left corner above the lit candle.

The dry corner, blue as ice and shaped like a flame,

reflects my hip and smoky taupe tile.

There's even a bit of my hand and a piece of the shower curtain

called "Disco, which has silver facets stamped in the plastic.

I'm leaving my wet body to live on the other side of the mirror--

like looking in through a hole in the second-floor window.

Where am I standing? On a ladder?

Who is that dripping and coated with steam?

She's staring--amazed.

What is she staring at?

That dry bit of mirror,

the shape of a flame.

"Surprise" was published in The Dark Opens, a collection of poems, 2008, Autumn House Press.

Please click on Tuesday Poem to find out more about this community of poets and their work.

Tuesday Poem: "I'm Nobody!"

2010-05-17T17:07:00.000-07:00

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Are you - Nobody - too?

Then there's a pair of us!

Don't tell! they'd advertise - you know!

How dreary - to be Somebody!

How public - like a Frog -

To tell one's name - the livelong June -

To an admiring Bog!

--Emily Dickinson

I never get tired of this poem! If Dickinson was told to be sparing of exclamation points, she did not obey!

Tuesday Poem is a community of poets!

Save SMU Press!

2010-05-15T18:34:00.000-07:00

SMU, Dallas Hall (Wikipedia)

Provost Paul Ludden announced the immediate closing of SMU Press called " one of the best small publishers of literary fiction in the country."

The decision to destroy SMU Press is shocking and discredits the university. Since 1936 the press has distinguished the school, publishing books of lasting value, and more recently fiction that future generations will read long after the cheering fans at football games in the twenty-first century are dead.

The word “culture” comes from a word meaning cultivation, tillage of the soil. In cultivation of the soil and the arts, the tools must go deep. SMU Press went deep and produced rich results.

Surely everything cannot be about money! Four hundred thousand dollars, the operating budget of the press, is an insignificant sum compared to the university’s other expenditures. Surely there are other ways to save money.

In a letter to the New York Times, author Tracy Daugherty writes: "Paul W. Ludden, the provost of Southern Methodist University . . . cites budgetary challenges as his rationale, but in fact SMU is weathering the recession quite well, with one of the largest university endowments in the country. Quite simply, this is a deliberate change in the university's educational/intellectual values, and I'm writing you because I believe this change would send ripples far beyond SMU, and set a precedent with disastrous ramifications for our national literary life."

While I am an SMU author--they published my novel In Paterson--I am not under contract for a future novel. I'm writing in support of SMU Press because I admire the work they do, publishing literary fiction the trade houses do not have the courage to publish. Here is a sample:

Praise for Mrs. Somebody Somebody from the Boston Globe

Short but not sweet
In the mill city of Lowell, interwoven tales of yearning, disappointment, and betrayal
By Steve Almond | April 19, 2009
MRS. SOMEBODY SOMEBODY
By Tracy Winn
SMU Press, 189 pp.


Boston Globe/ Katherine Rathke

There was a time not so long ago when writers could make a living crafting short stories. Those days are gone. Amid the downturn in publishing, the new mantra among literary agents and editors is: "How can we transform these stories into a novel?"

Tracy Winn has wisely (and courageously) resisted the pressure. The 10 tales gathered in her new collection, "Mrs. Somebody Somebody," offer a testament to the power of the short form. They do what all great stories must: capture their heroes and heroines in the throes of astonishing events.

I would be grateful if you would join the following writers, among others, who have written letters of support. Please e-mail your letter to Provost Paul Ludden: pludden@smu.edu and copy it to Kathryn Lang, Senior Editor, klang@smu.edu.

Lee K. Abbott

Ann Beattie

Madison Smart Bell

Robert Boswell

Rosellen Brown

Robert Olen Butler

Alan Cheuse

Marcia Day Childress

Ron Carlson

Robert Cohen

Lesley Epstein

Richard Ford

Laura Furman

Alyson Hagy

David Huddle

Paul Lisicky

Margot Livesey

David Madden

Jill McCorkle

A.G. Mojtabai

Kent Nelson

Naomi Shihab Nye

Leslie Pietrzyk

Richard Russo

David Slavitt

Susan Straight

Abraham Verghese

Brad Watson

Gordon Weaver

Steve Yarbrough

Tuesday Poem: "May First"

2010-05-10T19:23:00.000-07:00

May First

When you were born, the world was too.

The yews put out chartreuse and tulips

lifted red Bordeaux in satin goblets.

A haze from sugar maples streamed

thru our bedroom-window screen. People

say newborns don't see. Don't believe it.

You always turned your head toward light.

"You must change your life," Rilke wrote.

What did he know? You woke me. Birth

transforms. Procreation flares. In Terror

I became heroic. Before my wounds

healed I fought sleep to keep you alive.

Tuesday Poem is a New Zealand-based blog that welcomes all poets.

Heartbreak House

2010-05-10T07:10:00.000-07:00

Real estate fever seized my brain last week. I fell in love online after I saw the pictures of this 1770 house with four acres of land for $144, 900! My pulse raced and I would wake up in the middle of the night and plan: We'd take out a mortgage on our house near Boston and spend spring and summer weekends in New Hampshire near family. The house and outbuildings needed what they call "work." When I saw it, I thought, The work would kill us. It turned out someone had already made an offer.

The pictures on the agent's website did not show the atmosphere of lost promise, rotten sills, animal nests, and falling-down decay. Originally the house must have been built on acres and acres, a huge pre-revolutionary-war land grant, most of which has been sold off, a few parcels at a time. The air of sad rottenness and beauty was the New England version of the postbellum South. Hundreds of thousands dollars could bring the house back more easily than restoring a cotton planter's mansion.

What was the purpose of this little Greek revival temple? Was it used as church or a theater? Or both? Is it 19th century or a 20th century version of Greek revival?

I would guess the "bathing pavilion" was built in the 1920s.

A version of pastoral with chubby legs and feet, and shawl to keep off the chill.

The barn/garage/shed is much larger than it looks in the picture and needs to be rebuilt.

The mess in the shed.

Animal nest in the tool box.

Overgrown pool.

Garden urn atilt.

Rooms and rooms.

There are five fireplaces in the house.

I'll never go back.

"She Loves Me"

2010-05-06T16:05:00.001-07:00

Kristin Shoop Jenko and Jim Fitzpatrick

Kim Misci

Arlington Friends of the Drama presented a sparkling production of She Loves Me, a musical based on a play by Miklos Laszlo that also inspired the films The Little Shop Around the Corner and You've Got Mail.

She Loves Me is a hopeful work. Perfume shop employees Georg Nowack (Jim Fitzpatrick) and Amalia Balash (Kristin Shoop Jenko) are constantly fighting at work but unaware that they have responded to each other's lonely-heart ads--they've used aliases--and become secret friends. By the end of the play they discover the truth and love triumphs. Amalia sings:

Ice cream. He brought me ice cream!

Vanilla ice cream! Imagine that!

Ice cream, and for the first time we were together without a spat!

Ilona (Ann McCoy), another shop employee, also finds love, at the library: A trip to the library has made a new girl of me.

Here's to vanilla ice cream--Sheila Rehrig made sure there was plenty at the production party-- libraries, brilliant musical director Brian Rehrig, director J. Mark Baumhardt, the crew and designers, and a cast that sang marvelously.

At the production party I asked whether I could take pictures. "We're actors!" someone answered.

left, Matthew Kossack; David Herder

Sheila Rehrig hosted the production party

left, Ann Mccoy; music director, Brian Rehrig

James Grana

Melissa Fenton

center, director J. Mark Baumhardt

Tuesday Poem: "The End of War"

2010-05-04T05:03:00.001-07:00

The End of War

by Dahlia Ravikovitch (1936-2005)

He came at midnight, both legs lopped off,

through his old wounds had long since healed.

He came through the third-story window--

I was struck with wonder at how he got in.

We'd lived through an age of calamity;

many had lost their closest kin.

In streets sown with shredded papers

the orphan survivors were skipping about.

I was frozen as crystal when he came.

He thawed me like pliant wax,

altered me even as the pall of night

turns into the feather of dawn,

his bold spirit translucent as mist

that streams from the morning clouds.

(Translated from the Hebrew by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfield.)

Israeli poet Dahlia Ravikovitch was active in the peace movement. The poem with its unmistakeable historical context is an elegy, a dream poem, a vision. The dead man--I take him to be a mortally wounded soldier--comes back from the grave and the speaker in the poem comes to life. It is mysterious how an elegy can also be a resurrection. If only that were true in life. Yet daily "the pall of night/ turns into the feather of dawn."

The Iliad: Metaphor

2010-05-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

Achilles binding the wound of Patroclus.

When I heard our reading group up north was going to discuss the Iliad, I groaned: it's long and bloody and I hadn't read it since I was an undergraduate, years and years ago. But then I remembered the great scenes: the old men admiring Helen, Hector's son crying in fear when he sees his father's flashing helmet, the death of Patroclus, the death of Hector, the rage of Achilles. Maddened, he kills in a fit of blood lust and throws the dead bodies into the river Scamandros, so many bodies that the river overflows with blood.

Yet as I read I was more interested in the metaphors that were doors into a parallel world of an agricultural, sheepherding, goat-herding, people who kept their eyes on nature. I had been taught that metaphor and simile amplified the main subject, but now I appreciated the metaphors in their own right. They signified life away from the blood-soaked battlefield where warriors fought for honor.

Here are some of Homer's metaphors and similes:

Think how a goatherd off on a mountain lookout

spots a storm cloud moving down the sea . . .

bearing down beneath the rush of the West Wind

and miles away he sees it building black as pitch,

blacker, whipping the whitecaps, full hurricane fury--

the herdsman shudders to see it, drives his flocks to a cave--

. . . like swarms of bees

pouring out of a rocky hollow, burst on endless burst.

bunched in clusters seething over the first spring blooms,

dark hoards swirling into the air, this way, that way . . .

. . . as the huge flocks on flocks of winging birds, geese or cranes

or swans with their long lancing necks--circling Asian marshes

round the Cayster outflow, wheeling in all directions,

glorying in their wings--keep landing, advancing . . ."

. . . as the swarms of flies seething over the shepherds' stalls

in the first spring days when the buckets flood with milk . . .

. . . as quick as a mother

flicks a fly from her baby sleeping softly . . .

. . . like flocks of sheep in a wealthy rancher's steadings,

thousands crowding to have their white milk drained,

bleating nonstop when they hear their crying lambs . . .

. . . like a lithe black poplar

shot up tall and strong in the spreading marshy flats,

the trunk trimmed but its head a shock of branches.

. . . as a garden poppy, burst into red bloom, bends,

drooping its head to one side, weighted down

by its full seeds and a sudden spring shower . . .

I've read as far as Book Six. Tonight, reading on, I'll look for the "as" and "like," not in order to escape the bloody battles but to see how most ancient Greeks lived--tending their children and animals, the swans, cranes and geese wheeling overhead, bees and flies swarming, udders swelling with fresh milk--Greeks who had the time to see a single red poppy droop its head.