Yearly Archives: 2016

42 posts

Milosz on Merwin’s “Utterance”

poetry

merwin

I’ve been reading a book of poems edited by Czeslaw Milosz and enjoying his commentary before each poem as much as the poems themselves. Called A Book of Luminous Things, the volume will forever enjoy a special place in my heart because I bought it in a distant town that I was visiting and had never visited before and, as we all know, books purchased on our travels gain pedigree by the memory running through their veins alone. In this case I was in New York’s Hudson Valley in a town called Rhinebeck. The store? Oblong Books & Music, thank you.

Anyway, the poem. It’s brief but memorable, written by W. S. Merwin. In his commentary, Milosz writes, “At any moment in our life we are entangled in all the past of humanity, and that past is primarily language, so we live as if upon a background of incessant chorus, and of course it is possible to imagine the presence of everything which has ever been spoken.”

To see what Milosz means, you need only read Merwin’s eight-line meditation:

Utterance

Sitting over words
very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing
not far
like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark
the echo of everything that has ever
been spoken
still spinning its one syllable
between the earth and silence

Between the earth and silence. I think that’s where I want to be–today, at least. And I hope, as an important piece of time and humanity, you find a place there, too.

*************************************************************************

Why You Should Memorize a Poem

memorizing poetry poetry reading poetry

canis-major

One of the profoundest things I learned in college came from an English professor who was once a prisoner of war during WWII. He said he kept his sanity thanks to memorized poetry. Each day, throughout the drudgery and misery of his captivity, he would recite poems in his mind – words he had captured himself during schooldays. These poems became his company. His friends and succor. Without that, he said, he would almost surely have gone mad.

This morning, venturing into the crisp, 30-something degree dark with the dog, I was greeted as usual by the cheerful stars. It’s in those darkest-before-dawn hours that they seem sharpest, brightest, as if they save their diamond best as a treat for early risers.

And the friendliest October constellations to greet me? Orion, of course, with Canis Major, his faithful hunting dog, at his heels. I greet both dog and hunter by reciting aloud a Robert Frost poem I memorized long ago. Owning that poem makes me feel good, and the celestial dog seems to appreciate the attention to. Here’s what I say to the dark (“Canis Major” by Robert Frost):

The great Overdog,
That heavenly beast
With a star in one eye,
Gives a leap in the east.

He dances upright
All the way to the west
And never once drops
On his forefeet to rest.

I’m a poor underdog,
But tonight I will bark
With the great Overdog
That romps through the dark.

Each cloud-free morning, when I recite the poem, I watch the words rise as white steam in the beam of my headlight. Together they rise in the sky to join Canis Major, and Orion doesn’t seem to mind a bit. (I’m Sirius!)

On days starting like today, I often think of my professor and how right he was. And you don’t have to be a prisoner of war to benefit, either. You might be a prisoner of sadness. Or circumstances. Or boredom. Memorizing a poem will take care of your blues, I promise. Try it!

Free, free, free!

poetry

ind-wrld Nothing sets people off more than the word “free.” You can place furniture, toys, tools, a jar of ketchup, or whatever on your curb, crown it with the four-letter placard “FREE,” and watch it go because, as Solomon once said, “One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure–and we all treasure free stuff, especially when that ‘stuff’ means books.” (Perhaps Solomon said it more poetically than this. Please see the King James Version for further details.)

All this month, my publisher, Future Cycle Press, is offering up a copy of my rare-to-find (in readers’ hands because it’s poetry) book, The Indifferent World, as part of a Goodreads Giveaway promotion so, if you want one for free (free, free!), get thee to Goodreads some time between now and Halloween.

On that day, at midnight, with a few owls, black cats, and witches’ cauldrons added for effect, some lucky entrant will be in for a treat (treat, treat!). Just be sure, if it’s you, to read the book. In small doses, even.

Oh. And a review would be nice, too. Amazon. Goodreads. Reviews R Us. Wherever your opinions congregate.

Good luck!

Living on the Writer’s Block

poetry writing writing inspiration

tiny-tim

The crutch. It’s a mighty symbol, one I see frequently in the lives around me as well as in my own. But when it comes to writing, the crutch must be reckoned with.

Let’s start with Tiny Tim. The little guy needs his crutch. For him, it is a powerful symbol generating sympathy and tears, especially after he’s gone and only the crutch remains for Christmas dinner. But Tiny Tim wasn’t a writer. He was a God-Bless-Us-Everyone-er. Writers write. So why are they so fond of the crutch called “writer’s block”?

Living on the writer’s block is a choice. You don’t crash there like a plane that has lost its engine. I learned that by staring at my share of paper (once upon a time) and Word doc screens (once upon a more recent time) over the years. It was nice blaming the Muse-jamming equivalent of white noise, but who’s kidding whom? I was kidding me, that’s what.

Truth be told, writing something, writing ANYthing, is better than limping along on crutches feeling sorry for yourself. If you have mastered the pencil and / or the keyboard, voilá. Writer’s block has gone the way of the dodo bird (South, my friends… DEEP South).

Writing garbage (read: a first draft) is the ticket. Because in every dump the writer in you will find some treasure. Some shiny bauble. Something calling out to your eye. And how much easier is it to write from something as opposed to nothing? Rhetorical question.

So, yeah. I gave up writer’s block once I saw it for what it is. A fraud. No, I won’t lecture fellow writers who play that well-worn card. I won’t cry “Crutch!” like some know-it-all. But inside I’ll wonder. I’ll wonder, “Why doesn’t he just write?” Revision is where writing is at, and if you haven’t written something than you’ve got nothing to revise.

Nothing but a crutch, that is.

Looking through The High Window

poetry publishing

The High Window, a new (as of March 2016) home for poetry, has appeared in the UK under the editorial guidance of David Cooke, Anthony Costello, and Natalie Rees. In addition to poetry, each quarterly issue of the e-zine will include an editorial, an essay, translations, and a review.

I’m pleased to be a part of Issue #3 of The High Window. The poem, “Happiness Bound,” was fun to write because of the word play, the stream-of-consciousness approach, and the quirky repetition. Some readers see it as an ode to happiness, others as a lament about unhappiness. All power to the reader, I say!

You can read “Happiness Bound” by following the link, clicking my name, and/or just scrolling down.

Dionysus or Apollo? Your choice, really. The inspiration for the work started with an essay by Tony Hoagland about the influences of these strange, godly bedfellows. Reading it inspired me to lighten up and let loose, to have fun with language, and to not always play conservative.

To see that kind of writing rewarded by the High Window editors is both refreshing and gratifying. I hope you’ll check out Issue #3!

What Are We Waiting For?

poetry publishing

images

After careful consideration–wait for it!–I’ve decided that waiting is bad for me. Why am I always waiting? And why am I sometimes unaware of what exactly I’m waiting for?

As a poet, my waiting habit has been fed and nurtured. I write a first draft, second, third, and on up the abacus of practice until my poem looks like a many segmented caterpillar inching toward the promised land. Then I put it aside. Time will help, I insist.

Coming back to it weeks later, I slice it down to inchworm size. That bad. How did I miss it? And when is this great idea going to reach final fruition? Wait for it! I tell myself.

Often I send poems out to willing markets in batches of five or so. Then, instead of moving on to new work, I get lazy and wait. Surely today, I say a few weeks later. So I look at Submittable and see “Received” has changed to “In-Progress.” My waiting intensifies, though logic tells me one label is as meaningless as the other and the wait for “In-Progress” could be as long or longer than “Received.”

But that’s the essence of waiting.

Once I thought getting a book published was the final answer to waiting. I finished a manuscript, sent it out to multiple homes, and instead of starting another, waited for it. When the big event occurred and I was rewarded with acceptance, I felt all the waiting had been rewarded.

Alas, after the initial publishing euphoria, I just went back to waiting. But for what? For my book to be discovered, maybe. But by whom? God knows. And works in mysterious ways.

Speaking of, my waiting had almost evolved into a form of worship. I didn’t seem to realize that all this waiting amounted to time lost and days drained. I forgot that God numbers the days. It’s His bad habit. We all deserve one.

Some day, after another bout of great news, I’ll be asking myself, “Was this worth the wait? Is this any different? Is this the one?”

I’m almost sure the answer will be “no.” In the words of the prophet (Bono): “But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for….”

And never will.

Resolution without the excuse of a new year: I’m going to get busy. Busy so I don’t notice all this furtive waiting I’m secretly engaged in. You know. The waiting I’m supposedly giving up as of today.

(End of post. I’ve got to check my e-mail. I’m waiting for something big. Because surely this is the day….)

The Hazards of Thinking Too Much

poetry

red leaf

My mother-in-law famously said that the brain is a marvelous thing. It is also a pain in the ass. In fact, I often yearn for the days comma good old when I was a kid and didn’t think too much. Thinking too much, like the Internet, is both marvelous and horrible.

The fancy word for this is “metacognition” or “thinking about your thinking.” My metacognition is a moody son of a gun. It hyperventilates—especially when I’m feeling blue—and the last week of summer is a famously blue stretch of days. Indigo becomes “indigone” in a hurry.

My brain says stuff like this: “What of your great plans for summer, huh? What of THAT? Have you SEEN what’s left to this forever thing called July and August?” Hoo, boy. The brain is a task master. A drill sergeant. A guilt driver for the slave conscious.

And true enough, all my summer writing goals have not been met. But hey, as the song goes, I’m only human, and humans are famously designed to let themselves down.

So once more to the lake, this time to hear the dirge of summer. I know better than to read the E.B. White essay, “Once More to the Lake” in the coming week because the ending is a killer and it resonates wider and louder with each added year.

No, instead I will try to finish the 500-page book I’m meandering through. And I will earbud in the sad but hypnotic strains of Arvo Pärt’s “Fratres” as I look out at the water, but it’s only a beautiful sort of misery I’ll be indulging in, part of an ancient and known ritual by now, a benedictions to something sweet but fleeting.

What remains to be seen is how the last-week blues affects my writing. Sometimes all of the introspection and moodiness produces words. And other times it gets selfish, blocking the muse, getting hungry for words (which it will not share) itself.

There’s no denying the inevitable. Or stopping the tides. Or quelling the wind that blows calendar pages from the poorly-glued seam.

Or the thinking that all of this inspires. Meta-melancholic thinking.

Eating Poetic Fruit–and Words

poetry word choice

index

Simplicity. In poetry, it’s tough to embrace and get away with. You read something as simple as Galway Kinnell’s “Blackberry Eating” and say, “How easy. I can do that!”

And then you try.

It’s like those foolhardy fiction writers who make the terrible mistake of imitating Ernest Hemingway. Seems simple enough. Only the emulating stylists wind up producing something akin to Frankenstein’s monster playing violin. Badly.

As writing inspiration, simple poems can be deceiving. They sometimes scatter common writers’ “Thou shalt not’s” to the wind, too. For instance, “Thou shalt not overindulge in adjectives.” Here we have a 14-line (sonnet-like) poem that serves up not one, two, or three, but FOUR adjectives in Line 2 alone.

Explanation? Simple. Eating is a sensory experience. A reader needs adjectives to fully digest it.

For me, “Blackberry Eating” recalls the simple joys of William Carlos Williams’ “This Is Just To Say,” wherein WCW helps himself to “delicious,” “sweet,” and “cold” plums in the icebox:

“This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the iceboxand which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Summer’s on the wane. Harvest time continues. Time to pick some fruit (your choice) and release yourself to juicy simplicity. To whet your appetite, here’s Kinnell’s love letter to blackberries and words:

“Blackberry Eating” by Galway Kinnell

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry — eating in late September.

Garrison Keillor Reads One of My Poems

poetry The Indifferent World

index

In the “Things I Never Thought I’d Write” Department, we have this: Today Garrison Keillor read one of my poems on his nationally-syndicated program, The Writer’s Almanac. Yep. The very same Writer’s Almanac I’ve listened to on the radio and read on-line countless times.

The poem, “Snapper,” tells the simple story of a snapping turtle that labored up a sandy hill on our property to lay her eggs. My son and I witnessed the event, and it came to a bad end.

For the eggs.

Luckily, I can’t say the same for the creative process. Watching the turtle inspired the poem, which in turn was selected for reading on TWA. And no one reads poems like Garrison reads poems. It was an honor listening to him wrap his voice around my words!

And the thought of him reading with a copy of my first book of poems, The Indifferent World, in his hands? Let’s put it this way. It didn’t leave me indifferent.

As Andy Warhol never said, “Two minutes and ten seconds of fame is better than none at all!”

Dignity for the Aging, the Sick, the Dead

poetry

index

My wife and I are of such an age where we are rapidly losing friends and family members who grew up in the generation before us. Likewise, we spend much time visiting members of this generation in declining health, some in assisted living, some in nursing homes, some in hospitals.

It is a sad truth of life that proud and private people have no choice but to surrender their pride and their privacy once they are in some way debilitated and in need of full-time medical attention. Sometimes the professional help is just that–professional, caring, wonderful. And other times, sadly, it’s just a job.

As my last send-off post to Zbigniew Herbert, whose Collected Poems 1956-1998 (translator Alissa Valles) I finished today, I’ll share a tender poem he wrote on just that subject. It is called “Shame,” and in it, Herbert links his love for the ancient Greeks (Antigone) with the basic humanity and respect for the body she symbolizes:

Shame

When I was very ill shame abandoned me
willingly I bared for alien hands surrendered to alien eyes
the poor mystery of my body

They invaded me brutally increasing the humiliation

My professor of forensic medicine the old Mancewicz
fishing a suicide’s remains from a pool of formaldehyde
bent over him as if he wished to ask him for his pardon
then with a deft movement he opened the proud thorax
the basilica of the breath fell silent

delicately almost tenderly

So–faithful to the dead respectful of ash–I understand
the wrath of the Greek princess her stubborn resistance
she was right–a brother deserved a dignified burial

a shroud of earth carefully drawn
over the eyes