Ken Craft

718 posts

Fox & Hedgehog Poets vs. Krebs & Snopes Ones

poetry

“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing,” or so Archilochos told us when we were young in the 7th century. Ever since, I’ve been trying to figure out whether I’m a fox poet or a hedgehog poet.

Renaissance men, they were a foxy lot, knowing many things from many different disciplines. It was their point of pride, to the point of competition even. The poster boy? Leonardo da Vinci, of course. Foxier than Reynard the Fox. Or Foxy Loxy. Or any other foxes traipsing around Aesop’s fables instead of being productive.

Me, I lean hedgehog, though I can’t for the life of me identify the “one big thing” I know. Isn’t that what life is all about? Trying to figure out the one big thing? And isn’t that the itch that causes us to scratch out so many poems? Searching for the big thing, in that respect, becomes the Muse’s key of Middle C.

In his book, The Triggering Town, Richard Hugo dispenses with foxes and hedgehogs and buys stock in another split: fictional characters. He distinguishes between Ernest Hemingway’s protagonist Krebs from the story “Soldier’s Home” and William Faulkner’s young protagonist Snopes from the story “Barn Burning.” According to Hugo, we are either Krebs poets or Snopes poets.

Hugo describes Krebs as a man who is, “by birth and circumstance” an insider. His experience in the war and his sensitivity cause him to feel “alienated and outside.” Little Snopes, on the other hand is “by birth and circumstance… an outsider who wants desperately to be in. He wants to be a part of what, from his disadvantageous position, seems a desirable life.”

Taking his metaphor on the road and applying it to American poets, Hugo writes: “Not from birth and circumstance, but by virtue of how they feel about themselves and their relation with the world, as revealed in their poems, many American poets see themselves as (or really are) Krebs or Snopes.”

Hugo’s scorecard looks like so: The Krebs poets are William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Richard Wilbur, e. e. cummings, Wallace Stevens, and Allen Ginsberg. The Snopes poets are T. S. Eliot, Theodore Roethke, Robert Lowell, William Stafford, Louise Bogan, James Wright, Galway Kinnell, and A. R. Ammons.

“For a Krebs poet success means accepting values he knows are phony. For a Snopes poet, success could mean he has cast aside all people (including himself) he believes are doomed to failure and whom he continues to love. In both cases the result could be self-hatred and creative impotency.”

Hugo himself seems drawn to the Snopes crowd. I’ve no idea if the Snopes poets traffic in foxes or hedgehogs, and I’m not even sure I fully grasp what he’s after here, but it seems sure that the two characters arrive at the creative springs via different paths.

And what would the modern equivalent be? The MFA insider crowd, laureled by academia (scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours) vs. the feral poets, reading and writing each day without so much as a sideways glance at universities, residencies, seminars, and workshops? Would the former be the fox/Krebs tribe while the latter is the hedgehog/Snopes one? And where would you fit in, if the poetry world were split in such easy dichotomies?

A head scratcher, I admit. Especially if you feel so mixed up as to identify as a hedgehog/Krebs or a fox/Snopes. Then what?

Write, I guess. When you’re confused by anything, the answer is always “just write.”

A Leading Poem, Adrienne Rich in Irony

poetry poetry books

adrienne rich

I read somewhere that Adrienne Rich’s 1978 book, The Dream of a Common Language, has come to be considered a classic of poetry. This despite the rule (arbitrary, like all rules) that “classics” must steep for at least 50 years before anyone dare designate them canonical.

Curious, I took Rich’s book out of the library yesterday. It’s cloth binding and strong stitching speak to its age. This is not the type of book that falls apart like its modern-day brethren, where pages often leave the nest early, floating to the foreign ground and leaving behind non-sensical jumps in a soiled nest.

In the Billy Collins interview I posted comments about Saturday, Sir Collins stated that poetry books should always start with their strongest poems first, and if you don’t know which of your poems are strong, perhaps you shouldn’t be attempting publication.

Here, then, as a test of the best-foot-forward rule, is Rich’s lead-off batter. It is a poem called “Power” in an eponymous section, the first of three in the book.

Power

Living in the earth-depositis of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power

Compact and powerful, no doubt. Distinctive, too, is Rich’s neglect (spare one colon) of punctuation and her use of spacing. At first I was confused about the spacing’s purpose. Was it to signify a pause, to emphasize, to replace punctuation gone on holiday (I picture commas and periods holding hands, sipping from drinks with tiny paper umbrellas coming out of them), all of the above?

As is true with Zbigniew Herbert, the missing punctuation certainly helps to slow readers down, a function often served by longer lines and sometimes achieved by a dearth of stanzas. And though this opener isn’t as personal as many of the poems that follow (I am still mid-read), it does set the stage for a theme important to Rich, a feminist.

“Power” also shows no small sense of irony–like radiation, an element of modern-day life to be reckoned with due to its undeniable power.

If Music Be the Food of Poetry, Play On!

poetry writing

arvo part

Rumor has it that Estonian composer Arvo Pärt is an acquired taste, like salmon, Brussels sprouts, and all those other things you steer clear of as a kid. Repetition. Tintinnabulation. Waves of mesmerizing music (much of it religious in nature) washing over you.

I love writing poetry to classical music, but none more than Pärt’s. Whether his minimalist style shows up in my writing, I don’t know. In some cases, a definitive maybe. Can music genes long-jump to writing ones? And what is the sound of one note writing, anyway?

Koan-like questions, but some say ours is not to ask why, it’s to accept when inspiration strikes (with help or without), which is why I steal a page from the Bard and say, If music be the food of poetry, play on. (Yes, I snuck “poetry” in for “love,” but, in the final analysis and after checking the nutritional facts, what’s the difference?) The preceding link is to all instrumental pieces by Pärt, but you can find plenty of choral works, too, such as this meditative collection or this old favorite.

If your Muse is not inspired, it may sneak away for an Estonian nap. And yes, dozing mid-poem can be refreshing, too. To coin the well-minted Shakespeare once more: “to sleep, perchance to dream the next line.”

For an example of a minimalist poem from The Indifferent World written under the influence of Pärt, here’s a poem that’s so simple and so given over to mood that it may seem like empty calories to some, but it’s all a matter of taste, of course. Strawberry shortcakes and hot fudge sundaes with whipped cream are empty calories, too. It doesn’t mean you always scowl and put your nose up when they’re offered.

“Sitting in the Dark” by Ken Craft

In the dark
before dawn,

in the kitchen
before the lake,

when the windows
are rain-runneled

and the room
is still shadow,

I like to sit
and stare at black

glass glaring back,
beady with reflection,

runny with rumination
and the slip of sadness.

Though I don’t think ole Arvo has read any of my poems, I think he would approve of that little guy. Nothing fancy. Simple words. And not the best poem I ever wrote, but it does mirror a contemplative mood–one created while writing to Pärt’s Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, as I recall.

How about you? Do you write to music? And does it sometimes infuse the blood of your poems-in-progress?

Poetry That Fits the (Bud)Bill

poetry

I posted this book review for my (five) readers at Goodreads and thought I’d share it with my (four) readers at the University of WordPress.

T’was only a week ago I read David Budbill’s Moment to Moment. I didn’t want the moment to end, so I inter-library loaned a few more, reading While We’ve Still Got Feet in two days.

It’s very similar to the first. Short poems. Simple style. Constant allusions to ancient Chinese (Han Shan, especially) and Japanese (Ryōkan, especially) poets. Bud almost acts like he’s a reincarnation of these guys, due to his heading out for the mountains (in this case, Judevine Mt. in Vermont’s Green Mtn. chain) for a life of seclusion. Um, with his wife. And plenty of visitors. With the occasional visit to New York City.

OK, so there’s a touch of Thoreau’s Walden to it in that respect. Ole Henry David’s shack on the pond was only a mile or so from home, and he could visit Mums and Dad any day of the week. But I digress. Back to the reincarnation thing. Here’s a poem that visits the theme:

Different Names, the Same Person

More than a thousand years ago when I lived in China,
my name was Han Shan. And there were more of me
before that.

And plenty after also. Two hundred years ago,
in Japan, I called myself Ryōkan.
All of us:

independent, hating literary artifice and arrogance,
yet neither misanthropic nor taciturn,
friendly and talkative rather, but

preferring to live alone, in solitude, removed
and in the wilderness, keeping to that kind
of emptiness.

We’ve always been around, in lots of different places,
in every age. It’s just, only some of us
get known.

There’s one of us, I’m sure,
in your neighborhood
right now.

For a touch of his naturalistic bent, there’s this:

Winter: Tonight: Sunset

Tonight at sunset walking on the snowy road,
my shoes crunching on the frozen gravel, first

through the woods, then out into the open fields
past a couple of trailers and some pickup trucks, I stop

and look at the sky. Suddenly: orange, red, pink, blue,
green, purple, yellow, gray, all at once and everywhere.

I pause in this moment at the beginning of my old age
and I say a prayer of gratitude for getting to this evening

a prayer for being here, today, now, alive
in this life, in this evening, under this sky.

Very nice. As Mark Twain said of classics: “My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.” I feel this away about Budbill’s poetry. They hydrate the body poetic. No nonsense. And his poignant flair for lamenting old age and impending death hits a sweet spot, too. Who wants to give it up?

Finally, to hammer home the Chinese connection, Budbill writes poems where he references the “Emperor,” just as Han Shan and friends did so many years ago. Only in Bud’s case, the “Emperor” is the President (of the Disunited States of America), and the bad reputations of both are not far apart:

What We Need

The Emperor,
his bullies
and henchmen
terrorize the world
every day,

which is why
every day

we need

a little poem
of kindness,

a small song
of peace

a brief moment
of joy.

Hear, hear! I say. Time for more moments and more Budbill….

The Good (Poetry), the Bad (Poetry), and the Ugly (Poetry)

poetry writing

good bad ugly

What is “good” poetry? What is “bad” poetry? Will you always know it when you see it? Or are the answers to such questions automatically suspect due to the “you” in the latter question?

It’s a conundrum even Socrates would have trouble beating–we know good poetry when we see it, supposedly, but what happens to the ticker tape parade when Person B comes along and proclaims your “we hold this goodness to be self-evident” to be so much wishful thinking or, worse, garbage?

From the opposite tack, we often feel sure when we come across “bad” poetry. We scrunch our noses, shake our heads, perhaps abandon it halfway as if it were Joyce’s Ulysses. But what if this obviously bad poem appears on the lofty pages of Poetry magazine, say, or the loftier still pages of The New Yorker? Is it time to look in the mirror and start wondering about ourselves as judges?

I was left to contemplate such philosophical mysteries yesterday when I experienced a first. A poetry journal accepted one of my poems and, when I consulted my manuscript slated for publication around the new year to ensure it hadn’t undergone a title change (I hadn’t seen that title for awhile), I noticed the poem was no longer in the manuscript.

Data malfunction, you ask? Accidental deletion, maybe? Not quite. As I’ve been combing over the manuscript, tightening poems and, in a few cases, replacing “weaker” ones with new blood of a stronger strain, I’ve placed the cut poems if a file called “Pulled from Ms.”

It so happens that the accepted poem–one that I obviously decided was “bad” because multiple editors had given it the form e-mail boot, in so many words telling me it was bad–was lurking in this “out bin” with some other sheepish poems. Only now it looked less sheepish and more indignant.

“See?” it said. “You doubted me. You doubted yourself and decided I was bad. Ugly, even. Now what?”

I’ll tell you now what. I moved it back into the manuscript. Lines between the good, the bad, and the ugly had blurred dramatically. And all in the electronic flash of an acceptance.

What abstract point does this concrete experience make? Is it the old saw which states that we are the worst judges of our own works? And if so, how does that explain our negative reactions to other writers’ poems that find their ways into the most highfalutin’ of poetry journals and magazine glossies?

We’re told to judge not, but we can’t help but judge. We’re only human (which is, ironically, equal parts good, bad, and ugly at times).

My theory, subject to ridicule by Socrates and heirs to his cause, is that the great middle ground is impossible to pin down with such adjectives. There are extremes at either end–unquestionably good because they’ve stood the test of time and still thrill new generations of poetry readers, and undoubtedly bad because, well, the poet in question assaults the senses and a few other innocent bystanders, when his poetry is inflicted on them.

Still, taking out, say, 20% of poems on either end of the spectrum, we’re left with that huge DMZ: 60% of what we read or maybe even write ourselves. Is it good? Bad? Ugly like a duckling with ambitions?

Good luck deciding. Yesterday’s e-mail has me reaching for a poetic white flag.

“Speak like rain!”

poetry

dinesen

There’s a famous passage from Out of Africa where Isak Dinesen introduces some Kikuyu tribesmen to poetry and its ability to rhyme. She writes the following:

The Natives, who have a strong sense of rhythm, know nothing of verse, or at least did not know anything before the times of the schools, where they were taught hymns. One evening out in the maize-field, where we had been harvesting maize, breaking off the cobs and throwing them on to the ox-carts, to amuse myself, I spoke to the field laborers, who were mostly quite young, in Swahili verse. There was no sense in the verses, they were made for the sake of rime–“Ngumbe na-penda chumbe, Malaya mbaya. Wakamba na-kula mamba.” The oxen like salt–whores are bad–The Wakamba eat snakes. It caught the interest of the boys, they formed a ring around me. They were quick to understand that meaning in poetry is of no consequence, and they did not question the thesis of the verse, but waited eagerly for the rime, and laughed at it when it came. I tried to make them themselves find the rime and finish the poem when I had begun it, but they could not, or would not, do that, and turned away their heads. As they had become used to the idea of poetry, they begged: “Speak again. Speak like rain.” Why they should feel verse to be like rain I do not know. It must have been, however, an expression of applause, since in Africa rain is always longed for and welcomed.

As a writer of poetry, I cannot deny the music of poetry and know full well that there are poets who value the sound aspect in verse as much as or more than the visual and meaningful aspects. I engage in alliteration and assonance early and often, too, when I write poetry, but rhyme? What is it about rhyme? For some reason, I give it a wide berth, as if it were some beautiful Siren song surrounded by a shore of bones.

This reluctance to play with rhyme is odd, considering we are brought up on rhyming poems as children. My students, in fact, even at age 14, prefer rhyming poems to free verse (the meat and potatoes of my writing regimen). It’s a stubborn thing, hardwired into our musical brains.

Perhaps fear of rhyming is the “Hallmark effect,” as some have dubbed the sing-songy writing in greeting cards where roses are often red and violets are often blue. Or the gaudy allure of limericks. Or the refrain-happy repetition of rhyme in the songs of popular music. To some, it looks “cheap,” but clearly it isn’t, not when it is used by the likes of Robert Frost, William Butler Yeats, William Wordsworth, A.E. Housman, etc.

The only thing for it is to experiment. Rhyming where it doesn’t seem to be noticed, yet has the reader unconsciously tapping her foot, maybe. If not exact rime, then slant rime, maybe, as training wheels on the way to greater fluency.

What about you, as a reader and / or writer of poetry. Do you love rhyme? Do you find it too self-consciously “poetic”? I know this: We all like rain. It’s speaking like rain that’s the challenge, and perhaps a worthy one.

Where Pretentious Poetry Need Not Apply

poetry

budbill

It’s always a good day when you stumble upon a book of poetry you love, a day that introduces you to a new poet who has written plenty of other books you can now explore, a day that time forgets but you won’t soon because, well, it was so fun being lost in the thicket of its hours and minutes.

Such was yesterday morning when I waded into David Budbill’s Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse. Budbill, a Vermont poet, appeals to me for a few reasons. Let me enumerate a few:

His poems frequently allude to the ancient poets of China and Japan.
His poems are grounded in nature. There’s a Walden-esque air to his work, though he’d much prefer I say a T’ang Dynasty air to his work, maybe.
His poems can be self-deprecating.
His poems have a sense of humor.
His poetry comes alive on the page due to its strong sense of voice.
He pulls no punches when it comes to the Poohbahs of Poetry, people who write obscure poetry, the New Yorker type poets and, of course, the ubiquitous, inbred MFA-machine types.
His poems are simple, much like me.

Good enough reason to celebrate a day and a poet, to not only line up more Budbill books to read, but seek more of the humble poetry he admires from a distant Chinese and Japanese past. When books lead to books, a bibliophile is a happy being!

Here is a taste of Budbill’s straightforward poems, most of them short, many of them demonstrating traits shared above:

“When I Came to Judevine Mountain”

When I came to Judevine Mountain
I thought
all my troubles would cease,
but I brought
books and papers–my ambition–
so now, still,
all I know is grief.

“In the Ancient Tradition”

I live within the ancient tradition:
the poet as mountain recluse,
withdrawn and hidden,
a life of genteel poverty,
a quiet life of meditation,

which gives me lots of time
to gnash my teeth and worry over
how I want to be known and read
by everyone and have admirers
everywhere and lots of money!

“Like the Clouds”

Our lives are like the clouds.

We come from out of nowhere,
take some shape a little while,
then disappear.

No wonder we all want
money, power, prestige,
immortality from poetry.

“The Three Goals”

The first goal is to see the thing itself
in and for itself, to see it simply and clearly
for what it is.

No symbolism, please.

The second goal is to see each individual thing
as unified, as one, with all the other
ten thousand things.

In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.

The third goal is to grasp the first and second goals,
to see the universal and the particular,
simultaneously.

Regarding this one, call me when you get it.

“Another Lie”

This silence, this emptiness,
this freedom to listen and dream
are all I’ve ever wanted.

And if that were true my
ambition, bitterness, and envy
would have left me years ago.

“Be Glad”

Why become wise

when you can be stupid?

Why become sophisticated

when you can be simple and original?

If you are artless and ordinary,

the literati, who recognize only

artifice and self-consciousness,

will ignore you.

Be glad with just a cup of tea,

a bird’s song,

a small book of plain poems,

and your anonymity.

“Dilemma”

I want to be

famous

so I can be

humble

about being

famous.

What good is my

humility

when I am

stuck

in this

obscurity?

“The Cycle of the Seasons”

The cycle of the seasons is to teach us to prepare

for our own deaths.

We get to practice every year, especially in the fall.

I’ve had fifty-eight practice sessions now.

But I’m not getting anywhere.

I can’t seem to get it.

The more I practice, the older I get,

the less I want to die.

“An Age of Academic Mandarins”

This is an age of academic mandarins
who manufacture secret vocabularies
so they can keep their verses to themselves
and away from ordinary people
who could never understand the erudition
of their obtuse allusions, or the quirky twists
of their self-indulgent minds.

Ah, Po Chü-i, how they would laugh at you,
My Friend, standing there in your kitchen
testing your poem on your illiterate cook to see
if it is plain enough so that she and people like her
will be able to comprehend what you have to say.

And when she says she doesn’t know what you
are talking about, you go back to your study
to make it plainer, more easily accessible–
pure, clean, simple: so anyone can understand.

–all poems from Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse by David Budbill, Copper Canyon Press, 1999.

Ideal Conditions for Writing? Hear Ye, Hear Ye!

poetry writing

What are ideal conditions for writing? Far be it for me to offer advice, but since you didn’t ask, I’ll relent.

First of all, it is a myth that poetry, unlike it’s more verbose cousins (novels, plays, essays) is best written on paper. Sure, many famous poets wax poetic (what else?) about blue ink on long yellow legal pad, but me, I find the blizzard-like beauty of Word-.docx white just as enticing. Why? To preserve erasers. Nothing gets revised as many ways to Sunday as a poem suffering birthing pains. The confetti of eraser sheddings gets bothersome.

Writing position? As the Poles say, in their poetic way, on your dupa. (If you’re Polish and notice a misspelling, please forgive me.) I love Mark Twain, but never understood his elderly habit of writing in bed. Isn’t there a famous blues song, after all, called “Don’t Write in Bed”? (Ear worm works its way into my cochlea.)

Writing atmosphere? We cannot control the high and low pressure systems the Weather Gods (and their inept interpreters — read: meteorologists — on TV) send our way, but we can adjust ambience. For me, poetry is best written to classical music. Reason? The aforementioned ear worm. It doesn’t turn and do its night crawl when the music lacks lyrics.

Music with lyrics is like someone reading over your shoulder. Or worse, someone whispering another man’s poem in your ear while you are trying to compose your own. Have you ever tried to recall a song while another is playing? It puts the caco- in cacophony, let me tell you.

Some of my favorites? I love the Estonian wonder, Arvo Pärt, and his tintinnabulation. Kind of like Poe’s bells, bells, bells, only Pärt does it with more than bells. Like Bach, he’s also fond of repetition. Wave upon wave of musical refrain and echo and repetition. Are these not musical tools in the poet’s toolbox, too?

When Pärt is not around, I go with Johann Sebastian himself. Or Sibelius, whose music has a nice Finnish to it (don’t groan–the Bard is fond of puns, too, and no one groans).

Finally, before I sit down to classical music at the word processor and begin to write, I like to read good poetry for at least a half hour. Wonderful word play by masters sets the tone. Inspires. Fools you into saying, “Shoot. I can do that!” And, make no mistake, this conceit must be present, even if it is a wild conceit.

Results may vary, as they say. As will definitions of “ideal.” As long as you have some, that’s all. As long as you could write this column, too.

Basho Springs a Surprise (and Other Paeans to Spring)

poetry

daffodil

It feels like winter still, but the Old Farmer’s Almanac says differently. It’s the first day of spring. The long-awaited equinox. Poets, like farmers, have forever taken note. It moved Robert “Beginning to Melt” Frost to prayer, for instance:

“A Prayer in Spring”

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
To which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends he will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.

Yes, yes. There’s something about spring that pulls the “Oh’s” and the “O’s” from poets’ throats. I give you the experienced (and innocent) William Blake:

“To Spring”

O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down
Thro’ the clear windows of the morning, turn
Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!

The hills tell each other, and the listening
Valleys hear; all our longing eyes are turned
Up to thy bright pavilions: issue forth,
And let thy holy feet visit our clime.

Come o’er the eastern hills, and let our winds
Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste
Thy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearls
Upon our love-sick land that mourns for thee.

O deck her forth with thy fair fingers; pour
Thy soft kisses on her bosom; and put
Thy golden crown upon her languished head,
Whose modest tresses were bound up for thee.

There’s something about British poets and cuckoos, too. Here they only come in clocks: Eastern Standard Cuckoos and Daylight Savings Cuckoos. Let’s listen to some Bardilicious Shakespeare:

“Spring”

When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he:
‘Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo!’ O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.
When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,
And merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he:
‘Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo!’ O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.

Closer to (my) home, we have Claude McKay mucking about New Hampshire in mud season, thinking on fast-approaching April and slower-approaching May:

“Spring in New Hampshire”

Too green the springing April grass,
Too blue the silver-speckled sky,
For me to linger here, alas,
While happy winds go laughing by,
Wasting the golden hours indoors,
Washing windows and scrubbing floors.

Too wonderful the April night,
Too faintly sweet the first May flowers,
The stars too gloriously bright,
For me to spend the evening hours,
When fields are fresh and streams are leaping,
Wearied, exhausted, dully sleeping.

Here Katherine Mansfield unfurls a few flags of tenderest green:

“Very Early Spring”

The fields are snowbound no longer;
There are little blue lakes and flags of tenderest green.
The snow has been caught up into the sky–
So many white clouds–and the blue of the sky is cold.
Now the sun walks in the forest,
He touches the bows and stems with his golden fingers;
They shiver, and wake from slumber.
Over the barren branches he shakes his yellow curls.
Yet is the forest full of the sound of tears….
A wind dances over the fields.
Shrill and clear the sound of her waking laughter,
Yet the little blue lakes tremble
And the flags of tenderest green bend and quiver.

Pete Crowther channels the old country of “Jolly Olde,” plowing the way for red-winged blackbird season:

“Srping–It Is Icumen In”

There is no breath of wind today
The fields still white with frost
So clear the air that I can see
For miles and miles to where
A village church is almost hid
By trees, and here and there
A tiny plume of smoke betrays
Some farmhouse tucked away.
All seems to be expectancy:
The very air vibrates
And sparkles with the promise that
Sweet spring is on the way.
I feel my spirit lift, take wing
To be alive this day.

(Crowther’s being a play on the Middle English song with its famous refrain: Sing cuccu nu. Sing cuccu / Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu nu!)

Finally, lest your eyes go bleary with all these distinct, look-alike paeans to spring, I leave you with Matsuo Basho. You can always count on Basho to approach things differently. And succinctly:

First day of spring–
I keep thinking about
the end of autumn.

Sigh…

“This Is Your Book on Drugs…”

poetry

egg

Remember the old anti-drug commercial with the egg and the frying pan? “This is your brain on drugs,” it said. Drop egg into pan. Pipe in amped sound of sizzling.

I love metaphor, especially sunny-side up metaphors. Only having your first book of poems accepted for publication can be cloudy-side up at times. Think of it metaphorically: “This is your book on published and released.” It becomes many things, but few of them are what you imagined in the starry-eyed, naiveté of your pre-published days.

Soon, you learn, and your education in book publishing is a wonderful lesson in metaphor as well. Almost a year after my first was published, here are but a few that come to mind:

A published book is a mote of sand on the South Beach of life.

A published book is not a cry in the wilderness, but a cry from a seat in the last row at the Super Bowl of Published Authors. After a Hail Mary reception. For the win.

A published book is an unholy mackerel in the biggest school the ocean has ever educated.

A published book is a Who on the day Horton loses his hearing-aid.

A published book is a sales statistic you cannot easily pronounce on amazon dot all-is-not-calm.

A published book is a pile in a book bag in your study. Like your little brother who kept tagging along instead of running off to get himself sold or something.

A published book is the one you actually have time to reread. And critique. When it’s too late.

A published book is a falling ex-tree in a forest. Does it make a sound?

A published book is the sound of one person reading. Maybe you. OK, definitely you.

A published book is sharp. Like that needle in the haystack would be. If people could see it.

A published book is not a Billy. It is not a Collins, either.

A published book is not a Barnes & Noble shelf squatter.

A published book is an x-ray. When held to the light, it shows no signs of New Yorker.

A published book is a first edition looking for the Godot of its second.

A published book begs attention like a panhandler in New York City. Pedestrians see it as fire hydrant. Pigeon, maybe. A sidewalk crack, perhaps.

A published book is read by your family. Well, some of your family. OK, your spouse. Because you read it aloud. While she’s trying to eat her burrito and do the crossword.

A published book is a glowing book review written not in a room of the New York Times but in the rheum of your eyes every time you browse through it. After a few wines.

A published book is hundreds upon hundreds of Goodreads “to-reads.” It is one “currently-reading.” Maybe you. Or your Secret Sharer. Or Joseph Conrad. Who is dead.

A published book is your son in left field after he got hit on the head with a lazy fly ball. You’re still proud of him, and though he’s not batting clean-up or winning gold gloves, you don’t give up on having more children.

Nota Bene: Good News, gentle readers! My second poetry collection has been accepted by a publisher and will be released around the New Year! Metaphor: A second published book is… as great a joy as the first!