More Neruda

For those of us who love the sea, there is no end to our attempts to describe how it affects us. I am fortunate to live in an area where I can get to the Atlantic Ocean relatively quickly. When I stand gazing out over rocky cliffs or a smooth beach, I feel connected to the world, calmer than usual, soothed, I think, is the best word. The sea is healing.

Pablo Neruda wrote a wonderful short poem which captures the essence of the sea in a remarkable way. I found it in The Essential Neruda, ed. by Mark Eisner. I have included the Spanish as well, just for fun.

Have a wonderful weekend.


EL MAR

Un solo ser, pero no hay sangre.
Una sola caricia, muerte o rosa.
Viene el mar y reúne nuestras vidas
y solo ataca y se reparte y canta
en noche y día y hombre y criatura.
La esencia : fuego y frío : movimiento

Pablo Neruda


THE SEA

One single being, but there's no blood.
One single caress, death or rose.
The sea comes and reunites our lives
and attacks and divides and sings alone
in night and day and man and creature.
The essence : fire and cold : movement.

Pablo Neruda

Rita Dove

The Academy of American Poets is featuring some new work by established poets. I found one by Rita Dove entitled "Vacation"--which I probably latched onto because I could really use one--and I was struck by how much I resonated with the experience in the poem. It is included in a new collection entitled On the Wing: American Poems of Air and Space Flight.

Airports are often discussed as stressful, inconvenient, even dangerous places; but I have always loved the feeling of hanging out, waiting to board, having no place to be in that moment but in my chair, reading or sipping coffee. It's almost a time-out-of-time experience, maybe because I have no control over the schedule. I will move when instructed, and leave the plane when intructed. Kind of a relief after all the decision-making I do in my daily life.


Vacation

I love the hour before takeoff,
that stretch of no time, no home
but the gray vinyl seats linked like
unfolding paper dolls. Soon we shall
be summoned to the gate, soon enough
there’ll be the clumsy procedure of row numbers
and perforated stubs—but for now
I can look at these ragtag nuclear families
with their cooing and bickering
or the heeled bachelorette trying
to ignore a baby’s wail and the baby’s
exhausted mother waiting to be called up early
while the athlete, one monstrous hand
asleep on his duffel bag, listens,
perched like a seal trained for the plunge.
Even the lone executive
who has wandered this far into summer
with his lasered itinerary, briefcase
knocking his knees—even he
has worked for the pleasure of bearing
no more than a scrap of himself
into this hall. He’ll dine out, she’ll sleep late,
they’ll let the sun burn them happy all morning
—a little hope, a little whimsy
before the loudspeaker blurts
and we leap up to become
Flight 828, now boarding at Gate 17.

Rita Dove

If the moon were my sister...

Some of you may remember from a previous post that my sister is a planetary scientist. Recently, she participated in several meetings with colleagues about how Native Americans view science; specifically, the very different and special view native people have about the universe--the moon, the planets, the stars, etc.--being a part of a very large, loving family. Here is her response to one woman's teaching about this sujbect. When this woman read it, she was moved to tears. I felt that it was so poignant and lovely that I had to post it. Plus, she is my sister, so she gets special privileges. :-)


IF THE MOON WERE MY SISTER

Suddenly I feel very guilty that I've never visited. Just allowed
myself to be content with postcard meteorites sent in the mail,
and pictures from afar. The postcards remind me that there are
things we will never understand about ourselves, if we do not make
the effort to understand the other person. I look up at her with
my telescope, and see her waving. She's been really patient with
me. I get in my spaceship and take a trip. I orbit several times,
which is my way of knocking because I don't want to be rude. And
then I listen and am so thrilled when she says 'Come on down.' I
land as softly as I can. On the ladder looking down, I stop and
wait for permission to actually step off. I realize that I'm about
to get footprints all over the floor. But she's not hung up on
that, she just wants me to keep all that metal spaceship stuff
confined to a few places in the house, and not scattered all over.
I listen, and also learn there are some rooms guests should leave
just as is, and of course I respect that. She wants to share,
and offers me some rocks. But in exchange, she wants some from me,
of course. So she can understand me, too. So I go and come back
with rocks from Earth to give to her, one for every one I take.
And her gifts are so precious. They don't look like rocks to me
anymore, but gems. Gifts from my sister, like family photos from
our past that will tell me all sorts of things about her, and about
me too. And then I go, with promises to return soon. But not too
soon. It was just a first real visit, after all, and we both want
to go slow, and grow a relationship that will last all our lives.
We are very different people, and understanding takes patience.
Good thing she has that.

Jennifer A. Grier, Ph.D.


Photo taken by Ron Wyman; found at the Nasa web site

Two Pears

Two Pears in a Landscape by Armando Morales (b. 1927).

While thinking about the following poem, I did an image search on Google just to see what kind of art featuring two pears I might find. It must be a popular subject, because there are loads of them. Perhaps that is why Wallace Stevens chose this as the focus of his poem; it is a subject most artists probably thought they knew quite well.


STUDY OF TWO PEARS

1
Opusculum paedagogum.
The pears are not viols,
Nudes or bottles.
They resemble nothing else.

2
They are yellow forms
Composed of curves
Bulging toward the base.
They are touched red.

3
They are not flat surfaces
Having curved outlines.
They are round
Tapering toward the top.

4
In the way they are modelled
There are bits of blue
A hard dry leaf hangs
From the stem.

5
The yellow glistens.
It glistens with various yellows,
Citrons, oranges and greens
Flowering over the skin.

6
The shadow of the pears
Are blobs on the green cloth.
The pears are not seen
As the observer wills.


Stevens was an analytical kinda guy. He loved to observe, think about what he was observing, and attempt to capture his experience with pen and paper. He is a popular poet, and I think that is in large part because his work evokes powerful imagery and emotions. Many of the are poignant, or even downright sad. Stevens came to know the ultimate futility of trying to capture reality with art, and sometimes his frustration with this is quite evident; but he also recognized the power, and perhaps necessity, of trying to do it anyway. He manages to be very complex and very accessible at the same time.

Csezlaw Milosz writes that this poem is "akin to a Cubist painting" in its divided listing of the pears' qualities, and that the speaker discovers that "pears prove to be impossible to describe" (64). What the poem actually tells us, however, is that "The pears are not seen / As the observer wills." This implies that the observer is trying to project his understanding of what pears are onto the pears he is viewing. He comes to the experience thinking, "Hey, piece of cake, I know what pears are. I'll just write that." The pears, however, cannot be forced into his limited paradigm. They not only prove to be something other than the speaker thought--more complex and more fluid--but they refuse to be pinned down by any static definition.

This is exciting. In that last line we can find the basis for postmodern thought. Yes, there may be truth, but we cannot capture it; as soon as we think we know what it is, it eludes us once more. There is always more to learn about it. Truth is not stagnant; and no matter how many times we try to force our static framework onto it, it will refuse to be limited. Humbling indeed.

This is why there are so many images of two pears to be found. They are all strikingly different, yet they are all two pears.

Reflections of Experience

I'm still looking through A Book of Luminous Things, which includes amazing work from poets around the world. The following work, by the Polish poet Adam Zagajewski, has stuck in my mind since I read it. It is translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass (128):


AUTO MIRROR

In the rear-view mirror suddenly
I saw the bulk of the Beauvais Cathedral;
great things dwell in small ones
for a moment.

Adam Zagajewski


The Beauvais Cathedral (the St. Pierre de Beauvais) is a thirteenth century cathedral in Beauvais, France. Like other gothic cathedrals in Europe, this structure is awesome in its size and beauty. The medieval builders were hoping to construct the largest and tallest cathedral in France.

It's difficult for me to express what this poem does for me, but it has something to do with the speaker's second-hand viewing of this huge, beautiful structure. Even in a small, backwards reflection, he recognizes and is struck by the building's grandness. The reflection of the cathedral, encapsulated in a tiny, mirrored image, still retains the power to connect the speaker with the object.

It reminds me of poetry, and of art in general. We cannot represent exactly an object, an idea, or even a thought in a poem. Consider Wallace Steven's "A Study of Two Pears." He writes several stanzas describing two pears, each a different description but each true, and and eventually admits that he can't fully communicate the experience of viewing a pear. But the reader, nonetheless, can identify with the sensation of seeing the pears, and with the struggle of trying to describe them. We cannot accurately communicate the truth of our experience with words, or paint, or any medium, but the attempt is still inherently valuable.

So the speaker is not actually experiencing viewing the cathedral; he is viewing a representation of it; but even the representation has power and value, because it allows us, if only "for a moment," to connect with the experience.

Another interesting note: The builders of the Beavias Cathedral, in either their poor planning or poor materials, did something wrong; and the high vaults collapsed in 1248. Apparently, there is still discussion in the architectural world about why the collapse happened; no one is sure. So the speaker is viewing something not only "great" in something "small," but also something that speaks to humanity's flaws and, possibly, hubris. But still, flaws and all, it has the power to move us.

Like a poem. Inherently flawed, because it cannot accurately communicate the speaker's experience, but inherently valuable because of its attempt.

Dreams and Poetry

Have you ever written something based on a dream, one that was so vivid and lingering that you had to get it out of your system?

Dreams are a fantastic source for imagery, emotion, and exploration. People write their dreams, paint them, sculpt them, talk about them, and wonder endlessly what they might mean. They are our subconsious mind's way of getting our attention and communicating what is going on in our core being. We gain a great deal of insight into ourselves when we pay attention to our dreams.

This poem by Charles Simic, found in A Book of Luminous Things, edited by Czeslaw Milosz, is a classic example of how a dream can frame a poem and power the poem's imagery and narrative quality. Simic is an American poet born in Serbia, and this poem is most likely influenced by Simic's memories of the German occupation of his country (171):


EMPIRE OF DREAMS

On the first page of my dreambook
It's always evening
In an occupied country.
Hour before the curfew.
A small provincial city.
The houses all dark.
The store-fronts gutted.

I am on a street corner
Where I shouldn't be.
Alone and coatless
I have gone out to look
For a black dog who answers to my whistle.
I have a kind of halloween mask
Which I am afraid to put on.

Charles Simic


The anxiety expressed in this poem is captivating, because although it is specific in its detail, and although most of us do not know what it is like to live in an occupied country, we can nonetheless relate to the feelings of lonliness, fear, and unknown impending doom. The darkness, destroyed buildings, the coatless boy, the lost dog, and the sense of being in a forbidden place create an intense sense of vulnerability and danger.

The mask perhaps represents the occupying forces, that is, if the boy put the mask on, he symbolically joins the enemy, at least on the surface. But then would his dog recognize him? The boy is afraid of the protective covering of the mask, choosing to stay in this dangerous zone until he finds his dog.

Any thoughts about Simic's poem? How do dreams power your art and/or process of self-exploration?

Haiku

Thanks to some insights posted by Gilbert, I have been thinking a great deal about the Teasdale poem in the previous post. The transience of beauty is an idea that fascinates me; I return to this idea over and over whether I intend to or not.

I like the way this concept is expressed in mono no aware, a Japanese phrase frequently translated as "the ahh-ness of things." I don't care for that translation; it's too literal. Mono means "thing" or "things" in English, so when we see it in a phrase that tends to defy English translation, we cling to that word for dear life. I think of mono no aware as a brief, transcendent connection to beauty. It is a moment in which we lose the separateness between ourselves and that which we are observing. Its original meaning refers to objects in nature--animals, plants, ponds, fish, trees, etc.--but we can experience it with anything with which we feel that transcendent connection. For more details and discussion about mono no aware, check out this page.

This sense of connection to beauty, its transience, and its inherent poignancy is perhaps best expressed in the Japanese poetic form called haiku. Many English speakers understand haiku to be all about the strict syllabic form--5-7-5, for example--but the most important thing about haiku is to capture the essence of that brief connection with that which is being observed, while also expressing the transience of that connection. (If you have the "Poets Market 2005" edition, check out a great article in there about haiku.)

Here is one I really like. It is from A Haiku Menagerie, a beautiful book that includes both the Japanese haiku and the English translation. (Great for studying up on your kanji.)


An old pond--
after jumping in,
no frog!

Bosai


(Photo found on this site.)

Sara Teasdale

I've received a request for a poem by Sara Teasdale, a new poet to me, so here she goes:


Water Lilies
 
 
If you have forgotten water lilies floating
On a dark lake among mountains in the afternoon shade,
If you have forgotten their wet, sleepy fragrance,
Then you can return and not be afraid.

But if you remember, then turn away forever
To the plains and the prairies where pools are far apart,
There you will not come at dusk on closing water lilies,
And the shadow of mountains will not fall on your heart.

Sara Teasdale


The speaker is warning us not to return to an experience of beauty, but to instead move on to a wholly different place. Why? If we know of something beautiful and peaceful, why should we not go back to that experience?

Perhaps it is because we can never recreate our original connection with an experience; it exists only briefly and only in that original time. Beauty is transient; we cannot sustain a connection with it, but we can find it again somewhere else if we move on. If we think we can be fulfilled by staying in the same place, trying to renew the same connection with the same experiences, then we are fooling ourselves. We must move on and grow or become stagnant.

We can, of course, revisit places of beauty, and perhaps appreciate them in a different way. But since the original experience alters us, even if slightly, we will never feel it exactly the same way we did the first time. This is a truth of the human condition. It forces us to change, to move on, and to grow.

Some Whitman for Recovery

When I am in recovery from illness, in this case complications of a blood disorder plus a sinus infection thrown in for extra humility, I feel dulled in the brain and in the senses. I look for something to bring me back to life; something that encourages me to restart my five senses and engage as fully as possible in my environment. Poetry is frequently the fuel that gets me started.

In a wonderful collection called "A Book of Luminous Things" edited by Czeslaw Milosz, I found this poem by Walt Whitman. Although I am usually attracted to poetry that is postmodern and that struggles with definitions of reality and form, I find this poem to be a refreshing alternative. Described by Milosz as "a programmatic and unfinished poem," it asserts that our senses are indeed a trustworthy path to experiencing that which is real. I find it optimistic and very human. Just what I need right now.

Enjoy!


I AM THE POET

I am the poet of reality
I say the earth is not an echo
Nor man an apparition;
But that all the things seen are real.
I have split the earth and the hard coal and rocks and the solid bed
of the sea
And went down to reconnoitre there a long time,
And bring back a report,
And I understand that those are positive and dense every one
And that what they seem to the child they are
[And that the world is not joke,
Nor any part of it a sham].

Walt Whitman

Berryman and Birthdays

Thinking about my recent birthday led me to this poem by John Berryman:



Dream Song 112
 

My framework is broken, I am coming to an end,
God send it soon. When I had most to say
my tongue clung to the roof
I mean of my mouth. It is my Lady's birthday
which must be honoured, and has been. God send
it soon.

I now must speak to my disciples, west
and east. I say to you, Do not delay
I say, expectation is vain.
I say again, It is my Lady's birthday
which must be honoured. Bring her to the test
at once.

I say again, It is my Lady's birthday
which must be honoured, for her high black hair
but not for that alone:
for every word she utters everywhere
shows her good soul, as true as a healed bone,—
being part of what I meant to say.

John Berryman


Who is the Lady? Perhaps an image of the feminine divine? The poem has a prayer-like quality, given that it includes a plea to God to "send it soon," and a message to the speaker's "disciples." When the speaker says "my framework is broken," it sounds to me like the breakdown of a world view, or a philosphy, or some kind of belief. The speaker enjoins the disciples to honor the "Lady's birthday" and "bring her to the test." Perhaps she will pass a test of truth, as a "good soul" whose words are "as true as a healed bone," and express the speaker's ideas better than he can.

A Bone to Chew On

I'm traveling this week, and I don't have time to do much in the way of blogging, but I wanted to give you something to chew on until I get home.

Take care.


The Dog of Art
 

That dog with daisies for eyes
who flashes forth
flame of his very self at every bark
is the Dog of Art.
Worked in wool, his blind eyes
look inward to caverns and jewels
which they see perfectly,
and his voice
measures forth the treasure
in music sharp and loud,
sharp and bright,
bright flaming barks,
and growling smoky soft, the Dog
of Art turns to the world
the quietness of his eyes.

Denise Levertov

The Something of Nothing

My sister is a planetary scientist, and one day we had a lengthy discussion about what scientists in her field call "dark matter." My elementary understanding of this subject is that we only know, or can identify and/or quantify, about five percent of all of the matter in the universe. The rest looks like nothing to our human eyes; but the possibilities of what this dark matter may represent are seemingly endless--perhaps parallel universes where our other selves are living out all the alternative paths our lives could have taken. Freaky, but cool.

The idea of what nothing can represent is fascinating. Consider this poem by Kay Ryan:


Nothing Ventured

Nothing exists as a block
and cannot be parceled up.
So if nothing's ventured
it's not just talk;
it's the big wager.
Don't you wonder
how people think
the banks of space
and time don't matter?
How they'll drain
the big tanks down to
slime and salamanders
and want thanks?

Kay Ryan


The speaker in this poem states that nothing is one big, unquantifiable something. Maybe it's like love; can you measure how much you love someone? But the unmeasureable nature of nothing does not nullify its existence. That's why to venture it is "the big wager." You can only venture all of it, not a part.

I'll add this gorgeous poem by Linda Hogan. Feel free to read this short essay I wrote on it.


Nothing

Nothing sings in our bodies
like breath in a flute.
I dwells in the drum.
I hear it now
that slow beat
like when a voice said to the dark,
let there be light,
let there be ocean
and blue fish
born of nothing
and they were there.
I turn back to bed.
The man there is breathing.
I touch him
with hands already owned by another world.
Look, they are desert,
they are rust. They have washed the dead.
They have washed the just born.
They are open.
They offer nothing.
Take it.
Take nothing from me.
There is still a little life
left inside this body,
a little wildness here
and mercy
and it is the emptiness
we love, touch, enter in one another,
and try to fill.

Linda Hogan

Silhouettes of the Past

Yesterday I was sifting through a few boxes of stuff from my life, some things going back to when I was very small: piano recital programs, science fair awards, pictures of friends, pictures of me, writings, textbooks, and other trinkets. I do not enjoy this activity. I find it downright painful. Sometimes I see a picture of myself, young and naive and trusting in the future, and I feel a sense of loss, even waste. Why? I have a pretty good life. I'm not complaining. For some reason it bothers me to think about how I felt then that I could do anything. It turned out I couldn't. This is true for everyone. There are a finite number of things we can actually do with our lives, depending on our abilities, our energy, and our choices. So why does this bother me?

I'm not going to try to answer this today. Instead, I'll just share this poem that reflects this sense of the past at my shoulders, following me, haunting me, whispering to me. It is from The Antioch Review, vol. 54, no. 2, Spring 1996, p. 157:


WHAT A LITTLE BIRD SAID
by Joanie Mackowski

Flying behind my shoulders cormorants
head for the sea, and erratic, endless
stream of them; their rain-bent, pterodactylan
silhouettes set low over mercury
waves seem a bit severe--listen, lessons
in love aren't always tactile: a tarot
of overturned clam shells brims in the tangled
waves; the waves are full of tattered weed
like asterisks--maybe tonight the stars
will take a risk and bloom like barnacles
underwater--I miss you I--red-wing
blackbirds cling to the cattails, seem to say
miss you o me too or sometimes ole!
and sometimes this song continues all day--


(Photograph from this page about cormorants.)

"Tears and Loss and Broken Dreams"

I have heard it said that "everything looks better in the morning." I have, in fact, experienced this; I have gone to bed inexplicably worried about something, then awoken with the sunlight feeling less anxiety and a more positive view.

Is it true, then, that everything looks worse in the evening? Is there something about the waning light, the dropping temperature, and the pearly moon that brings on melancholy?

This poem by Carl Sandburg (1868-1967) describes just that feeling:


Dreams in the Dusk

Dreams in the dusk,
Only dreams closing the day
And with the day’s close going back
To the gray things, the dark things,
The far, deep things of dreamland.

Dreams, only dreams in the dusk,
Only the old remembered pictures
Of lost days when the day’s loss
Wrote in tears the heart’s loss.

Tears and loss and broken dreams
May find your heart at dusk.

Carl Sandburg


"Tears and loss and broken dreams." Do you have this experience in the evening? Do you feel the weight of your life's losses and sadder memories taking up space in your soul when the sun goes down?

Loss

I fear to love you, Sweet, because
Love's the ambassador of loss.

Francis Thompson (1859-1907)


Loss is a part of the human experience. We lose things, time, and money. We lose friends and people we love. We lose happiness, joy, and even hope. Sometimes we think we're losing our minds. Ultimately, we will lose our bodies when they pass away and join the earth's soil.

In Western culture, we try very hard to avoid loss, the same way we try to avoid pain or thoughts of death. Loss is seen as a negative experience, even a negative word. Loss is difficult, and often painful, but inevitable. How do we come to grips with that?

In the following poem by Elizabeth Bishop, the speaker describes her experience with loss and how she claims to deal with it:


One Art


The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop


The "art" of losing, the speaker calls it; something to pay attention to, to think about and analyze and not to ignore. Paying attention to loss--feeling its full emotional effects and taking the time to process it--sounds very wise to me. It is important to feel and process any kind of pain so we don't get stuck in it.

But, somehow, I feel the speaker is not quite being honest. Maybe it's the cavalier way she tries to deny the importance of losing significant things, like "continents" and "realms." "Even losing you," she states, insinuating that the loss of her love is the greatest loss on her list. Not "disasters," perhaps, but I feel a hestitancy in the speaker to claim the experience of loss, the pain of it, even perhaps the agony of losing her love. To state that the loss hurts would make her feel too vulnerable, and she is not willing to let on that her former lover had that much effect on her.

What about the "Write it" phrase? What do you think? Does Bishop's poem resonate with any experience of loss you have had? How does poetry or another kind of art help you process loss?

Fiery Connection

I found this gorgeous poem by Adrienne Rich at Poem Hunter. To me it stands as an alternative to the Clifton poem "fury,"in which a mother is forced to sacrifice her poetry to the red hot coals of a furnace. In Rich's "Burning Oneself Out," the speaker experiences a powerful connection with the burning logs in her wood stove, and describes the power of the senses to make us feel pulled out of time and joined with the thing we are observing. It is a transient but true experience.

Have a fabulous weekend.


Burning Oneself Out
 

We can look into the stove tonight
as into a mirror, yes,

the serrated log, the yellow-blue gaseous core

the crimson-flittered grey ash, yes.
I know inside my eyelids
and underneath my skin

Time takes hold of us like a draft
upward, drawing at the heats
in the belly, in the brain

You told me of setting your hand
into the print of a long-dead Indian
and for a moment, I knew that hand,

that print, that rock,
the sun producing powerful dreams
A word can do this

or, as tonight, the mirror of the fire
of my mind, burning as if it could go on
burning itself, burning down

feeding on everything
till there is nothing in life
that has not fed that fire

Adrienne Rich

Artistic Sacrifice

"If a man fears death, / he shall be saved by his poems."

from Mark Strand's "The New Poetry Handbook"

The two previous posts have elicited strong responses from several people. It appears many of us identify with the feeling that writing has become a necessary part of their lives, as necessary as eating and sleeping. Others resonate with the idea that to destroy one's art is to destroy a bit of one's self, and a few of us understand this feeling from direct experience. Some of us have destroyed our poems, journals, drawings, or other art we have created out of a sense of self-loathing, or misdirected rage, or embarassment, or perhaps because, like Lucille Clifton's mother, we were forced to do so.

I am very curious to know of other experiences of people who have, at some point in their lives, destroyed their art. What circumstances caused you to do it? What feelings did you have as you did it? How did you feel afterwards? What does that sacrifice mean to you now? Do you still feel the urge to do it?

I will share an art-destruction story of my own. When I was eleven, our local small town newspaper was having a contest for kids. Every day they printed a picture of a clown, and I would cut it out and color it in. You could do as many as you wanted, then send them all in. The best colored-in clown won a prize.

Creating art in my family was dangerous. Any creative risk was met with suspicion and sarcasm from my parents, so I hid these pictures in my room. (I didn't find out until I was in my twenties that my sister had been writing poems since her childhood, and keeping them in a large binder. She has hundreds of them, all kept secret for years.) I can't remember what prompted my mother's rage on that day--she was prone to fits of hostility and depression--but I remember her throwing things, yelling, and sending me to my room.

What I remember best about the entire incident is what I felt in that room. Most likely it was a warped anger against my mother, but I felt it as an intense self-loathing, a sense that I was incurably "bad," because my mother disliked me so much. I saw those clown pictures sitting on the floor of my room in a small stack, and I hated them. I hated that I had colored them, had bothered to hope that I might do something special. I hated that I had allowed myself to become vulnerable enough to believe that art was worthwhile. I hated that they existed.

I grabbed at the stack and started ripping paper as fast as I could, tearing apart the clown faces with sobbing fury. Once I had reduced the stack to a pile of ripped, colored newsprint, I felt a strange catharsis, as if I could breathe again. I stuffed the pieces in my trashcan and lay on my bed, unmoving, for a long time.

This sacrifice of my art was a sacrifice of a piece of my eleven-year-old heart. But it also helped me survive in an painful family situation. I could have never shown that kind of anger to my parents without severe consequences, and the destruction of the clown helped me proccess it, albeit it in a misdirected way. Part of me mourns the clowns; part of me is glad I had the clowns to rip up so I didn't do it to my body. It's difficult to judge.

Wide-Open Art

This weekend, I was reflecting on the power writing and other artistic expression has to liberate us from emotional paralysis. When I am writing regularly, I feel emotions travel through me like a mild electrical current, almost like a buzzing. Things that hurt still hurt, but they move on. Things that make me happy still do, but I experience the happiness more fully. Doing yoga regualrly provides a similar experience.

In her latest post, Kristina writes the following about writing:

Does [it] make you laugh? Does it make you cry? Does it make you think? Does it make you feel? Does it fulfill you? Does it leave you exhausted? Does it rejuvenate you? Does it scare you? Really, really scare you? Do you know, in your heart, that you could get through anything life hands you as long as you didn't have to give up this one thing?

Ruminating on these question brought me to the idea that, if you are a writer, then writing is breathing, just as sure as your lungs are breathing as they expand and contract. Writing is to our emotional selves what oxygen is to our blood. We crave it, and feel suffocated when we don't have it.

What happens to a person when she cannot practice her art? A few months ago, I posted a poem by Lucille Clifton called "fury," in which she describes her mother burning her own poems in a fiery, red furnace. Clifton's mother was forced to stifle her own artistic expression. Today, I found another poem by Clifton which illustrates what I perceive as the consequences of her mother's sacrifice:


My Mama Moved Among the Days
 
My Mama moved among the days
like a dreamwalker in a field;
seemed like what she touched was here
seemed like what touched her couldn't hold,
she got us almost through the high grass
then seemed like she turned around and ran
right back in
right back on in

Lucille Clifton


An artist without her art is "untouched" by the world, as if she can't process the reality of her environment properly. Things don't seem "real" without the framework of her art. It also appears that, without her poetry to sustain her, "mama" in the poem loses the courage she needs to get her self and her family through "the high grass;" she could make it, but chooses to run "right back in." Her fear of the wide-open world gets the better of her.

Writing is terrifying in its wide-openness. It takes immense courage to do it, and sometimes it just seems easier to pass it up. But when we do--when we choose the illusory protectiveness of the high grass--that's when we wither.

Wallace Stevens and Postmodernism

As you have probably guessed by now (I'm looking at you, Defeatist), I am something of a postmodernist. Jean-Francois Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition practically made me weep with relief the first time I read it; I was so astounded to find a vocabulary to express ideas that had been floating around in my psyche and attempting to make their way into full consciousness.

Thinking about this brought to mind Wallace Steven's poem "A Study of Two Pears;" but while I was looking for it, I ran into this other wonderful poem by Stevens at the Academy of American Poets. I haven't read this poem for a long time. I had forgotten how much I like it. The imagery is gorgeous, and for some reason, I always laugh at the end.

Have a wonderful weekend.



Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird


Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.


II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
 

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.


IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
 

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.


VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
 

VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?


VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.


IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.


X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.


XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.


XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.


XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

Wallace Stevens

Philosophical Gaps

One does not need to spend to much time surfing blogs, reading newspapers or magazines, or simply talking to various people to learn how eager we are to share our views with other people, whether on minor issues ("John Cusack is the best actor ever!) or major ones ("Pulling out of the Kyoto Conference was the stupidest decision ever!) Forming ideas, opinions, views about how the world does or should work, and creating a framework through which to view the function and purpose of our lives are inherent parts of the human experience. We spend a lot of time doing it, whether we are aware of it or not.

The trick, of course, is that once a belief or opinion is chosen, others are rejected; "the bookcase slides shut," as Ashbery writes in the following poem. It's true that some beliefs are more flexible than others; but if you prefer a more flexible view of the world, than you are probably rejecting the idea of absolutes or the validity of a "black and white" philosophy. You like the grays.

Fine. But how do we choose our beliefs, as we must do as humans, either quite consciously or not, and keep our minds open to other human beings who are doing the same thing? By listening to them. Listening to another person express ideas that are contrary to our own, without getting defensive or interrupting them, is just about the hardest thing to do. Holy cow, can it feel threatening. My husband and I spent years learning how to do this with each other, let alone with others. But consider this: it is unlikely that any one of us can imagine, let alone express, the entire truth of the purpose or meaning of our existence, or even of any given contentious issue. This does not nullify the vailidity of our opinions; but it does call into question where the truth actually lies.

"There's a lot of fun to be had in the gaps between ideas," Ashbery writes. I would suggest that there is a lot to learn in those gaps, as well--realizations of truths about self, about the universe, about others--and the ability the listen to others without judging them. Consider the article about six women on both sides of the abortion debate--three pro-choice and three-pro-life--who came together for five and a half years of secret talks to foster a civilized, honest discussion about their views. They actually listened to each to other:

At the end of the five and a half years of secret conversations, the six leaders wrote an article in The Boston Globe about their experience of dialogue. None of the women had changed their mind about abortion; they had, however, achieved a genuine and heartfelt respect and affection for each other.

A "genuine and heartfelt respect and affection." Can you imagine? Isn't it amazing to think about listening openly to someone without the burden of judging them, or feeling as if you must approve or disapprove of what they're saying? And having someone else do that for you? Can you imagine getting to know someone as a human being rather than seeing them as a mouthpiece for a particular agenda? Can you imagine the power in this?

If you're tired of the baloney about the "polarization" in the United States, and talk of the "red state/blue state" nonsense (check out the purple map for something closer to the truth), you might want to see what's going on at the Public Conversations Project.


My Philosophy of Life
 
Just when I thought there wasn't room enough
for another thought in my head, I had this great idea--
call it a philosophy of life, if you will.Briefly,
it involved living the way philosophers live,
according to a set of principles. OK, but which ones?

That was the hardest part, I admit, but I had a
kind of dark foreknowledge of what it would be like.
Everything, from eating watermelon or going to the bathroom
or just standing on a subway platform, lost in thought
for a few minutes, or worrying about rain forests,
would be affected, or more precisely, inflected
by my new attitude.I wouldn't be preachy,
or worry about children and old people, except
in the general way prescribed by our clockwork universe.
Instead I'd sort of let things be what they are
while injecting them with the serum of the new moral climate
I thought I'd stumbled into, as a stranger
accidentally presses against a panel and a bookcase slides back,
revealing a winding staircase with greenish light
somewhere down below, and he automatically steps inside
and the bookcase slides shut, as is customary on such occasions.
At once a fragrance overwhelms him--not saffron, not lavender,
but something in between.He thinks of cushions, like the one
his uncle's Boston bull terrier used to lie on watching him
quizzically, pointed ear-tips folded over. And then the great rush
is on.Not a single idea emerges from it.It's enough
to disgust you with thought.But then you remember something
William James
wrote in some book of his you never read--it was fine, it had the
fineness,
the powder of life dusted over it, by chance, of course, yet
still looking
for evidence of fingerprints. Someone had handled it
even before he formulated it, though the thought was his and
his alone.

It's fine, in summer, to visit the seashore.
There are lots of little trips to be made.
A grove of fledgling aspens welcomes the traveler.Nearby
are the public toilets where weary pilgrims have carved
their names and addresses, and perhaps messages as well,
messages to the world, as they sat
and thought about what they'd do after using the toilet
and washing their hands at the sink, prior to stepping out
into the open again.Had they been coaxed in by principles,
and were their words philosophy, of however crude a sort?
I confess I can move no farther along this train of thought--
something's blocking it.Something I'm
not big enough to see over.Or maybe I'm frankly scared.
What was the matter with how I acted before?
But maybe I can come up with a compromise--I'll let
things be what they are, sort of.In the autumn I'll put up jellies
and preserves, against the winter cold and futility,
and that will be a human thing, and intelligent as well.
I won't be embarrassed by my friends' dumb remarks,
or even my own, though admittedly that's the hardest part,
as when you are in a crowded theater and something you say
riles the spectator in front of you, who doesn't even like the idea
of two people near him talking together. Well he's
got to be flushed out so the hunters can have a crack at him--
this thing works both ways, you know. You can't always
be worrying about others and keeping track of yourself
at the same time.That would be abusive, and about as much fun
as attending the wedding of two people you don't know.
Still, there's a lot of fun to be had in the gaps between ideas.
That's what they're made for!Now I want you to go out there
and enjoy yourself, and yes, enjoy your philosophy of life, too.
They don't come along every day. Look out!There's a big one...

John Ashbery