Long Time New Poem

Wow -- I started a new job and got sucked in like a drowning camel -- who knows where that image came from.

Here are the only two new poems I've written in the past two months, drafts, jottings, musings, stretching the old muscles -- ugh

Still having Eavan Boland dreams.

#1 (for PZ)

No chemo for her
She knew and true
To her heart she blossomed
Into the space around
Where we watch
Each moment with gardenias
And gratitude.

#2 (also for PZ)
Finding An Old Letter From A Steady Friend

Things used to matter so much
I hurt you easily
I was strong, like a vise
around your fingers
where they pointed to
your heart

Now nothing hurts
anymore like a day
you forgot me
standing there not standing
up for myself
down in the gutter of your
laugh

I loved you like a lover
less a friend
we both hated it and
couldn't sleep for the
dreams

Today I re-read your
threats
they seem so small on
the yellowed letter
sweat breaks out
between my breasts
my skin remembers
what I have done under
with my mind
with time
the tip of your tongue
to my ear
lashing --

Working through Boland blogs

I'm starting to do my research for my thesis, and am finding all kinds of interesting blogs about Eavan Boland. Here are two:

Exphrasis: Poetry Inspired by Art and Song of a Reformed Headhunter (Jee Leong Koh) -- the later in particular discusses three poems I've been researching, one about a Degas painting, one about a Renoir painting, and one about an Ingres drawing. Since I'm lazy, I will not post the photos of these artworks, nor reproduce the poems. If you're interested, follow the links. Oh, what the heck, here's the Ingres. I like her clear face, her beautiful skin, her neck, her firmness -- wrapped all up in hasty sketches and ruffles -- a woman in a potato chip.

Long August

It was a great and grim month -- I have a new job, still trying to separate from my old job, my kid's sick (really not nice), the weather has been a disaster, the DNC and then the RNC took up a lot ot time, Sarah Palin gives me the creeps but my husband thinks she's attractive, I'm going to have to give away the tortoise because we really don't have enough space for him -- but on the up side, my sister-in-law is now a thyroid cancer survivor (yeah!), my best friend has her breast tumor downgraded and may not need chemo (double yea!), my son caught his first fish (yum!) and I think I've decided at last what to do with my thesis -- yes, this is a poetry post to this, my poetry blog -- Domestic Imagery in Eavan Boland's Poetry: Aesthetic or Femenist Choices? -- or something like that.

What do you think about this? (from "Suburban Woman" published in The War Horse, 1975)

II

Morning: mistress of talcums, spun
and second cottons, run tights
she is, courtesan to the lethal
rapine of routine. The room invites.
She reaches to flouresce the dawn.
The kitchen lights like a brothel.

Pretty cool, huh? Stay tuned --

About the Night Sky

We've been traveling in Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana (also in the Sierra Nevada near Tahoe) for almost two weeks -- the last week before the new moon and now the first week after it. There have been many stary nights. Here's a poem that my husband found on Andrew Sullivan's blog (citation to follow, there was a beautiful photograph with it), but of course we've had Emily to thank for it, for many years now. My daughter is on an Outward Bound trip somewhere in the Montana mountains. I miss her -- and I hope she's having some starry nights and some meditative moments, some altering experiences, of her own.

We grow accustomed to the Dark—
When light is put away—
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye—

A Moment—We uncertain step
For newness of the night—
Then—fit our Vision to the Dark—
And meet the Road—erect—

And so of larger—Darkness—
Those Evenings of the Brain—
When not a Moon disclose a sign—
Or Star—come out—within—

The Bravest—grope a little—
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead—
But as they learn to see—

Either the Darkness alters—
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight—
And Life steps almost straight.

On Vacation

Bye for now!

Poems about kids

Okay, so when I went back to the readwritepoem site (so much fun and cool people) I took their Read Write Poll about what most people write poems about. My top three choices are (1) my kids, (2) objects, (3) nature. I think "myself" is a redundant category --you can't write a poem without exposing/writing about/being yourself. Anyway --

The results surprised me. After you take the poll, they show you how you rank. In case the rankings change before you (whoever you are) get there, here's what the results were when I took the poll. Am I really the only person who writes about my kids? What does that say about us as writers? As mothers? I wish I could find the quote from (I think it was) Julia Alvarez who said of course she writes poems about her family. That's what she spends most of her time doing, that's her material.

The other side of the argument was nicely put by Adrienne Rich (in her book the name of which I will insert here when I get home from work) that poetry is the only place where she doesn't have to take care of her kids. Hence, she chose not to write about them.

Hmmmmmm-------

THE READ WRITE POLL

I most often write poems about (choose as many as three):

Memories (35%, 14 Votes)
Feelings (35%, 14 Votes)
Myself (30%, 12 Votes)
Nature (28%, 11 Votes)
Spirituality (23%, 9 Votes)
Love (20%, 8 Votes)
Strangers / people I don’t know (18%, 7 Votes)
Ideas (15%, 6 Votes)
Fantasies (13%, 5 Votes)
Objects (10%, 4 Votes)
My mother (8%, 3 Votes)
Other family members (5%, 2 Votes)
My father (5%, 2 Votes)
Politics (3%, 1 Votes)
My kids (3%, 1 Votes)
Animals (0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 40

Trying Something New

I discovered a poetry blog, readwritepoem, which posts writing prompts and other thought provoking things. I'm considering asking to become a participant, but thought I'd try out this week's prompt to gauge how seriously I could take this -- not a matter of not wanting to for me, but of time.

The prompt was to write an ekphrastic piece on one of the offered paintings by Rick Mobbs. Check out his site, Mine Enemy Grows Older, to see more of his work. The painting I chose is "Standing in the Shadows" and here they are -- his painting and my poem.

Saturday Morning

Jack’s home coughing
Stella’s pushing butterfly in the pool
Somewhere a horse is standing under the wings of an angel

Mom stares with coffee on the porch
Alice keeps face inches from fantasy
Somewhere an angel holds her armpit full of horse for safekeeping

Bob would go without me
Daddy would cover his eyes on the road
Somewhere the angel folds our dream beings beneath her stretch

Somewhere a horse leans out in freedom
Somewhere the red bodies and reddish brown knees
and golden brown edges know their place

In order
blue boulder
white fine equine legs
angel’s crotch
like butter
shadow wonderers in their grey question
line up between that smoke
and where I write
watching

Yeah Kay Ryan!

It makes all my hearts and all their cockles warm and giggling to learn that Kay Ryan, a woman from California, who teaches remedial English in a regular ol' high school, has become our great nation's newest poet laureate. I love her work. I've written hommage poems in her style (see side bar). I have to go home and feed my family, but here's a great poem of hers. And a photo of my tortoise, Armor, to go with it.

Turtle

Who would be a turtle who could help it?

A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,

She can ill afford the chances she must take

In rowing toward the grasses that she eats.

Her track is graceless, like dragging

A packing-case places, and almost any slope

Defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,

She’s often stuck up to the axle on her way

To something edible. With everything optimal,

She skirts the ditch which would convert

Her shell into a serving dish. She lives

Below luck-level, never imagining some lottery

Will change her load of pottery to wings.

Her only levity is patience,

The sport of truly chastened things.

From Flamingo Watching Copper Beach Press, 1994

Writing Through Cancer

Today I found a wonderful story in the NY Times about folks with cancer who are writing poetry as a way to deal with it. There are some great comments about some of my favorite poets, Donald Hall, Jane Kenyon, and I added a comment about Tory Dent -- who's poem Black Milk I posted to my Laundry Songs blog yesterday. I have a friend who's just been diagnosed with breast cancer, a best friend, and I feel so dissoriented by the news. I don't have a place in my life for this information --yet. Writing -- I should give it a try.

Since Kyle's poem talks about growing a prickly pear cactus, I offer two photos.

If you read the NY Times article, you'll find links to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and to another article in the Times about a study showing that newly diagnosed patients who write expressively about their feelings have improved quality of life. There is a beautiful photo of a person reading a journal at the top of that article, which I'd love to post here -- but I don't know the rules about posting other publications photos -- so, you'll have to go to the NYTimes to see for yourself.

One patient wrote: “Don’t get me wrong, cancer isn’t a gift, it just showed me what the gifts in my life are.”

Old Post from Tangled Swans

I don't want to lose this cool old post from 2007 so here: Stella and I are writing poems for her class, whose are better, you decide!

(This one is Stella's)
Yin

Masculine, sky

Penetrating, pursuing, swaggering

Uranus ♂♀ Gaea

Enveloping, nurturing, swooning

Earth, feminine

Yang

(This one is mine)
dull
slow, tarnished
waning, softening, aging
wearing out & warming up
refreshing, shining, honing
bright, quick
sharp

Kerouac pun for Al Gelpi

This is a great find! A poem that has it all - humor, a retro poet, an icon of American Literary Studies, the thrill and intrigue of discovery, the patina of age and mystery: a poem written by Jack Kerouac for Albert Gelpi, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. See the one-of-a-kind broadside here (with the proper line breaks and indent).

A Pun for Al Gelpi

Jesus got mad one day
at an apricot tree.
He said, "Peter, you
of the Holy See,
Go see if the tree is ripe."
"The tree is not yet ripe,"
reported back Peter the Rock.
"Then let it wither!"
Jesus wanted an apricot.
In the moring, the tree
had withered,
Like the ear in the agony
of the garden,
Strucky down by the sword,
Unready.
What means this parable?
Everybody
better see.
You're really sipping
When your glass
is always empty.

The other cool thing, is the website on which I found this pun - Modern Books and Manuscripts
Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138. What could be better than a link to a library that is in the business of acquiring beautiful old and new books, poems, items of desire and importance!

I'm happy about all this today because - if I am lucky - Al Gelpi will be able to serve as my advisor during my upcoming thesis year. My thesis has been approved with a reservation or two - mostly that I narrow my focus - which I knew I would have to anyway. I am looking at the evolution of domestic imagery (laundry?) in American poetry in the second half of the twentieth century. It should be lovely and hard and exciting and exhausting and gorgeous and revelatory - I'm tired already. But this conditional approval of my thesis is a good thing. It's hard to say, but, "yeah for me!"

Tangled Swans -- Witness to the Collision

I've encountered a blog called Tangled Wings put together by a woman photographer. It looks like she's got some beautiful photos. I couldn't figure out how to comment on her photos, so am putting my own "tangled swans" poem here. Go to her blog to see the pictures.

Witness to the Collision
The tangled swans have managed it,
they rise, a struggling clump, black
and white, light and clacking.

Black feet, webbed like the sticky
blood, membranous from a womb,
flop and shudder at the ends

Of their dangling legs, as if
empty black stockings were kicking,
dragged up into the air, still the shapes

Of knees and heels, stretched, unreleased.
Above the legs, curl the warm white
bodies, heavy with breast meat, rosy

Brown thighs, warm from fighting,
thrusting and flushed— only hunger
thinks of a swan as a meal, what

Of the cloud—the white smother—
put up your hand there, against
the flank, softly curved, it pulses.

So, then the outside, the white white
still tangled, at odd angles,
wings flawed and shredded as a book,

Huge plates of feathers, sliding
airplanes of silver, 2 wings
into 4 wings, articulating

From the bone—remiges and retrices—
Semiplumes—to the smaller, small
down, quills, then spaces

Between which warm air trembles.
Can you see through the fury
and horrible noise to their

Necks? Where ultimately they tango—
knotted—twisting, as twisted voice,
2 throats inclined and enraged,

Throats locked into smooth
white serpentine undulation of
barking. I don’t think they sing

Any song I understand, but those
tangled swans, so strong,
so broken, reassemble into a sky

I will call up to as they tighten
their bodies together into what
I will call heaven.

And heaven is only a white place,
a silence, an uninterrupted mind,
fluttering, born.

Keeping two blogs up is hard

I'm trying to segregate myself still -- poems here and laundry songs there -- I wonder if I should force this dichotomy -- any opinions? It feels right for the time being. Although I do get confused sometimes. Maybe I should try my PAD here again? (Poem A Day) or maybe I should call it DAD (Draft a Day) -- no, I don't like that -- MYAED -- (Move Your Arm Every Day) -- that's a good start.

To prove I mean it, here's a draft from a couple of weeks ago. (Not really today but oh well -- as Jackson would say -- cheese and rice.) This poem was inspired when Missy was hurtling herself along California on an AIDS ride.

the beauty of bicyclists
is an elastic flush
orange pink and red
lycra and titanium
a black thin loping
of human leg
and spoke into the next
rotation space street

the beauty of bicyclists
is a comfort, I'm driving
close enough to see the muscled
calves, the heart-shaped divot
behind the knee, a winking
ankle bone, flashing
like a kid with a torch
in the dark
signaling a friend
in the next house
darkness all around them except
in the bright orange
pink and red fingers
brain flesh, lips

the beauty of bicyclists
laps up the miles of road
between now and all the next
nows, working and work,
the rhythm
the language of the wheel

(you know it's a draft because there are no capital letters)

More IRB HRPP AAHRPP poetry

Our submission was Fedexed today.
Do you think they will increase our pay?
The flowers are fresh
Moral is a mesh
Good buddy, let's call it a day.

Magnolia Trees, Poems, and Me

Last week there was a lovely article in the New York Times, by Kerry Kennedy, describing her father's love for poetry -- this is something I did not know, that Bobby Kennedy loved poetry, kept a "battered book" by his side at the dinner table, and challenged his kids to memorize poems while he and Ethel were on trips. I have written my own poems about war's futility, and keep a Norton Anthology at the dining room table, but I don't have something that RFK had -- an ability to connect history, current American life and culture, poetry, and my children together in a way that reverberates for them. At least, if I do have that ability, I can't see it yet.
I did write a poem about a magnolia tree once. And I've learned a lot about RFK this month. Now if only I were writing more.

The Tree Attended

The rain is okay.
Wind scares me
makes that slap clacking sound
in the flags at the end of the pool,
when I put my head up I think of
skeletons or someone dropping silverware.
The black sky okay, too,
safe and close, oddly warm even when
the window is flat ice under my palms.
Hail jumps sweet,
sugar candy or popcorn,
the shy rain that changed its mind into shapes
big enough to share, then
brags its brightness, dents the air.

When it’s over
the tulip magnolia tree stands like a crossing guard,
a fair shepherdess,
blossoms pink and bruised white,
scattered along the sidewalk in two directions.
But many are still on the tree
jealous of their spring
like new breasts, eager
to fall into whatever the weather builds for their falling
and somehow reluctant
enjoying the shape of the their beauty.

Lisa, see how the tree is as big as a pick-up truck,
powerful, hauling the glistening oxygen,
damp, competent, moving
in the steaming evening,
flowers cupped with rain in the branches
and some in the street.
Everything lies down under the deluge.
The flowers don’t care
where they will fill up with nightfall,
or who sees them,
losing their minds.

(2005)

Swimming on a Summer Evening

Tonight I went swimming with my friend Michelle. She meets me at the club and we swim back and forth for about a half hour, chatting a little bit at the end of the lanes and while we shower. Tonight I swam on my back a bit more -- my neck is getting stronger. There was a sliver of moon in the early evening sky, 7 pm, still bright daylight but the sun low behind the tall redwoods. The afternoon feeling is heightened by the murky luminescence of sunscreen and sweat in the water -- a day of swim lessons, swim team practice, and little kids always leaves the water smelling and tasting like a sticky afternoon. I was glad to swim and feel stronger, glad to have a chance to talk to a grown up about something other than my job, glad to think about this poem, that I wrote many years ago, swimming after work, watching the moon lapping me in the sky as I swam on my back then, no longer angry.

Forgiveness

After you left
I swam on my back
watching the spider web clouds
break up in the deepening sky,
or maybe coalescing,
crystal seeding itself in ice,
or child’s hair in wind.
For a while I could taste the cut grass
from the playing field,
then the rubber chair of the lifeguard,
and the wet soap smell
of the other woman in my lane.
With each breath an open mouth
of surprises, of someone else,
I watched the sky and the evening,
now unpatterned lace,
brittle, fair and random, cloth of heaven,
and the colored flags
as they moved into sight
always five strokes away from the wall.
I found the moon, too,
less than half crescent,
in the western nightfall,
right where we agreed
it would be.

Poetry as punishment?

I guess the kids who broke into Robert Frost's house to party didn't think about getting caught -- and certainly didn't expect to have poetry as part of their punishment. I hope this is a good thing --

The vandalism took place at the Homer Nobel Farm, and here's a photo -- before the mess. There are plenty of photos of the mess after the break-in, but I think the NY Times did the best job of illustrating their article with a lovely snowy sunrise image -- Frost would have approved.

More IRB poetry

Haiku this time -- in strict 5/7/5 form -- which is perfect for research compliance but dorky for good hiaku -- forgive me, true haiku believers -- post something better, would you?

IRB all day --
at night CFR and more
words than butterflies

Teaching Adult ESL with Poetry

All the things you don't know in this life until you look. I've been teaching poetry in the schools in California for about 6 years now, and I'm just finding out so many things. For instance, there are many teachers who use poetry to teach English as a Second Language (ESL). Here's a great link I found -- thre are some lovely ideas here and some great poetry books cited. One of the poems discussed is "Margaret's Party" by Joni Miller. I'll have to find the whole text of that one.

AAHRPP poems

I wonder if anyone else out there has ever thought about writing poems that celebrate AAHRPP (that would be the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs). I'm thinking poems in strict form: haiku, limerick, villanelle, even sestinas and sonnets for the ambitous ones among AAHRPP-fans. How about this:

Our AAHRPP deadline is June.
We will finish our submission soon.
If they like what we do
They'll accredit -- woo hoo!
Our praises to all they will croon.

(For those of you who would like to follow suit, it's pronounced "a-harp")

A New Blog

So, now I'm up to three blogs, a FaceBook place, and several Yahoo groups. Why can't they figure out how to make all this stuff happen in one place?

First Blog: First Poem

If there's someone to turn to
I'm full
If there isn't
Then I'm empty.

Published when I was 9, in the fifth grade, in the Palo Alto Times. Thanks Miss Cava, wherever you are. You were a great teacher. I thank you for this gift of poetry in my life.