Poems 44 and 45 (Pandemic Day 52)

Arithmetic 

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.

Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how many you have before you

         lost or won

Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven-or five six bundle of sticks.

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper            till you get the answer.

Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out

      of the window and see the blue sky--or the answer is wrong and you have to start all over         and try again and see how it comes out this time.

If you take a number and double it and double it again and then double it a few more times,             the number get bigger and bigger and goes higher and higher and only arithmetic can tell            you what the number is when you decide to quit doubling.

Arithmetic is where you have to multiply--and you carry the multiplication table in your head              and hope you won't lose it.

If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad, and you eat one and a striped zebra            with streaks all over him eats the other, how many animal crackers will you have if                  offers you five six seven somebody and you say No no no and you say Nay nay nay                and you say Nix nix nix?

If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she gives you two fried eggs                 and you eat both of them, who is. better in arithmetic, you or your mother?

Buffalo Dusk

The buffaloes are gone.

And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.

Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the 

          prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing 

          on in a great pageant of dusk,

Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.

And the buffaloes are gone.

Carl Sandburg, Rainbows ARe Made: Poems by Carl Sandburg, selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1982.

These poems were selected for young readers by Hopkins who had been a teacher and fell in love with Sandburg's poetry early in his career.  His affection is evident in the poetry selections and design

of the book.  There is plenty of room on the pages for the poems to shine on their own, the full page wood engravings are masterly and engaging and the chapter headings are a poem themselves—about poetry....”Poetry is a series of explanations of life, fading off into horizons too swift for explanations.” Is the first one.  I haven’t read a lot of Sandburg, but I’m reminded now to spend more time with this poet who...”stops for the buzzing of bumblebees on bright Tuesdays in any summer month...”

Poems 42 and 43  (Pandemic Day 51)

Of My Former Self

by Georgia Cook

"Bone loss"

announces my dentist promising

to cap that noble worker,

lower back grinder,

I'm hoping to keep to cremation

It's a disappearing act.

Store clerks and waiters address

my daughters when we're out together...

In family albums

I'm bigger than the children,

How is it now, when we hug,

I'm smaller.

The last week in August

hiking in the Highline Trail,

sumac is starting small fires.

Milkweed grows here:

the arbitrary flutter of monarchs is

taking them to Mexico.

My good shadow bounces

from asphalt to prairie grasses,

to goldenrod, quicker, slimmer, darker than I am.

The Shade of Lilacs

by Charles V. Lisle

The best part of the springtime when he was ten

was sitting with his dog under the lilac bushes at

the end of the block and waiting for his dad to be

walking home.  The little terrier would see him

first and bark and bounce as they ran to him and 

skittered 'round him, trading tales of the day.

One sunny day when he was sixty he drove back

and parked at the corner where the lilacs once

stood.  They were long gone, but the breeze still

held the scent of them.  And the sound of a small

dog barking.

100 Words on Shadow, Volume 4 No. 2, International Writing Program, 1996.

Okay, folks...you've got only 100 words to tell a story, capture a moment, express your reality.  Can you do it and can you do it in such a way that others can understand the moment or the story and feel what you feel?  I think Georgia and Charles succeeded.  What do you think?

https://www.alaskastar.com/2018-05-22/garden-growing-lilacs

Poem 41 (Pandemic Day 50)

God Got Cable

And for a week

watched nothing but.

Didn't see the comet.

Didn't see the hurricane.

Missed that baby

being born entirely.

Just watched cable.

Funny thing is,

He like it.

He knew He wasn't supposed to.

All those girls

crying about their

boyfriends.

All those track meets.

All that

soap and toothpaste.

He liked it.

Couldn't help it.

Then Gabriel came

over with a deck of cards

and next thing you know,

they've played poker four weeks straight.

Gabriel's beard nearly 

as long as God's 

and corn chips all over the place.

And what God decided was that

he like not cable,

not poker,

but a break.

Every now and then,

even God needs a break.

Cynthia Rylant, God Went to Beauty School,  Harper Tempest, 2003.

I love this book by prolific Newbery Award-winning author/poem Cynthia Rylant.  God goes to the movies, the doctor, takes a bath and gets a dog.  The poems are humorous, but also reflective and profoundly spiritual.  There are not many books like this for young readers; I'm grateful for this one.  Its reflective mood puts me in mind of Joan Osborne's song, "What if God Were One of Us?"

Poem 40 (Pandemic Day 49)

When She Turned 40-ish

A    Annette wrote her memoirs on the back of a paper bag.

B     Bernice still didn't understand the principles of economics, & found she no longer cared.  

C     Carmen buried herself in cheesecake.  

D    Deena burned her diary and journals.

E     Elisa finally went to a Cher concert.

F     Francine began stalking writers at book-signing events.

G    Greta realized she talked too much.

H    Hailey  found she could no longer sleep without medication.

I     Ione got her first tattoo.

J     Jane began singing in karaoke bars.

K    Kayla moved to Easter Island.

L    Lavonne lost 10 pounds when she stopped eating.

M   Maggie gained 10 pounds when she stopped smoking.

N    Nancy realized she was no longer a girl detective.

O   Olivia gave up on a scrapbooking.

P      Penny became allergic to her cats.

Q     Queenie started buying lottery tickets.

R    Ramona tossed her "to do" list in the garbage and never looked back.

S      Sheila ran off with the circus.

T    Tamara became a cartographer.

U    Uma bought a yellow pant suit.

V   Vilma started hanging out at the courthouse.

W  Wendy was horrified to realize how many calories were in a bottle of Riesling

X   Xena became a warrior princess.

Y   Yvonne figured out how to calculate the required return for a preferred stock.

Z    Zelda accepted the fact that she would never read "War and Peace."

Carmen McCulloch, When She Turned 40-Ish, 2012

McCulloch is a mixed media collage artist who creates a fashionable outfit for each of our 40-ish gals out of Moda, Chrysalis fabric by Sanae on a background of paint, glue and pattern tissue.  I'm not sure this alphabetical narrative is really a poem, but with the addition of the fun artwork we get a fuller experience of the metamorphosis that women can experience as they move into their maturity.  Think of our clothing as a manifestation of our personalities--as we change, our garments may change too--do we choose to camouflage or blossom?  I think most of these women choose to bloom--run off to the circus, Sheila!!

Poems 38 and 39  (Pandemic Day 48)

I Like Pets

Once I hid a baby mouse

In the pocket of a blouse.

Mother found him, had a fit,

Told me to get rid of it.

Once I found a slimy slug,

Put him on the bathroom rug.

Mother found him, had a fit,

Told me to get rid of it.

Once I had a frog named Scamper,

Pet him in the laundry hamper.

Mother found him, had a fit,

Told me to get rid of it.

Once I caught a lovely bat,

Hid him in an old straw hat.

Mother found him, had a fit,

Told me to get rid of it.

Now I have a grassy snake,

Hidden in a box marked Cake

Mother's sure to have a fit,

She will scream, "Get rid of it!"

Hooray for Chocolate

Chocolate pudding,

Chocolate candy,

Chocolate drink, I think, is dandy.

Chocolate fudge,

And doughnuts too,

Covered with thick chocolate goo.

Chocolate cookies,

Chocolate cake, 

In a cone I always take

Chocolate,

Or chocolate chip,

Or chocolate-covered dairy dip.

Boy, oh boy! It would be nice

If only there were

Chocolate rice,

Chocolate spinach, stew and fish...

Chocolate in every dish!

Lucia and James L. Hymes, Jr., Hooray for Chocolate, Young People Press, 1972.

The upheaval of our lives right now is enough to give us all fits, regardless of the presence of mice, slugs frogs, bats or snakes.  Thank goodness for chocolate!  I wshl I could share some with you all!

When it's safe to travel again, a chocolate pilgrimage might be a good idea! 

Ode to the Artichoke

Poem 37 (Pandemic Day 47)

Ode to the Artichoke

The tender-hearted
artichoke
got dressed as a warrior,

erect, built
a little cupola,
stood
impermeable
under
its scales,
around it
the crazy vegetables
bristled,
grew
astonishing tendrils,
cattails, bulbs,
in the subsoil
slept the carrot
with its red whiskers,
the grapevine
dried the runners
through which it carries the wine,
the cabbage
devoted itself
to trying on skirts,
oregano
to perfuming the world,
and the gentle
artichoke
stood there in the garden,
dressed as a warrior,
burnished
like a pomegranate,
proud,
and one day
along with the others
in large willow
baskets, it traveled
to the market
to realize its dream:
the army.
Amid the rows
never was it so military
as at the fair,
men
among the vegetables
with their white shirts
were
marshals
of the artichokes,
the tight ranks,
the voices of command,
and the detonation
of a falling crate,
but
then
comes
Maria
with her basket,
picks an artichoke,
isn't afraid of it,
examines it, holds it
to the light as if it were an egg,
buys it,
mixes it up
in her bag
with a pair of shoes,
with a head of cabbage and a
bottle of vinegar
until
entering the kitchen
she submerges it in a pot.
Thus ends
in peace
the career
of the armored vegetable
which is called artichoke,
then
scale by scale
we undress
its delight
and we eat
the peaceful flesh
of its green heart.

Pablo Neruda, Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon, Translated by Stephen Mitchell, Harper, 1997

There is a poem for everything...if you can't find one, then you need to write it yourself.  However, I'd check in with Neruda first.

Consider this upcoming event...The Universe in Verse

April 25, 2020
4:30 PM EST

click the link to participate

Sparks

Poem 36 (Pandemic Day 44)

Sparks

When I was eight

I lit a coal stove every morning

staring at the sparks jump and 

dance out of flames

as I fanned them with a palm leaf

Mother said they were fairies in exile

turned into diamonds

She knit a crown

to adorn my childhood

When I was eight

I went fishing in a flooded stream

I floated on water

pebbles were my pillows

I looked up at the milky clouds

spreading across the sky

Father said they were angels in exile

turned into waterfalls

He folded a boat 

to bear away my childhood

Wang Ping, Of Flesh & Spirit,Coffee House Press, 1998.

Let's compare most people's experience of reading books of poetry with the experience of going into the water at the lake or the ocean.  I believe that would fall into the category of "dipping their toes in from the dock" or "wading in up to their ankles so they don't get their jeans wet" and not, "let's plunge right in and stay all day."  

Poetry expects a lot from its readers and reading a book of poetry from cover to cover in a single sitting is not our typical approach.  You might feel differently when you pick up Of Flesh & Spirit.   I tend to think of mysteries or thrillers as "intriguing" "compelling" "page-turners"  but I felt that about Wang Ping's poetry.  I couldn't just dip in and pick up a poem.  I needed to know the whole story she was telling of her amazing life told through both poems and anecdotal stories interspersed.  

Wang Ping was born in China in 1957,  just before Mao instituted the "Great Leap Forward" which brought on the deadliest famine in history.  She grew up on a small island in the East China Sea and largely self-taught,  went on to earn degrees including a Ph.D from NY University.  She wrote this book while teaching at Macalester College in St. Paul. Besides poetry, she has written novels and short stories, translates and is a photographer and performance artist.  Her latest book is My Name is Immigrant.

Great Uncle Norvell Fast is Dead

Poem 35 (Pandemic Day 43)

Great Uncle Norvell Fast is Dead

When death won out, Norvell was about 80.

He'd been married a long time to great aunt Kate.

At every family party, after the whiskey

Kate would say that her marriage succeeded

because, each morning, Norvell

would sit on the toilet first, to warm

the seat for her, for great aunt Kate.

Every year, we'd laugh, even though

we thought it was pretty strange.  Every year,

Norvell would notd, sip his drink, and say, 

"I defy anybody to tell me different

It's every small gesture of love 

that matters.  And besides

Kate deserves a warm place to wait

for the everyday coming up of light."

But now Kate, already older than she wants

to be, must also deal with the unbroken chill

of waking.  With the long cool night.

On the same day that Norvell Fast died

so, too, did a friend of mine.  Out west

where the land is supposed to expand,

my friend stared into his thirtieth year,

into the sun he saw buried in the mountains,

and he decided that the next step

was too much, was enough.

So he cut himself away from his legs,

away until blood told him all he thought

he needed to know.  He forgot

two children.  A woman who loved

him.  Forgot about a country 

that would've waited for him.

At some point, memory fails many of us.

Maybe it even failed Norvell Fast.

But I doubt it.  Even in death's face

I expect Norvell refused to claw

at the earth.  More likely, he reached

for a drink, said, "I'm still good looking,

I'm still putting my arms around a remarkable

woman who will never stop calling out my name,

I'm riding the edges of the sky, and

I defy, I defy, I defy."

John Reinhard, Burning the Prairie, New Rivers Press, 1988. (winner of 1987 Minnesota Voices Project)

John was my teacher at the Loft.  He was wise and astute and helped me give a shape and a voice to some nebulous thoughts and emotions through poetry.  That was a special gift.  His books of poetry, as fellow poet Jim Harrison wrote for the back cover..."give us something we knew but never thought of before."  

Uncle Norvell is the kind of old man that you could pass by on any street and never give him a second glance.  Reinhard's poem dresses him up as a gentle hero, the romantic lead in a love story.  Maybe we'll look at the next old man we see and consider the possibilities for heroism that lie just beneath the surface. Perhaps we'll consider it in ourselves.

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam trans. by E. FitzGerald

Poems 29-33  (Pandemic Day 41)

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

XII

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread__and Thou

    Beside me singing in the Wilderness--

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

XIII

Some for the Glories of This World and some

Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;

   Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,

Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!

XXIII

And we, that now make merry in the Room

They left, and Summer dresses in new bloom,

    Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth

Descend--ourselves to make a Couch---for whom?

XXIV

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,

Before we too into the Dust descend;

    Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie,

Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!


XCVI
Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That Youth's sweet-scented Manuscript should close!
    The Nightingale that in the Branches sang,
Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows!.

Edward FitzGerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Grosset and Dunlap, no date

My copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is pocket-sized and quite old and worn; because I was a bookseller for a long time, the provenance of many of my books is unknown, but I probably picked it up on "bag day" at some big book sale.

That's not romantic, but I can imagine a much more idyllic beginning for it.  Grosset and Dunlap began as book reprinters or rebinders in 1898.  I would guess from the style and condition that this was an early 20th century printing that some earnest but less than wealthy young man bought to woo his sweetheart on a picnic..."A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou".  That's the catch line of this classic, but what's it all about? 

Omar Khayyam (1048-1133) was a noted Persian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher and poet. "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" (a ruba'i is a four line quatrain specifically Persian, a rubaiyat is a collection of ruba'i) is not a narrative poem but a collection of epigrams or special insights. You could sum up the philosophy espoused in the poem as a directive to "Carpe Diem" or "Seize the Day" accompanied by the virtues of drinking wine. There are regular references to wine, jugs, urns, cups, bowls and grapes.

With that going for it, no wonder  it has become one of the most widely known poems in the world, republished virtually every year from 1879 (the year of FitzGerald's fourth edition) to the present day, and translated into over eighty different languages.

FitzGerald described his work as "transmogrification". To a large extent, the Rubaiyat can be considered original poetry by FitzGerald loosely based on Omar's quatrains rather than a "translation" in the narrow sense. Some critics maintain that the poetic quality of FitzGerald's finished product exceeded that of Khayyám's original quatrains. In other words, Khayyám supplied the lumber, and FitzGerald built the house. 

The concept of "carpe diem" might call to mind the scene in the 1989 movie, Dead Poets Society, where Robin Williams as a teacher at a boys' prep school inspired his students through poetry.  I hadn't seen the movie in the theater, but when it came on television, I was enthralled.  During a commercial break I rushed to my bookshelf and pulled out my old college text, Norton's Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1. (a modest 1,986 page book).  I turned to Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time."  There, next to the famous line, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a-flying" I had written--Carpe Diem--use time while you can.

Just like that, my 19-year old self had time-traveled 25 years into the future to give me a message, more pertinent than when I'd first penned it, --"seize the day"!  Omar has come down from my neglected poetry shelf  to reinforce it again.

"Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,

Before we too into the Dust descend..."

Read the poem which is in the public domain

A study guide to the poem

Two Poems by Harry Behn

Poems 27 and 28 (Pandemic Day 40)

Evening

Now the drowsy sunshine

Slides far away

Into the happy morning

Of someone else's day.

The Dream 

One night I dreamed

I was lost in a cave,

A cave that was empty 

And dark and cool,

And down into nothing

I dropped a stone

And it fell like a star

Far and alone,

And a sigh arose

The sigh of a wave

Rippling the heart

Of a sunless pool.

And after a while

In my dream I dreamed

I climbed a sky

That was high and steep

And still as a mountain

Without a cave,

As still as water

Without a wave,

And on that hill

Of the sun it seemed

That all sad sounds

In the world fell asleep

Harry Behn, Windy Morning, Harcourt, Brace, 1953.

I have two little volumes of children's poems by Harry Behn written in the late 40's or early 50's; full of generally cheerful, happy poems. They are the kind of poems you might expect would be right for the classrooms and nightstands of the "Leave it To Beaver" generation--my own sometimes idealized generation.  There were many happy traditional-values families like the Cleavers on TV--including Father Knows Best and Ozzie and Harriet among others.  The parents and the children all had well-defined roles within the home and without. The view of children as reflected in literature, too was constrained by the gender and age expectations of the times. They were expected to be happy and sheltered from the unpleasant things in life.

So did children actually like Behn's poems?  I'm not certain.  I am not blown away by his verse, but I'd have to say that I really like these little books--I like their size, their clean design, the font style and size and the small enigmatic one color pictures that the author created to accompany his poems.  Books have an aesthetic of their own, outside of their content or of the reputation of their author.  They can give pleasure just by being held or gazed at; a pleasure that ebooks are challenged to match.  Sometimes you can actually judge a book by its cover!

But let's speak of the author.  Harry Behn (1898-1973) is not a well-known literary figure, but a surprisingly interesting character. Born near Prescott, AZ,(he named one of his son's Prescott) he attended Stanford and graduated from Harvard in 1922.  He went to Sweden for a year on a fellowship.  Shortly after returning from Sweden he went to work in the relatively new field of screenwriting in Hollywood.  Later he taught creative writing at the University of AZ, created their radio bureau (writing scripts for radio shows); established the University of AZ Press, as well as the Phoenix Little Theater and was vice-president of the Tucson Regional Plan.  He wrote 21 books for children, winning Graphics Arts awards for 3 of them.  He seemed to have many talents and used them all in pursuit of his dreams.

For Strong Women by Marge Piercy

Poem 26 (Pandemic Day 39)

For Strong Women

A strong woman is a woman who is straining
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing “Boris Godunov.”
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn’t mind crying, it opens
the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears

 in her nose.

A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren’t you feminine, 

why aren’t you dead?

A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you’re so strong.

A strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside. A strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
a tooth, midwives used to say, and now
every battle a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.

A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.

What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other. Until we are all strong together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

Marge Piercy, The Moon is Always Female,  Alfred A Knopf, 1997.

To be a woman is to be many things, but quite often it involves being misunderstood, undervalued and overworked.  Sometimes the misunderstanding is almost enticing; as it is when"Old Blue Eyes" is saying it---

"I'm supposed to have a Ph.D. on the subject of women. But the truth is I've flunked more often than not. I'm very fond of women; I admire them. But, like all men, I don't understand them." Frank Sinatra (1915-1998)

But it's also demeaning and removed from reality--

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)--I tried (unsuccessfully thus far) to track down the source of this quote, since Shaw was an enlightened man and a supporter of women's rights.  He may not have personally felt that way, but it was a widely accepted social view.  (A well-articulated article about the "proper" place for men and women in politics from a 1903 article in Atlantic Monthly is a window into this point of view-https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1903/09/why-women-do-not-wish-the-suffrage/306616/) 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935), a writer, lecturer and social reformer drily and with wit summed up the undervalued and overworked concept when she said,  "The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses."

The perceptions of women's roles in economics, politics and society have evolved and expanded in my lifetime, but there currently seem to be forces determined to diminish and contract those advances.  It truly does seem that "a woman's work is never done."

Still, whether or not they were recognized for their strength, most of us have needed the women in our lives to be there for us in one way or another and they usually came through for us.  I think of my mother as an example of the women in this poem.  She contracted rheumatic fever at age 8 and languished in bed for a year, needing to relearn how to walk; this had a lifelong impact on her health and strength.  I'm picturing her now as that small child confined to bed and adding to this picture for the first time in my mind, my grandmother's experience.  Grandma was  already 28 when she married Grandpa in Skeitz, Germany and they immigrated to America in 1911 along with their 4 children (a 5th was on the way), when my mother was 3 years old(she was the 3rd child).  By the time of Mom's illness about 1916, there were 8 children under 12 years old, and 3 more yet to come.  Grandma had her last child at age 46. I tremble to think of the unending work and effort she had to expend every day.

From that example of perseverance, my mom faced her own challenges; widowhood with 2 small children at age 32 and needing to find a way to survive through the Depression and WWII which sent 4 of her brothers to war.  She was both strong and weak, independent-minded, but sometimes purposefully helpless and dependent (traits probably acquired in her sickbed). Sometimes she put on her rags of martyrdom and complained.

 "Oh," she'd say, "you'll never know how I suffered..." 

"So, tell me already," I would think to myself.

But the sum of her was joyous and generous and loving and was she was loved in return.  My friends and so many others always spoke of her with outright affection.  She had a disarming way of turning strangers into friends. The coffee pot was always on and something tasty cooling on the counter. She's been gone almost 30 years; but of course, not really.  I'm starting to see her everytime I look in the mirror...

Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other.

Poems by Ogden Nash

Poems 24 and 25 (Pandemic Day 38)

The Duck

Behold the duck.

It does not cluck.

A cluck it lacks.

It quacks.

It is specially fond

Of a puddle or a pond.

When it dines or sups,

It bottoms ups!

The Purist

I give you now Professor Twist,

a conscientious scientist,

Trustees exclaimed, "He never bungles!"

And sent him off to distant jungles.

Camped on a tropic riverside,

One day he missed his loving bride.

She had, the guide informed him later,

Been eaten by an alligator.

Professor Twist could not but smile.

"You mean," he said, "a crocodile."

Ogden Nash, Custard and Company, poems by Ogden Nash, selected and illustrated by Quentin Blake, Little, Brown and Co., 1980.

I love it when my friends surprise me with an unexpected talent or a quirky new interest.  My longtime friend and former roommate, Wanda, did just that when she recited from memory "The Eagle", by Alfred, Lord Tennyson one day when we were together.  She had decided to memorize some of the classic poems, just as her mother had as a girl.   She was working on Joyce  Kilmer's poem, "Trees" also.  

Reciting poetry in front of the classroom recalls to us Laura Ingalls Wilder stories and other images of long ago days.  Can't you just smell the chalk dust?  

Now days we don't have to remember anything in particular; even phone numbers, our own or those of our nearest and dearest; not when we carry the sum of the world's knowledge in our pocket or purse!  But our memory is a prodigious thing and it should be exercised.  

I've memorized a few poems in my day, but the poems I've committed to memory aren't quite as uplifting and erudite as Tennyson and Kilmer.  Ogden Nash fits the bill for me and the two I've shared above have rattled around in my brain for years.  It's surprising how often I pulled them out for amusement--I'm always amused and sometimes others are as well!

Lucinda Matlock by Edgar Lee Masters

Poem 23 (Pandemic Day 37)

Lucinda Matlock 

I went to the dances at Chandlerville,

And played snap-out at Winchester.

One time we changed partners,

Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,

And then I found Davis.

We were married and lived together for seventy years

Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,

Eight of whom we lost

Ere I had reached the age of sixty.

I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick

I made the garden, and for holiday

Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,

And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,

And many a flower and medicinal weed--

Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys,

At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all, 

And passed to sweet repose.

What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness

Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?

Degenerate sons and daughters,

Life is too strong for you--

It takes life to love Life.

Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology, Collier Books, 1962.

I remember being introduced to Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology in high school English and about the same time the play, Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, was performed by the senior class.  

All of a sudden, the voices of the dead were everywhere and they had stories to tell the living.  The Diary of Anne Frank was probably still on my bookshelf and still holding sway in my mind.  The Vietnam War was raging and I would get letters from a neighbor, who had been my first crush (I was 8 and he was 11).  For an adolescent at anytime the world can be strange and uncertain; for my generation which had experienced the assassination of President Kennedy (I was in Mr. Peterson's 4th period Social Studies class) and would soon be in the shadow of Martin Luther King's and Bobby Kennedy's assassinations; the world was in upheaval.

Still, just like Lucinda Matlock (a stand-in for his grandmother, his ideal of the undaunted pioneer woman) we went to dances, we fell in love, we persevered.  At least the lucky ones among us.  Now after all these years my classmates, my fellow travelers from the 50's, may be speaking from the graveyard of their sins and their sorrows, their triumphs and their pain.  Our voices have been added or soon will be to the laments of Spoon River.  But until then--live life; love Life!

Little Rooms by William Stafford

Poem 22 (Pandemic Day 36)

Little Rooms

I rock high in the oak--secure, big branches--

at home while darkness comes.  It gets lonely up here

as light needle forth below, through airy space.

Tinkling dishwashing noises drift up, and a faint

smooth gush of air through leaves, cool evening

moving out over the earth.  Our town leans farther

away, and I ride through the arch toward midnight,

holding on, listening, hearing deep roots grow.

There are rooms in a life, apart from others, rich

with whatever happens, a glimpse of moon, a breeze.

Youwho come years from now to this brief spell

of nothing that was mine: the open, slow passing 

of time was a gift going by.  I have put my hand out

on the mane of the wind, like this, to give it to you.

William Stafford, An Oregon Message: Poems, Harper & Row, 1987.

Today is Income Tax Day, or it was; back when life passed for normal.  I mark today however as another Wednesday when I go to the Minnesota Unemployment website to check in.  For the past year I had been spending 2-4 days selling clothes and helping customers at Christopher and Banks.  I met lots of wonderful people, both fellow associates and customers who have become friends.  Now, however, I'm on furlough while the stores are closed and I am uncertain when (or if) I will go back.  

Why today's poem should make me think of work is just another quirk of a mind's meanderings.  I'm picturing myself as a word, looking for employment.  Where would I choose to go?  In a conversation perhaps?  But the job is brief and often inconsequential--blown away in the wind.  In a newspaper marking important news, but then put in the bottom of a bird cage, or wrapped around potato peels and tossed out? Words in textbooks have an important job, but are seldom loved.  

I think I would seek work in a poem, perhaps one awakened by William Stafford in the early hours of each day.  Words in a poem do a lot of heavy lifting.  There usually aren't many of them (133 in this poem, including the title) and they carry emotion and double meanings and their placement in a line is significant.  Even the punctuation works hard (although it is sometimes its absence that does the work).  Consider how well-beloved the dash was to Miss Dickenson--employed over and over again--

To appreciate the work that the words do in "Little Rooms" you need to spend a little time with them; read them out loud, envision the picture they are painting, feel the emotional tug.  You might even want to tuck them under your pillow and pull them out when the moon is too bright, or your mind is troubled..."I have put my hand out on the mane of the wind, like this, to give it to you."

Belinda by Stanley Kiesel

Poem 21 (Pandemic Day 35)

belinda

This five year old burglar

Has stolen me out of myself.

Without socks and in an

Emaciated dress, she

Twitters and warbles and

Whistles and pokes the 

Sun in the ribs.

This culturally-deprived

Mexican child dances

Upon nothing. Fortunately

Joy has no need of soap 

Or water--nor a ribbon

In its hair (children

are its ribbons).  It needs

Only the indestructible

Assent. And Belinda,

Little cicada, sings

Without any operatic

Ambitions. Life would

Not be worthwhile

If one could not throw 

Snowballs at the Mona Lisa.

Stanley Kiesel, The Pearl is a Hardened Sinner: Notes from Kindergarten, Nodin Press, 1976

When I became a licensed media specialist in 1977, I was hired by Gladys Sheehan, Director of Media Services in the Minneapolis Public Schools to work in two schools; Hiawatha and Minnehaha.  I started at the end of December, when the librarian moved to Toledo. (Something I always think about when I travel to Ohio)  I spent two days a week at one school, two days a week at the other and rotated the 5th day between the two.  I had two media centers to run and classes to teach in both buildings, two principals and lots of staff to serve.  For a new librarian, I had bitten off a lot.  

Stanley Kiesel was a Kindergarten teacher at Hiawatha during the time I worked there.  He had been born in CA and had taught Kindergarten in Los Angeles before he came to Minneapolis, where he would spend many years as a poet-in-residence.  Unfortunately, I didn't really get to know him well.  I remember being aware that he was a published poet (The Pearl... was first published in 1968 by Scribner's but was expanded and reissued by a local Minneapolis publishing company just before I came to teach with him) and he seemed like a nice older man and that, folks, was that.  He went on to have several novels for children published.  The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids,1980, was well received by critics and loved by its select readers; although it was too absurd and imaginative for many, including me.  

What I've come away with though, from my small connection with him, was his passion for his students.  That kind of passion was shared by so many of my teaching colleagues over the years in the challenging situations that the Minneapolis Public Schools presented us with.  What was different, is that those children's lives, which came to blend and blur and fade away for so many of us; were captured so clearly and indelibly by Stanley in poem portraits that can still impact us many years distant from their time in the sandbox and the story corner.  Belinda's life was meager, financially, but rich with her character, and ultimately enriched by the caring of her teacher.

This is My Chair by Francesco Marciuliano

Poems 19 and 20 (Pandemic Day 34)

This is My Chair

This is my chair

This is my couch

That is my bed

That is my bench

There is my chaise

There is my settee

Those are my footstools

Those are my rugs

Everywhere is my place to sleep

Perhaps you should just get a hotel room.

Francesco Marciuliano, I Could Pee on This: and other poems of cats, Chronicle Books, 2012.

I just wasn't sure which poem to pick from this cute little volume; each one was funnier than the last.  Then Rod came upstairs planning to go to bed, only to see the bedspread covered with my books and papers and Kit Kat well established on his side of the bed.  There are people like us that allow such things to happen and then there are people who don't have pets...I suppose you have your reasons, and they are probably good reasons, but still; look what you're missing!

I really can't stop at one poem, just like I couldn't stop at one cat.  As I was paging through the book for another poem, I found some cat hair between the pages.  Have the cats been reading this on their own?? This next poem strongly hints at the possibility.

Your Keyboard

Suetdhe8defdisjas

I just typed a poem in your presentation

chesothekstevdswdj

I just typed a joke in your email

nosyd76mhdlwdag

I just typed something personal

     on your update

Vos7swps8s73wbk

I just typed my political views

     in your tweet

Bhst9ahw-2ynsyhz

I just accidentally typed in 

     your bank account password

Kitty's gonna buy himself 

     a new scratching post

You Are Christ's Hands by St. Teresa of Avila

Poem 18 (Pandemic Day 33)  EASTER SUNDAY

You Are Christ's Hands

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,

     No hands but yours,

     No feet but yours,

Yours are the eyes through which is to look out

     Christ's compassion to the world

Yours are the feet with which he is to go about

     doing good;

Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.

--St. Teresa of Avila

Roger Housden, For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics, Hay House, 2009

I first discovered Roger Housden through his book, Ten Poems To Change Your Life.  He uses poetry as gateways to personal understanding and has written numerous books with poetry as a central feature.  “You may never have read a poem in your life, and yet you can pick up a volume, open it to any page, and suddenly find yourself blown into a world full of awe, dread, wonder, marvel, deep sorrow, and joy,” writes Roger. “Poetry not only matters; it is profoundly necessary. Especially in times of darkness and difficulty, both personal and collective. To read or write poetry is a powerful, even subversive, act, and it is one small thing we can do that can make a very big difference.”

I appreciate the heart of St. Teresa's words--to have an active faith, to carry out your beliefs in service to others is to recognize that a message of good news, compassion and hope is within us to deliver and is the expectation of a worthy existence.

Spring Again by Karla Kuskin

Poem 17 (Pandemic Day 32)

Spring Again

Spring again

Spring again

Spring again

Isn't it?

Buds on the branches

A breeze in the blue

And me without mittens

My sweater unbuttoned 

A spring full of things

All before me to do.

Karla Kuskin, The Rose on my Cake, Harper & Row, 1964.

My poetry choices so far have tended towards the serious; but on this glorious Saturday, warm enough for eying the emerging daylilies and irises in our shirtsleeves,  I'll share this cheerful spring poem.  Ah, but you noticed it, didn't you?  The question in the middle?  Because Spring is a fickle gal, and the snow and cold predicted for Easter Sunday can make us question Spring's fidelity.  Even so, warmth and growth and rebirth will not be denied in the end.  

I've been collecting children's poetry since my days in college preparing for a career in elementary education.  I bought a bunch of 4 x 6 index cards and a tan file box and began gathering poems I liked.  That file box has stayed with me ever since and I am employing it again right now as I direct my granddaughter's distance learning.  We've performed an enthusiastic choral reading of at least one poem from that box and Lexi is eager to learn more.  

It could be said about Karla Kuskin, according to Jack Prelutsky, serving as Children's Poet Laureate for the Poetry Foundation, that "Her poems, deceptively simple, are largely based on personal experiences, especially those of her childhood. She writes about things as diverse as hugging bugs, dragons pulling wagons, and a radish rising in the nighttime sky. Karla makes every word stand out in sharp relief. Some of her poems have fewer than ten words, and the way she compresses her thought makes you look carefully at each word, as if it’s as valuable as a diamond."  

The rest of his remarks can be found by following the link attached to her name above.

A preview of coming attractions!
A Siberian Iris from my garden last May

Poem 16 (Pandemic Day 31)

You Were Right, Emily

The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth,--

The sweeping up the heart
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity.

About the bustle, you were right, Emily, for on the three times Death
visited our house, the bustle began right away with parishioners from
my dad's three country churches bringing food; oval casseroles of
macaroni and hamburger, flushed with home-canned tomatoes;
rectangular glass pans, holding dense chocolate cakes, deepened
with red food coloring, heaped with cocoa and butter frosting;

circular glass pie plates with lard and butter crusts, crimped carefully,
lightly browned in wood stove ovens, tart custardy lemon, crowned with
puffy tan peaks of meringue.  Bustle of casseroles to comfort us for losing
our baby brother, John Phillip, taken by the furniture store owner
and placed in such a tiny casket just after he had learned to laugh aloud.
Cakes to help us forget our mother Hildur Linnea "gone home to be with

Jesus," our father told us, her 31-year-old rheumatic heart stopped forever
from beating.  Pies to lessen our grief over our 14-year-old sister JoAnne Helene,
who spent her last summer afternoon sunning with her friend Susanna,
but awakening at midnight, gasping for breath, dead by morning.

All three of them disappeared into their caskets, and I stood, five years old,
eight years old and nineteen years old, watching my father scatter dirt over
them, entoning the ancient words: "Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return,
in sure and certain hope of the resurrection," and again you were right, Emily,
for his words marked the putting away of our love until eternity.

Phebe Hanson, Why Still Dance: 75 Years: 75 Poems, Nodin Press, 2003.

It's appropriate that the introduction to this book of poetry was written by Howard Mohr, author of How to Speak Minnesotan, for her Minnesota roots are very evident in the poem-- stoic resignation accompanied by hotdish and a 9" x 13" pan of frosted cake.  As author Trish Hampl notes in her review,  "Phebe Hanson writes in the American vernacular, but her subject is the American sublime... How does a voice so immediate, so down-to-earth sing such rhapsodies?"

Tomorrow is the 3rd anniversary of my sister Marian's death; two days after her daughter's birthday and a day before my daughter's birthday.  She was hospitalized for a week and our family held vigil at the hospital.  Someone brought coloring books and art supplies and we expressed our grief that way.

Today my daughter, granddaughter and I drove around delivering Easter baskets.  Robin is celebrating her third and likely last birthday to fall on Easter Sunday (the next one is 2093) by giving out baskets to family and friends...it's a lovely gesture and very Minnesotan.

Our Vigil in crayon and colored pencil

Marian and her husband John

Marian and I at a family reunion

Trunkful of Easter joy