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

Poem 15 (Pandemic Day 30)

My Daughter Says

My daughter say

she feels like a Martian,

that no one understands her,

that one friend is too perfect, 

and another too mean,

and that she has 

the earliest bedtime

in her whole class.

I strain to remember

how a third grader feels

about love, about pain

and I feel a hollow in my heart 

where there should be blood

and an ache where there should 

be certainty.

My darling Molly,

no earthling ever lived who did not feel

like a Martian,

who did not curse her bedtime,

who did not wonder

how she got to this planet,

who dropped her here

and why

and how she can possibly 

stay.

I go to bed 

whenever I like 

and with whomever I choose,

but still I wonder

why I do not 

belong in my class,

and where my class is anyway,

and why so many of them

seem to be asleep 

while I toss and turn

in perplexity.

They, meanwhile, imagine I am perfect

and have solved everything:

an earthling among the Martians,

at home on her home planet,

feet planted in green grass.

If only we could all admit

that none of us belongs here,

that all of us are Martians,

and that our bedtimes

are always

too early

or 

too late.

Erica Jong, Becoming Light: Poems: New and Selected. Harper, 1991 (acquired 1996)

When you hear the name, Erica Jong, some of you of a certain age, will think of her novel, Fear of Flying  and remember it as this blurb from Amazon does: "Originally published in 1973, the groundbreaking, uninhibited story of Isadora Wing and her desire to fly free caused a national sensation. It fueled fantasies, ignited debates, and even introduced a notorious new phrase to the English language. Now, after thirty years, the revolutionary novel known as
Fear of Flying still stands as a timeless tale of self-discovery, liberation, and womanhood."

I don't remember if I was fearless enough to read it the early 70's.  I had aspirations to be liberated and uninhibited, but by then I was a newly married, first grade teacher in a small town--not living the life that Erica Jong did.  And what a life!  She had 4 husbands and one child; I got by with one husband and 4 pregnancies.  By the time I acquired this book of poetry, I was considerable more experienced and worldly and was writing poetry myself.  Through some wonderful classes at the Loft with poet John Reinhard, I became part of a writers group that met regularly at a coffee shop on Grand Avenue.  The group members were more talented and dedicated than I and became published poets:  Mary Jo Thompson, Kathleen Jesme, Susan Steger Welsh.  Still, I have folios full of poems that helped me find my way through things I didn't understand and couldn't have found any other way to express.  Things like not belonging, like yes, being as uncertain and out of place as a Martian.

One of the first poems I wrote in my class at the Loft was about my daughter, who was a teenager at the time.  Some people turn to alcohol; I was lucky to have poetry.

Erica Jong's daughter, Molly, no longer a 3rd grader, is a writer too.  Somehow I ended up reading a chapter of her book, The Sex Doctors in the Basement: True Stories From a Semicelebrity Childhood.
Oy vey!

Poems 12-14 (Pandemic Day 29)

Summer in Kashega

The old ones, Alexie and Fekla, they say,

"Go, Vera. Go to Kashega.  See your mother, your friends.

It is only for the summer," they say.

"Go.  Nothing will happen to us."

So I go, eager to visit Kashega.

Riding the mail boat out of Unalaska Bay

     as Alexie and Fekla Golodoff,

     and our snug house in Unalaska village,

     and my photographs and books, my little skiff,

And my twelve handsome chickens,

All fade into the fog.

What War?

I arrive in Kashega.  My friends Pari and Alfred squabble over me

     like a pair of seagulls fighting for a crab claw.

     My mother greets me like a stranger, with an 

     Americanchin hug, then touches my hair.

There is no sign of trouble here.  We have crayon days, 

     big and happy.

The windows sparkle at night.

I had forgotten how a lighted window shines

     without blackout paper.

The Japanese

They weren't always our enemy. There was time when the

     Japanese sailed in and their crews played baseball with 

     our Aleut teams.

But we saw what they were up to.  We warned our

     government about Japanese who charted our

     shorelines, who studied our harbors from their fishing

     boats.

Our Japanese visitors expected always

     an amiable Aleut welcome. But

     when the hand of friendship was withdrawn,

They took their measurements and made their calculations

    anyway.

Karen Hesse, Aleutian Sparrow, Margaret M. McElderry Books, 2003.

I just finished reading this young adult novel written in free verse by the Newbery-winning author of Out of the Dust, (1998) which was also written as a series of poems.

While the infamous Executive Order 9066, which forcibly removed 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry from their homes during WWII is a well-known atrocity that took place on American soil; the removal and detainment of Native Americans from the Aleutian Islands was something I'd never heard about before opening this book from my poetry shelf.

While the number of Aleuts was much smaller (881) the relocation and detention was done "under conditions that are as shocking as any in the long, sad history of the Government's relations with its Native-American citizens." (David Oyama, New York Times op-ed, July, 1981).  The destruction of their culture was disproportionate.

Hesse's spare but powerful verses bring you into the lives and struggles of these displaced people through the eyes of Vera, a young Aleut girl.  Although the reason these people were moved was because the Japanese had seized and occupied some of these strategic islands, the Japanese had left by 1943 and yet the Aleuts were not returned until 1945 and they returned to homes that had been destroyed, without adequate compensation to rebuild.

What strikes me is that these actions taken to protect a group of people was done with such indifference to who they were and to their basic humanity--not willful harm, but lack of regard.  I've been fortunate enough to have lived in another country (Australia) and to have traveled widely enough to be able to recognize our universal commonalities as humans and to despair over our human tendencies to disregard our basic connections to one another and replace them with artificial barriers of race and color and nationality.  Will this current crisis help more of us to see that?  

Poem 11 (Pandemic Day 28)

Acquainted with the night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Robert Frost, The Poetry of Robert Frost,  Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969.

f you recall your literature classes that dealt with the forms and structures of poetry, this evocative poem by Frost first published in 1927, would check many of the boxes.  It is a sonnet; a poem consisting of 14 lines made up of 3 quatrains and one rhyming couplet.  (Shakespeare wasn't the only one writing sonnets, although he helped popularize the form of the English or Shakespearean sonnet, as opposed to the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet which came centuries earlier. )

It has a classic rhyming scheme: ABA CDC DAD AA. and to top it all off, it's written in good old "iambic pentameter" the type of meter (10 syllables that make 5 heartbeats in the poem)  that just assures that you will read it with a poetic rhythm. 
I don't think it hurts to understand how something works; but wonderful poems like this rise above the mechanics.  The sadness, loneliness and isolation expressed by the poet is something that during this distressing time many of us will come to feel, no matter how busy we stay with necessary tasks or binge watching tv shows.  Night comes eventually, and with it, uncertainty.  We are not reassured or comforted by Frost's words; but we know we are not alone.  Our sadness and loneliness are legitimate feelings, worthy of acknowledgment.

Poem 10 (Pandemic Day 27)

The Little Hat

I lost my little

Hat. It had

Ribbons round and 

Round it.

And this made me very sad.

And I never found it.

Dorothy Aldis, All Together, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1952

Yesterday was T.S. Eliot; today for contrast is Dorothy Aldis, whose poetry was written to be accessible to children, not to be mused over in drafty garrets, contemplated in the flickering light of the fireside or dissected in college classrooms. 

Eliot(1888-1965) and Aldis(1896-1966)  were basically contemporaries, both born in the midwest to wealthy families of note and both were educated in prestigious eastern private schools.  We always associate T.S. Eliot with British literature, but he spent his first 25 years in the US.  Perhaps their paths might have been more congruent if they had been born 50 years later.  Despite Aldis's talent and opportunities, her choices may have been much more restricted than Eliot's.

Both poems are about loss.  The Waste Land takes you through the landscape of death and destruction and loss.  It is a stunning journey.  Aldis gives you a picture of grief in less than 25 words.

For a child, loss can be such a tangible emotion.  You love something and then it is gone, you look, you wait, you hope, but it never returns.  Early life lessons in loss can be a treasured toy, a beloved pet, or a grandparent.  It is the finality of loss that I feel right in my gut in this poem..."And I never found it."  My parents, my aunts and uncles, and all 5 of my siblings are gone.  This makes me very sad.

Poem 9 (Pandemic Day 26)

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD 
April is the cruellest month, breeding 
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing 
Memory and desire, stirring 
Dull roots with spring rain. 
Winter kept us warm, covering 
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding 
A little life with dried tubers. 
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee 
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, 
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,                             
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. 
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch. 
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s, 
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, 
And I was frightened. He said, Marie, 
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. 
In the mountains, there you feel free. 
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow 
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,                                 
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, 
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, 
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only 
There is shadow under this red rock, 
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock), 
And I will show you something different from either 
Your shadow at morning striding behind you 
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; 
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.                           

From: T. S. Eliot. The Waste Land, Harvest Book, Harcourt Brace, 1962

This paperback copy (listed price: $1.25) has been with me since I read it in Mr. McFarland's Humanities class at Moorhead State in the early 1970's.  I had some amazing professors there, Larry McFarland and especially Dr. Clarence Glasrud, English instructor whose nickname was Soc (short for Socrates).
 I'll have to admit I was a receptive student, full of youthful idealism--literature took this country girl to exotic and esoteric places in both time and space.  I had such a desire to be "erudite", even if that word had not been in my vocabulary before.
The Waste Land was a dense poem, full of literary allusions and historical references.  I noted them all in small and careful writing in a purple pen.
Written in 1921 and published in 1922 it was inspired by the ravages of W.W. I.  Perhaps another great literary masterpiece like this will arise of this global crisis.
While The Waste Land is still under copyright protection in the U.K. and Europe by has been in the public domain in the U.S. since 1998.  If you would like to read this amazing poem or other available class books; Project Gutenberg is the best source.