April is Poetry Month: Day 6

     I love "serendipity"; both the sound of the word, with its multiple syllables hopping around on your tongue, and the meaning of the word: "the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way."   I consider problem-solving to be a core function of living and a slant towards seeing the serendipitous elements of life is useful and fun.  

    My friend' Sharon's father, Richard, told me about a neighbor of his who, in the style of Red Green, could always concoct a device to accomplish a task that needed doing.  There might be a conventional tool to do the job, but why spend money when you could put together what you had laying around the farm and get the job done?  Richard had adopted that philosophy himself and showed me one of his jerry-rigged tools that he called a "Gordon" in honor of his thrifty and clever neighbor.  Now "Gordon," whom I've never met, has become my patron saint of serendipity and his mantra is: everything you need will come to you at the perfect time. (As long as you have your eyes open to possibility!)

    Closely related to serendipity is "synchronicity" which means "the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection."  Both of these are variants of "coincidence" and whether or not they can be explained they add  mystery and flavor to life and I enjoy seeing them pop up in my life and telling their stories.  I keep a notebook labeled "Synchronicity" to record just those moments.

    On day 4 when I wrote about Kenneth Koch's book, Talking to the Sun, I didn't expect him to show up again so soon in one of my books.  It's not a wild coincidence to find a modern poet in more than one poetry book, of course; but Kenneth Koch is not exactly a household name.  I might not pause for a second to find another poem by Emily Dickinson or Robert Frost, even your most non-literary acquaintance probably recognizes those names, but you have to be a little more geeky to recognize Koch.  But here he is, in this rather unique volume.

 
  Let's put together a classroom of school kids, a worthy cause, a proactive teacher, a cadre of notable people and  two simple but profound questions:  What is your favorite poem and why did you chose it?  The result is Poems for Life assembled by Class V at the Nightingale-Bamford School in New York in 1995.  Anna Quindlen provided the introduction and 49 other writers, actors, politicians and journalists answered the call.  Among those people was Koch (pronounced "coke") who shared a poem that was written by a fifth grader, as well as an explanatory letter to the student who elicited his response.

Dear Adie Ellis,

I don't really have one Favorite Poem but quite a lot of favorite poems.  Some poems seem so good that there couldn't possibly be any poem better, and then one goes on reading and finds another poem one likes just as well.  I think if I started listing my favorite poems, it might fill up your whole boo--there would be poems by Shakespeare, John Dunne, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Frank O'Hara, and a lot more.  Also among my favorite poems are some written by the students I had when I was teaching schoolchildren to write poetry, like this one by Jeff Morley.  He was in the fifth grade at Public School 61 in New York when he wrote it, I think in 1968.  I had asked my students to write poems that were completely untrue--what I called "Lie Poems."  Some children wrote lists of funny, crazy things like "I was born on a blackboard," "I fly to school at 12:00 midnight," or "I am in New York on a flying blueberry"--but Jeff wrote about just one strange, and obviously untrue, experience.  There was something about it that seemed true, though--

The Dawn of Me:

By Jeff Morley

Bunker Lake Park, September 2020 J. Doolittle

I was born nowhere

And I live in a tree

I never leave my tree

It is very crowded

I am stacked up right against a bird

But I won't leave my tree

Everything is dark

No light:

I hear the bird sing

I wish I could sing

My eyes, they open

And all around my house

The Sea

Slowly I get down in the water

The cool blue water

Oh and the space

I laugh swim and cry for joy

This is my home

    For Ever

April is Poetry Month: Day 5

"I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing; when they, who are so fresh from  God, love us.    Charles Dicken  

    In today's world, motherhood is a fraught undertaking, now involving politicians and courts making decisions for women, in what feels like an ever more dangerous world of national tensions, gun violence, wars and climate disaster on the horizon.  

Lexi, May, 2014, by J. Doolittle

    Whatever the motivations of the powerful might be, either good or bad, young mothers have to feel some trepidation about bringing new life into the world.  

    But perhaps, it has always been so.  The future has always had aspects of danger and uncertainty.  Giving birth can be the ultimate act of hope.  

    This poem seems to capture some of the ambiguity about motherhood that many women have felt, along with the ultimate joy of a child to love.

To My Child

By Anne Campbell

You are the trip I did not take;

You are the pearls I cannot buy;

You are my blue Italian lake;

You are my piece of foreign sky.

You are my Honolulu moon;

You are the book I did not write.

You are my heart's unuttered tune;

You are the candle in my night.

You are the flower beneath the snow,

In my dark skies a bit of blue;

Answering disappointment's  blow

With: "I am happy! I have you!" 

    

From A Mother's Pride, A Father's Joy.  Compiled by Lillas M. Watt, The World Publishing Company, 1970 

    I received this book when I was a new mother.  There was a host of emotions that I experienced, tiredness perhaps at the top of the list.  I don't think I've ever fully examined those emotions in the busyness of raising children, holding down a job and managing a home.  

    Other parents out there....did you ever fully grapple with the big idea of parenthood?  What conclusions did you reach? As it stands right now, I am forever grateful for my unique and precious children and now my grandchildren.  I probably wouldn't have written that book anyway.

April is Poetry Month: Day 4

Londonderry, VT.  May 2017, Jean Doolittle

Today I continue the exploration of my eclectic collection of poetry books.  I find that a number of volumes I've collected combine poetry with fine art; a natural pairing actually, that can expand our understanding of the inexpressible emotions and ideas that art in its many forms attempts to reveal.

While we wait anxiously for spring, we are more attuned to the sun and the clouds and the movements of the weather.  This awareness is age old and is beautifully expressed in this poem from the Hottentot people of Africa.

  Song For the Sun That Disappeared Behind the Rainclouds

The fire darkens, the wood turns black.

The flame extinguishes, misfortune upon us.

God sets out in search of the sun.

The rainbow sparkles in his hand,

The bow of the divine hunter.

He has heard the lamentations of his children.

He walks along the Milky Way, he collects the stars.

With quick arms he piles them into a basket

Piles them up with quick arms

Like a woman who collects lizards

And piles them into her pot,  piles them

Until the pot overflows with lizards

Until the basket overflows with light.

From: Talking To The Sun: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems for Young People, Selected and Introduced by Kenneth Koch and Kate Farrell.

Kenneth Koch was an inspiration to me as a teacher; his book, Wishes, Lies and Dreams: Teaching Children to Write Poetry helped me through some of the pitfalls of writing instruction and I believed helped many children find their voices.  He had a fresh take on poetry that was invigorating.  In the wikipedia page about him (linked above) it explains that Koch asked in his poem Fresh Air (1956) why poets were writing about dull subjects with dull forms. Modern poetry was solemn, boring, and uneventful. Koch described poems "Written by the men with their eyes on the myth/And the missus and the midterms..." He attacked the idea that poetry should be in any way stale. I'd agree with that completely.

    The introduction to this book articulates the connection between art and poetry.  It's worth mulling over as the snow melts.

    Everyone has feelings, thoughts, wishes, instincts, and sensations that seem almost impossible to talk about or to express in a way that seems absolutely complete and true.  Even supposedly ordinary, everyday things can be secretly very important but hard to talk about.  

    Think, for instance, of trying to describe exactly the thrill of riding a bicycle down a breezy hill, the peacefulness of holding your cat..., the strangeness of your first memories of your house or street, the happiness of discovering something--a stream in the woods or the first tree buds of spring.  Think of trying to explain the confuse excitement of feeling secretly in love with someone...the mystery of language, of color, of beauty, of time going by; the funny wildness of dreams, fantasies, daydreams and the loneliness, sometimes of wondering about yourself and the whole universe in a way that you can't explain...

    Everyone's experience of the world is mostly private and not quite like anyone else's, so it is hard to communicate that experience...The urge to express the absolute truth about the way things are in one's own, private, inner world of thoughts, feelings, and imagination s one of the reasons why poets write poetry, painters paint pictures, and composers write music.

    The arts are natural and exciting expressions of these things.  People count on the arts to tell them the truth about what it is to be a person in the world--a world that we are always wondering about and never completely understand.

    In a way, the pleasure of a good painting or sculpture or poem is a little like the pleasure of seeing through the eyes of someone who can see in a way that no one else has ever seen before, the excitement of imagining with someone else's strange and brilliant imagination, or the surprise of remembering with someone else's memory.

April is Poetry Month: Day 3

 The Blind Men and the Elephant

   by John Godfrey Saxe

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined

Who went to see the Elephant

(Though all of them were blind),

That each by observation

Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant

And happening to fall

Against his broad and sturdy side,

At once began to bawl:

"God bless me! but the Elephant 

Is very like a wall!"

The Second  feeling at the tusk,

Cried, "Ho! what have we here

So very round and smooth and sharp?

To me tis mighty clear

This wonder of an Elephant 

Is very like a spear!"

The Third approached the animal,

And happening to take

The squirming trunk within his sands,

Thus boldly up and spake:

"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant

Is very like a snake!"

The Fourth reached out an eager hand

And felt about the knee.

"What most this wondrous beast is like

Is mighty plain," quoth he;

"Tis clear enough the Elephant

Is very like a tree!"

The Fifth who chanced to touch the ear,

Said: "E'en the blindest man

Can tell what this resembles most;

Deny the fact who can,

This marvel of an Elephant

Is very like a fan!"

The Sixth  no sooner had begun

About the beast to grope,

Than, seizing on the swinging tail

That fell within his scope,

"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant

Is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan

Disputed loud and long

Each in his own opinion

Exceeding stiff and strong,

Though each was partly in the right,

And all were in the wrong!

From: Nonsense & Commonsense : a child's book of Victorian verse by John Grossman & Priscilla Dunhill, Workman Publishing, 1992.

    As a lover of Sherlock Holmes in all his permutations, I feel an affinity for the Victorian times, although I am always grateful that I did not have to fit into either the stuffy manners or the stifling garments of the times.  As a lover of poetry, however, I can look upon the Victorian period as a golden age.  

    As they write in the introduction to this beautifully illustrated volume, "In nineteenth-century America,, poetry was a national pastime.  Victorians "rendered" poems in front parlors, at political rallies and family picnics.  Parents knew then, as parents know today, that poetry with its click-clack rhyme, rhythm and repetition is the first literature children fall in love with."  

    The illustrations are all from the years 1880-1920 and are part of the John Grossman Collection of Antique Images.  The book design is top-notch. I found each page a delight to look through and the poems both charming and fun and provided a chance to glimpse the innocence of another time and place. 

    The poem that I chose, seems particularly pertinent for today's media landscape.  We have such amazing technology and information resources at our fingertips that we should, theoretically, be able to see issues in all their fullness and complexity.  However, human nature being what it is, we are, like the blind men, limited by our vantage point and committed to our point of view, regardless of how accurate it might (or might not) be.  

    The poem has a final verse that was not included in the text of the book.  It reads:

MORAL,

So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean;
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

    I found that verse in an article from On Art and Aesthetics  which delves into this topic beautifully and in depth.  It's worth a read, so click on the link.  The opening paragraph reads:

"The Indian parable of the blind men and the elephant (part of many religious traditions) is a powerful commentary on the perennial tension between subjectivity and objectivity. The narrative is simple – a small group of blind men (or men in the dark) try to touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each touches only a part (side or tusk or ear or something else) and hastily concludes that it must be the elephant’s real and only form. They quarrel long and loud upon discovering the incompatibility of their accounts. The story has been used to encourage intellectual humility and respect for the views of one’s opponents. It is also a reflection on the tricky nature of truth and highlights the need for dialogue in human society."

    In some small way, that's what I try to accomplish in this blog and other writings that I do. 

April is Poetry Month: Day 2

 Warning

Nashua Volquez-Young, Pexels.com

By Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired

And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

And run my stick along the public railings

And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

And pick the flowers in other people's gardens

And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

And eat three pounds of sausages at a go

Or only bread and pickle for a week

And hoard pens and pencils and beer mats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

And pay our rent and not swear in the street

And set a good example for the children.

We have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practise a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

From: When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple, An Anthology of Short Stories and Poetry, Edited by Sandra Martz, Papier-Mache Press, 1987.

    This is the poem that started a movement: the Red Hat Society, now a global phenomenon.  It is a delicious poem...cheeky and irreverent and yet poignant and wise.  It is delightful to read out loud, but it may not even be my favorite poem in this anthology.  

    It turns out that Jenny Joseph wrote this poem in 1961 when she was 29 years old.  She went on to write 13 books of poetry and 6 children's books, but this is the one poem that is forever associated with her.  Purple, however, was never her favorite color.   Here is Jenny Joseph reading "Warning"

    I plan to spend more time with this book, even though I, like Jenny, have not filled my closet with purple.  As someone who is currently recuperating from another "adventure in aging" surgery; I could use the company of poets who speak of the experiences that come to us as the years inevitably pile on.  Poems like "I know the mirrors" by Janice Townley Moore, "Endurance" by Fran Portley and "Last Visit to Grandmother" by Enid Shomer.  Maybe too,  I'll buy some brandy, although I'll skip the summer gloves and satin sandals for the time being.

April is Poetry Month: Day 1

The first poem of the month, dedicated to my friend Mary Beth Nelson, just because...

The Journey

By Mary Oliver

Lake Superior, Sept. 2016 by Jean Doolittle

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house 

began to tremble 

and you felt the old tug 

at your ankles

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop. 

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy 

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night 

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company 

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life that you could save.

    This poem is the first featured poem in ten poems to change your life, By Roger Housden, Harmony Books, 2001.  

    If you feel uncertain about poetry and whether or not there is space in your hectic life for spending time with carefully placed words in rhythmic order, this book may convince you that not only can you make space for poetry, but that you absolutely must, if you want to be fully human and alive.

    Perhaps this sounds like hyperbole.  It is not. 

    Housden himself is not a published poet but he has an uncanny understanding and love for the medium and for making poems accessible to others.  The dust jacket blurb is wonderful, beginning with one of my favorite sentences, ever.

    "This is a dangerous book.  Great poetry calls into question not less than everything.  It dares us to break free from the safe strategies of the cautious mind.  It opens us to pain and joy and delight.  It amazes, startles, pierces, and transforms us.  It can lead to communion and grace.

    Through the voices of ten inspiring poets and his own reflections, the author of Sacred America shows how poetry illuminates the eternal feelings and desires that stir the human heart and soul.  These poems explore such universal themes as the awakening of wonder, the longing for love, the wisdom of dreams, and the courage required to live an authentic life.  In thoughtful commentary on each work, Housden offers glimpses into his personal spiritual journey and invites readers to contemplate the significance of the poet's message in their own lives."

    

    

April is National Poetry Month

 Two years ago when the uncertain days of the Covid-19 pandemic were just beginning, I found something to occupy my newly free hours at home.  I began re-organizing bookshelves and recognized I had a trove of poetry books that had been neglected.  For the next 57 days I explored a different book and shared a poem (or two) each day both on my blog and on .  Eventually I added commentary and pictures.  I'm not sure why I ended my postings, because I had not yet exhausted my supply of poetry books.

Now I once again find myself somewhat confined at home following foot surgery and can return to my unexplored poetry books everyday in April.  If you are interested in additional activities on this topic, check out  National Poetry Month .