April is Poetry Month: Day 29

Taylors Falls, MN May, 2019, J. Doolittle

Angler  

 

 He hadn’t been at it very long when he discovered that he was becoming addicted to something. It wasn’t the fish,which he didn’t like to handle or eat, and it wasn’t the other fishermen, which he disliked even more. He simply had to go, and the fact that he hadn’t learned to swim and was still terribly afraid of drowning did not stop him from heading into deeper and deeper water each time, even though he knew there were few fish in water of that depth. For one reason or another he filed the sharp barbs off his hooks, and sometimes he forgot to put on the bait.
    He knew someday he would use up all his line, and the thought still bothered him from time to time.  But still he fished on alone, deeper and deeper into the dark green shadows, for he also knew that no matter how much line he let out,he would never reach bottom.

                                                                            Mark Vinz (1942-)

From: Late Night Calls, Mark Vinz, New Rivers Press, 1992.

    For 39 years,  Vinz was a professor at Moorhead State College (later Moorhead State University, now Minnesota State University Moorhead). He joined the faculty in 1968, the same year I was a freshman there. I never had a class with him, but he had enough of a reputation as a poet that his name carried weight on campus, as he worked with and developed a close friendship with Tom McGrath, an already notable poet.

    The words above are structured as a prose poem, which doesn't look much like a poem to most of us...it is in the reading out loud that the poem emerges.  I like to think of myself as flexible and open-minded and yet, after living with poems daily throughout this month, looking at this and the other poems in the book, left me a little fidgety and unsettled.  What, I wondered, would it feel like if it was arranged more like a typical poem?  Could those sentences line up "properly" or would they be disobedient as most prose would be, forced into an unnatural shape? 

     It shaped up quite easily.  Did I have a right to impose my will on his words?  I think once a writer releases their work onto a page, the words take on a life of their own that interacts with the reader.  It is in that interchange that meaning is made.  My little exercise helped me bring meaning to this little story and linger in thought in those "dark green shadows" that he evokes.  I wonder what you think about my revision...

Angler

He hadn’t been at it very long when he discovered
That he was becoming addicted to something

It wasn’t the fish,
Which he didn’t like to handle oreat,
And it wasn’t the other fishermen,
Which he disliked even more.

He simply had to go.

And the fact that he hadn’t learned to swim
And was still terribly afraid of drowning
Did not stop him from heading into 
Deeper and deeper water each time,
Even though he knew there were few fish 
In water of that depth.

For one reason or another he filed the sharp barbs
Off his hooks,
And sometimes he forgot to put on the bait.

He knew someday he would use up all his line, 
And the thought still bothered him from time to time.
But still he fished on alone,
Deeper and deeper into the dark green shadows,
For he also knew that no matter how much line he let out,

He would never reach bottom.

                                            Mark Vinz

The Wadena County Historical Society produced this in-depth interview with Mark Vinz, sharing his poetry and his ideas on the subject.  

April is Poetry Month: Day 28

 A Blessing

BY JAMES WRIGHT (1927-1980)

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness   

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.   

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.   

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me   

And nuzzled my left hand.   

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.

From: The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 1975

    Another poet who died young, who understood despair and loneliness.  It's not necessary to live in pain and sadness to create art, but so often art is the phoenix that rises out of the ashes of suffering.  Would we have Sunflowers and Starry Nights if van Gogh had been a happy accountant or carefree aristocrat?  The Bloomsbury Review praised this poet-- "James Wright wasn't afraid to find out who he really was, no matter how frightening that self may have been. This is the essence of the pure, clear voice we encounter in his poems, and this is why James Wright endures."  

    I am grateful everyday that whether in joy or sorrow, there are artists around us bringing their vision and their beautiful messages to us through the works of their minds, their hearts and their hands. 

April is Poetry Month: Day 27

J.Doolittle, March 2016

 April

A bird chirped at my window this morning, 

And over the sky is drawn a light network of clouds.

Come,

Let us go out into the open,

For my heart leaps like a fish that is ready to spawn.

I will lie under the beech-trees,

Under the grey branches of the beech-trees,

In a blueness of little squills and crocuses,

I will lie among the little squills

And be discharged of this overcharge of beauty,

And that which is born shall be a joy to you

Who love me.

                            Amy Lowell (1874-1925)

From: A Nature Poem for Every Night of the Year, Edited by Jane McMorland Hunter, Batsford, 2020.

     Amy Lowell, from a rich, distinguished New England family, a spinster, an overweight, suspected lesbian, an admirer of Ezra Pound, outspoken and opinionated, recipient of a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Poetry after her early death at age 51, was a prolific poet and a proponent of the Imagist school, which promoted a return to classical values.

    Sometimes the little side trips I take into the poets' lives are as fascinating as anything they put on paper.  Who was she writing this poem to?  Was it the same person who inspired this short and lovely poem?  

Decades

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,

And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.

Now you are like morning bread,

Smooth and pleasant.

I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour

But I am completely nourished.

Below is a 3 minute video about her life.

April is Poetry Month: Day 26

 

The Owl and the Pussycat

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea

   In a beautiful pea-green boat,

They took some honey, and plenty of money,

   Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,

   And sang to a small guitar,

“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,

    What a beautiful Pussy you are,

         You are,

         You are!

What a beautiful Pussy you are!”

II

Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl!

   How charmingly sweet you sing!

O let us be married! too long we have tarried:

   But what shall we do for a ring?”

They sailed away, for a year and a day,

   To the land where the Bong-Tree grows

And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood

   With a ring at the end of his nose,

             His nose,

             His nose,

   With a ring at the end of his nose.

II

“Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

   Your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.”

So they took it away, and were married next day

   By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

   Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

   They danced by the light of the moon,

             The moon,

             The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

                                                    Edward Lear 1812 – 1888

From: Poetry to read Out Loud, Edited by Robert Alden Rubin, Algonquin Books, 1993.

    This was such a cute book, The square shape, along with its brightly-colored dust jacket just called out..."read me, read me" but the choices made by the editor, Robert Alden Rubin,  left me a little cold.  

    Maybe I was in a bad mood.  Perhaps that's it--I found myself wondering if his mother called him ROBERT ALDEN!" when she sent him off to clean his room.  I'm not usually so churlish. But in the end, there are plenty of poems out there and he can pick his favorites and I can pick mine.  

    Perhaps if I just go eat some mince and slices of quince, everything will be fine! (Where's my runcible spoon??)

April is Poetry Month: Day 25

 Today's poem is by one-time Poet Laureate, Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006) He was 5 years old when Halley's Comet was visible from his birthplace, Worcester, MA. When he was nearly 90, the memory of that encounter. which had been simmering so long, finally emerged as a poem.

Halley's Comet

Miss Murphy in first grade

wrote its name in chalk

across the board and told us

it was roaring down the storm tracks

of the Milky Way at frightful speed

and it it wandered off its course

and smashed into the earth

there'd be no school tomorrow.

A red-bearded preacher from the hills

with a wild look in his eyes

stood in the public square

at the playground's edge

proclaiming he was sent by God

to save every one of us,

even the little children,

"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted,

waving his hand-lettered sign.

At supper I felt sad to think

that it was probably

the last meal I'd share

with my mother and my sisters;

but I felt excited too

and scarcely touched my plate.

So mother scolded me

and sent me early to my room.

The whole family's asleep

except for me. They never heard me steal

into the stairwell hall and climb

the ladder to the fresh night air.

Look for me, Father, on the roof

of the red brick building

at the foot of Green Street--

that's where we live, you know, on the top floor

I'm the boy in the white flannel gown

sprawled on this coarse gravel bed

searching the starry sky,

waiting for the world to end.

From: Fooling With Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft, Bill Moyers, William Morrow & Co, 1999.

    For the Harry Potter fans among us, there are all sorts of wizarding items that would be so wonderful to possess; a magic wand, of course, Harry's "cloak of invisibility', various unique modes of travel, and one of my favorites, the Pensieve.  

    You would have to be admitted into Dumbledore's sanctuary, certainly, but once there, you could look into its shallow stone basin filled with a silvery cloud-like liquid/gas and see the memories that had been siphoned into it.

    In our non-magical muggle world, we do not have the Pensieve, but we do have poetry, which Kunitz's used for the same effect in "Halley's Comet".  Though miles and years separated him from that childhood experience and even more miles and years separate him from me--still his experience has now become mine.  I enrich it by pulling in my own experience; an encounter with my parents, a dark summer night and a UFO.  Perhaps I will write about that some time, maybe, it is even now on its way to becoming a poem.

    Looks like Fooling With Words will be added to my reading pile.  Bill Moyers is always engaging, insightful and very readable--or maybe I'll just watch the documentary--there are limits on high my pile can grow! 

April is Poetry Month: Day 24

 

Love Sonnet XCIV

If I die, survive me with such sheer force

that you waken the furies of the pallid and the cold

from south to south lift your indelible eyes,

from sun to sun dream through your singing mouth.

I don't want your laughter or your steps to waver,

I don't want my heritage of joy to die.

Don't call up my person. I am absent.

Live in my absence as if in a house.

Absence is a house so vast

that inside you will pass through its walls

and hang pictures on the air

Absence is a house so transparent

that I, lifeless, will see you, living,

and if you suffer, my love, I will die again.

                            Pablo Neruda

From: ten poems to say goodbye, Roger Housden, Harmony Books, 2012.

    April 24 was when our family said goodbye to Amanda, beloved wife of Keith, mother of Hunter, Riley, Ella and Madi.  She was just 4 days shy of her 42nd birthday, taken from us by cancer.  Her funeral attracted hundreds and the memories shared were joyous and reflected the impact of her life, her courage and her love.  The family is strong, numerous and tight.  Her husband is determined to carry on, raising the children and running the farm that she loved so much. Now the living must deal with her absence and hang pictures in the air.  

    This book has so much to offer us through the poems selected.  We are always saying goodbye; to loved ones, to relationships, to our youth, our careers, our once healthy bodies...grief is a frequent companion and too often we do not know what to say, or how to cope.  In the quiet hours of the night, this is one place to turn.

April is Poetry Month: Day 23

https://www.greatbigcanvas.com/view/bald-eagle-perched-on-spruce
-branch-overlooking-the-chilkat-mountains-alaska,2116520/

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

                        Alfred Lord Tennyson

From: The Bird Book, Compiled and edited by Richard Shaw, Warne, 1974.

    Chances are this poem by Tennyson sounds familiar to you.  It is short, yet powerful, and has an identifiable poetic structure; making it ideal for classroom study.  

    Back in the days when memorizing poetry was "a thing" I would have been happy to be assigned this poem and not something by Longfellow (whose poems like the Song of Hiawatha, were indeed long fellows!) 

    It is a two STANZA poem, written in three line groups or TERCETS.  The rhyming pattern is a simple AAA BBB and the rhythm or METRICAL PATTERN is an IAMBIC TETRAMETER. This means that each line contains four sets of two beats, known as METRICAL FEET or IAMBS.  The first is unstressed and the second is stressed. It sounds something like da-DUM, da-DUM.

    Lest you think that I am geekier than you already do,  I found this information on the Poem Analysis website.  This is a fantastic site if you want to look beneath the surface of a poem, and let's face it...there is often a whole hidden universe to be found within a poem's economy of words but wealth of meaning.  

    The Eagle, for example is only 41 words long, including the title, but those few words create a world and an experience. Reading this analysis helped me see how Tennyson was able to accomplish this.  

    This website is a happy discovery for me and I will return to learn more about the poems that confounds me.