More Letterboxing

I wrote earlier about letterboxing, and now I write about it with actual experience.

Here is the stamp I carved today. This was my first attempt at carving, and I'll look forward to doing it again, and making more stamps. My friend Julie joined me, which made the process very satisfying. I also baked scones, so the kitchen is full of flour and rubber shavings.



We have gone letterboxing too, and collected two stamps: one in the Baker Wood Lot on campus, and one at a local park. Here is the first one, collected in the Baker Wood Lot:

The Woods 40

Last weekend, my family gathered at "The Woods 40," a chunk of land in Oceana County that was once my great-grandfather's. My great-grandpa cut wood there, taking along his dog and, often, my grandma. She loved it. It was a couple of miles from their farm -- close enough to visit with some frequency, but just far enough from daily life that it must, always, have felt special to be there. She missed it when she went away to college, and as much as she loved the farm she created with my grandpa, I think she needed the Woods 40, and Oceana County, in her life. We camped there every summer when I was a girl, in a meadow by the edge of the woods, up the hill from a creek where we waded, swam, and collected clay. They were wonderful trips, full of cousins and aunts and uncles, and, always, my grandma and grandpa. We returned there last weekend, without my grandma or grandpa. We missed their physical presence, but it was easy to feel near them, easy to believe they knew we were there. We had such fun bushwacking and bird watching and wading and exploring. It makes me happy to think how satisfied my grandma would be to know we were there together, watching bats and fireflies, cooking pie irons in the camp fire, and looking for wild flowers.


Here is the result of a mud fight.



Here is the meadow.

Strawberry Picking

We picked strawberries this morning with friends. We didn't have to drive too far, just far enough that we, maybe especially Tommy, could appreciate the shift in the landscape, the sense of country that, fortunately, is not all that far from us.

The Raft

Last weekend my dad and Tom built a raft. Tom is nine, so this summer it's time to light out for the territory...

Wandering Poet

We had a quick trip to Charlevoix last weekend, and I wandered around Esperance looking at nuts and tea and wine and chocolate and cheese. I was tempted to get this bottle of sake, but didn't.

Letterboxing

Last Friday, I had a picnic with a friend who told me about letterboxing. It sounds like a low-tech, artful version of geocaching. I googled it, told Tommy about it, and am now thinking about our own stamp-making project. Here is the summary, as I understand it: you carve your own stamp (ideally...though you could purchase one too), get a notebook, and find clues online. These clues will direct you to woods or gardens or parks, with specific clues about where to find a hidden "letterbox." In that letterbox, you will find a stamp and a notebook. You use that stamp to imprint a new image in your notebook, and you use your own stamp to share your inked carving in the hidden notebook, which you return to the hidden waterproof container for someone else to find. I'm excited to do this but skeptical about my stamp-making skills.

Better than a Backpack

This new bike accessory has already carried 11 books to the library and seven books home. I really like it! The books are good too. Among them: Jim Harrison's In Search of Small Gods, which I am savoring.

Out

School is out, frogs are out, poppies are out, and we are out.

Quick Trip

A quick trip to Nordhouse Dunes for one night of camping seemed to cure the aches that were left in me. I drove over on Saturday afternoon and met Thad and Tommy and friends Erik and Emma. Tommy had a birthday party to get to at 3:30 on Sunday, so we didn't have much time to linger, but we did have coffee by the fire and a chance to use pie irons. We got on the road at about 12:30. I learned, later, that a room at the Ludington Area Arts Center was dedicated to poet Judith Minty at 3 p.m. It would have been nice to attend that ceremony.

Erik and Emma


Emma: a delightful and confident young aviator, without goggles. Or a plane.


Tommy: Tree Dweller.


Me, Thad, and Tommy

Other Worlds

My friend Karin sent a wonderful card with a picture of a faerie house, built with stones, roofed with moss, bordered by a little stone walkway near a little stone bench. I would like, so much, to fit inside that house, and inside so many others that must certainly contain miniature tea pots and wonderful books. Here is a picture of my neighbor's homestead, a favorite little garden spot on the corner of two quiet streets in our neighborhood.

Afterglow

I had a fine day yesterday full of surprises and good wishes. Here is a photo swatch of some pajama bottoms my sister sent. Birthdays are a good occasion to be thankful for family and good friends, and I am grateful for both. I also had a great surprise in the mail: the latest issue of Bateau arrived, with my poem, "The Musician," included in it. That was an extra birthday treat!

Carmen

"Carmen" tonight at the Wharton Center! I'm very excited. Michigan Opera Theatre brings everything in -- sets, costumes, orchestra, everything. I don't think MOT is doing anything here next season, and I'm sort of surprised this production wasn't canceled. Last October, I read an article in The New York Times about MOT's budget cuts. They canceled a performance scheduled during the Final Four tournament because they thought they could make more money renting out their parking lot to basketball fans than selling opera tickets (and incurring the expense of a production).

Good Things

The East Lansing Art Festival was last weekend, my birthday is coming up soon, and this frog is back in the garden.

Ann Patchett

I went with a group of friends to hear Ann Patchett speak tonight. The Capital Area District Library brought her in as part of the 2009 Spring Author Series. She was fantastic! She shared hilarious stories and talked of her reluctance to tell people that she is a novelist. On some recent occasion -- a gathering of people in Tennessee who share the same (long and odd) last name as her husband -- she did tell someone she was a novelist. The woman said, "We are all novelists. We all have a novel inside us." Patchett said, "Oh Really? Are we all mathematicians? Do we all have an algebraic equation in us?" She mentioned the much-discussed rule of 10,000 hours and did not hesitate to emphasize how hard she has worked, how many hours she has logged. She also shared the story of her friendship with Renee Fleming. After Bel Canto was published, Patchett found out that all of the arias her fictional character sang happened to be all of the arias Fleming sings. People started saying Patchett had written a book about Renee Fleming. One day, Renee Fleming called Patchett and invited her to lunch. Patchett hadn't known anything about opera before she wrote the book, and still didn't know much about it when she met Fleming. Now they are great friends. I came home and pulled out my copy of Fleming's The Inner Voice, which I have not read, just to check when it was published. Yes...it was published after Bel Canto, and among the many acknowledgments printed at the beginning of the book, the first listed is a tribute of thanks to Ann Patchett. Ha!

Lilacs

In the waning days of NaPoWriMo, I got sick. I kept writing, but on the last day, my doctor said, enough, and put me in the hospital. So NaPoWriMo ended, for me, on April 29 instead of April 30. But I think I fulfilled the spirit of the mission, and I will return to my 29 poems in the days ahead and tinker with some of them. I was in the hospital two nights -- long enough, this time of year, for leaves and blossoms and yards to change. And long enough to weep when I returned to leaves and blossoms and yards. Our lilacs are blooming, and they scent the neighborhood with something that for me will forever be associated with hope and excitement. It's graduation time, and my head returns to those spring days when I was 21 and felt like I had so much poetry ahead of me. I still feel that way, especially when I smell lilacs.

Poetry and Weather

It's April, a month of poetry and strange weather. In March, my friend Karin invited me to be her NaPoWriMo partner. I agreed without hesitation, mostly because I admire her a great deal and I was honored that she asked me, and also because the 30 poems in 30 days challenge is a fantastic excuse to get a lot of writing done. I had almost two weeks to worry about my commitment before the month began, and during that time I felt a wonderful surge of adrenaline, a strange excitement I have not felt for some time...pre-race jitters. I woke up to my own sort of shotgun blast start on April 1, and felt something like a great caffeine rush for a fews days. It was fun. That feeling has settled down some as I have discovered that writing a poem a day is possible. A big reason it is working is because of Karin. It means a great deal to know she is there in Vermont, working on her poems and checking her email, waiting for my poems. Her invitation was a gift. She is a wonderful poet, and when May arrives I will miss this month of daily contact.

As for strange weather, here is a good reminder that April has always been mixed up.

From "Two Tramps in Mud Time," by Robert Frost:

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

April

It's April. The sun knows it, and I know it. The air is hard to convince, but the sun will charm that soon enough.


Hopping streams is a pretty good way to spend spring break.


I love these.

A Word from Lego

Rajma Masala, basmati, and naan... is that good fuel for NaPoWriMo? It smells wonderful right now. NaPoWriMo sounds like its own dish, really....something with tofu and brown garlic sauce?

Happy (early) National Poetry Month.

A Poem a Day

For those considering the poem-a-day challenge for NaPoWriMo, here is an argument in favor of quantity.

From Art and Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot -- albeit a perfect one -- to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes -- the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Note: I have not read the book, but I may look for it today when I walk into town.

Where the Wild Things Are

This has promise (and hope and fear and something wild).

The Man in the Red Shoes

We saw this documentary about Garrison Keillor (narrated, mostly, by Garrison Keillor) tonight at the Hannah Community Center. The auditorium was packed! The film was produced and directed by Peter Rosen, who was in attendance tonight and who answered questions after the film. We stayed for about four or five Q&A's, then snuck out because it was approaching 9:30 p.m. and Tommy needed to get to bed. The questions were interesting, or at least the answers were interesting. Sometimes you get good answers from bad questions. Sometimes you get bad answers from good questions. I'd like to think there is some correlation between the quality of questions and the quality of answers....but I don't always think that's the case either. One guy asked about the title, Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes. Peter Rosen said the title was originally Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Tennis Shoes. Keillor asked them to delete "Tennis." Rosen shrugged a bit at this, as though it was easy enough to accommodate, but sort of quirky. I get this completely. For one thing, Tennis shoes are for tennis. All other sneakers, which I do not call sneakers because I am in my 40's not my 70's, are Tenna shoes. Tenna. Tenna. Not Tennis. Enunciation is good, but it has its limits. Rosen said that request was G.K.'s only edit. The film is fantastic.

What I Missed

The 12th Annual East Lansing Film Festival is mostly over, and though I had a few minutes of pleasure reading the schedule, I didn't make it to Wells Hall for popcorn and movies. I missed A Plumm Summer (set in 1968 Montana), The Music Lesson (a documentary about ten classically trained musicians from the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra who travel to Kenya for a cultural exchange with a group of African students), Fresh (a documentary about farmers, philosophers, and business people who are re-thinking approaches to raising and distributing food), and Mining Madness, Water Wars (a documentary about a proposal to blast a sulfide mine beneath a trout stream in the Upper Peninsula). I missed a lot more, of course, but those were four I really wanted to see.

Dreams

Pure whimsy from The Fortune-Telling Book of Dreams, published by Chronicle Books. A few samples:

CONVICT:
A career in the arts, particularly music, is in your future if you dream of being a convict.

FROST:
A most fortunate dream. Frost on a window augurs a unique and enriching experience.

JAZZ:
To dream of listening to jazz is a warning that you should start to live within your means.

NOVOCAIN:
You will finally come to a resolution regarding a current problem if you dream of being under the effects of Novocain.

PANCAKES:
If you make pancakes in a dream, you will soon make a new friend.

TOMATOES:
To dream of tomatoes foretells travel and success.

XYLOPHONE:
Beware if a xylophone is played out of tune. This is the prediction of an accident.

Natasha Trethewey at Albion College

Last night I heard Natasha Trethewey read at Albion College. I had read Native Guard and have heard Trethewey on NPR, but it is great to fill out those experiences. Thad and I drove down, and though he accompanied me primarily out of kindness I think he enjoyed it too. I bought Domestic Work there at the reading, and read Rita Dove's introduction to it this morning. It's a good introduction, though I found one comment odd. Trethewey, writes Dove, "resists the lure of autobiography and is careful to avoid such narrow identification, weaving no less than a tapestry of ancestors..." It is true that this poet's work is not limited to or by autobiography. It is not solipsistic. It is relevant and meaningful, and it is poetry, not memoir. But history, as Dove does acknowledge, is a part of Thethewey's poetry, as is personal history. There is something of autobiography in Trethewey's work. One does not feel mired in it, but the lure of it is clear. What is important is that she has transcended it: she has created art, in her case poetry, out of autobiography.

It was good to return to Albion, and as I watched a group of students interact with Trethewey I was reminded of the benefits of learning in the intimate environment of a small college. Trethewey had met with many of these students and one sensed that they had all enjoyed the chance to get to know each other. At one point, she stepped back from the podium and smiled at one student, mentioning that student's fondness for and knowledge of a particular poem. Then she invited that student up to read that poem, and the student did so with obvious delight. Trethewey listened with appreciation and said, after the student finished, "That is just what a poet hopes. You hope that if you get the words down on the page in the right way, somebody can read it aloud just like that."

It was a good evening. We had sandwiches and coffee in the car, and I really enjoy that drive between Eaton Rapids and Albion. After the reading, I had a chance to talk with one of my old poetry professors.

Ottawa

More pictures...

Parliament:


One of the many wonderful images carved in the facade of Parliament:


Skaters on the Rideau Canal:


Our hotel:


More skaters:

Art and Ice

Art: "Shooting the Rapids," by Frances Anne Hopkins
People in Picture: Unknown

We just returned from Ottawa, which is a fantastic city. The drive there from the airport feels nothing like the approach to Washington D.C. Ottawa feels like a northern outpost, and it has some of the magic associated with such a place. People USE winter there, and everywhere one walks one sees people dressed for the outdoors. I have long wanted to skate the Rideau Canal, and the experience exceeded my expectations. I can't stop thinking about it. It was a grand and glorious trip, full of delightful, unexpected things. We skated each day, and it was such a surprise, that first day, to reach the Bank Street bridge and find framed art from the Portrait Gallery of Canada hanging on the cement walls underneath the bridge. Reproductions, yes, but ART...hanging there for people in hockey skates to discover outside in February. It was a wonderful intersection of art and outdoor sports, and everyone, it seemed, appeared to appreciate it -- to pause and linger and study the pictures.

Elsewhere

It has been a fine, wet day of English rain. Mist has hovered in low places and settled on my cheek and delivered me to strange new lands. I brought home this train station from my grandpa's house today, ostensibly for Tommy (who thinks it is sweet). I like crouching beside it and staring at the platform and entering an older world. I like thinking about Glendale.

25 Things

1. I am an introverted extrovert. Or an extroverted introvert. I’m not sure which, but because I was an English major I believe in the difference.

2. It bothers me when I hear someone use the phrase, “kill some time.”

3. I played the ukulele in elementary school. My son started playing the guitar in kindergarten. One always wants more for one’s child than one had….

4. When I was a girl, I wanted to be a professional cross-country skier. I skied most every night, usually in my grandparents’ orchard. There was also a time I wanted to be a geologist. I readied myself for this by pulling all of the clothes out of my closet and moving in a chair, a small chest, my rock collection, a magnifying glass, and several field guides.

5. My inner life is a big part of my life.

6. I broke my collarbone when I was in fourth grade. I was riding my bike (fast) down our street and tried to pop a wheelie. My front tire hit a rock, my handlebars kicked out, and I landed next to the curb.

7. I have had two reconstructive knee surgeries. I tore the ACL in my left knee in 1989 when I was in Scotland. Five years later, I tore the ACL in my right knee.

8. I love the weird, looping logic created in sestinas.

9. I miss my grandma fiercely.

10. I grew up working and playing in my grandparents’ apple orchard. I ate apple-something (fried apples, cinnamon apples, baked apples…) every day of my life for a very long time.

11. I don’t have much use for Red Delicious apples.

12. I like shoveling snow.

13. When I was 21, I spent the night on a cliff in the Peloponnese above the Mediterranean Sea. I hiked there with my friend Lori because we could not find a place to stay in town (Koroni). We huddled on a rocky outcropping all night, listening to Greek men shout unknown things somewhere off down the hill, and hoping -- really really hoping --they did not climb up the hill to drink ouzo and kill us. They did not.

14. There was not a train that served that little village in the Peloponnese, so in the morning we found a ride with a man who needed to deliver some chickens to a friend. We rode in the back seat with the chickens.

15. I misplace keys frequently. Duke Ellington’s granddaughter once found a set I had been missing for more than a year.

16. I love children’s books. I love reading to children.

17. Galway Kinnell visited Albion College the semester I was in Scotland. I was so disappointed to miss him that, a year or so later, I took a train to St. Paul to hear him read at The Hungry Mind.

18. I like trains. I took one to Austin, Texas to see my sister. I could have flown for $2 less, but I had books to read, strangers to meet, poems to write….

19. I miss doing things with my sister.

20. I don’t like butterscotch.

21. I love cilantro.

22. I want a unicycle.

23. I don’t care about the Super Bowl (ever), but I watched Bruce Springsteen at half-time tonight.

24. I like climbing trees.

25. I am a tent camper, though I sometimes skip the tent. I have slept under the stars in many special places. Maybe the best was Isle Royale, where I woke in the night and heard wolves.

Perfection Wasted

Garrison Keillor just read Updike's poem, "Perfection Wasted," on PHC. Of course, it's the perfect selection. My friend Julie Stivers beat him to it, though. She posted it earlier this week, and so I have had fine reminders of it twice in one week.

Perfection Wasted

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market--
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, these loved ones nearest
the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,

their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,

their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

--John Updike

Spent

I worked beside these today. So many love the tight buds of early blossoms, but I love the spent, and the nearly spent, just as much.

John Updike

John Updike
March 18, 1932 - January 27, 2009

Just checking news, a bit randomly, which I don't tend to do online. I wait for the morning paper, and I listen to the radio, and I do not, generally, do either at 11:30 p.m. I stumbled on Updike's obituary just now and felt some sorrow, maybe more so because of the unexpected fashion in which I discovered the announcement.

William Kurelek

A few year's ago I discovered William Kurelek's A Prairie Boy's Summer at the library. Then I discovered A Prairie Boy's Winter. We now have our own copy of the "summer" book, and this morning I ordered the "winter" book. In February, we're going to Ottawa to skate the Rideau Canal. I just learned that the National Gallery of Canada (in Ottawa) has some of Kurelek's work. I am excited to see it.

Sunshine

More beauty today, and some of it is just in sunlit corners of the house.

Winter

It is cold, yes, but it is also beautiful. Sunshine and icicles are a fine combination, but moonshine and icicles are brilliant. The other night the house was dark and I walked upstairs in that darkness and reached the top and looked up and out the window near the landing and there was the moon, and there was a collection of icicles glistening in the moonlight. This was just before I went to bed, which is when monsters are most active, and I looked at the icicles and thought, "Fangs. Magnificent fangs." And so I went to bed thinking of monsters and fangs but I slept very well and the dreams I dreamed were concocted of good things. This morning I got up and the house was dark and I walked down the hallway and paused at the window near the top of the stairs and looked out at the icicles and thought, "Teeth! Long, pointy, brittle teeth!" And I came downstairs and got my keys and went to the dentist. I am back from the dentist and the sun is shining on our neighbors' icicles and I can't seem to stop staring at them. They do not look like fangs. They are beautiful and surreal and they make me glad, so very glad, to be a creature of winter.

Hooked

On this:From this place:

Northern Shoveler

Do you see the similarities? The green head...

Ice

Oh! I've been away for 11 days. It began with a drive. It was not a long drive. The drive was even an adventure. My car made horrible metal-on-metal sounds. I pulled off and decided I shouldn't drive. Then I did drive. I made it to the place I wanted to be and called Subaru. Subaru sent a flat bed trailer to pick up my car. My car went away and I stayed. That was fine. I didn't need a car. I had ice. It was great ice! For three days. And three nights. Night skating! Oh! After three days and three nights of shoveling and skating and shoveling and skating and skating and skating and skating and shoveling and skating, we got rain. It all turned to soup. But it was pretty soup. Who needs a car when you have ice skates and Bean boots? I did, eventually, and it is back now, and I am back now.

Movies

I don't watch T.V. I just don't. But I do like movies. And I like reading movie reviews. Wendy and Lucy is on my want-to-see list.

Fun with Fire

I am working on another long poem, this one involving Olivier Messiaen, Paris, and birdsong. A fire seemed necessary. A colorful fire. So I added one of these pine cones, which came from my grandpa's.

Under the Tree

This morning, Tommy closed his bedroom door (rare) as I walked by. He's eight! He can have a little privacy! I walked by without commenting. Then he hustled out, asked for some pipe cleaners (I had pipe cleaners! I can't believe I had pipe cleaners!), some tin foil, paper clips, and a rubber band. Then he hustled back in, closed the door, and emerged before the walk to the bus stop with a fine grin. Today after school he wrapped something, and I found this under the tree. What joy! It is fun to watch him experience the pleasure of making something to share.

I Have Done So

Progress

Beethoven, Wordsworth and Fulton are getting along quite well now. We are all having tea at the kitchen table, though they have asked me to light a fire. We have had such a fine day together, I am inclined to indulge them.

What I'm Working On

It is approaching bus stop time and I have made little progress on a poem I started working on last Wednesday. There is a lot going on in it, and that accounts for much of my difficulty. I am trying to squeeze Beethoven, Wordsworth, and Robert Fulton into one poem and they are not fitting so well. I work on one part, which then requires some alteration to another part. It is like trying to carry too much laundry up from the basement. I can't see the steps, socks are falling out, and I'm bumping into walls. I stoop to pick up one sock and then a wash cloth falls off the top. I press my chin into a towel to hold everything in place but then I can't see where I am going. So it is with this poem. I add some historical detail and some other historical detail comes tumbling off like an errant sock.

Editorial note: It has been a week since I've posted, and a lint trap was featured prominently in the last posting. Maybe I should set aside Beethoven and Wordsworth and Robert Fulton and work on laundry.

The Lint Trap

I went for a walk today and realized, truly, how much I needed a walk. Sometimes I start walking and do not want to stop. It's like Forest Gump when he started running. I just don't want to stop walking. I went to the post office and the library, and I meant to walk in the little patch of woods behind the library. But somehow I came out of the library with a backpack full of books and a head full of thoughts. My mind had begun wandering far enough that I felt the need to catch up with it or at least keep pace with it and I forgot about the patch of woods until I got home and realized I was not ready to be home. I wanted to be in a patch of woods watching birds, but somehow there I was on my front porch with a key in my hand. The walk was not sufficient. I came home and the lint trap in my head was still full. Walking is the best way to empty it, but sometimes one must walk a very long way.

Margaret Atwood

I heard Margaret Atwood talk last night at the Wharton Center. She was funny, but her talk went something like this:

My talk this evening was titled "A Precision of Language," but that's not really what I will be talking about....I could talk about my childhood (insert a few funny stories to engage audience). I could talk about why I decided to become a writer (insert another witty story to engage audience). I could talk about my first reading, which I gave in a department store near the mens' socks (pause for laughter). Mention a few other witty things one could discuss and insert a few more anecdotes to charm the audience. Then launch into a full discussion to promote latest book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth.

I enjoyed the talk but couldn't help assuming that she uses this format for many lectures, inserting the lengthy description/discussion of whatever her latest book is.

Warm Spell

Bill Holm's poem, "Warm Spell," seems utterly appropriate for this week.

Warm Spell

A long November warm spell;
all the blizzards still asleep.
Bees hum unbelieving
around still blooming flowers.
Leaves, piled in compost heaps,
move around uneasily.
The dried branch bends down
in warm wind,
inviting them home again.

People who haven't spoken in years
smile and greet each other in the street.
Relatives forget old quarrels
over family heirlooms.
The town atheist admits that God exists;
and the town drunk drinks coffee on his porch.
The Lutheran minister forgets
St. Paul and the furrows
vanish from around his mouth.
Children are conceived in the open air
under willow trees by the river.

Like the life in the body,
this cannot last, so everyone
wastes time joyfully,
not even remembering
the old wounds they gave their spirit.
The old man on the stoop
in front of the beer joint
remembers his first lover,
and his toes begin dancing
around inside his shoes.

This Morning, These Poems

I woke to sunshine, eggs and hash browns prepared by Thad, news of change, and five poems in the NEWSPAPER! William Carolos Williams wrote, "It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there." Today we get poetry in the news! News in our poems!

Ripening

I have just ordered this, by Paul Hunter. (I don't think we are related, but I might feel we are after I spend more time with his work.)

Pumpkins

Five days before Halloween, we carved pumpkins. This was risky, considering our greedy population of squirrels. I peeked inside the gaping mouth of one of them this morning, looking for a chipmunk curled up beside the unlit candle. No chipmunk. Maybe we'll capture one when the candle is lit and glowing like a well-stoked wood stove. Here is my magic tractor, which runs on roasted pumpkin seeds, not gasoline.

This Day

I am baking muffins, and when they are done I will scoop them out of their little compartments and deliver them to relatives who have already begun their day. I am eager to get there and be among them. And when I come home I have this to look forward to:
Blue Lash, by James Armstrong. Published by Milkweed.

Monomania

Ahab had his whale. I have my endless succession of lost car keys. My last big search was in June. It ended well, but there are hours I will not recover. Today's search lasted much longer. It consumed me. I had even decided the key must be locked inside the car. I googled instructions about how to break into automobiles. I did not have a rubber triangular door stop, which seems to be highly recommended, so I substituted a variety of rubber spatulas, grouped into something that resembled a triangular rubber door stop. This did not work. I could not break into my car. Part of it was a hesitation to do harm. Mostly, I think, it was incompetence. But the key is back. It was on the kitchen floor hidden behind a door. I am exhausted. I thought only of the key for six hours. I was supposed to drive my son and his friend back from soccer practice. I could not do this. I had to ride my bike to soccer practice and ask the father of another child to take responsibility for my child and for the other child and for his child. I have had enough. Tomorrow I am buying spare keys. 17 spare keys.

Pigeons and Spotted Owls

I am reading Superdove, by Courtney Humphries, which is all about pigeons. So this sign in Golden Gate Park seemed particularly relevant when I saw it. Humphries acknowledges that no one can agree on the proper relationship between pigeons and people in cities, and her additional notes at the back of the book mention a proposed thousand dollar fine for feeding pigeons in New York City.

There were other interesting things in S.F. too. The Japanese Tea Garden, City Lights Book Store (with a whole floor devoted to poetry), Britex (four floors of fabric), and then, across the Golden Gate Bridge, miles of hiking in Marin County...and a SPOTTED OWL in Muir Woods that flew low 20 feet off the trail and landed in a redwood within easy sight.

In Memory, In Love

Photo by Doug Vasey

HOWARD EVANS HUNTER
May 6, 1905 - September 26, 2008

My grandpa was not a man of great commotion. He was not hurried or dramatic. He was wise and capable, he loved reading about history and engineering, and he had an extraordinary mind. You sensed, when you were in his presence, that you were with someone rare and exceptional. I think all sorts of people could comprehend this. His grandchildren certainly did. He gave us an orchard to play in, a pasture to roam, work to do that made us feel trusted and important, and patience -- endless patience, along with an early introduction to diplomacy. When I served him soapy bathwater in a Dixie cup and called it lemonade, he couldn’t keep his lips from puckering, but he managed to nod his head and say, “well, say, that’s interesting. Thank you. Thank you very much.” One day I picked wild grapes in the orchard. They were small and tart and nearly juiceless. I spent a good portion of the afternoon crushing them on the picnic table where we spread birdseed, filling considerably less than a Dixie cup with sour juice mixed with a few seeds the squirrels didn’t want. I didn’t think about adding sugar or water. I rushed out to the orchard, following the chug of the tractor so I could flag down my grandpa and present my gift. He stopped -- interruptions were just something else to take in stride -- and accepted my cup with characteristic appreciation, “well say, that’s awfully nice of you.” This show of trust came just a year or so after the bathwater trick, and still he was willing to give me another chance. Again his lips puckered, and again he shared thanks and managed some comment about the color of the juice, the amount of work it must have taken. Not only was he diplomatic, he was unflappable. I remember summer afternoons, days I spent playing Flinch with my grandma and climbing trees. Grandpa spent a lot of those days trying to fix equipment – the sprayer, the tractor…something he was depending on for that day’s work that broke down just when he was counting on it to get a job done. He’d spend a whole morning tinkering with it, and he’d come in for lunch and sit down and still he wouldn’t complain. He’d thank my grandma for the cinnamon apples or the fried apples or the baked apples, and he’d watch her hustle around the kitchen, and I’d watch him watching her, and that was an early introduction to what love looked like in someone’s eyes. We all learned a lot about love from him, and from them, and from the place they shared with us.

Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Marsalis is in town. MSU Jazz Studies Director Rodney Whitaker led a talk at the Wharton Center with him last night. Marsalis was cool and funny, of course, but he was also serious about what it takes to be an artist, what it means to be a jazz artist, what jazz means to this country, and just exactly how children should be supported as they begin to explore our musical language. That man knows how to connect with a crowd.

The Writing Life, The Divided Life, The Mental Subcontinent

This morning, after blueberry pancakes and coffee, I sat down with The New York Times Magazine and read David Gessner's article, Those Who Write, Teach. Yes, it was about the old divide between academia and art, but one could substitute "teaching" with any job that distracts one from pursuing his art. It's worthwhile reading for those who have struggled with this issue. As Gessner says, "It's hard to throw your whole self into something when that self has another job."

Hurricanes, Books

I read this several years ago, before Katrina and certainly before Ike. Maybe it is time to read it again.

I also saw Tom Piazza's new book, City of Refuge, at Schuler's today. Here is what Richard Ford said about it: “People ask me when will Katrina begin to inform our art, when will imagination become essential to tell what the raw facts can't. Well, here's an answer: now. CITY OF REFUGE speaks eloquently into that silence.” Maybe I should read this too.

"So many books, so little time."

New Dimensions

OOOOHHHH....Higgs Particles are all very interesting, but an extra dimension? This could solve a lot of problems: roads will become less congested, air traffic control will become easier. Can we use jet packs? Is it a new frontier? Let's not conquer this one. Let's just let it tantalize us forever.

Brain Green's Op-Ed piece in Friday's New York Times was great. My concerns about the Large Hadron Collider have been quelled. I am reassured that Switzerland will not be swallowed, and I am spending my afternoon with a tape measure, staring at the kitchen table, waiting for the new dimension to reveal itself to me. Tomorrow I will casually mention that my table is 40" wide, 45" long, 30" tall, and 6 3/4" quimoogle. Yes. Quimoogle is the new dimension. I have just named it. For an English major, this is enough.

Poem Puzzles

It's the second week of what I now call fall, defined entirely by the start of school. I have settled into a routine, which I am now breaking, so one must question whether I can call it a routine if, after 7 days, I am interrupting it. I've been walking Tommy to the bus stop, walking home in the morning sunshine (or rain), sitting down at the kitchen table, and working on poetry. I feel like I am making some progress on poems I started over the summer. When I am working on a poem, I feel such a sense of absorption, and I am aware of a logic and a rhythm to the process. It's like assembling a jigsaw puzzle, though I suppose there is sometimes more than one solution to each poem puzzle. I can feel when lines are fitting together, and I can feel when I need to reshape and reconfigure. I always think that I know when I've put the final piece in, but sometimes I have "false closure," and then I come back to the poem puzzle and take a few pieces out and build different pieces to replace them. When I am done with a jigsaw puzzle, I like to run my hands over it. When I am done with a poem, I read it aloud to myself, which is like running my hands over a puzzle. Last August, when I was hiking along the ridge trail in Nordhouse Dunes, I loved looking at the trees, which were all shaped by the wind. They had distinctive growth patterns and similar twists. I notice that with puzzles. Each 500-piece, 1,000-piece puzzle tends to have one shape that is repeated, with some variation, in many of the pieces. So it is with poems. Something in our work becomes our voice.

Goodbye Summer

RipStik

I want this. My cousin's son introduced me to it last night, and though I only tried it once, and only went about 4 feet, I think I'm hooked. The deck pivots and there are casters, so everything seems to swivel and tilt. It feels different than a skateboard...but similar too. There must be very good bearings in there because it felt smooth, at least for the four feet that I traveled.