So yes, we are still amid a global pandemic that has killed a few million people, but it’s spring, we have a sane president, I’ve had both my vaccinations and I’m feeling uncharacteristically optimistic. So I am working on a project, putting together some resources on poetry for university students and community.
So I have two questions.
1. What resources about poetry would you be interested in?
2. What common misconceptions do people have about poetry?
Let me know in the comments!
The writing stays. I wrap it around me like
A blanket, like a superhero’s cape.
Friends drift. Size doesn’t matter and
Sometimes is downright
Counterproductive. Age happens—and
That’s the soft option—bringing its own
Aches and pains. But through it all,
Beyond it all, the writing stays.
I got an email from Kickstarter a few days ago that spoke to the current moment:
“In times of crisis, some might feel selfish pursuing creative work. It might be hard to imagine why your art matters in the midst of a pandemic. But think of the book that shaped your childhood; the movie you watch whenever you feel sad. Creative work transports us. It recharges and renews us. And in order to experience it, someone needs to make it—to get that strange, unprecedented idea out into the world.” (No author cited)
But a few hours earlier, for the first time in a long damn time I started writing a poem, which I will find tomorrow and finish and post here. But in the meantime I wrote this for a prompt on one of my Facebook groups. It is dedicated to Musashi, who is now the Teaching Assistant for my now-online classes.
Love in the time of plague is this black cat
walking over my keyboard because he knows
attention is love, attention to what your loved one
attends to is love, and also when she doesn’t yell at you
for making all the M’s run across the screen
that reticence, the soft voice calling you
a goober, that most of all is also love.
And yes. That is my rollbook he’s sitting on.
Inspired by the painting that Wikipedia used yesterday on its homepage, on President Barack Obama’s last day.
“Hope” George Frederic Watts, 1886
There have always been moments
Like this: the whole world a weeping
Woman, half-collapsed, up to her knees
In tears for our unborn futures.
There/like/woman/in: blah
Moments/weeping/knees/future: so-so
good enough start; carry on.
In 1886, my great-grandparents chose
(or turned?) (Look this up; give context;
History is personal and political:
The sweat of a single brow, the blood
Of thousands soaking a nation’s fields)
Since then, the vote and indoor plumbing:
Yes, all that. But also, a nuclear arsenal
In the small idle hands of a man
With neither conscience nor safeguards.
And so, this lyre–all strings but one long since
Broken, washed away in these salt waves,
The tears of my people, my tears–
And all the air above this musician
Awaiting the quiet note still to come perhaps
From this final trembling audacious
String and the transformation
That may yet follow its music.
So this is the poem I wrote about voting on Tuesday, or actually, waiting in the playground before we got into the school to vote: anticipation.
Election Morning, Nov. 8, 2016
Alexander Hamilton Elementary School
Bodies order themselves in circles, concentric,
The newest arrivals on the inside, protected:
One step forward. Stand. Watch each others’
Nervous faces, watch the selfies on this
Historic morning. Another step forward. Stand.
This election has kept us guessing, neither able
To watch this boor go up against this white-clad
Suffragette, nor able to look away, alas.
One embraces the thought of war—he’s a fan,
Apparently; the other considers him deplorable.
The circle moves incrementally, a lazy dragon
Shifting forward one step at a time, waiting to take
A stand on the issues, to fill in small ovals
With a black marker on a slightly shielded shaky
Table. But not yet. For now, take a step forward.
Stand. I hear a woman say, “This is like that
Catholic thing in the garden.” Oh yes. The living
Rosary. People stand in a circle, each saying on prayer
To our mother to save us. Three rounds: Joyful,
Sorrowful, Glorious mysteries. Pray for us sinners.
Yes, this is a circle like that one. Taking a step forward.
Standing. Remembering the joys and sorrows of
The last eight years. Hoping against hope for glory
To come. Twelve hours later we sit and wait for hope
And unity to win, take another step forward, stand.
So yesterday I was struggling to write a blogpost about how we need to vote to avoid turning this country into an English-speaking version of 1930s Italy or Germany, how if we fail our country now, we are both figuratively and literally screwed, all our buried racism, sexism, xenophobia and homophobia, all our buried shit will come up from where it has been buried for so long and will be turned into public policy.
I am a student of history. I know how that sort of thing turns out.
And I was trying to write this, I found it easier to write about writing, something neutral and safe. But I am a writer and I cannot stay neutral and safe. Yesterday on Facebook, I put out a post saying this:
“Well, even if Wednesday does not begin with a hail of jackboots, we have our work cut out for us trying to unfuck this country from its toxic political discourse and the reality of recharged institutional oppressions. Where do we even begin?”
And while many of my friends focused on my (apparently) original use of the verb “unfuck,” my old friend Jack Reynolds wrote the following:
“Where to begin? Create things of beauty; art, music, poetry, food. Step out of comfort zones with small acts of kindness, not random unplanned ones but something to do everyday. Smile. Tell a joke. Give compliments. Break bread (gluten free if needed) with others and find out what makes them tick. As Dan Berrigan once said “Lets tell the truth to each other and see what happens.” Make community. Don’t search for it, make it or it’ll never happen. Smile. Take quiet time and not take ourselves too serious. Take others seriously. Be grateful for any and all things that are beautiful and unearned and are gifts. I heard a sailor say that you can’t control the wind but you can control the sail.”
He is wise.
So I thought I would write a poem to give us hope, because I seriously believe that this is a huge part of what art is for. So this is my offering to you and to God and whatever other gods might be out there: for sanity and liberty and the hope that this country stands for.
Election Eve, November 7, 2016
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live…” Deuteronomy 30:19-20
The moon is half-and-half tonight, like
A mitzpah coin holding out its promise:
That this is not some space-opera dystopia,
Where the creepy demagogue wanna-be
Is going to shoot down the moon, leave
All our tides raging out of control, our seas
Washing their bloody waves, troughing through
Our silent, ravaged, grey cities. No. Never.
The moon will remain to govern all our tides,
Those of water, those of blood: like clockwork.
The shining silver half-coin will grow to full,
Showing that we shall be together, not long hence,
With what this country was always meant to be:
The melted alloy of many elements, the gift given,
The promise kept: that we are stronger together,
And together we can heal all the broken pieces.
In Response to Nadia’s Misdirected Email, I State Exactly What I Am Looking For Balance. The ability to stand on one foot, on a tightrope, and juggle AR-15s, ethics and dollar bills, while chanting the U.S. Constitution, in tongues. Or good health. Unweighted dreams. A mechanism for disagreeing without needing to annihilate the opposition. […]
via In Response to Nadia’s Misdirected Email, I State Exactly What I Am Looking For — O at the Edges
Human Distance 1 Apart from edges, and into deeper darkness, our scars crawl, remaining aloof. 2 Open windows frame the ache in motion, the displaced notes between two wavering spaces. 3 Absent light, absent voice. What is the longitude of grace? Consider errors and their remnants. 4 Navigators measured lunar distance and the height of […]
via Human Distance — O at the Edges
Watching from the shadows, the heart wears dark
Glasses, a trenchcoat, carries a camera optimized
For distance and details. Curiosity kills cats
Regularly, it seems, but hearts don’t learn. They long
To know, to be prepared, to study the pictures–
Foreground, background, shadow on top of shadow.
Photo+graphein: Greek, to draw with light. We think
That light reveals, unveils, shows us an image
We can recognized. We know that the eyes
Rely on light to differentiate what (and who)
We should walk toward or away from. The heart
More private than the eye, remains in shadows.
Nine Variations of a Cloud 1 Looking up, I renounce pity and the sadness of wind. 2 Only lust pulls and shapes more, diminishing your integrity. 3 It slips through whenever I try to grab it. 4 Every phrase is a window glowing at night, surrendered to its frame. 5 Water in another form is […]
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