National Poetry Month

Poetry is not part of most people's lives on an every day basis. I do not consider myself a poet but I write poetry -- that's because I take writing very seriously and believe it is, first an art and then a profession and, lastly, something almost anyone can enjoy and dabble in. I dabble, by my own definition.

I was shocked in a conversation yesterday when someone who often asks me to offer an opinion about his poetry told me he never reads fiction because it's merely escapism. Yes, he thinks he writes poetry although he has never read a book about poetics. What a strange relationship he has with poetry!  He does not read books of poetry but not only takes pleasure in producing his "poems" but annually prints them up into a little chapbook of his own making to share with friends and family.  How strange people are!  Poetry has some power that neither nonfiction prose nor fiction has. Most people have a favorite poem or a line or two of poetry that resonates in their lives, the word "magical" is almost appropriate. 

Years ago someone mentioned Rilke in a conversation. I had read a little of Rilke and didn't quite understand him.  So the friend gave me the following poem without giving me it's title.  I've returned to it often because I find resonance in various lines at various times. To me that is part of the definition of good poetry, something that offers information about life and the world in a way--with words arranged skillfully--that offers insight again and again and never becomes trite.

You see, I want a l lot,
Perhaps I want everything:
The darkness that comes with every infinite fall
And the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing,
And are raised to the rank of prince
By the slippery ease of their light judgements.

But what you love to see are the faces
That do work and feel thirst.

You love most of all those who need you
As they need a crowbar or a hoe.

You have not grown old, and it is not too late
To dive into your increasing depths
Where life calmly gives out its own secret.

April is National Poetry Month

from e e cummings:

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
Lady I swear by all flowers. Don't cry
-- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

and Death I think is no parenthesis

This poem refers to many things on my mind today: it is April Fool's day. Spring is having a difficult birth this year [snow flurries yesterday] and I have just heard about the death of someone I knew and worked with at certain period in my life. Over the weekend I heard, too, of the end of a business I worked for some 25 years and talked with the owner about the distressing circumstances leading to closing the business. This poem that I haven't read for a few years was the one the poetry anthology I picked up opened to -- it seemed one of those moments of synchronicity that, when happy I like to call serendipity, and have no name for on a morning like this. I simply read a poet's thoughts and marvel at all that can be said in so few words.

Middle of the night

Billiant light penetrates through closed, sleeping eyes and then a cymbal crash of thunder assaults the ears. Awake! A necessary primitive fight-or-flight startle. But we're safely in a house, warm under the covers. Maybe we get up to let the cat in or close the windows, maybe we lie awake listening to continued storm noises, or maybe we fall back asleep quickly and easily. I have for years slept through storms and sometimes am astonished at the puddles or even the damaged trees, the ferocity that I have missed.

Other times, like last night, some unexpected internal lightening and thunder -- not a nightmare [or at least not a remembered one or even remnants of one] -- startled me awake. Not drowsily awake as happens when I've had sufficient sleep and am restless but relaxed. Rather a clear headed awakeness. I could have got up and read a book. But I felt something was asking to e considered although no big outstanding questions needed resolution, expect possibly writing a story that has been waiting to be written for a few years. I think the time has come to write it and determined -- between 12:55 and approximately 4:00 while I was awake -- to do just that.

I also puzzled, without resolution or additional insight about Jane Hirschfield's poem "Button". It had been discussed in a class in which one member who has done more research than I mentioned that she is a practitioner of zen meditation. I had found the first part of the poem clearly a zen state of mind, an ease with the is-ness of circumstance and condition. Her expression was serene and beautiful. But the last six lines took a turn, brought in hope -- which is desire, which is the root of all human unhappiness and the thing that the meditation is meant to banish. It seemed to be banished in the earlier part of the poem. Often I feel when I read poetry that I am following the writer's logic, that something may surprise me [I LIKE those surprises] but the surprising mental turns made sense, the poem becomes a revelation. So I lay in the dark, letting the bedside clock radio play for an hour, interweaving Brahms and Mendelsohn with my wide awake, questioning mental state.

It's axiomatic that older people often sleep badly. Most complain about it and worry about their wakefulness in the wee hours. My state of mind did not fit into that cliche. I was not bothered about being awake for I knew I could spend the day doing what I needed to do with out sleep. I felt, perhaps in a somewhat zen way, that it was okay, it was, for some reason necessary for me to be so wide awake and consumed with literary pondering. This seems to be a part of who I am at this stage -- I think those hours were a little like the hours when one might listen to an all night storm splashing against the windows and a wind howling around the corners of the house. Tomorrow, because today was busy with other things, I will begin writing that story. There was a thought whether it would be part of a novel, a bigger story. That remains to be seen.

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month. I will try to post a number of poems that are not ones most people have run into, at least not often. Today it's "Riding Lesson" by Henry Taylor.

I learned two things
from an early riding teacher.
He held a nervous filly
in one hand and gestured
with the other, saying: "Listen,
Keep one leg on one side,
the other leg on the other side,
and our mind in the middle."

He turned and mounted.
She took two steps, then left
the ground, I thought for good.
But she came down hard, humped
her back, swallowed her neck
and threw her rider as you would
throw a rock. He rose, brushed
his pants and caught hisG breath,
and said, "See that's the way
to do it. When you see
they're going to throw you, get off."