oops

I don't usually read Crooked Timber, but p. pointed me to this link they have over there today to Louis Armstrong singing Britney Spears' "Oops I Did It Again." Lovely.

proofs

Looks like Timna is working on proofs this week, too. I hate it. There's so much I wish I could change, but can't. So many horrible sentences. I think, "did I write that?" and then look back at the original and find that yes, yes, I did. There are a few icky errors that are the fault of the proofreaders and not me, but this whole porcess is making me nervous. It's doubtful more than a dozen people will ever read this article, but I still wish it were better written. I even have a better revision (one I sent out with job application materials), but since those revisions were made post my article getting accepted, they won't make it.

aragah.

dream

P. gave birth to a cat. I helped deliver it in the backseat of a car.
Also, I dived deep into the bottom of a pool to bring up 5 copper coins.
Also, I won $10,000, but it was contingent on my returning all but 2 books I just got through interlibrary loan. Of course I had a hard time picking just two, but I had made my first choice at least when the alarm went off.

Even my dreams are scatter-brained.




edited to add this Usage Note, brought to you by our friends at Dictionary.com & my own "dived? is that correct?" moment. Very interesting stuff, I think:

Either dove or dived is acceptable as the past tense of dive. Usage preferences show regional distribution, although both forms are heard throughout the United States. According to the Dictionary of American Regional English, in the North, dove is more prevalent; in the South Midland, dived. Dived is actually the earlier form, and the emergence of dove may appear anomalous in light of the general tendencies of change in English verb forms. Old English had two classes of verbs: strong verbs, whose past tense was indicated by a change in their vowel (a process that survives in such present-day English verbs as drive/drove or fling/flung); and weak verbs, whose past was formed with a suffix related to -ed in Modern English (as in present-day English live/lived and move/moved). Since the Old English period, many verbs have changed from the strong pattern to the weak one; for example, the past tense of step, formerly stop, became stepped. Over the years, in fact, the weak pattern has become so prevalent that we use the term regular to refer to verbs that form their past tense by suffixation of -ed. However, there have occasionally been changes in the other direction: the past tense of wear, now wore, was once werede, and that of spit, now spat, was once spitede. The development of dove is an additional example of the small group of verbs that have swum against the historical tide.

edited again to add this. At dinner with C.'s parents long ago, somehow a question of the origin of the word "hooker" came up at the dinner table. C's is the kind of family that doesn't hesitate to get up from the table to bring back an encyclopedia, a dictionary, or any other book relevant to conversation at hand. I loved this. I want to be this. At any rate, the entry for "hooker" was quite lengthy, and I remember laughing hysterically as C's father read some version of the following:

hook·er²
n.

1. One that hooks.
2. Slang. A prostitute.

Word History: In his Personal Memoirs Ulysses S. Grant described Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker as “a dangerous man... not subordinate to his superiors.” Hooker had his faults. He may indeed have been insubordinate; he was undoubtedly an erratic leader. But “Fighting Joe” Hooker is often accused of one thing he certainly did not do: he did not give his name to prostitutes. According to a popular story, the men under Hooker's command during the Civil War were a particularly wild bunch, and would spend much of their time in brothels when on leave. For this reason, as the story goes, prostitutes came to be known as hookers. However attractive this theory may be, it cannot be true. The word hooker with the sense “prostitute” is already recorded before the Civil War. As early as 1845 it is found in North Carolina, as reported in Norman Ellsworth Eliason's Tarheel Talk; an Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860, published in 1956. It also appears in the second edition of John Russell Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms, published in 1859, where it is defined as “a strumpet, a sailor's trull.” Etymologically, it is most likely that hooker is simply “one who hooks.” The term portrays a prostitute as a person who hooks, or snares, clients.

Who writes this stuff? Really, I'd like to know.

And the days are not full enough

And the Days Are Not Full Enough

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.

Ezra Pound

These days my days are not full enough. And by full enough I don't mean that I have nothing to do; for here, at the end of the semester, I've definitely got plenty. Conferences with students. Papers to grade. Exams to make, to give, to grade. Meeting to attend. Proofs to read. Errands to run. Kitchens to clean, showers to take, hair to shampoo rinse and repeat.

By full enough I mean having some sort of meaning to them. Sometimes I feel like my life can just slip away (like that field mouse) if I'm not careful enough. I catch myself not paying attention to what's around me. I'm always missing steps, bumping into things, forgetting and misplacing things, but I feel like there's plenty else I've been missing in the rush.

The good thing about this detox program is that in the evenings I'm feeling calmer. I'm not coming home unable to wind down, though I am tireder (I think) than usual.

I long for this summer, and for fuller days of thinking and reading and talking with people I care about, and for travelling and hiking and all sort of other filling things. But I also long for balance, and for the ability to make more of my moments not wasted. I want to live more deliberately, consciously. Somehow.

poetrymonth

addiction

I gave up coffee (and caffeine) in favor of baby-making this weekend. Over the weekend, it wasn't so hard. This afternoon... oh, mannnnnnnnnnnnnn I've got cravings! Headache coming on. Soooo soooo sleepy. Can't concentrate. Will sugar help? Let's find out.

weekendend

it's not been sooo long, but it feels like it's been ages since I wrote last. Busy week. After than depressing Tuesday, things looked up and down and up again a bit. Highlight of the week was a tornado warning during a class I was teaching. Some burly administrator came nearly running into my classroom, where some students had just finished a presentation, told us to get us to the basement. We went and talked some more Shakespeare there, huddled together on comfy couches & a less comfy floor. When the warning passed, another admin person came by and told us we could go back upstairs, but we stayed instead. It wasn't the most spectacular class ever, but it was fun. I like these students.

The weather has turned cold again, but at least there's no snow. p. & i have had a good weekend together. Saw The Interpreter last night. The story's not great, but Sean Penn is pretty amazing. Without saying a word, he can reveal such depth. His face.... so expressive. Wow.

Spent a lot of time looking at P's face too, this weekend, from closeup. My nose as reflected in his eyes looks HUGE.

thin skin

I have a student who sits in my afternoon class with a blank & angry stare most of the time. Sometimes she seems to be rolling her eyes. Is it me?

I've had a hard time getting this group of students to read, as I've said plenty of times already, and have finally dealt with it by pretending that everyone's read and breaking them into groups to answer some questions for discussion as that will force them to engage with the text on their own at least a little. This student, to her credit, is one who often reads, but she definitely doesn't seem to like me and her sighs and eyerolls bother me far more than they should. I'd like to sigh and roll my eyes at this class sometimes, too, but I've tried to muster up as much enthusiasm as I can just to get us through the end of it.

I need a thicker skin.

Last semester I had a student who exhibited similar body language when she came to class-- but at the end of the semester she wrote a very nice evalution for me (which I could identify because of her distinctive handwriting). Lesson should be-- can't always trust appearances. But the lesson I really need to learn is that it doesn't matter, they don't have to like me.

I wonder sometimes if I'm really cut out for this job. I dread the 75 minute class periods I have to teach every Tuesday and Thursday, and am even more wary of this compressed summer course I'm teaching for 4 hours daily (pre-travel). I do okay in shorter intervals, but being on-the-spot is still a very stressful experience for me. I love listening to people and learning about them. I've often felt very humbled reading papers for freshman comp of all things because of the details of their lives my students have chosen to share with me. I like watching them develop as thinkers. But I want them to like me, too, and that's a problem.

I think part of this stems from the total lack of friendships in this new place. I have some acquaintances at work, but none that I hang out with outside of work. I have P., I have some long distance friends, but in large part the students have turned into a primary source of emotional validation or stress. And that doesn't sound so healthy.

Punks. If they're not reading and we have poor discussions, it's not my fault, is it? So why do I feel so responsible?

blossoms

A student introduced me to this poet, who, she claims, is one of the best young poets alive today.

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bit into
the round jubilance of a peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

This poem comes from a splendid anthology called Staying Alive, which I picked up before a long plane trip once.

It is spring. I was sad when the magnolia blossoms (the first blooms of spring here) began falling from the trees and leaving naked branches in their stead... but then tiny green leaves started appearing on the trees, and white and pink and yellow and glorious deep purple came out on others. And then our yard broke out in an epidemic of wildflowers-- violets and whites and pale blues and yellows. I'd never seen anything like it. But then the neighbors started mowing their lawns. And then P. started getting antsy to mow ours...

I put him off for a week, saying, please, please, let it along a little longer, you're going to destroy all those flowers! This weekend when the mower came out, I took my camera outside and took photographs, and lay among those blooms and inhaled their scent and felt sad that they were going....

... but they didn't go. Although there are fewer blossoms than there were before, the white and the purple and the yellow blooms are still there, peaking up through the grass. And yet another tree has opened up its buds to spill forth blossoms.

O, I love this spring!

when i die

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

(Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself")

Some years ago, back when I was with C., a phone call came in the night. His grandmother had died. She'd been quite sick for a while. C's parents had been taking care of her, at home, and she'd finally passed away. They held a memorial service for her in the summer. It was the most beautiful thing of its sort I've ever been to. No priest and no body (she'd already been cremated), just all her family and friends, gathered in a white tent in her backyard, sharing memories. A string quartet played (she'd known the violinist, who once gave lessons to C.). She seems to have been an extraordinary woman. She was an avid birdwatcher. She took walks (in the mountains of Pennsylvania). She kept journals. She knew everyone. After her husband died, she took a bunch of classes at the college where C's father (her son) taught. One of the classes was an American poetry class. She loved Whitman.

In her last days, C's mother was spending a lot of time at her house. She'd read to her. Just days before her death, they finished Leaves of Grass. C's mother read this poem (an excerpt from "Song of Myself") at the memorial service. It's the most beautiful send-off I can imagine.

poetrymonth

clay and taxes

The Potter
(Pablo Neruda)

Your whole body has
a fullness or a gentleness destined for me.

When I move my hand up
I find in each place a dove
that was seeking me, as
if they had, love, made you of clay
for my own potter's hands.

Your knees, your breasts,
your waist
are missing parts of me like the hollow
of a thirsty earth
from which they broke off
a form,
and together
we are complete like a single river,
like a single grain of sand.

poetrymonth

In the summer after my second or third year of graduate school, I signed up for a ceramics course at the university. We did a lot of handbuilding, but were briefly introduced to the potter's wheel, too. Since this was a summer course, I was spending hours and hours in the studio every day. The textures of clay became very familiar to me, and during the weeks we were working on wheels, I could see the swirling clay bottom of a cyllinder every time I closed my eyes. It was a magical experience, one that maintained quite a grip on my sensory life. My sense of touch became strangely hightened, and in the dark with my lover that summer, I saw and felt things differently than I ever had before. Skin became clay in my hands, I myself was claylike in his.

That summer, I rode my bicycle for a mile or so to the ceramices studio every day, and C. rode with me there in the early morning. One day the seat on my bicycle came loose on the way. By the time I got there, it was totally hanging off. When I left the studio that afternoon I found that the seat had been tightened. C. had ridden home and back with a screwdriver and fixed things while I worked.

He was always fixing things for me.

I messed up that beautiful relationship. C. is engaged now, and marries (I think) next month. I wish I knew more about how he's doing.

I'm very lucky to have found a good things with P., who is currently trying to pay our taxes online. It was P. who made me love Neruda and Garcia Lorca and Miguel Hernandez and all sorts of other poets I'd never have met otherwise. It is P. whose body I fall asleep next to at night, and P. whose hands.... well, do magical things. After a day such as this, though, even his paying of taxes is a terribly romantic and beautiful thing.




winging it?

When I started teaching, I was spending on average of 3-5 hours preparing for each class I taught. If that sounds insane to you, it should. These were new preps, but I guess the excessive time spent had more to do with my own lack of confidence.

Today I felt like I was winging it, but things went fine.... and then I realized that no, actually I spent4 hours preparing for the 3 classes (2 preps) I had to teach this morning and afternoon. I was going to say "good for me!I didn't spend too much time prepping today"-- but then I remembered that I spent a bit of time last night preparing, too, which bumps up my hours of preparation to at least 6 (sigh). So that means I've spent nine hours preparing for and teaching today's classes. No wonder I have no life. No wonder it's felt so hard this week to get everything done-- the teaching + the committe work + cooking dinner + half-hearted efforts at cleaning + an occasional shower.

Please, please, let next year be easier.

SupposedlyI need to be doing some research, too, if I want this to turn into a tenure-track position and/or if I want to go on the market again next year. The good news is that I have proofs for my first article (submitted over a year ago) coming my way. I'm nervous about it, want to slip more revisions into it, but I'm not sure if that's kosher at this point. The bad news is that one article's not enough to boost my chances of finding a job somewhere near P. next fall--wherever that may be.

Oh, sweet summer, come.

rescue me, part ii.

because this part of what i want to say is too ugly and inarticulate to put in the same post as a seamus heaney poem.

I had a conversation today that's completely caused me to rethink what it is I'm doing here at ______ college and whether or not I do fit in and/or should stay. Of course the conversation comes after I've already shut the door for another possible job opportunity for next year (at bigger state school in another state).

Even posting about it feels a bit dangerous. Maybe I'll wimp out (wise up?) and delete it, but right now I'm still trying to process things and it feels good to write.

This afternoon I had coffee with Dr. Feminist Outspoken, who is leaving _____ college and moving on to a better (and better paid and better located) job next year. The conversation disturbed me in ways I can't quite make sense of yet...

Except for on small incident which I thought I was blowing out of proportion, I've felt nothing but good things from my department. They are collegial, they are progressive, they are down-to-earth. For the most part, they also seem to not like Dr. Outspoken too much. Okay, that's a huge understatement. Several of them roll their eyes at her in department meetings.

Dr. Outspoken tells me (over coffee in a public place with students and staff and who knows who else milling back and forth) that many if not all of the problems at _______college stem from sexism, that sexism is the reason our deparment has only one other tenured female. She tells me that Dr. Respectable (male) is actually the devil incarnate, that Dr. Other Tenured Female drinks too much and that... many more other things that I'm not supposed to know. Her comments make me rethink a comment made towards me by Dr. Respectable in a recent deparment meeting that somewhat embarrassed me in front of everyone, and they also make me feel a lot less secure about my job and prospects and ___ college than I did before.

Listening to all of this was rather unnerving, especially since, were her remarks overheard by the wrong people, I could be associated with those comments. I know I should take those comments with salt, too, but they did give me what I'm sure is a valuable glance at the dark underside of our department and college culture in general.

I imagine this is normal for most new profs, but ever since I arrived at ___ college, I've known that there's plenty about what goes on and what has gone on here that I don't know. I can sense certain rivalries between a few faculty folk, I've known the college has had some troubles in the past, but everybody does seem to put on a good show for the new folk. They don't talk about the bad times. You might see this as optimism, as commitment to move forward, but the not-talking about distasteful things also doesn't quite feel so good.

I've been curious, and now I know far more than I should. But balancing these comments against what I'm getting elsewhere... ? whew. It's all too confusing right now.

I'm sure I can't be making much sense, but hope/imagine the scenario might be familiar to someone out there. I'm not sure what else to write. I can't even formulate an intelligent question to ask. All I can say is... Wow.

rescue me

a short one today:

The Rescue
(Seamus Heaney)

In drifts of sleep I came upon you
Buried to your waist in snow.
You reached your arms out: I came to
Like water in a dream of thaw.

mysterious penguin dreaming

Today's poem, for a day I'd really rather be dreaming away.

In praise of dreams
(Wislawa Szymborska)

In my dreams
I paint like Vermeer van Delft.

I speak fluent Greek
and not just with the living.

I drive a car
that does what I want it to.

I am gifted
and write mighty epics.

I hear voices
as clearly as any venerable saint.

My brilliance as a pianist
would stun you.

I fly the way we ought to,
i.e., on my own.

Falling from the roof,
I tumble gently to the grass.

I've got no problem
breathing under water.

I can't complain:
I've been able to locate Atlantis.

It's gratifying that I can always
wake up before dying.

As soon as war breaks out,
I roll over on my other side.

I'm a child of my age,
but I don't have to be.

A few years ago
I saw two suns.

And the night before last a penguin,
clear as day.

I've always thought this poem would be great to teach in an undergrad poetry workshop (or a poetry class in general, as it provides a form that might be easily played with/imitated (like Wallace Stevens' famous "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" poem). And I love hearing about other people's dreams.

A friend who's now become a fabulous neuroscientist (and who also writes great poetry) introduced me to Jung's notion that in dreams, the rooms in a house represent different parts of your unconscious. I'd been dreaming about houses, with attics and basements, and dark narrow passageways through and around them.

Years later I went through a phase in which I was having a lot of intense and sometimes troubling dreams. My lover at the time gave me a book on interpreting dreams for my birthday. I loved the inscription: "Just in case you dream of something besides me." But it was very ominous book, and quite sexist, too, with different interpretations given for some unnamed (I suppose male) person and for "a young woman." I had to stop using it to analyze my own dreams for a while because it was quite distrubing. I was so hoping there would be an entry for "penguin," that I could write about, but sadly, there isn't. But here's the entry for "lizard" (to give you just a taste):

To dream of lizards, foretells attacks upon you by enemies.
If you kill a lizard, you will regain your lost reputation or fortune; but if it should escape, you will meet vexations and crosses in love and business.
For a woman to dream that a lizard crawls up her skirt, or scratches her, she will have much misfortune and sorrow. Her husband will be a victim to invalidism and she will be left a widow, and little sustenance will be eked out by her own labors.

Yikes. Guard yourselves against lizard-dreams. Especially you ladies.

poetrymonth

more poems... because it's addictive

This evening I bring you two poems by the fabulous Lucille Clifton. The first, a response to the Sharon Olds poem posted on jo(e)'s page, here. The second, for all you historians out there. (I'm starting to sound like a dj [deejay?], no? But if it's poetry & not discs I offer, perhaps a pj is a better word for it?)

I was inspired to collect African American women's poetry some years ago while prepping to teach an intro to poetry class. That's one class (and this is one poet) I'd love to teach again.

Poem in praise of menstruation

if there is a river
more beautiful than this
bright as the blood
red edge of the moon if
there is a river
more faithful than this
returning each month
to the same delta if there

is a river
braver than this
coming and coming in a surge
of passion, of pain if there is

a river
more ancient than this
daughter of eve
mother of cain and of abel if there is in

the universe such a river if
there is some where water
more powerful than this wild
water

pray that it flows also
through animals
beautiful and faithful and ancient
and female and brave

i am accused of tending to the past

i am accused of tending to the past
as if i made it,
as if i sculpted it
with my own hands. i did not.
this past was waiting for me
when i came,
a monstrous unnamed baby,
and i with my mother's itch
took it to breast
and named it
History.
she is more human now,
learning languages everyday,
remembering faces, names and dates.
when she is strong enough to travel
on her own, beware, she will.

poetry Rx: There are other poems of Lucille's here. I recommend the Lorena Bobbit poem & the Clark Kent series, especially if you're looking to put a little spunk back into your step.

poetrymonth

pretty how town

I was going to post this e.e. cummings poem for sunday, but then I found it here. So here's another one instead. You should read this one aloud.

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

I love the rhythm of this one, and also the uses of anyone, noone, someones. This poem also triggers a memory from my childhood: When I was learning to read, everytime I came across the word "nowhere," I would read it (aloud, sometimes, in reading group) as "now here." I remember being disappointed when my teacher corrected me with "no where" and couldn't understand why the word couldn't be what I'd thought it was, too.

And this: In first grade, to demonstrate that I should go to second or third grade for reading lessons, my teacher wrote a short passage of about five lines or so on the chalk board and had me read it aloud to another teacher. It was a silly passage about the antics of some "pet." I was a good reader, but every time I came upon the word "pet," I would read "cat" in its place. No one writes a story about a "pet," I thought. Good writers will be far more precise-- it matters if the pet is a cat or a dog or a mouse or an iguana. The teacher tried to appease me by adding this sentence to the end of the passage: "The pet was a cat." It didn't work. They bumped me up a grade, anyway.


poetrymonth

advice?

I have a hunch some of you out there teach first-year composition, too. If any one has recommendations for textbooks (or "real books"), I'd love to read them.

amazing

In the very moments I was typing out the marigold poem for you, P., sweet P., was typing out the very same poem in Spanish on his blog, here. He carries his laptop to the bathroom with him (where he seems to do some of his best thinking), and when he came out, he caught me having just clicked the "publish" button. Check out the time stamps. We posted in the very same minute.

Last night we spent some time reading poems to each other (it's happened before, and it's one of my favorite things). He read Garcia Lorca, and since Williams seemed to match the tone, I read to him the marigold poem. And it seems those images stayed with both of us.

There are always moments of wonder like these with P., moments that make me aware of how much more deeply connected we are than I'm often aware of.

There's something about that poem... the first time I encountered it, it was read aloud to me, too. I can't remember all the details of the circumstance-- I think what happened was this: Zack and Roxanne (two people I adore) had come to visit me my first or second year in graduate school. We visited a used bookstore together, and I think we all came back with books. Picture from Breughel was mine. Somehow we wound up passing around books of poetry and reading to each other. Zack found the marigold poem. Bless him wherever he is.

The three of us had taken a poetry-writing class together in college. The class met in the evening, and it was always dark when we left. I remember walking out of class into the cool spring nights with them, looking up at the moon, filled with poetry and love for them and every other person in the class, and for Professor A., whom one would never suspect of being able to teach a poetry workshop in such a way as that. It was beautiful to me that, long after the class, the three of us would be reading poems to each other. It's similarly beautiful to me, that years and years after that, I still have someone to read and listen to poems with.

I don't want poetry month to end.

poem for spring...

and for YelloCello, who liked the plum poem:


A Negro Woman (William Carlos Williams)

carrying a bunch of marigolds
wrapped
in an old newspaper:
She carries them upright,
bareheaded,
the bulk
of her thighs
causing her to waddle
as she walks
looking into
the store window which she passes
on her way.
What is she
but an ambassador
from another world
a world of pretty marigolds
of two shades
which she announces
not knowing what she does
other
than walk the streets
holding the flowers upright
as a torch
so early in the morning.


Unfortunately Blogger won't let me reproduce the poem exactly the way it looks on the page, with the lines undulating in a back and forth movement.... they seem to be walking, each line a new footstep or few...

but you can still get a sence (or rather sense, since, scents) of it, and of why Williams is so often called an "imagist" poet, too.,





Marigolds for everyone! Happy spring.

poetrymonth

another poetry post

This poem is for jo(e), and for her own recent and marvellous post about a monastery:

The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.

The anchor dragged along behind so deep
It hooked itself into the altar rails
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,

A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
And struggled to release it. But in vain.
'This man can't bear our life here and will drown,'

The abbot said, 'unless we help him.' So
They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back
Out of the marvellous as he had known it.

(From Seamus Heaney's Seeing Things)

I have seen the ship, the monks, the abbot, and the sailor drag their anchors, say their prayers, and climb their ropes a thousand times in my head.

poetrymonth

confession

So inspired am I by National Poetry month, I've got 3 more poems saved in draft form to post tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Can't get enough of everyone else's poems, either. Thank you.

national poetry month, part ii.

mystery post-it note attached to my office door this a.m. :

I need to speak with
you about a class
in the next day or
two.

Stanley Fish (in an essay "Is there a Text in this Class?") once described a reading list he'd left up on the board from a previous class that looked like this:

Jacobs-Rosenbaum
Levin
Thorne
Hayes
Ohman (?)

He told his following class of seventeenth-century poetry students that this was a religious poem, and asked them to explicate it as such. They did. I like the idea of getting students to play with language, though something about Fish's excercise (something I can't quite put my finger on) bugs the hell out of me and reminds me too much of fellow graduate students who waved around names like Derrida as if they were magical keys that could unlock the meaning (or non-meaning) of everything. Maybe it's the names themselves (with maybe the exception perhaps of "Ohman (?)" that I find distinctly unpoetic.

The mystery student's note is much more to my taste. The hesitancy of those first and third line breaks, as if the student isn't quite sure of who he needs to speak with or when or how urgent his need is. The student is no poet, but those lines make me think of the doctor William Carlos Williams' scribbling poems onto his prescription pads. [I love the idea of a poem as a prescription. It's lovely how just the few I read in your blogs the other day uplifted my spirits. I don't know if this has ever happened, but I love imagining a physician handing a poem to a weary patient. "You'll be fine. Read this and come back in a week."]

I didn't understand or even like WCW until I took a creative writing (poetry) class in college. I couldn't figure out what that red wheel barrow poem was doing in every poetry anthology around. I couldn't appreciate the elegance. And then there was this one (which I like much better):

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

A note dashed off by a husband to a wife, perhaps. But what's the tone here? It sounds so playful to me, so mischievous. In class, the poem inspired more conversation than I ever thought possible. I started to see just how deliberate those breaks were, how much the breaks themselves could communicate. We practiced using them in poems of our own, experimenting with how else those breaks can convey meaning or tone:

We appreciate
your interest
We are unable to
include you

We were forced
to be extremely
selective

Thank you
for allowing us
to pursue your
credentials

Please accept our
best wishes
for the future

This "poem" seems to be sneering. The words are conventional, but there's still some fun being had. And unlike Williams' poem in which perhaps a joke is being shared between lovers, here it's at the addressee's expense. Putting the word "credentials" on a line by itself seems to convey exactly what the hiring committee might think of the rejected applicant. It's the tone I heard in my head when reading the numerous rejection letters (for grad schools, for jobs) I've received up to this point. Oh, sure, most of them seem nice enough, and some are even apologetic, but the perceived meaning "you're not good enough for us" was still there. I know better, now, how random the search process is, how much regret our committee really does seem to have that we can't hire or even interview more... but I digress.

I guess what I'm trying to say is... it's national poetrymonth. That's all.

in honor of National Poetry month

How uplifting to find this new meme out there.

I adore this one:

Halley's Comet
(Kenneth Rexroth)

When in your middle years
The great comet comes again
Remember me, a child,
Awake in the summer night,
Standing in my crib and
Watching that long-haired star
So many years ago.
Go out in the dark and see
Its plume over water
Dribbling on the liquid night,
And think that life and glory
Flickered on the rushing
Bloodstream for me once, and for
All who have gone before me,
Vessels of the billion-year-long
River that flows now in your veins.


poetrymonth

Nothing comes of nothing. Speak again.

It's a terrible feeling, having nothing to say. Work is sucking the life out of me again, and even though things are going okay, I fear I've become terribly boring.

Our department is hosting campus visits this week and next. I'm one of the first to meet the candidates; am picking both up from hotels and taking to dinner the night before their job talks and full day of interviews. I'm curious about them, especially the woman. But I'm done caring about how many publications they have or what they can teach. I wonder about their senses of humor, the way they talk, what their non-academic interests are. I find myself longing to meet (for us to hire) someone I might hang out with. I even worry, "will they like me?" How pathetic is that? Were I in a bigger town I might sign up for yoga classes or dance lessons or aerobics or a book club or a knitting circle or anything that might involve meeting new people. But in this small factory town, you'd be hard pressed to find any of those things....

So I go to work, I come home, I talk to P. and play with the cats and go to bed and wake up and do it all over again. And in between I read all sorts of far more interesting blogs & look at very cute pictures of other people's kids and feel encouraged and lonely at the same time.

What's wrong with me?

update

For all the cursing I did about having committed myself to organize a panel with students and present a paper at this conference, it was actually quite quite fun. I finished writing my paper after 1 am this morning and did some more revisions on it when I woke up at 6. Met my students, drove them to the conference, ran a red light along the way and endured much teasing about it. We got seven or eight people in the audience which was more than I was expecting. The students shined-- they came across as the brilliant, brilliant young women that they are, both in their delivery and in their responses to questions and comments from the floor. Folks in the audience were impressed and said so. One suggested these undergrad essays could compete with those of some of her graduate students. I beamed. The students had a good time and received what I think is some helpful external validation on their writing, and they said nice things about me and my teaching. They said my class changed the way they think about lit. and (in a few cases) their own future teaching careers. This was so worth it.

And I have no idea how I did this on so little sleep, but somehow I managed to have a pretty darn good Shakespeare class this afternoon, too.

It's been a good day.