Category: learn

April 27, 2010 poetry

My Yellow Bowl is Green

This weekly installment from the American Life in Poetry Project dropped into my inBox yesterday. It was a busy day after a busy weekend after a busy week before. My emotions were stretched and frayed from the stuff of life. I was having a hard time concentrating and a hard time catching up. I was immersed in that unique loneliness of my own thoughts. That quality of my brain that bars any intrusions. That part that keeps me focused internally and resists exposure. Then I saw this email. It stopped me. It stilled me. It enticed me to “bathe in the light” of this woman’s attention, as Mr. Kooser described.

I have this light pouring like water, only mine floods the dining room or a pink and green bedroom. I have this rug, only mine is the brick of the front porch or the glean of the hardwood floors. I have this yellow bowl, only mine is green and filled with lemons and Granny Smiths. I have this song. I’m singing it bent over the faces of my own babies. These easy words and descriptions jarred me from that internal immersion, that loneliness that comes from being bound by thought. They directed my attention around me to the mundane activity there. To the simple giving and living. Like you, perhaps, I spend much of my life in the silence of constant motion, of a thousand activities and conversations and concerns robbing stillness. But, here in this newly recognized place, the loneliness of hardship and disappointment and busyness and thought is misshapen. Now, it’s only quiet. And, quiet is ok.

[I’m continually astounded by the power of words, whether composed in verse or in paragraphs. Poetry, in particular, possesses the ability to speak into our common experience and pull from it a varied meaning. April is National Poetry Month. In these last few days of celebration, reacquaint yourself with American poets and their amazing clarity. The American Life in Poetry project is a great place to start.]

American Life in Poetry: Column 266
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

The great American poet William Carlos Williams taught us that if a poem can capture a moment in life, and bathe it in the light of the poet’s close attention, and make it feel fresh and new, that’s enough, that’s adequate, that’s good. Here is a poem like that by Rachel Contreni Flynn, who lives in Illinois.

The Yellow Bowl

If light pours like water
into the kitchen where I sway
with my tired children,

if the rug beneath us
is woven with tough flowers,
and the yellow bowl on the table

rests with the sweet heft
of fruit, the sun-warmed plums,
if my body curves over the babies,

and if I am singing,
then loneliness has lost its shape,
and this quiet is only quiet.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by David Lee Garrison, whose most recent book of poems is Sweeping the Cemetery: New and Selected Poems, Browser Books Publishing, 2007. Poem reprinted from Rattle, Vol. 14, No. 2, Winter 2008, by permission of David Lee Garrison and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

March 28, 2010 poetry

One of Everybody

What is it about those we sometimes deem the “lesser” individuals of society that usually makes them the most indiscriminate? I’ve had this installment from the American Life in Poetry project sitting in my mailbox for a while. It is one of my favorites of Mr. Kooser’s selections.

The homeless, the “crazy,” the children… they so often tend to see past the outward appearances or trapping s of status and find a commonality in being a person. I see it in my own children. We went to the local McDonald’s playland yesterday for lunch, and I noticed how easily the children play together even though they don’t know one another. They never notice the color of the other’s skin or the type of clothes they are wearing. They wave at strangers. They always watch out for Baby Girl, even though (at 19 months) she slows down the climbing and sliding process. They always ask “are you ok,” when someone falls down.

I’ve noticed that when we suddenly “arrive” at the station in life we feel we deserve with the requisite education, religion, possessions, network or reputation in tow, sometimes we forget those simple commonalities, the simple discipline of indiscrimination. It’s easy to see how the equal opportunity gathering of signatures was so memorable to the poet. She immortalized the open-hearted decision that all signatures were welcome and valued the same. She took pride in including hers among the thousands. It’s a much-needed reminder that “I am one of everybody.”

American Life in Poetry: Column 243
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Lots of contemporary poems are anecdotal, a brief narration of some event, and what can make them rise above anecdote is when they manage to convey significance, often as the poem closes. Here is an example of one like that, by Marie Sheppard Williams, who lives in Minneapolis.

Everybody

I stood at a bus corner
one afternoon, waiting
for the #2. An old
guy stood waiting too.
I stared at him. He
caught my stare, grinned,
gap-toothed. Will you
sign my coat? he said.
Held out a pen. He wore
a dirty canvas coat that
had signatures all over
it, hundreds, maybe
thousands.
I’m trying
to get everybody, he
said.
I signed. On a
little space on a pocket.
Sometimes I remember:
I am one of everybody.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by David Lee Garrison, whose most recent book of poems is Sweeping the Cemetery: New and Selected Poems, Browser Books Publishing, 2007. Poem reprinted from Rattle, Vol. 14, No. 2, Winter 2008, by permission of David Lee Garrison and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

March 2, 2010 reading log

Twenty Books

I’ve been thinking about books a lot lately. I just finished reading Just Kids by Patti Smith, a memoir of her life and friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe. What is it about books, whether mysteries or memoirs or monographs, that have such power to move me? Just Kids was at times poignant, at times an exercise in frustration, at times an obscure literary lesson and at times a huge 60s and 70s cocktail party. But, at the end, when the final scenes for Patti and Robert were played out before his death, I was moved to tears. It was such an unavoidable description of the realities of goodbye and hello and time spent and time lost and unexpected outcomes and enduring soul kinship. And, since I’m writing this to the backdrop of Little Drummer Boy and Baby Girl giggling and playing together, I’m realizing it was also a story of life lived and how it moves on. Quite a range of thinking from just 279 pages.

I’m not sure I have ever in my life been able to read words on a page without thinking about them. Yes, I sometimes realize at bedtime that I’ve reached the end of my 647th encounter with Corduroy or Harry the Dirty Dog or The Tale of Peter Rabbit without remembering the actual act of speaking the words. But, the first time I read them I thought about them. The first time I read them I engaged in some strange process of extracting personal reactions or obscure life lessons. Many of the books my children read are copies I had as a child myself. I’m sure my first time reading them as a parent produced different thoughts than my times reading them as a youngster. That’s just how it goes.

I’m in the midst of deciding on the next book to read and culling down a list of possibilities gleaned from way too much time spent with NPR email alerts and the New York Times Book Review. I don’t know why I always get indecisive with this process. It’s not like I can’t put a book down and pick up another one at my leisure. Sometimes the decision represents some tantalizing combination of being afraid a book won’t live up to its billing and of being afraid it will so surpass its billing that it will haunt me for months or years. Perhaps I’m overthinking. While I decide and reign myself in, I thought I’d offer up a Tuesday Twenty list of books I’d be delighted to RE-read. I just read an interview in the LA Times with John McPhee, the author and long-time columnist for The New Yorker. The article was about his upcoming book of personal essays (just another addition to the list of reading possibilities *sigh*), and in it, he offered some sage insight about being a reader, despite his ample experience being the writer in the equation. He observed that “the creative person in this process is the reader, by a long shot. The writer supplies three or four words, but the reader makes the picture.” These books have afforded me the opportunity to paint a unique picture on one or more occasions in my reading. And, I’m convinced another reading would give me an entirely new view. The power of a good book.

1. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Some folks tire of the intricate detail found in Edith Wharton’s work, but I really enjoy the description of New York society during the turn of the 20th Century. It’s a toss-up between this more popular novel and The House of Mirth. Both have such a wrenching view of women living outside the constraints of the trappings of that society.

2. Emma by Jane Austen
Fills my latent romantic tendencies. Downright funny at times, and there’s a happy ending!

3. Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
The most poignant part in the first reading: Ellen thinks her last name is Foster because people always refer to her as “that Foster child.” Hers is a story of triumph and Kaye Gibbons’ Southern stream of consciousness is remarkable, if you like that sort of thing. I’d read any of her books again. Seriously.

4. Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
Vermeer. Enough said. But, the fictional tale surrounding the moments captured in one of his most astounding works is bittersweet, eloquent and artistic.

5. Lucy Gayheart by Willa Cather
Years later, I’m still thinking about the bittersweet end of this beautiful novel about a woman who wants so much more than what the culture she lives in is willing to give her.

6. A Woman of Independent Means by Elizabeth Forsythe Bailey
Told entirely in letters, this story of a woman’s powerful spirit made me want to go out and buy stationery. The lost art of letters never looked so attractive.

7. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
I can’t tell you how many times I read this as a child. It still stirs me, both from the family story, the independence of “Jo” and my own memories of reading it.

8. 31 Hours by Masha Hamilton
Published just last year, I’m astounded by the restraint in this book, by the new perspective on terrorism, by the mother’s heart described, by the uncommon experiences found in the common subway.

9. Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Laura Ingalls was my best friend in elementary school. It would be good to see her again.

10. The Lively Art of Writing by Lucille Vaughan Payne
This little book was my 9th grade English textbook. Thank you, Mrs. Armstrong. I still use the principles today. And, I still choose when to lovingly ignore them.

11. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
I read this book way back in college, and I think explored the evolution of cities in a project centered on it. It is an amazing glimpse of the fragmented sociology of kingdoms told by a fictional Marco Polo. The young European explorer offers Kublai Khan, the aging asian emperor, tales of the cities throughout his empire. As it turns out, the stories all describe the same city — a lesson in points of view.

12. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
No elaboration required.

13. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
An unforgettable non-fiction account of one reporter’s indoctrination into all things Southern and a beautiful and quirky account of the mystery and crazy culture of Savanah, GA. Best tombstone epitaph: a bench at the grave of Conrad Aiken is inscribed with “cosmos mariner, destination unknown.”

14. Night by Elie Wiesel
You may have seen the account of my first reading of this memoir. I still shrink back from the book, but crave the undeniable reality check on human nature it offers.

15. Creating a Beautiful Life by Alexandra Stoddard
Every time I look at this book, I’m encouraged to pay attention to the little things and value beauty in my life. Beauty, as I behold it, is important and it’s not that hard to achieve.

16. On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon by Kaye Gibbons
A very moving tale of a woman during the Civil War era. In my first reading, I was compelled to record Emma Garnett’s thoughts on seeing the jarring, but numbing realities of that war through photos, and how it would have been more powerful in paintings…

“If Monet or Manet or Toulouse-Lautrec had performed the scenes of battle, I might have been urged toward emotion, for the horror would have quivered on the surface of the page and beckoned my mind to follow attendant sensations deeper and deeper to the core, down into the true, wasted, stupid, futile blasphemy of that conflict.”

17. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
An example of C.S. Lewis’ creativity and a treatise on the nature of evil told from the perspective of a young devil in training.

18. The Divine Romance by Gene Edwards
A beautiful telling of the story of God–his creation, his work, his redemption–expressed as a love story. The very first page describes two essentials of God’s existence in the pre-dawn of creation. God was alone. And, God was love. A profound paradox of coexistence for both God and man — the lover without the loved.

18. My Mississippi by Willie Morris
Who can escape the words of Willie Morris. His thoughts about his (and my) home state are moving, steeped in memory and the fervor of the unique life here. His essay is accompanied by a collection of photos of the state taken by his son.

20. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
The first descriptive word that came to mind when I read this book originally was “ethereal.” Its descriptions of characters and of the Newfoundland area were beautiful. The journey of a man coming to grips with his own history and finally learning to love was like a deep breath.

October 19, 2009 poetry

Monday Music

This piece from the American Life in Poetry series crossed my Inbox at just the right time today. I had high hopes for the weekend, but found my worst enemy right there in the mirror. I spent the two days scurrying and worrying about this, disgruntled and complaining about that.  I feel I missed the opportunity to really wade in to what matters–to the lights of my life, to the joys of my life, to what inspires the best of my creativity. Today I’m listening to my own gifts’ example. Today I’m hearing the music anew, I came up to this site called MusicalInstrumentsExpert and it is amazing for music lovers. Today is a day to drink in deeply.

American Life in Poetry: Column 239

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
It’s likely that if you found the original handwritten manuscript of T. S. Eliot’s groundbreaking poem, “The Waste Land,” you wouldn’t be able to trade it for a candy bar at the Quick Shop on your corner. Here’s a poem by David Lee Garrison of Ohio about how unsuccessfully classical music fits into a subway.
Bach in the DC Subway
As an experiment,
The Washington Post
asked a concert violinist—
wearing jeans, tennis shoes,
and a baseball cap—
to stand near a trash can
at rush hour in the subway
and play Bach
on a Stradivarius.
Partita No. 2 in D Minor
called out to commuters
like an ocean to waves,
sang to the station
about why we should bother
to live.
A thousand people
streamed by. Seven of them
paused for a minute or so
and thirty-two dollars floated
into the open violin case.
A café hostess who drifted
over to the open door
each time she was free
said later that Bach
gave her peace,
and all the children,
all of them,
waded into the music
as if it were water,
listening until they had to be
rescued by parents
who had somewhere else to go.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by David Lee Garrison, whose most recent book of poems is Sweeping the Cemetery: New and Selected Poems, Browser Books Publishing, 2007. Poem reprinted from Rattle, Vol. 14, No. 2, Winter 2008, by permission of David Lee Garrison and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

American Life in Poetry: Column 239
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

It’s likely that if you found the original handwritten manuscript of T. S. Eliot’s groundbreaking poem, “The Waste Land,” you wouldn’t be able to trade it for a candy bar at the Quick Shop on your corner. Here’s a poem by David Lee Garrison of Ohio about how unsuccessfully classical music fits into a subway.

Bach in the DC Subway

As an experiment,
 The Washington Post
asked a concert violinist—
wearing jeans, tennis shoes,
and a baseball cap—
to stand near a trash can
at rush hour in the subway
and play Bach
on a Stradivarius.
 Partita No. 2 in D Minor
called out to commuters
like an ocean to waves,
sang to the station
about why we should bother
to live.

A thousand people
streamed by. Seven of them
paused for a minute or so
and thirty-two dollars floated
into the open violin case.
A café hostess who drifted
over to the open door
each time she was free
said later that Bach
gave her peace,
and all the children,
all of them,
waded into the music
as if it were water,
listening until they had to be
rescued by parents
who had somewhere else to go.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by David Lee Garrison, whose most recent book of poems is Sweeping the Cemetery: New and Selected Poems, Browser Books Publishing, 2007. Poem reprinted from Rattle, Vol. 14, No. 2, Winter 2008, by permission of David Lee Garrison and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

August 30, 2009 mother's heart, poetry

S is for Soft

Soft is the smooth touch
of my baby girl’s cheek
against mine, her skin
aglow in unfettered smiles
barely touched by the world.
the brush of eyelashes hovering
over a cloudless blue.
Soft is her sweet breath
against my nose, deepening
my inhale. in and out,
the gentle fluttering
of one thousand hopes and dreams
between her heart
and mine.
Soft is the whisper
of her sleepy fingers
against my shoulder,
the plump and eager toes
too worn with the day.
the patter of steps and moments
as they fly away.

maggie1

Soft is the smooth touch
of my baby girl’s cheek
against mine, her skin
aglow in unfettered smiles
barely touched by the world.
the brush of eyelashes hovering
over a cloudless blue.

Soft is her sweet breath
against my nose, deepening
my inhale. in and out,
the gentle fluttering
of one thousand hopes and dreams
between her heart
and mine.

Soft is the whisper
of her sleepy fingers
against my shoulder,
the plump and eager toes
too worn with the day.
the patter of steps and moments
as they tiptoe away.

Happy 1st Birthday, Baby Girl! Your softness has forever melted my heart.