Wyzga On Words

Really, Now! Who Has Time To Write Poetry?

I am reading "The One-Straw Revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka.  Michael Pollan calls this little book,

"One of the founding documents of the alternative food movement, and indispensable to anyone hoping to understand the future of food and agriculture."

Why would I read such a book? I want to feed people organic apples and the foods one can make with apples.  We can always use a good apple, grown right - and a nice slice of pie.

In one chapter Mr. Fukuoka reflects on how the times have changed.  Not just for farmers but for all of us. In the act of cleaning his village shrine he uncovered bit of haiku written by villagers time out of mind.  Then, he notes, even farmers had time to write poetry.  But no more - we are hurried.

This seems true for all of us.  Even for me when I catch myself (again) eating a meal in front of the computer screen instead of appreciating what I prepared perhaps sitting in the sun.

It can be different, even if only incrementally. We just need to step out of the cave:

From Out the Cave
    by Joyce Sutphen

When you have been
at war with yourself
for so many years that
you have forgotten why,
when you have been driving
for hours and only
gradually begin to realize
that you have lost the way,
when you have cut
hastily into the fabric,
when you have signed

papers in distraction,
when it has been centuries
since you watched the sun set
or the rain fall, and the clouds,
drifting overhead, pass as flat
as anything on a postcard;
when, in the midst of these
everyday nightmares, you
understand that you could
wake up,
you could turn
and go back
to the last thing you
remember doing
with your whole heart:
that passionate kiss,
the brilliant drop of love
rolling along the tongue of a green leaf,
then you wake,
you stumble from your cave,
blinking in the sun,
naming every shadow
as it slips.  [from Straight Out of View. © Beacon Press, 1995]

Winter Is Dark For A Reason.

Winter Is the Best Time

    by David Budbill

Winter is the best time
to find out who you are.

Quiet, contemplation time,
away from the rushing world,

cold time, dark time, holed-up
pulled-in time and space

to see that inner landscape,
that place hidden and within.

"Winter Is the Best Time" by David Budbill, from While We've Still Got Feet. © Copper Canyon Press, 2005.  Other poems by Budbill.

Our Fate - Like Fruit Trees In Winter.

Standing all raggedy, twiggy and forlorn in my backyard is a peach tree. Its naked form reminds me of a piece by German poet and novelist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

"Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter.  Looking at its sad appearance who would think that those stiff branches, those jagged twigs would turn green again and blossom and bear fruit next spring; but we hope they will, we know they will."

I believe that one of the most difficult and courageous things we can do for ourselves, our families, friends and clients who look to us for a little encouragement is to acknowledge a time of fearful barrenness, that hum of panicky anxiety.  And only then turn coax an expectant face toward spring.

This photograph reminding me that the honeybees are soon on the local blooms was taken by friend and fellow beewrangler, Janet Andrews of Backyard Bees who creates some of the most remarkable honey creams and lip balms you will find anywhere.  Even my pure honey and beeswax cappings find their way into her luscious product.  Family in the chill mountains of Colorado and the dry indoors of New Hampshire swear by its restorative properties.

Every one of us every day needs a little something good.

Gin, Osso Bucco & Intimacy.

Some days I get weary of posting work-related blogs.

Better said, some days I want to blog on love and romance and poetry.

We are coming into what I call "The Single's Trifecta": Christmas, New Year's Eve, and Valentine's Day.  Those holidays when you know you don't fit in if you are "flying solo" in the world of couples.

Maybe for that reason or because I was in the mood to receive a piece of poetry that featured a cold gin martini with an olive, I was drawn in by Jacqueline Berger's languid and seductive, rawly intimate poem posted on A Writer's Almanac:

Gin

by Jacqueline Berger

I like a green olive
stuffed with a pimento
after it has been submerged
for some time in a martini.
I like to go downtown with my husband,
sit in a booth at the Grand
and let the drink rub the edge
off the inane fight we had
about the furniture salesman
and whether he treated us fairly,
my view, or whether he tried
to put one over on us,
my husband's view.
In some moods we'll fight about anything
just to make the other
carry the weight of anger
we lug all day through our lives.
But that moment
when we climb into bed
on a winter's night,
letting our bodies lie down,
letting the day be over,
its not unlike the way gin
loosens the rope, lets float
the raft into its stillest waters.
Happy hour, when the landscape
loses its daylight meaning
as it slips into the silk of dusk
before night pours down its jazzy notes
in a cathedral of crushed velvet.
We are sitting side by side in the booth,
watching the flurry of holiday shoppers
come in from the cold.
By now the salesman is a jerk,
or he's a helluva guy,
either way is fine.
We are talking about anything,
having drifted out into the calm
plainness of intimacy. Nothing
profound, just a place to rest
at the end of the day,
the cord between us swinging gently
after the bells have stopped their ringing.

"Gin" by Jacqueline Berger, from The Gift that Arrives Broken. © Autumn House Press, 2010

I took the liberty of sending it 'round to chosen family and friends with this quite personal header, "Yes, there are agreeable things to be said for flying solo & yet, despite the intermittent hardships required, being a couple offers sharing & intimacy."

And what came back to me was a lovely piece to complete the story which I'd like to share with you:

"If'n you don't mind I have a couple of musings of my own. I appreciate the metaphor of the gin, I am drawn to two images. The first a piano keyboard. if you don't over stretch the simile, you can see that each key has its own destiny free to move as its spirit dictates. However when working together at about same velocity (tempo) a newer structure emerges that had only the potential to exist.The second is that of Osso Bucco, when two people form a couple each brings their own features and desires to the formation. At this time the meal is transformed. No longer a mere piece of venison or rib-eye, but a complex presentation that parallels the complexity of being a principle part of a couple. What happens then is still a part of each persons features. You mentioned "sharing & intimacy" I would also note that trust is a major part of intimacy rather than the other way around. Each trusts that the other has the best interests at all times. In my view, intimacy in not furious fighting, nor is placidly sharing a room in different chairs. To me intimacy is sharing a spiritual and emotional path with the ultimate destination not of as much concern as fearlessly  twinning of the two."

Who is the mysterious author?  I don't kiss and tell.

I will say that poetry is always a fine way to round out the story you are telling whether trying a case in a courtroom, making a pitch to a group in a boardroom, persuading a team, enticing a spouse, explaining an idea to a partner, and so on; poetry is class act communication.

When Perplexed, Return To Your Roots And Allow Yourself To Be Deeply Lost.

Maybe you know this feeling of "being lost in a dark wood where the true way is wholly lost to you."  [Dante]

What do you do then?

I know what I do: I go back to my roots in storytelling and poetry.  I summon the voices of those whose work I rely on.  As I have written before, one such voice is the poet and author David Whyte.

I have been memorizing a poem I heard Whyte read.  I was lucky to find it on line to share with you.  The poem is part of an interview on the topic of creativity which you may read in whole or in part by clicking here.  The poem gives one permission to stand still, forget about the logistical conversations that consume our mind asking how to get from here to there, and for a moment be deeply lost in what you yearn for.

"There is a teaching story out of the Northwest Native American tradition that would be told by an elder to a young girl or boy who asked the question, "What do I do when I am lost in he forest?" In other words, "What do I do when I've lost my creative fire?" which is really "What do l do when I forget who I am?" It has been rendered into modern English in a marvelous way by David Wagoner. Here is the answer the elder gives:

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead

and bushes beside you

Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here.

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger.

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers.

I have made this place around you.

If you leave it you may come back again.

saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you.

You art surely lost. Stand still.

The forest knows

Where you are. You must let it find you."

As a storyteller I believe that the choices I and my fellow tellers make about the stories we tell are driven as much by us and our own needs as by the need of the story to be told.  It has been my experience time and again that a program of stories I prepared to tell at a gathering was shifted around by some force of creativity or intuition.  A story not on the program but which ended up being told is the very one that someone in the gathering needed to hear.

I cannot account for it; that's just the way it is.  Sometimes, you must let the story find you.

The Secret Of Life.

Henry Moore was a celebrated sculptor and a poet; at least that's how I interpret his free-form works that look like flash-frozen Play-Doh forms conjured up by a day-dreaming child. 

Moore said,

"The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is -- it must be something you cannot possibly do."

To what are you devoting this one precious life? 

What Is The Elemental Water Of Your Life?

I recall talking with a friend of mine who practices family law.  She was sharing with me the philosophy of her law practice.  As she saw it her job was to be a counselor at law.  To her this meant that she would be instrumental in not only settling say, the landlord-tenant dispute but also figuring out how the single mother tenant was going to pay the rent and feed her children.  She would help the teenage mistress who had been kicked out of the "Sugar Daddy's" penthouse as well as help figure out why the young girl got herself there in the first place.  And so on. 

Hers is a legal practice that fully embraces the elemental water of her life.   She is not stumbling and bumbling on dry ground - she has found the place where she belongs.

For those of us who have had the pleasure and delight of watching a swan head to water you know what I mean.  They are awkward at best.  Like us when we are out of our element.    

 

But put them in the place where they best live and the scene becomes serene. One cannot tell where the swan ends and the water begins.     

I am very fond of this poem, The Swan, by Rainier Maria Rilke

The Swan

The labouring through what is still undone,
as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way,
is like the awkward walking of the swan.

And dying – to let go, no longer feel
the solid ground we stand on every day
is like his anxious letting himself fall
into the water, which receives him gently
and which, as though with reverence and joy,
draws back past him in streams on either side;
while, infinitely silent and aware,
in his full majesty and ever more
indifferent, he condescends to glide.

Click here to listen to David Whyte as he interprets the poem.

And take a moment to ask yourself:

1. What is the elemental water of your life?
2. Are you swimming in it? 
3. Are you stumbling on dry ground?
4. What will it take to move toward the element where you belong?
5. How will you know when you have arrived?

Police Blotter Poetry

My small town has a weekly throwaway-type newspaper with the local "Go.See.Do" news about town, coupons for this and that, what's happening with sports teams at the high school, and of all things a "police blotter." It's an accounting of what goes for crime here: a man urinating into a cup in a parking lot "in front of everyone;"  a rattle at a back door; a knifing in an alley over a woman; a man whose wife with Alzheimer's had walked away and he "could not take it any more;" someone with binoculars watching the children at a playground; and teens making too much noise at a pool party.

Oddly enough the police blotter news comes across more like the poetry of this town, as well as a sound byte story of its occupants.

Imagine my delight when I saw that today's offering from The Writer's Almanac was thus:

Police Notes

by Alice N. Persons

Female reported running up Main Street yelling "No, no,
no!"
She was described as wearing dark clothing and loud
shoes.

Subject was reported standing in the roadway with a sign
saying
"lawyers suck and police are outlaws."

Woman called to report a man lurking on her patio.
Officers investigated and found a runaway goat.

Clerk in convenience store reported male customer was
looking up someone's skirt. Subject was tracked to the
university.

911 report — woman says her wallet was stolen from her
kitchen.
Before officers could investigate, she called back and said
that it was her son, 45.

Elderly woman called to report a moose, people carrying
torches, and strange music on her property. Officers
searched and found nothing.

911 dispatcher got a call saying there was a "huge party"
in the woods off County Road 3. Officers find empty
bottles and discarded clothes. Residents of Elm Street
report seeing four naked people.

Paris Road resident reports peeping Tom. Later told
police it was "one of my boyfriends."

"Police Notes" by Alice N. Persons, from Don't Be a Stranger. © Sheltering Pines Press, 2007.

What's going on in your town?

America Has A New Poet Laureate!

The Library of Congress has announced that Philip Levine (who happens to live just up the road a'piece in Fresno, CA) is to be our next poet laureate.

Read more in Charles McGrath's NYTimes article, "Voice of the Working Man to Be Poet Laureate."

Perhaps, like many of you I grew up when poetry was something one HAD to learn by rote memorization.  Blech! 

Only later did I come to fully appreciate the music and imagery of poetry.  It's so much better when it's read or spoken aloud.  I have my dear, far-flung friend Robin to thank for that lesson when she stopped our walk in the harbor to recite, "It isn't so much that the ships pass in the night.  It is more like the ship, hull gleaming in the sun, flags flying from the masts, and band playing on the deck parks itself under your bedroom window.  But you have the idea you want to go by train and so pay it no attention."

Click here for a selection of poems by Levine.  Make sure to take a moment to read "What Work Is" out loud and with feeling.

Think of all the many ways you might rely on a poem to persuade, encourage, educate, inspire, delight, and so on.  Like someone once said, "Here is the way I would say it if I could say it this way."

"If I Had Only Four Or Five Lines Worth"

Untitled

by Bruce Dethlefsen

what would I write
if I had only
four or five lines worth
of ink or time left?

how we children were put down
around eight o-clock in the bedroom nearby
with a crack of light from the open door
so the grownups could smoke play cards and talk

how I walked my sweetheart home
from eighth grade on that orange afternoon
carried her books from school
and she said the word marriage

how perfect the rainbow of the ball
my triple during
the all-star game
with my father there

how I heard the first cries of my baby
little bundle wrapped
in that thin pale yellow flannel blanket
in my arms against my chest

what would I write?
would I drop an anonymous note to jesus?

would I beg you
to remember to keep
this untitled green and blue
world of ours?

really what would I write
if I had only
four or five lines worth
of ink or time left?

"Untitled" by Bruce Dethlefsen, from Breather. © Fireweed Press, 2009

[The Writer's Almanac]