Under My Wings

Under My Wings

A

promise

of 

peace

as far as

the shadow of 

my wings can spread

and that all

imaginative 

sins of self-exploration

will be 

           forever

                     blessed.

 

Fiction Friday (102)

As I've mentioned in a Fiction Friday a few weeks ago, one of the great treats about working in a library is wandering the shelves and spotting a book that you didn't know existed. So, something only librarians might appreciate is that poetry is not shelved in the fiction section, or some poetry section (which doesn't exist in libraries), but is shelved in Non-Fiction in the 811's. And that is where I cam across this book, by an author I love, and was unaware she wrote poetry.

morning in the burned house by Margaret Atwood
(Mariner Books, 1996)

The strength of any poetry is the word. It is the choice of words, the choice of omission, and the order in which they come together. In this collection of poetry, most centered around the theme of aging, Atwood displays a mastery of all of those choices. 

Her ability to take ordinary scenes and imbue them with a quality of imaginative beauty is the real treasure of this book. Her imagery is stunning. Her rhythm nearly impeccable. There wasn't any single poem that rose above the others, rather it was the entirety of the collection that gives it power.

I don't read poetry to the extent that I once did. In collect, I was a devoted reader of poetry, but sort moved away from it. However, every now and then I enjoy the form and relish the moments I spend absorbed in a collection. This was one of those books.

Fiction Friday (96)

It's been a minute since I picked up a poetry collection. I spent much of my developing years engulfed in poetry, only to abandon it in my adult years for the spell that fiction casts upon me. But every once in a while, I find myself returning to the purity of words that is found in poetry. It always has a way of awakening that part of my brain, the one that searches for complexity in simplicity of words. 

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo
(Norton, 2017)

"I was on a train stopped sporadically at checkpoints.
What tribe are you, what nation, what race, what sex, what
       unworthy soul?"

In this collection of poetry from our current Poet Laurette, Joy Harjo explores the relationship of the individual with the world around through examinations of the everyday. Her perspective related to her experience as Native American and the spiritual teachings of indigenous peoples, an experience that has been fractured and frayed by the injustices of time.

It is about healing, or the more appropriated, attempts at healing. How do we reconcile being human in a society which seems bent on the destruction of the human connection with nature? 

There isn't really an easy answer, but we attempt to do it through memory, through song, through words and celebration of all that we hold dear. These are powerful poems with subtle context that challenge the reader to examine themselves and their place in existence.

When the Strange Snow Fell

Strange snow falls in a strange dream.

It never touches my skin,

and on my tongue

more like ash than snow.

The streetlight just below the hill

is closer than I remember.

And our house was never this near to the ocean in winter.

But everything changes, here

where the snow falls like stars

with smaller ones in orbit.

The path is covered over and white.

The trees are only hints,

hiding behind the electric glare.

We make a new way through the night,

using our coats as sleds and our arms to row,

knowing wherever it takes us, it will be somewhere new.

Where is a Poem?

(poem by Eve Merriam. illustration by Joseph Schindelman)

All of the book nerds our there know that April is Poetry Month. You know who you are. Those of us who still occasionally read verse instead of prose. The few faithful hanging onto a dying form. I'm happy to admit I'm one of them. In college, I focused most of my literature studies on poetry and it has played a huge role in defining my prose style. Though I don't write much poetry these days, I do enjoy to read it. So instead of a picture book this week, I've chosen a collection of nonsense children's poetry to share.

there is no rhyme for silver

by Eve Merriam

(Antheneum 1962)

I've always enjoyed the playful rhymes found in silly poems. I bought this book several years ago at a used book store after flipping through it. It's quite fun if you've exhausted Shel and Lear and Carroll. It's not altogether perfect. There are some poems that just don't work as well as others, but that's the nature of poetry collections I think. In some ways, it's the mild ones that make the gems sparkle as you read through. But one of the great thing about children's poetry collections is that there is nearly always a delightful picture that picks up the weaker poems. I feel many a volume of classic poetry could be improved upon with some simple line drawings.

Here's one of my favorites from the book. Enjoy.

A LAZY THOUGHT

There go the grownups

To the office,

To the store.

Subway rush,

Traffic crush;

Hurry, scurry,

Worry, flurry.

No wonder

Grownups

Don't grow up

Any more.

It takes a lot

Of slow

To grow.

The Marsupial Strut

Sprinkle it on.

Sprinkle it on.

Alligator...was a quater.

My marsupial strut.

(c) ben burdick 1994

This Story Time Tuesday memory is brought to you by the insanity of the south tower resting on the corner of 11th Street and Third Avenue. A piece of paranoia folklore kept alive with retellings over time. One perfect stanza and then no more, but one I will always enjoy.

Monday Morning Glory

The characters in most of my novels are often at odds with society. This is because I've often found myself at odds with what I see as a culture dominated by greed, selfishness, blame, and general inconsideration. I've never understood the American suburban dream of sheltered isolated lives that ignore the problems of the world as long as they have their homes, money, and safe cars. Perfect World was all about that and several months after completing that book, while finishing work on its companion Dirty Liar (also very much about the same themes), I encountered the Manic Street Preachers landmark 1994 album The Holy Bible.

Little people in little houses

Like maggots small blind and worthless

The massacred innocent blood stains us all

Who's responsible - you fucking are.

from Of Walking Abortions

These lines expressed exactly what I was feeling at the time during the who War on Terror hey day. A profound statement full of rage, meaning, and lyrically beautiful. A wonderful piece of writing.

Richey Edwards mysteriously disappeared not too long after this album. If the lyrics on this album, along with the lyrics used for Journal for the Plague Lovers written around the same time, are his final send-off then they stand as some of the best poetry written in the last 30 years.

Monday Morning Glory

(Flag Ceremony - '98 (watercolor, colored pencil)

The American Revolution and the founding of America have always held a place in my imagination. As a concept, it's undeniably attractive. As a citizen, it's often frustrating knowing that we have yet to live up to the ideals set forth in that time. I briefly mention this frustration in Pure Sunshine as the main character passes by Independence Hall. But a lot of poets have expressed their feelings about the American experiment over the two hundred plus years of the empire in great detail. Two have always stood out for me, expressing the spirit for better and worse.

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear...

-Walt Whitman [1860]

Under the bluffs of Oroville, blue cloud September skies, entering U.S. border, red red apples bend their tree boughs propt with sticks.

- Allen Ginsberg from The Fall of America [1965]

Written almost exactly 100 years apart, I think these two poems combined capture the way I've always felt about America. Whitman's poem captures the sense of hope and possibility for what America can be. Ginsberg's poems bring out the harsh reality of a dream corrupted and controlled and the heartbreak of those of us who still believe in possibility.

For the last several years, I've been collecting scraps and bits of verse or ideas, sticking them in a folder marked America (Again). One of these days, I plan on writing my own epic poem about this strange land. Until then, I will share one scrap, written possibly two years ago with the title Independent Nation scribbled atop with a drawing of a boy saluting nothing in particular:

Dead leaves are my citizens.

Dandelions that I let breed

are as well.

My piece of the mountain bought and paid for,

I even own the clouds when they pass overhead,

And all the way down to the road

that runs alongside.

I am its little lord

and I do my best to govern without any laws.

The woodchuck, the woodpecker, the hungry rabbits, bees and birds,

They're all here.

They all seem to notice.

The deer leave halo footprints to let me know.

When I stand still and face the wind crawling quickly from the west,

It almost feels like I understand,

for a brief moment,

what 'America' was supposed to have meant.

-brian james 2008

Where The Sidewalk Ends

On a trip to Florida in early spring, I inadvertently discovered the place where the sidewalk ends. To the disappointment of imaginative children everywhere, it doesn't drop off into a world of wonder. It leads to a patch of crab grass just off the pavement of a public parking lot. Now you know why it is I prefer to live in fiction.

For the children, they mark, and the children, they know

The place where the sidewalk ends.

Shel Silverstein

Monday Morning Glory

There are certain lines or phrases or bits of writing that are just simply perfect. I'm not necessarily talking about quotes. Quotes have to be complete thoughts to be relevant. I'm referring more to pure poetic expression where the combination of words adds up as tightly and beautifully as a complicated math equation. These are phrases that stick in my mind for days at a time, year after year, as I contemplate their completeness. From now on, I plan to set Monday mornings aside to share some of these lines.

The inaugural entry comes from the second verse of Leonard Cohen's song "Bird on a Wire":

Like a baby, stillborn

Like a beast with his horn,

I have torn everyone who reached out for me.

The first time I head this song was during my first semester at NYU while chain smoking in a girl named Kate's bedroom as we drank bottomless mugs of coffee and tried to conjugate german verbs. Upon hearing these lines, the young poet in me was blown away. I had never heard of Leonard Cohen before that moment, but soon would go on to read his poetry, buy his albums, and encounter Beautiful Losers, one of the best novels ever written.

I was listening to Joe Cocker's version of "Bird on a Wire" this past Saturday and was reminded again of how perfect those lines are. Two completely different images of a stillborn baby and horned animal come together to encompass the full range of both physical and emotional pain. The use of the word "torn" is brilliant in bringing the imagery together. This could very well be my favorite stanza written in the English language.

The World is Too Much With Us

- It's all logic and reason now. Science! Progress! The laws of hydraulics, the laws of social dynamics, the laws of this that and the other! No place for three-legged cyclops in the South Seas...No place for cucumber trees...or oceans of wind...No place for me! - Baron Von Munchausen

I recently read Terry Gilliam's novel that accompanied his grossly under appreciated classic film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. The novel and movie are based on the classic tall tales told by the real Baron and, like most Gilliam movies, at their core they are about the importance of imagination in a world where imagination continues to get pounced on "reality". This is a theme that I think about a lot as the name of this blog suggests. And since the movies release over twenty years ago, the trend has only gotten worse.

The book version, even more so than the movie, focuses on Sally and her desire to believe in fiction. There's a strong correspondence with the Wordsworth notion that child is the father of man. Her belief in the Baron gives him strength. I truly believe that as a society, the second we stop believing in the fantastic, as soon as we stop dreaming, we are doomed. It's not only nice, but necessary, to view the world with a little childhood wonder every once in while.

"THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US; LATE AND SOON"

THE world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:             

Little we see in Nature that is ours;             

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!             

The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;            

The winds that will be howling at all hours,             

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;            

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;             

It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be             

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;                                      

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,             

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;             

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;             

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.   

                      William Wordsworth 1806.

Goblin Market

Morning and evening

Maids heard the goblins cry

"Come buy our orchard fruits,

Come buy, come buy:"

This weekend I decided to read Christina Rossetti's free verse fairy tale poem again for the first time since college. I was originally lead to the poem by Lewis Carroll's fascination with it. In this poem, he saw that children's literature could be something more than the didactic snores that had existed before. I was recently reading another Lewis Carroll inspired work and was once again steered to The Goblin Market. 

The Goblin Market is the tale of two sisters tempted by forest goblins to eat the fantastical fruits they sell. The sister's know better than to taste of such fruit, but one simply cannot resist...she eats. 

As the wiser sister watches the other prematurely age and begin to die before her eyes, she decides she must face her fears in order to save her sister. What ensues is a maddening encounter that stands as one of the most exiting pieces of poetry written in the Victorian era, in my opinion. 

"Though the goblins cuffed and caught

       her,

  Coaxed and fought her,

 Bullied and besought her,

 Scratched her, pinched her black as ink,

 Kicked and knocked her,

 Mauled and mocked her,

 Lizzie uttered not a word;

 Would not open lip from lip

 Lest they should cram a mouthful in;"

The strength of this poem is in the language. The pace is frantic and enthralling. Reading it aloud, you can hear the words circling upon each other like a storm. It's also clear to see its influence in some of the more manic episodes within Alice's adventures. 

The poem can be read in it's entirety here if you wish...as with any verse though, I recommend you read it aloud. Enjoy. I certainly did.