water standing
in a raccoon footprint
from here
Plummer’s Hollow Run
deer fence
a sudden understory
of shrubs and forbs
protected from deer
for nearly two decades now
this plot thickens
Smilax
they say her thorniness drove a man
wildflowery
Exceptionalism
The viral video shows a white woman speaking up
for two hispanic women being harassed by another
white woman at a grocery store for chatting
in Spanish in the cereal aisle. No you don’t,
she says forcefully, marching after her
and taking out her phone to call the police.
The other woman sputters something about respect,
which she demands but ironically can’t give to other
humans just because they don’t look or sound
like her. And It’s my country, as if this whole
continent had a picket fence winding around it,
a gated driveway, a two-car garage: one book
for family and friends and another for the help—
one really meaning separate, apart, not unified.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Lumbermen
We having sailed all night (and I do wonder how they in the dark could find the way) we got by morning to Gillingham, and thence all walked to Chatham; and there with Commissioner Pett viewed the Yard; and among other things, a teame of four horses come close by us, he being with me, drawing a piece of timber that I am confident one man could easily have carried upon his back. I made the horses be taken away, and a man or two to take the timber away with their hands. This the Commissioner did see, but said nothing, but I think had cause to be ashamed of.
We walked, he and I and Cocke, to the Hill-house, where we find Sir W. Pen in bed and there much talke and much dissembling of kindnesse from him, but he is a false rogue, and I shall not trust him, but my being there did procure his consent to have his silk carried away before the money received, which he would not have done for Cocke I am sure. Thence to Rochester, walked to the Crowne, and while dinner was getting ready, I did there walk to visit the old Castle ruines, which hath been a noble place, and there going up I did upon the stairs overtake three pretty mayds or women and took them up with me, and I did ‘baiser sur mouches et toucher leur mains’ and necks to my great pleasure: but, Lord! to see what a dreadfull thing it is to look down the precipices, for it did fright me mightily, and hinder me of much pleasure which I would have made to myself in the company of these three, if it had not been for that. The place hath been very noble and great and strong in former ages. So to walk up and down the Cathedral, and thence to the Crowne, whither Mr. Fowler, the Mayor of the towne, was come in his gowne, and is a very reverend magistrate. After I had eat a bit, not staying to eat with them, I went away, and so took horses and to Gravesend, and there staid not, but got a boat, the sicknesse being very much in the towne still, and so called on board my Lord Bruncker and Sir John Minnes, on board one of the East Indiamen at Erith, and there do find them full of envious complaints for the pillageing of the ships, but I did pacify them, and discoursed about making money of some of the goods, and do hope to be the better by it honestly. So took leave (Madam Williams being here also with my Lord), and about 8 o’clock got to Woolwich and there supped and mighty pleasant with my wife, who is, for ought I see, all friends with her mayds, and so in great joy and content to bed.
in the raw timber
I see nothing of the hill
but ruins
what a dreadful thing it is
to look down the precipice
into a grave
board on board
men full of pillage making money
of some honest joy
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 2 October 1665.
The Hollow (10)
birch roots
turned stilts
a hollow in the shape of a stump
desire path
deer cutting across
this trench of a trail
raised high in a claw
of upturned roots
an ordinary rock
smooth sandstone
the empty seas of the first
great extinction
Directive
The lab tech asks me
to make a fist after she swabs
the inside of my arm, tightening
the tourniquet.
When the needle goes
in and the blood rises, she asks
if I’ve made arrangements for
a living will, an advance
directive. I can’t think
of what to say to the dark
swirl of viscous liquid pouring
as if without effort from me
into the glass vials, to
the fold of gauze pressed
on the site and covered with
a band-aid. What do we do
with things that move
forward despite anything?
From Middle to Old
English: willen, wollen;
meaning to will, to choose,
to wish. As in to be seized
by the desire for morning light,
wood smells, cold salt air.
Poet Bloggers Revival Digest: Week 40
A few quotes + links (please click through!) from the Poet Bloggers Revival Tour, plus occasional other poetry bloggers in my feed reader. If you’ve missed earlier editions of the digest, here’s the archive.
I sense a bit of exhaustion in the poetry blogosphere this week, as witnessed by the relative paucity of posts. Among those who did blog, there’s a certain introspection as political outrage gives way to resolve and a quest for pursuits that truly sustain us. Such as poetry, yes, but also photography, gardening, and other “useless things,” to quote Claudia Serea in her ongoing blogging collaboration with photographer Maria Haro, Twoism. “Around me, the world tilts, rocks, spills, / burns, crashes, cooks, / dies, laughs, cries. // And I plant thunderseeds…”
I have a deep weariness. It’s interesting to pay attention to my levels of weariness, which are often only somewhat connected to how much sleep I’m getting. This week’s weariness has to do with last week’s news, and the realization that this level of bad news of our incivility and worse is the new normal–or are we just back to what was always normal? This week’s weariness has to do with the fact that we’re at week 1 of our new quarter, which means longer hours at work. This week’s weariness has to do with the home repairs, which are progressing, but we’re still far from done.
I’m so weary that I can’t even envision what would fill my well. I want to write, but my brain feels dehydrated. It’s been awhile since I had a good meal, but nothing sounds appetizing. I’d like to sleep, but in a room that doesn’t also contain a refrigerator and other items stored there for a home remodel.
I realize that I might sound like I’m depressed, but I’m not depressed so much as I am just bone tired.
Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Weariness update
*
Trying to teach Robert Hayden on Friday, I had such a mother of a hot flash that my glasses fogged up. I’m not sure my students even noticed. We were discussing Hayden’s complicated elegy for Malcolm X, a small star releasing its own fire, and the seminar is full of canny astronomers with their own strong opinions and expertise. On the whole, it felt like a good space in which to vent the engines–for them, I hope, as well as for me.
I probably won’t blow–my inner Scotty has always been an alarmist–but the past few weeks have certainly been a test. I feel terrible, but not surprised, that after his public temper tantrum of privilege challenged, Kavanaugh is about to join the nation’s highest court. I feel terrible, but not surprised, at how some of my students feel unheard and disrespected on my own campus, which continues to be roiled by arguments over its racist history. And I feel sick about irreparable harms to immigrant children, voting rights, and the more-than-human world that sustains us despite our poisonings. The damage feels so massive–and so gleefully perpetrated–that it’s hard to know where to stand while voicing your own small resistance.
Literature sustains me more than anything else–reading it, teaching it, editing it. Less so writing it, in October, but I’ll get back to drafting someday, and in the meantime I’m trying to keep serving the writing by handling proofs and edits of articles, interviews, and poems in a timely way, plus keeping work under submission. My inner Mr. Spock, that is, keeps the priorities rational and the ship on course, knowing I’m precariously low on fuel. AWP labors dominate this weekend, and I’ll be attending my last AWP board meeting as a trustee next weekend (San Antonio), although I’m on the search committee for a new executive director and that work will continue for months yet. My work for the AWP has felt useful and important, but I’m ready to turn to other modes of literary service. Beth Staples has now appointed me Poetry Editor of Shenandoah, which honestly is a role I don’t feel quite deserving of yet, and hence I’ve been shy about announcing–but I’m working hard and learning a ton from her and also from the great teacher that is the submissions pile, so full speed ahead, I guess, on this little enterprise through which maybe I can help do some good.
Lesley Wheeler, She cannae take any more, cap’n
*
I had some good news this week about my PR for Poets book but the buzz of the good news was hard to celebrate with all the terrible things happening in the news and the slowness of my recovery (always slow with MS, way slower than I like.) Then I got my royalty statement from Moon City Books for Field Guide to the End of the World (thanks, everyone who taught and bought the book) which was a nice boost too. Then I did some research on the new MS drug they want to put me on – Aubagio and that was terrifying.
And I watched five minutes of news recaps which was equally horrifying. It’s not good for the immune system to dwell on the absolutely horrifying things happening in our country (and I went on a little unfriending spree on Facebook because I’m not actually going to be friends with anyone who says hateful things about rape victims and positive things about rapists. (Remember who voted how in 2020, kids! Remember who laughed at Dr. Ford’s pain at Trump’s rally and fist-bumped getting an attempted rapist onto the Supreme Court.) I wrote a really angry poem but I realized I already have a book about what being a rape victim – besides the horrifying physical pain, there’s the mental and psychological damage that lasts…forever – Becoming the Villainess. It’s about how women in every society from ancient Greece to modern America can only choose between the roles of victim (pretty princess) and the villainess (evil witch) and that the rage and brokenness that results from sexual assault has repercussions.
By the way, you will never be “nice” enough to protect yourself from the men that want to violate you without any consequences. So, maybe stop being nice. The men in charge right now definitely don’t deserve nice. Anyone who victim-blames doesn’t deserve nice, either. My nice energy will be reserved for the victims, not the perpetrators.
Friday was a rainfest so we retreated to our local gardening center (Mobak’s) to celebrate the Harvest Festival and also goof around their Harvest Festival photo ops. I listened to the rain on the greenhouse roof and looked at flowers and then we came home and planted 40 daffodil and tulips and hyacinths bulbs. A sign of hope. I thought, we can make the world a slightly better place – we can donate money and vote and be kind to those that deserve it and we can plant growing things and adopt animals and believe women and we can meet and talk about ways to make things better. It is awfully hard to not lose hope. I am a creative type so doing creative things and being out with plants is a way for me to not lose my mind. Go do something that brings you joy and then take a step, then another step. I am counting my steps.
Jeannine Hall Gailey, A Rough Week, Harvest Festivals and Pumpkin Patches, and Poets Managing Good and Bad News
*
Just a short post today to link to a poem I read this morning, “Sunday Morning in the Church of Air” by Catherine Abbey Hodges in Swwim Lit Mag. It’s a beautiful poem that felt like a breath of fresh air after way too many days in pollution. Lately, I feel like I’m surrounded by toxic energy because of the dirty politics in our country, the finger-pointing, the screaming, the anger. I feel like so many are filled with hate and retribution and I don’t think they realize how it’s poisoning them and our country. Social Media has given everyone a voice and most of those voices, lately, are used to tear down, bully, ridicule. The intolerance is crushing.
I’m taking steps to severely limit toxic, angry voices in my online and television time. Yes, there are reasons to be angry but not.all.the.time. Don’t let it take over your life. It’s bad mental health. And, remember, everyone is entitled to their opinions and no one is right all the time.
Thank goodness for Poets who write about the beautiful in life, the good, the light. I’ll always choose the road to light over darkness. I will not allow anger, violence, and hate to change who I am. I have that power and so do you.
And none of this depends
on me, though I see now that somehow
I depend on it—the river, the stooped
heron and the one rising on great wings
above its reflection
**Steps off soap box.*
Have a beautiful day, friends.
Charlotte Hamrick, On Beauty and Poison
*
I’ve been waking up with my jaw already clenched, too many days in a row now, in dread of each day’s news. Sometimes really fantastic things happen–the MacArthur “genius” grant recipients for this year include Natalie Diaz and Kelly Link–and sometimes someone shows me a video of a basket of baby sloths or a baby flamingo taking it’s first steps, and sometimes it’s just enough to be in the same space as a friend, laughing. Sometimes solace lasts for the length of a poem. But it’s all a bulwark against the sense that our checks and balances no longer operate as they should. Perhaps they never did. The calls of “Remember all this on November 6!” ring a bit hollow when you’re a resident of Washington, D.C.–almost 700,000 of us, and not one seat in the Senate. Imagine how differently the last few weeks might have gone, had we had voting representation.
Teju Cole visited American University this past week. My undergraduate students for “Writers in Print and Person” read Blind Spot, photographs juxtaposed with flash nonfiction texts. The book is physically gorgeous as an artifact and gave us means to discuss Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida, “studium” and “punctum.” Barthes developed this vocabulary to talk primarily about portraiture; in moving the approach to landscape photography, which Cole does–and largely devoid of people’s faces–I’d argue that the explicit text teases a “punctum” to the surface that would otherwise stay invisible, but inherent to the impulse of the photographer. His lecture did the thing great art does, selfishly, which was that it made me want to hole up and think and write.
Sandra Beasley, Holding Space
*
Somewhere recently–was it the Sunday New York Times?–I read an opinion essay about how recent surveys of US citizens indicate that we have fewer hobbies than we have had in years past. The columnist wondered whether that lack is due to a zeal to be the best at whatever we engage in–the best jogger we can be, the most avid cyclist, the best collector, knitter, paper-crafter, woodworker, violinist, what-have-you. She suggested we’ve somehow lost the joys of being hobbyists: amateurs who do or create something because it is fun or relaxing, or because trying to learn a new skill makes us feel good. A true hobby is something we don’t have to be perfect at, because that is not the point.
As my students wrestle with the tasks of college and their concerns about their futures, the concept of vocation arises often. What to do with a life? Earn enough money to live reasonably comfortably, even if the job is not a passion? What if it’s not even satisfying? Should people choose a bearable career and find enjoyment in avocations? Or persist at what they love even if society doesn’t always reward the path they’ve chosen? Or–the options are legion.
~
I believe in vocation as passion, and I also practice hobbies. My career is in higher education, and I enjoy and learn from my job. My vocation is writing, particularly writing poetry; my passion lies in that direction more than any other, but poetry has not been a career path in my case.
~
My hobbies have evolved over the years. For decades, gardening has kept me happily occupied out of doors–but I have no need to become a Master Gardener, and my gardens are often minor failures in one respect or another. The garden, however, soothes me, distracts me from anxieties, helps me to become a better observer, teaches me much. When learning about plants, I got interested in botany and wild flower identification, so I am a more informed hiker and nature-saunterer than I used to be.
Photography’s also a hobby I pursue, an interest of mine since my late teen years (back before digital). The view through the frame has always intrigued me, as well as the opportunities that different lens lengths offer the photographer as to framing and focus. I especially enjoy macro lenses. It’s fun to zoom in closely on insects, flowers, and small areas of everyday objects. Photography encourages different types of observation.
Ann E. Michael, Vocation, avocation
*
Let’s invent useless things,
the ultimate freedom.I’ll make marble eggs,
headless dolls,
and stringless violins.I’ll write poems
that don’t put food on the table
with words no one understands:paperheart,
mailpill,
painstain,
bloodfence.
Claudia Serea, Useless things
*
Forty years ago I proposed a research project to answer this question: Do chipmunks follow set paths as they go about their nut gathering? This was high school senior year research bio class. I have no recollection of trying to justify the significance of that research question. I have no idea how I’d answer that. But Monsieurs Rehm and Cederstrom (R.I.P., lovely man) okayed the project.
I then spent very little time actually gathering data — which required sitting endlessly, motionlessly, in the park noting the movements of chipmunks I could in no way tell apart. I then, unsurprisingly with such little data, wrote a paper concluding there were no set patterns.
Now I find myself sitting in this chair (with the pleasure of having little else to do at the moment) almost every morning for the past two weeks out in this yard, with, as it happens, this chipmunk going about its business. From the hole in the brush behind me, it generally moves roughly south, pauses at a chair in front of the house, then disappears into the brush in front of that. Eventually, it returns, roughly from that direction, crosses the yard generally from the south, sometimes right along the edge of the house, or at least within five feet of it. It has many other paths, I know, as I’ve seen it rustling around across the road, or slipping into the outdoor shower and into the hole under that. But its return to this particular hole seems to follow a particular path. So lo and behold, I do think it has a general set pattern. Hunh.
I don’t know that I have much point here. Except that, you know, isn’t life funny?
In spite of my lazy approach to gathering data for that project, I have always been an observer. I had wanted to be a detective when I was a kid. Then a research biologist. Then I studied anthropology. Then public policy, which in a way is, if policy is well thought out, a combination of all those things. Then I studied poetry, which also, at least the poetry I write, is a combination of all those things: whodunit, and why, and what do we as a culture understand about it, how do we talk about it, and what can we make of it all.
If the chipmunk has a pattern then, as a predator, I could catch it. Or as a rival for its acorns, I could follow the chipmunk to its source and plunder. Or I can just notice. Maybe that’s what my role is here.
If human beings could be said to have some kind of unique role in life, maybe this is all it is — observe, note patterns, make art. And try not to kill too many things while we’re here.
Marilyn McCabe, No Straight Lines; or, What’s a Human For?
*
Maybe there’s been so much going on that when it stops you’re mildly disorientated. That must be it. I remind myself of the episode in John Hillaby’s book Journey through Britain. In the early sixties he walked from Land’s End to John o’ Groats, using, as far as was feasible, only footpaths and drovers’ roads and bridleways. Arriving in Bristol tired and jaded he seeks the advice of a boxing trainer who examines his legs, looks up, and says: what you need, sir, is exercise. Which turns out to be sound advice. When in doubt, just do it. So I shall.
I have no excuse; last Monday was a day I’d looked forward to for months. The guest poets at Puzzle Poets Live were two of my inspirations. Kim Moore and Clare Shaw. What a double bill! Poets whose reading makes you more alive, who electrify and excite you. One of the folk in the audience was David Spencer (cobweb guest in July) who had cycled from Huddersfield to Sowerby Bridge to be there. Valley to valley over a big Pennine hill with the M62 at its top. And then had to cycle back. That’s how good they are. It was a brilliant night. Along with their new work, Kim read Train from Barrow to Sheffield and In that year ; Clare read This baby and I do not believe in silence, and I could not have been happier. This week I found a warm review of my pamphlet Advice to a traveller in Indigo Dreams’ Reach Poetry 241 (thank you, Lynn Woollacott, and then…..
I’ve had a summer of doing stuff, pretty well non-stop; brickwork, woodwork, paintwork, garden work. I looked forward to it all being done, and then it was and suddenly I’d nothing to do. Except that I have…a review that should have been sent off months ago and which I keep rewriting and scrapping; feedback on lots of poems for two special friends. Why don’t I just do it? I’ve a horror of not being busy. I always have. It’s that Conradian thing, the need to work and work to avoid reality, or something. I dreaded retirement …and it was destabilising when it came, that lack of imposed obligations. What I’m not so good at is dealing with self-imposed obligations. A bit like the feeling that most teachers know, the Sunday afternoon feeling, the knowledge that there’s a pile of marking that must be done for Monday, that’s grown because you didn’t do it when you could have done, because you’ve put it off.
What saved me was finding poetry and writing. I have a fear of unemployment and silence. Like Clare Shaw, I do not believe in silence. I cannot sit still. I cannot be quiet.
John Foggin, The return of Polished Gems Revisited : with Laura Potts
Writing life
(Lord’s day). Called up about 4 of the clock and so dressed myself and so on board the Bezan, and there finding all my company asleep I would not wake them, but it beginning to be break of day I did stay upon the decke walking, and then into the Maister’s cabbin and there laid and slept a little, and so at last was waked by Captain Cocke’s calling of me, and so I turned out, and then to chat and talk and laugh, and mighty merry. We spent most of the morning talking and reading of “The Siege of Rhodes,” which is certainly (the more I read it the more I think so) the best poem that ever was wrote. We breakfasted betimes and come to the fleete about two of the clock in the afternoon, having a fine day and a fine winde. My Lord received us mighty kindly, and after discourse with us in general left us to our business, and he to his officers, having called a council of warr, we in the meantime settling of papers with Mr. Pierce and everybody else, and by and by with Captain Cuttance. Anon called down to my Lord, and there with him till supper talking and discourse; among other things, to my great joy, he did assure me that he had wrote to the King and Duke about these prize-goods, and told me that they did approve of what he had done, and that he would owne what he had done, and would have me to tell all the world so, and did, under his hand, give Cocke and me his certificate of our bargains, and giving us full power of disposal of what we have so bought. This do ease my mind of all my fear, and makes my heart lighter by 100l. than it was before. He did discourse to us of the Dutch fleete being abroad, eighty-five of them still, and are now at the Texell, he believes, in expectation of our Eastland ships coming home with masts and hempe, and our loaden Hambrough ships going to Hambrough. He discoursed against them that would have us yield to no conditions but conquest over the Dutch, and seems to believe that the Dutch will call for the protection of the King of France and come under his power, which were to be wished they might be brought to do under ours by fair means, and to that end would have all Dutch men and familys, that would come hither and settled, to be declared denizens; and my Lord did whisper to me alone that things here must break in pieces, nobody minding any thing, but every man his owne business of profit or pleasure, and the King some little designs of his owne, and that certainly the kingdom could not stand in this condition long, which I fear and believe is very true.
So to supper and there my Lord the kindest man to me, before all the table talking of me to my advantage and with tenderness too that it overjoyed me. So after supper Captain Cocke and I and Temple on board the Bezan, and there to cards for a while and then to read again in “Rhodes” and so to sleep. But, Lord! the mirth which it caused me to be waked in the night by their snoaring round about me; I did laugh till I was ready to burst, and waked one of the two companions of Temple, who could not a good while tell where he was that he heard one laugh so, till he recollected himself, and I told him what it was at, and so to sleep again, they still snoaring.
morning is the best poem
afternoon papers it over
all settled things must break in pieces
I believe in my sleep
waked in the night by snoring
I laugh to recollect it
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 1 October 1665.
The Hollow (9)
den holes
I knock on the tree to see
if a head pokes out
a breeze shakes acorns loose
their muffled thumps into rain-
softened moss
how great it felt
not to be afraid of falling
in last night’s dream
perched aristocratically
among the toadstools
a cranefly
Pilgrimage
It takes a while
before the eye feels
comfortable
navigating the streets
in a once familiar
and now foreign city—
It wants to take in
landmark after landmark
based on emotional vibrations
set off by certain signs or
whether the sea
can be glimpsed
from a lookout point.
Other than that, each junction
is its own destination: stops
on the way that vendors try
to make bearable with offerings
of hot peanuts or boiled eggs,
or the sweet-charred smell of corn.
A friend buys every single item
lifted to the grimy bus
window— isn’t that the point,
he says. Like church
pilgrimages made in Lent:
when the faithful touch
their lips to every statue
that might warm to life.
Intemperate
Up and to the office, where busy all the morning, and at noon with Sir W. Batten to Coll. Cleggat to dinner, being invited, where a very pretty dinner to my full content and very merry. The great burden we have upon us at this time at the office, is the providing for prisoners and sicke men that are recovered, they lying before our office doors all night and all day, poor wretches. Having been on shore, the captains won’t receive them on board, and other ships we have not to put them on, nor money to pay them off, or provide for them. God remove this difficulty! This made us followed all the way to this gentleman’s house and there are waited for our coming out after dinner. Hither come Luellin to me and would force me to take Mr. Deering’s 20 pieces in gold he did offer me a good while since, which I did, yet really and sincerely against my will and content, I seeing him a man not likely to do well in his business, nor I to reap any comfort in having to do with, and be beholden to, a man that minds more his pleasure and company than his business.
Thence mighty merry and much pleased with the dinner and company and they with me I parted and there was set upon by the poor wretches, whom I did give good words and some little money to, and the poor people went away like lambs, and in good earnest are not to be censured if their necessities drive them to bad courses of stealing or the like, while they lacke wherewith to live. Thence to the office, and there wrote a letter or two and dispatched a little business, and then to Captain Cocke’s, where I find Mr. Temple, the fat blade, Sir Robert. Viner’s chief man. And we three and two companions of his in the evening by agreement took ship in the Bezan and the tide carried us no further than Woolwich about 8 at night, and so I on shore to my wife, and there to my great trouble find my wife out of order, and she took me downstairs and there alone did tell me her falling out with both her mayds and particularly Mary, and how Mary had to her teeth told her she would tell me of something that should stop her mouth and words of that sense. Which I suspect may be about Brown, but my wife prays me to call it to examination, and this, I being of myself jealous, do make me mightily out of temper, and seeing it not fit to enter into the dispute did passionately go away, thinking to go on board again. But when I come to the stairs I considered the Bezan would not go till the next ebb, and it was best to lie in a good bed and, it may be, get myself into a better humour by being with my wife. So I back again and to bed and having otherwise so many reasons to rejoice and hopes of good profit, besides considering the ill that trouble of mind and melancholly may in this sickly time bring a family into, and that if the difference were never so great, it is not a time to put away servants, I was resolved to salve up the business rather than stir in it, and so become pleasant with my wife and to bed, minding nothing of this difference. So to sleep with a good deal of content, and saving only this night and a day or two about the same business a month or six weeks ago, I do end this month with the greatest content, and may say that these last three months, for joy, health, and profit, have been much the greatest that ever I received in all my life in any twelve months almost in my life, having nothing upon me but the consideration of the sicklinesse of the season during this great plague to mortify mee. For all which the Lord God be praised!
like a blade carried in the teeth
my temper
not fit to go to bed with
if I hope to sleep
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 30 September 1665.