Spotting the webs

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

The first clear weather after weeks of haze or showers, and what I am most agog at are the shadows. That, and the profusion of spider webs, most from one species – spined micrathena. I walk slowly through the woods, trying to spot each web before it snags me, but more than once I have to stop and clean myself of web and spider. I do appreciate the fact that this forces me to walk slowly and pay close attention. But they really should go after smaller prey.

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

In the spruce grove, small as it is, the air is noticeably cooler and (naturally) more fragrant than in the surrounding field. Here, too, the shadows are uncommonly sharp.

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

The effect of a two- or three-acre planting of even-aged trees in more-or-less orderly rows is altogether different from the oppressive feeling one gets from walking through a large plantation. An evergreen grove this size is a habitation within the larger landscape. For two years running, sharp-shinned hawks have nested here, secretive to the point of invisibility until the young hatch, then increasingly aggressive toward any intruder. We have yet to pinpoint the exact location of their nest.

Leaving the grove on the northwest side makes for an abrupt and surprising transition. Right outside it, among a ragged file of half-dead black locust trees, a half-acre milkweed patch hosts more monarch caterpillars than I have ever seen – one or two per plant. The location of the patch, at the one place where the old field laps up to the top of the ridge, may be especially effective in attracting the migratory butterflies. Be that as it may, there’s no question that these caterpillars are among the last of the year, and will become the generation of butterflies to head down-ridge toward Mexico, following the invisible paths of their great-great-grandparents the year before.

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

I cross into the black cherry – red maple – sugar maple woods that was so devastated by last January’s ice storm. The spear-point snags of snapped boles now sport clusters of five- and six-foot-long sprouts; I am cheered to think that many of these trees will live. In the middle of the old woods road, I come across a box turtle, one of at least two that reside in the vicinity of the ephemeral ponds. We found them mating last year at this time: a sight at once comic and awe-inspiring, as the male lies almost all the way over on his back, gyrating non-existent hips against the firmly planted female. I wonder if their slow blood is once again stirring? This one retracted its feet but not its head when I approached; the picture doesn’t do justice to its dark red jewel of an eye.

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

On the way back from the Far Field, a large burl on the trunk of a red maple brought down by the ice storm seems to invite the prurient attentions of a hay-scented fern. Or am I with my camera the one who’s being prurient? As I follow the trail along the head of Roseberry Hollow, one of the pair of ravens that have been circling and calling all morning lands in a tree somewhere close above me on the ridgetop. I’m startled by the loudness of its cries: RAWK RAWK RAWK RAWK RAWK. Then it switches to a more metallic, nasal call – ONK ONK ONK. An eerie sound. It repeats the phrase, as if pleased with the sound of it. I hear the distant reply of its mate. Then it lifts off, its wingbeats almost as silent as an owl’s. I catch a glimpse of its shadow passing through the trees, sliding up and over the strange green paintbrushes of new growth.

The fears and pleasures

This entry is part 6 of 42 in the series Antiphony: Paul Zweig

 

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

I’m reading Paul Zweig. This is the sixth poem in the first section of his Selected and Last Poems, followed by my response. See here for details.

Afraid That I Am Not a Poet
by Paul Zweig

Afraid that I am not a poet,
Yet willing to write
Even about that . . .

[Remainder of poem removed 8-25-05]

* * * *

Ukiyo-E

Outside of a poem, I have never seen
such a seemingly everyday thing as
an empty mirror.

I think of the fear I would feel if
I came face to face with
the absence of myself
& shiver with longing & delight.

Ah, that the mere thought of a thing –
an outline, an image – can open
a window in my chest
& make my tongue dance about
for words!
__________

Ukiyo-e, which refers to a genre of pre-modern Japanese woodblock prints depicting scenes from the demimonde, literally means “Picture(s) of the Floating World.”

They call it Stormy Monday

Six-thirty a.m. at the Super 8. I shut off the air conditioner – blessed maker of white noise – and slide the window open. Rain falls on hundreds of acres of pavement to no purpose. I sip my coffee, prop my feet up as if I were back home on my own front porch.

Four men stand talking and moving their arms in the parking lot below, gesturing toward the GP station, the Shoney’s, the Wal-Mart Supercenter – maybe even toward the hills. I can hear every word, but understand nothing. Can my Spanish really be that rusty?

I call my linguist brother over to the window. “That’s not Spanish. It’s some Eastern European language, I think.” After a few minutes, they arrive at some decision, get into their pick-ups and drive away.

I listen to the semis going by on the wet highway – shhhhhhhUSHHhhhhh. Something triggers a car alarm in the distance, a plaintive beeping that goes on and on without stopping.

*

Ten-thirty in the small reception area at Scotty’s Discount Tire and Muffler in downtown Summersville, West Virginia (population 3,900). I return from a walk with my umbrella in the on-again, off-again drizzle and find my brother reading a history of India as he waits for news about the car. A small, white-haired lady in the next seat over is singing about Jesus.

As I stand gaping in the doorway, a middle-aged woman walks over, leans down and asks the other woman if she’ll be coming for supper that night. “Just nod your head if the answer is ‘yes,’ mother,” she says. The singing woman nods, then goes on slowly nodding, keeping time to one gospel hymn after another: jubilant words in a voice as sad and quiet as the rain.

*

Twelve-thirty at Fran’s Restaurant, catty-corner from the courthouse, waiting for lunch at a table facing the street. We can just make out the sign for another body shop, which appears to be closed – Rusty Auto. “Too bad they’re not open – that seems like the place for us,” I joke.

Steve swats at a persistent fly and misses. “Clap your hands in the air above him – that always works,” I say. “Oh, I know. But I prefer to catch them,” he says, “Like this – ” and as the fly makes its next pass low over the flat monotony of imitation wood, his hand darts in from behind and scoops it up. “So the question now is, how to get rid of it?” he asks rhetorically, and proceeds to demonstrate, dashing the fly against the table so it lies there, stunned, waiting for the hand’s deliberate descent.

Fuel

This entry is part 5 of 42 in the series Antiphony: Paul Zweig

 

I’m reading Paul Zweig. This is the fifth poem in the first section of his Selected and Last Poems, followed by my response. See here for details.

On Possessions
by Paul Zweig

      I
Burning what I own,
Burning this fuel of nerves and money . . .

[Remainder of poem removed 8-25-05]

* * * *

On Possession

1.
The Gothic cathedral at Burgos, in northern Spain,
was too much: all that colored light
flooding in around the apse
where the monstrous symbolic god was expected
to lay his thorn-pillowed head.
I couldn’t see it.

Cathedrals are best on days when wind & rain
beat their wings against the glass.
Outside, the stone shell darkens
& one longs to pull it tight against the skin
like a frogman’s wetsuit.
Inside: revelation. That a blue drop
should hide a molten core!

2.
The lords of this world reach as far as they need to.
Their fingertips smell of oil & wet ashes
from the crematorium.
We are all possessed, say
the bells of wherever.
This very poem gutters in its wax, poor thing.

3.
The university library commissioned a sculpture
to mark the dedication of a new wing:
in white marble, an open book
with a flame rising from the page, tall
& sinuous – a lap dancer
in the seat of what, we are solemnly
given to understand, represents knowledge.
The room vibrates with the hum of computers.
Sunlight slants through the high windows
above the milling crowd of students,
smooth faces glowing,
glowering,
glistening,
glazed
from the firing of each split-second synapse,
that light-drenched gap.

Becoming grass

This entry is part 4 of 42 in the series Antiphony: Paul Zweig

 

I’m reading Paul Zweig. This is the fourth poem from his Selected and Last Poems, followed by my response. See here for details.

A Sadness from the Old Philosophers
by Paul Zweig

I plant my stick in the loose earth,
And now my father lies down beside me….

[Remainder of poem removed 8-23-05]

* * * *

A Wryness from the Old Wives

Click, clack says my walking stick,
& the soft buzz of a rattlesnake
shivers from the rock.

You go for water & bring back a strange new lover:
that’s how it is in the tales the old wives
used to roll between their palms.

One long noodle of clay made a bowl, a mirror
you could drink from. Coiling or uncoiling,
something always gets loose.

Raising the tank

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

It’s been over thirty years since the thousand-gallon oil tank was buried in the lawn, and we figured it was only a matter of time before it rusted through. This would be an environmental catastrophe, since it sits right above the stream, near the head of the hollow. We were planning to replace the old guest house furnace with a new, more efficient model anyway, so it seemed like a good time to put in an above-ground, fiberglass-lined tank, as well.

Thus, Saturday morning found us – my dad, my brother Steve and I – helping to free an aging, submersible craft from a shallow sea of soil. I say “helping,” because in fact the diesel-powered farm tractor did most of the work. The backhoe arm had no trouble moving earth that had been broken up by the original excavation in 1973, but as soon as it tried to bite into virgin ground, it ran a cropper of the bedrock, which is little over 18 inches down in some spots. Dad sat at the controls while Steve and I leaned on our shovels, or climbed up behind him for a better view. From the front porch, looking straight down as dirt and boulders tumbled onto a growing pile, I really did begin to feel as if I were watching a kind of semi liquid, like the stuff that spills out of a field-dressed deer. But when the hole got below four feet in depth, we saw water for real: even in this drought, the bottom of the tank sat a foot below the water table.

Of course, the air itself was saturated with moisture. The thermometer was climbing past 90 and we were sweating buckets just standing still. But Dad was afraid of undermining the guest house front porch, which he and I had spent considerable time and effort shoring up a few summers back, so Steve and I did have to jump down into the hole at one point and do a bit of digging around that side. Standing on top of the emerging tank, Steve discovered a metal ring or handle poking up. Without that discovery, we might’ve spent all day trying to get a chain under and around the tank.

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

Using the tractor’s front loader, Dad was able to lift and carry the tank up to the barnyard. I had already gone up to the main house to begin preparing that evening’s supper – we eat almost nothing but cold dishes in this kind of weather, so I have to work well ahead. But Steve buzzed me on the intercom so I wouldn’t miss it, and I ran back down and joined Karylee and Elanor on the porch. As the tank lurched free of the earth, it swung dangerously close to the nearest porch column, and we all moved down to the far end.

Once in the barnyard, we lowered the tank onto concrete blocks, stacked so it would sit an angle. I pulled over the steel drip pan from underneath the bulldozer, and Dad and Steve proceeded to cut a small hole in the bottom with a sawzall in order to drain out the last of the oil. When it was finished draining, Dad gave the end of the tank a kick and discovered that it had amazing acoustic properties: a booming bass that went on and on almost as long as a Japanese temple bell. After supper, on my way back down to the guest house, I grabbed a sledgehammer from the barn and tried it out, striking the end as hard as I could. From a foot away, I could hear all kinds of overtones. Dad joined me in the barnyard after dumping the kitchen scraps in the compost pit. “Bet they can hear that all the way from Tyrone,” he said. I tried an accelerating rhythm: BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOMBOOMBOOM, like the world’s largest ruffed grouse. My dad’s never been to a rock concert. “You can feel the sound right in your chest,” he marveled.

Owed

This entry is part 3 of 42 in the series Antiphony: Paul Zweig

 

I’m reading Paul Zweig. This is the third poem from his Selected and Last Poems, followed by my response. See the introduction to yesterday’s post for details.

God’s Ledger
by Paul Zweig

You gave me what I didn’t want
And taught me to love it. You fed me
Sweet food, and killed each painful cell…

[Remainder of poem removed 8-23-05]

* * * *

Anti-Psalm

The Lord is my venture capitalist; I shall not wonder.
My mouth scarcely shapes itself into an Owe
& His pen is already busy adding zeroes.
He underwrites my need for better reception.
Who knew I harbored such complex involucres?

He asks for nothing difficult in return:
there’s no soul in receivership, no pain that doesn’t pass —
hard currency of that heaven they harp about.
I am full, full. Beggars get fat on my crumbs.

He gives me something to quench the flames
well in advance of setting me on fire.
He asks for nothing, believe me.
He takes a loss.

The pure distance

This entry is part 2 of 42 in the series Antiphony: Paul Zweig

 

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us
Northern true katydid (Pterophylla camellifolia)

What does it mean to bring one’s full attention to a text? Medieval Christian mystics pioneered a form of deep reading, lectio divina, which they viewed as indispensable to clear thinking, prayer and contemplation. As one present-day Benedictine monk puts it,

The art of lectio divina begins with cultivating the ability to listen deeply, to hear “with the ear of our hearts” as St. Benedict encourages us in the Prologue to the Rule…. [This] is very different from the speed reading which modern Christians apply to newspapers, books and even to the Bible. Lectio is reverential listening; listening both in a spirit of silence and of awe. We are listening for the still, small voice of God that will speak to us personally – not loudly, but intimately.

(For more on lectio divina, see Slow Reads blogger Peter’s review of Sacred Reading: the Ancient Art of Lectio Divina, by Michael Casey.) Could something of this technique be carried over into secular reading? After all, every truly inspired text is full of silences and caesuras, places where the incommensurability of word and world appears to be a source of energy rather than an obstacle, like the gap in a spark plug. The goal would be a bit more modest: rather than Christian contemplation, I’m after little more than the meditative trance brought on by immersion in creative work. That’s the logic behind this experiment in writing poems prompted by the poems of others, beginning with Paul Zweig: more antiphony than lectio, I suppose. My intent is not to try and equal – or even really to imitate – the original poem, but simply to respond to it out of my own experience, using the most exact and exacting language I can muster. I don’t expect every response to be a resounding success. But I am hoping that the effort will lead me to listen more attentively to all the sounds and layers of meaning in the original texts.

Here’s the second piece included in Zweig’s Selected and Last Poems, edited by C. K. Williams, Wesleyan University Press, 1989. (After a week or so, I’ll remove his poems from the posts in order to avoid copyright infringement.)

Walking over Brooklyn
by Paul Zweig

Black smoke trails from the incinerators,
Bits of cardboard flaming in the cage
On top of tall chimneys….

[Remainder of poem removed 8-21-05]

* * * *

Eye to Eye

In the story of my childhood I am
usually elsewhere, a thin presence to myself,
mumbling from a script of my own devising.
It never occurs to me to wonder
how my opposite number the hero
might really feel: Hey, it’s hot up here!
I’m tired of coming to the rescue of girls
you’re too scared to say one word to.
And how can you call yourself a pacifist
& expect me to avenge all wrongs
with my infallible fists?

Of unscripted moments, I remember few.
I wreck every kite I ever try to fly
in the mountaintop’s sideways wind.

Late summer of my 40th year, I catch
an echo of my childhood in the nightly
chorus of katydids, their camouflaged
leaf-bodies falling out of & back into unison
like a concert audience that continues its rhythmic
clapping during a break in the music.
I float on that throbbing: sleep is the only time
I get to dream now. By day, I tread
the high wires of the cicadas’ whine
& press a cold watermelon to my belly –
one sightless eyeball to another.
Soon enough, all distance will dissolve
into a single arc of spent sugar.
The half-moon will rise a lurid red.

Them bones

This entry is part 1 of 42 in the series Antiphony: Paul Zweig

 

Marooned in motel rooms for five days with a single, well-thumbed book of poetry, I pored over the words of Paul Zweig – his Selected and Last Poems, edited by C. K. Williams, Wesleyan University Press, 1989 – like a shipwrecked survivor hoarding pieces of driftwood. I began thinking about a new experiment in close reading or exegesis wherein I would write poems of my own in response to poems by some of my favorite writers, beginning with Zweig. I have no idea whether I’ll be able to carry through with it or not; even stating the aspiration here violates a personal taboo against articulating an ambition for a writing project before undertaking it. So it’s more than likely that this post will be a one-off. In any case, my intent is not to match Zweig’s effort – a near-impossibility – but simply to respond to it using the most exact and exacting language I can muster.

Here’s the poem C. K. Williams chose as the opener; it originally appeared in the book Against Emptiness. As always, merely typing out the words of another poet enforces a more intimate kind of reading than I am used to…

On Discovering a Thighbone under a Heap of Stones
by Paul Zweig

      I
I’m waiting for the Druid to claim his bone
In the woodshed. I have dusted and cleaned it,
But the stain of earth remains….

[Remainder of poem removed 8-18-05]

* * * *

On Discovering a Poem by Paul Zweig

I have grown too accustomed to the terms
of surrender, the unconditional so-called
human condition. In the crawl-space
under my house, dust where no rain
has fallen in a hundred & fifty years
preserves not merely bones but hide
& hair of rat, raccoon, groundhog.
A porcupine flat as a punctured balloon
still bristles with the nibs of dry pens.
Every few years when I have to repair
the insulation around the heating ducts,
I uncover the remains of my fellow inhabitants
with a shock of recognition:
that I have never been here before, as long
as I have traveled in this one place.
Perennial wonder that we & the dead
should possess such durability. Aside
from the body’s moist exudates,
what passes? Earth, bone, these fossils
under our faces: consonants in
some ancient Baedeker
dehydrated for easy portability –
add vowels & serve.

I ask no more of you than what you wanted
from yourself, Zweig. The opening poem
in your posthumous book almost begs
the well-traveled reader to pass by.
Blood, stones, field – the shibboleths
of every workshop poet. But I am hardly
a sophisticate myself; what better place
to begin than the common gate?
Gate.
Rogate.
Interrogate.
We spell each other, then. The dry bones live.

Blogging from the ninth circle

In case anyone is wondering where the hell I’ve been: my brother and I are stranded in Summersville, WV with a broken-down car. I came down last Saturday for a cousin’s wedding in Beckley and I’ve been here ever since, with no access to the Internet until now, eating junk food and watching many bad movies. Virtually every mechanic in a five-mile radius has examined my brother’s 1990 Olds, replacing a number of parts, but it still won’t run. Short of getting a local Pentecostal preacher to drive the demons out of it, we have explored every option. It looks very much as if we will have to ditch it and rent a car to get us back home (we’re well off the Greyhound route).

Staying on the strip (first at a Super 8, then at a Hampton Inn), I’ve been forced to think about this most ubiquitous of American landscapes…

Strip. Lay down your overburden, bare your black seam of heat where the shovels can reach it. Let rains tease your acids from the rock.

Strip, stripe of concrete between gas stations & inconvenience stores, chain restaurants, big box stores, motels, each marooned on its own island of tarmac. We are all strangers here, even the natives.

Strip: supposedly comic, unmoving pictures starring the same faces, day after day. We grimace at the punchlines: Neighborhood Grill and Bar, says the Applebee’s sign. Oh, do let’s take a stroll ’round the Village Square!

Stripped of wheels, we navigate the strip on foot, automatic jaywalkers. The smell of fryer grease mingles with exhaust. Under one streetlight, we step carefully around the corpses of three starlings. We could be anywhere. This might as well be home.

Image hosted by Photobucket.com