Ann E. Michael's Blog, page 33

Burning

[image error] t’s fascinating to me how memory and associations work; this weirdly human cognitive process (or set of connective processes) seems to wire us for poetry, for art, for metaphor, analogy, and symbolism–for dreams and the surreal, and for curiosity and wonderment.

I visited the Cathedral of Notre Dame when I was in Paris at age 16, an experience indelible in my mind. And yet, what arrived when I sat down to write my poem for this particular April day is a different, though related, image and experience. One I had not thought about for many years, not since this post, probably.

~

Cathedral, Burning

In a work of fiction, the church aflame would act as symbol; in a sermon,

as analogy, something metaphorical in both church and fire; but listen,

my childhood church, First Presbyterian of Yonkers, burned to the ground–

steeple towers, bricks, stained glass, oak pews–in 1968, faulty electric

wires, not an act of God, nothing symbolic about it, no medieval art, no

gargoyles, no rose window; and I can attest to fire’s brute facts, the physics

of heat, the combustion chemistry my father’s brother studied for years, how

even stone can change in fire, transmute, char, chip, and timbers light up

like a droughty forest, glass fused into new-made forms and smoke erupting

to chorus its own pronouncement louder than prayer; and there is no alleluia

yet there is no satan, only what the earth is made of changing its form

(molecular re-arrangements) but not its substance, which is earth, and ours.

~

Archival photo here.

Half-way through

[image error]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lightning_strike_jan_2007.jpg

Night-storm

Then, the flood: flash. Side of road overwashed

as we are washed over. Swept. Wind is the broom

and we the debris. Unnecessary as dust or crumbs.

What name can we give to this occurrence? Call it

natural. Disaster. Or just a Thing That Happens.

Not that the name means much to us once we drown

in it, sucked under and curled into water’s embrace

whether sea or river or the lake become enraged

by thunderous sky or thunderous quaking crusts

the planet [they say] possesses. Loose scutes or

scales. Loose bark, like a tree. Pieces of slate

shorn sideways. Shear. Water. A species of bird,

Calonectris, that touches earth only to breed.

They skim sea. We cannot. We tumble under, breath

withheld until we can no longer wait and inhale

water. Absent our past gills, we inundate our lungs.

The crash of a body blasted from surf to shore.

Gasping. Thus I waken, shaken with sobs, damp to

the core, bruised, stiff, coated in mud and sand.

I wonder. All that inside me. As though I could know.

Sense the absence after the dwindling and oblivion.

Or is it creativity–imagining swell and loss?

Which may be nothing. Nothing like this dream.

~

Today marks the halfway point in my challenge to myself to write a poem a day for National Poetry Month. Is it getting easier yet? (No.)

Tending, clearing

According to the Chinese lunisolar calendar, between now and the late April rains one should tend to the graves of one’s ancestors. This period goes by the name 清明, or qīngmíng, and the weeks are designated “clear and bright.”

In my part of the world, we experience a mix of rainy and clear; but the days are warming and the grass greener. The annual winter weeds pull up easily, and the tough perennial weeds emerge before the grasses. The moist, newly-thawed soil makes levering those weeds less difficult now than later in the year.

I, however, do not live anywhere near my ancestors’ graves.

~

Clearing

Clear the patch that yields

to memory

clutch the hand hoe

and the trowel

disturbing early spring’s

small bees and gnats

beneath the plum’s

blossoming branches

Weeds encroach here

grasses grown too high

a nearby stone

toppled and broken

tells us about

forgetfulness

Insects surround

the quiet morning

active each year as warmth

moves into earth

the newt that curls

under last year’s leaf

finds sustenance

As do we

in our earnest effort

clearing as skies clear

each handful of chickweed

representing thanks

to those whose efforts

and accidents

brought us into

the world

~

[image error]

photo by David Sloan

Brevity

Haiku are even shorter than tanka, though in some ways they are easier to compose. Herewith, two versions of a haiku moment, both in draft form.

I began a longer piece this morning but could not complete it…maybe tomorrow…or another day.

~

bluebird on fence post

tree frogs calling–

insects have wakened

~~

bright bluebird

under overcast sky

an April day

~

 

[image error]

Eastern bluebird photo thanks to Photo: Laurie Lawler/Great Backyard Bird Count Participant, Audubon Society website.
 

Playing

Sometimes a “skinny” poem’s fun to play with. And breaking up the expected in a rather ornery mood.

~

[image error]

Aviatrix

I get off on

it, scoff at

ground

walkers

down be

lo & be

hold—

sky waves

a big hello.

Nobody drags

me under

no beast nor

man can

tether me

to lack

luster earth.

Wind, cloud

I am a

light o, how

I hate

going back.

~

Photo by Azim Islam on Pexels.com

Lustratio*

Another day, another draft!

This challenge has not gotten easier yet. Sometimes, disciplined practice leads to a certain ease or confidence–that’s always the hope, anyway, that I might find amid the drafts something wonderful. My model here would be someone like William Stafford, who sat down every morning to draft at least one poem (and sometimes they were wonderful). The Poetry Foundation’s site says:

Stafford reports that he sits alone in the early morning and writes down whatever occurs to him, following his impulses. “It is like fishing,” he says, and he must be receptive and “willing to fail. If I am to keep writing, I cannot bother to insist on high standards…. I am following a process that leads so wildly and originally into new territory that no judgment can at the moment be made about values, significance, and so on…. I am headlong to discover.”

At the end of this National Poetry Month, I will give myself a reckoning as to whether the NaPoWriMo process has been at all helpful to me as a poet. It may be it proves beneficial in some other way…

~

Lustratio

Her friends died young when she herself

was young and unbaptized in the realm of dying

Yet you would think her better prepared–for there were

car crashes, suicides, fires, the blood plague taking

its long and steady toll

There were the risk-takers certain of their immortality

who drowned or fell from cliffs or grace

through the needle or the drug or drink and those

whose hearts took upon themselves

a need to hurry beyond the body’s balance and

whose breastbones could not contain them

You would think her ready for the news that someone

loved or once loved or otherwise connected

(Milgram’s six degrees of separation theory)

had died however people do when they are young–

embolism, cancer, accident, murder

Slow or sudden–it’s not as if the difference

though there is one, matters

because you’d think, by now, when she is no longer young

the facts of gone and after and remembering

the evidence of dying and grief’s enormous cosmos

would have carved for her a familiar space

A kind of purifying trauma–as if the bulla and procession

could protect her or her community from harm

when harm is what the world offers now and then

and we must bid it enter even if we are young

Even when it is unwelcome.

~

NOTE:

* Lustratio was an ancient Greek purification and protection ritual for children or for cities, farms, and other precious items; in the case of a male child, sometimes it was a naming ceremony at which the baby would receive a small, gold bulla (charm in the shape of a bull’s head) as a blessing or for protection. Ancient historians describe it in several ways, but most frequently mention a procession and animal sacrifice.

Rhyme

Rhyme comes easily to some people. For me, rhyme presents no problem as far as lighter verse, parodies, ditties–which have their place in literature and in culture. In more introspective or reflective verse, though, rhyme tends to elude me and often seems not to mesh with the poem’s mood. Revising toward rhyme often succeeds in assisting the metaphors, imagery, or tone, however. Usually assisted by some sort of metrical strategy.

Today my poem-draft-a-day offers evidence of how rhyme can appear spontaneously in a poem’s first version.

If you are interested, here’s an excellent book on rhyme in poetry: Rhyme’s Reason, by John Hollander & Richard Wilbur–welcome authorities on the subject.

Quite long ago now, I dwelt in cities for a few years. The contrast to my current environment startles me now and then, makes me remember those years.

~

Outmoded

His back aches. It hurts to move.

How did he ever get so old?

The work it takes to walk a block

to buy a paper! Then he’s told

the news is found online, where he

can read it on a mobile phone.

He hates the sound of that idea–

the text so small–and, when alone,

he likes the paper’s rustling noise.

It’s domestic. One of life’s joys.

The work and pain are thus worthwhile.

That, and the newsstand vendor’s smile.

~

[image error]

Photo by Daria Obymaha on Pexels.com

Favorite poem project

[image error]

Last night, I had the pleasure of participating in a Favorite Poem Project reading at my university.  I have many favorite poems, but this time I chose to read Audre Lorde’s “Coal”, because of how powerfully it spoke to me when I encountered it as a very young woman in a Contemporary Women’s Literature course in my undergraduate years. Reading it aloud to the audience, I realized the poem speaks to me even now–though in a slightly different way, altered by life experience.

 

~

My poem for Day 9 seems to evoke Han Dynasty style poetry.

~

Warm Spring Night

I was not drinking wine

alone on the porch

I was accompanied by clouds

two species of frogs

toads whose squeaking chorused

sex and risk–

also the silent predators

awaiting the amphibian

awakening

hungry after winter

among this vast assembly

I had least to gain

and least to lose

I savored the taste

of my situation

under the near-new moon.

~

[image error]

Photo by Plus Blanc Studio on Pexels.com

Drafty

I have to keep reminding myself that these poems are drafts and just get over their weakness and rough spots and recall that the drafting aspect is part of my April experiment–pushing the envelope, as the saying goes, and allowing the imperfections to go public. Then readers will perhaps recognize that every poem has to start somewhere, and it is not always from inspiration or native talent.

Any of the poems I draft this month that I consider worth keeping around for further work will move into my revision-worthy pile. For me, the revision process engages creativity in a form very different from the initial draft. Just as an example, few of my drafts use rhyme; sometimes I employ a basic metrical strategy (but not always)–and stanza structure almost always occurs during my revision process. Yet my finished poems often contain such components.

This one’s a less-plausible lyrical narrative, and I have no idea why I drafted it.

[image error]

“Observatory Box,” Joseph Cornell

~

Experience of the Disembodied

What happened was a bounce

or peak in the field,

a shiver in the multiverse

tearing through cosmic shift

although maybe that is not

what happened because I was

not observing the rift,

I was entering into it with my

physical body per se

although I could not call the action

“flying” yet I did feel earth’s

gravity, that weakest of forces,

loosening until church spires

and pine trees, tall city buildings

shrank beneath me–

and my skin emptied,

a frosty altitude, a gutted sensation,

numbed spine and brain: Where am I?

In this supra-cosmos no light

of the sort my eyes can translate.

Energy vibrating. Loss of myself

while I watch myself,

fascinated, undone. Waiting

for the next shoe to drop.

~~

Re: National Poetry Month –here’s a thoughtful blog post on continuing the conversation through millennia.

Lyric, narrative

I love hearing stories. Telling stories. Inventing stories. Often I choose to create a story using the first person perspective, whether the story is my own, someone else’s, or totally invented. In poetry this gets called the lyrical narrative.

~

A Toast to the Brown Bat

We are on the porch, drinking wine

late in the long summer day, dusk hovering

the way small storms of insects do

the day after a hard rain, and we’re talking

about something not especially dear to us,

no deep discourse, past that, watching

candles glow and the first wink of fireflies

when a brown bat flutters over like

an autumn leaf and my friend asks, “what

is it like to be a bat?” And as I’m somewhat

versed in philosophy I mention Thomas

Nagel, whose essay with that title is

justly famous but who does not really answer

the question; and she responds, “it must be

alternately stifling and soaring.” I think she

means that every flight’s like Christmas—

freedom and feasting—and every day an

imprisonment in the tightly-packed dark.

“But what if colony life is cozy?” I ask, imagining

small bodies light as sparrows breathing

together softly, fur-lined and snuggled,

fingers folded over the bellies, a generous

communion of sleep. “I can’t quite get over,

though,” she says, “that they sleep upside-

down.” “It might cure your migraines,” I say,

and we devote our next toast to the bat.

~

[image error]

WYPR.org